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I made yesterday all about sauropods as the announcement of Nigersaurus was sure to be big in the news, but in all the hubub some significant events were overlooked. First off, my fellow scibling Darren of Tetrapod Zoology fame announced the publication in the journal Palaeontology of a paper he co-authored with sauropod specialist Mike Taylor on an "immensely" amazing find that was right under everyone's noses for some time; Xenoposeidon proneneukos. Make sure you read Darren's summary, the SV-POW! coverage, and Mike Taylor's summary (with a link to the paper itself!). This announcement really should have made bigger news than it did, and I hope that it gets picked up a bit more in the blogosphere and elsewhere.
Yesterday also marked the 3rd edition of The Accretionary Wedge over at The Other 95%, this time about the intersection of biology/paleontology and geology. Neil's piece on fossils is especially good, but the whole carnival is chock-full of great links.
One more note; there's supposedly a new paper out in PNAS this week (it hasn't yet appeared on the journal's website) about chimpanzees digging to reach roots and tubers, even when other food is available. I'll blog in full about this soon, but this could be an important paper in terms of human evolution in that tubers and other buried resources have long been considered "fallback foods" that were not particularly desirable unless fruits or meat were not available. Even if applications to human evolution cannot be made, the paper is significant in terms of chimpanzee behavior as digging for roots and tubers has not been well-documented in the past, so be sure to have a look at the USC press release.
