Archive for October, 2015

Baby Dinosaur Fossil Airlifted Out of New Mexico Desert

The National Guard recently airlifted a rare baby dinosaur fossil, estimated to be 70 million years old, out of “desert wilderness” in northwestern New Mexico, according to museum officials at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. The baby fossil, which is nearly as big a rhinoceros, is of a Pentaceratops, “a five-horned […]

The fiery world before dinosaurs

Scientists from the Department of Earth Sciences at Royal Holloway, University of London together with colleagues from the USA, Russia and China, have discovered that forest fires across the globe were more common between 300 and 250 million years ago than they are today. This is thought to be due to higher level of oxygen […]

Ecosystems of the Pleistocene epoch

For years, evolutionary biologists have wondered how ecosystems during the Pleistocene epoch survived despite the presence of many species of huge, hungry herbivores, such as mammoths, mastodons and giant ground sloths. Observations on modern elephants suggest that large concentrations of those animals could have essentially destroyed the environment, but that wasn’t the case. Now life […]

Life of Maiasaura

Fossil bone microanalyses reveal the ontogenetic histories of extinct tetrapods, but incomplete fossil records often result in small sample sets lacking statistical strength. In contrast, a histological sample of 50 tibiae of the hadrosaurid dinosaur Maiasaura peeblesorum allows predictions of annual growth and ecological interpretations based on more histologic data than any previous large sample […]

Mass extinction led to many new species of bony fish

With over 30,000 species worldwide, the ray fins are currently the largest group of fish. These bony fish were not always as numerous, however. Losses of other fish species, such as cartilaginous fish, helped them to spread successfully. As paleontologists from the University of Zurich together with international researchers reveal, a series of serious extinction […]

Arvinachelys goldeni: A pig nosed turtle fossil

In the 250-million-year evolutionary history of turtles, scientists have seen nothing like the pig nose of a new species of extinct turtle discovered in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by a team from the Natural History Museum of Utah. “It’s one of the weirdest turtles that ever lived,” said Joshua Lively, who described the new species […]

Spinolestes may be earliest mammal

A recently discovered fossil of a hedgehog-like creature may push back the date at which scientists believe mammals began to appear on Earth by more than 60 million years.The 125-million-year-old fossil, which was found in Spain, has what researchers say is the “earliest record of preserved mammalian hair structures and inner organs.” The creature, which […]

WFS Facts : Peanut Wood

Peanut wood is a variety of petrified wood that is usually dark brown to black in color. It is recognized by its white-to-cream-color markings that are ovoid in shape and about the size of a peanut. It received its name from these peanut-size markings. It is a fossil gem with a very unusual history. How […]

Developing Saurolophus dino found at ‘Dragon’s Tomb’

Scientists describe a perinatal group of Saurolophus angustirostris, a giant hadrosaur dinosaur, all likely from the same nest, found at “Dragon’s Tomb” in Mongolia, according to a study published October 14, 2015 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Leonard Dewaele from Ghent University and the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Belgium and colleagues. […]

Fossilized eggshells reveal how warm blooded dinosaurs were

Scientists have used the fossilized eggshells of dinosaurs to estimate their body temperatures — and have revealed some surprises. Researchers have long debated whether dinosaurs were warm blooded like their living relatives, modern birds. In recent decades, the idea that dinosaurs — especially later, smaller, more bird-like dinosaurs – were warm blooded and active like birds, rather than more sluggish […]