Archive for October, 2018

New species of ‘missing link’ between dinosaurs and birds identified

Known as the ‘Icon of Evolution’ and ‘the missing link’ between dinosaurs and birds, Archaeopteryx has become one of the most famous fossil discoveries in Palaeontology. Now, as part of an international team of scientists, researchers at The University of Manchester have identified a new species of Archaeopteryx that is closer to modern birds in […]

WFS News: Ancient flesh-eating fish look like piranha

@WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev Scientists have unearthed the fossilised remains of a piranha-like species that they say is the earliest known example of a flesh-eating fish.This bony creature, found in South Germany, lived about 150 million years ago and had the distinctive sharp teeth of modern-day piranhas.These Jurassic marauders used their razor […]

WFS News: Climate Change and the Geophysical Underpinnings of Species Diversity

@WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev Conserving the Stage: Climate Change and the Geophysical Underpinnings of Species Diversity Conservationists have proposed methods for adapting to climate change that assume species distributions are primarily explained by climate variables. The key idea is to use the understanding of species-climate relationships to map corridors and to identify […]

WFS News: Oldest skeleton of a fossil flying squirrel

@WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev The oldest flying squirrel fossil ever found has unearthed new insight on the origin and evolution of these airborne animals. Writing in the open-access journal eLife, researchers from the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont (ICP) in Barcelona, Spain, described the 11.6-million-year-old fossil, which was discovered in Can Mata […]

WFS News: Dinosaur from the Earliest Jurassic of South Africa

@ WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev A Giant Dinosaur from the Earliest Jurassic of South Africa and the Transition to Quadrupedality in Early Sauropodomorphs A new species of a giant dinosaur has been found in South Africa’s Free State Province. The plant-eating dinosaur, named Ledumahadi mafube, weighed 12 tonnes and stood about four metres […]

WFS News:Description of climate-envelope models

@WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev Climate-envelope models attempt to capture the climatic conditions that constrain the potential niche of a species, and use them to predict the probability of occurrence of species in an area. There are many different types of climate-envelope models [1], distinguished among other things by the type of data […]

Plate tectonics may have been active on Earth since its origin

A new study suggests that plate tectonics — a scientific theory that divides Earth into large chunks of crust that move slowly over hot viscous mantle rock — could have been active from the planet’s very beginning. The new findings defy previous beliefs that tectonic plates were developed over the course of billions of years. […]

WFS News: Fossil of Oldest Flowering Tree in North America Discovered

@WFS,World Fossil Society, Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev During the late Cretaceous period, northeastern Utah was home to pterosaurs, duck-billed dinosaurs and fearsome therizinosaurs with claws that would put Edward Scissorhands to shame. Now, add to that list giant flowering trees. A fossil log found in the Mancos Shale of Utah reveals that huge angiosperms were part […]