Nature reveals the “missing link” for sharks, thanks to a cartilaginous fossil of a 383 million-year-old eel-like fish:
… Read the rest “As Australopithecus to us, so this fossil to sharks.”Christian Klug at the University of Zurich in Switzerland
From the Linda Hall Library “Scientist of the Day” entry on Henry Fairfield Osborn:
… Read the rest “Science Art: Reconstruction on paper of Tyrannosaurus rex, from Bulletin of the AMNH, 1905 (Linda Hall Library).”Osborn named and described some of the most famous dinosaurs in the world,
Nature introduces us to the Greek ancestors of modern humanity – by far the oldest-known Homo sapiens, relatively recently discovered in a cave in southern Greece:
… Read the rest “Skulls of the first Homo sapiens in Europe”Harvati et al.
We thought we were pretty clear on how dinosaurs gradually evolved into birds, developing longer fingers, stronger feathers, and all the rest of that. Now, as Smithsonian Magazine reports,… Read the rest “Bat-winged dinosaur bemuses paleontologists”
An Easter Sunday lunch is served: an early bird!
This is the Chinese feathered dinosaur Sinocalliopteryx gigas, chomping the bird Confuciusornis – something … Read the rest “Science Art: Sinocalliopteryx gigas as a stealth hunter feeding on the primitive bird Confuciusornis, by Cheung Chungtat”
Science Daily has more on the creature named Peregocetus pacificus, which unfortunately hasn’t been around for a 42.6 million years, but was once a whale with four legs that crossed… Read the rest “Scientists discover a Peruvian four-legged whale – with “otter-like features”.”
Science News describes a dizzying array of unknown animals from “the Cambrian explosion,” when life took a sudden turn for the weird and wonderful. The 518 million-year-old… Read the rest “China opens a window on life before the dinosaurs.”
LiveScience digs deep for a prehistoric prize, finding dietary clues about Smok wawelski – a peak predator who, thankfully, left modern scientists poop full of bones:
… Read the rest “Prehistoric dragon ate bones with its meat. And its own teeth.”In a new study
I’ve always had a thing for these guys – the frills are so, well, *frilly*. I don’t usually picture them looking quite so … of the dawn, I guess.… Read the rest “Science Art: Styracosaurus, by Julio Lacerda”
The Leakey Foundation reveals what we know about the newest proto-human species to be given a name, Australopithecus sediba – and what these guys tell us about the way we learned to… Read the rest “New missing link: The ape that walked like we do.”
Science Daily makes the leather-winged terrors of the Jurassic seem downright cuddly with research that indicates pterosaurs might, in fact, have been soft and cuddly:
… Read the rest “Fuzzy little pterosaur.”Researchers led
Science Alert lets us know that oceanographers have determined that the event that killed 70 percent of all land species and 96 percent of all marine species (not individuals – but… Read the rest “We now know what killed everything in Earth’s worst mass-extinction event.”
Earth Archives talks about a recent fossil discovery that changes the way we picture marine life in the age of dinosaurs:
… Read the rest “Color-changing, warm-blooded ichthyosaurs.”An incredible new specimen of the Early Jurassic genus Stenopterygius
PhysOrg explains that they were really Elasmotheriums – 3.5-ton primordial rhinos known as “Siberian unicorns” – but they really did survive into the era of… Read the rest “We really did walk with unicorns.”
Science News looks back at the shallow coastal waters of eons past, when the wading was comfortably uncrowded and the first creatures with spinal cords began to take shape:
… Read the rest “The very first vertebrates came from the beach.”Scientists have
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