What happens when the modern evolutionary theory of punctuated equilibrium collides with the older theory of mosaic evolution? Part of the answer comes from a new, wide-ranging study by paleobiologists Melanie J Hopkins at the Museum fuer Naturkunde Berlin and Scott Lidgard at the Field Museum in Chicago. Their results are published this week in […]
Archive for November, 2012
What happens when the modern evolutionary theory of punctuated equilibrium collides with the older theory of mosaic evolution?
November 30th, 2012 
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Tags: Fossil record, Riffin T Sajeev, Russel T Sajeev, WFS, world fossil society 
No Comments »Dinosaurs’ Role in Evolution of Bird Flight
November 26th, 2012 riffin A new study looking at the structure of feathers in bird-like dinosaurs has shed light on one of nature’s most remarkable inventions — how flight might have evolved. Academics at the Universities of Bristol, Yale and Calgary have shown that prehistoric birds had a much more primitive version of the wings we see today, with […]
Posted in Featured Post Tags: Bird Flight, Riffin T Sajeev, Russel T Sajeev, WFS, world fossil society No Comments »Dome-Headed Dinosaurs Did More than Just Butt Heads
November 25th, 2012 riffin We have all seen nature shows with footage of bighorn sheep rearing up and “butting heads” with each other using their heads and enlarged horns. People often assume other animals with horns and comparable head structures have similar behaviors. For a long time this was the case for the dome-headed dinosaurs, the pachycephalosaurids (pack-y-sef-a-lo-sore-ids), who […]
Echinoderms Display Morphological and Behavioural Phenotypic Plasticity in Response to Their Trophic Environment
November 24th, 2012 Riffin Adam D. Hughes*, Lars Brunner, Elizabeth J. Cook, Maeve S. Kelly, Ben Wilson Department of Ecology, Scottish Association for Marine Science, Oban, Argyll, Scotland The trophic interactions of sea urchins are known to be the agents of phase shifts in benthic marine habitats such as tropical and temperate reefs. In temperate reefs, the grazing activity of sea urchins has […]
Posted in Featured Post Tags: Echinoderms, Riffin T Sajeev, Russel T Sajeev, WFS, world fossil society No Comments »Rhino Skull Preserved in Volcanic Ash
November 23rd, 2012 riffin Less than 2% of Earth’s fossils are preserved in volcanic rock, but researchers have identified a new one: the skull of a rhino that perished in a volcanic eruption 9.2 million years ago. The find is described in a paper published Nov. 21 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Pierre-Olivier Antoine and colleagues from the […]
Posted in Featured Post Tags: Rhino Skull, Riffin T Sajeev, Russel T Sajeev, WFS, world fossil society No Comments » November 22nd, 2012 Riffin Less than 2% of Earth’s fossils are preserved in volcanic rock, but researchers have identified a new one: the skull of a rhino that perished in a volcanic eruption 9.2 million years ago. The find is described in a paper published Nov. 21 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Pierre-Olivier Antoine and colleagues from the […]
Bacterial biofilms as fossil makers
November 21st, 2012 Riffin Bacterial decay was once viewed as fossilization’s mortal enemy, but new research suggests bacterial biofilms may have actually helped preserve the fossil record’s most vulnerable stuff — animal embryos and soft tissues. A team of 13 scientists led by Indiana University Bloomington biologists Rudolf and Elizabeth Raff found that the invasion of dying embryo cells […]
Posted in Featured Post Tags: Bacterial biofilms, Riffin T Sajeev, Russel T Sajeev, WFS, world fossil society No Comments »Fossil Egg Links Dinosaurs to Modern Birds
November 19th, 2012 riffin Researchers have discovered a series of dinosaur eggs with a unique characteristic: they are oval in shape. The discovery supports the theory that birds and non-avian theropods, dinosaurs from the Cretaceous Period, could have a common ancestor. Before her death in December 2010, Nieves López Martínez, palaeontologist of the Complutense University of Madrid, was working […]
Posted in Featured Post Tags: Fossil Egg, Riffin T Sajeev, Russel T Sajeev, WFS, world fossil society No Comments »Why Some Earthquakes Result in Faster Shaking : A Tabletop Fault Model
November 18th, 2012 riffin The more time it takes for an earthquake fault to heal, the faster the shake it will produce when it finally ruptures, according to a new study by engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, who conducted their work using a tabletop model of a quake fault. “The high frequency waves of an earthquake — […]
Posted in Featured Post Tags: Fault Model, Riffin T Sajeev, Russel T Sajeev, WFS, world fossil society No Comments »“Sauroniops pachytholus” DINO NAMED AFTER LORD OF THE RINGS’
November 17th, 2012 riffin Earlier this year a team of palaeontologists came into the possession of what appeared to be a 95 million-year-old skull cap from a previously unknown dinosaur. Further analysis showed that the bone likely belonged to a carcharodontosaurid — an offshoot of the familiarAllosaurus. Given its unique domed skull, the researchers concluded that it was in […]
Posted in Featured Post Tags: Riffin T Sajeev, Russel T Sajeev, Sauroniops pachytholus, WFS, world fossil society No Comments »
