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

A New Non-Pterodactyloid Pterosaur from the Late Jurassic of Southern Germany

February 25th, 2013

Riffin

The ‘Solnhofen Limestone’ beds of the Southern Franconian Alb, Bavaria, southern Germany, have for centuries yielded important pterosaur specimens, most notably of the genera Pterodactylus and Rhamphorhynchus. Here we describe a new genus of non-pterodactyloid pterosaur based on an extremely well preserved fossil of a young juvenile: Bellubrunnus rothgaengeri (gen. et sp. nov.).

Methodology/Principal Findings

The specimen was examined firsthand by all authors. Additional investigation and photography under UV light to reveal details of the bones not easily seen under normal lighting regimes was completed.

Conclusions/Significance

This taxon heralds from a newly explored locality that is older than the classic Solnhofen beds. While similar to Rhamphorhynchus, the new taxon differs in the number of teeth, shape of the humerus and femur, and limb proportions. Unlike other derived non-pterodacytyloids, Bellubrunnus lacks elongate chevrons and zygapophyses in the tail, and unlike all other known pterosaurs, the wingtips are curved anteriorly, potentially giving it a unique flight profile.

Citation: Hone DWE, Tischlinger H, Frey E, Röper M (2012) A New Non-Pterodactyloid Pterosaur from the Late Jurassic of Southern Germany. PLoS ONE 7(7): e39312. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0039312

Editor: Leon Claessens, College of the Holy Cross, United States of America

The specimen was found in summer 2002 during an investigation of the Brunn quarry by Monika Rothgaenger, who was at the time in charge of the privately organised scientific excavation in cooperation with the Bavarian State Collection for Palaeontology, Munich and the Solnhofen Museum, Bavaria. The specimen was subsequently prepared by freelance preparator Martin Kapitzke in Stuttgart before coming to the Solnhofen Museum in 2003. While permanently housed in the Solnhofen Museum as specimen BSP–1993–XVIII–2 (formerly curated as BSP XVIII–VFKO–A12), the material is owned by Bavarian State Collection for Palaeontology and Geology, Munich, Bavaria, Germany (BSP). See Figure 1.

Figure 1. Holotype specimen of Bellubrunnus BSP XVIII–VFKO–A12.

Scale bare 1 cm. Full page width.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0039312.g001

Locality, Geological Setting and Stratigraphy

The fossil lagerstätte of brunn.

The small village of Brunn is situated in Upper Palatinate, Eastern Bavaria, 25 km northwest of the city of Regensburg on the westernmost rim of the Southern Franconian Alb. The Brunn quarry is a small stone pit at the “Kohlstatt locality”, between the villages of Brunn and Wischenhofen, which was previously quarried for road building materials. Starting around 1990 some well-preserved fossils were discovered by collectors, and the first scientific excavations took place soon afterwards. These yielded many fossil plants and numerous invertebrate and vertebrate taxa. The Brunn quarry is now a protected site reserved for geological research only (Geological map of Bavaria 1:25 000, sheet 6937, Laber and sheet 6837, Kallmünz).

Methods

The speimen was described primarily under normal lighting regimes and examined with and without a light microscope and hand lens. Additional examination and photographs were then taken under UV lights by H.T.

For a general introduction to the methods used here to visualise vertebrate fossils in ultraviolet-light (UV) light . For UV investigation of the specimen here we predominantly used UVA lamps with a wavelength of 365–366 nanometers. The use of a variety of different filters allows selective visualisation of some fine structures. A series of experiments led to the determination of the optimal filter combination, the displacement, intensity, and incident angle of the ultraviolet lamps (e.g. see Figure 2). Documentation via ultraviolet-light photography was executed by means of analogue photography on slide film as well as by digital photography.

Figure 2. Bellubrunnus under multiple UV regimes.

Different filter and light combinations illuminate the bones and matrix differently providing greater clarity of some details. A selection are shown here for reference. Full page width.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0039312.g002

Figure 3. Line drawing of the holotype of Bellubrunnus.
Abbreviations as follows for this and, where appropriate, subsequent figures: cdv, caudal vertebrae; chv, chevron; co, coracoid; cp, carpus; cs, cristospine; cr, cervical rib; cv, cervical vertebrae; dr, dorsal rib; dv, dorsal vertebrae; fb, fibula; fe, femur; g, gastralium; hu, humerus; il, ilium; ish, ischium; mc, metacarpal; md, manual digit; mn, manus; pb, pubis; pd, pedal digit; ppb, prepubis; ptd, pteroid; r, ribs; rad, radius; sc, scapula; sk, skull; st, sternum; ul, ulna; wmc, wing metacarpal; wpx, wing phalanx. Single column width.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0039312.g003

Stratigraphy and the Principles of Relative Dating

February 23rd, 2013

Riffin

Relative dating falls under the sub-discipline of geology known as stratigraphy. Stratigraphy is the science of rock strata, or layers. Layering occurs in sedimentary rocks as they accumulate through time, so rock layers hold the key to deciphering the succession of historical events in Earth’s past.

The fundamental principles of stratigraphy are deceptively simple and easy to understand, but applying them to real rocks and fossils can be quite challenging. Here are the four fundamental principles of stratigraphy that form the foundation of our understanding of Earth’s history:

The Principle of Original Horizontality: When sediments are laid down on Earth’s surface, they form horizontal or nearly horizontal layers. This means that non-horizontal rock layers were tilted or folded after they were originally deposited.
The Principle of Lateral Continuity: Rock layers extend for some distance over Earth’s surface—from a few meters to hundreds of kilometers, depending on the conditions of deposition. The point is that scientists can relate layers at one location to layers at another. This is critical for stratigraphic correlation (see below).
The Principle of Superposition: As layers accumulate through time, older layers are buried beneath younger layers. If geologists can determine which way was originally “up” in a stack of layers, they can put those strata in the correct historical order. (Rarely, after a sequence of layers has been deposited and compressed to form rock, it may be literally overturned by thrusting of the Earth’s crust as continental plates collide. In these rare places the youngest rocks in a sequence are on the bottom, but such overturned sequences can be identified by the extensive faulting and breaking of rocks, and because the same original sequence of rocks is frequently present elsewhere in undisturbed order.)
The Principle of Faunal Succession: This principle is attributed to William Smith, an English engineer in the late 1700s. Smith noticed that the kinds of fossils he found changed through a vertical succession of rock layers, and furthermore, that the same vertical changes in fossils occurred in different places. Using the fossils collected from rocks in one part of England, Smith could predict the succession of rocks and fossils in other parts of England. The observation that fossils change in a consistent manner through stratigraphic successions can be extended to the entire world. Smith’s discovery formed a key line of evidence for evolution (it predates the birth of Charles Darwin in 1809), but it is an observed property of the rock record and is independent of natural selection, Darwin’s proposed mechanism of evolution.

Relative dating of rocks and fossils from an area is based on the Principle of Superposition, which enables scientists to put historical events in order. Relating the succession of events in one region to those in another requires that the two areas be stratigraphically correlated. Correlations can be made by tracing rock strata from one area to another by using the Principle of Lateral Continuity or by relating the fossils of the two areas using the Principle of Faunal Succession.

The Grand Canyon as an Example of the Principles of Stratigraphy
The Grand Canyon spectacularly exposes rocks spanning hundreds of millions of years of Earth’s history.
Many of the rock layers exposed in the walls of the Grand Canyon have not been disturbed by mountain building or other forms of deformation since they were originally laid down on Earth’s surface. This is an example of original horizontality. Some older layers, however, have been tilted; the surface where these tilted layers are overlain by undeformed strata is called an angular unconformity.

Many of the undisturbed formations can be traced from one end of the Grand Canyon to the other, a distance greater than 435 kilometers (270 miles). This is an example of lateral continuity. Some of the same formations are also exposed hundreds of miles farther away in other parts of the Southwest.

The oldest rocks in the Grand Canyon are exposed at the base of the gorge and are late Proterozoic. These rocks are overlain by younger Paleozoic-age rocks. This is an example of superposition: In a pile of sediment, the oldest deposits are at the bottom of the pile, underneath younger deposits.

Each major layer of sedimentary rock in the Grand Canyon contains different types of fossils. The succession of fossils in the Grand Canyon is consistent everywhere in the canyon and is also similar to the succession of fossils in other parts of North America and on other continents. This is an example of how the principle of faunal succession has been used to recognize that the Grand Canyon includes rocks from the Cambrian, Devonian, Mississippian, Pennsylvanian, Permian, and other geologic periods (each characterized by different fossils).

Biostratigraphy
Correlation based on fossils is the focus of biostratigraphy. Most species live only for a few million or tens of millions of years before they become extinct or evolve into new species. This fact implies that rocks containing fossils of the same species were probably formed within a few million years of one another. The more species that can be matched in this way, the more precise the estimate of the relative age of a rock layer. Organisms with high turnover rates (meaning that new species appear very rapidly and last for a short period of time) and a high likelihood of being preserved as fossils are ideal for biostratigraphy. Graptolites and conodonts are good examples from the Paleozoic, and mammals, foraminifera, and pollen are often used for biostratigraphy in Cenozoic rocks.

By using the four principles of relative dating, geologists can compile a detailed sequence of events based on relative time. The process is not always straightforward, however, because the geologic record is often discontinuous. Rock layers representing a particular time may be missing from an area because no sediment was deposited there at that time, or because sediments that were deposited were eroded. Furthermore, fossils may be absent or poorly preserved, and interpretations of evolutionary relationships within fossil groups may be incorrect. If sediments were deposited in different environments (such as land and oceans) comparison is difficult because most organisms are adapted to a relatively narrow range of environmental conditions.

Until the advent of radiometric dating, there was no independent way to test the accuracy of relative dating of sedimentary sequences. In stratigraphic sections around the world radiometric dating techniques have verified the relative ages of sedimentary rocks that had been determined long before from the fossils they contained.

Rocks whose ages have been determined by absolute dating can be incorporated into a succession of strata determined by relative dating. Then geologists can use correlation to infer the ages of rocks and fossils that cannot be directly dated.

Source: http://paleobiology.si.edu/geotime/main/foundation_dating2.html

Collection of Jerry Bastedo And Collegues from Penn Dixie paleontological site

February 22nd, 2013

Riffin

Brachiopods – Largest is 1 cm across, collected by Jerry Bastedo in 2004

Trilobite – Greenops sp., enrolled, 0.7.cm wide, collected by Jerry Bastedo in 2004.

Blastoid, 0.5 cm wide, discovered by Amanda Czechowski

Pyrite – smallest is 1 cm long, collected by Richard Spencer.

Living” molecules found in fossil

February 22nd, 2013

Riffin

“Living” molecules, meaning intact cellular structures that haven’t fossilized, were recently retrieved from 350-million-year-old remains of aquatic sea creatures uncovered in Ohio, Indiana, and Iowa, according to a study that will appear in the March issue of the journal Geology.

The animals- crinoids– were spindly and had feathered arms. Their relatives today are called by the plant-like name “sea lily.”

The retrieved molecules are quinones, which function as pigments or toxins (to help ward off predators) and are still found in modern sea lilies. The molecules aren’t DNA, unfortunately, but they can reveal other things about past life, such as the color of long gone animals.

“Living” molecules, meaning intact cellular structures that haven’t fossilized, were recently retrieved from 350-million-year-old remains of aquatic sea creatures uncovered in Ohio, Indiana, and Iowa, according to a study that will appear in the March issue of the journal Geology.

The animals- crinoids– were spindly and had feathered arms. Their relatives today are called by the plant-like name “sea lily.”

The retrieved molecules are quinones, which function as pigments or toxins (to help ward off predators) and are still found in modern sea lilies. The molecules aren’t DNA, unfortunately, but they can reveal other things about past life, such as the color of long gone animals.

“There are lots of fragmented biological molecules — we call them biomarkers — scattered in the rock everywhere,” William Ausich, professor in the School of Earth Sciences at Ohio State and co-author of the paper, said in a press release. “They’re the remains of ancient plant and animal life, all broken up and mixed together. But this is the oldest example where anyone has found biomarkers inside a particular complete fossil. We can say with confidence that these organic molecules came from the individual animals whose remains we tested.”

The ultra ancient crinoids appear to have been buried alive in storms during the Carboniferous Period. At that time, North America was covered with vast inland seas. The skeletal remains of the buried-alive crinoids filled with minerals over time, but some of the pores containing organic molecules were miraculously sealed intact.

This finding helps to negate the prior belief that complex organic molecules cannot survive fossilization.

Lead author Christina O’Malley, from Ohio State too, began the study when she noticed something strange about crinoids that had perished side by side and became preserved in the same piece of rock. She observed that the various species were preserved in different colors.

In one rock sample used in the study, one crinoid species appears a light bluish-gray, while another appears dark gray and yet another more of a creamy white. All stand out from the color of the rock they were buried in. The researchers have since found similar fossil deposits from around the Midwest.

“People noticed the color differences 100 years ago, but no one ever investigated it,” O’Malley said. “The analytical tools were not available to do this kind of work as they are today.”

She and her team employed a high tech machine called a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer to vaporize a liquid mixture that contained small bits of the ground up fossils. Computer software identified some of the resulting molecules as quinones.

The researchers next compared these molecules with ones from living sea lilies. As the scientists suspected, quinone-like molecules occur in both living sea lilies and their fossilized ancestors.

While “mummified” dinosaurs have yielded 66-million-year-old organic material, this level of preservation is exceedingly rare. And consider that these prehistoric sea lilies lived long before the first dinosaurs.

Crinoids tend to preserve really well because, like modern sand dollars, they possess a skin on top of their hard shells, which consist of stacked calcite rings. Calcite is a mineral made up of calcium carbonate. It is stable over geologic time, so organic matter may be protected by it when sealed whole.

“We think that rock fills in the skeleton according to how the crystals are oriented,” Ausich said. “So it’s possible to find large crystals filled in such a way that they have organic matter still trapped inside.”

“These molecules are not DNA,” he added, “and they’ll never be as good as DNA as a means to define evolutionary relationships, but they could still be useful. We suspect that there’s some kind of biological signal there—we just need to figure out how specific it is before we can use it as a means to track different species.”