Azendohsaurus just shed its dinosaur affiliation. A careful new analysis of A. madagaskarensis—this time based on the entire skull rather than on just teeth and jaws—aligns this 230-million-year-old animal with a different and very early branch on the reptile evolutionary tree. Many aspects of Azendohsaurus are far more primitive than previously assumed, which in turn means that its plant-eating […]
Archive for the ‘Featured Post’ Category
Demoting a dinosaur
August 20th, 2012 
riffin 
Posted in Featured Post 
Tags: Azendohsaurus, Riffin T Sajeev, Russel T Sajeev, WFS, world fossil society 
No Comments »Deep Earth Quakes
August 19th, 2012 riffin Deep earthquakes were discovered in the 1920s, but they remain a subject of contention today. The reason is simple: they aren’t supposed to happen. Yet they account for more than 20 percent of all earthquakes.Shallow earthquakes require solid rocks to occur—more specifically, cold, brittle rocks. Only these can store up elastic strain along a geologic fault, […]
300m-year-old forest preserved in ash :’Chinese Pompeii’
August 19th, 2012 riffin The researchers were able to “reconstruct” nearly 1,000 sq m of the forest’s trees and plant distributions. This rare insight into how the region once looked is described in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The excavations sampled three sites across a large expanse that was covered with about a metre of ash. Due to […]
Posted in Featured Post Tags: chineese pompii, Riffin T Sajeev, Russel T Sajeev, WFS, world fossil society No Comments »Rare insect fossil reveals 100 million years of evolutionary stasis
August 18th, 2012 riffin Researchers have discovered the 100 million-year-old ancestor of a group of large, carnivorous, cricket-like insects that still live today in southern Asia, northern Indochina and Africa. The new find, in a limestone fossil bed in northeastern Brazil, corrects the mistaken classification of another fossil of this type and reveals that the genus has undergone very […]
Bird Louse Study Shows How Evolution Sometimes Repeats Itself
August 17th, 2012 riffin A study of the genetic heritage of avian feather lice indicates that their louse ancestors first colonized a particular group of birds (ducks or songbirds, for example) and then “radiated” to different habitats on those birds — to the wings or heads, for instance, where they evolved into different species. This finding surprised the researchers […]
Hot Mantle May Prop Up the Seafloor
August 16th, 2012 riffin The seas may be rising due to climate change, but most of the seafloor is also dropping as part of the natural dynamics of Earth’s crust. The question that has dogged scientists for decades, however, is why hasn’t the ocean bottom sunk faster? An exhaustive analysis of the Pacific Ocean seabed may provide at least […]
Posted in Featured Post Tags: Riffin T Sajeev, Russel T Sajeev, Sea floor, WFS, world fossil society No Comments »X-Rays Reveals Origins of Volcano Hot Spots
August 15th, 2012 Riffin Scientists have used X-rays to expose the extreme conditions in the Earth’s core that lead to volcanoes, offering observational evidence that volcanic hot spots are indeed caused by giant plumes of magma flowing upward from within the Earth. Most volcanoes are found where continental tectonic plates push or pull against one another, but volcanic hot […]
Posted in Featured Post Tags: Riffin T Sajeev, Russel T Sajeev, volcanic hot spots, WFS, world fossil society No Comments »Whale fossil discovered on Flint River
August 14th, 2012 Riffin A Georgia Southern University team of professors and students Monday started excavating the fossil of a whale on the shore of the Flint River. The geology dig has been in the works for two years, and the team calls it a stunningly significant find. Did you know that there were whales at one time in […]
Posted in Featured Post Tags: bassilosaurus, Riffin T Sajeev, Russel T Sajeev, WFS, world fossil society No Comments »Giant Jurassic fleas drank the blood of dinosaurs and pterosaurs
August 13th, 2012 Riffin Fossils unearthed in China reveal that the insects were up to 10 times as large as modern fleas Fossil hunters have uncovered the remains of giant Jurassic fleas that sucked the blood of ancient beasts more than 100m years ago. The oversized insects had long, serrated sucking tubes for piercing dinosaur hides, and used spines on their bodies […]
Posted in Featured Post Tags: Giant Jurassic flea, Pterosaur, Riffin T Sajeev, Russel T Sajeev, WFS, world fossil society No Comments »Mojoceratops: New dinosaur species named for flamboyant frill
August 13th, 2012 Riffin When Nicholas Longrich discovered a new dinosaur species with a heart-shaped frill on its head, he wanted to come up with a name just as flamboyant as the dinosaur’s appearance. Over a few beers with fellow paleontologists one night, he blurted out the first thing that came to mind: Mojoceratops. “It was just a joke, but […]
Posted in Featured Post Tags: Ceratopsids, Mojoceratops, Riffin T Sajeev, Russel T Sajeev, WFS, world fossil society No Comments »
