The end-Permian mass extinction event was the big daddy of all the known mass extinction events. Life on the planet Earth was almost entirely wiped out. A new paper explores the post-extinction recovery of ecological systems. Continue reading After the End Permian Mass Extinction
Tag Archives: Paleontology
The Evolution of the Modern Climate: New Evidence from Plant Remains
Things are just not like what they used to be. You know this. You know that the Age of Dinosaurs, for instance, was full of dinosaurs and stuff, and before transitional fossil forms crawled out of the sea to colonize the land, all animals were aquatic, etc. But did you know that from a purely modern perspective, the Miocene was the most important geological period? Continue reading The Evolution of the Modern Climate: New Evidence from Plant Remains
The Island Effect in Dinosaurs
Everyone these days knows about the “island effect” where certain animals evolve to a diminutive size because they live on islands. You know this because of the Flores hominid. Now, it has been shown to have operated in a dinosaur. Continue reading The Island Effect in Dinosaurs
Cave Bears More Carnivorous Than Previously Thought
From a University of Bristol Press Release: “Rather than being gentle giants, new research reveals that Pleistocene cave bears, a species which became extinct 20,000 years ago, ate both plants and animals and competed for food with the other contemporary large carnivores of the time such as hyaenas, lions, wolves, and our own human ancestors.” Continue reading Cave Bears More Carnivorous Than Previously Thought
Deep Sea Evidence of Major Volcanic Eruptions
Pumice is rock that is ejected from a volcano, and has so much gas trapped in it that it can float. So when a pumice-ejecting volcano (not all volcanoes produce pumice) goes off near a body of water, you can get a raft of rock floating around for quite some time. By and by, water replaces the gas within the rock and it sinks. Like a rock. So, you can get layers of pumice on the bed of lakes, seas and oceans. A forthcoming paper in Deep Sea Research I describes two such pumice deposits of “Drift Pumice” in the Indian Ocean. Continue reading Deep Sea Evidence of Major Volcanic Eruptions
New Open Access Paleontology Journal
Its name is, unfortunately, “Open Paleontology Journal.” Reminds me of the Soviet/Communist Era in Asia, where such a journal might have been named “The People’s Paleontology Journal.”Details are here.
Avalon and the origin of multicellular life
New research published in Science on the origins of multicellular life reveals an interesting pattern. The Cambrian Explosion may have been samosamo. Continue reading Avalon and the origin of multicellular life
The Bahamas Yield Amazing Fossil Finds
Plant and animal fossils recently discovered from an island in the Bahamas tell a story of habitat change and human involvement in local extinction. Continue reading The Bahamas Yield Amazing Fossil Finds
A Whale of a Missing Link : Indohyus
Yet another missing link has been found! This new find links whales to quadrupedal land mammals.
Thewissen et al. report in Nature new fossil material from the Middle Eocene of Kashmir, India. This species (in the genus Indohyus is represented by a remarkable set of remains, including cranial and post cranial material. Previous studies using DNA had linked whales to the artiodactyls (even-toed ungulates such as deer, antelope, and bison). However, there is a great deal of uncertainty, and some contradictory evidence, as to where exactly in this group the whales arose.
Giant Skeleton Found
OMG, look at this:
… oh wait, it’s a fake. But an interesting fake. Read about it here, on Afarensis.
New Glyptodont Species
A team of U.S. and Chilean scientists working high in the Andes have discovered the fossilized remains of an extinct, tank-like mammal they conclude was a primitive relative of today’s armadillos. The results of their surprising new discovery are described in an upcoming issue of Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.The partial skeleton was unearthed by the group in 2004 and found to represent a new species of glyptodont–a family of hard-shelled, grazing mammals that may have occasionally tipped the scales at two tons. The newly described animal, which was given the tongue-twisting name Parapropalaehoplophorus septentrionalis, likely weighed in at a mere 200 pounds and was covered with a massive shell of immovable armored plates, unlike the hinged rows of plates on armadillos. The fossil was found at the unusually high elevation of 14,000 feet.[source]
Student identifies enormous new dinosaur
Fossils representing on of one of the largest meat-eating dinosaurs known, the African Carcharodontosaurus iguidensis, were identified by Steve Brusatte, a student working at the University of Bristol. The fossils were originally located in Niger.Carcharodontosaurus iguidensis, a new species, was about 13 to 14 meters long, with a skull about 1.75 meters long. It is said that its teeth were the size of bananas. So think about that next time you are eating a banana.Bits and pieces of this dinosaur genus have been previously located, some of those fossils (from Egypt) having been destroyed during the bombing of Munich in 1944. The new material is sufficiently different form these earlier finds that it is being considered as a new species. The new material includes bits of the skull and some neck vertebrae.[source]
Academic uncovers Holy Grail of palaeontology
According to this press release from Manchester.. Continue reading Academic uncovers Holy Grail of palaeontology
New, Really Big Sea-dwelling Dinosaur
The small fragments of bone are spread out on a workbench in tiny pieces that could fit into a matchbox, betraying the size of their owner: a fearsome sea predator considered the Tyrannosaurus Rex of the oceans…. a pliosaur, a reptile that swam the oceans 150 million years ago and was so big it could swallow a grown man in a single gulp. [note: there were no people living at that time -gtl]Bits of pliosaur fossils have previously been found in Germany, Britain and Argentina, but never have as many been found as this summer in the Svalbard archipelago off northern Norway in the Arctic.”It looks like the most complete one. We won’t know for sure until we excavate it but it looks very promising,” says Joern Hurum who led the Norwegian research team to the Svalbard, only a little more than 1,000 km from the North Pole….The palaeontologists came upon the ‘treasure trove’ of fossils in August. Only the skull and a few vertebrae of the pliosaur were sticking out of the Arctic rocks in what was once the seabed, and further excavations will be carried out in August 2007 to find and, hopefully, recover the rest of the body…. It measured about 10 metres in length, weighed 10 to 15 tonnes and – perhaps most importantly – had a hundred teeth, some as big as a cucumber.”It’s like a sea lion with a crocodile skull in the front but it’s the size of a bus,” Hurum says. “It was the top sea predator at that time so really it ate anything it liked,” he said, comparing his “baby” to a Tyrannosaurus Rex, the king of dinosaurs which roamed the earth at the same time and both of which disappeared 65 million years ago….the reptile was a land animal before becoming a sea creature.