Paleo on EARTH Magazine

Frogs fill in post-Gondwana picture

Wed, 13 Feb 2019 16:29:47 -0500

Land connections, bridges and corridors may have enabled the dispersal of plants and animals, including frogs, among the landmasses around the Indian Ocean after the breakup of Gondwana. Credit: Seshadri.K.S., CC BY-SA 3.0

The positions of landmasses after the breakup of Gondwana during the late Mesozoic and early Paleogene are highly debated, especially the configurations of the Indian and Australian plates around the newly opening Indian Ocean. In a new study, the paleogeographic and genetic distributions of a group of frogs called Natatanurans were used to test the various post-breakup models — and the results bring additional clarity to the post-Gondwana puzzle.

Neanderthals and humans suffered similar levels of head injuries

Wed, 13 Feb 2019 16:18:22 -0500

Neanderthals are commonly thought to have relied on dangerous close-range hunting techniques, using nonprojectile weapons like the thrusting spears depicted here. Credit: Gleiver Prieto and Katerina Harvati.

Paleolithic Neanderthals have traditionally been depicted as more aggressive than Homo sapiens, and reliant on inferior hunting techniques with close-range weapons that would have put them at greater risk of suffering gruesome injuries and shortened life spans. A seemingly high incidence of Neanderthal remains bearing evidence of traumatic injuries has helped shape the narrative that they lived harder, more violent lives and died younger than their modern human neighbors. But a new study in Nature looking at skull injuries in Eurasian hominids casts doubt on this brutish stereotype.

Hard-knock hominid skeletons tell harsh tales

Wed, 13 Feb 2019 16:15:25 -0500

The malformed skull of a 2- to 3-year-old Pleistocene hominid (top) found in France shows signs of hydrocephalus, a swelling of the braincase due to excess fluid in the skull. The hole in the top of the skull is thought to have been cut postmortem. Abnormally bowed femurs (bottom) in the fossil skeleton of a 10-year-old boy found at the Sunghir site in Russia may have been caused by chronic nutritional stress or an inherited disorder. Credit: both: Erik Trinkaus/PNAS.

The Pleistocene was a hard time for hominids. Homo fossils from this period, when humans evolved and expanded from Africa and across Eurasia, are riddled with an unusual number of skeletal abnormalities. Swollen braincases, bowed femurs, twisted long bones, pronounced dwarfism and malformed teeth are just a few of the unusual skeletal features found in many Pleistocene hominid fossils. A new statistical study has confirmed that these anomalies occur at higher-than-expected rates in the Pleistocene fossil record. But whether this elevated incidence was mainly caused by nutritional stress or inbreeding, or if it’s an artifact of preservational bias, is unknown.

Dinosaur soft tissues preserved as polymers

Wed, 13 Feb 2019 16:05:07 -0500

Since 2005, several samples of ostensibly soft tissue, such as blood vessels and bits of organic bone material, have been gleaned from dinosaur bones. The finds have stirred debate because the notion that intact dinosaur proteins could survive tens of millions of years has proved a tantalizing but difficult pill to swallow for many paleontologists. In a new study, however, researchers have identified a chemical pathway — well known in food science but not seen before in paleontology — that may be the key to long-term preservation of soft-tissue structures.

Down to Earth With: Paleoanthropologist and underground astronaut Lindsay Hunter

Wed, 13 Feb 2019 15:14:59 -0500

Lindsay Hunter finds a perch in the Rising Star Cave in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage site in South Africa, where she helped excavate the bones of Homo naledi. Over three weeks in November 2013, Hunter and her colleagues excavated more than 1,500 fossil pieces from specimens of the previously unknown hominin species. Credit: ©Wits University/Elen Feuerriegel.

In 2013, Lindsay Hunter found herself at a personal and professional crossroads. She had gone through a divorce, left the paleoanthropology doctoral program at the University of Iowa, where she had received her master’s in 2004, and moved, along with her three dogs and two cats, to live with her parents on a farm outside Austin, Texas.

"Cradle of Humankind" fossils can now be dated

Mon, 04 Feb 2019 10:50:12 -0500

A light-colored flowstone deposit lies atop lithified red sediments in a South African cave were hominin fossils were found. Researchers dated such flowstones to constrain the ages of fossils found in adjacent sedimentary layers. Credit: Robyn Pickering

Robyn Pickering was taught as an undergraduate about a collection of limestone caves in northern South Africa known collectively as the Cradle of Humankind for the trove of early hominin fossils discovered there. She learned that, unlike hominin fossils unearthed in East Africa, whose ages have been constrained by dating the surrounding layers of volcanic ash, the fossils in the Cradle — including well-preserved specimens of Australopithecus africanus and the recently discovered Homo naledi, among others — were impossible to date independently.

Earliest bird-like lungs found in China

Thu, 17 Jan 2019 14:10:35 -0500

Modern birds have complex respiratory systems, which are needed to meet the high energetic demands of flight, often at high altitudes. A 120-million-year-old specimen of the ornithuromorph Archaeorhynchus spathula shows that it already had lung structures like those of modern birds. Credit: public domain.

Before birds took to the air, a number of anatomical features evolved that allowed them to get off the ground. While many of these features were skeletal adaptations that have been well-documented in the fossil record, when exactly the large-volume lungs needed to power flight developed has long been a mystery. But the recent discovery of a unique fossil bearing a significant amount of preserved soft tissue, including lung tissue, has shed light on how early birds adapted to breathe in flight.

Free swimmers came back first after Great Dying

Thu, 17 Jan 2019 13:23:48 -0500

In the Early Triassic, following the end-Permian extinction, nektonic marine life recovered fastest, according to new research, resulting in a reversed functional pyramid. Percentages represent the proportion of marine genera belonging to each class of organisms. Credit: courtesy of Haijun Song.

About 252 million years ago, at the boundary between the Permian and Triassic periods, the vast majority of marine and terrestrial life died out in the most devastating extinction event in Earth’s history. Earth’s ecosystems eventually recovered, but not in the way — or as quickly as — scientists thought. In a new study looking at how marine species reemerged in the Triassic, researchers report a surprising trend of recovery from the top of the food chain down.

Benchmarks: February 17, 2017: Arkansas Gets a State Dinosaur

Tue, 15 Jan 2019 14:14:43 -0500

In 1972, the first dinosaur remains ever found in Arkansas — a fossilized foot — were pulled out of a gravel and sand pit near the Sevier County town of Lockesburg in the southwestern part of the state. Though the foot remained a scientific mystery for decades, it became something of a local celebrity. In February 2017, with help from an enthusiastic high school student, the species from which the fossil originated was designated the state dinosaur of Arkansas. And about a year later, in March 2018 — more than 45 years after its initial discovery — the dinosaur finally received a thorough scientific description and an official scientific name: Arkansaurus fridayi.

Mesosaurs may have spent time on land

Fri, 21 Dec 2018 11:06:27 -0500

Mesosaurs were well adapted to life in the water, but adults may have also spent time on land. Credit: Roman Yevseyev and Graciela Piñeiro.

Mesosaurs are famous for being the earliest-known fully aquatic reptiles. With their whip-like tails, webbed feet and nostrils on top of their heads, the 2-meter-long reptiles appear to have been well adapted for life in the water. But in a new study, scientists have found fossil evidence that mesosaurs may have spent some of their adult lives on land.

Earliest art found in South Africa

Fri, 21 Dec 2018 10:59:32 -0500

Blombos Cave, located along the South African coast about 300 kilometers east of Cape Town, has been excavated since 1991, revealing materials left by Homo sapiens between 100,000 and 70,000 years ago. A closer look at some curious red lines on a flake of rock found in the cave in 2011 has confirmed they were drawn by humans as early as 73,000 years ago, predating the earliest-known forms of art by as much as 30,000 years.

Early mammal reproduced like a reptile

Fri, 21 Dec 2018 10:51:50 -0500

A mother found fossilized alongside 38 of her young is offering a rare glimpse into early mammalian reproductive strategies. Unearthed in northeastern Arizona, the 184-million-year-old fossils are from specimens of Kayentatherium wellesi, an early mammal-like tritylodont that falls between reptiles and true mammals on the evolutionary tree.

Climate cooling a driver of Neanderthals' extinction

Thu, 29 Nov 2018 16:46:00 -0500

Analyses of cave speleothems from Romania revealed periods of rapid climatic cooling in Eastern Europe about 44,000 and 40,000 years ago that, according to recent research, likely contributed to the decline of Neanderthals. Credit: shutterstock.com/Procy

Neanderthals disappeared from Europe roughly 40,000 years ago, and scientists are still trying to figure out why. Did disease, climate change or competition with modern humans — or maybe a combination of all three — do them in? In a recent study, researchers offer new evidence from Eastern Europe that climate change was a major player in the Neanderthals’ disappearance.

Two new species fill gap in dinosaur family tree

Thu, 08 Nov 2018 12:53:32 -0500

An artist's reconstruction of important alvarezsaurian genera from left to right: Haplocheirus, Xiyunykus, Bannykus and Shuvuuia. Credit: Viktor Radermacher.

Cretaceous rocks in northwestern China have yielded two new dinosaur species that help fill a 70-million-year gap in dinosaur phylogeny. The new species — Xiyunykus pengi and Bannykus wulatensis — are both alvarezsaurians, an odd group of dinosaurs that, by the Late Cretaceous, had evolved many avian characteristics such as birdlike skulls, tiny teeth and light, slender bodies, as well as unique mole-like single-clawed forearms that were likely useful for digging.

Spiky new American ankylosaurid originated in Asia

Tue, 16 Oct 2018 10:30:03 -0400

An artist's vision of the newly discovered Akainacephalus johnsoni. The unusually spiky armored head points to an Asian origin for this new genus and species. Credit: ©Andrey Atuchin/DMNS.

A new genus and species of ankylosaurid discovered in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah reveal new information about the spread of armored dinosaurs into North America. Most North American ankylosaurids are known for their smooth skulls, but the new specimen more closely resembles spiky-skulled Asian ankylosaurids.

Marine animals have been migrating for millions of years

Tue, 16 Oct 2018 09:46:47 -0400

Marine organisms like corals, sponges and snails have been migrating for millions of years, mostly driven by temperature changes. Credit: Carl Reddin.

Scientists have suspected that ancient animals migrated in response to changing global temperatures, but until now, there was no documentation of this across extensive time periods. In a new study, researchers found that, for millions of years, marine organisms like corals, sponges and snails, have shifted their ranges in response to climate change.

Extinct gibbon found in Chinese tomb

Mon, 10 Sep 2018 12:52:31 -0400

Junzi imperialis is a newly described extinct gibbon from China. Credit: Samuel Turvey/ZSL.

About 2,200 years ago, a Chinese noblewoman was buried in a tomb with a menagerie of animals, including 12 horses, a leopard, a lynx and a species of gibbon unknown to modern science. The new ape, identified using detailed cranial and dental measurements as a new genus and species — Junzi imperialis — may represent the first ape to have gone extinct due to human influence after the last ice age.

First Antarctic tetrapods

Mon, 10 Sep 2018 11:35:49 -0400

This illustration depicts ancient Antarctic tetrapods in their aquatic habitats. Tutusius is to the right; Umzantsia is to the left. Credit: Maggie Newman.

Tetrapods include all those animals with four limbs. Humans are tetrapods, as are dogs and dinosaurs and salamanders. The earliest tetrapods evolved on land from fish with bony fins during the Devonian Period between about 420 million and 359 million years ago. Until now, fossils of the earliest four-legged forms were only known from equatorial regions, but paleontologists working in South Africa now report the discovery of fossil tetrapods that lived in the Late Devonian Antarctic.

Earth's first footprints

Mon, 10 Sep 2018 09:37:23 -0400

These fossil trackways from China bear Earth's first "footprints" — the dimple-like bumps that make up each trackway. Credit: NIGP.

As far as we know, life originated on Earth about 3.5 billion years ago, and for roughly the first 3 billion years of that history all life was microscopic. Then, during the Ediacaran Period from 635 million to 541 million years ago, the first organisms visible to the naked eye emerged. Although many members of this group, called the Ediacara biota, would have looked alien to us, some nonetheless had features we might find familiar. And according to a new study, it was Ediacaran creatures that left behind Earth’s oldest-known footprints.

Grazing gave elephant ancestors an edge

Fri, 03 Aug 2018 13:17:40 -0400

Replica of a reconstructed Gomphotherium steinheimense skeleton on display at the Basel Natural History Museum. Credit: Zhang Hanwen, University of Bristol.

The poor dental hygiene of some ancient elephant-like beasts has proven a boon to future scientists. In a new study, researchers used grass fragments recovered from the teeth of two extinct species of Central Asian gomphotheriids to decode the animals’ feeding habits during the middle Miocene.

An asteroid redirected bird evolution

Fri, 03 Aug 2018 13:08:49 -0400

A ground-dwelling bird tiptoes through burning forests in the aftermath of the asteroid impact about 66 million years ago at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary. Credit: ©Phillip Krzeminski, Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology.

When an asteroid hit Earth 66 million years ago, it helped wipe out all the dinosaur lineages save one: the birds. But birds didn’t completely dodge the cataclysm the asteroid triggered. Recent research suggests that forests around the planet were devastated. With forests gone, bird species that called trees home went extinct alongside their nonavian dinosaur cousins. This means that the birds that we see living in trees today evolved from lineages that, in the aftermath of the impact, were ground-dwelling.

Geomedia: Books: Informative and inspiring: "Why Dinosaurs Matter"

Fri, 03 Aug 2018 12:52:08 -0400

"Why Dinosaurs Matter" by Kenneth Lacovara, Simon & Schuster, 2017, ISBN 1501120107.

“Why should we care about dinosaurs? They’re all dead!” It’s a question paleontologists get all the time. There are many people who don’t see the point of studying dinosaurs (or any other prehistoric animal) and would much rather see scientists researching topics that “actually matter to humans.”

Island-dwelling mammal had small brain, keen senses

Tue, 03 Jul 2018 11:20:05 -0400

A newly discovered mammal, Litovoi tholocephalos, belongs to a previously unknown genus. Credit: Csiki-Sava et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2018.

A host of fossils has been discovered near the Romanian town of Haţeg, including 15 species of Late Cretaceous dinosaurs — some of them dwarf dinosaurs — and enormous pterosaurs with 12-meter wingspans, prompting the establishment of the Haţeg Country Dinosaurs Geopark in 2005.

Mineral clue to finding perfectly preserved fossils?

Tue, 03 Jul 2018 11:05:16 -0400

Exquisitely preserved fossils of Waptia fieldensis can be found in Canada's Burgess Shale. Credit: Susan Butts/Yale University.

The exquisitely preserved fossils found in the 500-million-year-old Burgess Shale in Canada are famous for the detailed anatomy they display. They also provide a rare and crucial record of the Cambrian Explosion, when most of the major animal groups first appeared.

Down to Earth With: Paleobiologist Rowan Lockwood

Tue, 03 Jul 2018 10:39:57 -0400

Rowan Lockwood, a professor of paleobiology in the Department of Geology at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, studies ecological changes through geologic time to inform modern conservation approaches. Credit: Stephen Salpukas.

In 1608, Captain John Smith noted that oysters “lay as thick as stones” on the floor of the Chesapeake Bay. The shell reefs — built up by hundreds of years of oyster generations — were so large, ships wrecked against them. And each oyster was so massive, to eat one, you had to cut it into pieces — like a steak.

The Paleo-Bell River: North America's vanished Amazon

Mon, 02 Jul 2018 16:54:20 -0400

The North Saskatchewan River (foreground), at its confluence with the Alexandra River near the rivers' headwaters in the Canadian Rockies, is part of the Saskatchewan River system, which together with the Nelson River watershed is the last remnant of the once-mighty Paleo-Bell River system. Credit: Yvesgagnon1974/istockphoto.com.

By middle school, most students have learned that the Amazon River is the mightiest of Earth’s rivers. Its mean discharge to the ocean of about 209,000 cubic meters per second is more than the combined discharges of the next six largest rivers in the world. Its farthest tributaries rise in the Andes a few hundred kilometers from the Pacific Ocean, and it drains an area of about 7 million square kilometers as it crosses South America to the Atlantic. The Amazon dwarfs North America’s largest river system, the Mississippi, which drains less than half the area of the Amazon and discharges about one-tenth as much water.

Saglek Basin sediments suggest a Grand Canyon connection

Mon, 02 Jul 2018 16:42:29 -0400

Pollen grains thought to have once been trapped in rock from the Late Triassic Chinle Formation (left) and the Pennsylvanian to lower Permian Supai Group (right) in the Grand Canyon area of northern Arizona were found in the former delta complex of the Paleo-Bell River beneath the Labrador Sea, roughly 5,000 kilometers from their former outcrops. Credit: left: Finetooth, CC BY-SA 3.0; right: Luca Galuzzi, CC BT-SA 2.5.

Pollen makes an ideal fossil. Pollen grains — each only a few tens of microns in diameter — are produced in astronomical quantities by plants and record information about the ecosystem from which they came, thus providing a way to reconstruct past environments. Additionally, pollen is composed of a highly stable organic substance, sporopollenin, which resists decay as well as the high heat and pressure associated with deep burial, lithification and tectonism. It is so resistant, in fact, that it can be eroded from rock and recycled into younger sediments, a process recognized in the 1980s by V. Eileen Williams of the University of British Columbia in her studies of Paleo-Bell River sediments deposited in the Labrador Sea.

Diamonds and the Eocene climate of the Bell River Basin

Mon, 02 Jul 2018 16:39:26 -0400

Plant macrofossils from the Ekati Mine, Northwest Territories, Canada, including (A) 50-million-year-old Metasequoia needles and branches, and fossil wood in a 10-centimeter-wide drill core and (B) a large piece of fossil wood containing amber. Credit: courtesy of Alberto Reyes, University of Alberta.

Diamonds mined from the kimberlite pipes of the Lac de Gras diamond field in Northwest Territories, Canada, are among the world’s youngest known diamonds, dating from 75 million to 45 million years ago. In some cases, when the magmas that carried these diamonds to Earth’s surface encountered water-saturated rock at shallow depths, violent steam explosions called phreatomagmatic eruptions resulted. Such explosions can form volcanic craters known as maars, which often fill with water and accumulate lake sediment, along with soil and vegetation that collapse into them from their margins. In the case of the Panda kimberlite pipe at the Ekati Mine in the Lac de Gras area, maar sediments accumulated far below the surrounding terrain, such that they were later buried under glacial deposits rather than being eroded away by ice sheets during the past million years. Wood and other organic materials were entombed and preserved in their natural state, thereby preserving shreds of the Paleo-Bell River Basin.

Pterosaurs flew into the Late Cretaceous

Tue, 05 Jun 2018 16:57:57 -0400

Late Cretaceous skies might have been more crowded than previously thought. Until recently, scientists thought the dearth of pterosaur fossils found from the Late Cretaceous meant that the flying reptiles were in decline before the catastrophic end of the Mesozoic. But the recent discovery in Morocco of several new pterosaur species suggests this unique branch of reptiles may have been thriving just before the end-Cretaceous extinction.

Down to Earth With: Highway paleontologist Shane Tucker

Tue, 05 Jun 2018 15:39:13 -0400

Nebraska highway paleontologist Shane Tucker monitors road construction projects to recover the state's valuable paleontological resources, including many of the mammal fossils for which Nebraska is famous. Credit: Gary Hochman.

When roads are built in fossil-rich states, paleontologists sometimes follow the trucks and bulldozers to make sure that the buried treasures that construction crews occasionally uncover — namely, remnants of ancient animals and plants — get out of the ground safely and into a museum to be cataloged and studied.

Travels in Geology: Mesozoic masterpiece: England's Jurassic Coast

Tue, 05 Jun 2018 14:31:10 -0400

Just a few hours’ drive from London, along England’s southwestern shore, stretches a stunning expanse of coastline with a geologic story as captivating as its scenery. Thanks to a wide variety of landforms, impressive cliffs ranging in color from ochre to lily-white, and layered rocks representing all three periods of the Mesozoic Era, this 155-kilometer-long coastal strip has long been recognized as an important place in the study of earth science. But it’s the rich cache of fossils entombed within these colorful rocks, particularly those of Jurassic age, that led UNESCO to declare this singular shoreline a World Heritage Site in 2001. Exploring the “Jurassic Coast” — from its pebbly beaches, windswept walking paths and cozy pubs, to the various museums detailing the area’s long tradition of groundbreaking fossil discoveries — is a timeless and fun-filled adventure.

Down to Earth With: John Copeland

Wed, 23 May 2018 17:16:27 -0400

John Copeland. Credit: Pierre de Lespinois

Movie effects have come a long way since the close-shot model explosions that made “Star Wars” a hit, and science documentaries are no exception, says John Copeland, a director and producer who has worked on such shows as “Babylon 5,” “Dinosaur Planet” and “When Dinosaurs Roamed America.” Copeland explains to EARTH reporter Brian Fisher Johnson how TV drama and computer effects have revolutionized the way documentarians portray science.

Down to Earth With: Michael Novacek

Wed, 23 May 2018 16:41:16 -0400

When it comes to fossil hunting, Michael Novacek has just about seen it all. As a paleontologist, senior vice president and provost of science at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, Novacek has braved everything from Andean snowstorms to Yemeni bandits in his quest for fossils. Somewhere, he found time to write two books about his expeditions: “Dinosaurs of the Flaming Cliffs” (1996) and “Time Traveler” (2002). Novacek recently chatted with EARTH reporter Brian Fisher Johnson about his experiences.

Down to Earth With: Jack Horner

Wed, 23 May 2018 16:02:09 -0400

As one of the world’s most successful dinosaur hunters and a leader in the field of dinosaur growth and development, Jack Horner needs little introduction for paleontology enthusiasts. His first big discovery, the dinosaur Maiasaura, or “Mother Lizard,” was found with the first known dinosaur eggs in the Western Hemisphere and the first evidence of colonial nesting. This discovery dispelled the notion that dinosaurs were bad mothers. Other notable discoveries include the first dinosaur embryos and the largest Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton. Horner also served as technical advisor for the “Jurassic Park” films and is the partial inspiration for the main character Alan Grant.

Oldest human remains outside Africa found in Israel

Tue, 01 May 2018 16:01:28 -0400

Close-up view of the human jawbone fossil found in Misliya Cave in northern Israel, showing details of the crown topography and dental features. Credit: both: Rolf Quam/Binghamton University.

The recent discovery of a jawbone belonging to Homo sapiens, and associated stone tools, in Israel may push back the timing of the earliest human migration out of Africa by as much as 50,000 years.

A new look at Cheddar Man

Tue, 01 May 2018 15:56:12 -0400

Cheddar Man's dark skin defies conventionally held ideas that Britons have long been light-skinned. Credit: ©Tom Barnes/Channel 4.

In 1903, a skeleton was found in a limestone cave in Cheddar Gorge, near Somerset, England. Radiocarbon dating in the 1970s revealed the remains to be more than 10,000 years old, making it the oldest near-complete human skeleton found in Britain. Now, as yet unpublished research suggests Cheddar Man’s genome reveals a surprisingly different appearance for the Mesolithic man from what’s long been thought, according to researchers who analyzed DNA from the skeleton.

Down to Earth With: Geologist and paleontologist David Wilcots

Tue, 01 May 2018 12:10:02 -0400

David Wilcots is a senior geologist and manager of environmental projects at Sci-Tek Consultants, Inc., in Philadelphia. He is also a paleontologist and participates in fossil hunting expeditions in the West. Credit: Thea Boodhoo.

When David Wilcots was 4 years old, his parents took him to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City where he encountered his first giant dinosaur skeleton: a roughly 27-meter-long sauropod named Apatosaurus (though at the time it was still popularly known as Brontosaurus). “That just blew my mind,” he remembers. His passion for paleontology grew, branching from dinosaurs into early mammals, and led him to major in geology at Temple University in Philadelphia. In 1988, he earned a master’s in geology at Fort Hays State University in Kansas.

Flightless dino had bright, rainbow-colored feathers

Tue, 10 Apr 2018 12:08:45 -0400

A reconstruction of the new dinosaur species, Caihong juji. Credit: Velizar Simeonovski, Field Museum.

In recent years, many dinosaurs have gotten a fabulously feathered makeover, but for the most part, scientists still aren’t sure what colors the animals were. A new discovery of a finely preserved feathered dinosaur fossil in China suggests that some dinosaurs were as brightly colored as modern-day hummingbirds.

How Borneo got its elephants

Tue, 10 Apr 2018 11:58:46 -0400

The Bornean elephant is the smallest subspecies of elephant. This baby is one of fewer than 2,000 individuals that remain in the wild. Credit: Rudi Delvaux.

Elephants may not seem like islanders, but a small population lives on the Southeast Asian island of Borneo. How and when the animals arrived on the island has long been a mystery. A new DNA analysis points to colonization at the end of the Pleistocene, when a land bridge may have connected Java, Borneo and Sumatra to the Malay Peninsula and mainland Asia.

Lidar preserves record of destroyed theropod tracks

Tue, 10 Apr 2018 11:55:41 -0400

Researchers document a theropod dinosaur trackway at a gypsum quarry in Arkansas. Credit: University of Arkansas.

In 2011, the first theropod dinosaur tracks ever discovered in Arkansas were uncovered at an active gypsum quarry near Nashville in the southwestern part of the state. Over two weeks, researchers collected a set of high-resolution digital scans of the trackway that has now allowed scientists to piece together its 100-million-year-old story, even though the tracks have long-since been destroyed by mining operations.

Origins of plant photosynthesis illuminated

Tue, 10 Apr 2018 11:49:51 -0400

Bangiomorpha pubescens is a fossil red alga that's now the oldest-known direct ancestor of plants. Credit: Nicholas Butterfield.

Photosynthesis, the process by which plants harness sunlight to make their food, is a defining feature of plants and an important evolutionary development. But when photosynthesis evolved in ancient plant ancestors is not clear. The Precambrian fossil red alga Bangiomorpha pubescens, discovered in the Canadian Arctic in 1990 by University of Cambridge paleobiologist Nicholas Butterfield, displays evidence of traits that suggest it photosynthesized the way plants do, but the exact age of the fossil was also unknown. In a new study, researchers report an age for the alga of about 1.047 billion years, making it the oldest-known direct ancestor of plants.

Whatever happened to thagomizers and other tail weapons?

Tue, 10 Apr 2018 11:39:45 -0400

New research finds that extinct, tail weapon-wielding animals — such as the dueling ankylosaurs illustrated here — all shared a set of traits, including large body size, herbivory and bony body armor, that no modern animals possess. Credit: Jack Mayer Wood.

Stegosaurus wielded a spiked tail — dubbed a “thagomizer” by cartoonist Gary Larson and informally adopted by paleontologists — which the herbivorous dinosaur likely used for defense against hungry predators. Other extinct animals also sported foe-clobbering tail weapons: Ankylosaurus had a tail club, as did extinct mammals like the glyptodonts, giant armadillo-like animals that once roamed the Americas. Today, though, thagomizers and bony tail clubs are things of the past. In a new study, paleontologists have found that extinct animals with such weapons all shared a now-antiquated set of traits: They were large, herbivorous, and had body armor and a stiff torso.

Hot tropics drove out ancient reptiles, but they came back

Tue, 10 Apr 2018 11:33:16 -0400

Terrestrial reptiles vacated the tropics (orange and yellow belts) following the end-Permian mass extinction 252 million years ago. Credit: MUSE Archive.

About 252 million years ago, massive volcanic eruptions in what is now Siberia rapidly warmed Earth, resulting in the end-Permian mass extinction that saw most terrestrial and marine species die off. It’s been thought that surviving reptiles and fish fled the hot tropics and didn’t return for millions of years. But according to new research, the tropical evacuation may not have lasted so long after all.

Down to Earth With: National Park Service senior paleontologist Vincent Santucci

Tue, 10 Apr 2018 09:56:08 -0400

Vincent Santucci is the senior paleontologist and paleontology program coordinator at the National Park Service. Credit: NPS photo.

When Vincent Santucci was hired in 1985 to work as a seasonal ranger in South Dakota’s Badlands National Park, he assumed the most formative part of the experience would be sharing his unbridled enthusiasm for fossils with park visitors. But as Santucci explored the colorful badlands on his days off, he sometimes stumbled across people who were illegally collecting fossils. Following the first of these encounters, Santucci raced back to headquarters to report the illicit activity with the expectation that the chief ranger would rush out and arrest the perpetrator. Much to Santucci’s surprise, the ranger instead put a hand on his shoulder and drawled, “You ain’t from around here, are you, boy?” After several repeat episodes, Santucci learned that when rangers had previously caught illegal collectors and brought them before the local magistrate, the judge had refused to prosecute, citing a lack of fencing or signage that clearly informed the fossil hunters they’d been on federal land.

Travels in Geology: Underground awe in France: The caves of the Causses

Fri, 23 Mar 2018 12:25:26 -0400

The village of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie is built on a hill above the Lot River Valley. Credit: Callan Bentley.

The Causses du Quercy Natural Regional Park, usually just called “the Causses” (pronounced like “coast” without the “t”), in south-central France is a classic Gallic landscape of gently rolling hills divided millennia ago into farm plots, livestock grazing pastures, low, dense forests and small stone-carved towns. It’s a place where the roads curve and wiggle, the butterflies dance in the sun, and people take long lunches at outdoor patios adjacent to the local “auberge” (inn). Strolling along the tree-lined roads, you hear the buzz of insects and glimpse backyard vegetable gardens, and after a tiny car passes you with a wave, you discover a Neolithic tomb, or dolmen, surrounded by vines. The dolmen speaks profoundly of how humans have inhabited the Causses for a very long time.

Pesky ticks even plagued dinosaurs

Wed, 14 Mar 2018 15:13:08 -0400

A tick grasps a dinosaur feather in a piece of 99-million-year-old amber. Credit: E. Peñalver et al., Nature Communications, December 2017.

Blood-sucking, disease-spreading ticks are one of the most maligned parasites in the world, and new evidence shows they’ve been doing their dirty work for a long time: Fossilized ticks dating to the mid-Cretaceous represent the first direct evidence that the ancestors of today’s pesky critters once plagued dinosaurs.

Down to Earth With: Paleontologist and astronomer Tom Kaye

Fri, 09 Mar 2018 12:50:11 -0500

Credit: Tome Kaye.

What do paleontology, astronomy and paintball guns have in common? For one, they have all been pursuits of Tom Kaye. Kaye, a research associate at the Burke Museum in Seattle, Wash., is a self-taught paleontologist and an amateur astronomer. But he’s not content with just digging fossils and observing constellations. His ambitions are much greater. In July, for example, he set off a paleontological debate when he and his colleagues suggested in PLoS One that soft tissue that was discovered in a tyrannosaur fossil in 2005 was nothing more than bacteria trapped in tiny grooves on the bone.

World's longest sauropod trackway exposed

Fri, 23 Feb 2018 11:26:54 -0500

Artist's rendition of the sauropod that made the tracks at Plagne. Credit: drawing: A. Bénéteau; photo: Dinojura.

A sauropod trackway found in 2009 in the French village of Plagne extends for more than 155 meters. Credit: P. Dumas.

Excavations at a dinosaur trackway found in 2009 in the French village of Plagne, 200 kilometers east of Lyon, revealed 110 sauropod footprints spanning a distance of 155 meters, making the site the world’s longest sauropod trackway. In a new study published in the journal Geobios, researchers report that the tracks were made roughly 150 million years ago and that the largest tracks measure more than a meter across. Analysis of the trackway suggested the prints were left by an animal at least 35 meters long and weighing more than 35 tons, that traveled about 4 kilometers per hour with an average stride of 2.8 meters. The prints were assigned to a new ichnospecies — a species only known from trace fossils — named Brontopodus plagnensis.

Oldest blood cells found in Early Jurassic ichthyosaur

Fri, 23 Feb 2018 11:23:23 -0500

The oldest preserved red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets have been found in the remains of a 183-million-year-old ichthyosaur vertebra. Ichthyosaurs were formidable marine predators in Mesozoic seas. Credit: Curtin University.

Since 2005, a steady trickle of reports detailing proteins and other soft tissues preserved in fossils of dinosaurs and other ancient animals has gradually worn down the disbelief that such tissues can last through geologic time. In a new study in Scientific Reports, scientists have now reported the oldest preserved red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets, found in the remains of an ancient marine reptile.

Drought drove early humans from Africa

Fri, 23 Feb 2018 11:12:48 -0500

Homo sapiens, which first emerged in Africa between 150,000 and 200,000 years ago, migrated in waves to different parts of the world. Credit: K. Cantner, AGI.

Genetics studies have dated the largest migrations of early Homo sapiens out of Africa to between 70,000 and 55,000 years ago, although smaller groups may have left earlier. The most widely accepted exodus theory, known as the “green carpet” or “green Sahara” hypothesis, holds that people likely left during wetter periods in the Sahara and Arabia, which would have allowed easier passage into Eurasia via the Middle East. But new research supports the opposite idea: that drier conditions may have triggered at least some of the exodus.

Growing up saber-toothed: Strong from the start

Thu, 15 Feb 2018 14:35:35 -0500

During the Pleistocene, saber-toothed cats were formidable predators, with their massive canines and powerful front legs sporting razor-sharp claws. The bones of saber-toothed cats are thicker and more robust compared to those of other large cats, both modern and extinct. And previous studies of Smilodon have shown that their forelimbs in particular featured several adaptations, including thickened cortical bone, which would have increased strength, presumably useful in subduing ambushed prey.

Did mud volcanoes set the stage for Burgess Shale fossils?

Tue, 06 Feb 2018 12:53:22 -0500

Talus from the fossil-rich Burgess Shale covers the ground in the Walcott Quarry near Field, British Columbia. Credit: Mary Caperton Morton.

Canada’s Burgess Shale is famous for a wide array of exquisitely preserved 500-million-year-old fossils, which are found in a dozen localities in the Canadian Rockies. Linking all these localities today is a geologic feature called the Cathedral Escarpment, which formed in the Cambrian as a steep line of underwater cliffs where regular mudslides are thought to have gently buried a diversity of organisms, setting the stage for the prolific fossil beds. However, new mineralogical clues found at several of the fossil-rich sites suggest that mud volcanism may have also played a starring role in creating the Burgess Shale.

Fossil sea turtle hatchling reveals its Eocene proteins

Fri, 12 Jan 2018 14:37:45 -0500

Preserved biomolecules were found in this specimen of an Eocene sea turtle, Tasbacka danica, which was found in Denmark. The circle in (b) indicates the part of the turtle's carapace — enlarged in (c) — sampled by researchers. Credit: Lindgren et al., Scientific Reports, October 2017, CC BY 4.0.

A study of a 54-million-year-old sea turtle hatchling found in Denmark is adding to a growing body of evidence that certain proteins can remain intact in the fossil record for tens of millions of years.

Denali's Asian dinosaurs

Wed, 10 Jan 2018 09:37:53 -0500

“Paleontologists have long hypothesized that a land bridge between present-day Siberia and Alaska served as a gateway for fauna to migrate between Asia and North America during the Cretaceous, but they have unearthed little evidence that directly supports this idea. Now, researchers have found an Asian dinosaur track assemblage in North America, a discovery that backs the longstanding hypothesis.

Nothing is clear about who left marks on ancient bones

Fri, 05 Jan 2018 17:58:46 -0500

Two crocodile teeth found at the collection site along with a horse leg bone with marks that Yonatan Sahle's team studied. Credit: Y Sahle et al./PNAS 2017.

An ongoing debate regarding the origin of scrape marks on ancient animal bones has taken a new turn. The marks were first thought to have been made by early hominid butchers, then by trampling, and now it’s looking like crocodiles might have been responsible, according to a recent study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Predators may have spurred evolution of ancient brittle stars

Thu, 14 Dec 2017 18:07:42 -0500

Fossils of roughly 275-million-year-old brittle stars were found in Western Australia. Credit: Kenneth McNamara.

Threats to species can encourage evolution, leading to animals with harder shells or other defensive adaptations. In a recent study in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, researchers found that while some ancient brittle stars — relatives of starfish with long, whip-like arms — evolved in the face of threats, some adapted a different approach: they moved.

Fossilized dinosaur feces reveal flexitarian diet

Thu, 14 Dec 2017 15:36:05 -0500

Fossilized feces tell paleontologists a lot about what dinosaurs ate. Some unusual coprolites discovered in Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument may indicate that normally herbivorous dinosaurs occasionally ate crustaceans.

“From what we know about dinosaurs, this was a totally unexpected behavior,” said lead investigator Karen Chin, a paleontologist at the University of Colorado Boulder, in a statement. “It was such a surprising discovery we wondered what the motivation could have been.” Chin and colleagues found 5-centimeter-long crustacean shells embedded in bits of rotting wood in 10 different coprolite samples. The large size and prevalence of the shells indicated the ingestion was likely intentional, they suggested in a study in Scientific Reports.

Science meets art: Tiny trilobite gets huge makeover

Thu, 14 Dec 2017 14:39:49 -0500

At less than a centimeter in size, Agnostus pisiformis might not look like much, but a new series of larger-than-life sculptures is giving the arthropod its due as one of the most ubiquitous and recognizable Cambrian fossils.

19th-century discovery now reveals modern human arrival in Sumatra

Thu, 14 Dec 2017 06:57:40 -0500

New research at Lida Ajer Cave in Sumatra, combined with data from human teeth found there in the 1880s, suggests humans were in Indonesia roughly 20,000 years earlier than previously thought. Credit: Julien Louys.

Modern humans began journeying out of Africa by at least 75,000 years ago, eventually expanding across the planet. Evidence of these early human travels, including fossils and artifacts, is typically spotty and difficult to find. But one such discovery more than a century ago has shed new light on the appearance of humans in Southeast Asia.

Mysterious Miocene bipedal footprints found in Crete

Mon, 11 Dec 2017 13:02:20 -0500

Photos, laser scans and interpretations of three footprints dated to the Late Miocene and preserved in sedimentary rock in western Crete. Numbers denote digits, and "ba" and "he" refer to interpretations of ball and heel imprints, respectively. Credit: Gierliński et al., Proceedings of the Geologists' Association, August 2017.

A curious set of 5.7-million-year-old bipedal footprints found in western Crete — far from the cradle of humanity in Africa and dating to the Late Miocene, long before hominins are thought to have walked upright — has paleoanthropologists scratching their heads.

Down to Earth With: Paleontologist Ali Nabavizadeh

Mon, 11 Dec 2017 12:56:55 -0500

Anatomist and paleontologist Ali Nabavizadeh is an assistant professor at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University in Camden, N.J. Credit: Thea Boodhoo.

A perfect day in the life of paleontologist Ali Nabavizadeh wouldn’t be complete without a fresh corpse. The subjects of his work at the dissection table range from a rhinoceros, to an elephant head, to the human cadavers essential to the anatomy classes he teaches at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University in Camden, N.J. The only thing that could possibly top a fresh corpse, in fact, is an extremely old one.

Transitional Chilesaurus fills gap between major dinosaur groups

Wed, 15 Nov 2017 14:46:28 -0500

Chilesaurus, which lived during the Late Jurassic, was an early ornithiscian dinosaur that shared traits with other ornithischians as well as with theropods, according to new research. Credit: Nobu Tamura.

In 2015, a new dinosaur was discovered in southern Chile, but its odd set of characteristics left paleontologists scratching their heads: Was it a carnivore or an herbivore? A closer look at the bones of the dinosaur, named Chilesaurus, is helping scientists determine how it fit into the Late Jurassic landscape.

Dino deaths cleared the way for frogs

Wed, 15 Nov 2017 14:34:29 -0500

Certain frog lineages, including the family Microhylidae to which this male Microhyla rubra belongs, flourished after the dinosaur extinction left environmental niches open. Credit: L. Shyamal, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Frogs make up almost 90 percent of amphibians, and with 6,775 described species, frogs are considered one of the most diverse groups of vertebrates on the planet. In a new study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers indicate that frogs’ rapid diversification stems back to the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg, formerly the K-T) boundary, about 66 million years ago, when nonavian dinosaurs and many other animals went extinct.

Can fossil footprints reveal the weight of a dinosaur?

Wed, 15 Nov 2017 14:23:17 -0500

These footprints — in roughly 150-million-year-old sandstone at the Copper Ridge tracksite in eastern Utah — were made by a single sauropod, possibly a Diplodocus or Camarasaurus. Credit: James St. John, CC BY 2.0.

Body mass is a fundamental factor in determining how much food an animal requires, how it moves and grows, and what role it plays in its ecosystem. Measuring modern animals is often a straightforward matter of putting them on a scale, but it’s no easy feat for paleontologists interested in extinct creatures like dinosaurs, since many of these animals’ weighty parts — their organs, muscles and skin, for example — are long gone. Frequent claims of “the heaviest dinosaur of all time,” for example, as in the case of the recently named Patagotitan, are fraught with uncertainty. Recent research, however, is offering a novel approach to estimating dinosaur body masses by examining the footprints they left behind.

Down to Earth With Richard Prum

Tue, 14 Nov 2017 07:05:33 -0500

Richard Prum studies modern birds to learn more about dinosaurs. Credit: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Prum, a professor of ornithology at Yale University in New Haven, Conn., was an avid birdwatcher as a kid and thought he might grow up to be a park ranger. But in college he became interested in phylogenetics — the study of evolutionary relationships. Combining that with his interest in birdwatching seemed natural, he thought. So he went into evolutionary ornithology.

Marine megafaunal extinction discovered

Thu, 09 Nov 2017 15:07:39 -0500

Fossils from Pliocene megafauna: sharks' teeth from Carchahinus leucas (left) and Negaprion (right). Credit: University of Zurich.

Extinctions of large land animals during the Pleistocene are well documented. In a new study, scientists report that marine megafauna also suffered severe losses several million years ago, around the time that the first hominid ancestors were emerging in Africa.

Humans arrived Down Under earlier than thought

Wed, 18 Oct 2017 12:07:17 -0400

Chris Clarkson of the University of Queensland talks with Djurrubu Aboriginal Rangers at the Madjedbebe excavation site in Australia's Northern Territory. Credit: Dominic O'Brien, Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation.

Analysis of sediments surrounding a trove of artifacts discovered in northern Australia suggests the first humans arrived on the continent about 10,000 years earlier than previously thought, a finding that has implications for the hypothesized role of humans in the extinctions of Australian megafauna.

When agriculture went to our heads

Wed, 18 Oct 2017 12:04:46 -0400

Researchers used points, or landmarks, on numerous crania and mandibles from a variety of preindustrial farming and foraging populations to compare features of post-agricultural skulls. Credit: David Katz and Tim Weaver, UC Davis.

The dawn of agriculture left an indelible mark on early human societies, and a new study finds that eating softer, cultivated foods subtly changed the shape of human skulls. Scientists have long suspected that the transition from hunting and foraging to farming and raising livestock would have affected our skulls, specifically the mandible and other anatomy involved in chewing, but quantifying such changes has proven difficult.

Another whiptail dinosaur added to sauropod family tree

Fri, 13 Oct 2017 13:53:08 -0400

With their massive size, long necks and whip-like tails, the sauropods are one of the most recognizable dinosaur groups. They grew as large as 100 metric tons, and it seems their huge frames were an effective adaptation: The sauropods were among the most diverse dinosaur groups, with more than 15 species known from North America alone. That list is now one species longer, with the identification of a new species based on a specimen found in Wyoming in 1995.

Chemical clues illuminate fossil plant relationships

Fri, 13 Oct 2017 09:35:59 -0400

To reconstruct relationships among extinct plants and animals, paleontologists often compare genetic sequences from distinct organisms or analyze differences in fossil shapes. But both techniques have limitations: DNA does not last more than about a million years in the rock record, so genetic comparisons are typically limited to relatively recent species; and finding fossils intact enough to use for shape comparisons can be difficult. In a recent study, scientists describe a new technique that could help get around these issues — for some plants at least — using molecular remnants that are more robust than DNA and are preserved in fossil leaves.

Can preserved proteins reveal paint-by-numbers plumage?

Thu, 12 Oct 2017 12:20:11 -0400

Some of the most compelling dinosaur fossils are those found with clearly defined feathers. Feathers may seem fragile and unlikely to be preserved, but in fact they’re composed of durable keratin, one of the toughest natural proteins. Additionally, some fossil feathers unearthed are speckled with tiny black dots, which, according to different studies, could be remnants of either bacteria or melanosomes. Melanosomes are organelles that produce and store melanin, the main source of pigment in feathers. If melanosomes are indeed preserved in some ancient fossils, they could reveal information about dinosaur coloration and plumage — and represent further evidence of preserved proteins in dinosaurs.

Cretaceous collagen: Can molecular paleontology glean soft tissue from dinosaurs?

Thu, 12 Oct 2017 12:08:51 -0400

Mary Schweitzer, of North Carolina State University, and her colleagues first reported the discovery of soft tissue in a Tyrannosaurus rex femur in 2005. The vial contains a sample of the bone. Credit: both: ©Science.

In the early 1990s, “Jurassic Park” hatched a wild idea: that dinosaurs could be reincarnated using tiny amounts of preserved DNA. In the bestselling books and blockbuster movies, the premise hinged on extracting fragments of dinosaur DNA from ancient blood-sucking insects preserved in amber, filling in the genetic gaps with snippets of modern amphibian DNA and hatching the engineered dinosaurs out of ostrich eggs. In reality, however, while many amazing things have been found in fossilized tree sap, DNA isn’t one of them.

Neolithic farmers impacted sedimentation

Mon, 18 Sep 2017 14:45:40 -0400

People have been affecting the Dead Sea Basin since Neolithic times. Credit: EvgeniT, CC BY-SA 3.0.

The Neolithic Revolution, also known as the Agricultural Revolution, started in the Middle East about 11,500 years ago when people moved away from nomadic hunting and gathering toward more settled agricultural communities where they raised livestock and cultivated crops. In a new study of the Dead Sea Basin, researchers found that this turning point may also mark the first time that humans made a measurable impact on sedimentation rates.

Down to Earth With: Paleobiologist Gregory Erickson

Mon, 18 Sep 2017 14:37:02 -0400

Gregory Erickson is a professor of anatomy and vertebrate paleobiology at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Fla. Credit: Gregory Erickson.

As an undergraduate at the University of Washington, Gregory Erickson wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. He started out as an engineering major, then dabbled with getting a degree in wildlife management. In 1986, having taken numerous science courses, he happened to compare notes with his best friend, a geology major, and realized he was just a few courses shy of obtaining a geology degree himself. Eager to finish college, Erickson signed up for a class in vertebrate paleontology focusing on dinosaurs — a decision that ultimately changed his life.

End of ice age may have been too wet for megafauna

Tue, 15 Aug 2017 14:30:11 -0400

Large ice-age herbivores, as imagined in this artist's rendition, might have been driven to extinction by rising moisture levels that caused semi-arid grassland areas to shrink. Credit: K. Cantner, AGI.

Between 15,000 and 11,000 years ago, dozens of ice-age megafauna species went extinct. Various causes, from climate-driven habitat changes to overhunting to extraterrestrial impacts, have been cited for these extinctions. But new research looking at fossils of large herbivores such as bison, horses and llama supports the idea that a worldwide uptick in moisture was a main driver of the extinction trend.

Asymmetrical fossil feathers fill in timeline of flight

Tue, 15 Aug 2017 14:19:18 -0400

To get off the ground and evolve into flying birds, dinosaurs got a lift from asymmetrical feathers, which are more aerodynamic than symmetrical feathers. The discovery of a new species of asymmetrically feathered dinosaur in northeastern China from the Early Cretaceous is helping fill in the timeline of adaptations that led to flight.

T. rex's bone-crushing bite

Tue, 15 Aug 2017 14:16:40 -0400

T.rex (specimen AMNH 5027) at American Museum of Natural History. Credit: J.M. Luijt CC BY-SA 2.5 nl.

In a landscape rife with fearsome predators, Tyrannosaurus rex carved out a bone-crushing niche. New research analyzing the force generated by T. rex’s massive jaws found that the terrible tyrant’s bite could exert a pressure of more than 30,300 kilograms per square centimeter (431,000 pounds per square inch): a world record.

Baby Louie dinosaur fossil gets a formal name

Thu, 10 Aug 2017 11:33:59 -0400

Top: An illustration of a Beibeilong embryo and egg fossil, with reconstructions of the skeleton and embryo to the right. Bottom: An artist's rendition of the nesting parents. Credit: both: Zhao Chuang.

A baby dinosaur found fossilized with a clutch of eggs in China in the 1990s has finally been identified as an embryo from a new species of giant oviraptorosaur, according to a study in Nature Communications. The specimen, nicknamed “Baby Louie” and once featured on the cover of National Geographic, has been formally classified as a caenagnathid oviraptorosaur named Beibeilong sinensis, which translates to “Chinese baby dragon,” by Hanyong Pu of the Henan Geological Museum in Zhengzhou, China, and colleagues.

Horned dinosaur find a first for eastern North America

Mon, 17 Jul 2017 08:12:15 -0400

A ceratopsid tooth found recently in Mississippi. Credit: George Phillips, MDWFP Museum of Natural Science.

Fossils of horned dinosaurs called ceratopsids, the group that includes Triceratops, are usually found in either western North America or Asia. But the discovery of a single ceratopsid tooth in Mississippi, reported in a new study in PeerJ, hints that this group spread into new territory at the tail end of the Mesozoic Era — just prior to going extinct. Migrating from Montana — or elsewhere where ceratopsid fossils are found in abundance — to Mississippi is straightforward today, but during the Late Cretaceous, North America was split by the Western Interior Seaway into two landmasses, Laramidia to the west and Appalachia to the east. This division created distinct dinosaur communities on either side of the continent, with ceratopsids notably cut off from the east.

Massive trove of dinosaur tracks cataloged in Australia

Mon, 17 Jul 2017 08:09:32 -0400

Anthony Romilio and Linda Pollard from the University of Queensland in Australia prepare to make a cast of a sauropod track in the Walmadany area on Dampier Peninsula in Western Australia. Credit: University of Queensland/Steven Salisbury, CC BY-ND 4.0.

In a remote region of Western Australia, paleontologists have documented the world’s most diverse assemblage of dinosaur tracks. The scientists found preserved in Early Cretaceous rocks thousands of tracks, 150 of which can be assigned to at least 11, and possibly as many as 21, different known track types representing theropods, sauropods, ornithopods and armored thyreophorans.

Hangover echinoderms survived the Great Dying

Mon, 19 Jun 2017 20:33:54 -0400

Triassic asterozoans like these, along with other "hangover" echinoderm species, descended from Paleozoic lineages once thought to have gone extinct at the end of the Permian. Credit: Thuy et al., ©Geological Society of America, 2017.

The end-Permian extinction event was disastrous for a wide range of organisms on land and in the sea, with as many as 70 percent of terrestrial and 81 percent of marine species dying off. One of the hardest hit marine phyla was the echinoderms, which today includes sea urchins and starfish. Echinoderms are thought to have suffered one of the most severe population reductions in evolutionary history, with only a few members surviving to repopulate the oceans in the Triassic. But in a new study, researchers have identified Triassic fossils from a handful of “hangover” species whose ancestors were previously thought to have gone extinct at the end of the Permian, suggesting the extinction wasn’t quite as cataclysmic for echinoderms as paleontologists have suspected.

Precambrian rumblings of the Cambrian Explosion

Mon, 19 Jun 2017 20:30:25 -0400

Cloudina, one of the earliest-known skeletal animals, was once thought to have lived only in the Ediacaran Period, but it now seems that it lived during the Cambrian as well, implying an earlier history for Cambrian animals. Credit: Shuhai Xiao, Virginia Tech.

The Cambrian Explosion, when the ancestors of most of today’s animal groups began appearing in the fossil record about 542 million years ago, was — as the name suggests — a geologically abrupt event. Paleontologists have long thought of the event as marking a boundary between distinct Precambrian and Cambrian faunas. In new research published in Geology, however, scientists report that small, shelly fossils once thought to occur only in Cambrian rocks have been found in rocks dating to the late Ediacaran, just before the Cambrian, implying an earlier start to the explosion than previously thought.

Bipedalism left its mark on human skull: Kangaroos and upright rodents show same signs

Mon, 19 Jun 2017 13:20:41 -0400

The transition to bipedal walking in our ancestors changed the hominin skeleton in many ways. New research looking at how upright walking affected the structures at the base of the skull in both early humans and other bipedal mammals, like kangaroos, is shedding light on a once-controversial marker for bipedalism.

Two ichthyosaurs become one

Fri, 16 Jun 2017 14:57:26 -0400

Dean Lomax examines an ichthyosaur fossil on display at the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery in England. Credit: Nigel Larkin.

While dinosaurs ruled on land in the Mesozoic, dolphin-like marine reptiles called ichthyosaurs roamed the oceans. Paleontologists first described the genus in 1821 based on remains discovered in England, naming the first species Ichthyosaurus communis. The description of a second species, I. intermedius, followed in 1822. Although these two species were the earliest-known ichthyosaurs, they are also some of the most poorly understood, as their initial descriptions were based on limited remains.

Rearranging the dinosaur family tree

Fri, 16 Jun 2017 14:48:27 -0400

The old (left) and new (right) dinosaur family trees. Credit: K. Cantner, AGI, after Baron et al., Nature, March 2017.

Dinosaurs have long been grouped into two major clades — Ornithischia and Saurischia — largely based on the shapes of their hips. But new phylogenetic research is shaking up the dinosaur family tree, suggesting the traditional two-branch system needs reorganizing.

Horned dinosaur find a first for eastern North America

Tue, 23 May 2017 08:16:00 -0400

The ceratopsid tooth found recently in Mississippi is held next to the lower left law of a Triceratops from Montana. Credit: Jeremy Copley, Mississippi Museum of Natural Science

Horses evolved to get along: Competition between species not main evolutionary driver

Wed, 17 May 2017 10:05:52 -0400

Artist's depiction of three species of Hipparion, which lived in the Iberian Peninsula between 9 million and 5 million years ago. Credit: Mauricio Anton.

Horses have changed size and shape dramatically over the last 20 million years, evolving from small dog-sized creatures with multiple toes into the large, hoofed grazing animals we see today. But the factors that drove these changes have been unclear. In a new study in Science, scientists tested the long-held theory that horses evolved rapidly to compete with one another during the worldwide expansion of grasslands starting 18 million years ago.

Mastodon bones point to significantly earlier human presence in North America

Wed, 26 Apr 2017 09:53:12 -0400

San Diego Natural History Museum Paleontologist Don Swanson pointing at rock fragment near a large horizontal mastodon tusk fragment. Credit: San Diego Natural History Museum

In 1992, paleontologists from the San Diego Natural History Museum discovered a set of fossil bones, tusks and teeth from a single mastodon next to state highway 54 south of San Diego. Archaeologists were soon called to investigate the site, which also featured several large cobblestones — unique in the otherwise sandy matrix surrounding the bones — that seemed to have been used to break open the mastodon’s long bones, hinting at human activity soon after the animal’s death. A reliable age for the intriguing find has eluded scientists for more than two decades, but in a study released today in Nature, researchers who successfully dated the bones have come to a sensational conclusion: The site appears to date back roughly 130,000 years, more than 100,000 years before humans are thought to have lived in North America.

Down to Earth With: Paleontologist Gerta Keller

Thu, 20 Apr 2017 09:55:52 -0400

Gerta Keller looks at sediment samples along the Brazos River in Texas. Credit: Gerta Keller/courtesy of NSF.

The mass extinction that did in the dinosaurs is one of the best-known events in geology. It’s also one of the most contentious.

First trilobite eggs found in fool's gold

Wed, 19 Apr 2017 14:08:33 -0400

Trilobites are sometimes found preserved in pyrite, such as this specimen from British Columbia. Credit: Mary Caperton Morton.

Trilobites were one of the most successful groups of animals to ever scurry across the seafloor, thriving for more than 270 million years. But how they reproduced has long been a mystery, since no fossil had ever been found with preserved eggs or genitalia. With the discovery of a cluster of trilobite eggs preserved in pyrite in upstate New York, however, scientists are getting the first glimpse of how these early arthropods reproduced.

Did the first humans arrive in North America a lot earlier?

Wed, 19 Apr 2017 14:01:28 -0400

Dating of this horse mandible from the Bluefish Caves in the Yukon suggests humans were at the site as early as 24,000 years ago. Credit: Bourgeon et al., PLOS ONE, January 2017, CC BY 4.0.

New dating of artifacts recovered from a site in the northern Yukon, on the Alaskan border, may push back the hypothesized entry date of the first American colonizers via a northwestern route — long thought to have occurred over the Bering land bridge between 18,000 and 14,000 years ago — by several thousand years.

Tiny dinosaur-era marsupial packed a big bite

Tue, 18 Apr 2017 09:33:54 -0400

An artist's depiction of Didelphodon on the hunt. Credit: Misaki Ouchida.

Newly described fossils from one of the earliest-known marsupials are shedding light on the evolution of mammals during the Mesozoic and revealing an animal with an impressive bite, perhaps strong enough to take down a dinosaur.

Scientists crack the secret of dinosaurs' incubation time

Tue, 18 Apr 2017 09:21:40 -0400

Gregory Erickson examined teeth in dinosaur embryos to assess their incubation times. Credit: Bill Lax/FSU Photography Services.

Paleontologists have long thought that the eggs of dinosaurs — like those of their living bird relatives — probably hatched after short incubation times, up to a few weeks at most. But surprising results from a new study suggest that nonavian dinosaurs spent anywhere from three to six months inside an egg, incubation times similar to reptiles like crocodiles and alligators.

Lucy liked hanging out in trees

Thu, 06 Apr 2017 10:13:48 -0400

A new study focused on Lucy's upper arm bones, which held clues revealing an arboreal, climbing lifestyle for the hominin. Credit: John Kappelman/University of Texas, Austin.

Lucy, the 3.2-million-year-old human ancestor discovered in Ethiopia in 1974, is one of the most complete early hominin skeletons ever found. Still, despite the skeleton’s completeness, debate continues about how Lucy got around: Did she spend most of her time walking on the ground or climbing in trees? In a new study, scientists studying Lucy’s upper limb bones have found that she likely spent more time in trees — and was a more capable climber — than later hominin species like Homo erectus and Homo sapiens.

Dental plaque reveals later start date for hominin cooking

Wed, 29 Mar 2017 14:00:30 -0400

The Sima del Elefante site is located near the famous Sima de los Huesos hominin site in Spain's Atapuerca Mountains. Credit: Hardy et al., The Science of Nature, December 2016.

Ancient teeth have long been a source of information about ancient diets, mainly through analyses of isotopic compositions and wear patterns. In a new study published in the Science of Nature, researchers studied microfossils of food particles extracted from the teeth of a 1.2-million-year-old unidentified hominin found at the Sima del Elefante site in northern Spain. The microfossils include traces of raw animal tissue, uncooked starch granules from grasses, pollen grains from a species of pine tree and insect fragments. The lack of charring of the recovered fibers and an absence of micro-charcoal suggest the bearer of the teeth neither cooked his or her food nor spent significant time around a fire source.

Tiny fish illuminates tooth fairy mystery

Thu, 16 Feb 2017 11:01:35 -0500

When kids lose their milk teeth, the roots shrivel up and just the outer enamel falls out — a process known as basal resorption. Now, the discovery of a tiny jawbone from a 424-million-year-old fossil fish is shedding light on the origin of our modern mode of tooth replacement.

Early fossils demonstrate dinosaurs' slow rise

Thu, 09 Feb 2017 09:33:06 -0500

Dinosaurs were so dominant through much of the Mesozoic that it’s easy to forget that wasn’t always the case. The discovery of a specimen of an early small dinosaur alongside a lagerpetid — a precursor to the dinosaurs — is giving scientists a glimpse into the slow-paced early stages of dinosaur evolution.

Discovered: One of the last-surviving Asian dinosaurs

Thu, 09 Feb 2017 09:24:27 -0500

Paleontologists have discovered a new species of oviraptorosaur, a group of strange bird-like dinosaurs without teeth. The species, Tongtianlong limosus, has been described based on a specimen preserved in mudstone dating to the end of the Cretaceous. The find adds to a growing list of newly unearthed and similarly aged oviraptorosaur species, suggesting the group flourished during the last few million years of the Age of Dinosaurs before all nonavian dinosaurs were killed off in the end-Cretaceous mass extinction.

The Dinosaur Garden of the Gobi: Motivating future paleontologists

Tue, 07 Feb 2017 10:04:48 -0500

A classic T. rex and Triceratops display dominates the far corner of a new dinosaur park in Dalanzadgad, the closest city to the Flaming Cliffs, where dinosaurs were first discovered in Mongolia. While Westerners immediately recognize these two Cretaceous dinosaurs, many Mongolian park visitors have never heard of them and leave the park knowing little more, as there are no signs conveying information about the dinosaurs on display. Credit: Thea Boodhoo.

In June 2016, the tourism board of Dalanzadgad, a small city in the Mongolian Gobi, opened a new dinosaur theme park on the outskirts of town. It was paid for with a government grant awarded before the 2016 economic downturn. The night we arrived in town, our Gobi team was given a tour by two of the project’s biggest advocates.

Saving Mongolia's dinosaurs and inspiring the next generation of paleontologists

Tue, 07 Feb 2017 09:15:17 -0500

Articulated dinosaur fossils can still be found at the Flaming Cliffs, and frequently are — by tourists, guides, locals and poachers. Mongolian law instructs those who find such specimens to notify the area's single ranger, but no signage or leaflets exist to convey this. Even when a fossil is reported, Bayanzag Park has no resident paleontologist to excavate it, no prep lab to clean it, no collections facility to store it and no museum to display it. Credit: Thea Boodhoo.

The bones were too yellow, too translucent, and the skeleton had no hands. I could tell the skeleton wasn’t a dinosaur, but the illusion was enough to bring my brain to a momentary halt.

Rare Late Cretaceous dino skin found fossilized

Wed, 25 Jan 2017 14:03:52 -0500

About 66 million years ago, a dinosaur lay down on a muddy riverbank in what is now Spain, leaving behind the impression of its scaly skin. A team studying sandstone formations near the village of Vallcebre in the Pyrenees recently uncovered the unique artifact, made even more extraordinary by the timing of when it was left: right before the end-Cretaceous extinction that wiped out the nonavian dinosaurs.

Early birds quacked

Wed, 18 Jan 2017 14:37:33 -0500

Researchers have found the oldest-known avian voice box from an ancient bird that lived more than 66 million years ago. Scientists found the vocal structure, called a syrinx, while examining the fossil remains of a specimen of Vegavis iaai, a Late Cretaceous diving bird similar to modern ducks and geese. The finding suggests that the prehistoric bird may have “quacked” like modern ducks, says Julia Clarke, a paleontologist at the University of Texas at Austin and lead author of the new study in Nature.

Cave paintings confirm mystery European bison species

Wed, 18 Jan 2017 14:34:25 -0500

Depictions of a steppe bison painting (a) found in Lascaux Cave in France compared to a painting found in Pergouset Cave of a previously unknown cattle-bison hybrid species (b). Credit: Soubrier et al., Nature Communications, October 2016.

Modern European bison in Białowieża Forest in Poland. Credit: Rafal Kowalczyk.

Ice-age hunters had an intimate knowledge of the animals they coexisted with — and this familiarity is clearly depicted in paintings on cave walls throughout Europe. Inside a cave in France, scientists recently identified artistic evidence dating to about 17,000 years ago of a previously unknown hybrid species of cattle crossed with bison. The paintings confirm findings from recent genetic studies of fossil bison, the researchers say.

How to hide a dinosaur

Tue, 27 Dec 2016 17:19:47 -0500

An artist's illustration of a camouflaged Psittacosaurus. Credit: Jakob Vinther, University of Bristol, and Bob Nicholls (Paleocreations.com).

Analysis of a finely preserved fossil dinosaur from China has revealed the animal’s erstwhile camouflage. It appears that the meter-high Early Cretaceous ceratopsid Psittacosaurus was light-colored on its underside and dark on top, a pattern known as countershading that may hint that the small herbivore lived in a dense forest environment.

Earliest evidence of humans in the Americas

Tue, 27 Dec 2016 14:08:28 -0500

Earliest evidence of humans in the Americas. Credit: K. Cantner.

Underwater archaeology

Tue, 27 Dec 2016 13:51:10 -0500

As the ice sheets melted at the end of the last ice age, sea level rose dramatically, drowning much of the paleo coastline of North and South America under meters of water. To find evidence old enough to be associated with the initial colonizers, archaeologists have to get wet, even donning scuba gear to search for human relics along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts. Such work is highly technical and expensive, but a small handful of divers trained in underwater archaeological excavation techniques insist that it’s worth the trouble.

The first Americans: How and when were the Americas populated?

Thu, 15 Dec 2016 20:27:50 -0500

Archaeologists used to have a tidy story to explain the earliest peopling of the Americas: During the last ice age, when sea levels were much lower, a band of intrepid travelers walked from East Asia, over the Bering land bridge, and into Alaska. From there, they followed an ice-free corridor east of the Canadian Rockies south onto the megafauna-rich plains, eventually spreading throughout North and South America by 11,000 years ago and leaving a trail of finely shaped “Clovis” spear points in their wake.

Tiniest pterosaur found in British Columbia

Mon, 12 Dec 2016 15:58:08 -0500

Pterosaurs have a gargantuan reputation: Most fossils of the flying reptiles have wingspans similar to a small plane. But the recent discovery of fragmentary fossils from an eagle-sized specimen in British Columbia shows that not all pterosaurs were huge.

Extinct tiger had unique elbow, hunting style

Mon, 12 Dec 2016 15:55:34 -0500

During the Pleistocene, the marsupial lion, Thylacoleo carnifex, was one of Australia’s top predators. Fossil records indicate the jaguar-sized cat died out between 20,000 and 10,000 years ago (although rumors persist the “Queensland Tiger” may still survive in isolated habitats). In a new study examining Thylacoleo fossils, researchers have now found an elbow joint unique among living predatory mammals.

Improved genetic simulations identify human genes passed down from Neanderthals, Denisovans

Wed, 07 Dec 2016 14:39:55 -0500

A reconstruction of a Neanderthal stands at the Natural History Museum in London. Genetic traces of Neanderthals and Denisovans have been identified in the DNA of modern humans. Credit: Paul Hudson, CC BY 2.0

You could have your mother to blame for a predisposition to baldness, but you might need to thank a Neanderthal for your ability to fight off disease. In the past decade, researchers have identified a number of genes in the human genome that they believe originated in Homo sapiens’ close evolutionary kin, Neanderthals and Denisovans. Now, a study published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution has identified additional traces of such archaic genes in modern human DNA.

Benchmarks: December 6, 1916: Dinosaur fossils lost at sea in World War I

Wed, 30 Nov 2016 13:33:12 -0500

The SS Mount Temple in Nova Scotia in 1907, nine years before its fateful journey. Credit: public domain

One hundred years ago this month, a Canadian cargo ship — the SS Mount Temple — departed the port of Montreal on the St. Lawrence River headed for France. On board were 3,000 tons of wheat, more than 700 horses bound for service in World War I, and an unknown number of 75-million-year-old dinosaur skeletons and bones destined for the British Museum of Natural History. But the ship, and the fossils, never made it.

Tiny bones pull India into the story of early primate evolution

Tue, 15 Nov 2016 18:31:36 -0500

Fossilized femur bones from early primates found in a coal mine in Gujarat, India. Credit: Johns Hopkins Medicine .

Bones of an ancient rat-sized, tree-dwelling primate have recently been discovered in a coal mine in Gujarat, India, and may represent the most primitive known remnants of the divergence between the two great primate clades.

New species of extinct dolphin found in Smithsonian archives

Tue, 15 Nov 2016 18:25:37 -0500

Artist's depiction of a pod of Arktocara yakataga swimming offshore of Alaska during the Oligocene about 25 million years ago. Credit: Linocut print art by Alexandra Boersma.

Freshwater river dolphins are one of the most compelling — and endangered — branches of the cetacean family tree. Now the discovery of a new species of extinct river dolphin found in the fossil archives of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History is shedding light on the dolphin family tree, as well as the origins of the highly endangered South Asian river dolphin.

Getting there and getting around Tumbler Ridge

Tue, 18 Oct 2016 16:29:45 -0400

Boulder Gardens is a domed sandstone peak overlying softer shale; the sandstone spalls off, creating a talus pile known as the gardens. Credit: Larry Erlendson.

There are no direct commercial flights into Tumbler Ridge, which is about a 13-hour drive from Vancouver, B.C. However, Air Canada and WestJet fly from Vancouver into nearby Fort St. John, and from there, it is about a two-hour drive to Tumbler Ridge. Regional airline Central Mountain Air also flies from Vancouver into Dawson Creek, about a 90-minute drive from Tumbler Ridge. You can also fly into Edmonton, the capital of Alberta, a 6.5-hour drive, or Grande Prairie, a 2.5-hour drive.

Travels in Geology: Tumbler Ridge: Finding dinosaurs — and their predecessors and descendants — in northeastern British Columbia

Tue, 18 Oct 2016 16:14:42 -0400

Not many globally recognized geoparks get their start courtesy of an 8-year-old. Yet that’s exactly how the Tumbler Ridge Global Geopark was born.

In the summer of 2000, 8-year-old Daniel Helm and 11-year-old Mark Turner were playing near their home in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia — a small municipality of less than 3,000 people covering nearly 1,600 square kilometers (an area about the size of Houston) in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies on the eastern side of the continental divide. They were tubing down a creek in the woods when they fell out of their inner tube and had to walk back up the creek bank. As they trudged up the hill, they stumbled upon a series of large footprints unlike anything they’d ever seen. They wondered if it might be dinosaur footprints and ran home to get Daniel’s father, a physician named Charles Helm, to show him their find.

Turtle shells evolved for burrowing, not protection

Tue, 18 Oct 2016 13:41:31 -0400

How the turtle got its shell is one of the long-standing conundrums of paleontology. Paleontologists know that one of the first steps toward a shell was a broadening of the ribs, which occurred about 50 million years before full shells evolved. But why the broadening, which conferred some disadvantages to movement and breathing, began, has been a mystery. Now, the discovery of a proto-turtle with a partial shell in South Africa is shedding some light on the early stages of shell development.

Unique teeth helped vegetarian dinosaurs

Mon, 17 Oct 2016 09:15:46 -0400

A skull of the plant-eating hadrosaur, with its rows of teeth. Credit: ©School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol.

Although the Tyrannosaurus rex might’ve been one of the most fearsome dinosaurs to roam Earth, it wasn’t the most common. That honor belonged to a group of vegetarian duck-billed dinosaurs called hadrosaurs. And now, scientists have uncovered the secret to their success: their teeth.

Antarctic no place to hide during end-Cretaceous extinction

Tue, 20 Sep 2016 16:13:52 -0400

Artist's rendering of a typical Cretaceous marine environment in Antarctica, including the paperclip-shaped "heteromorphy" ammonite Diplomoceras. Credit: James McKay (jamesmckay.info).

The end-Cretaceous extinction is famous for killing off the dinosaurs, but many other species perished as well. A new study in Nature Communications of marine fossils found in the Antarctic indicates that the extinction event was just as deadly for creatures in the polar regions.

Mammals hit harder than thought by end-Cretaceous extinction

Tue, 20 Sep 2016 15:09:59 -0400

This jaw fragment is part of a specimen of Didelphodon, a cat-sized marsupial predator that went extinct during the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction. Credit: Nick Longrich.

Mammals, unlike the remaining nonavian dinosaurs and many other animals, are thought to have fared relatively well through the massive meteorite impact and protracted volcanism at the end of the Cretaceous 66 million years ago. After the extinction, mammals went on to dominate terrestrial ecosystems. But new research indicates that mammals might have taken a bigger hit than paleontologists have realized: Instead of about 75 to 85 percent of species going extinct, as prior studies suggested, it looks like about 93 percent of all mammal species may have gone extinct during the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction.

Down to Earth With: Fossil preparator Bob Masek

Tue, 20 Sep 2016 13:09:15 -0400

Bob Masek standing by fossil preparation equipment at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. Credit: Lori Grove.

When paleontologists unearth a fossil and rock still entombs part of it, they take it to someone like fossil preparator Bob Masek, who cleans and prepares the fossil for scientific study, and sometimes for display in a museum. In the 1990s, Masek helped prepare “Sue,” the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex fossil ever discovered, which now stands in Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History.

New species of uniquely horned dinosaur identified

Tue, 13 Sep 2016 14:11:37 -0400

Jordan Mallon stands with the reconstructed skull of Spiclypeus shipporum, a newly described genus and species of horned dinosaur. Credit: ©Canadian Museum of Nature/Martin Lipman.

The Triceratops family tree just got a little spikier. A decade ago, a retired nuclear physicist uncovered the large skull, legs, hips and backbone of a dinosaur on his land near Winifred, Mont. Now, the remains have been identified in a new study as a new member of the ceratopsid family, dubbed Spiclypeus shipporum, meaning “spiked shield.”

Hammerhead herbivore pioneered vegetarianism in Triassic seas

Tue, 13 Sep 2016 14:01:53 -0400

A model of the head of the hammerhead vegetarian Atopodentatus unicus beside a fossil of the Triassic marine reptile. Credit: ©Nick Fraser.

New fossils found in southern China hint that the earliest herbivorous marine reptiles got off to a bizarre start: Atopodentatus unicus, which lived about 244 million years ago and sported a unique hammerhead-like snout for grazing underwater plants, sheds light on how the earliest marine reptiles began experimenting with herbivory after the Permian mass extinction, which killed off 96 percent of marine organisms about 252 million years ago. This “Great Dying” event left vast holes in the ecology of the Early Triassic, and a diversity of new feeding styles evolved to occupy the open niches.

Humans, megafauna coexisted in Patagonia before extinction

Tue, 13 Sep 2016 13:48:46 -0400

Cueva del Milodón, or Mylodon Cave, in Patagonia was named after the giant ground sloth whose mummified skin and large deposits of dung were found in the cave. Credit: Alan Cooper.

During the last ice age, giant mammals roamed the wide-open steppes of what is now Patagonia. Around the time that humans were making their way down through North America and into South America, the climate began warming and large species of giant sloths and saber-toothed cats soon disappeared. Now, researchers looking at mitochondrial DNA from some of these megafaunal species are shedding light on the timing of the extinction and whether encroaching humans or changing climate — or both — were to blame for their disappearance.

The new kid on the block

Wed, 17 Aug 2016 10:47:34 -0400

Location of Rising Star Cave in Guateng Province. Inset map: Location of Guateng Province in South Africa. Credit: Animalparty, CC BY-SA 4.0.

In 2013, cave explorers discovered a trove of human-like fossils in the Rising Star Cave in South Africa. Since then, more than 1,500 fossils belonging to at least 15 individuals have been excavated from the site. The fossils display a mishmash of primitive and more advanced features that seem to place it somewhere between Australopithecus and early Homo species, such as a small cranial capacity closer to Australopiths, but with finer facial features, more like Homo.

Hominid vs. hominin

Wed, 17 Aug 2016 10:37:49 -0400

Once genetics entered the picture, the definitions of hominids and hominins changed. Credit: K. Cantner, AGI.

Before genetics came along and revealed just how closely modern humans and chimpanzees are related, humans were classified in their own family, Hominidae, separate from old world monkeys, which were in the family Pongidae.

Redefining Homo: Does our family tree need more branches?

Tue, 16 Aug 2016 17:03:27 -0400

The hominin family tree is frequently revised, but researchers disagree about where many fossils should be placed on the tree. Credit: K. Cantner, AGI.

As the sole surviving species of the genus Homo, we Homo sapiens are one of the most taxonomically lonely species living on Earth today. But dig back a few thousand years or more and we find ourselves with plenty of company: Many now-extinct species shared the genus Homo, ranging from the robust Homo neanderthalensis, to the hobbit-like Homo floresiensis to the more primitive Homo habilis and Homo erectus. But do all these species, with their wide diversity of physical and cultural traits, actually belong in the same genus?

Scaling up: Mega-dino babies were mini adults

Tue, 16 Aug 2016 13:46:24 -0400

A baby Rapetosaurus was similar in size to a baby rhinoceros. Credit: D. Vital.

Even the largest dinosaurs to walk the planet had to start out small, hatching out of eggs, but whether these were miniature versions of adults has been a long-standing question. Now a new study looking at fossils belonging to a specimen of Rapetosaurus krausei, a type of titanosaur, that died at just a few weeks of age is revealing just how fully formed some of these eventual giants were at an early age.

Ancient dinosaur migrations analyzed

Tue, 16 Aug 2016 13:42:11 -0400

Dinosaur skeletons fill the halls of the Natural History Museum of Utah in Salt Lake City. Credit: Lucas Joel.

Many studies have sought to track the movements of dinosaurs as they migrated across the supercontinent Pangea before and during its breakup. Now, researchers using a method called “network theory” have shed new light on dinosaur migration patterns.

New dating of 'hobbit' sheds light on when it lived

Mon, 15 Aug 2016 13:18:41 -0400

A reconstruction of Homo floresiensis by Atelier Elisabeth Daynes. Credit: Kinez Riza.

Since 2004, when scientists first announced the discovery of fossil remains of a new species of hominin from Indonesia — dubbed Homo floresiensis and nicknamed “hobbits” due to the species’ meter-tall stature — researchers have been trying to pinpoint exactly when H. floresiensis lived and when it died off. Several recent studies shed light on the topic.

Seeds may have saved bird-like dinosaurs from extinction

Wed, 20 Jul 2016 13:35:55 -0400

About 66 million years ago, nearly three-quarters of life on Earth, including all species of nonavian dinosaurs, were wiped out. However, a few species survived the mass extinction event, including the Neornithes, the ancestors of modern birds. A new study suggests they may have done so by relying on seeds when other food sources were scarce.

Teeth hold clues to human success, Neanderthal decline

Wed, 20 Jul 2016 13:30:44 -0400

During the Upper Paleolithic, modern humans and Neanderthals coexisted until about 40,000 years ago, when Neanderthals went extinct for unknown reasons. Wear patterns on teeth from both humans and Neanderthals are providing insight into how different dietary strategies may have led to Homo sapiens’ success and the Neanderthals’ decline.

Tully monster mystery solved

Thu, 14 Jul 2016 13:52:44 -0400

In 1958, an amateur fossil collector named Francis Tully found a strange fossil in a quarry near Morris, Ill., southwest of Chicago. Thousands more of the worm-like Tullimonstrum gregarium, better known as the “Tully monster,” were recovered from the same deposit — now a National Historic Landmark called Mazon Creek fossil beds. But the creature’s full appearance and just what sort of animal the Tully monster was have remained mysteries. In a new study, researchers have now finally identified it as a jawless fish, similar to modern lampreys.

Saving Mongolian wildlife, 80 million years after extinction

Fri, 24 Jun 2016 09:59:02 -0400

Children visit the Institute for the Study of Mongolian Dinosaurs mobile museum in 2015 during ISMD's first outreach trip through Mongolia in 2015. Credit: ©Institute for the Study of Mongolian Dinosaurs

In the time of_ Velociraptor_, 80 million years ago, southern Mongolia looked surprisingly like the Gobi Desert that exists there today. Animals roamed, nested and fought amid an arid climate while sand-soaked winds battered rocky outcrops. Today, walking along the Flaming Cliffs of Bayanzag, you may only notice one stark difference: Where Velociraptor and other dinosaurs once thrived, there are now only a few fossilized remains. And even those are endangered.

Cretaceous amber suggests societal behavior in insects is at least 100 million years old

Thu, 16 Jun 2016 12:46:14 -0400

Cretaceous-aged ants, thought to be fighting one another, preserved in amber. Credit: AMNH/D. Grimaldi and P. Barden.

Researchers recently identified previously unknown termites in fossilized amber samples. At left is the soldier caste of Gigantotermes rex, while at right are specimens of Krishnatermes yoddha from three castes: winged reproductive, worker and soldier. Credit: AMNH/D. Grimaldi.

Many insects are social animals. Some, including ants, form colonies with complex social hierarchies, wherein specific roles like reproduction and colony construction are assigned to specific groups of ants, like queens or workers, for example. This kind of sociality, known as eusociality, is found in many other insects, like beetles, honeybees and termites. When it evolved, however, has remained unclear. Until now, the earliest evidence of eusociality came from 20-million-year-old fossils, even though the insect lineages were known to be much older. But two new fossil discoveries have pushed the first known appearance of eusociality back by 80 million years.

Could early Homo pass the sniff test?

Thu, 16 Jun 2016 12:41:27 -0400

A reconstruction of Homo habilis at the Museum of Archaeology in Herne, Germany. At some point in the diversification of early Homo, facial features that resembled those of humans began to replace the ape-like countenance of early hominins. Credit: Lillyundfreya, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Like modern humans, early hominins walked upright and had opposable thumbs, but their faces were more ape-like, with flattened noses and protruding foreheads. It wasn’t until the evolution of the genus Homo that hominin faces began to look more human — flatter overall but with protruding noses. Along with changes in external appearance came internal changes as well, though these are less well understood as soft-tissue structures preserved in the fossil record are hard to come by. In a new study, researchers comparing both modern human and nonhuman primate nasal cavities offer some clues as to how our respiratory system evolved on the inside to compensate for the changes on the outside.

Giant armadillo look-alikes really were giant armadillos

Wed, 15 Jun 2016 15:00:14 -0400

An illustration of two glyptodonts battling, using their club-like tails for weapons. Credit: Peter Schouten.

Due to coincidences of evolution, extinct creatures sometimes resemble living animals, even if they’re not actually related. But in a new study looking at the family tree of glyptodonts, armored beasts resembling giant armadillos that once roamed South America, researchers have found that the animals actually were early relatives of modern armadillos.

Fossil dinosaur illuminates evolution of tyrannosauroid body sizes

Wed, 15 Jun 2016 12:55:14 -0400

Fossils of the horse-sized Timurlengia euotica, which lived about 90 million years ago in what is now Uzbekistan, have helped fill a gap in the tyrannosauroid family tree. Credit: Original painting by Todd Marshall.

Tyrannosauroid dinosaurs were the dominant predators of the terrestrial ecosystems in which they roamed for much of the Late Cretaceous, from about 80 million to 66 million years ago. Some, like Tyrannosaurus rex, reached lengths up to about 13 meters and heights of nearly 4 meters. Their large size and keen senses — relatively large nasal passageways suggest a heightened sense of smell — are considered to have been keys to their success.

Statistics shine light on T. rex family tree

Wed, 15 Jun 2016 12:27:07 -0400

Tyrannosaurus rex is one of the most recognizable dinosaurs, but the tyrannosauroid family tree is also occupied by many lesser-known cousins — such as Xiongguanlong and Lythronax — along with some large holes. Now, researchers have produced a new phylogenetic family tree including all of the known tyrannosauroid species that highlights the largest remaining gaps and provides clues as to how they might be filled.

New fossils illuminate 'hobbit' evolutionary history

Wed, 08 Jun 2016 14:52:48 -0400

A reconstruction of Homo floresiensis by Atelier Elisabeth Daynes. Credit: Kinez Riza

Scientists first discovered fossils of Homo floresiensis — a species of extinct 1-meter-tall hominins nicknamed “hobbits” — in Liang Bua cave on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2004. Until now, H. floresiensis, thought to have lived between about 95,000 and 50,000 years ago based on recent evidence, was the only extinct hominin known to have lived on Flores, although artifacts discovered on the island dating to 800,000 to 1 million years ago pointed to earlier hominin habitation. Now, in two new studies published in Nature, researchers announce the discovery of hobbit-like hominin fossils found elsewhere on the island that are roughly 700,000 years old. The new remains, if confirmed, would extend the age range of the hobbit lineage, and may help researchers piece together why H. floresiensis became so small.

Ancient Indonesian tools made by mysterious inhabitants

Thu, 19 May 2016 22:12:43 -0400

These stone artifacts were found scattered on the ground near Talepu Hill on the island of Sulawesi, and date to at least 118,000 years ago. Credit: Erick Setiabudi.

The island of Sulawesi is one link in a chain of islands between mainland Asia and Australia, and was likely an important stepping stone in human dispersal from Eurasia through Oceania to Australia. Previous research has placed modern humans on Sulawesi as early as 40,000 years ago, but scientists have now dated a set of stone tools to at least 118,000 years ago, suggesting humans occupied the island far earlier than thought.

Underwater archaeology reveals pre-Clovis people butchered mastodon in Florida

Fri, 13 May 2016 13:20:49 -0400

Team member Neil Puckett of Texas A&M University surfaces from the dive excavation in Florida with a 14,550-year-old limb bone from a juvenile mastodon. Credit: Brendan Fenerty.

Following the discovery of stone tool artifacts uncovered near Clovis, N.M., in 1932, archaeologists have thought that the people who made the tools — named the Clovis people — were the first to populate the Americas, about 13,500 years ago. But evidence has been mounting for cultures even older than the Clovis, with archaeological sites and artifacts older than 14,000 years found as far south as Chile and genetic evidence dating the first incursions into North America to about 15,000 years ago. Now, a new study reporting on an underwater archaeological excavation at a site in Florida that dates to 14,550 years ago is adding more evidence of pre-Clovis people, and shedding light on how they may have spread across the Americas.

Burgess Shale fossil find offers glimpse of early parenting

Tue, 10 May 2016 11:53:12 -0400

A specimen of the Middle Cambrian arthropod, Waptia fieldensis, found with a cluster of eggs (highlighted) under its carapace in the Burgess Shale. Credit: ©Royal Ontario Museum

Parenting behaviors of many modern animals are well known. Marsupials, like kangaroos, keep their young in pouches, and brown bear mothers are famously protective of their offspring, for example. By caring for their young, parents can increase the survival chances of their offspring. But for all we know about animals today, the origins of parenting are much less understood. Now, a new study has shed light on one of the earliest demonstrated examples of parental behavior in animals: brood care among ancient shrimplike arthropods.

Benchmarks: May 12, 1905: Andrew Carnegie donates 'Dippy the Dino'

Fri, 22 Apr 2016 12:02:19 -0400

The original skeleton of the holotype specimen of Diplodocus carnegii, discovered in Wyoming in 1899, has been on display for more than a century at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, where locals have dubbed it "Dippy the Dino." Credit: Scott Robert Anselmo, CC BY-SA 3.0.

As one of the world’s wealthiest philanthropists, Andrew Carnegie had come to expect that people would praise and honor him, but May 12, 1905, would be an unusual day for the Pittsburgh steel magnate. Never before had he been honored for donating a dinosaur. Carnegie’s contribution of a massive plaster model of a Diplodocus — at the time the largest-known animal to have ever trod the planet — to London’s Natural History Museum was part of the Scotsman’s dream to rid the world of war, which he called “the foulest blot upon our civilization.”

Travels in Geology: Discovering Denver's dinosaurs

Thu, 21 Apr 2016 17:38:20 -0400

The first set of dinosaur trackways in the Denver area was discovered at Dinosaur Ridge in the 1930s. Two types are preserved on the pictured slab: a birdlike, three-toed print belonging to an ostrich-sized carnivore like Ornithomimus, and a more bulbous print made by an herbivorous duck-billed dinosaur such as an Iguanodon. Credit: James St. John, Ohio State University, Newark.

Since 1877, when Arthur Lakes, a professor at the Colorado School of Mines, spotted an enormous vertebra embedded in a block of sandstone on a rocky ridge near Golden, Colo., the Denver region has played a pivotal role in expanding scientific knowledge of dinosaurs. Skeletons of many of the most familiar species, including Stegosaurus, Allosaurus and Apatosaurus, were first discovered in the area, and a stunning set of dinosaur tracks was unearthed on the same ridge during road construction in the 1930s. Studies of these and other tracks since the 1980s have kept the area at the forefront of dinosaur research, while conservation efforts have protected many irreplaceable sites from ever-expanding suburbs.

Getting there and getting around Denver

Thu, 21 Apr 2016 17:24:17 -0400

Red Rocks Amphitheatre, about 15 kilometers outside of Denver and next to Dinosaur Ridge, is a great place to take in views of the region as well as a show. Credit: Quan Ha, CC BY 2.0.

“Denver International Airport is the best arrival point for exploring Denver and the surrounding area. A car is necessary to see many of the attractions described here. If you fly in, you can rent a vehicle at the airport or take the new light rail into town and rent a car as needed. Although all of these sites are open year-round, snow sometimes obscures the tracks during winter and early spring, and trails can be muddy. May through October is an ideal time to visit the region

Turtle finds lower Altiplano elevation estimate

Thu, 21 Apr 2016 15:38:09 -0400

Fossil turtle fragments found in Bolivia, such as this piece of a shell from a specimen in the genus Chelonoidis, suggest that the elevation of the southern Altiplano was lower 13 million years ago than previously thought. Credit: Darin Croft.

Rare turtle fossils uncovered in Bolivia suggest that, about 13 million years ago, the southern portion of South America’s Altiplano — the arid, high-elevation plateau immediately west of the Andes — was far lower than previously thought.

Fossil leaves provide clues to ancient Australian habitat

Tue, 19 Apr 2016 15:29:35 -0400

Heath and scrubland vegetation cover this part of Stirling Range National Park in southwestern Australia. In the Late Cretaceous, central Australia may have looked similar, with a mosaic of low-growing and open vegetation and woody thickets. Credit: Raymond Carpenter.

Researchers have long thought that the scrublands of Australia developed over the last 25 million to 30 million years as part of a global trend toward colder and drier climates in which rainforests yielded ground to more open, fire-prone environments.

China's Red Deer Cave people may have survived until the last ice age

Mon, 18 Apr 2016 17:41:16 -0400

Artist's reconstruction of a Red Deer Cave man. Credit: Peter Schouten.

In the 1980s, a collection of bones from very small hominids was excavated from a cave in southwestern China, alongside a number of bones from a species of large red deer. Nicknamed the “Red Deer Cave people,” but not yet declared a distinct species, researchers previously dated radiocarbon in the sediments where the bones were found to about 14,000 years ago. In a new comparative study, the same team has now found that the hominids from which the bones came appear to have been similar to — although far smaller than — Homo habilis and Homo erectus, suggesting it could indeed be a new species.

Museums and exhibits in the Dinosaur Diamond

Mon, 18 Apr 2016 17:27:54 -0400

Dinosaur Diamond Map. Credit: Martin Lockley.

Price’s Prehistoric Museum

A mounted skeleton of Utahraptor, the largest-known dromaeosaurid, at the Prehistoric Museum in Price, Utah. Credit: Christine K. Trease.

The Prehistoric Museum in Price, Utah, the western point of the Dinosaur Diamond, now affiliated with Utah State University Eastern, was founded as a tourist attraction in the early 1960s with the acquisition of a complete Allosaurus replica for $2,250. Situated amid the Price-Helper coal mining district, the museum contains many tracks of hadrosaurs and ceratopsians extracted from the coal mines. The museum was expanded in the 1990s and now contains mounted skeletons of Utahraptor and ceratopsians.

Making tracks through the Dinosaur Diamond

Mon, 18 Apr 2016 16:50:47 -0400

Author Martin Lockley beside a Late Triassic trackway formed by an early sauropodomorph. The track was found at the base of the Wingate Sandstone in western Colorado. Credit: Martin Lockley.

For more than a century, the Western Slope of the Rocky Mountains where the mountains descend across the Colorado-Utah border onto the Colorado Plateau has proved a bountiful source of dinosaur fossils. In 1900, the giant Late Jurassic sauropod, Brachiosaurus, was first found in the now world-famous Morrison Formation near Fruita, Colo. Bones in the dinosaur graveyard we now know as Dinosaur National Monument near Vernal, Utah, were discovered starting in 1908 with a Diplodocus femur, followed in 1909 by a nearly complete Apatosaurus and many more dinosaur bones over the ensuing years. These finds — along with multiple others closer to Denver in the late 19th century — set off a fossil-hunting bonanza across the West.

Bat signals

Fri, 01 Apr 2016 12:34:24 -0400

Mystacina tuberculata foraging on New Zealand's South Island. Credit: Rob Morris.

Bats, the only true-flight mammals, first appeared during the Early Eocene after a period of acute global warming known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. Despite decades of study, however, much remains unknown about bats. Recent discoveries are shedding new light on the natural history of these creatures, which today comprise one of the most diverse mammalian groups.

Inside an icthyosaur's brain

Fri, 01 Apr 2016 12:01:23 -0400

The combination of an unusually well-preserved skull and CT scanning technology has produced the clearest image yet of an ichthyosaur's braincase. Credit: University of Bristol.

While the dinosaurs were busy ruling the continents in the Mesozoic, an order of marine reptiles known as the ichthyosaurs ruled the oceans. Ichthyosaurs are well known from numerous fossils, but they are often found flattened, limiting researchers’ ability to study the skulls and braincases as they existed in life.

A long layover on the Bering land bridge

Wed, 16 Mar 2016 20:22:15 -0400

The Late Pleistocene remains of two infants recovered from the Upper Sun River campsite in eastern Alaska are shedding light on the peopling of the Americas. Credit: K. Cantner, AGI, after Tackney, et al. 2015.

About 11,500 years ago, two infants were laid to rest side by side in a shallow grave 80 kilometers southeast of what is now Fairbanks, Alaska. The area was once part of Beringia, a strip of ice-free land connected to Asia during the last ice age. Researchers found the remains in 2013, and have now sequenced the complete mitochondrial genomes of the two children. The results revealed that the infants had different mothers and that their genetic signatures are found today throughout North and South America.

Parasites of the Paleozoic

Wed, 02 Mar 2016 17:07:28 -0500

Some crinoids became prey for parasitic sea snails and worms beginning in the Late Ordovician. Credit: Berengi, CC BY-SA 3.0

Parasitism — an ecological relationship in which one species benefits at the expense of its host — is common among living organisms, but as most parasites are soft-bodied, it’s rare to find them preserved in the fossil record. Two recent discoveries, however, have lengthened the short list of ancient parasites.

Earliest Americans were wide-ranging wanderers

Fri, 19 Feb 2016 19:02:47 -0500

A pebble tool made out of serpentine, likely sourced from the coastal cordillera west of Monte Verde. It was made 17,000 to 19,000 years ago. Credit: Tom Dillehay.

About 40 years ago, when the Monte Verde archaeological site in southern Chile was dated to 14,800 years ago, conventional ideas of American anthropology were turned on their heads. Until then, the “Clovis First” theory, which held that modern humans only began populating the Americas from Asia via the Bering land bridge roughly 13,500 years ago, was widely accepted. That people had lived thousands of kilometers farther south more than 1,000 years before the Clovis culture arose came as a shock initially, but the idea, and the Monte Verde site, has gradually become accepted over time.

A jaw all the wider to bite you with

Fri, 19 Feb 2016 15:43:23 -0500

T. rex was a fearsome predator with the jaws to match. Credit: Stephan Lautenschlager, University of Bristol.

Tyrannosaurus rex is often depicted with its fearsome jaws wide open, but few studies have looked at how wide the Cretaceous predator’s gape could actually be. In a new study, Stephan Lautenschlager of the University of Bristol in England looked at theropod jaws, including that of T. rex, to study how the feeding styles and dietary preferences of dinosaurs were linked to how wide they could open their mouths.

Mammoths may have suffered from bone disease

Mon, 08 Feb 2016 15:30:50 -0500

Some of the more than 23,500 mammoth bones analyzed in a new study that found the animals might have been suffering from various bone ailments prior to going extinct. Credit: Sergey Leshchinskiy.

The demise of mammoths, which went extinct by the end of the Pleistocene about 12,000 years ago, is thought to have been brought about by a combination of climate change and overhunting by early humans. A new study indicates that another culprit might have contributed as well: Mammoth bones retrieved from Northern Eurasia — from sedimentary strata close to the animals’ last known appearance in the fossil record — appear to show evidence for bone diseases associated with nutrient deficiencies.

Geologic Column: A Jurassic romance

Fri, 05 Feb 2016 10:30:02 -0500

Autograph letter concerning the discovery of plesiosaurus, from Mary Anning. Credit: public domain.

For me there were two notable events in 1847. One was literary, the other scientific. The literary event was the publication of the first Harlequin Romance, more than a century before Harlequin Romances actually existed. It followed the usual formula in which a shy, self-effacing girl goes to work for a domineering, untamed hunk of a man, falls in love with him and, after a convenient house fire rids him of the mad wife he kept stashed in the attic, he surrenders. In the final chapter of Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre” the heroine announces, “Reader, I married him.”

Gouges in the ground are best evidence yet of dinosaur courtship

Thu, 14 Jan 2016 17:42:44 -0500

Dinosaurs might not have been lonely in love, according to new research published in Scientific Reports. Scientists recently discovered the first tangible evidence that dinosaurs engaged in courtship behaviors: parallel scrape marks up to about 1.8 meters long and 40 centimeters deep that were gouged in the ground during the Cretaceous.

Fossilized melanin reveals bats' true colors

Fri, 08 Jan 2016 08:18:03 -0500

Palaeochiropteryx, a 49-million-year-old bat, likely had reddish-brown coloration when it lived. Credit: Ghedoghedo, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Studies of pigments preserved in fossil feathers have changed our perception of how colorful dinosaurs were. Now, researchers have revealed the true colors of some of the first flying mammals as well. Two species of bats that lived during the Eocene about 50 million years ago were likely reddish-brown in color, according to a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Rising Star cave hominid walked its own way

Fri, 08 Jan 2016 08:04:08 -0500

The hand and foot of the newly discovered hominin species, Homo naledi. Credit: Peter Schmid/Will Harcourt-Smith.

After dozens of human-like fossils were discovered in a cave in South Africa last summer, they were declared distinct enough to be classified as a new species: Homo naledi. Two recent studies looking in detail at the new hominid’s hands and feet are revealing how different they were from other early humans.

Ancient eggshells may reveal dinosaur body temperatures

Fri, 08 Jan 2016 07:58:25 -0500

A fossilized clutch of titanosaur eggs. Credit: Luis Chiappe.

Whether dinosaurs had metabolisms more like slow, cold-blooded reptilians or fast, warm-blooded birds has long been a mystery. Fossilized bones, which don’t preserve the delicate cell membranes that facilitate heat production in warm-blooded animals, are not likely to answer the question. Fossilized eggshells, however, might be just the ticket to determining the past body temperatures of egg-laying females, which, scientists say, might help address whether the dinosaurs’ metabolisms were warm or cold.

Three new species of extinct baleen whales found

Thu, 07 Jan 2016 10:34:55 -0500

Baleen whales, such as these North Atlantic right whales, are filter feeders that sieve krill and other microorganisms through plates of baleen attached their jaws. Credit: NOAA/NEFSC, Peter Duley.

The evolution of baleen whales from toothed whales was gradual, with intermediate fossil species found that possess both teeth and baleen. Now, the discovery of three new whale species on New Zealand’s South Island is filling in the evolutionary story of baleen whales.

South African cave system reveals new early human ancestor

Wed, 23 Dec 2015 13:01:21 -0500

Homo naledi's head as reconstructed by paleoartist John Gurche, who spent about 700 hours recreating it from bone scans. Credit: Mark Thiessen/National Geographic, for the October 2015 issue of National Geographic magazine.

The Rising Star Cave system, near Johannesburg, South Africa, has never been extensively explored because of its complexity and extremely narrow passages. But in 2013, when a team of intrepid cavers from the Speleological Exploration Club of South Africa pushed through a narrow 12-meter-long chute with an average width of only 20 centimeters, they discovered a chamber filled with what looked like human bones.

Oldest marine turtle found in Colombia

Wed, 23 Dec 2015 12:07:51 -0500

Desmatochelys padillai. Credit: PaleoBios/ Cadena.

A 120-million-year-old sea turtle recently discovered in Colombia is about 25 million years older than the previously oldest-known marine turtle. Despite its age, the new 2-meter-long specimen is very similar to living marine turtles and was placed in the group Chelonioidea, which includes the modern Hawksbill turtle and green sea turtle.

Unshelled ancestor fills big gap in turtle family tree

Wed, 23 Dec 2015 11:53:48 -0500

Eunotosaurus lacked a full shell, but it had other characteristics that indicate it was likely an early ancestor of modern turtles. Credit: Mick Ellison.

Turtles may seem like innocent creatures, but the uniquely shelled reptiles have long posed a problem for paleontologists. Shelled turtles are plentiful in the fossil record, but specimens of their intermediate forebears — the missing links between ancestral unshelled reptiles and modern turtles — have remained elusive. Now, a closer look at the skull of what may be one of the earliest turtle relatives is filling gaps in the turtle family tree.

Volunteering to muck around in the mud

Wed, 09 Dec 2015 15:39:22 -0500

Volunteers were involved with everything from bladerunning to digging to plastering the fossils. Below, Stephen Wagner, a volunteer team leader, holds a mastodon humerus. Credit: both: Stephen Wagner.

The Snowmastodon Project team pulled thousands of fossils out of snowy mud in a matter of months, a herculean task that would not have been as successful without a small army of volunteers, many of whom came from the Denver Museum of Nature & Science’s paleontology program. The program trains interested laypeople in the art of collecting, studying and curating fossils, one of the only programs like it in the world.

What happened here?

Wed, 09 Dec 2015 15:35:31 -0500

Brown and Nash check the soil for organic matter. Credit: ©Denver Museum of Nature & Science.

Why did so many animals end up buried at the Snowmastodon site? What happened to them? “We really struggled to figure out why there were so many bones found in this location,” says Ian Miller, chair of earth sciences and the paleobotanist at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science who co-led the Snowmastodon Project. “Was it some kind of deathtrap? Or was there a deadly catastrophe like an earthquake or a landslide?”

The Snowmastodon Project: Mammoths and mastodons lived the high life in Colorado

Wed, 09 Dec 2015 12:10:28 -0500

This site at Snowmass Village, Colo., is now submerged beneath a reservoir. But for a brief period in 2011, it was the site of one of the largest fossil excavations ever. In the end, scientists and volunteers collected 5,500 large bones and more than 30,000 small bones representing roughly 50 different species. Credit: ©Denver Museum of Nature & Science.

Snowmass Village, Colo., 270 kilometers west of Denver, is famous for being one of the premier ski destinations in the Rocky Mountains. But at the edge of the ski runs, under a man-made reservoir used for making snow, lie the ice-age stars of Snowmass Village: giant ground sloths, long-horned bison, North American camels, dozens of mammoths and mastodons and abundant insects and plant matter — basically an entire fossilized Pleistocene ecosystem. Imagining these extinct creatures roaming the lower-elevation grasslands and forests of North America is strange enough, but Snowmass Village sits at 2,705 meters of elevation, making this alpine site one of the highest Pleistocene fossil localities ever discovered.

Down to Earth With: Paleobiologist Nigel Hughes

Thu, 12 Nov 2015 10:53:48 -0500

Nigel Hughes in Bengal. Credit: Nigel Hughes.

I first met Nigel Hughes, a paleobiologist at the University of California at Riverside (UCR), in 2010. He took me on a brisk walk through the UCR Botanical Gardens, where the trees kept us cool in the hot Southern California sun while he told me all about trilobites.

Potentially venomous extinct mammals discovered in Zambia

Thu, 12 Nov 2015 09:44:07 -0500

A new species of mammal, nicknamed "Scarface," may be one of few known venomous mammals. Credit: Field Museum.

Venomousness is rare among both living mammals and their extinct relatives, with only a handful of modern mammals, like the platypus and some species of shrews, known to produce venom. But the discovery of a mammal that lived about 255 million years ago in what is now Zambia may be one of the earliest venomous mammals.

Moroccan fossil formation reshapes timeline of Early Phanerozoic evolution

Thu, 12 Nov 2015 08:52:03 -0500

This marrellomorph arthropod is one of many fossils found in Morocco's Lower Fezouata Formation. Credit: Peter Van Roy.

Many new life-forms emerged during both the Cambrian Explosion and the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event, but a lack of fossils from the 40-million-year span in between has left scientists wondering if a period of evolutionary stasis took hold between the two booms. Now, the discovery of a prodigious bed of fossils in Morocco that date to between 485 million and 444 million years ago indicates that the Ordovician boom may actually have been a continuation of the Cambrian Explosion, with little to no evolutionary downtime in between.

Bite marks offer best evidence yet of T. rex cannibalism

Mon, 09 Nov 2015 16:38:10 -0500

Bite marks seen on this large theropod bone, which was found recently in Wyoming, offer strong evidence that Tyrannosaurus rex wasn't averse to making a meal out of its own kind. Credit: Matthew McLain

Tyrannosaurs were not the most discerning of carnivores. In addition to dining on other dinosaurs, like Triceratops and duck-billed hadrosaurs, it appears the fearsome apex predators weren’t averse to making a meal of their own kind. A series of deep bite marks on a 66-million-year-old leg bone uncovered recently in eastern Wyoming may be the best evidence yet of Tyrannosaurus rex cannibalism.

Butchery or trampling? Controversy marks ancient animal bones

Mon, 02 Nov 2015 11:18:24 -0500

Marks on a fossilized rib bone, one of the two controversial bones. Credit: Zeresenay Alemseged.

At some point in early human evolution, our ancestors began regularly hunting, butchering and consuming meat from large game, a protein- and fat-rich change in diet that may have helped fuel the development of a larger and more complex brain. When exactly this change took place has long been a matter of debate. Stone tools from 2.6 million years ago have offered the most solid evidence to date. But the discovery several years ago of a pair of 3.4-million-year-old animal bones in Dikika, Ethiopia, that appear to show cut marks indicative of butchery could push the date back significantly. Some researchers think the bones were marked by incidental trampling, however, not by early humans.

Benchmarks: July 11, 1997: Neanderthal DNA unraveled

Tue, 27 Oct 2015 12:39:33 -0400

Artist's rendering of Neanderthals. Credit: art by Randii Oliver.

On July 11, 1997, six scientists announced they had sequenced DNA from a Neanderthal fossil. It was the first time anyone had analyzed the genetics of an extinct hominin, and the findings gave paleoanthropologists a new perspective on Neanderthals’ place in the human family tree.

Triceratops relative 'Wendi' sported a fantastic frill

Tue, 20 Oct 2015 12:36:02 -0400

An artist's drawing of the spectacularly adorned Wendiceratops. Credit: Danielle Dufault.

The discovery of a 79-million-year-old frilled and horned relative of Triceratops is shedding light on the early evolution of the ceratopsid’s distinctive look. The new specimen, discovered in a quarry in southern Alberta, Canada, and described recently in PLOS ONE, was named Wendiceratops pinhornensis after the famed fossil hunter Wendy Sloboda of the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, who discovered the site in 2010.

Owl pellets bridge ancient and modern ecosystems

Tue, 06 Oct 2015 11:37:48 -0400

Mammal bones are visible in this owl pellet, which is tangled in cheatgrass and buried in sediment. Credit: Rebecca Terry.

In Homestead Cave near Utah’s Great Salt Lake, owls have been regurgitating pellets containing the undigested bones and hair of prey — typically small mammals like rodents — at a relatively constant rate since the end of the Pleistocene glaciations about 13,000 years ago. Those pellets have stacked up and fossilized in the cave to present a near-continuous glimpse into how mammal communities in this part of the Great Basin region have changed over time. Now, paleontologists examining bones in the pellets have found that, although small mammals in the region have generally been able to adapt to shifting ecosystems in the past, today, in the face of landscape-altering human activity, the mammal population is changing in unprecedented ways.

A Cambrian-like explosion of mammals in the Mid-Jurassic

Tue, 06 Oct 2015 10:14:57 -0400

Mammals, such as the docodonts illustrated here, experienced a burst of rapid evolution in skeletal and dental features in the Middle Jurassic. Credit: April Neander.

Dinosaurs dominated the continents during the Mesozoic, and for a long time, paleontologists assumed our mammalian ancestors kept a low-profile in that era, existing only as small, ground-dwelling, nocturnal insect-eaters. But in the last decade, discoveries of an ever-increasing diversity of mammal fossils have forced a rethink: Mesozoic mammals were also gliders, climbers, diggers and swimmers. Now, scientists looking at mammalian rates of evolution during the time of the dinosaurs have found that this diversity peaked in the Mid-Jurassic, leading to new physical characteristics that would remain for millions of years.

Sauropod skull mystery

Mon, 21 Sep 2015 13:05:08 -0400

It is rare for sauropod skeletons to be found with the skull also preserved; it was only recently that the first complete North American Cretaceous-aged sauropod skull was described. The skull Douglass discovered, while associated with the Apatosaurus skeletons, was thought at the time to belong to Diplodocus. Douglass realized, though, that no skull identified as belonging to Diplodocus had ever actually been found associated with a Diplodocus skeleton — an observation that moved Holland to proclaim that the skull found in the Carnegie Quarry belonged to Apatosaurus. The skull, however, was not immediately installed on the Apatosaurus on display at the Carnegie Museum. First, the skeleton was affixed with a Camarasaurus skull, and it was not until 1979, after an in-depth study by paleontologists, that the skeleton was fitted with the proper skull.

Benchmarks: October 4, 1915: Dinosaur National Monument Founded

Mon, 21 Sep 2015 12:47:14 -0400

The view of Split Mountain at Dinosaur National Monument. Credit: Lucas Joel.

While moving across the country from California to Michigan two years ago, I stopped at Dinosaur National Monument, or “Dinosaur,” which today covers 85,000 hectares and straddles the northern portion of the border between Colorado and Utah. I camped at the Green River Campground on the Utah side, and from there, Split Mountain, on the western margin of the east-west-trending Uinta Mountains, glowed violet-pink in the sunset light.

First fossilized bird of another feather found in Brazil

Mon, 21 Sep 2015 12:05:05 -0400

The oldest bird from Brazil, found in Cretaceous rocks dating to 115 million ago. Credit: Ismar de Souza Carvalho.

Delicate bird bones and feathers aren’t easily preserved as fossils, and most known examples of Cretaceous birds and feathers come from a few sites in northeastern China. An exquisitely feathered bird fossil found recently in the Araripe Basin of Brazil is the first to be discovered in South America, putting the ancient southern supercontinent Gondwana on the map of early avian evolutionary history.

Dinosaurs used the same nests repeatedly

Mon, 21 Sep 2015 10:43:37 -0400

Troodon dinosaur eggs from China. Credit: David Varricchio.

Fossil dinosaur eggs and nests offer clues about dinosaur development and behavior: Based on past work, for example, scientists have thought that some dinosaurs, like oviraptors, brooded, or sat on their eggs, much like modern birds do. Now, the results of a new study describing two fossil egg nests suggest that some dinosaurs used the same nesting sites again and again.

Gender equity in dino bones

Wed, 02 Sep 2015 11:42:44 -0400

A new study of 29 Protoceratops specimens suggests that males and females cannot be distinguished based on their skulls. Credit: Karen, CC BY 2.0.

Modern birds like cardinals and peacocks offer some of the most dramatic examples of sexual dimorphism on Earth, with males and females varying in size and/or displaying different plumage, among other differences. But whether the two sexes of birds’ dinosaur ancestors also possessed different physical characteristics has long been debated. Now, in a new study, scientists using state-of-the-art measuring techniques to look at Protoceratops — a frilled, horned relative of Triceratops that’s found abundantly in the fossil record — are questioning past notions about whether the sex of specimens can be distinguished based on their fossils.

Earliest stone tools pre-date Homo

Mon, 24 Aug 2015 10:26:18 -0400

Sonia Harmand examines a primitive stone tool found in Kenya. Credit: MPK-West Turkana Archaeological Project.

Tool making is thought to be one of the defining characteristics of the transition from apes to early man. Now, the discovery of a set of stone tools dating to 3.3 million years ago is pushing back this critical stage of early human development by more than half a million years, and, according to one researcher involved, disproving “the long-standing assumption that Homo habilis was the first tool maker.”

Snake forebear had two back legs but no front legs

Fri, 21 Aug 2015 12:32:06 -0400

This artist's rendering of the common ancestor of modern snakes shows it with two small hind legs. Credit: Julius T. Csotonyi.

The more than 3,400 species of snakes alive today may have descended from one ancestor that lacked forelimbs, but which had small vestigial hind limbs complete with ankle bones and toes, according to a new study published in BMC Evolutionary Biology.

Oldest birds unearthed in China

Fri, 21 Aug 2015 11:39:12 -0400

Two specimens of the oldest- known ornithuromorph yet discovered, Archaeornithura meemannae, thought to have been a wading bird, were recently found in China. Credit: Zongda Zhang.

The discovery of two well-preserved fossils in the Sichakou Basin of northeastern China has pushed back the known evolutionary record of birds by as much as 6 million years, according to a new study published in Nature Communications.

Ancient marine reptiles born alive and ready to hunt

Fri, 21 Aug 2015 11:36:28 -0400

An artist's interpretation of an adult mosasaur giving birth to live young. Credit: Julius T. Csotonyi.

Mosasaurs, giant marine reptiles found in all the world’s oceans during the Late Cretaceous, may have reached up to 18 meters in length, and they were fearsome predators. Little is known, however, about newborn, or neonate, mosasaurs because very few have been found. Now, new research describing a rare fossil find from Kansas reveals that mosasaurs likely gave birth to live young that were born swimming and able to survive alongside the adults.

De-evolving the bird beak

Fri, 21 Aug 2015 09:07:16 -0400

An illustration highlighting the premaxillary and palatine bones in the nonavian dinosaur Anchiornis (rear) and a modern tinamou, which belongs to one of the most ancient living orders of birds. Credit: John Conway.

The transition from dinosaurs with snouts to birds with beaks was a pivotal change in the evolution of dinosaurs into birds during the Late Mesozoic. Now, biologists have partially reversed this process by transforming chicken embryos into specimens with snout and palate configurations similar to those of small dinosaurs like Velociraptor and Archaeopteryx.

Closing a gap in the tetrapod fossil record

Thu, 06 Aug 2015 10:42:16 -0400

Nova Scotia's Blue Beach preserves one of the richest concentrations of tetrapod fossils from the base of "Romer's Gap." Credit: Jason Anderson.

A few fossils at Blue Beach have been found in situ, especially in two horizons informally dubbed the "Theta Layer" and "Lighthouse Sandstone." Credit: Jason S. Anderson et al., PLOS ONE, 2015.

The story of how fish evolved into four-legged land animals called tetrapods has long been left incomplete by a 15-million-year gap in the fossil record, known as Romer’s Gap, which stretches from the end of the Devonian Period into the Carboniferous. Whether the gap is due to the actual absence of tetrapod fossils from this interval, or whether such fossils exist but have not been found yet has long remained unclear. A new study, however, shows tetrapod fossils from the base of the gap, adding to a growing list of discoveries that appear to be closing the gap.

A terribly low voice for a new terror bird

Fri, 17 Jul 2015 09:31:09 -0400

A nearly complete skeleton of Llallawavis scagliai is on display at the Lorenzo Scaglia Municipal Museum of Natural Sciences in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Credit: M. Taglioretti and F. Scaglia.

A recently discovered fossil skeleton is giving paleontologists a nearly complete look at a new species in the family of big-beaked giants known as “terror birds.” Thought to have grown as tall as 3 meters, these flightless birds roamed South America as apex predators before going extinct about 2.5 million years ago.

From fearsome predator to filter feeder

Thu, 16 Jul 2015 13:31:04 -0400

This reconstruction of the giant filter- feeding anomalocaridid, Aegirocassis benmoulae, from the Early Ordovician of Morocco shows it feeding on a cloud of plankton. Credit: Marianne Collins, ArtofFact.

Early in the Paleozoic, giant arthropods known as anomalocaridids were the largest predators in the sea. A collection of finely preserved fossils, described in a new study in Nature and belonging to the Early Ordovician Fezouata Biota of Morocco, is now giving paleontologists a more detailed look at a 2-meter-long variety called Aegirocassis benmoulae. The fossils seem to suggest that at least this species wasn’t a predator after all.

Makeovers for two popular dinosaurs

Thu, 16 Jul 2015 12:01:37 -0400

An artist's rendering of two Daspletosauruses in combat. Credit: Luis Rey.

Two of the most recognizable dinosaurs are getting image makeovers. According to recent research, tyrannosaurs weren’t only fearsome predators with a taste for other species, but also may have been cannibals; and Brontosaurus, long thought to be obsolete — as a distinct genus at least — may be making a comeback.

One whale's incredible journey details East Africa's uplift

Tue, 16 Jun 2015 11:55:16 -0400

About 17 million years ago, a 7-meter-long beaked whale took a wrong turn off Africa’s east coast and swam hundreds of kilometers up the Anza River before stranding. In 1964, the fossilized remains of the wayward whale were discovered at high elevation in West Turkana, Kenya, and then transported to the U.S., where they were subsequently lost in storage for more than 30 years before being rediscovered at Harvard in 2011. The whale’s incredible journey is now providing crucial clues about the timing of uplift in East Africa.

Geomedia: On the Web: Dinologue: A dino blog

Mon, 08 Jun 2015 08:42:49 -0400

Science writer and amateur paleontologist Brian Switek has launched a new dinosaur website, Dinologue. Credit: Tracey Switek.

Wherever you want to go, the Internet can take you there. Space? No problem. The bottom of the ocean? Sure. Now, you can add another stop to the itinerary: the Mesozoic. A new website, Dinologue.com, aims to transport visitors back to the time of the dinosaurs.

Bigger is better in the sea

Mon, 08 Jun 2015 08:33:55 -0400

Since first appearing in the fossil record more than 550 million years ago, complex animals have steadily grown in average size, from millimeters to meters to many meters in length. This tendency of species to evolve toward larger sizes over time — known as Cope’s rule — has been studied before in individual species, such as horses and clams, but a new dataset of thousands of marine animals is giving scientists their first large-scale look at how Cope’s rule applies to whole ecosystems over hundreds of millions of years.

Tiny plant fossils offer big view of ancient ecosystems

Mon, 01 Jun 2015 10:12:55 -0400

Fossil plant phytoliths, like this 49-million-year-old example found in an ancient soil horizon in Patagonia, Argentina, may offer clearer views of past ecosystems. (Scale bar is 10 micrometers.) Credit: Regan Dunn.

A key part in understanding a terrestrial ecosystem is analyzing its vegetation structure: How dense is the foliage? Is its canopy open or closed? How much sunlight reaches the ground? Answering these questions about a modern plant community is relatively easy, but for paleoecosystems, such analysis has not been possible until recently. Now, a new study published in Science reports a novel way to create what lead author Regan Dunn calls a “3-D look” at ancient ecosystems.

Oldest climbing and burrowing mammals discovered in China

Mon, 01 Jun 2015 09:44:58 -0400

These 160-million-year-old fossils of Docofossor (left) and Agilodocodon (right) represent the oldest burrowing and tree-climbing mammals, respectively. Credit: Zhe-Xi Luo, University of Chicago.

During the Mesozoic, mammals were small and inconspicuous, remaining hidden in the shadows of their larger reptilian neighbors and only diversifying into the many ecological niches they now occupy after the dinosaurs went extinct. Or so scientists thought. Now, two new shrew-sized fossils, each dating to about 160 million years ago, lend support to the alternative idea that mammals were ecologically diverse long before the dinosaurs left the scene.

Comparing apples to oranges, hyenas to humans

Tue, 05 May 2015 09:34:18 -0400

Studying the behavior and social structure of living carnivores, such as spotted hyenas, might shed light on whether early humans led cooperative lives. Credit: David S. Green.

Traditionally, anthropologists thought that hunting played a huge role in the lives of early humans, perhaps because of the prominence of stone tools in the fossil record. But today, most researchers recognize that hominids must have exploited a wide range of resources, and were probably not exclusively carnivores.

The new anthropology: From bones and stones to biology and behavior

Tue, 05 May 2015 09:25:52 -0400

Grasslands in Tanzania's Serengeti National Park in East Africa may be similar to some of the habitats in which early humans evolved. Credit: ©Noel Feans, CC BY-2.0.

Paleoanthropology has traditionally been a dusty science, with new discoveries usually involving bones, teeth and stone tools painstakingly picked from the dirt. But in recent years, the field has embraced a more integrated approach to understanding our ancestors, studying them not just in terms of their skeletons and artifacts, but also their biology and behavior as formerly living, breathing organisms.

Amber-encased plant could be oldest known grass: Specimen may also preserve a Cretaceous-aged hallucinogen

Mon, 04 May 2015 12:52:54 -0400

This 100-million-year-old amber-encased specimen contains what could be the oldest grass fossil known, and the only fossilized specimen of the fungus ergot (dark material at top) ever found. Credit: Oregon State University.

Delicate grasses don’t preserve well in the fossil record, and evidence for grasses coexisting with dinosaurs is scant. But according to a new study, a chunk of 100-million-year-old amber recently discovered in Myanmar appears to contain the world’s oldest grass fossil — far more ancient than any fossil grasses previously found. What’s more, the specimen seems to be topped with the world’s oldest known ergot — a fungus containing ingredients used to make lysergic acid diethylamide, better known as LSD. But while the image of a 100-metric-ton sauropod grazing on hallucinogen-laced grass is intriguing, not everybody is convinced that the specimen is the real deal.

Earliest primates were tree dwellers

Mon, 20 Apr 2015 09:02:41 -0400

The ankle bones of the 65-million- year-old primate Purgatorius, shown here in an artist's rendition, reveal that the earliest primates likely lived in trees. Credit: Patrick Lynch/Yale University.

The first primates evolved shortly after the mass extinction of the dinosaurs about 66 million years ago. But whether these small mammals lived on the ground or in trees has puzzled paleontologists, who only had fossil teeth and jaws to examine, which left much of the animals’ appearance and behavior a mystery.

Soft-bodied fossils cast in fool's gold

Mon, 09 Mar 2015 11:49:18 -0400

Pyritized specimens of the wormlike Conotubus from the Gaojiashan Lagerstätte in China. Credit: Yaoping Cai, Northwest University, Xi'an China.

Most of the fossil record is composed of hard bones and shells — only a handful of places preserve fossils of soft-bodied organisms from early in Earth’s evolutionary history. The processes by which these delicate fossils form are not well understood, but a new study looking at an assemblage of 550-million-year-old soft-bodied fossils found in China sheds light on one potential mechanism.

One-of-a-kind dinosaur skull goes digital

Mon, 02 Feb 2015 13:30:32 -0500

A comparison between the originally preserved and digitally restored skulls of the Cretaceous dinosaur Erlikosaurus andrewsi. Credit: Lautenschlager et al., 2014, Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 34 (6).

Some dinosaur species are only known from a single skull, and gaining access to study such rare and fragile fossils can be difficult, especially if the skull is stored in a far-flung place like a museum in Mongolia. Now, a new technique using medical CT scans and digital imaging to create a digital model of fossils will allow such rarities to be studied by lots of eyes, all over the world, without damaging or transporting the delicate original.

Tricky take-off limited pterosaur size

Mon, 02 Feb 2015 13:14:32 -0500

Pterosaurs likely launched themselves into the air using both their forelimbs and hindlimbs. Credit: Mark Witton.

Pterosaurs are the largest flying animals in Earth’s history — some boasted nearly double the wingspan of the largest flying birds. But just how big the airborne reptiles grew and what kept them from achieving even greater sizes are outstanding questions. Now, a new study examining the mechanics of pterosaur flight suggests that taking off was perhaps the trickiest part of flying for pterosaurs, and likely constrained their size more so than other factors.

Early horse history written in Indian coal mine

Mon, 02 Feb 2015 12:56:29 -0500

The first relatives of horses evolved during the Early Eocene in India, possibly while it was still an isolated island. Credit: Mary Caperton Morton.

Modern horses, rhinos and tapirs — all ungulates with an odd number of toes — belong to a group of animals called Perissodactyla. The oldest Perissodactyla fossils date from the Early Eocene Epoch about 56 million years ago, but the animals’ earlier evolution remains a mystery. Now, a discovery in India suggests that the group likely originated on the Indian subcontinent when it was still an island on a collision course with Asia.

Fossil leaves reveal effect of "impact winter"

Fri, 30 Jan 2015 14:29:58 -0500

In an analysis of fossil leaves from the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, when the Chicxulub impact occurred, scientists saw an increase in vein density (A to B) and a decrease in leaf mass per area (C to D). Credit: B. Blonder et al., 2014, PLOS Biol. 12(9): e1001949.

When the Chicxulub bolide struck the Yucatán Peninsula at the end of the Cretaceous about 66 million years ago, widespread extinctions of land and marine animals resulted. However, the blast’s lasting effects on plants, which tend to be more resilient against impact-related fallout, have been less clear. Now, a new analysis of fossil leaves dating to around the end-Cretaceous offers some of the first quantitative evidence of a substantial shift in plant communities — toward more deciduous plants — following the impact.

Getting there and getting around Connecticut's ancient Rift Valley

Fri, 30 Jan 2015 11:22:33 -0500

The 1913 East Haddam Swing Bridge spans the river next to the acclaimed Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Conn. Credit: Terri Cook and Lon Abbott.

The Essex Steam Train and Riverboat ride provides a good overview of the river valley's geology. Credit: Terri Cook and Lon Abbott.

Central Connecticut is easily accessible via major roads and flights into Hartford’s Bradley International Airport. The region is well equipped with rental cars, hotels, restaurants and everything else a traveler could need. The website www.ctvisit.com has maps and more details on all of the attractions listed here, as well as lodging, food and other activities.

Travels in Geology: Exploring Connecticut's Ancient Rift Valley

Fri, 30 Jan 2015 10:42:44 -0500

Dinosaur State Park in Rocky Hill, Conn., features more than 2,000 dinosaur footprints, one of the largest trackways ever discovered. The tracks were likely made by dilophosaurs, which grew to about 2 meters tall, 5.5 meters long, and weighed about 275 to 320 kilograms, as demonstrated by the park museum's life-size model. Credit: ©Rain0975/kellyv, CC BY-ND 2.0.

Sightseeing destinations in the lower Connecticut River Valley. Credit: Kathleen Cantner, AGI.

In August 1966, bulldozer operator Edward McCarthy was excavating the basement of a new state building near Rocky Hill, Conn., when he made a startling discovery: a large, three-toed track imprinted in a slab of gray sandstone. Careful excavation soon revealed that this print was part of one of the largest dinosaur tracksites in North America. Word of the discovery spread quickly, and within a few weeks, the entire site — including more than 2,000 prints embedded in Early Jurassic-age rock — was preserved as Connecticut’s Dinosaur State Park.

Crumbly amber holds dinosaur secrets

Mon, 05 Jan 2015 16:41:39 -0500

Insects preserved in amber can't be used to reengineer dinosaurs, but they can reveal details of Mesozoic habitats. Credit: University of Alberta Strickland Entomology Museum specimen, R.C. McKellar.

In the movie “Jurassic Park,” dinosaurs were resurrected from DNA in blood harvested from Mesozoic mosquitoes preserved in amber. The plot was pure science fiction, but a new study has found another use for the biological material trapped in fossilized tree resin. By studying microscopic inclusions of plant material, pollen and feathers preserved in bits of amber recovered alongside dinosaur fossils, paleontologist Ryan McKellar of the Royal Saskatchewan Museum in Canada is recreating a more complete picture of the Mesozoic landscape.

Scientists sequence oldest modern human genome to date

Mon, 05 Jan 2015 16:34:49 -0500

The Ust'-Ishim femur belonged to a modern human man who lived in western Siberia roughly 45,000 years ago. Credit: Bence Viola, MPI EVA.

A chance fossil find along a Russian river has provided researchers with the oldest genomic data ever sequenced from a modern human. The fossil, a nearly complete left femur, was pulled from a bank along the Irtysh River near the Ust’-Ishim district in western Siberia in 2008 by a Russian artist before it made its way to scientists.

Stegosaur's tail packed a lethal punch

Mon, 05 Jan 2015 16:20:17 -0500

The stegosaur tail spike entered the allosaur's pubis and passed all the way through the bone. The wound then led to an abscess and infection that eventually spread and killed the allosaur. Credit: Robert Bakker.

With their big lumbering bodies and plates of armor, stegosaurs can be likened to the modern-day rhinoceros. Both are primarily peaceful plant eaters, but you wouldn’t want to make either of them mad. Now, paleontologists have uncovered evidence of a casualty of stegosaurian combat: a predatory allosaur with a lethal conical wound the size and shape of a stegosaur tail spike.

Ancient cave art discovered in Indonesia

Mon, 05 Jan 2015 16:06:52 -0500

Stencils of a splayed human hand in an Indonesian cave date to about 40,000 years ago. Credit: Kinez Riza.

Europe has long been thought to have been the home of the oldest art in the world — including a stash of cave paintings in northern Spain that date to about 40,000 years ago — but a new dating technique may put Indonesia on the ancient art map as well.

Down to Earth With: Adrian Hunt

Thu, 18 Dec 2014 10:14:32 -0500

Paleontologist Adrian Hunt studies fossil feces called coprolites. Credit: Courtesy of Adrian Hunt.

Adrian Hunt grew up in England, but after earning his undergraduate degree in geology at the University of Manchester, he began looking for somewhere foreign to attend graduate school. At the time, Hunt says, he thought, “If it doesn’t work out, at least I’d see somewhere exotic.” He ended up in New Mexico, where his brother was working at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Very Large Array in Socorro. It worked out and Hunt stayed to complete a master’s degree at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, followed by a doctorate at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

Down to Earth With: Kirk Johnson

Tue, 16 Dec 2014 10:32:02 -0500

In 1967, at a family picnic in Casper, Wyo., 6-year-old Kirk Johnson stumbled across a fossil that looked to him like an ancient rattlesnake tail (it turned out to be a brachiopod). Not long after, while hiking in his home state of Washington, he accidentally knocked over a piece of shale, fortuitously discovering a fossil leaf. The ensuing epiphany that he had a knack for finding fossil treasures led to what he now calls his “paleo obsession.”

Benchmarks: August 3, 1769: The La Brea Tar Pits are described

Mon, 15 Dec 2014 16:08:22 -0500

Long before Los Angeles’ infamous traffic packed the pavement of Wilshire Boulevard, the area teemed with hundreds of species of Ice Age animals that became trapped in an asphalt quagmire of a different sort: the La Brea tar pits.

New species of titanosaurus discovered in Tanzania

Tue, 09 Dec 2014 12:06:57 -0500

The Cretaceous landscape was dominated by huge herbivorous sauropods, the largest land animals ever to walk the planet. Fossils from many of these massive creatures have been unearthed around the world, but the recent discovery of a new specimen of titanosaurus in Tanzania is among the first sauropods found on the African continent.

Neanderthals dined on pigeons

Tue, 09 Dec 2014 11:14:08 -0500

Gorham's Cave on the southeast side of the Rock of Gibraltar has been inhabited for tens of thousands of years. Credit: C. Finlayson, Gibraltar Museum.

The butchering, cooking and eating of birds has previously been thought to be an enterprise unique to modern humans, who were smart enough to catch them. However, a discovery in the dolomite caves of the Rock of Gibraltar shows that Neanderthals were the first to enjoy avian fare.

Dating the demise of the Neanderthals

Tue, 09 Dec 2014 11:10:37 -0500

Researchers Thomas Higham and Katerina Douka examine samples at a Neanderthal site in Abric Romani, Spain. Credit: Thomas Higham.

For a time, _Homo sapiens _and Neanderthals shared space in Europe, likely interacting and possibly interbreeding, but roughly 40,000 years ago the Neanderthals died out for unknown reasons. Pinpointing the extinction of the Neanderthals has proved difficult due to limitations in carbon-14 dating techniques, the accuracy of which declines in samples approaching and older than 50,000 years due to a decreasing amount of carbon-14 for testing. Now, using a new dating technique, scientists have confirmed that Neanderthals likely disappeared between 41,000 and 39,000 years ago.

Hallucigenia finally finds a home

Tue, 09 Dec 2014 10:56:07 -0500

A microscopic look at the claws of Hallucigenia and modern velvet worms links the two distant relatives. Credit: Royal Ontario Museum.

A fossil so bizarre that it was formally dubbed Hallucigenia has finally found a place in the evolutionary tree of early life. One of the more head-scratching fossils to come out of the famous 500-million-year-old Burgess Shale assemblage in British Columbia, the worm-like creature with legs, spikes and a head difficult to distinguish from its tail was originally drawn both backwards and upside down: The spines were originally thought to be legs, and its legs were thought to be tentacles.

All dinosaurs may have had feathers

Tue, 09 Dec 2014 10:51:54 -0500

Artist's reconstruction of the feathered Kulindadromeus zabaikalicus, an ornithischian from the Jurassic. Credit: Andrey Atuchin.

Since the first feathered dinosaur was discovered in China in 1996, more and more feathered theropod specimens have been found. Now, a new nontheropod fossil found in Siberia and described in Science suggests that all species of dinosaurs may have had feathers.

Oldest-known skeletal animals found

Tue, 04 Nov 2014 12:02:02 -0500

Researchers have discovered a 548-million-year-old reef in southern Namibia. Credit: Rachel Wood.

The Ediacaran Period, which lasted from 635 million to 541 million years ago, is famous for the evolution of soft-bodied organisms that pre-dated the Cambrian Explosion, the relatively brief period during which most of the major animal phyla appeared. Now, Ediacaran-aged animals with skeletons have been found.

Limited ranges left ammonites vulnerable to extinction

Tue, 04 Nov 2014 10:18:15 -0500

Why spiral-shelled, ocean-faring ammonites went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous while the nautilids — the ammonites’ less abundant and less diverse cephalopod relatives — survived has long puzzled paleontologists. Nautilids tended to dwell deeper in the ocean than ammonites, perhaps keeping them farther out of harm’s way after the asteroid struck, which likely led to acidification of the ocean surface. Now, a new study suggests that the animals’ geographic range may have contributed to which ones lived and which ones died.

Polar dino tracks show full ecosystem

Mon, 03 Nov 2014 20:38:33 -0500

Researchers recently uncovered a new dinosaur tracksite in Alaska’s Denali National Park. The well-preserved Late Cretaceous footprints were left by duck-billed dinosaurs called hadrosaurs. Most of the tracks are incredibly detailed, and some even show some skin impressions; they represent animals of various ages. Given the wealth of data, the tracks provide insight into the herd dynamics and paleobiology of the greenhouse-world Arctic.

Down to Earth With: Molecular biologist Sarah L. Anzick

Fri, 03 Oct 2014 14:18:33 -0400

Sarah L. Anzick was 2 years old when a Clovis burial site was found on her family's ranch in 1968. In 2014, she was part of the team that analyzed the infant's genome, which shows that modern Native Americans evolved in the Americas. Credit: Sarah L. Anzick.

In May 1968, when Sarah L. Anzick was 2 years old, the 12,600-year-old remains of a male toddler were discovered at the base of a bluff on her family’s ranch near Wilsall, Mont. The Anzick infant — one of just a handful of ancient skeletons to have been found in North America and the only known Clovis burial site — had been carefully buried with more than 100 stone and bone tools.

July 28, 1996: Kennewick man is discovered

Thu, 11 Sep 2014 08:35:04 -0400

On the evening of July 28, 1996, archaeologist James Chatters received an unexpected call at his home in Richland, Wash., from the local coroner. Two spectators at the local hydroplane races had found a skull in Columbia Park on the banks of the Columbia River near Kennewick, Wash. The coroner wanted Chatters, a paleontologist and forensic anthropologist affiliated with Central Washington University who often consulted for Benton County, to look at the skull and determine if it belonged to a recent murder victim. When the coroner arrived with the skull in a 5-gallon bucket, Chatters had scant notion that the discovery would end up challenging the reigning theory of the origins of the first Americans and would embroil scientists in a protracted, precedent-setting legal battle against the federal government.

Out of Africa, time and again

Tue, 02 Sep 2014 13:36:35 -0400

A study of genetic data and the shapes of skull bones among indigenous populations from Asia, Australia and Melanesia suggests modern humans left Africa in multiple waves separated by tens of thousands of years. Credit: ©Gossipguy, CC BY-SA 3.0.

There is widespread agreement among scientists based on fossil and geochemical evidence that modern humans evolved in Africa between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago before spreading around the world. But the timing and route of this dispersal, and whether it occurred as a single exodus or in multiple pulses, remain contested. Now, a new study throws its weight behind a multiple-dispersal hypothesis, suggesting a first group of modern humans left Africa as early as 130,000 years ago, followed by a second about 80,000 years later.

Ancient shark jaws resemble those of modern fish

Tue, 19 Aug 2014 11:37:21 -0400

The well-preserved fossil of Ozarcus mapesae from two different lateral views. Credit: AMNH/F. Ippolito.

Sharks are thought to have one of the most consistent body plans in the animal kingdom; the formidable predators seem to have remained roughly the same for more than 400 million years. But a new study, published in Nature, suggests that sharks are not the unchanging, “living fossils” that paleontologists once thought.

Geomedia: 'Dinosaur 13' chisels away at the story behind discovery of Sue

Tue, 12 Aug 2014 14:56:42 -0400

'Dinosaur 13' opens in theaters Friday, Aug. 15.

As the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton ever found, “Sue” is an icon. She even has her own logo and her own Twitter account. Sue made history in the early 1990s, and not just for being a major paleontological discovery: The human drama that unfolded afterward is the focus of the 2002 book “Rex Appeal,” and, now, the subject of a new documentary, “Dinosaur 13,” to be released in theaters Aug. 15.

For toothed whales, ecolocation is an ancient art

Mon, 21 Jul 2014 14:41:20 -0400

The skull of the 28-million-year-old Cotylocara macei. Its anatomy and density variation indicate that this early toothed whale used echolocation to find its prey. Credit: James Carew and Mitchell Colgan.

Echolocation is a distinctive feature of toothed whales, but little is known about how and when this complex behavior and its underlying anatomy evolved, Jonathan Geisler of the New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine and colleagues wrote in Nature. To navigate and communicate, toothed whales emit high-frequency vocalizations in the nasal passages just below the blowhole. As the sound waves bounce off objects and echo back to the whale, they are modulated through the animal’s air sinuses and the melon, a mass of fatty tissue at the forehead, producing an “image” of the seascape.

Pompeii-like eruption fossilized dinosaurs in death poses

Fri, 18 Jul 2014 17:49:17 -0400

The Yixian and Jiufotang formations are famous for preserving fine details such as hair, skin and feathers from a diverse array of animals, including land dwellers, birds and freshwater fish. Careful analysis of the exquisitely preserved fossils and surrounding sediments suggests that the diverse assemblage of animals were killed by a series of sudden, lethal ash flows that swept through the area, charring the carcasses and leaving them piled in bone beds.

Hell Creek Formation reveals a 'chicken from hell'

Thu, 10 Jul 2014 13:25:40 -0400

Anzu belongs to a mysterious group of theropods called Caenagnathidae, which were only known previously by a handful of fossils found in the 1920s. “Anzu is far and away the most complete caenagnathid that has ever been discovered,” said Matthew Lamanna of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh in a statement. “After nearly a century of searching, we paleontologists finally have the fossils to show what these creatures looked like from virtually head to toe. And in almost every way, they’re even weirder than we imagined.”

Ancient food web shows modern structure

Thu, 10 Jul 2014 12:17:31 -0400

Hundreds of thousands of fossils — many in such fine detail that soft tissues and gut contents are visible to the naked eye — have been recovered from the Messel site in Germany. Credit: clockwise from top: Mark A. Wilson; ©Franzen et al., PLOS ONE, 2009; ©Gerbil, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Located in a former shale quarry near Frankfurt, Germany, the Messel deposit is so fossil-rich it has been named a UNESCO World Heritage Site. About 48 million years ago, this area was a forest surrounding a lake. Scientists hypothesize that a sudden release of toxic gases from the lake — similar to that at Cameroon’s Lake Nyos in August 1986 — smothered thousands of organisms, many of which sank to the bottom of the oxygen-poor lake, where they were fossilized in such fine detail that soft tissues and gut contents are visible to the naked eye.

La Brea climate adaptation as different as cats and dogs

Wed, 09 Jul 2014 12:37:45 -0400

New research on bones at the La Brea tar pits suggests saber-toothed cats (at right) grew larger as the climate warmed toward the end of the last ice age, whereas dire wolves grew smaller. Credit: Kathleen Cantner, AGI.

“The most attractive thing about working at the tar pits is the sheer quantity of fossils,” says Robin O’Keefe, an evolutionary biologist at Marshall College in West Virginia and lead author of the dire wolf study, published in Palaeontologia Electronica. “Instead of just studying individuals, we can actually ask population-level questions about how these animals evolved.”

Message in a bottle gourd

Mon, 23 Jun 2014 17:47:10 -0400

Logan Kistler of Penn State University and colleagues analyzed DNA from bottle gourds collected at pre-Colombian archaeological sites throughout the Americas, as well as from living wild gourds from all over the world. The pre-Colombian gourds, the researchers reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were closer genetically to African, rather than Asian, gourds, suggesting they traveled from Africa to the New World via a more direct route. Kistler and his colleagues then used ocean drift models to show that ocean currents could plausibly have transported the gourds, and their concealed seeds, across the Atlantic in less than a year. Once the plant arrived and took hold in its new home, large animals could have consumed the wild fruit and helped disperse its seeds across the Americas, the researchers suggested.

Dinosaur feathers burst into color

Mon, 23 Jun 2014 15:40:33 -0400

Images of some of the 13 Jurassic and Cretacous pterosaur, dinosaur, turtle, bird and lizard fossils sampled for evidence of preserved melanosomes. Credit: Clarke et al., Nature, 2014.

Melanosomes are melanin-producing cells found in the feathers of all modern birds as well as a range of other animals. To study the origins of colorful feathers, lead author Julia Clarke of the University of Texas at Austin and colleagues compared melanosomes in 181 living species with those preserved in 13 different fossils. They found that maniraptors — the lineage of dinosaurs that evolved into birds — seemed to have undergone a rapid diversification of melanosome shapes and sizes not long after the origin of advanced pinnate feathers.

Cryptic creatures made for a spectacular hanging garden

Mon, 23 Jun 2014 13:32:27 -0400

The upside-down cryptic assemblage — so known because the creatures inhabited a hollowed-out cavity in the rock — is “exceptionally well preserved,” which allowed Michal Jakubowicz of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland and colleagues to identify what types of animals had lived in the roughly 390-million-year-old colony, and even particular species in some cases. They also determined a succession of colonization, reporting in Geology that cnidaria appeared to have been first on the scene but were eventually overtaken and overgrown by corals and crinoids.

Early Triassic fossil showed live birth in action

Mon, 23 Jun 2014 11:13:10 -0400

A young Chaohusaurus, a marine reptile that lived about 248 million years ago, is seen emerging headfirst from its mother in this portion of a remarkably preserved fossil. The head of a second juvenile, still inside the mother, is also visible to the left. Credit: ©Ryosuke Motani, CC-BY 3.0 US.

Not only does the fossil specimen preserve an example of live birth, or viviparity, in action, but the embryos are about 10 million years older than previously preserved embryos of Mesozoic marine reptiles, reported Ryosuke Motani of the University of California at Davis and his colleagues in PLOS ONE. Additionally, the headfirst birth posture — characteristic of births in most viviparous terrestrial animals — suggests that marine reptiles, which are known to have evolved from terrestrial reptiles, inherited viviparity from these land-dwelling ancestors, the researchers wrote. This contrasts with the conventional view that live birth evolved in marine reptiles as an adaptation to life in the sea, and further suggests that terrestrial reptiles evolved the trait much earlier than previously thought, they noted.

Did tidal zone trilobites lead the way onto land?

Mon, 23 Jun 2014 10:52:13 -0400

Artist's rendering of trilobites on an Early Cambrian tidal flat. Trilobites first appeared about 520 million years ago and thrived for 270 million years until the end-Permian extinction, making them one of the most successful lineages to ever live. Kathleen Cantner, AGI.

During the Cambrian, when trilobites thrived in Earth’s early oceans, the continents were devoid of animal life. “The Cambrian explosion was an open marine event,” says Gabriela Mángano, a geologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, and lead author of the new study, published in Geology. “The typical story is that colonization of the terrestrial settings didn’t happen until the middle of the Paleozoic with organisms moving from the sea, into brackish water, then freshwater and then onto land.”

Spanish cave reveals possible new Neanderthal ancestor

Thu, 19 Jun 2014 14:40:44 -0400

A trove of thousands of hominin fossils unearthed from a prolific cave in northern Spain is proving a boon for paleoanthropologists studying human evolution and the early ancestors of Neanderthals. The fossils are proving difficult to categorize as a recognized species, however, raising the prospect of a new category of hominin for these Middle Pleistocene specimens.

Ancient skeleton found in underwater cave reveals DNA of earliest Americans

Fri, 16 May 2014 12:17:38 -0400

Between 13,000 and 12,000 years ago, a teenage girl entered a cave, likely searching for water, and fell to her death into a pit, which would later fill with glacial meltwater at the end of the last Ice Age. The pit, called Hoyo Negro, Spanish for “Black Hole,” part of the San Actun cave system beneath Mexico’s Eastern Yucatán Peninsula, has now yielded one of the oldest human skeletons ever found in North America.

New burgess shale fossil site found in Canada's Kootenay National Park

Fri, 16 May 2014 09:55:32 -0400

With its plethora of ancient and exquisitely preserved soft-bodied fossils, the Burgess Shale in Canada’s Yoho National Park is one of the world’s most famous fossil sites. Now a sister site has been discovered just 40 kilometers away in Kootenay National Park, and the new find may prove even richer than the original.

Down to Earth With: Steven Stanley

Thu, 15 May 2014 12:32:58 -0400

Paleontologist Steven Stanley. Credit: Steven Stanley

It’s no wonder Steven Stanley says he can’t imagine having pursued any career other than research and teaching in geology and paleontology. After studying under eminent scientists like Alfred Fischer, Colin Pittendrigh and Harry Hess while a student at Princeton and then Yale in the 1960s, Stanley went on to add many of his own paradigm-shifting contributions to our understanding of fossils, evolution and Earth’s environmental history. He has also authored several popular textbooks and has won numerous awards, including the prestigious Mary Clark Thompson Medal from the National Academy of Sciences in 2006 and, most recently in 2013, the Geological Society of America’s (GSA) highest honor, the Penrose Medal.

Dueling dinosaurs hit the auction block

Thu, 15 May 2014 09:51:34 -0400

The "Dueling Dinosaurs" specimen identified as Nanotyrannus (shown here) has 16 to 18 tooth sockets in its upper jaw, whereas Tyrannosaurus rex has only 11 to 12 sockets. Credit: Raphael Rosen

In 2006, fossil collector Clayton Phipps (a Montana rancher known as the “Dinosaur Cowboy”) and his crew discovered a rare fossil on private land in Montana’s Hell Creek Formation: the bones of two fully articulated dinosaurs that appeared to have died together, locked in battle. The fossil duo — a small, pony-sized carnivorous tyrannosaurid and a slightly larger herbivorous ceratopsian, both now preserved in plaster — became known as the “Montana Dueling Dinosaurs.”

Down to Earth With: Scott Sampson

Mon, 12 May 2014 14:06:47 -0400

During a recent public lecture at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, dinosaur paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Scott Sampson was making a point as he walked up the aisle when a preschooler charged the stage, grabbed hold of his leg and wouldn’t let go until her mother retrieved her.

Fieldwork revises ice-free corridor hypothesis of human migration

Tue, 08 Apr 2014 19:26:45 -0400

Researchers sample a boulder known as a glacial erratic to determine when it was deposited. Credit: Lionel Jackson.

The existence of an ice-free corridor through Canada during the climax of last glaciation, which allowed the first Americans to cross the Bering land bridge from Siberia and move south (about 13,000 years ago), has long been postulated in North American archaeology. Now, research based on the exposure ages of glacial rocks found in the corridor suggests a puzzling conclusion — that the open pathway closed several thousand years prior to 20,000 years ago and didn’t open again until between 13,000 and 12,000 years ago, well after the first Americans were in the Americas.

The trouble with turtles: Paleontology at a crossroads

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 11:15:51 -0400

Scientists debate whether modern turtles are more closely related to snakes and lizards or birds and crocodiles.

Traditional paleontological research has been upended over the past few decades, as less traditional fields, such as genomics and developmental biology, have weighed in on vertebrate evolution. Researchers have examined the lingering color elements in dinosaur feathers, the genetics of woolly mammoths, purported proteins and blood from dinosaurs, and other ancient fossil signatures using modern tools. But the question of turtle evolution has remained resistant to both traditional and novel methods.

From boom to bust in Neolithic Europe

Thu, 20 Feb 2014 10:11:20 -0500

Even after the introduction of agriculture to Europe about 8,500 years ago, growing Neolithic communities still experienced large population swings. Copyright Mary Harrsch, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic

As agricultural practices spread from the Fertile Crescent across Europe, gradually expanding west and north starting about 8,500 years ago, they brought increased and localized food production to a continent where nomadic hunter-gatherers had long made their living subject to the whims of climate and the environment. With agriculture, long-term settlements developed, fertility rates rose and, thus, populations grew steadily. Or at least that’s been the conventional wisdom.

Brooks Ellwood and the unusual applications of magnetism

Thu, 20 Feb 2014 09:26:45 -0500

Comparing a historical photo of a cemetery in Giddings, Texas, to modern-day photos and removing modern additions like phone lines and curbing, Brooks Ellwood and his team noticed three trees and five monuments common in both photos, allowing them to locate the possible position of Wild Bill Longley's grave. Sure Ellwood

Ellwood, Smithsonian forensic anthropologist Doug Owsley and their team then excavated where the computer work indicated, and found the long-lost gravesite of Wild Bill. Sure Ellwood

Ellwood pioneered the use of the MagnetoSusceptibility Event and Cyclostratigraphy (MSEC) technique to study Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) localities around the world, such as this one near Luxor, Egypt. Brooks Ellwood

The call came out of the blue. Geophysicist Brooks Ellwood was sitting in his office in the geology department at the University of Texas at Arlington in 1990 when the telephone rang. On the other end was Doug Owsley, a forensic anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution, who was calling to ask for Ellwood’s help to find the grave of “Wild Bill” Longley. Little did Ellwood realize that this seemingly straightforward request would set him off on a 10-year quest.

Blogging on EARTH: New lessons from antiquity, this time on construction

Thu, 20 Jun 2013 18:48:48 -0400

A sample of Roman concrete collected for the study. Carol Hagan

The concrete ceiling of the Pantheon is a marvel of Roman construction. Wikimedia Commons

Each year, millions of visitors flock to Italy to wander among the remains of ancient Rome, where Cicero strolled and Augustus celebrated his expanding empire. Vestiges of the historic city center lie sprawled around the forum grounds like the abandoned playthings of a distracted giant: vertebrae of toppled columns, a crossword puzzle of ancient foundations, towering doorframes granting access to long-gone buildings. Above everything soars the lopsided profile of the Roman Colosseum, a structure as tough and stubborn as the gladiators that once battled in its ring.

Blogging on EARTH: Ancient whale with a big bite named for Moby Dick author

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 06:41:58 -0500

Artistic view of _Leviathan melvillei_ attacking a baleen whale. C. Letenneur (MNHN)

Schematic drawings of the skull and jaw of _Leviathan melvillei_. G. Bianucci (Universita di Pisa)

It reads like a passage from a horror story: a monster 15 meters long with gigantic, gnashing teeth capable of tearing apart other whales. But it’s not fiction. Researchers recently discovered the fossils of an extinct sperm whale with teeth bigger than a human head.

Criminals steal London dino's dung

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 06:41:58 -0500

It took a big dinosaur to make dung this large. This coprolite was likely from a _Maiasaura_, an herbivorous dinosaur that walked upright on its hind legs. Karen Chin

Blogging on EARTH

A series of robberies over the past five years at London’s Natural History Museum has curators frustrated — and puzzled. From stuffed squirrels to scarab beetles, it seems that anything that can be carried is vulnerable. But most oddly, some thieves made off with a piece of fossilized dinosaur dung.

Third hominin coexisted with modern humans and Neanderthals

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 06:41:58 -0500

Outside of Denisova Cave, where 'X-woman' was discovered. Bence Viola

Modern humans and Neanderthals lived side by side on the Eurasian landscape for tens of thousands of years — but it turns out they weren’t alone, much to researchers’ surprise. A team of researchers has found a hominin bone in a Siberian cave containing DNA that doesn’t match up with either known hominin species at that time, the researchers reported in Nature today, indicating that these humans shared the continent with a third, unknown hominin.