Fossils & Paleontology

[p0rtia]

[RTH10260]

Runner didn’t know he nabbed ‘invaluable’ find on CA beach — until turning on the news

Daniella Segura
Wed, May 31, 2023 at 9:28 PM GMT+2

As a runner trekked across a California beach, something caught his eye.

Jim Smith, who frequently runs in the Aptos area in Santa Cruz County, kept on going, though, Liz Broughton, the visitor experience manager at the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History told McClatchy News.

But on his return, it captivated him once again, Broughton said.

Smith thought it “looked cool and interesting,” Broughton said, so he picked it up and brought it home.

Days later, he was shocked when an image of the very thing he brought home from the beach popped on screen while watching the news, according to Broughton.

Smith, Broughton said, had brought home an ancient artifact — a mastodon tooth.

Unbeknownst to Smith, Wayne Thompson, a paleontologist with the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History, had been frantically searching for the tooth.

Just days before, Thompson told McClatchy News he came across a woman’s Facebook post, questioning what she may have found near Aptos Creek on Rio Del Mar Beach on Friday, May 26, after someone tagged him in the post.

“I took a look at it, and I knew it was a mastodon tooth,” Thompson said.

The out-of-town woman, however, did not pick up the tooth, and when Thompson went to search for it alongside her, it was gone, he said.

“With it being a holiday weekend on the beach, odds were never in our favor,” Broughton said. “But (Thompson) definitely put in the effort.”

Given its location, Thompson said he didn’t think the tooth would have been washed away with high tide. Rather, he suspected someone plucked it off the beach and took it home.

“I had very, very little hope that it would ever be found again, but I did have hope,” Thompson said.



https://www.yahoo.com/news/runner-didn- ... 54916.html
(original: Sacramento Bee)

[RVInit]

RTH, you find the best stories and info to post here. This was really interesting.

[RTH10260]

Ice Age Fossils Discovered Beneath Garbage Dumped in Florida River

i hunt dead things

27 July 2021

Part 1 comes after Part 2 & 3 have already been released. Mike Fleischhauer of www.SavanahsSharkShack.com and I head out on a river and stop at a very public spot not expecting to find much. What we find is trash, tons of trash, bottles, toilet parts, tools, and creepy figurines. Mixed in with this was some bone. I was certain, based on the condition of the old bottles, that if we found anything here, it would likely also be in good condition. Soon we find our first megalodon tooth, and from there we just have an amazing day with discovery after discovery. Until producing this video, I hadn't realized all of the clues I was finding to the most amazing discovery of my life. And we spent an entire day in the exact location that Jeffery was later bitten on the head by an alligator, turning this all into the most incredible story of our life-times.

[AndyinPA]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/ ... ite-sands/

Dozens of awe-inspiring ancient footprints left on the shores of an ice age lake have reignited a long-running debate about when the first people arrived in the Americas.

Two years ago, a team of scientists came to the conclusion that human tracks sunk into the mud in White Sands National Park in New Mexico were more than 21,000 years old. The provocative finding threatened the dominant thinking on when and how people migrated into the Americas. Soon afterward, a technical debate erupted about the method used to estimate the age of the tracks, which relied on an analysis of plant seeds embedded with the footprints.

Now, a study published in the journal Science confirms the initial finding with two new lines of evidence: thousands of grains of pollen and an analysis of quartz crystals in the sediments.

“It’s more or less a master class in how you do this,” said Edward Jolie, an anthropological archaeologist at the University of Arizona who has studied the White Sands footprints in the field but was not involved in the new study. “As Carl Sagan said, ‘Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.’ They have some extraordinary evidence.”

[Foggy]

Very cool. Thanks, Andy.

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

Those are some groovy dance steps.

[pipistrelle]

IIRC there was a debate on the old Fogbow about those shadows.

[RTH10260]

ps. where the birth certificates with matching wee little footprint also found?

[keith]

IIRC there was a debate on the old Fogbow about those shadows.

Shadows create an optical delusion to make the prints look raised and ruler look depressed.

I first noticed the effect on moon crater photos.

[Liz]

There are both raised tracks and depressed trackways at WhiteSands ... depending on the soil conditions at the time made.

Once it is dry, it is more resistant to the effects of wind or water. Eventually, a new layer of sediment buries the hardened mud or sand, preserving the footprints. As the sediment becomes compacted and cemented together to form rock, the footprints become fossilized.

Raised Tracks

In 2005, David Bustos came to White Sands to work as a National Park Service biologist. The following year, he took notice of odd animal footprints that would appear only when the ground was wet. (The first of these footprints was reported in the 1930s.) The markings, which would disappear as the earth dried up, became known as ghost tracks.

Then in 2009, Bustos came across tracks he thought belonged to ancient humans walking alongside mammoths. But few scientists agreed, he says, rebutting with “No, no, those are the prints of camels that were slipping in the mud,” referring to now-extinct North American camels. And the tracks would disappear with changes in the weather. Heavy rainfall drowned them; periods of drought dried them up. It would take more than a decade—and cooperative weather—for scientists to agree that the tracks belonged to humans.

[Foggy]

But we thought the humans had not reached this area until about 13,000 years ago.

And instead, we now know they arrived 8,000 years earlier, so 21,000 years ago.

And 8,000 years is a long time. Our civilization isn't 8,000 years old. It's only about 2,000 years old.

And a lot can happen in eight thousand years. I wonder what they watched on the Tee Vee?

[Dr. Caligari]

And a lot can happen in eight thousand years. I wonder what they watched on the Tee Vee?

Come on, they didn't have TV 8,000 years ago. They listened to the radio.

[RTH10260]

Colossal sea monster unearthed in UK - BBC News

BBC New
10 Dec 2023

The skull of a colossal sea monster has been extracted from the cliffs of the Jurassic Coast in Dorset, UK.

It belongs to a pliosaur, a ferocious marine reptile that terrorised the oceans about 150 million years ago.

The 2m-long fossil is one of the most complete specimens of its type ever discovered and is giving new insights into this ancient predator.

The skull will be featured in a special David Attenborough programme on BBC One on New Year's Day.

with more details

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

Nessie!!!!

[RTH10260]

by Google Translate from a German website, must be an early local publication as no other references located, pictures in article

Researchers from Thuringia: This mini is one of the most dangerous dinosaurs | Regional

From TheLocalGermany /
January 7, 2024

Schleusingen (Thuringia) – A cute lizard? A cute hippopotamus? Incorrect! This picture shows one of the most dangerous predators of prehistoric times.

This creature from times long past lived around 300 million years ago. An international team of researchers has now been able to prove its existence for the first time. In Rhineland-Palatinate, remains of prehistoric amphibians were found in the ground.

Dr. Ralf Werneburg, director of the Natural History Museum at Bertholdsburg Castle in Schleusingen (Thuringia)He was significantly involved in the reconstruction. Through careful, detailed work, he and his team managed to recreate and illustrate the excavated skeletal parts.

The newly discovered species grew up to 1.5 meters long over the course of its life and had a large, flat skull. Striking feature: a particularly large number of pointed teeth.

In addition, several large fangs were hidden in the roof of the mouth. It fed on fish, among other things, but also on other It hunted dinosaur species. As an amphibian, it could survive - and hunt - both in water and on land.

The newly discovered dinosaur was christened “Stenokranio Boldi” (Greek: “narrow skull”) and thus named after its special type of skull. He felt particularly comfortable on the edge of tropical waters. There he lay in wait for his prey. The Stenocranio is considered the forefather of today's crocodile.




https://thelocalgermany.de/123564/forsc ... -regional/

[Sam the Centipede]

That's a bit confusing and perhaps sloppy from the news people. I appreciate it's translated from the German (and my German is very poor nowadays) but the original article also clearly describes the fossil species as an amphibian and then later refers to it as a dinosaur. That's not amphibian as in a vehicle that can go in water or on land, but amphibian as in frogs, toads, newts, salamanders. And amphibians are not reptiles, which lizards, crocodiles, etc. are.

Importantly dinosaurs are reptiles. All of 'em. Including birds if you want to be monophyletic about your reptiles.

The statement that

As an amphibian, it could survive - and hunt - both in water and on land.

is misleading. The key difference between amphibians and reptiles is that amphibians need to lay their soft soggy eggs in (perhaps near?) water, in which their larval stages grow. Reptiles lay bird-like eggs with shells, so can live wholly out of water. As all sketches of large fossil amphibians also show, they tend to have stick-out-at-the-sides legs: some reptiles and later mammals worked out that legs underneath can be better.

Whether this fossil is an ancestor of crocodiles, debatable. Reptiles are a daughter group of amphibians, which ones, I dunno.

Ok, end of paleobiopedantry.

[keith]

archae·ology

NOUN
the study of human history and prehistory through the excavation of sites and the analysis of artefacts and other physical remains.

palae·on·tology

NOUN
the branch of science concerned with fossil animals and plants.

[Sam the Centipede]

Yeah, I thought that too, but what the heck, I can only unpack at one box of bananas at a time. You can start a Paleontology thread and get a greeny or the Great Foglord to transfer the relevant posts.

[keith]

Yeah, I thought that too, but what the heck, I can only unpack at one box of bananas at a time. You can start a Paleontology thread and get a greeny or the Great Foglord to transfer the relevant posts.

Fossils & Paleontology

ETA: Sam posts to Fossils & Paleontology thread

ETA 2: I'm just poking ya not throwing shade. It's one of my things that some folks don't know the difference, and I can't resist reminding them. End of lexigraphical pedantry.

[RTH10260]

archae·ology

NOUN
the study of human history and prehistory through the excavation of sites and the analysis of artefacts and other physical remains.

palae·on·tology

NOUN
the branch of science concerned with fossil animals and plants.

BUT... But... but... they are all in the same ancient dreck

[RTH10260]

Prehistoric Shark's Teeth Had Their Own Tiny Fangs, Alabama Fossils Reveal
Fossil Remains Of Ferocious Prehistoric Shark Found On Beach

Published Feb 07, 2024 at 1:00 PM EST
By Jess Thomson Science Reporter

A brand new species of prehistoric shark has been discovered, and its teeth have a terrifying addition: their very own tiny fangs.

The shark has been named Palaeohypotodus bizzocoi. Its genus name Palaeohypotodus roughly translates to "ancient small-eared tooth." The fossilized teeth have tiny protruding pieces on either side of the main tooth, resembling vampire fangs.

This shark species is thought to have been a predator that ruled the seas just after the dinosaurs were wiped out by the Chicxulub asteroid impact, according to a new paper in the journal Fossil Record.

"Perhaps one of the coolest aspects of this shark, is when it lived – the Paleocene, approximately 65 million years ago," David Cicimurri, the curator of natural history at South Carolina State Museum, said in a statement. "This is the time period from just after the death of the dinosaurs, where over 75 percent of life on Earth went extinct."

This was the last mass extinction event that Earth faced, known as the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction, and resulted in the death of the dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and many mammals, insects, reptiles, amphibians and birds. The seas were also hit badly by extinctions, with marine reptiles like mosasaurs and plesiosaurs being wiped out, as well as invertebrates like ammonites. Seven percent of all families and 50 percent of all genera were wiped out: for reference, humans are in the Hominid family and the Homo genus.



https://www.newsweek.com/ancient-shark- ... ed-1867794

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

Prehistoric Shark's Teeth Had Their Own Tiny Fangs, Alabama Fossils Reveal
Fossil Remains Of Ferocious Prehistoric Shark Found On Beach

Published Feb 07, 2024 at 1:00 PM EST
By Jess Thomson Science Reporter

A brand new species of prehistoric shark has been discovered, and its teeth have a terrifying addition: their very own tiny fangs.

The shark has been named Palaeohypotodus bizzocoi. Its genus name Palaeohypotodus roughly translates to "ancient small-eared tooth." The fossilized teeth have tiny protruding pieces on either side of the main tooth, resembling vampire fangs.

This shark species is thought to have been a predator that ruled the seas just after the dinosaurs were wiped out by the Chicxulub asteroid impact, according to a new paper in the journal Fossil Record.

"Perhaps one of the coolest aspects of this shark, is when it lived – the Paleocene, approximately 65 million years ago," David Cicimurri, the curator of natural history at South Carolina State Museum, said in a statement. "This is the time period from just after the death of the dinosaurs, where over 75 percent of life on Earth went extinct."

This was the last mass extinction event that Earth faced, known as the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction, and resulted in the death of the dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and many mammals, insects, reptiles, amphibians and birds. The seas were also hit badly by extinctions, with marine reptiles like mosasaurs and plesiosaurs being wiped out, as well as invertebrates like ammonites. Seven percent of all families and 50 percent of all genera were wiped out: for reference, humans are in the Hominid family and the Homo genus.



https://www.newsweek.com/ancient-shark- ... ed-1867794

Does Ammon Bundy know about this?

[RTH10260]

Off Topic

I guess we can even find such artefacts without spine still hibernating in Congress today

[jcolvin2]