Paleontology

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. This is true of all science, but especially in palaeontology, where only a handful of exceptional fossils can give a disproportionate amount of…

I heard recently on QI that apparently there was a "vacant" position in a museum somewhere for a skeleton of a human to be kept, to be used as the holotype - the reference specimen of Homo sapiens. (…

This rather sorry creature can be found in a lab in the ROM, hidden away with some old CRT monitors, This guy is Hallucigenia, another fossil from the exquisite Burgess Shale fauna - a contemporary…

Firstly, I guess an apology is in order. Its been a hell of a long time since number 4 went out; I got rather caught up with other things and this series then languished on my list of half-written…

I'll share with you my most recent finds, which I found at Craigleith last weekend in a brief interlude from the fieldwork that I'm doing down the road from there: Pseudogygites latimarginensis. I…

Hello to the K. B. Polk 4th graders! I enjoyed your visit to Cedar Ridge Natural Preserve.  As I told some of you, I'm a scientist and I was going out to South Texas that weekend to find some…

Elasmosaurs loved their gastroliths – round, polished stomach stones – have been found amid their bones. These stones would have been swallowed to help grind down their catch and lower their natural…

Elasmosaurs loved their gastroliths – round, polished stomach stones – have been found amid their bones. These stones would have been swallowed to help grind down their catch and lower their natural…

What do you get if you mix a jellysifh (Peytoia), a sponge (Laggania), a crustacean tail, a crustacean abdomen (Tuzoia) and some Sidneyia tails? The answer is Anomalocaris, a very unusual fossil…

Cute!! Well, not really, but it's still just about big enough to play on the swings with you. Unlike his rather more terrifying parents, who might have rather impolitely eaten you for dinner, this…