paleontology
gregladen | October 19, 2008Yet another missing link has been found! This new find links whales to quadrupedal land mammals.
Thewissen et al. report in Nature new fossil material from the Middle Eocene of Kashmir, India. This species (in the genus Indohyus is represented by a remarkable set of remains, including cranial and post cranial material. Previous studies using DNA had linked whales to the artiodactyls (even-toed ungulates such as deer, antelope, and bison). However, there is a great deal of uncertainty, and some contradictory evidence, as to where exactly in this group the whales arose.
Thewissen et al.…
gregladen | October 17, 2008I have three neat news stories to report, including the oldest insect ever, all cool fossil finds being reported just now.
Walking Fish Helps Fill Evolutionary Gap
Some 375 million years ago, a unique fish existed with features in its head that helped pave the way for vertebrate animals to live on land, scientists said on Wednesday.
Now, new research is providing the first glimpse at the internal head skeleton of Tiktaalik roseae.
The transition from aquatic to terrestrial lifestyle involved complex changes not only to appendages (fins to limbs) but also to the internal head skeleton,…
grrlscientist | October 17, 2008tags: Tiktaalik rosea, sarcopterygian, fishibian, fishapods, transitional fossil, evolution, vertebrate terrestriality, vertebrate evolution
A new study on the internal anatomy of the skull of the extraordinary fish, Tiktaalik roseae, which lived 375 million years ago, provides more evidence of how vertebrate life transitioned from water to land. The head showed changes from more primitive fish that helped adapt to the new feeding and breathing conditions presented by a terrestrial environment, scientists said.
Image: Ted Daeschler, Academy of Natural Sciences [larger view].
A paper was…
laelaps | October 8, 2008
The Boneyard #24 is now up over at The Other 95%, and the latest edition of the anthropology carnival Four Stone Hearth is up at Clashing Culture. Be sure to give both of them a look!
The 25th edition of the Boneyard will be up at The Big Dinosaur Lie next month.
laelaps | October 6, 2008
The next edition of the paleo-themed blog carnival The Boneyard (#24) will be going up tomorrow at The Other 95%. Be sure to get your submissions in to me or Kevin sometime today if you want to be in it!
grrlscientist | October 3, 2008tags: mammoth tooth, fossils, Hurricane Ike, Jim Westgate, Dorothy Sisk, paleontology
Paleontologist Jim Westgate, a research associate with the Vertebrate Paleontology Laboratory at the University of Texas Memorial Museum, shows off a newly discovered fossil tooth of a mammoth that he found in Caplen, Texas, in the debris from Hurricane Ike. Westgate believes the fossil discovered in the Ike-damaged debris is from a Columbian mammoth.
Image: Brian Sattler, Lamar University.
Hurricanes are very destructive, make no mistake about that. But imagine the surprise when Lamar University…
laelaps | October 3, 2008
Profesor Paleozoic. From Buffalo Land.
Our leader, Professor Paleozoic, ordinarily existed in a sort of transition state between the primary and tertiary formations. He could tell cheese from chalk under the microscope, and show that one was full of the fossil and the other of the living evidences of animal life. A worthy man, vastly more troubled with rocks on the brain than "rocks" in the pocket. Learning had once come near making him mad, but from this sad fate he was happily saved by a somewhat Pickwickian blunder. While in Kansas, some years since, he penetrated a remote portion of…
laelaps | October 2, 2008
Supposed human footprints from the "Old Red Sandstone" of Missouri. From Voices From the Rocks.
I mention these facts to show how easy it is for one to be led astray, when every possible phase of the subject is not carefully studied. Let us, therefore, attend strictly to detailing facts of observation, and they are sure to lead to a correct solution of all problems within the compass of the human mind. - Unknown author, from "Impressions of Human Feet in Sandstone," Proceedings of the Indiana Historical Society
Fossil footprint fraud isn't anything new. For nearly 200 years (if not longer…
gregladen | October 1, 2008Welcome to the Third Edition of the Carnival of Evolution. The previous edition of this web log 'carnival of the vanities' was at Jason Rosenhouse's Evolution Blog. The next edition will be written by Mike (TUIBG) and hosted here, at Clashing Cultures.
Please submit your web posts on Evolution for the next carnival, which is slated for Mid October! Use this handy dandy submission form. And now, on with the show:
Newly reconstructed Neanderthal female. (View larger image) A Very Remote Period Indeed presents Fear and Loathing in the Pleistocene.
"... [the] narrator announces "Today,…
laelaps | October 1, 2008
A reconstruction of Megalosaurus from Life in the Primeval World.
Dinosaurs were in ample supply when I was a kid. There were enough documentaries, cartoons, books, trading cards, and misshapen plastic toys to keep me occupied for all my days. They were the ultimate brand; freely available to be printed on anything by anyone, and they most certainly were. (Why eat just any cereal when you can eat dinosaur-shaped cereal?) This prehistoric popularity is so widespread that it is not unusual for children to go through a "dinosaur phase," in which they master Greek & Latin terminology and…
laelaps | September 30, 2008
The next edition of the paleo-themed blog carnival The Boneyard (#24) will be on exhibition next Tuesday, October 7th, at The Other 95%. It would be nice if, in honor of the host, we could get some cool invert posts in this one (ammonites, rudists, bryozoa, you name it). Whatever paleo posts you might have will work just fine, though, so get them to me or Kevin before next Tuesday if you want in on the next edition!
gregladen | September 29, 2008Fossils of a newly discovered species of dinosaur -- a 10-meter-long, elephant-weight predator -- were discovered in 1996 along the banks of Argentina's Rio Colorado, and are now being reported after a long period of careful study. This dinosaur dates to about 85 million years (which falls within the Cretaceous period).
Perhaps the most interesting feature of Aerosteon riocoloradensis is that it demonstrates the evolution of a bird-like respiratory system in an animal that is definitely not bird-like in most other ways. Indeed, the authors of this paper imply that this dinosaur's…
clock | September 29, 2008I always get excited when Paul Sereno publishes a paper in PLoS ONE and today is one such day - his third paper in this journal within a span of less than a year (the first was the paper with detailed description of Nigersaurus and the second was the article on Green Sahara cemeteries). Today's paper is also the second time PLoS ONE publishes a taxonomy paper, i.e., a monograph that describes a new species:
Evidence for Avian Intrathoracic Air Sacs in a New Predatory Dinosaur from Argentina:
Background
Living birds possess a unique heterogeneous pulmonary system composed of a rigid, dorsally-…
laelaps | September 29, 2008During the 19th century most discussions of the earliest known bird, Archaeopteryx, focused on its relationship to other fossil reptiles, whether or not it could fly, and what it indicated about the origins of flight. A bird would not be a bird without song, though, and at least two authors attempted to imagine what sounds the early bird might have made had it tried to sing. The first was Eden Phillpotts in the fictional book Fancy Free. In one particular chapter an Archdeacon describes a fantastic Mesozoic safari (with a tomcat named Peter by his side), describing that and as he relaxed by…
laelaps | September 27, 2008Whatever the hell it wanted. A few years ago, though, there were plenty of shows that played up the debate over whether the famous dinosaur was a scavenger or a predator, and below is one such program. Called "T-rex: Warrior or Wimp?" the show is full of dramatic music cues and interviews with paleontologists like Peter Larson, Ken Carpenter, Chris Brochu, Jack Horner, and others. (A few months ago Horner answered a few questions about his work, which you can see here. For a good, critical look at the scavenging vs. hunting debate, though, see Thomas Holtz's contribution to the new…
laelaps | September 26, 2008The latest issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology is now available via BIOONE, and it's packed to the gills with neat stuff. Of particular interest are;
A paper on Georgiacetus that also establishes a new cladistic arrangement of ancient whales, the Pelagiceti.
A study of vertebral pachyostosis in the spine of the mosasaur Carentonosaurus.
A new aetosaur from Texas. [For more from one of the authors of the paper, see Chinleana.]
A new skull of a juvenile Heterodontosaurus tucki.
New postcranial material of the tyrannosauroid Stokesosaurus.
A new paper on the biogeography…
laelaps | September 22, 2008We're fast approaching the date for the next Boneyard, which will be posted on October 7th. The only problem is that we don't have a host! If you're interested in hosting the next edition send me an e-mail (or say so in the comments of this thread), as the 24th edition deserves a good home.
Update: And we have a winner! The next edition will be hosted at The Great Dinosaur Mystery and the Big Lie, so send your submissions in to that blogger or to me within the next two weeks.
laelaps | September 22, 2008Here's a short video about the famous Edmontosaurus specimen named "Dakota," focusing on how NASA technology was used to look inside the slabs containing the skeleton. There are a few things about Dakota that have been taken a little bit too far (i.e. just because Edmontosaurus had a deep tail does not mean that all hadrosaurs did, and it will be interesting to see how the Brachylophosaurus specimen "Leonardo" differs from Dakota), but the video is a good general overview of what has been released about the fossil to date;
laelaps | September 19, 2008After finishing Life's Splendid Drama last night, I immediately picked up Don Lessem's Dinosaurs Rediscovered which had arrived earlier in the day. It's like a little time capsule representing the state of paleontology when I was a kid, people like Paul Sereno, Michael Benton, and Peter Dodson being the young up-and-coming crop of researchers in the field (with plenty of attention paid to folks like Phil Currie, Bob Bakker, and Jack Horner, too).
I'm about halfway through it, but reading about the exploits of so many researchers in the field has sadly reminded me of my own lack of field…
laelaps | September 18, 2008It can really be a chore to track down old papers. While many journals have digitized their collections and placed them online, a subscription is often required to access old papers (even from the 19th century!)*. That's if the paper you're looking for was published in a journal that still exists, of course. There are plenty of journals that have gone defunct or are otherwise unavailable, a sad fact that keeps important papers out of the hands of students and scientists today.
[*This really aggravates me. Shouldn't these papers, in many cases nearly 100 years old or more, be freely available…