Archive for July, 2018

Glaciers in East Antarctica also ‘imperiled’ by climate change

Source:University of California – Irvine A team of scientists from the University of California, Irvine has found evidence of significant mass loss in East Antarctica’s Totten and Moscow University glaciers, which, if they fully collapsed, could add 5 meters (16.4 feet) to the global sea level. In a paper published this week in the American […]

Yellowstone super-volcano has a different history than previously thought

The long-dormant Yellowstone super-volcano in the American West has a different history than previously thought, according to a new study by a Virginia Tech geoscientist. Scientists have long thought that Yellowstone Caldera, part of the Rocky Mountains and located mostly in Wyoming, is powered by heat from the Earth’s core, similar to most volcanoes such […]

Paleontologists discover largest dinosaur foot ever

The dinosaur foot known as ‘Bigfoot,’ described in a new scientific paper recently published in the open-access journal PeerJ — the Journal of Life and Environmental Sciences, was excavated in 1998 by an expedition from the University of Kansas, with Anthony Maltese, lead author of the study, as member of the crew. After detailed preparation and study, Maltese and his international team of researchers identified it as belonging to an animal very closely related to Brachiosaurus.

The Earth’s youngest banded iron formation discovered.

The discovery of Earth’s youngest-ever banded iron formation is changing how scientists understand the evolution of complex life.

Earth’s ancient biosphere deciphered using prehistoric lake deposits.

A sample of ancient oxygen, teased out of a 1.4-billion-year-old evaporative lake deposit in Ontario, provides fresh evidence of what the Earth’s atmosphere and biosphere were like during the interval leading up to the emergence of animal life.

Curious armoured dinosaur fossil discovered in Utah!!!!

Fossils of a new genus and species of an ankylosaurid dinosaur — Akainacephalus johnsoni — have been unearthed in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah, USA, and are revealing new details about the diversity and evolution of this group of armored dinosaurs. The research indicates that the defining features of Akainacephalus — the spiky bony armor covering the skull and snout — align more closely with Asian ankylosaurids than other North American Late Cretaceous ankylosaurid dinosaurs.

WFS News: Plant fossils provide new insight into the uplift history of SE Tibet

@WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev The Tibetan Plateau, the highest and largest plateau in the world, is well known as ‘The Third Pole’. Tibet has also been called ‘Asia’s water tower’ because so many of Asia’s major rivers such as the Ganges, Indus, Tsangpo/Brahmaputra, Mekong, Yellow and Yangse rivers originate there. Despite its […]

WFS News: Scientists have discovered the oldest colors in the geological record

@WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev  1.1-billion-year-old porphyrins establish a marine ecosystem dominated by bacterial primary producers.  N. Gueneli, A. M. McKenna, N. Ohkouchi, C. J. Boreham, J. Beghin, E. J. Javaux, and J. J. Brocks.              PNAS, 2018 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1803866115 The average cell size of marine phytoplankton is critical […]

WFS News: Evidence for arboreal radiation of stem primates in the Palaeocene

@WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev Oldest skeleton of a plesiadapiform provides additional evidence for an exclusively arboreal radiation of stem primates in the Palaeocene Stephen G. B. Chester, Thomas E. Williamson, Jonathan I. Bloch, Mary T. Silcox, Eric J. Sargis Palaechthonid plesiadapiforms from the Palaeocene of western North America have long been recognized as among the oldest […]

WFS News: Early African Fossils Elucidate the Origin of Embrithopod Mammals

@WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev Long before rhinoceros, giraffes, hippos, and antelopes roamed the African savannah, a group of large and highly specialized mammals known as embrithopods inhabited the continent. The most well known is Arsinoitherium, an animal that looked much like a rhinoceros but was in fact more closely related to elephants, […]