Archive for November, 2016

WFS News: X-raying the Earth with waves from stormy weather bomb

@WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T sajeev Using a detection network based in Japan, scientists have uncovered a rare type of deep-earth tremor that they attribute to a distant North Atlantic storm called a “weather bomb.” The discovery marks the first time scientists have observed this particular tremor, known as an S wave microseism. And, […]

WFS News: Keratin and melanosomes preserved in 130-million-year-old bird fossil Eoconfuciusornis

New research from North Carolina State University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Linyi University has found evidence of original keratin and melanosome preservation in a 130-million-year-old Eoconfuciusornis specimen. The work extends the timeframe in which original molecules may preserve, and demonstrates the ability to distinguish between ancient microstructures in fossils. Eoconfuciusornis, crow-sized primitive birds […]

WFS News: Asteroid impacts could create niches for early life

@WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T sajeev Scientists studying the Chicxulub crater have shown how large asteroid impacts deform rocks in a way that may produce habitats for early life. Around 65 million years ago a massive asteroid crashed into the Gulf of Mexico causing an impact so huge that the blast and subsequent knock-on […]

WFS News: This oviraptorosaur may have met its end in a Chinese slush pit

@ WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T sajeev The workmen were building a high school, blasting out the site with dynamite in the southern Chinese city of Ganzhou when they saw it: the newly exposed fossil of a small, child-sized dinosaur. It was well preserved despite the construction, and it struck a curious pose: head […]

WFS News: Dinosaurs’ rise was ‘more gradual’

Researchers have discovered two small dinosaurs together with a lagerpetid, a group of animals that are recognized as precursors of dinosaurs. The discovery made in Brazil and reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on November 10 represents the first time that a dinosaur and a dinosaur precursor have ever been found together. The […]

Plate tectonics cannot explain dynamics of Earth and crust formation more than three billion years ago

The current theory of continental drift provides a good model for understanding terrestrial processes through history. However, while plate tectonics is able to successfully shed light on processes up to 3 billion years ago, the theory isn’t sufficient in explaining the dynamics of Earth and crust formation before that point and through to the earliest […]

WFS News: Fossil clues to aftermath of dinosaur asteroid strike

Rapid recovery of Patagonian plant–insect associations after the end-Cretaceous extinction Michael P. Donovan,, Ari Iglesias,, Peter Wilf,, Conrad C. Labandeira, & N. Rubén Cúneo The Southern Hemisphere may have provided biodiversity refugia after the Cretaceous/Palaeogene (K/Pg) mass extinction. However, few extinction and recovery studies have been conducted in the terrestrial realm using well-dated macrofossil sites that […]