Taxonomy term

Bright coloration likely emerged in dinosaurs right after the evolution of feathers, according to a new study in Nature. And the burst of color may have been more than an aesthetic change, researchers say: It may have readied feathered dinosaurs for flight.

Ancient changes in vegetation have traditionally been studied based on fossil pollen; however, this record tends to be biased toward plants that produce lots of pollen, such as grasses, reeds and sedges. Now, researchers have sequenced plant DNA retrieved from radiocarbon-dated permafrost samples and gained further insight into the Arctic plant communities not readily identifiable by pollen analysis.
 

For undergraduate geology students, field camp is a rite of passage. And the importance of the experience, in terms of properly training and preparing geoscience students to become geoscience professionals, should not be underestimated. 

An exceptional case of fossil preservation has provided the oldest view yet of the moment of live birth in a vertebrate. The fossil contains parts of four marine reptile individuals — a mother and her three young — from the ichthyopterygian genus, Chaohusaurus, and was unearthed in the Anhui Province of eastern China. While one of the young is still inside the mother and a second is already outside (and mostly obscured from view by other portions of the fossil), the third juvenile can be clearly seen emerging headfirst from the mother’s pelvis. Thought to be about 1 meter long when fully grown, Chaohusaurus lived about 248 million years ago in the Early Triassic and was an ancestor of later ichthyosaurs.