These lizards are related to the mammal-like reptiles that are, in turn, ancestral to mammals.

The teeth show plant eating, and in particular, they show a morphology thought to be linked to a more specialized consumption of a higher quality, lower fiber diet. This is actually something I know something about, and for that reason, I’m going to reserve comment on this interpretation and its meaning until I’ve thought about it a bit more. But, we can probably take the researchers word for this at the moment. do have one provisional comments about the diet of Gordodon kraineri. It is small for a plant eating lizard, said from the teeth to be specialized in higher quality plant parts. For this reason, I wonder, is there any evidence of co-evolution between this lineage of specialist plant eaters and the plants they ate? There should be, might be hard to find, but probably worth looking for.

Abstract:

Gordodon kraineri is a new genus and species of edaphosaurid eupelycosaur known from an associated skull, lower jaw and incomplete postcranium found in the early Permian Bursum Formation of Otero County, New Mexico, USA. It has a specialized dental apparatus consisting of large, chisel-like incisors in the front of the jaws separated by a long diastema from relatively short rows of peg-like maxillary and dentary cheek teeth. The dorsal vertebrae of Gordodon have long neural spines that bear numerous, randomly arranged, small, thorn-like tubercles. The tubercles on long neural spines place Gordodon in the Edaphosauridae, and the dental apparatus and distinctive tubercles on the neural spines distinguish it from the other edaphosaurid genera—Edaphosaurus, Glaucosaurus, Lupeosaurus and Ianthasaurus. Gordodon is the oldest known tetrapod herbivore with a dentary diastema, extending the temporal range of that anatomical feature back 95 million years from the Late Triassic. The dental apparatus of Gordodon indicates significantly different modes of ingestion and intraoral transport of vegetable matter than took place in Edaphosaurus and thus represents a marked increase in disparity among edaphosaurids. There were two very early pathways to tetrapod herbivory in edaphosaurid evolution, one toward generalized browsing on high-fiber plant items (Edaphosaurus) and the other (Gordodon) toward more specialized browsing, at least some of it likely on higher nutrient, low fiber plant items. Gordodon shows a surprisingly early specialization of the dental apparatus and indicates how incomplete our knowledge is of edaphosaurid evolution, disparity and diversity.

Artist’s reconstruction of the new fossil find about to eat a plant, in a specialized manner:

The movie:

The original paper is available as an OpenAccess paper at Palaeontological Electronica.

Full Reference: Spencer G. Lucas, Larry F. Rinehart, and Matthew D. Celeskey. The oldest specialized tetrapod herbivore: A new eupelycosaur from the Permian of New Mexico, USA. Article number: 21.3.39

Despite the fact that the word “Dinosaurs” occurs in the title, this book is only partly about dinosaurs. In fact, I would say it is mostly about mammals, insofar as the critters go. And that’s good because Donald Prothero is probably the world’s leading expert on Fossil Mammals. The dinosaur part is major and interesting, though. One of the mysteries Don addresses is the presence of Dinosaurs in the region of the earth that is dark for 6 months out of the year and generally frozen. Indeed, the “greenhouse effect” was very much stronger (in that there were more greenhouse gasses) in those days than today. All that atmospheric Carbon (in the form of CO2) was eventually to be trapped in the lithosphere, which helped cause the planet to cool to the levels that were around when we, as a species (genus, really) evolved. The world in which everything alive today evolved in is a world with a few hundred parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere, the world of the “Dino Greenhouse” had much more CO2, and we are quickly heading back to the Dinosaur era level, which is going to really mess us up.

Greenhouse of the Dinosaurs: Evolution, Extinction, and the Future of Our Planet addresses questions of “Yeah, so, it was hot then and everything was fine, so Global Warming is not important.” Don also regales the reader with stories about doing palaeontology, about controversies in the field, and that sort of thing. And, he brings us past the K-T boundary, to the “Cainozoic” (age of “Cain) during which the earth cooled, and mammals took over to be the dominant large visible above ground life form. (Yes, yes, I know, bacteria are the dominant life form, yadda yadda… just don’t look for any murals of bacteria interacting on the wall of the Yale Peabody Musuem any time soon.)

Greenhouse of the Dinosaurs: Evolution, Extinction, and the Future of Our Planetis a great book. Highly recommended by me.

The Triassic is old. This book is new. That is a hard to beat combination.

Let’s see … The Triassic is about here:

(You can also look it up in this PDF file supplied by the USGS.

It is situated between two major extinction events, and is especially interesting because it is during this period that modern day ecological systems and major animal groups took a recognizable form. The preceding Permian, if contrasted with modern day, would form a very stark contrast while the Triassic would be at least somewhat more recognizable.

But of course the Triassic was in many ways distinct, different, and fascinating. Dinosaurs arose during the Triassic. The Triassic is also famous for its enormously large insects. It was also the time of Pangaea, where most of the Earth’s land was concentrated instead of being more or less spread out as it is now. Mammals, or at least the progenitors of what we now know of as mammals, arose then as well.

The Triassic was hot compared to today, and dry. Lots of sandy, arid-land deposits visible today date from this period. The poles were temperate, and the middle regions of the one giant continent was probably … very continental (mainly, dry).

So, all this adds up to the simple fact that the Triassic was a very interesting time period, and I assume that you would like to know a lot more about it. That would be where the new book, Triassic Life on Land: The Great Transition, comes in. This new volume in a series on “Critical Moments and Perspectives in Earth History and Paleobiology” (of which there are several other interesting must-have installments) comes in.

Sues and Fraser’s accessibly priced volume is neither a popularization of palaeontology nor a monotonous monograph of esoterica. It is a scholarly but readable detailed yet succinct description of this incredibly interesting time period. This is the kind of book that you will sit down to relax with, but do so with a pack of post-it notes handy just in case you need to mark something. Triassic Life .. is sufficiently detailed and well documented (excellent references and index) to be used as a textbook in a middle level palaeontology course, and sufficiently engaging for you to use as a source book for your next cocktail party.

The authors are widely recognized and respected experts in their field. The publisher did an excellent job with the book, which is very heavily illustrated and well laid out. Yet, most of the illustration are very nicely done line drawings and black and white photos, which keeps the price of this volume down despite the nice paper and excellent binding.

The book has eleven chapters, seven of which serve as mini-monographs of specific Triassic sub periods in specific geographical locations (such as “Late Middle and Late Triassic of Gondwana” and “Late Triassic of the Western United States”). Each of these chapters gives the basic information on where, when, and what for that particular subset of paleontological phenomena. Chapter 9, “Two Extraordinary Windows into Triassic Life” focus on two cases of Konzentrat-Lagerstätten (places of especially good preservation or richness): Solite Quarry in the eastern US and Madygen in Central Asia. Triassic insects. Very nice.

Chapter 10 is an overview of the large scale pattern of biological change during the period, and Chapter 11 examines the Triassic end-times, exploring the possibility of an end-Triassic impact, and other issues.

If you have an evolution-oriented relative or friend who’s birthday is coming up, now’s your chance: The book is new enough and specialized enough that there is no way they’d have it already. And, it looks enough like a coffee table book that others looking on will see it as a great gift even if it is a bit over the top in geek points.

The last Giants’ was hosted at The Questionable Authority, here. The next issue will be hosted at The Evilutionary Biologist: All Science, All The Time, which resided here.

Since this is Darwin Month in Darwin Year and almost, indeed, Darwin Day, we start with … Paleontology. We’ll get to Darwin at the end.

Early palaentologists and the Giant killer lungfish from Hell as well as the Revenge of the Giant Killer Lungfish from Hell, at Laelaps, serve as instructive historical arguments worth a read by any paleontologist, fishy or otherwise.

Today, “spooky” in physics means stuff that happens at the smallest scales with photons and other subatomic bits and pieces. But back in the 18th and 19th centuries, simple electricity and magnetism was sufficiently spooky to keep everyone busy. Skullsinthestars writes about the complex history of discovery of the connection between the two, revealing a complex plot involving Faraday, Morichini, Somerville and the rest of them: A physics history-mystery: magnetism from light? Also from Skulls we have “Do optics like Darwin’s Dad!” The same author also has an historical look at the role of Evolution in pulp fiction, here.

We’re coming up on the golden anniversary of some very important experiments that were milestones in confirming relativity and were enabled by a breakthrough in nuclear physics, the Mossbauer effect. Mossbauer’s discovery (published in 1958) of the Mossbauer effect … Read about this in Testing Einstein at Swans on Tea.

The Aetosaur Paper That Changed Everything is very interesting foray into nineteenth century (and later) palaeontology, implicating everyone from Agassiz to Cope to B.J. Small, posted at Chinleana.

Ninja Cats are a recent phenomenon, but the question of the moon’s influence on human behavior has a long history. PodBlack Cat explores this literature: Ninja Kittens Don’t Steal The Moon – Crime Rates And Lunar Phase Research

An excellent post on how the heck alloys work, which in turn is based on models developed during the pre-WWII days, is posted at Materialia Indica: Classics in Materials Science: The Bragg-Williams model of order-disorder transformations.

John J. McKay has produced a tour de force series of blog posts on the history of everything, tied together with the theme of a mysterious specter haunting Europe and Asia from the late seventeenth century onward. “Some said it was a monster that lived underground; others said it lived in the water. No one had seen it alive. It was said to die on exposure to sunlight or air. All, however, agreed that it was an enormous beast–bigger than anything known–and that it had teeth (or horns) longer than a man. The natives called it ….” Click here to find out. And here, here, here, and here. Oh, and here. This is really great stuff. It should be a book!

It seems that almost every important thread of biological research eventually runs through the world of birds at some point or another. Grrrrrrrrrrrl Scientist speaks to this in particular with regards to species radiations in her post: Meet the Great Speciators: The White-Eyes

A book review for you: Tides of History by Michael S. Reidy at The Dispersal of Darwin Blog. … “I received this book from the publisher last year, so I am now finally able to put up my review. But I also had to read it for my current graduate class on historical writing, taught by Michael Reidy (my advisor and the author of the book!).” What luck!

Everybody hates Francis Bacon. Srsly. Chris Mooney covers this, so far, in Part I and Part II of a post of the same name.

Ah, now on to Darwin. We start with Larry Moran, who claims to not really be a Darwinist, Re-reading the Origin of Species. Then we move on to yours truly, re-reading the Voyage of the Beagle.

Then we have Mike Dunford, on Darwin, Experimentalist.

A Primate of Modern Aspect blog discusses Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Human Evolution

This just in from SciCurious: Friday Weird Science: Of Testicles and Cocks