Tag Archives: paleontology

Science

A 319-million-year-old brain has been discovered. It could be the oldest of its kind

Leave a comment

Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.



CNN
 — 

A scan of the skull of a 319-million-year-old fossilized fish has led to the discovery of the oldest example of a well-preserved vertebrate brain, shining a new light on the early evolution of bony fish.

The fossil of the skull belonging to the extinct Coccocephalus wildi was found in a coal mine in England more than a century ago, according to researchers of the study published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.

The fossil is the only known specimen of the fish species so scientists from the University of Michigan in the US and the University of Birmingham in the UK used the nondestructive imaging technique of computed tomography (CT) scanning to look inside its skull and examine its internal bodily structure.

Upon doing so, came a surprise. The CT image showed an “unidentified blob,” a University of Michigan press release said.

The distinct, 3D object had a clearly defined structure with features found in vertebrate brains: It was bilaterally symmetrical, contained hollow spaces similar in appearance to ventricles and had extending filaments that resembled cranial nerves.

“This is such an exciting and unanticipated find,” study coauthor Sam Giles, a vertebrate paleontologist and senior research fellow at the University of Birmingham, told CNN Thursday, adding that they had “no idea” there was a brain inside when they decided to study the skull.

“It was so unexpected that it took us a while to be certain that it actually was a brain. Aside from being just a preservational curiosity, the anatomy of the brain in this fossil has big implications for our understanding of brain evolution in fishes,” she added.

C. wildi was an early ray-finned fish – possessing a backbone and fins supported by bony rods called “rays” – that is thought to have been 6 to 8 inches long, swum in an estuary, and ate small aquatic animals and aquatic insects, according to the researchers.

The brains of living ray-finned fish display structural features not seen in other vertebrates, most notably a forebrain consisting of neural tissue that folds outward, according to the study. In other vertebrates, this neural tissue folds inward.

C. wildi lacks this hallmark feature of ray-finned fish, with the configuration of a part of its forebrain called the “telencephalon” more closely resembling that of other vertebrates, such as amphibians, birds, reptiles and mammals, according to the study authors.

“This indicates that the telencephalon configuration seen in living ray-finned fishes must have emerged much later than previously thought,” lead study author Rodrigo Tinoco Figueroa, a doctoral student at the University of Michigan’s Museum of Paleontology, said.

He added that “our knowledge on the evolution of the vertebrate brain is mostly restricted to what we know from living species,” but “this fossil helps us fill important gaps in the knowledge, that could only be obtained from exceptional fossils like this.”

Unlike hard bones and teeth, scientists rarely find brain tissue – which is soft – preserved in vertebrate fossils, according to the researchers.

However, the study noted that C. wildi’s brain was “exceptionally” well preserved. While there are invertebrate brains up to 500 million years old that have been found, they are all flattened, said Giles, who added that this vertebrate brain is “the oldest three-dimensional fossil brain of anything we know.”

The skull was found in layers of soapstone. Low oxygen concentration, rapid burial by fine-grained sediment, and a very compact and protective braincase played key roles in preserving the brain of the fish, according to Figueroa.

The braincase created a chemical micro-environment around the enclosed brain that could have helped to replace its soft tissue with dense mineral that maintained the fine details of the brain’s 3D structures.

Giles said: “The next steps are to figure out exactly how such delicate features as the brain can be preserved for hundreds of millions of years, and look for more fossils that also preserve the brain.”

Read original article here

Science

Cat-size primate relatives lived in the Arctic 52 million years ago

Leave a comment

Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.



CNN
 — 

Analysis of fossils found in the far north of Canada has revealed that two previously unknown species of ancient near-primates lived above the Arctic Circle some 52 million years ago, according to new research.

The now-extinct creatures belonged to a part of the primate family tree that branched off before the ancestors of lemurs diverged from the common ancestors of monkeys, apes and humans, said study coauthor Dr. Chris Beard, a distinguished foundation professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Kansas and senior curator at the university’s Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum.

The two sister species lived on what is now Ellesmere Island in northern Canada. They are the first known primatomorphans, or primate relatives, to have lived in latitudes north of the Arctic Circle, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE.

The two species have been named Ignacius mckennai and Ignacius dawsonae.

“To get an idea of what Ignacius looked like, imagine a cross between a lemur and a squirrel that was about half the size of a domestic cat,” Beard said. “Unlike living primates, Ignacius had eyes on the sides of its head (instead of facing forward like ours) and it had claws on its fingers and toes instead of nails.”

When researchers analyzed the fossil fragments, the jawbones and teeth of Ignacius seemed different from other primatomorphans that lived in North America’s more southerly reaches.

“What I’ve been doing the past couple of years is trying to understand what they were eating, and if they were eating different materials than their middle-latitude counterparts,” said lead study author Kristen Miller, a doctoral student at the University of Kansas’ Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum.

The Arctic primatomorphans evolved special features in their jaws and teeth to chomp on harder foods, like nuts and seeds, as opposed to their preferred diet of ripe fruit. This physical adaptation was likely because for half of the year, the species lived in the darkness of Arctic winter, when food was much more difficult to find.

“That, we think, is probably the biggest physical challenge of the ancient environment for these animals,” Beard said.

These findings could also be used to understand how animals adapt and evolve amid periods of climate change — as with species facing the human-driven climate crisis today.

Researchers believe the primatomorphans descended from an ancestor species that trekked north from the more southerly regions of North America. Similar fossils have been found across Wyoming, Texas, Montana and Colorado, according to Miller.

“No primate relative has ever been found at such extreme latitudes,” Miller said. “They’re more usually found around the equator in tropical regions. I was able to do a phylogenetic analysis, which helped me understand how the fossils from Ellesmere Island are related to species found in midlatitudes of North America.”

The common ancestor of the two Ignacius species likely reached Ellesmere Island around 51 million years ago, Beard said. At the time, it was a peninsula jutting into the Arctic Sea from adjacent parts of North America.

Ignacius mckennai and Ignacius dawsonae are named in part after two of Beard’s former colleagues and mentors, he explained: the late paleontologists Dr. Mary Dawson of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh and Dr. Malcolm McKenna of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, both of whom worked extensively on Ellesmere Island.

During these ancient times, the Arctic Circle was a warmer, more hospitable place for life. Global warming had caused the region to be much warmer and wetter, with a swamplike environment. The warmer temperatures during this period likely encouraged Igancius’ ancestor to venture north.

“Winter temperatures may have gotten as low as freezing for short periods of time, but we know that there were hardly ever any sustained freezing temperatures because crocodilians have been found on Ellesmere Island, and they cannot survive long freezes,” Beard said. “In the summertime, temperatures reached about 70 degrees Fahrenheit.”

Despite the warmer temperatures, the primatomorphans still had to adapt to survive in their unique northern ecosystem. They grew bigger than their southern relatives, who resembled squirrels; such growth commonly happens in mammals living in northern latitudes because it helps them maintain the needed core body temperature, Beard said.

“(The findings) tells us to expect dramatic and dynamic changes to the Arctic ecosystem as it transforms in the face of continued warming,” Beard said. “Some animals that don’t currently live in the Arctic will colonize that region, and some of them will adapt to their new environment in ways that parallel Ignacius. Likewise, we can expect some of the new colonists to diversify in the Arctic, just as Ignacius did.”

Read original article here

Science

Trilobites armed with tridents could be the earliest known example of sexual combat

Leave a comment

Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.



CNN
 — 

From a deer’s elaborate branching antlers to the fiddler crab’s oversize claw, the animal kingdom is full of flashy features used in combat to help secure a mate.

A team of researchers announced last week that it has found the earliest known evidence of sexual combat in the form of a trident-headed trilobite that scuttled the seafloor 400 million years ago.

Trilobites were one of the earliest arthropods, the group of invertebrates containing insects, spiders, lobsters, crabs and other organisms with exoskeletons, segmented bodies and jointed limbs. These pill bug-like sea creatures first emerged 521 million years ago and died out 252 million years ago in the mass extinction that gave way to the dinosaurs.

There were over 22,000 species of trilobite, some reaching lengths of more than 2 feet, but the type that caught the eye of paleontologist Alan Gishlick was more modest in size, around 2 to 3 inches. He recalls seeing specimens of Walliserops at fossil trade shows and marveling at the trident-shaped protrusion branching off the trilobites’ heads.

“That’s the type of structure that has to have a function. You don’t put that much biological energy into something that doesn’t do something,” said Gishlick, an associate professor of paleontology at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania.

Researchers have proposed various uses for these forking protrusions, including defense, hunting and attracting mates.

In a paper published January 17 in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Gishlick and coauthor Richard Fortey delved into these hypotheses, ruling out the trident as a means of defense or a hunting tool based on how the trilobite would have been able to move it. The trident wouldn’t be of much use against predators attacking from above or behind, and while it could have been used to spear prey, the trilobite would then be stuck with its meal just out of reach.

What made the most sense to Gishlick and Fortey, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London, was that Walliserops used the trident to fight among each other.

Their thinking was bolstered by an unusual specimen of Walliserops with a deformed trident bearing four prongs instead of the usual three. If the trident was a vital part of day-to-day survival, they reasoned, then the trilobite probably wouldn’t have lasted for long with a malformed one.

Bolstered with the evidence for Walliserops’ trident being used to win mates, the researchers turned to the closest analogue they could find in the modern world. “The structure reminds me a heck of a lot of beetle horns,” Gishlick said.

The researchers used a technique called landmark-based geometric morphometrics, which Gishlick described as a means of comparing complex shapes in a statistically robust way, to analyze the surface-level similarity of trilobite tridents and horns of rhinoceros beetles. They found that the trilobite tridents’ shape had a lot in common with the horns of beetles that flip their dueling partners in a “shoveling” motion, as opposed to other species whose horns are better for fencing or grasping.

Gishlick said he believes that, like in beetles, trilobites’ tridents were “sexual weapons” used by males sparring to win mates. “This is the earliest known structure that we can point to and say, ‘Yeah, I’m pretty sure that this is an animal weapon used in reproductive competition,’ ” he said.

Furthermore, Gishlick explained: “Generally, organisms that are involved in interspecific combat over mates are highly dimorphic” — varying in appearance from one sex to the other — “because only one does the competition, and generally in the animal world that’s the male.”

Growing features such as big combat-ready horns requires a lot of energy, and female animals already have to expend lots of it to produce eggs.

If the trilobites’ tridents are the first evidence of sexual weapons, then they could also be the earliest known evidence of sexual dimorphism. There’s one problem with this hypothesis, however: Scientists have no definitive means of telling which Walliserops are male and which are female, and no trident-less Walliserops have been discovered.

That might be due to bias by fossil collectors, who Gishlick said often prioritize bigger, flashier specimens, or because the females might be labeled as entirely different species. “This to me makes it very clear that you better be looking for females,” Gishlick said.

Erin McCullough, an assistant professor of biology at Clark University in Massachusetts, said she agrees with the researchers’ conclusion that the trilobite tridents were likely used for interspecies combat. However, she’s not sold on their argument that this was a trait only possessed by males.

“In general, if there’s going to be an extravagant trait that’s used for fighting for mates, usually, it’s the males that have the extravagant trait, but biology is fun because there’s always exceptions — female reindeer have antlers,” said McCullough, who was not involved with the study (but whose beetle analyses Gishlick and Fortey drew upon for their work).

“If they are arguing that these are male weapons that are used to gain access to females, it would have been a stronger story to me if they had evidence that the females don’t have weapons.”

Read original article here

Science

Striking new images reveal beauty of forgotten, and largest, amber fossil of a flower

Leave a comment

Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.



CNN
 — 

Almost 40 million years ago a flower bloomed in a Baltic conifer forest. Dripping tree resin encased the petals and pollen, forever showcasing an ephemeral moment in our planet’s past.

Scientists have taken a fresh look at the unique amber fossil, which was first documented in 1872 as belonging to a pharmacist called Kowalewski in what’s now Kaliningrad, Russia.

The striking fossil had been languishing largely forgotten in the collection of the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources in Berlin (BGR), according to Eva-Maria Sadowski, a postdoctoral researcher at the Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin’s natural history museum, and author of the new study.

She said she heard about the fossilized flower, officially known as specimen X4088, in passing from a retired colleague, who she thought was exaggerating.

“He told me that he once visited the BGR and that (he) saw the most amazing and largest amber flower in their collection. I was not aware that they had an amber collection. So I asked the curator of the BGR collection if I could come to see their collection – and there I found the specimen X4088,” she said via email.

“I was more than surprised to see such a large flower inclusion.”

At 28 millimeters (1.1 inches) across, it’s the largest known flower to be fossilized in amber – three times the size of similar fossils.

Sadowski extracted and examined pollen from the amber. She found that the flower had been misidentified when it was first studied.

“The original genus name of this specimen was Stewartia of the plant family Theaceae. But we could show in our study that this was not correct, mainly based on the pollen morphology. But when the specimen was first studied in the 19th century, they (had) not discovered or studied the pollen,” she said.

The flower is closely related to a genus of flowering plants common in Asia today known as Symplocos – shrubs or trees that sport white or yellow flowers.

Originally named Stewartia kowalewskii, the authors propose a new name for the flower of Symplocos kowalewskii.

Amber fossils offer a tantalizing, three dimensional look at the past. As well as plants and flowers, a dinosaur tail, a crab, a hell ant, a spider mom and her young, an ancient bird’s foot and a lizard’s skull have been found entombed in globs of tree resin.

The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports on Thursday.

Read original article here

Science

Rare evidence that dinosaurs feasted on mammals uncovered

Leave a comment

Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.



CNN
 — 

Sometime during the Cretaceous Period, 120 million years ago, a dinosaur wolfed down its last meal — a small mammal the size of a mouse. And it’s still there.

A researcher with a sharp eye spotted the mammal’s foot preserved inside the guts of a fossilized Microraptor zhaoianus, a feathered therapod less than a meter (3 feet) long.

“At first, I couldn’t believe it. There was a tiny rodent-like mammal foot about a centimeter (0.4 inch) long perfectly preserved inside a Microraptor skeleton,” said Hans Larsson, a professor of biology at McGill University’s Redpath Museum in Montreal. Larsson came across the fossil while visiting museum collections in China.

“These finds are the only solid evidence we have about the food consumption of these long extinct animals — and they are exceptionally rare,” Larsson said in a news release.

The research, which was published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology on December 20, said this was only the 21st known example of a fossilized dinosaur with its last meal preserved.

It’s rarer still to find that a mammal was on the menu; there’s only one other such example currently in the fossil record.

“We already know of Microraptor specimens preserved with parts of fish, a bird, and a lizard in their bellies. This new find adds a small mammal to their diet, suggesting these dinosaurs were opportunistic and not picky eaters,” Larsson, a coauthor of the study, said in a statement.

“Knowing that Microraptor was a generalist carnivore puts a new perspective on how ancient ecosystems may have worked and a possible insight into the success of these small, feathered dinosaurs,” he explained.

Generalist predators, like foxes and crows, are important stabilizers in today’s ecosystems because they can feed on several species, the news release said. According to the research, the Microraptor is the first known example of a generalist carnivore in a dinosaur era.

It was possible that other dinosaurs from the therapod family, which included the Tyrannosaurus rex, might also have shared a similarly unfussy diet, the study said.

The Microraptor fossil was discovered in the rich fossil deposits in Liaoning in northeastern China in the early 2000s. The specimen, which features plumage on its arm wings and legs, was one of the first feathered dinosaurs to be unearthed.

“While this mammal would absolutely not have been a human ancestor, we can look back at some of our ancient relatives being a meal for hungry dinosaurs,” said study coauthor Dr. David Hone, a reader in zoology at Queen Mary University of London, in a statement.

“This study paints a picture of a fascinating moment in time — one of the first record(s) of a dinosaur eating a mammal — even if it isn’t quite as frightening as anything in ‘Jurassic Park.’”

Read original article here

Science

Scientists Find a Mammal’s Foot Inside a Dinosaur, a Fossil First

Leave a comment

An illustration of Microraptor chowing down on a mammal foot.
Illustration: Ralph Attanasia

Paleontologists taking a second look at a species of small, four-winged dinosaur have found a fossilized mammalian foot in the predator’s stomach.

It’s the first concrete evidence of dinosaurs eating mammals, the researchers say. Specimens of the dinosaur, Microraptor zhaoinus, have been discovered containing ancient birds, fish, and lizards, so the mammalian find is just the latest known source of protein for this spunky hunter. The team who re-scrutinized the Microraptor fossil published their findings today in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

“It really demonstrates the generalist diet in this small feathered dinosaur,” said Hans Larsson, a paleontologist at McGill University and the study’s lead author, in an email to Gizmodo. “Adding mammals to the menu shows just how un-specialized this dinosaur was.”

The tree-dwelling Microraptor lived during the early Cretaceous, and specimens have been found across what is now northeast China. The fossil-rich region is called the Jehol Biota, and its well-preserved treasures are a great resource for understanding nuances of dinosaur anatomy, as well as details about different animals’ ecological niches.

Microraptor is thought to have lived in trees, gliding around the Cretaceous forests looking for morsels on branches as well as on the ground. The recently studied specimen is the holotype, meaning it was first of its species to be found and named. It’s only recently been revisited after its discovery back in 2000. The new analysis revealed the mammalian foot—a seemingly unprecedented find.

G/O Media may get a commission

The mammal foot (center) within the Microraptor fossil.
Photo: Hans Larsson

The researchers couldn’t identify the particular mammal species, but the foot’s preservation within Microraptor allowed them to understand its ecological niche and, obviously, its predators.

“Gut contents are amazing snapshots into the diet of fossil animals, but they are so rare that it can be difficult to figure out whether the preserved ‘last meal’ represents the animal’s normal diet or a weird, one-off event that lucked into getting fossilized,” said Stephanie Drumheller-Horton, a paleontologist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who was not affiliated with the recent paper, in an email to Gizmodo.

“Microraptor is shaping up to be a very interesting exception to that rule, with multiple, beautifully fossilized specimens preserving different ‘last meals,’” Drumheller-Horton added. “Taken together, the authors make a compelling case that this little theropod wasn’t a particularly picky eater, eating all sorts of small-bodied animals in its environment.”

Another illustration of Microraptor with its prey.
Illustration: Hans Larsson

The mammal foot apparently did not belong to a distant human ancestor; the team said it had similarities to the morphologies of Sinodelphys, Yanoconodon, and Eomaia, all ancient species of early mammals that looked roughly like opossums or rodents.

The foot belonged to an animal about the size of a mouse. The team’s analysis found the critter wouldn’t have been a good climber—an indicator that Microraptor may have occasionally swooped down to the forest floor for feeding.

“The foot seems completely intact, and thus was swallowed whole. How much of the mammal was swallowed is unknown,” Larsson said. “However, there were several other unidentified bones around the foot in the rib cage, so I suspect that more of that mammal was consumed.”

The researchers could not determine whether the animal was hunted and killed or if the feathered dinosaur had scavenged its body.

Given the luck paleontologists have had with the Jehol Biota so far, it may just be a matter of time before another meal-laden specimen offers more insights about the Cretaceous food scene.

More: A Shark, Eating a Squid, Eating a Lobster, in One Fossil

Read original article here

Science

Fossil site was birthing ground for giant marine reptiles, study reveals

Leave a comment

Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.



CNN
 — 

The final resting place for dozens of massive prehistoric marine reptiles lies in what’s now Nevada’s Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest.

But why the ichthyosaurs died in such large numbers at this one particular fossil site some 230 million years ago has long been a source of debate among paleontologists. Scientifically known as Shonisaurus popularis, the species resembled a chunky dolphin and grew at least 50 feet (15.2 meters) long.

Theories suggested a mass stranding event or that the ichthyosaurs were poisoned by toxins from an algal bloom.

Now, though, scientists say that they have ruled out these hypotheses and have a much better understanding of why 37 of the ancient creatures died at the same location. The researchers believe their findings illuminate a fascinating aspect of the reptile species reproductive behavior, which is shared by some of today’s marine mammals.

“We present evidence that these ichthyosaurs died here in large numbers because they were migrating to this area to give birth for many generations across hundreds of thousands of years,” said study coauthor Nicholas Pyenson, a research geologist and curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, in a news release.

“That means this type of behavior we observe today in whales has been around for more than 200 million years.”

Present-day whale species, including blue and humpback whales, routinely migrate across oceans to breed and give birth in waters where predators are scarce. Many whales congregate year after year along the same stretches of coastline.

“There are other examples of ichthyosaur embryos and newborns, but this is the first time we have strong evidence for reproductive grouping behavior,” said study coauthor Randy Irmis, chief curator and curator of paleontology at the Natural History Museum of Utah in Salt Lake City.

“We know this is something many large marine vertebrates exhibit in the present, so it makes sense that simialr behavior occurred in the past. But we really didn’t know how far back, especially with extinct animal groups like ichthyosaurs, that have no close living relatives,” Irmis said in an email to CNN.

The researchers from the United States, United Kingdom and Belgium used new techniques, such as 3D modeling, to investigate the fossil site, which is part of Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park.

The team examined the chemical makeup of rocks surrounding the fossils and found no evidence of any sudden increases in organic matter, such as algae, that might have starved the creatures of oxygen.

Geological evidence also suggested the ichthyosaurs’ bones had sunk to the bottom of the sea, which then covered much of present-day Nevada, rather than along a shoreline shallow enough to suggest the marine reptiles had beached themselves.

What’s more, the team noticed the fossils were predominantly of adult ichthyosaurs, with very few other marine vertebrates present. Nor were there any juvenile ichthyosaurs.

A breakthrough came when tiny ichthyosaur remains were identified among both new fossils collected at the site and within older museum collections. Micro-CT X-ray scans revealed the small bones belonged to embryonic and newborn ichthyosaurs.

“Once it became clear that there was nothing for them to eat here, and there were large adult Shonisaurus along with embryos and newborns but no juveniles, we started to seriously consider whether this might have been a birthing ground,” said lead author Neil Kelley, a research assistant professor in Earth and environmental sciences at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, in the news release.

The authors concluded that the area must have been a preferred birthing habitat for the prehistoric creatures — and that the high number of fossilized remains was a result of the high numbers of ichthyosaurs that congregated there, perhaps over millions of years, to give birth.

“This is a clear ecological signal, we argue, that this was a place that Shonisaurus used to give birth, very similar to today’s whales. Now we have evidence that this sort of behavior is 230 million years old,” Pyenson said.

The journal Current Biology published the research on Monday.

Read original article here

Science

Ankylosaurs used their sledgehammer tails to fight each other

Leave a comment

Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.



CNN
 — 

Armored dinosaurs called ankylosaurs might have wielded sledgehammer-like tail clubs against one another in conflict, in addition to warding off predators like the Tyrannosaurus rex.

A well-preserved fossil of an ankylosaur, a plant-eating dinosaur that lived 76 million years ago, is changing the way scientists understand the armored dinosaurs and how they used their tail clubs.

A study of the fossil revealed spikes on the dinosaur’s flanks that were broken and healed while the animal was still alive. Researchers believe the injuries were caused when another ankylosaur slammed its tail club into the dinosaur.

The study published Tuesday in the journal Biology Letters.

The ankylosaur sported bony plates in varied sizes and shapes across its body; along the sides of its body, these plates acted like large spikes. Scientists also believe ankylosaurs could have used their weapon-like tails to assert social dominance, establish their territory or even while battling for mates.

An ankylosaurs using its tail in combat against one another is similar to how animals like deer and antelope use their antlers and horns to fight one another today.

The fossil is of a member of particular species of ankylosaur otherwise know by its classification name, Zuul crurivastator. If the name sounds familiar, it’s because researchers borrowed the name Zuul from a monster in the 1984 film “Ghostbusters.”

The dinosaur’s full name means “Zuul, the destroyer of shins,” given that the ankylosaur’s tail club is thought to have been the enemy of tyrannosaurs and other predators that walked upright on their hind legs.

These tails measured up to 10 feet (3 meters) long, with rows of sharp spikes along the sides. The tail’s tip was fortified with bony structures, creating a club that could swing with the force of a sledgehammer.

The skull and tail were the first pieces of the fossil to emerge in 2017 from a dig site in northern Montana’s Judith River Formation, and paleontologists labored for years to free the rest of the fossil from 35,000 pounds of sandstone. The fossil was so well preserved that remnants of skin and bony armor across the dinosaur’s back and flanks remain, giving it a very lifelike appearance.

This particular ankylosaur seemed pretty banged up by the end of its life, with spikes near its hips and sides missing tips. After sustaining these injuries, the bone healed into a much more blunt shape.

Due to the location on the body, the researchers don’t believe the injuries were caused by a predator’s attack. Instead, the pattern looks like the result of receiving a forceful slam from another ankylosaur’s tail club.

“I’ve been interested in how ankylosaurs used their tail clubs for years and this is a really exciting new piece of the puzzle,” said lead study author Dr. Victoria Arbour, curator of palaeontology at the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, Canada, in a statement.

“We know that ankylosaurs could use their tail clubs to deliver very strong blows to an opponent, but most people thought they were using their tail clubs to fight predators. Instead, ankylosaurs like Zuul may have been fighting each other.”

Arbour suggested the hypothesis that ankylosaurs might have engaged in their behavior years ago, but fossil evidence of injuries was needed — and ankylosaur fossils are rare.

The exceptional Zuul crurivastator fossil helped to fill that knowledge gap.

“The fact that the skin and armour are preserved in place is like a snapshot of how Zuul looked when it was alive. And the injuries Zuul sustained during its lifetime tell us about how it may have behaved and interacted with other animals in its ancient environment,” said study coauthor Dr. David Evans, Temerty Chair and curator of vertebrate palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, in a statement.

The Zuul fossil is currently kept in the Royal Ontario Museum’s vertebrate fossil collection.

Read original article here

Science

Plesiosaur: Fossil hunters in Australia discover 100 million-year-old skeleton

Leave a comment



CNN
 — 

The discovery of a giant 100 million-year-old marine reptile’s skeleton in Australia has been hailed by researchers as a breakthrough that may provide vital clues about prehistoric life.

The remains of the 6-meter (19 feet) tall juvenile long-necked plesiosaur, also known as an elasmosaur, were found by a trio of amateur fossil hunters on a cattle station in the western Queensland outback in August.

Espen Knutsen, senior curator of palaeontology at the Queensland Museum, likened the discovery to that of the Rosetta Stone – the Ancient Egyptian block of granite rediscovered in 1799 that helped experts to decode hieroglyphics.

“We have never found a body and a head together and this could hold the key to future research in this field,” Knutsen said in a statement Wednesday that confirmed the discovery, adding it could give paleontologists greater insight into the origins, evolution and ecology of the cretaceous period in the region.

“Because these plesiosaurs were two-thirds neck, often the head would be separated from the body after death, which makes it very hard to find a fossil preserving both together,” he said.

The discovery was made by amateur paleontologists known as the “Rock Chicks” – Cassandra Prince, her sister Cynthia, and fellow fossil sleuth Sally, who goes only by her first name.

Elasmosaurs, which grew to between 8 and 10 meters long, lived in the Eromanga Sea, which covered large parts of inland Australia with waters 50 meters deep about 150 million years ago.

Knutsen told CNN that when an elasmosaur died, its decomposing body would swell with gas that made it rise to the water’s surface, and often the head would break off when predators scavenged the carcass – making full-body discoveries rare.

He added that because the latest find was a young specimen it would shed light on how the body shape of elasmosaurs changed from youth to adulthood.

“We’re going to look at the chemistry of its teeth and that can tell us something about its ecology in terms of habitat as well, whether it was migrating throughout his life, or whether it was sort of staying in the same habitat, and also into its diet,” he said.

Ancient marine reptiles like plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs are not classified as dinosaurs even though they lived around the same time. Plesiosaurs evolved from ancestors who lived on land and therefore didn’t have gills and had to surface occasionally for air. It remains unknown how long they could stay underwater.

It’s the latest big discovery about prehistory to have been made in Australia in recent years.

In June last year, scientists confirmed that the 2007 discovery of a fossilized skeleton in Queensland was the country’s largest dinosaur. The dinosaur, nicknamed “Cooper,” stood about two stories tall, and was as long as a basketball court.

Two months later, scientists discovered that there once was a species of flying “dragon” that soared over Australia 105 million years ago. The pterosaur was described by researchers as a “fearsome beast” that snacked on juvenile dinosaurs.

Read original article here

Science

Prehistoric giant sea turtle newly discovered in Europe

Leave a comment

Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.



CNN
 — 

Long ago, gigantic marine turtles swam the Earth’s seas. Until recently, these prehistoric giants, reaching lengths of over 3 meters (10 feet) from head to tail, had been thought to be found only in waters surrounding North America.

Now, scientists have discovered a previously unknown species — the largest European sea turtle ever to be identified.

Initially found by a hiker who stumbled upon the remains in 2016 in the Pyrenees mountains of northern Spain, the species has been given the name Leviathanochelys aenigmatica. “Leviathan” is the biblical term for a sea monster, an allusion to the creature’s large body size, while “chelys” translates to turtle and “aenigmatica” translates to enigma — in reference to the turtle’s peculiar characteristics, wrote the authors of a paper published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports.

The unusual animal’s presence in this part of the prehistoric world revealed that giant turtles were more common than previously thought, according to the study.

Before the discovery, the largest European species measured at just 1.5 meters (5 feet) in length, similar to today’s leatherback sea turtles, which weigh an average of 300 to 500 kilograms (660 to 1,100 pounds) and measure 1 to 2 meters (or between 3 and 6.5 feet), according to the Smithsonian Institute.

The bone fragments of this newly identified species, however, have led scientists to estimate that Leviathanochelys had a 3.7-meter-long body (12.1 feet), almost as big as an average sedan.

“We never thought it was possible to find something like this. After quite a long study of the bone fragments, we realized that there were some features that were totally different, not present in any other fossil of a turtle species discovered so far,” said Albert Sellés, coauthor of the study and a postdoctoral researcher at the Autonomous University of Barcelona’s Miquel Crusafont Catalan Institute of Paleontology in Spain.

Originally, researchers believed the bones belonged to a different kind of animal, according to Sellés.

“It is quite common to find bone fragments, a lot of them. But most of them are uninformative,” Sellés said. “It is quite rare to discover something that really tells you a little bit of the life of the past.”

A local museum and Catalonia’s Ministry of Culture had originally collected the bone specimens, but they remained unstudied for nearly five years. When Sellés and the other researchers began their work studying the bones in 2021, they realized they were looking at a species of marine turtle completely new to science, and quickly went back to the Pyrenees site to perform more excavations.

There, more fragments of the specimen, including pieces of the turtle’s pelvis and carapace — the part of the shell that covered the creature’s back — were discovered. With these finds, the scientists observed more features not previously seen in any living or dead turtle species.

“The main differences of this new fossil are related to the pelvic region. More specifically, to a couple of bony bumps present in the anterior part of the pelvis, which we suspect are related to some kind of muscle that controls the movement of the abdominal region of the turtle,” Sellés said.

This feature or muscle most likely impacted the turtles’ breathing capacity, allowing them to hold their breath longer than other turtle species, in order to swim deep in the ocean to find food or escape predators, according to Sellés.

The research team estimated the ancient animal lived during the Campanian Age of the Late Cretaceous Epoch, making it at least 72 million years old.

The largest turtle on record, called Archelon, lived some 70 million years ago and grew to be about 4.5 meters (15 feet) long. Before this recent discovery, all prehistoric giant marine turtle discoveries were part of the same lineage as Archelon.

“We’re proving that turtles could achieve really gigantic proportions in different times, and also in different families,” Sellés said. “For the first time, we found a (giant) turtle that doesn’t belong to this family.”

The researchers hope to return to the fossil site again to look for more bones, as they are not certain that all fragments from this specimen have been discovered, according to Sellés.

Read original article here