Paleontology

Confuciusornis Sanctus- Plumage Of The First Birds 120 Million Years Ago Revealed

Using the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource, researchers have examined two fossilized birds, Gansus yumenensis and Confuciusornis sanctus. Confuciusornis sanctus, which lived 120 million years ago, was one of many evolutionary links between dinosa ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 30 2011 - 5:28pm

Friday Fossil

This week's friday fossil is Mesolimulus. Although it's admittedly very pretty, Mesolimulus is actually a friday fossil because, if you were to wander along the Northwest Atlantic coast, you be forgiven for thinking Mesolimulus had become depetri ...

Blog Post - Oliver Knevitt - Jul 8 2011 - 7:18am

Crete: Island of Fossils & Ancient Myths

Much of the island of Crete is Miocene and filled with fossil mollusks, bivalves, gastropods who lived 5 to 23 million years ago in warm, tropical seas. They are easily collected from their pink limestone matrix and are often eroded out, mixing with their ...

Blog Post - Heidi Henderson - Jul 10 2011 - 3:03pm

Farewell, Archaeopteryx

It's not often that paleontology makes the news. This week, however, it did- in a big way. And let me tell you, it wasn't the edgy paper on a new assemblage of South American bivalves ("Barremian Bivalves from the Huitrín Formation, West-Cen ...

Article - Oliver Knevitt - Jul 29 2011 - 12:39am

Teilhardina Brandti- Oldest Known Nails In Modern Primates

When nails appeared on all fingers and toes in modern primates about 55 million years ago, they led to the development of critical functions, including finger pads that allow for sensitive touch and the ability to grasp. ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 15 2011 - 9:31pm

Juramaia Sinensis- 160-Million-Year-Old Fossil Pushes Back Mammal Evolution

A fossil discovered in northeast China has pushed back mammal evolution 35 million years and provides new information about the earliest ancestors of most of today's mammal species—the placental mammals.  A team of scientists led by Carnegie Museum of ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 24 2011 - 3:37pm

Tibet: Cradle Of The Ice Age Giants?

A new oldest woolly rhino fossil in Tibet suggests some giant mammals evolved there before the beginning of the Ice Age, but it leaves a lot of questions about where these giants came from and how they acquired their adaptations for life in a cold environm ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 1 2011 - 4:30pm

Is Australopithecus Sediba The Best Candidate Ancestor To Our Species?

Brain, pelvis, hands and feet  don't lie- and five recent studies of Australopithecus sediba, a primitive hominin that existed around the same time early Homo species first began to appear on Earth,  suggest this ancient relative and its primitive and ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 8 2011 - 11:41am

Propanoplosaurus Marylandicus: A Win For Open (And Citizen) Science

In 1997, Ray Stanford, a citizen scientist dinosaur tracker who often spent time looking for fossils close to his Maryland home, was searching a creek bed after an extensive flood and discovered a fossil which he identified as a nodosaur.  Nodosaurs have b ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 14 2011 - 10:55pm

Acherontisuchus Guajiraensis: Prehistoric Giant Crocodile Versus The World's Largest Snake

A giant crococile versus a giant snake in a Colombian coal mine? It sounds even more awesome than "Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus", except the real life version does not have Debbie Gibson. An ancient crocodile relative, a dyrosaurid now named A ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Sep 15 2011 - 10:03am