Archive for the ‘General’ Category

WFS News: Tharosaurus indicus, an oldest long-necked dinosaur unearthed in India

@WFS,World Fossil Society,Athira,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev Fossils of the oldest long-necked dinosaur that inhabited Earth about 167 million years ago have been unearthed in India that reveal the country was a “major centre of dinosaur evolution”, experts said. The discovery unearths some of the oldest plant-eating giant reptiles to have roamed the planet. The dinosaur, named Tharosaurus indicus after India’s Thar desert, walked […]

WFS News: Historical RNA expression profiles from the extinct Tasmanian tiger.

@WFS,World Fossil Society,Athira,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev A new study shows the isolation and sequencing of more than a century-old RNA molecules from a Tasmanian tiger specimen preserved at room temperature in a museum collection. This resulted in the reconstruction of skin and skeletal muscle transcriptomes from an extinct species for the first time. The […]

WFS News:Plate tectonic cross-roads: Reconstructing the Panthalassa-Neotethys Junction Region from Philippine Sea Plate and Australasian oceans and orogens.

@WFS,World Fossil Society, Athira, Riffin T Sajeev, Russel T Sajeev Utrecht University geologist Suzanna van de Lagemaat has reconstructed a massive and previously unknown tectonic plate that was once one-quarter the size of the Pacific Ocean. Her colleagues in Utrecht had predicted its existence over 10 years ago based on fragments of old tectonic plates […]

WFS News:125-Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Feathers Reveal Traces of Ancient Proteins

@WFS,World Fossil Society, Athira, Riffin T Sajeev, Russel T Sajeev Paleontologists at University College Cork (UCC) in Ireland have discovered X-ray evidence of proteins in fossil feathers that sheds new light on feather evolution. Previous studies suggested that ancient feathers had a different composition to the feathers of birds today. The new research, however, reveals […]

WFS News: New Research Sheds Light on How Dinosaurs Became Giants

@WFS,World Fossil Society, Athira, Riffin T Sajeev, Russel T Sajeev Bone cavities called air sacs emerged in the precursors of long-necked dinosaurs around 225 million years ago, according to the analysis of a specimen found in Rio Grande do Sul state, South Brazil. The missing link has just been found, bridging the gap between the […]

WFS News: Long-Standing Question Answered – How Mass Extinction Paved the Way for Oysters and Clams

@WFS,World Fossil Society, Athira, Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev One of the biggest crises in Earth’s history, marked by a significant shift in shellfish, saw the widespread replacement of brachiopods, often referred to as ‘lamp shells’, with bivalve species such as oysters and clams. This happened as a result of the devastating end-Permian mass extinction, which effectively […]

WFS News: Large fossil spider found in Australia

@WFS,World Fossil Society, Athira, Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev A team of Australian scientists led by Australian Museum (AM) and University of New South Wales (UNSW) paleontologist Dr. Matthew McCurry have formally named and described a fossil spider, Megamonodontium mccluskyi, which is between 11–16 million years old. The findings on this new genus of spider […]

WFS News: Rhabdodontidae dinosaurs of Late Cretaceous Europe

@WFS,World Fossil Society, Athira, Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev A new study published in Fossil Record brings together intriguing details about the little-known Rhabdodontidae dinosaurs of Late Cretaceous Europe. These gregarious herbivores, characterized by robust builds and beaks specialized for tough vegetation, inhabited the European archipelago. Despite being widespread and abundant, they vanished in Western Europe due […]

WFS News: New insights into the sea spider fauna (Arthropoda, Pycnogonida) of La Voulte‐sur‐Rhône, France (Jurassic, Callovian)

@WFS,World Fossil Society, Athira, Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev An extremely rare collection of 160-million-year-old sea spider fossils from Southern France are closely related to living species, unlike older fossils of their kind. These fossils are very important to understand the evolution of sea spiders. They show that the diversity of sea spiders that still […]

WFS News:Burgessomedusa phasmiformis;Oldest known species of swimming jellyfish

@WFS,World Fossil Society, Athira, Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) announces the oldest swimming jellyfish in the fossil record with the newly named Burgessomedusa phasmiformis. These findings are announced in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Jellyfish belong to medusozoans, or animals producing medusae, and include today’s box jellies, hydroids, stalked jellyfish […]