WFS

Formation of sedimentary layers of white clay, Tamilnadu, India

Fossil site for wood fossils, Tamilnadu, India

Fossil site in Kerala, India

Fossil wood park maintained by geological survey of India at Tamilnadu

Cretaceous fossil sites india

Fossils in rack:-Cyad

Fossils in rack:-echiniderms

Fossils in rack:-Rastellum sp

Pre-historic seabed, Cretaceous period

Woolly Mammoth DNA Adapted for Ice Age Survival

August 15th, 2013

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Genetics researchers may not clone a woolly mammoth any time soon but they are learning much about the ice age creatures by studying their DNA. One recent study sequenced the gene for mammoth hemoglobin, a red blood cell protein that allows blood to carry oxygen around the body. The trouble is, hemoglobin function begins to shut down at cold temperatures.

Scientists conducing the study compared the genetic code of the hemoglobin gene from a 43,000 year-old woolly mammoth to that of modern elephants. Turns out, mammoth hemoglobin has a unique adaptation that seems to have enabled it to continue it’s critical oxygen delivery functions even at cold temperatures.

Woolly mammoths evolved in Africa over one million years ago but migrated to Arctic regions just as the global climate began to cool significantly. The recently discovered hemoglobin adaptation must have been among many evolutionary changes that allowed mammoths to survive the brutal cold of the ice ages.

Source: Nature

Dating Oldest Known Petroglyphs in North America

August 14th, 2013

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A new high-tech analysis led by a University of Colorado Boulder researcher shows the oldest known petroglyphs in North America, which are cut into several boulders in western Nevada, date to at least 10,500 years ago and perhaps even as far back as 14,800 years ago.

The petroglyphs located at the Winnemucca Lake petroglyph site 35 miles northeast of Reno consist of large, deeply carved grooves and dots forming complex designs on several large limestone boulders that have been known about for decades, said CU-Boulder researcher Larry Benson, who led the new effort. Although there are no people, animals or handprint symbols depicted, the petroglyph designs include a series of vertical, chain-like symbols and a number of smaller pits deeply incised with a type of hard rock scraper.

A CU-Boulder-led team has found that petroglyphs discovered in western Nevada date to at least 10,500 years ago, making them the oldest rock art ever dated in North America. (Credit: University of Colorado)

Benson and his colleagues used several methods to date the petroglyphs, including determining when the water level the Winnemucca Lake subbasin — which back then was a single body of water connecting the now-dry Winnemucca Lake and the existing Pyramid Lake — reached the specific elevation of 3,960 feet.

The elevation was key to the study because it marked the maximum height the ancient lake system could have reached before it began spilling excess water over Emerson Pass to the north. When the lake level was at this height, the petroglyph-peppered boulders were submerged and therefore not accessible for carving, said Benson, an adjunct curator of anthropology at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History.

A paper on the subject was published this month in the Journal of Archaeological Science. Co-authors on the study included Eugene Hattori of the Nevada State Museum in Carson City, Nev., John Southon of the University of California, Irvine and Benjamin Aleck of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe Museum and Visitor’s Center in Nixon, Nev. The National Research Program of the U.S. Geological Survey funded the study.

According to Benson, a white layer of carbonate made of limestone precipitated from the ancient, overflowing Winnemucca Lake had coated some of the petroglyph carvings near the base of the boulders. Previous work by Benson showed the carbonate coating elsewhere in the basin at that elevation had a radiocarbon date of roughly 11,000 years ago.

Benson sampled the carbonate into which the petroglyphs were incised and the carbonate that coated the petroglyphs at the base of the limestone boulder. The radiocarbon dates on the samples indicated the carbonate layer underlying the petroglyphs dated to roughly 14,800 ago. Those dates, as well as additional geochemical data on a sediment core from the adjacent Pyramid Lake subbasin, indicated the limestone boulders containing the petroglyphs were exposed to air between 14,800 and 13,200 years ago and again between about 11,300 and 10,500 years ago.

“Prior to our study, archaeologists had suggested these petroglyphs were extremely old,” said Benson, also an emeritus USGS scientist. “Whether they turn out to be as old as 14,800 years ago or as recent as 10,500 years ago, they are still the oldest petroglyphs that have been dated in North America.”

While Native American artifacts found in the Lahontan Basin — which encompasses the Winnemucca Lake subbasin — date to the time period of 11,300 to 10,500 years ago, it does not rule out the possibility that the petroglyphs were carved as early as 14,800 years ago, Benson said.

The oldest dates calculated for the Winnemucca Lake petroglyph site correspond with the time frame linked to several pieces of fossilized human excrement found in a cave in Oregon, said Benson, who also is affiliated with CU’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. The caves, known as the Paisley Caves in south central Oregon, held not only fossilized human coprolites that dated to roughly 14,400 years ago, but also bones of horses and camels that went extinct in North America prior to 13,000 years ago.

The younger time interval calculated for the Winnemucca petroglyphs corresponds to dates obtained from a second significant archaeological finding in the region — Spirit Cave Man, who was discovered more than 70 years ago some 60 miles east of Reno and whose hair, bones and clothing were dated to about 10,600 years ago. The remains of the man, who was found partially mummified in a shallow grave in Spirit Cave, Nev., were discovered with a fur robe, a woven marsh plant shroud and moccasins.

Petroglyphs near Long Lake in central Oregon — which were previously thought to be the oldest examples of rock art in North America — share similar features with some of the rock art the Winnemucca site, said Benson. At least one of the petroglyph panels from Long Lake was buried by ash from an eruption of the nearby Mount Mazama volcano roughly 6,700 years ago, proof that it was carved sometime before the eruption.

“We have no idea what they mean,” Benson said of the Winnemucca Lake petroglyphs. “But I think they are absolutely beautiful symbols. Some look like multiple connected sets of diamonds, and some look like trees, or veins in a leaf. There are few petroglyphs in the American Southwest that are as deeply carved as these, and few that have the same sense of size.”

Benson obtained permission to non-invasively examine the petroglyphs from the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, which owns the land. Study co-author John Southton, a faculty member at University of California, Irvine, radiocarbon dated the material for the study.

The ‘Genetics of Sand’ May Shed New Light On Evolutionary Process Over Millions of Years

August 13th, 2013

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An evolutionary ecologist at the University of Southampton, is using ‘grains of sand’ to understand more about the process of evolution.

Dr Thomas Ezard is using the fossils of microscopic aquatic creatures called planktonic foraminifera, often less than a millimetre in size, which can be found in all of the world’s oceans. The remains of their shells now resemble grains of sand to the naked eye and date back hundreds of millions of years.

This image shows a close-up of planktonic foraminifera. (Credit: The University of Southampton)

A new paper by Dr Ezard, published today (9 August 2013) in the journal Methods in Ecology & Evolution, opens the debate on the best way to understand how new species come into existence (speciation). The debate concerns whether fossil records such as those of the planktonic foraminifera, contain useful evidence of speciation over and above the molecular study of evolution. Molecular evolution traditionally uses evidence from species that are alive today to determine what their ancestors may have looked like, whereas this new research promotes the importance of using fossil records in conjunction with the molecular models.

Dr Ezard, from Biological Sciences and the Institute for Life Sciences at Southampton, says: “Because planktonic foraminifera have been around for many millions of years and rocks containing groups of their species can be dated precisely, we can use their fossils to see evidence of how species evolve over time. We can also see how differences between individual members of species develop and, in theory, how a new species comes into existence.

“The controversial hypothesis we test is that the processes leading to a new species coming into existence provoke a short, sharp burst of rapid genetic change. This is controversial because it is very difficult to detect these new species coming into existence accurately without the fossil data; it is more commonly determined from assumptions made from the study of species alive today using molecular evidence.”

In the paper, Dr Ezard and colleagues, Dr Gavin Thomas from the University of Sheffield and Professor Andy Purvis from Imperial College London, highlight the importance of using fossil and molecular evidence to study evolution. Their intention is that the use of both types of data will become widespread in the future study of evolution.

To support his research, Dr Ezard has received an Advanced Fellowship from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) to study how variation among individuals generates variation among species. He will conduct this interdisciplinary research in the Centre for Biological Sciences at the University, in close collaboration with researchers from Ocean and Earth Science at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton.

Molecular and Paleontological Evidence for a Post-Cretaceous Origin of Rodents

August 12th, 2013

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The timing of the origin and diversification of rodents remains controversial, due to conflicting results from molecular clocks and paleontological data. The fossil record tends to support an early Cenozoic origin of crown-group rodents. In contrast, most molecular studies place the origin and initial diversification of crown-Rodentia deep in the Cretaceous, although some molecular analyses have recovered estimated divergence times that are more compatible with the fossil record. Here we attempt to resolve this conflict by carrying out a molecular clock investigation based on a nine-gene sequence dataset and a novel set of seven fossil constraints, including two new rodent records (the earliest known representatives of Cardiocraniinae and Dipodinae). Our results indicate that rodents originated around 61.7–62.4 Ma, shortly after the Cretaceous/Paleogene (K/Pg) boundary, and diversified at the intraordinal level around 57.7–58.9 Ma. These estimates are broadly consistent with the paleontological record, but challenge previous molecular studies that place the origin and early diversification of rodents in the Cretaceous. This study demonstrates that, with reliable fossil constraints, the incompatibility between paleontological and molecular estimates of rodent divergence times can be eliminated using currently available tools and genetic markers. Similar conflicts between molecular and paleontological evidence bedevil attempts to establish the origination times of other placental groups. The example of the present study suggests that more reliable fossil calibration points may represent the key to resolving these controversies.

Citation: Wu S, Wu W, Zhang F, Ye J, Ni X, et al. (2012) Molecular and Paleontological Evidence for a Post-Cretaceous Origin of Rodents. PLoS ONE 7(10): e46445. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0046445

Editor: Alistair Robert Evans, Monash University, Australia

Fresh Analysis of Dinosaur Skulls Shows Three ‘Species’ Are Actually One

August 11th, 2013

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A new analysis of dinosaur fossils by University of Pennsylvania researchers has revealed that a number of specimens of the genus Psittacosaurus — once believed to represent three different species — are all members of a single species. The differences among the fossil remains that led other scientists to label them as separate species in fact arose from how the animals were buried and compressed, the study found.

Landmark locations. The locations of the 3D landmarks are presented here in (A) dorsal and (B) lateral views on ZMNH M8137. Since the landmarks were not reflected on either side of the skull, the left lateral landmarks have different landmark numbers than the right lateral landmarks. A 3D model of the skull of ZMNH M8137 is included in Multimedia S1 for reference. Scale = 50 mm. (Credit: Brandon P. Hedrick, Peter Dodson. Lujiatun Psittacosaurids: Understanding Individual and Taphonomic Variation Using 3D Geometric Morphometrics. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (8): e69265 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0069265)

“Because of the vagaries of fossilization, no two fossils are the same,” said senior author Peter Dodson, professor of anatomy in Penn’s School of Veterinary Medicine and professor of paleontology in the School of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Earth and Environmental Science. “Animals are alive and they die, but what’s crucial in paleontology is what happens to the animals after they die.”

The research involved a cutting-edge technique, known as three-dimensional geometric morphometrics, which uses lasers to generate data about the shape of different specimens. This is the first time the approach has been used to study dinosaur fossils and could lead to a re-examination of the taxonomic classifications of additional dinosaur species as well as other long-extinct fossil organisms.

Brandon Hedrick, a doctoral student in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science, led the study in collaboration with Dodson. Their research will be reported in the journal PLOS ONE.

The investigation focused on dinosaurs in the genus Psittacosaurus, a word that comes from the Greek for “parrot lizard.” The group was named for the animal’s beaked face, not unlike that of a turtle. Originally discovered in 1923, 15 species have been classified as Psittacosaurus, though a recent analysis confirmed only nine of these as definite members of the genus. These animals were small plant-eaters that lived 120 to 125 million years ago. Paleontologists have discovered Psittacosaurus fossils in Mongolia, China and Russia and possibly in Thailand.

“Meat-eaters are sexy; plant-eaters are not,” Dodson said. “This isn’t a flashy dinosaur. But it has an interesting feature in that it’s one of the most abundant dinosaurs known to science.”

Indeed, many hundreds of Psittacosaurus specimens have been found. This abundance made the genus ideal for Hedrick and Dodson’s comparative study, as it is easier to determine relationships within and between species when there are more individuals to compare.

“For example, if you have a single dachshund and a single beagle, they may appear to be different species until you found 40 dachshund-beagle mixes of various grades to examine,” Hedrick said.

The scientists examined Psittacosaurus skulls discovered in the fossilized ashes of the Lujiatun beds of northeastern China’s Yixian Formation. Paleontologists had previously identified the skulls as belonging to three different species, Psittacosaurus lujiatunensis, P. major or Hongshanosaurus houi.

To compare and contrast the specimens, the researchers used two techniques. First they conducted a traditional study in which they examined every skull that had been classified as one of those three species — a total of 74 specimens — for a variety of characteristics that had been used in prior studies to distinguish the species. The Penn team also compared these fossils to skulls that had been classified as belonging to eight other Psittacosaurus species.

Next they completed a more high-tech analysis of 30 skulls from the three named species. Using a hand-held stylus that captures a point in space relative to a transmitter, they pinpointed 56 “landmarks,” or particular anatomical locations, on each fossil and compared the relative position of those marks between specimens. They also used a hand-held, laser-emitting scanner to make a three-dimensional image of each specimen, similar to a CT scan, from which they also collected landmark data.

Based on the “old-fashioned” method of examining the physical skulls, the researchers concluded that the three purported species were in fact one. They propose that all three can be considered members of the species P. lujiatunensis.

Results from the geometric morphometric analysis, though not sufficient on its own to classify species, supported this conclusion and suggested that how an animal’s body was crushed as it fossilized — from the top, from the side or twisted — could lead to inaccurate species determinations.

“Our study found all of these false ‘species’ that are not biological species but are apparent species caused by the process of fossilization,” Dodson said.

The Penn team said their investigation shows the value of traditional taxonomic analysis, while also revealing the potential of a new approach to analyzing fossils.

“Hopefully this will open up the paleontological community to using three-dimensional geometrics morphometrics in a variety of ways,” Hedrick said. “This technique has limitless applications to understanding dinosaurs.”

International research team discovers new mineral

August 10th, 2013

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Geologists at the University of California, Riverside have discovered a new mineral, cubic boron nitride, which they have named “qingsongite.”

The discovery, made in 2009, was officially approved this week by the International Mineralogical Association.

The UC Riverside geologists, Larissa Dobrzhinetskaya and Harry Green in the Department of Earth Sciences, were joined by scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the University of Maine and from institutions in China and Germany in making the discovery.

Qingsongite is a recently discovered mineral. Coesite and osbornite are also ultra-high pressure minerals. – L. Dobrzhinetskaya, UC Riverside.

“The uniqueness of qingsongite is that it is the first boron mineral that was found to be formed at extreme conditions in deep Earth,” Dobrzhinetskaya said. “All other known boron minerals are found at Earth’s surface.”

The mineral was found in the southern Tibetan mountains of China within chromium-rich rocks of the paleooceanic crust that was subducted to a depth of 190 miles and recrystallized there at a temperature of about 2372 degrees Fahrenheit and pressure of about 118430 atmospheres.

“About 180 million years ago the rocks were returned back to shallow levels of the Earth by plate tectonic processes leading to the closure of the huge Paleo-Thethys ocean – an ancient Paleozoic ocean – and the collision of India with the Asian lithospheric plate,” Dobrzhinetskaya explained.

Until now, cubic boron nitride, created first in the laboratory in 1957, was known as an important technological material. Because its atomic structure bears resemblance to carbon bonds in diamond, it has high density and could be as hard as diamond.

To date, more than 4700 species of minerals have been recognized, with at least 100 proposals for new minerals and their names submitted each year to the International Mineralogical Association for approval.

Qingsongite was named after Qingsong Fang (1939－2010), a professor at the Institute of Geology, the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, who found the first diamond in the Tibetan chromium-rich rocks in the late 1970s, and contributed to the discovery of four new mineral species.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by the University of California – Riverside

Earthquake data Visualisation

August 9th, 2013

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ROLLA, Mo. – Making sense of the ever-increasing mounds of data is one of the great challenges facing researchers today. At Missouri University of Science and Technology, staff and students in the information technology department have come up with an approach to help researchers gain a new perspective on their data.

The IT research support services (RSS) team at Missouri S&T has developed a tool to help researchers visualize their data. Called Visualizing Four Dimensions in Rolla, the system allows researchers to view their data in 3-D over various time spans.

The system is called V4DiR for short and is pronounced “Vader,” as in Darth. It holds promise for shedding light on various research projects at Missouri S&T and elsewhere, says RSS director Mark Bookout.

On campus, Bookout’s team has been demonstrating V4DiR’s power to researchers by showing maps-in-motion of natural disasters: all of the world’s earthquake occurrences from 1920 through 2012 as well as tornado activity in the U.S. since 1950. The earthquake data is also being used by Dr. Stephen Gao, a professor of geology and geophysics who is studying seismic activity in the Horn of Africa region.

This screenshot from Missouri S&T’s 3-D visualization program V4DiR shows where earthquakes occurred — and how deep into the earth — during a certain time frame. Using V4DiR, S&T researchers can now visualize global earthquake data from 1920 through 2012. (Credit: Image courtesy of Missouri University of Science and Technology)

The team also demonstrates V4DiR with a 3-D immersion of a New Mexico mine created by a remote-sensing technology known as LIDAR. With V4DiR it is possible to take a virtual walk-through of the mine, scanning the environment for anything that a researcher is looking for or that may seem out of place.

The RSS team uses projectors, head-mounted displays and a big-screen 3D TV to show off V4DiR’s capabilities. That on-screen visualization – a continuous loop of information – can be manipulated to help researchers home in on specific data points. For instance, the visualization can be tilted on an axis to provide greater levels of depth or various angles. It can also be stopped if researchers want to examine data from a particular time frame.

“We can pinpoint exactly where on the earth, as well as how deep within the earth, an earthquake has happened,” says Nick Eggleston, a junior computer science major from Maysville, Mo., who leads the project. Eggleston is part of a cadre of undergraduate students employed by RSS to develop tools that support Missouri S&T’s computing-intensive research efforts. He is developing a computer program to allow the software to show how data progresses over time. The program will also allow users to manipulate the format of their data and combine similar sets of data.

As impressive as the technology is in its ability to make images out of numbers, another aspect of V4DiR may be even more remarkable, says RSS director Bookout.

“One of the most powerful things to me is to watch how someone who sees it for the first time reacts to the visualization,” Bookout says. “Without exception, the first experience for faculty who see what we can do translates into a ‘Can it do this?’ conversation. Sometimes we hear, ‘I’ve never seen that before’ or even, ‘Uh-oh, what I thought was happening here in the data was wrong. I need to change something.'”

Bookout and undergraduate students demonstrated an earlier version of the system last November at Supercomputing 2012, an international conference for high-performance computing sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society and the Association for Computing Machinery. They plan to show off the system again at this year’s conference.

They also demonstrated V4DiR at the Great Plains Network conference last May in Kansas City, Mo. (S&T is a member of the Great Plains Network, a consortium of universities in the Midwest.) There, Eggleston met a behavioral psychologist who discussed the potential of using V4DiR to visualize data related to her research on how children with autism behave during various times of the day.

“V4DiR has the potential to enhance any sort of research,” Bookout says. “It allows us to use our natural pattern-recognition capabilities to isolate interesting groupings of information. And our association with vendors ensures that we have enough computing horsepower to build and display very large data sets in quick order.”

New Proto-Mammal Fossil Sheds Light On Evolution of Earliest Mammals

August 8th, 2013

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A newly discovered fossil reveals the evolutionary adaptations of a 165-million-year-old proto-mammal, providing evidence that traits such as hair and fur originated well before the rise of the first true mammals. The biological features of this ancient mammalian relative, named Megaconus mammaliaformis, are described by scientists from the University of Chicago in the Aug 8 issue of Nature.

“We finally have a glimpse of what may be the ancestral condition of all mammals, by looking at what is preserved in Megaconus. It allows us to piece together poorly understood details of the critical transition of modern mammals from pre-mammalian ancestors,” said Zhe-Xi Luo, professor of organismal biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago.

Megaconus was a nocturnal animal, foraging mostly in the night. It lived on the shores of a shallow freshwater lake in what is now the Inner Mongolia Region of China. (Credit: April Isch, Zhe-Xi Luo, University of Chicago)

Discovered in Inner Mongolia, China, Megaconus is one of the best-preserved fossils of the mammaliaform groups, which are long-extinct relatives to modern mammals. Dated to be around 165 million years old, Megaconus co-existed with feathered dinosaurs in the Jurassic era, nearly 100 million years before Tyrannosaurus Rex roamed Earth.

Preserved in the fossil is a clear halo of guard hairs and underfur residue, making Megaconus only the second known pre-mammalian fossil with fur. It was found with sparse hairs around its abdomen, leading the team to hypothesize that it had a naked abdomen. On its heel, Megaconus possessed a long keratinous spur, which was possibly poisonous. Similar to spurs found on modern egg-laying mammals, such as male platypuses, the spur is evidence that this fossil was most likely a male member of its species.

“Megaconus confirms that many modern mammalian biological functions related to skin and integument had already evolved before the rise of modern mammals,” said Luo, who was also part of the team that first discovered evidence of hair in pre-mammalian species in 2006.

A terrestrial animal about the size of a large ground squirrel, Megaconus was likely an omnivore, possessing clearly mammalian dental features and jaw hinge. Its molars had elaborate rows of cusps for chewing on plants, and some of its anterior teeth possessed large cusps that allowed it to eat insects and worms, perhaps even other small vertebrates. It had teeth with high crowns and fused roots similar to more modern, but unrelated, mammalian species such as rodents. Its high-crowned teeth also appeared to be slow growing like modern placental mammals.

The skeleton of Megaconus, especially its hind-leg bones and finger claws, likely gave it a gait similar to modern armadillos, a previously unknown type of locomotion in mammaliaforms.

Luo and his team identified clearly non-mammalian characteristics as well. Its primitive middle ear, still attached to the jaw, was reptile-like. Its anklebones and vertebral column are also similar to the anatomy of previously known mammal-like reptiles.

“We cannot say that Megaconus is our direct ancestor, but it certainly looks like a great-great-grand uncle 165 million years removed. These features are evidence of what our mammalian ancestor looked like during the Triassic-Jurassic transition,” Luo said.

“Megaconus shows that many adaptations found in modern mammals were already tried by our distant, extinct relatives. In a sense, the three big branches of modern mammals are all accidental survivors among many other mammaliaform lineages that perished in extinction,” Luo added.

The fossil, now in the collections in Paleontological Museum of Liaoning in China, was discovered and studied by an international team of paleontologists from Paleontological Museum of Liaoning, University of Bonn in Germany, and the University of Chicago.

How Did Earth’s Primitive Chemistry Get Kick Started?

August 7th, 2013

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How did life on Earth get started? Three new papers co-authored by Mike Russell, a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., strengthen the case that Earth’s first life began at alkaline hydrothermal vents at the bottom of oceans. Scientists are interested in understanding early life on Earth because if we ever hope to find life on other worlds — especially icy worlds with subsurface oceans such as Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s Enceladus — we need to know what chemical signatures to look for.

Two papers published recently in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B provide more detail on the chemical and precursor metabolic reactions that have to take place to pave the pathway for life. Russell and his co-authors describe how the interactions between the earliest oceans and alkaline hydrothermal fluids likely produced acetate (comparable to vinegar). The acetate is a product of methane and hydrogen from the alkaline hydrothermal vents and carbon dioxide dissolved in the surrounding ocean. Once this early chemical pathway was forged, acetate could become the basis of other biological molecules. They also describe how two kinds of “nano-engines” that create organic carbon and polymers — energy currency of the first cells — could have been assembled from inorganic minerals.

This image from the floor of the Atlantic Ocean shows a collection of limestone towers known as the “Lost City.” Alkaline hydrothermal vents of this type are suggested to be the birthplace of the first living organisms on the ancient Earth. Scientists are interested in understanding early life on Earth because if we ever hope to find life on other worlds – especially icy worlds with subsurface oceans such as Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s Enceladus – we need to know what chemical signatures to look for. (Credit: Image courtesy D. Kelley and M. Elend/University of Washington)

A paper published in the journal Biochimica et Biophysica Acta analyzes the structural similarity between the most ancient enzymes of life and minerals precipitated at these alkaline vents, an indication that the first life didn’t have to invent its first catalysts and engines.

“Our work on alkaline hot springs on the ocean floor makes what we believe is the most plausible case for the origin of the life’s building blocks and its energy supply,” Russell said. “Our hypothesis is testable, has the right assortment of ingredients and obeys the laws of thermodynamics.”

Russell’s work was funded by the NASA Astrobiology Institute through the Icy Worlds team based at JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. The NASA Astrobiology Institute, based at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., is a partnership among NASA, 15 U.S. teams and 13 international consortia. The Institute is part of NASA’s astrobiology program, which supports research into the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life on Earth and the potential for life elsewhere.

The First Occurrence in the Fossil Record of an Aquatic Avian Twig-Nest with Phoenicopteriformes Eggs: Evolutionary Implications

August 6th, 2013

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We describe the first occurrence in the fossil record of an aquatic avian twig-nest with five eggs in situ (Early Miocene Tudela Formation, Ebro Basin, Spain). Extensive outcrops of this formation reveal autochthonous avian osteological and oological fossils that represent a single taxon identified as a basal phoenicopterid. Although the eggshell structure is definitively phoenicopterid, the characteristics of both the nest and the eggs are similar to those of modern grebes. These observations allow us to address the origin of the disparities between the sister taxa Podicipedidae and Phoenicopteridae crown clades, and traces the evolution of the nesting and reproductive environments for phoenicopteriforms.

Nest and egg descriptions.

Comparison of the Palaelodidae and Phoenicopteridae distal tibiotarsi. show more (a) Phoenicopterus ruber (MZUSP 88485); (b) BAS new species; (c) Agnopterus sicki (MHNT 4257); (d) Phoenicopterus croizeti (MHNT 5085); (e) Palaelodus spp. (MHNT 5010). The most diagnostic characters found in BAS are a crest in the Retinaculum Extensorium Tibiotarsi (RET) divided by a deep and conspicuous sulcus from the articular facet for the intercotylar eminence of the tarsometatarsus (b), a deep intercondylar incision extending over the lateral condyle, a tuberosity for the RET medial attachment and a deep sulcus surrounded by crests cranial to the trochlea cartilaginis tibialis (not shown). RET: Retinaculum Extensorium Tibiotarsi. SRET: sulcus between the RET and the articular facet for the intercotylar eminence of the tarsometatarsus in the BAS specimen. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0046972.g006

Comparison of the Palaelodidae and Phoenicopteridae distal tibiotarsi.
(a) Phoenicopterus ruber (MZUSP 88485); (b) BAS new species; (c) Agnopterus sicki (MHNT 4257); (d) Phoenicopterus croizeti (MHNT 5085); (e) Palaelodus spp. (MHNT 5010). The most diagnostic characters found in BAS are a crest in the Retinaculum Extensorium Tibiotarsi (RET) divided by a deep and conspicuous sulcus from the articular facet for the intercotylar eminence of the tarsometatarsus (b), a deep intercondylar incision extending over the lateral condyle, a tuberosity for the RET medial attachment and a deep sulcus surrounded by crests cranial to the trochlea cartilaginis tibialis (not shown). RET: Retinaculum Extensorium Tibiotarsi. SRET: sulcus between the RET and the articular facet for the intercotylar eminence of the tarsometatarsus in the BAS specimen.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0046972.g006

Methodology/Principal Findings

Multi-disciplinary analyses performed on fossilized vegetation and eggshells from the eggs in the nest and its embedding sediments indicate that this new phoenicopterid thrived under a semi-arid climate in an oligohaline (seasonally mesohaline) shallow endorheic lacustine environment. High-end microcharacterizations including SEM, TEM, and EBSD techniques were pivotal to identifying these phoenicopterid eggshells. Anatomical comparisons of the fossil bones with those of Phoenicopteriformes and Podicipediformes crown clades and extinct palaelodids confirm that this avian fossil assemblage belongs to a new and basal phoenicopterid.

Conclusions/Significance

Although the Podicipediformes-Phoenicopteriformes sister group relationship is now well supported, flamingos and grebes exhibit feeding, reproductive, and nesting strategies that diverge significantly. Our multi-disciplinary study is the first to reveal that the phoenicopteriform reproductive behaviour, nesting ecology and nest characteristics derived from grebe-like type strategies to reach the extremely specialized conditions observed in modern flamingo crown groups. Furthermore, our study enables us to map ecological and reproductive characters on the Phoenicopteriformes evolutionary lineage. Our results demonstrate that the nesting paleoenvironments of flamingos were closely linked to the unique ecology of this locality, which is a direct result of special climatic (high evaporitic regime) and geological (fault system) conditions.

Citation: Grellet-Tinner G, Murelaga X, Larrasoaña JC, Silveira LF, Olivares M, et al. (2012) The First Occurrence in the Fossil Record of an Aquatic Avian Twig-Nest with Phoenicopteriformes Eggs: Evolutionary Implications. PLoS ONE 7(10): e46972. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0046972

Editor: Lee A. Newsom, The Pennsylvania State University, United States of America