Fossils

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Fossilized egg from prehistoric giant turtle reveals baby inside

The turtle that laid the egg may have had a shell as long as a person is tall, roaming the Earth alongside the dinosaurs.

AUGUST 18, 2021

Standing in a farmer's home in China's Henan Province in the summer of 2018, paleontologists Fenglu Han and Haishui Jiang peered down into a box of rounded lumps of rock. The farmer had collected the trove near his home in Neixiang County, which is renowned for its dinosaur eggs. One stony orb in particular caught the scientists' eyes. About the size and shape of a billiard ball, the fossil was unlike any dinosaur egg they'd seen before.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/s...ls-baby-inside

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Confiscated fossil turns out to be exceptional flying reptile from Brazil

Aug 25, 2021

A fossil acquired in a police raid has turned out to be one of the best-preserved flying reptiles ever found, according to a study published August 11, 2021 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Victor Beccari of the University of São Paulo and colleagues.

https://phys.org/news/2021-08-confis...le-brazil.html

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/s...ptiles-secrets

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Researchers describe a new fossil species representing the ancient forerunner of most modern reptiles

Aug 25, 2021

Lizards and snakes are a key component of most terrestrial ecosystems on earth today. Along with the charismatic tuatara of New Zealand (a "living fossil" represented by a single living species), squamates (all lizards and snakes) make up the Lepidosauria—the largest group of terrestrial vertebrates in the planet today with approximately 11,000 species, and by far the largest modern group of reptiles. Both squamates and tuataras have an extremely long evolutionary history. Their lineages are older than dinosaurs having originated and diverged from each other at some point around 260 million years ago. However, the early phase of lepidosaur evolution 260-150 million years ago, is marked by very fragmented fossils that do not provide much useful data to understand their early evolution, leaving the origins of this vastly diverse group of animals embedded in mystery for decades.

https://phys.org/news/2021-08-fossil...er-modern.html

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Fossil of Earliest Known Ankylosaur Unearthed in Morocco

Sep 24, 2021

The newly-discovered dinosaur species, Spicomellus afer, is the earliest-known ankylosaur and the first ankylosaur to be named from Africa.

Spicomellus afer lived in what is now Morocco during the Middle Jurassic period, some 168 million years ago.

The new species belongs to Ankylosauria, a diverse group of armored herbivorous dinosaurs.

http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology...fer-10102.html

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Researchers Discover First Dinosaur Era Crab Fully Preserved in 100-Million-Year-Old Amber

Oct 21, 2021

Discovery provides new insights into the evolution of crabs and when they spread around the world

Looking at the ancient piece of amber, Javier Luque’s first thought wasn’t whether the crustacean trapped inside could help fill a crucial gap in crab evolution. He just, more or less, wondered what the heck is a crab doing stuck in fossilized tree resin?

“In a way, it’s like finding a shrimp in amber,” said Luque, a post-doctoral researcher in the Harvard Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. “Talk about wrong place, wrong time.”

Luque spent three years trying to unravel the puzzle and, along with a team of international scientists, reported the findings on today (October 20, 2021) in Science Advances.

https://scitechdaily.com/researchers...ear-old-amber/

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Fossil Treasure Trove Shows Complex Social Herd Behavior in Dinosaurs 193 Million Years Ago

Oct 21, 2021

Fossils indicate a communal nesting ground and adults who foraged and took care of the young as a herd, scientists say.

To borrow a line from the movie “Jurassic Park:” Dinosaurs do move in herds. And a new study shows that the prehistoric creatures lived in herds much earlier than previously thought.

In a paper appearing today (October 21, 2021) in Scientific Reports, researchers from MIT, Argentina, and South Africa detail their discovery of an exceptionally preserved group of early dinosaurs that shows signs of complex herd behavior as early as 193 million years ago — 40 million years earlier than other records of dinosaur herding.

https://scitechdaily.com/fossil-trea...ion-years-ago/

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The curious case of the ancient whale bones

A trove of fossils in the Atacama Desert may hold lessons about the plight of modern whales.

Nov 3, 2021

Every year, thousands of whales strand — meaning that they wind up trapped on beaches or in shallow waters — and it’s really hard to figure out why.

It’s not for lack of trying. Teams of forensic researchers investigate stranded whales, studying organs, analyzing body parts with CT scanners, digging through stomach contents, and checking skin for scarring. But these meticulous whale detectives still often don’t find any answers.

“We can only about 50 percent of the time, if that much, give you a solid answer of why that animal died and why it’s stranded,” says Darlene Ketten, a marine biologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who refers to her work as “CSI: The Beach.”

https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/20...a-desert-algae

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Ferocious ‘penis worms’ were the hermit crabs of the ancient seas

Nov 7, 2021

The Cambrian (543-490 million years ago) brought about the first major explosion of biodiversity. Earth, Virtually all modern animal ancestors first appeared. One of the most feared of them was the penis worm.

Technically known as the Priapulida — named after Priapus, the blessed god of the male reproductive organs in Greece — the penis worm, as is commonly known, has been around the world for 500 million years. It is a division of marine worms that survived in the sea. Their modern offspring live almost invisible in deep, muddy burrows in the water, occasionally astonishing fishermen with their floppy penis-shaped bodies.

https://www.livescience.com/penis-wo...shell-behavior

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A first in fossil research: Seeds sprouting from an amber-encased pine cone

Nov 16, 2021

Oregon State University research has uncovered the first fossil evidence of a rare botanical condition known as precocious germination in which seeds sprout before leaving the fruit.

In a paper published in Historical Biology, George Poinar Jr. of the Oregon State College of Science describes a pine cone, approximately 40 million years old, encased in Baltic amber from which several embryonic stems are emerging.

https://phys.org/news/2021-11-fossil...ased-cone.html

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New Species of Hypercarnivorous Ichthyosaur Identified

Nov 30, 2021

Kyhytysuka sachicarum swam in the Earth’s oceans during the Early Cretaceous epoch, some 130 million years ago.

Its well-preserved 1-m-long skull was uncovered in Colombia and initially assigned to a species called Platypterygius sachicarum.

“This animal evolved a unique dentition that allowed it to eat large prey,” said Dr. Hans Larsson, director of the Redpath Museum at McGill University.

“Whereas other ichthyosaurs had small, equally sized teeth for feeding on small prey, this new species modified its tooth sizes and spacing to build an arsenal of teeth for dispatching large prey, like big fishes and other marine reptiles.”

http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology...rum-10319.html

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Fossils Reveal Unique Walking Behavior of Quetzalcoatlus

Dec 8, 2021

With a 11-12-m wingspan (37-40 feet), Quetzalcoatlus is the largest flying organism ever known and one of the most familiar pterosaurs to the public. Its fossils were first discovered in 1971 by University of Texas at Austin graduate student Douglas Lawson in Big Bend National Park, Texas, the United States. Despite a half century of interest, Quetzalcoatlus remains very incompletely described. Some paleontologists think the ancient giant rocked forward on its wingtips like a vampire bat; or that it built up speed by running and flapping like an albatross; or that it didn’t fly at all. But, according to new research, Quetzalcoatlus probably leaped, jumping at least 2.4 m (8 feet) into the air before lifting off by sweeping its wings.

http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology...lus-10346.html

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‘Mammoth graveyard’ containing rare skeletons discovered

Dec 19, 2021

Archaeologists have unearthed the “near-pristine” remains of five Ice Age mammoths while excavating a newly discovered 200,000-year-old graveyard in the UK. Tools perhaps used by Neanderthals to hunt the animals were also found.

The remains, including those of two adults, two juveniles, and an infant, belong to a species of Steppe mammoth, an ancestor of the Woolly mammoth. More bones are expected to be uncovered as digging continues at the vast site, a gravel quarry in the Cotswolds area near the town of Swindon.

https://news.google.com/articles/CAI...S&ceid=US%3Aen

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Fossil discovery of 5 mammoths with Neanderthal tools reveals life in Ice Age

Dec 29, 2021

The well-preserved mammoth remains belonged to two adults, two juveniles and an infant. Their bones were found next to a Neanderthal ax and small flint scrapers that were used to clean animal skins.

The artefacts from this site are so well preserved that archaeologists have also found remains of brown bears, steppe bison, seeds, pollen, delicate beetle wings and freshwater snail shells. Together they tell the story of the site’s environment hundreds of thousands of years ago.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/12/29/w...scn/index.html

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See stunning fossils of insects, fish and plants from an ancient Australian forest

New specimens show a parasitoid wasp, fish that have dined on phantom midges and more

Jan 7, 2022

A new trove of plant, insect, fish and other fossils offers an unprecedented snapshot of Australia’s wetter, forest-dominated past.

McGraths Flat in New South Wales contains thousands of beautifully preserved specimens of flowering plants, ferns, spiders, insects and fish, vertebrate paleontologist Matthew McCurry and colleagues report January 7 in Science Advances.

Images of the fossils’ soft tissues, captured with scanning electron microscopy, reveal them in astonishing detail, from the facets of a crane fly’s compound eye to phantom midges trapped in a fish’s stomach.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/...ts-fish-plants

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Remains Of A Dinosaur Found Inside An Ancient Crocodile For First Time

Feb 14, 2022

A Cretaceous crocodile has been found with a newly eaten dinosaur in its stomach. This wasn’t quite the titanic dinner-time duel we might first imagine – the crocodile wasn’t all that large even by modern standards and the dinosaur was chicken-sized. Nevertheless, it's confirmation of something palaeontologists have long suspected, as well as marking the discovery of a new crocodile species and genus.

https://www.iflscience.com/plants-an...or-first-time/

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This extinct ten-armed fossil may be earliest known ancestor of vampire squid

March 8, 2022

Paleontologists believe they have discovered a new genus and species of extinct cephalopod with ten functional arms, similar to a vampire squid. The 328-million-year-old fossil is the earliest known example of a vampyropod (ancient soft-bodied cephalopods) to date, pushing back the earliest evidence by 82 million years, according to a new paper published in the journal Nature Communications. Other paleontologists aren't so sure, believing the specimen might represent a different known species of ancient cephalopods and calling for a full chemical analysis to confirm the species one way or the other.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022...vampire-squid/

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In Peru, skull of ‘marine monster’ points to fearsome ancient predator

Scientists think the ancient mammal was a basilosaurus, part of the aquatic cetacean family, whose contemporary descendents include whales, dolphins and porpoises.

March 18, 2022

LIMA, Peru — Paleontologists have unearthed the skull of a ferocious marine predator, an ancient ancestor of modern-day whales, which once lived in a prehistoric ocean that covered part of what is now Peru, scientists announced on Thursday.

The roughly 36-million-year-old well-preserved skull was dug up intact last year from the bone-dry rocks of Peru’s southern Ocucaje desert, with rows of long, pointy teeth, Rodolfo Salas, chief of paleontology at Peru’s National University of San Marcos, told reporters at a news conference.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna20664

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Check out the ancient sea creature which walked on stilts!

April 24, 2022

The ocean is known for being home to some pretty unique creatures and scientists have recently discovered a very odd looking ancient animal!

A fossil of the species, which has been named Tomlinsonus dimitrii, was found in Ontario, Canada last year.

It's believed to have been part of a now-extinct group of arthropods called marrellomorphs that lived around 450 million years ago.

Today, arthropods include popular species like crabs, lobsters, spiders and centipedes.

https://www.sciencealert.com/this-ex...-to-get-around

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Rare fossil of ancient dog species discovered by paleontologists

May 3, 2022

Sometime around 14,000 years ago, the first humans crossed the Bering Strait to North America with canines, domesticated dogs they used for hunting, by their side.

But long before the canines arrived here, there were predatory doglike canid species who hunted the grasslands and forests of the Americas. A rare and nearly complete fossilized skeleton of one of these long-extinct species was recently discovered by paleontologists at the San Diego Natural History Museum.

https://phys.org/news/2022-05-rare-f...g-species.html

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Ancient swamp was a sex death trap for fossil frogs

July 6, 2022

University College Cork (UCC) paleontologists have discovered why hundreds of fossil frogs died in an ancient swamp 45 million years ago: It happened during mating.

The watery death trap in the Geiseltal area in central Germany claimed the lives of over 50,000 ancient beasts, including birds, horses, bats, fish and hundreds of frogs. Because of its unique geological features and thousands of fossils, the former coalfield of Geiseltal in Saxony-Anhalt is considered a scientific treasure trove, providing a unique window into how the Earth's plants and animals evolved over millions of years.

https://phys.org/news/2022-07-ancien...th-fossil.html