fossils
pharyngula | August 23, 2007Aaargh. When will the media learn? National Geographic is running this ridiculous headline right now: New Fossil Ape May Shatter Human Evolution Theory, in which the reporter claims a discovery of some teeth could "demolish a working theory of human evolution." It's not true. Where is this nonsense coming from?
I read the article. It's titled "A new species of great ape from the late Miocene epoch in Ethiopia." The exciting news is that the "combined evidence suggests that Chororapithecus may be a basal member of the gorilla clade, and that the latter exhibited some amount of adaptive and…
pharyngula | August 9, 2007Two new Homo fossils are described in this week's Nature, and here they are.
This is KNM-ER 42700. It's a very well preserved brain case, it has been dated to 1.55 million years ago, and it has been positively identified as belonging to Homo erectus. It's a little unusual in being particularly small, but otherwise, definitely H. erectus.
a, Anterior, b, left lateral, d, superior and e, inferior views of KNM-ER 42700 (scale bar, 5 cm).
This is KNM-ER 42703. It's a broken maxilla, or upper jaw, and it has been dated to 1.44 million years ago — it's over 100,000 years more recent than the KNM-…
pharyngula | August 7, 2007John Hawks reports that a certain well-known 3.2 million year old lady has quietly left her home in Africa, and is on her way to Texas. She's probably also going to visit Chicago in 2009 — I'll be sure to stop by and pay my respects then.
grrlscientist | August 5, 2007tags: dinosaurs, fossils,The Boneyard,blog carnivals
The second edition of The Boneyard is now available for all you fossil hunters and dinosaurophiles out there. Be sure to pop in and give them some support!
grrlscientist | July 24, 2007tags: mastodon fossils, Greece
AMNH 9951, skeleton of the American mastodont, Mammut americanum, Newburgh, NY.
Image: AMNH (American Museum of Natural History, NYC, NY) [larger]
In an astonishing discovery, a three million year old "fossilized zoo" was discovered by Greek geologists yesterday in the northern Milia region near the town of Grevena. This "zoo" contains the fossilized remains of prehistoric rhinos, mastodons, gazelles and carnivorous mammals.
The discovery included a pair of tusks from a mastodon (pictured left. Image: Evangelia Tsoukala), an ancient species of elephant that…
grrlscientist | July 10, 2007tags: creationism lies, fossils, ordovician, avian, streaming video
A streaming video revealing that the Creationist museum was built upon a huge layer of Ordovician fossils, including brachiopods, trilobites, and bryozoans [10:11]
grrlscientist | July 2, 2007tags: teratornis, Argentavis magnificens, birds, ornithology, giant bird
Dr. Kenneth E. Campbell, (one of the discoverers) in front of the 25 ft. wingspan Argentavis magnificens. Display from the Natural History Museum, Los Angeles. The feather size from such a bird is estimated to have been 1.5 meters long (60 inches); and 20 centimeters wide (8 inches). [larger]
Image source.
Discovered decades ago and formally described in 1980, Argentavis magnificens is the largest bird known. It lived six million years ago during the Miocene period throughout Argentina. It is nearly the size of a…
pharyngula | June 28, 2007The state department has approved a visit from an eminent foreigner: a certain 3.2 million year old australopithicene is going to be at the Houston Museum of Natural Science from 31 August 2007 through 20 April 2008…and then she's going on tour. Future locations haven't been determined yet, but Minneapolis is nice. Chicago would be OK. I hope I get a chance to pay court on her.
Just a thought, but the creationists have got it all wrong. They think we worship Charles Darwin, but actually, if there are any objects of reverence among evolutionary biologists, it would be the evidence — the bones…
grrlscientist | June 27, 2007tags: Icadyptes salasi, giant penguin, ornithology, birds, avian
Two fossils recently discovered in Peru reveal that early penguins responded differently to natural climate change than scientists would have predicted. The larger skull, Icadyptes salasi (top), would have been fearsome to encounter because this penguin stood over five feet tall, and had a seven-inch beak, and is one of the largest penguins ever described. Compare this new penguin species to the smaller skull (below), which is from the modern-day Peruvian (Humboldt) penguin, Spheniscus humboldti.
Image: PNAS / Daniel Ksepka…
pharyngula | June 13, 2007This is Gigantoraptor erlianensis, a newly described oviraptorosaur from late Cretaceous of China. It's a kind of nightmare version of Big Bird — it's estimated to have weighed about 1400kg (1½ tons for non-metric Americans).
Histological examination of the growth structure of the bones suggests that this fellow was a young adult, about 11 years old, and that they grew rapidly and reached nearly this size by the time they were 7. And since it is a young adult, there were probably bigger gigantoraptors running around. They also compared limb length to other dinosaurs, like the tyrannosaurs—…
grrlscientist | June 13, 2007tags: researchblogging.org, dinosaur, bird, fossil, Gigantoraptor erlianensis, China
An artist's painting of the newly discovered Gigantoraptor dinosaur, depicted with other smaller dinosaurs. Fossilized bones uncovered in the Erlian Basin of northern China's Inner Mongolia region show the Gigantoraptor erlianensis was about 26 feet in length and weighed 3,000 pounds. The discovery of the giant, birdlike dinosaur indicates a more complicated evolutionary process for birds than originally thought.
Image: Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology & Paleoanthropology (Beijing, China) [larger]…
grrlscientist | June 7, 2007tags: researchblogging.org, archaeopteryx, dinosaurs, mammals, fossils
Archaeopteryx fossil showing the distinctive head-back death pose of many articulated fossilized birds, dinosaurs and early mammals. Archaeopteryx is an ancient feathered dinosaur. This specimen is at the Humboldt Museum, Berlin. The skull is approximately two inches long.
If you've looked at the articulated 150-million-year-old Archaeopteryx fossils, you probably have noticed that they all have a weirdly similar pose; their heads are thrown over their backs, mouths open and tail curved upwards. Scientists have been…
grrlscientist | June 6, 2007tags: ancient mushroom, amber, parasites, fossils
A 100-million-year-old piece of amber was recently found with an ancient mushroom embedded inside. The amber specimen was collected approximately one year ago in Burma by Ron Buckley, a registered nurse, photographer and collector of amber fossils who lives in Florence, Kentucky.
"I knew right away what it was when I looked at it under the microscope," said Buckley, who has been collecting amber fossils for the past eight years.
Amber is fossilized tree resin, a sticky substance that seeps from certain pine and legume trees. Because of its…
grrlscientist | April 13, 2007tags: researchblogging.org, Tyrannosaurus rex, dinosaurs, birds, fossils
Repeated analysis of proteins from a fossilized Tyrannosaurus rex reveal new evidence of a link between dinosaurs and birds: Of the seven reconstructed protein sequences, three were closely related to chickens.
Image: NYTimes
It was once thought impossible to obtain actual soft tissue, such as proteins, from fossils, but the impossible has happened and now, two research teams who published reports in this week's Science describe their findings: the closest relative to the fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex is .. a chicken.…
pharyngula | April 13, 2007Science magazine has an article today on extracting and sequencing proteins from T. rex bones, and I'm already getting email from people wondering whether this is believable, whether it challenges the stated age of dinosaurs, whether this means we can soon reconstruct dinosaurs from preserved genetic information, and even a few creationists claiming this is proof of a young earth. Short answers: it looks like meticulous and entirely credible work to me, these fossil bones are really 68 million years old, and it represents a special case with limits to how far it can be expanded, so scratch "…
grrlscientist | March 30, 2007
Architect's rendition of the completed College of Eastern Utah Prehistoric Museum and Mesozoic Gardens.
At a time when creationists are dumping money into so-called prehistoric "museums" that tell lies to the public about evolution, it is refreshing to see a real museum gain more monetary support and prominence, especially in a "red state". An official home has been found for the world's most extensive evolutionary botanic gardens, which also includes an expansion of the College of Eastern Utah (CEU) Prehistoric Museum, in Price, Utah.
At a recent groundbreaking ceremony, entrepreneur…
grrlscientist | March 30, 2007
120-million-year-old fossilized footprints made by a roadrunner-like bird, Shandongornipes muxiai, discovered in Shandong Province, China. (Track four).
In the past few years, China has become famous for the number and quality of bird fossils from the Early Cretaceous that have been discovered there. This week, another such discovery has been reported by an international team of Chinese, American and Japanese scientists. Their discovery of 120-million-year-old fossilized footprints made by a roadrunner-like bird in Shandong Province, China (see map), was published in the European journal,…
grrlscientist | March 26, 2007
Some mites are known to live exclusively in moist grasslands and pastures, where they break down vegetable matter (including livestock excrement) to provide a rich food source.
Studying ancient civilizations can be difficult when they have left no detailed written records behind. But researchers say they now have a new tool for examining the fortunes of animal-based populations.
Scientists are now able to follow the progress of ancient civilizations by studying fossil mites that were found in the dung of their livestock. A group of scientists from America, France and Britain have been…
grrlscientist | March 23, 2007A fossil hunter recently discovered the biggest whale fossil ever found in Italy. It was found in the vineyards of Castello Banfi, one of the country's finest vineyards located in the northern grape-growing area of Tuscany. The five million-year-old fossil skeleton is 10 meters (33 feet) in length and appears to be complete.
"A group of palaeontologists were digging in January in the Castello Banfi vineyards and found a whale's vertebra," said a spokesperson for Winenews, a wine promotion agency.
This was not the first such find for this area: an ancient dolphin's skeleton was found several…