Stegosaurs might be portrayed as lumbering plant eaters, but they were lethal fighters when necessary, according to paleontologists who have uncovered new evidence of a casualty of stegosaurian combat. The evidence is a fatal stab wound in the pubis bone of a predatory allosaur. The wound — in the conical shape of a stegosaur tail […]
Archive for October, 2014
WFS Dino Diary: Riojasaurus (Rioja lizard)
October 29th, 2014 
Riffin Name: Riojasaurus (Rioja lizard). Phonetic: Re-o-jah-sore-us. Named By: Jose Fernando Bonaparte - 1967. Classification: Chordata, Reptilia, Dinosauria, Saurischia, Sauropodomorpha, Prosauropoda, Riojasauridae. Species: R. incertus (type). Diet: Herbivore. Size: About 10 meters long. Known locations: Argentina, La Rioja Province - Los Colorados Formation. Time period: Norian of the Triassic. Fossil representation: Several individuals. Riojasaurus was and […]
Bardarbunga volcano sits on massive magma hot spot
October 26th, 2014 Riffin Spectacular eruptions at Bárðarbunga volcano in central Iceland have been spewing lava continuously since Aug. 31. Massive amounts of erupting lava are connected to the destruction of supercontinents and dramatic changes in climate and ecosystems. New research from UC Davis and Aarhus University in Denmark shows that high mantle temperatures miles beneath Earth’s surface are […]
Dinosaur ecology found in fragile amber
October 22nd, 2014 Riffin Ryan McKellar’s research sounds like it was plucked from Jurassic Park: he studies pieces of amber found buried with dinosaur skeletons. But rather than re-creating dinosaurs, McKellar uses the tiny pieces of fossilized tree resin to study the world in which the now-extinct behemoths lived. New techniques for investigating very tiny pieces of fragile amber […]
placoderms:Origins of sex discovered?
October 20th, 2014 Riffin A profound new discovery announced in Nature today by palaeontologist, Flinders University Professor John Long, reveals how the intimate act of sexual intercourse first evolved in our deep distant ancestors. In one of the biggest discoveries in the evolutionary history of sexual reproduction, Professor Long has found that internal fertilisation and copulation appeared in ancient […]
Journey to the center of the Earth:Isotope Study
October 19th, 2014 Riffin A UC Santa Barbara geochemist studying Samoan volcanoes has found evidence of the planet’s early formation still trapped inside the Earth. Known as hotspots, volcanic island chains such as Samoa can ancient primordial signatures from the early solar system that have somehow survived billions of years. Matthew Jackson, an associate professor in UCSB’s Department of […]
Mysterious Midcontinent Rift is a geological hybrid
October 17th, 2014 Riffin An international team of geologists has a new explanation for how the Midwest’s biggest geological feature — an ancient and giant 2,000-mile-long underground crack that starts in Lake Superior and runs south to Oklahoma and to Alabama — evolved. Scientists from Northwestern University, the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), the University of Gottingen in […]
Microfossils reveal warm oceans had less oxygen
October 16th, 2014 Riffin Researchers in Syracuse University’s College of Arts and Sciences are pairing chemical analyses with micropaleontology — the study of tiny fossilized organisms — to better understand how global marine life was affected by a rapid warming event more than 55 million years ago. Their findings are the subject of an article in the journal Paleoceanography. […]
Posted in Featured Post 
Tags: Microfossils, Riffin T Sajeev, Russel T Sajeev, WFS, world fossil society 
No Comments »Earliest-known lamprey larva fossils discovered
October 15th, 2014 Riffin Few people devote time to pondering the ancient origins of the eel-like lamprey, yet the evolutionary saga of the bloodsucker holds essential clues to the biological roots of humanity. Today, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a description of fossilized lamprey larvae that date back to the Lower Cretaceous — at least […]
The unexamined diversity in the ‘Coral Triangle’
October 12th, 2014 Riffin Research on zoantharians, a group of animals related to corals and anemones, by researchers James Reimer of the University of the Ryukyusin Okinawa, Japan, Angelo Poliseno of Universita Politecnica delle Marchein Italy, and Bert Hoeksema from Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Netherlands, has demonstrated how little we know about marine diversity in the so-called “center of marine […]
