Picture this: A massive asteroid almost as wide as Rhode Island and about three to five times larger than the rock thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs slams into Earth. The collision punches a crater into the planet’s crust that’s nearly 500 kilometers (about 300 miles) across: greater than the distance from Washington, D.C. […]
Archive for April, 2014
Extinct carnivorous marsupial Nimbacinus dicksoni may have hunted prey larger than itself
April 15th, 2014 
Riffin The reconstruction of an extinct meat-eating marsupial’s skull, Nimbacinus dicksoni, suggests that it may have had the ability to hunt vertebrate prey exceeding its own body size, according to results published April 9, 2014, in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Marie Attard from the University of New England together with colleagues from the […]
Posted in Featured Post 
Tags: carnivorous, Extinct, marsupial, Nimbacinus dicksoni, Riffin T Sajeev, Russel T Sajeev, WFS, world fossil society 
No Comments »Lone survivor of catastrophic meteor impact 65 million years ago?
April 13th, 2014 Riffin A team of scientists has discovered the youngest dinosaur preserved in the fossil record before the catastrophic meteor impact 65 million years ago. The finding indicates that dinosaurs did not go extinct prior to the impact and provides further evidence as to whether the impact was in fact the cause of their extinction. Researchers from […]
Extinct plants ‘back to life’ through colour rendering
April 12th, 2014 Riffin Jeff Benca is an admitted über-geek when it comes to prehistoric plants, so it was no surprise that, when he submitted a paper describing a new species of long-extinct lycopod for publication, he ditched the standard line drawing and insisted on a detailed and beautifully rendered color reconstruction of the plant. This piece earned the […]
500 million years old fossilized embryos found
April 11th, 2014 Riffin The Cambrian Period is a time when most phyla of marine invertebrates first appeared in the fossil record. Also dubbed the “Cambrian explosion,” fossilized records from this time provide glimpses into evolutionary biology when the world’s ecosystems rapidly changed and diversified. Most fossils show the organisms’ skeletal structure, which may or may not give researchers […]
First image of protein residue in 50-million-year-old reptile skin
April 10th, 2014 Riffin The organic compounds surviving in 50-million-year-old fossilized reptile skin can be seen for the first time, thanks to a stunning infrared image produced by University of Manchester palaeontologists and geochemists. Published in the journal Royal Society Proceedings B: Biology, the brightly-coloured image shows the presence of amides — organic compounds that serve as building blocks […]
WFS Profiles: Georges Cuvier (1769-1832)
April 9th, 2014 Riffin Georges Cuvier was one of the most influential figures in science during the early nineteenth century. A self-appointed referee of proper science from his stronghold in the elite Académie des Sciences, Cuvier was as successful in creating his own image as a great man of science as he was in the many areas of science […]
More Earthquakes for Chile? Seismic gap has not been closed
April 6th, 2014 Riffin After the strong earthquake that struck Chile on April 2 (CEST), numerous aftershocks, some of them of a considerable magnitude, have struck the region around Iquique. Seismologists from the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences doubt that the strong earthquake closed the local seismic gap and decreased the risk of a large earthquake. On the […]
Extinctions reduce speciation
April 5th, 2014 Riffin The same factors that increase the risk of species extinctions also reduce the chance that new species are formed. This is concluded by two biologists at Umeå University. Their findings are published in the April issue of the scientific journal Evolution. We often see alarming reports about the global biodiversity crisis through the extinction of […]
Dinosaur ‘Chase’ Reconstructed in 3D
April 4th, 2014 Riffin About 112 million years ago, a long-necked sauropod dinosaur traversed some intertidal flats near what is now Glen Rose, Texas. Coming after it — perhaps hours or days later, or perhaps hot on its tail in a dinosaur chase scene — a meat-eating theropod followed, overlaying some of the sauropod’s footprints with its own. This […]
