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Fossils & Paleontology

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Re: Fossils & Paleontology

#51

Post by RTH10260 »

You'd think that the paleontology record might still be missing the full menu card...
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Re: Fossils & Paleontology

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https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... 0000-years
Five ice-age mammoths in an extraordinary state of preservation have been discovered in the Cotswolds, to the astonishment of archaeologists and palaeontologists.

The extensive remains of two adults, two juveniles and an infant that roamed 200,000 years ago have been unearthed near Swindon, along with tools used by Neanderthals, who are likely to have hunted these 10-tonne beasts. More are expected to be found because only a fraction of the vast site, a gravel quarry, has been excavated.

Judging by the quality of the finds, the site is a goldmine. They range from other ice-age giants, such as elks – twice the size of their descendants today, with antlers 10ft across – to tiny creatures, notably dung beetles, which co-evolved with megafauna, using their droppings for food and shelter, and freshwater snails, just like those found today. Even seeds, pollen and plant fossils, including extinct varieties, have been preserved at this site.
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Re: Fossils & Paleontology

#53

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“Largest-ever millipede fossil found on Northumberland beach”:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-59734747

“The millipede, known as Arthropleura, is thought to have been more than 8ft (2.5m) long. It would have weighed about seven stone (50kg).”
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Re: Fossils & Paleontology

#54

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https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... ike-a-bird
Scientists have announced the discovery of an exquisitely preserved dinosaur embryo from at least 66m years ago that was preparing to hatch from its egg just like a chicken.

The fossil was discovered in Ganzhou, southern China and belonged to a toothless theropod dinosaur, or oviraptorosaur, which the researchers dubbed “Baby Yingliang”.

“It is one of the best dinosaur embryos ever found in history,” Fion Waisum Ma, a University of Birmingham researcher who co-authored a paper in the journal iScience, told AFP.

Ma and colleagues found Baby Yingliang’s head lay below its body, with the feet on either side and back curled – a posture that was previously unseen in dinosaurs, but similar to modern birds.
Image
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Re: Fossils & Paleontology

#55

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Rutland ichthyosaur fossil is largest found in UK
Published 6 hours ago

The largest UK example of a predator that roamed the seas at the time of the dinosaurs has been uncovered.

The 33ft (10m) long ichthyosaur fossil, which is about 180 million years old, was found at Rutland Water Nature Reserve.

Similar in shape to dolphins, the reptiles - known as sea dragons - varied in size from 3 - 82ft (1 - 25m).

Anglian Water, which owns the area, said it was now seeking funding to protect and display the remains nearby.

As well as being the biggest, it is also the most complete fossil of its kind found in the UK and is also thought to be the first ichthyosaur of its specific species (Temnodontosaurus trigonodon) found in the country.

When lifted for conservation and study, the block containing the 6ft (2m) skull and surrounding clay, alone weighed a tonne.

It was discovered by Joe Davis, conservation team leader at Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust, during the routine draining of a lagoon island for re-landscaping in February 2021.



https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-lei ... e-59902730
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Re: Fossils & Paleontology

#56

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Rutland? Get Eric Idle on this pronto!
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Re: Fossils & Paleontology

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The Kunga Was a Status Symbol Long Before the Thoroughbred
A new study finds the first known instance of a human-engineered hybrid, bred from a donkey and a Syrian wild ass 4,500 years ago.

By James Gorman
Jan. 14, 2022

Sign up for Science Times Get stories that capture the wonders of nature, the cosmos and the human body. Get it sent to your inbox.
In ancient Mesopotamia 4,500 years ago, long before horses arrived in the region, another spirited member of the equine family, the kunga, took a starring role in pulling four-wheeled wagons into battle.

Archaeologists had suspected that these animals — depicted in art, their sales recorded in cuneiform writing, their bodies sometimes laid to rest in rich burial sites — were the result of some kind of crossbreeding. But proof was lacking.

On Friday, a team of researchers reported on more than a decade of research in the journal Science Advances, concluding that studies of ancient DNA showed the kunga was a cross between a female donkey (Equus Africanus asinus) and a male Syrian wild ass (Equus hemionus hemippus).

The kunga is the first known instance of a human-engineered hybrid of two species, a production far beyond the traditional processes of the domestication of animals, the researchers found.



https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/14/scie ... ybrid.html
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Re: Fossils & Paleontology

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... pterosaurs
Scientists in Chile have unearthed a rare cemetery with well-preserved bones of ancient flying reptiles that roamed the Atacama desert more than 100m years ago.

The remains belong to pterosaurs, scientists determined, flying creatures that lived alongside dinosaurs and had a long wingspan and fed by filtering water through long, thin teeth, similar to flamingos.

The group of scientists, led by Jhonatan Alarcón, an investigator at the University of Chile, have been searching for pterosaurs for years, but this discovery surpassed their hopes.

“This has global relevance because these types of findings are relatively rare,” Alarcón said. “Almost everywhere in the world, the pterosaur remains that are found are isolated.”
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Re: Fossils & Paleontology

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“Tanis: 'First dinosaur fossil linked to asteroid strike'“:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-61013740

“Scientists have presented a stunningly preserved leg of a dinosaur.
The limb, complete with skin, is just one of a series of remarkable finds emerging from the Tanis fossil site in the US State of North Dakota.
But it's not just their exquisite condition that's turning heads - it's what these ancient specimens purport to represent.
The claim is the Tanis creatures were killed and entombed on the actual day a giant asteroid struck Earth.
The day 66 million years ago when the reign of the dinosaurs ended and the rise of mammals began.”
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Re: Fossils & Paleontology

#60

Post by Volkonski »

:mad: :mad: :mad:

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Re: Fossils & Paleontology

#61

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“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
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Re: Fossils & Paleontology

#62

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we're not heartless, we report this ;)
The Oldest 3-D Heart from Our Vertebrate Ancestors Has Been Discovered
Fish fossils from Western Australia preserve the oldest 3-D hearts, livers, stomachs and intestines in a jawed vertebrate

By Stephanie Pappas
on September 15, 2022

The oldest chambered hearts have been discovered in fossils from Western Australia.

The two-chambered organs, which date back about 380 million years, are preserved within remarkable three-dimensional fossils of ancient, armored fish called placoderms, which were the first vertebrates to develop jaws more than 400 million years ago. These jawed fish represent an evolutionary leap toward the body plan present in most animals with a backbone today—including humans. The fossils reveal that it didn’t take long for evolution to land on this basic body plan: At this point in evolutionary history, the S-shaped heart in the placoderms was already well separated from the other organs, lodged near the newly evolved jaw. The heart’s separation from the abdominal organs is still seen today.

“A great deal of complexity occurred right at the beginning of our evolutionary history as jawed vertebrates,” says Kate Trinajstic, a paleontologist at Curtin University in Australia, who led the new research.

The fish fossils also contain livers and intestines, as well as stomachs that are so beautifully preserved that the folds of their lining are still visible. The organs are the oldest preserved in three dimensions in any jawed vertebrate. This kind of 3-D preservation is very rare, says study co-author Per Ahlberg, a paleontologist at Uppsala University in Sweden. The placoderms in the study, which grew to about 10 inches (25 centimeters) in length, once trawled an ancient reef made of sponges and stromatolites, sedimentary rocks deposited by microorganisms. When the fish died, some of their bodies washed off the reef into water layers containing very little oxygen and lots of hydrogen sulfide. The bacteria in these layers formed a biofilm around the bodies, which attracted minerals, encasing the fish in a protective crust that prevented them from becoming flattened like most fossils. “It’s kind of bizarre,” Ahlberg says. “You look at these guys, and they were probably semi-mineralized by the time they hit the seafloor.”



https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... iscovered/
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#63

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Shrew-like creature was placental mammals’ last common ancestor
Group’s earliest primogenitor was probably a diminutive creature with a long snout, researchers suggest

Nicola Davis Science correspondent
Thu 27 Oct 2022 20.55 BST

The last common ancestor of today’s placental mammals – a group that includes humans, whales and armadillos – was probably a shrew-like creature with a long snout, researchers have revealed.

The forerunners of mammals are believed to have split from what eventually became reptiles around 320m years ago, but it was not until some time between 70 and 80m years ago that placental mammals arose.

Their diversity eventually mushroomed, with the creatures evolving from primarily small insectivores to a huge array of creatures on land, sea and wing.

Now researchers have analysed the skulls of more than 300 species of extinct and living placental mammals – a subgroup that makes up 94% of mammals alive today – to unpick the trends in their evolution and reveal what their last common ancestor might have looked like.

The results suggest placental mammals got their break around the time of the mass extinction 66m years ago, when an asteroid ploughed into Earth and wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs and a host of other life.

Before this time, the team note, the ancestors of the major groups encompassing today’s placental mammals all had similar shaped skulls. But from then on, contrary to some theories, diversification happened rapidly.



https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... n-ancestor
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Australia
NSW volcanic eruptions likely triggered mass extinction
Research reveals the largest mass extinction on Earth likely began in Northern NSW.

Published 10 May 2022

New research out of the University of New England (UNE) has revealed a series of super volcanic eruptions that occurred in Northern NSW more than 252 million years ago likely triggered the largest mass extinction ever seen on Earth.

Until now, the cause of the significant global warming that set off this period of ‘Great Dying’ was relatively unknown to scientists, however, UNE post-doctoral fellow Dr Timothy Chapman, geologist Dr Luke Milan, and a team of international researchers believe they’ve found the answer after studying a number of ancient volcanic remnants scattered across the New England region of NSW.

“We’ve found these remnants, otherwise known as calderas, to represent some of the largest eruptions observed globally,” says lead researcher Dr Chapman.

“These violent eruptions would have reached the stratosphere and the subsequent fall-out of volcanic ash would have blanketed most of eastern Australia”.

Dr Chapman says minimum estimates suggest at least 150,000 kilometres cubed of material was exploded, making it a similar scale to that of the super eruption of Yellowstone which covered the majority of the United States in ash.

“To put this into perspective, the eruption that obliterated the city of Pompei was just three to four kilometres cubed of pyroclastic rock and ash, while the Mt St Helens eruption in the US in 1980 was about one kilometer cubed,” says Dr Chapman.




https://www.une.edu.au/connect/news/202 ... extinction
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Scientists claim first discovery of mammal eaten by dinosaur
Paleontologists say they have identified foot of mouse-sized mammal in fossilised rib cage of predatory microraptor

Harry Taylor
Wed 21 Dec 2022 00.11 GMT

It may have been a pressing fear for the fictional characters in the 1993 film Jurassic Park, but scientists believe they have uncovered the first known incident of a mammal being eaten by a dinosaur.

However, the fossils from 120m years ago are not of a human ancestor, but instead the foot of an animal inside the ribcage of a small feathered dinosaur, known as a microraptor.

The palaeontologists said that their findings, published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, is the “first record of a dinosaur eating a mammal”.

Dr David Hone from Queen Mary University of London, who is first author on the study, said: “It’s so rare to find examples of food inside dinosaurs, so every example is really important as it gives direct evidence of what they were eating.

“While this mammal would absolutely not have been a human ancestor, we can look back at some of our ancient relatives being a meal for hungry dinosaurs.

“This study paints a picture of a fascinating moment in time – the first record of a dinosaur eating a mammal – even if it isn’t quite as frightening as anything in Jurassic Park.”

Microraptors lived in the ancient forests of what is now China, somewhere between 125m and 113m years ago.

While it moved on its two legs, experts believe some species may have been capable of guided flight.

They were the size of crows, or small cats, and moved from tree to tree to prey on small animals.

The specimen was first described more than 20 years ago, in 2000, but researchers said the previous team had failed to see the remains of another animal inside the dinosaur.




https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... y-dinosaur
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#66

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:think: or was said mammal feasting on a dead microraptor when it met its own end then?
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Post by Foggy »

What's the statute of limitations on a thing like that? :think:
Out from under. :thumbsup:
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#68

Post by RTH10260 »

Does the Code Of Hamurabi apply to such ancient incidents?

:think: was munching of another creature a commercial contract back then?

:think: does Admirality Law already apply?
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https://mymodernmet.com/molly-sampson-megalodon-tooth/
9-Year-Old Paleontology Lover Finds Giant Megalodon Tooth on Maryland Beach

While most kids hope to get toys or gadgets for Christmas, a 9-year-old girl from Maryland named Molly Sampson only wished for one thing—insulated chest waders. This request may sound odd to most people, but her parents, aware of her passions, knew that this would allow her to look for her true Christmas treat–shark teeth, which she has been collecting since she was little. After breaking into her new outfit on Christmas Day, she took to the beach in Chesapeake Bay and told her parents, “I'm looking for Meg.” Little did she know that she would find just what she was looking for. She found a 5-inch tooth that once belonged to a megalodon, the largest shark to ever live, which roamed the seas more than 2.6 million years ago and is now extinct.

After spotting the tooth, which is larger than Molly's hand, the little girl dove into the water. Given her track record with shark teeth—she has collected about 400 pieces of all shapes and sizes—the future paleontologist now has a knack for spotting them. While this isn't the first megalodon tooth she has spotted, it is certainly the biggest she has found so far. “This tooth was in the water, so thanks to the waders, she got the best part of her present!” her mom told Daily Mail.

Molly's passion for shark teeth comes from her dad, who has done this for years, as well as her older sister. “My husband has looked for them his entire life!” Molly's mom admits. “We've always lived close to the bay so all of our kids have done it since they were little.” On Christmas Day alone, the family gathered 22 shark teeth and shared their discovery in a cheerful Facebook post, where the little girl grins from ear to ear as she holds her finding. “I'm pretty sure Molly is feeling like this is the best Christmas ever,” her mom wrote.

After celebrating her achievement, Molly took to the paleontology department of the Calvert Marine Museum, which confirmed the fossil's identity. Her finding will help further the academy's knowledge of the elusive megalodon, which puzzles experts to this day, as no complete skeleton has been found. However, Molly will have access to the tooth whenever she wants. “Molly is a super shy kid,” her mom explains, “so she isn't one to like the spotlight, but she also knows it's more about this amazing tooth.”
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:thumbsup:
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RTH10260 wrote: Fri Mar 17, 2023 7:27 am now there you have a problem when stuffing your opinion down that throat ...
‘Gargantuan’: China fossils reveal 70-tonne dinosaur had 15-metre neck
Analysis of bones found in 1987 suggest Jurassic-era sauropod was animal with longest known neck

Ian Sample Science editor
Wed 15 Mar 2023 17.43 GMT

A dinosaur that roamed east Asia more than 160m years ago has been named a contender for the animal with the longest neck ever known.

A new analysis of bones from the beast’s neck and skull revealed that the dinosaur, known as Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum, sported a neck 15metres long, or one-and-a-half times the length of a doubledecker bus.

The fossilised remains of the creature were recovered in 1987 from 162 million-year-old rocks in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of north-west China, but the full length of the animal’s neck was only recently reassessed by scientists.

The dinosaur was one of the huge herbivorous sauropods that grew to 50 metres from snout to tail and weighed more than 70 tonnes. Despite only a handful of bones remaining of the beast, researchers were able to estimate the length of its neck by comparing the remains with complete fossils belonging to closely related dinosaurs.

“Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum might be the longest-necked sauropod discovered so far, but odds are that there were larger, longer sauropods roaming around the Late Jurassic of what is now China,” said Andrew Moore, a palaeontologist at Stony Brook University in New York.

“Unless we’re willing to believe that we just so happened to discover the largest single individual sauropod that ever existed, our default assumption should always be that there were larger animals out there. We can only hope that some of these titans fossilised, and are just waiting to be discovered by paleontologists.”

A long neck was one of the fundamental body features that allowed sauropods to reach such gigantic proportions. It allowed the animals to graze vast areas of vegetation while standing in one spot, meaning they could take in tonnes of food without expending much energy. Having a long neck may also have helped the animals to keep cool by increasing their surface area – a trick elephants achieve with their large ears.

The sauropods’ lifestyle was impressively successful, evolving early in dinosaur history and lasting until the final days of their reign during the mass extinction event triggered by an asteroid impact 66m years ago. The only dinosaurs that survived are the ancestors of modern birds.

How sauropods evolved such long necks and large bodies without collapsing under their own weight has puzzled scientists since the first fossils of the animals were recovered. But X-ray scans of the Mamenchisaurus fossils show that the vertebrae were light and hollow, with airspaces making up two-thirds to three-quarters of their volume. Similar skeletal features are seen in birds that minimise weight in order to fly. On sauropods, such lightweight skeletons would be prone to fracture, but the animal had rod-like neck ribs – bony extensions of the vertebrae – which stiffened the neck and improved its stability.



https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... c-sauropod
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#73

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Wonderful article. Thanks.
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#74

Post by RTH10260 »

Dave from down under wrote: Fri Apr 21, 2023 10:53 pm https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-22/ ... /102220196

Half a billion years old
:thumbsup:
One of the fossils found at the site was the Spriggina – the first evidence of a creature with a head.

Exclusive to the Flinders, it has not been found anywhere else in the world, and is now the fossil emblem for South Australia.
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#75

Post by Liz »

RTH10260 wrote: Sat Apr 22, 2023 10:37 am
Dave from down under wrote: Fri Apr 21, 2023 10:53 pm https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-22/ ... /102220196

Half a billion years old
:thumbsup:
One of the fossils found at the site was the Spriggina – the first evidence of a creature with a head.

Exclusive to the Flinders, it has not been found anywhere else in the world, and is now the fossil emblem for South Australia.
“That’s why NASA is supporting our research.
“If we need to look at what’s out there, it’s going to look more Ediacaran than anything we see around us today.”
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