The discovery of well-preserved pelves and a partial pelvic fin from Tiktaalik roseae, a 375 million-year-old transitional species between fish and the first legged animals, reveals that the evolution of hind legs actually began as enhanced hind fins. This challenges existing theory that large, mobile hind appendages were developed only after vertebrates transitioned to land. […]
Archive for January, 2014
Discovery of New Tiktaalik Roseae Fossils Reveals Key Link in Evolution of Hind Limbs
January 14th, 2014 
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Taking the ‘Pulse’ of Volcanoes Using Satellite Images
January 13th, 2014 Riffin A new study by scientists at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science uses Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) data to investigate deformation prior to the eruption of active volcanoes in Indonesia’s west Sunda arc. Led by geophysicist Estelle Chaussard and UM Professor Falk Amelung, the study uncovered evidence that […]
Fossil Pigments Reveal the Colors of Ancient Sea Monsters
January 12th, 2014 Riffin During the Age of the dinosaurs, huge reptiles, such as mosasaurs and ichthyosaurs, ruled the seas. Previously, scientists could only guess what colours these spectacular animals had; however, pigment preserved in fossilised skin has now been analysed at SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden and MAX IV Laboratory, Lund University, Sweden. The unique soft tissue […]
Iconic Australasian Trees Found as Fossils in South America
January 11th, 2014 Riffin Today in Australia they call it Kauri, in Asia they call it Dammar, and in South America it does not exist at all unless planted there. But 52 million years ago the giant coniferous evergreen tree known to botanists as Agathis thrived in the Patagonian region of Argentina, according to an international team of paleobotanists, […]
Amber Fossil Reveals Ancient Reproduction in Flowering Plants
January 7th, 2014 Riffin A 100-million-year old piece of amber has been discovered which reveals the oldest evidence of sexual reproduction in a flowering plant — a cluster of 18 tiny flowers from the Cretaceous Period — with one of them in the process of making some new seeds for the next generation. The perfectly-preserved scene, in a plant […]
‘Nedoceratops’: An Example of a Transitional Morphology
January 4th, 2014 Riffin The holotype and only specimen of the chasmosaurine ceratopsid dinosaur ‘Nedoceratops hatcheri’ has been the source of considerable taxonomic debate since its initial description. At times it has been referred to its own genus while at others it has been considered synonymous with the contemporaneous chasmosaurine Triceratops. Most recently, the debate has focused on whether […]
Earth’s Crust Was Unstable in Archean Eon; Dripped Down Into Mantle
January 1st, 2014 Riffin Earth’s mantle temperatures during the Archean eon, which commenced some 4 billion years ago, were significantly higher than they are today. According to recent model calculations, the Archean crust that formed under these conditions was so dense that large portions of it were recycled back into the mantle. This is the conclusion reached by Dr. […]
