The Penn Dixie Paleontological and Outdoor Education Center in Hamburg is looking for people to work as volunteers for the site’s various programs and activities. A training session for new volunteers will be held at 8:30 a.m. Saturday in the Gateway Executive Office Building’s auditorium at 3556 Lake Shore Road in Blasdell, next to Woodlawn […]

Back in 2004, a fossil tetrapod from the Canadian Arctic achieved near-celebrity status, at least for mineralized skulls. The newly discovered specimen, named Tiktaalik roseae, made appearances on the Colbert Report and PBS NewsHour. (The scientists involved got to share a bit of the spotlight, as well.) The find was noteworthy because it supplied a long […]

A team of paleontologists has discovered the oldest animal with a skeleton. Called Coronacollina acula, the organism is between 560 million and 550 million years old, which places it in the Ediacaran period, before the explosion of life and diversification of organisms took place on Earth in the Cambrian. The finding provides insight into the evolution […]

Two new horned dinosaurs have been named based on fossils collected from Alberta, Canada. The new species,Unescopceratops koppelhusae andGryphoceratops morrisoni, are from the Leptoceratopsidae family of horned dinosaurs. The herbivores lived during the Late Cretaceous period between 75 to 83 million years ago. The specimens are described in research published in the Jan. 24, 2012, online […]

The discovery of two new extinct camel species by University of Florida scientists sheds new light on the history of the tropics, a region containing more than half the world’s biodiversity and some of its most important ecosystems.       Appearing online this week in theJournal of Vertebrate Paleontology, the study is the first […]

A 390-million-year-old fossil has yielded new insights into the evolutionary origins of the front claws of scorpions and horseshoe crabs. The fossil was discovered by scientists from Yale University and the University of Bonn Germany. It was unearthed in a quarry near Bundenbach in Germany and has been given the scientific name Schinderhannes bartelsi. The […]

Researchers* have recently published in the online edition of the journalCretaceous Research the discovery and description of a turtle from the end of the age of dinosaurs.They have named this new species as Polysternon isonae, in recognition of the municipality of Isona I Conca Dellà (Catalonia, Spain), where the fossil remains of the specimen type have been […]

Geological Society of America Special Paper 474, June 2011, “Geobiological opportunities to learn at U.S.  Fossil Parks” by Renee Clary, of Mississippi State University, and James Wandersee, of Louisiana State University, evaluated   seven fossil parks and the Penn Dixie Paleontological and Outdoor Education Center in Hamburg, NY was ranked No. 1.  This fossil site contains various marine invertebrate fossils […]

Researchers at Drexel University are bringing the latest technological advancements in 3-D printing to the study of ancient life. Using scale models of real fossils, for the first time, they will be able to test hypotheses about how dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals moved and lived in their environments. “Technology in paleontology hasn’t changed in […]

  Spyroceras is a Devonian genus of orthocerid cephalopod recorded from Europe and North America.Characters (from Sweet 1964): Annulated orthocones with straight transverse sutures, transverse or slightly oblique surface annulations, and faintly cyrtoconic apices. Surface variously ornamented, longitudinal lirae conspicuous from earliest stage. Siphuncle central or slightly ventral; siphuncle orthochoanitic with forward-growing endosiphuncular annuli; in mature segments, […]