Formation of sedimentary layers of white clay, Tamilnadu, India

Fossil site for wood fossils, Tamilnadu, India

Fossil site in Kerala, 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

WFS News: True colors of dinosaurs and other creatures from Fossils.

May 26th, 2019 Riffin

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A false color synchrotron X-ray image of a fossilized mouse. The yellow regions are rich in zinc and sulfur, suggesting the mouse’s fur had red pigments.CreditCreditNature Communications

A false color synchrotron X-ray image of a fossilized mouse. The yellow regions are rich in zinc and sulfur, suggesting the mouse’s fur had red pigments.Credit: Nature Communications

What color was T. Rex? What about triceratops or glyptodon? Until recently, the palette of prehistory was the sole provenance of daydreams, CGI artists or kids with crayons.

Advances in imaging technology are bringing us closer to real answers. Over the past decade, we’ve learned that Sinosauropteryx’s tail was striped, and Microraptor’s head was blue-black and shiny, like a crow’s.

A paper published Tuesday in Nature Communications adds to the paint box. In it, a team of researchers provide the first conclusive fossil evidence that an ancient creature contained pheomelanin — the same pigment that gives a red hue to chicken feathers, tiger fur and your freckles. Their findings, and the method that led to them, will allow researchers to search for more evidence of this coloring across the fossil record.

Even in well-preserved fossils, pigments deteriorate quickly. Researchers have a few workarounds to find clues to color. Some look for melanosomes, the organelles in animal cells that make and store pigments. The shape of a melanosome can indicate what type of pigment was once inside, while the organization of melanosomes within a feather can suggest whether a bird (or dinosaur) was dull or iridescent.

Another technique is to look for more persistent molecules known to be associated with pigments. That’s the preferred tactic of this research group, which previously found evidence of eumelanin — a brown and black pigment — in the plumage of the feathered dinosaur Archaeopteryx.

The 3 million-year-old fossil found in Germany of an extinct species of field mouse.CreditUniversity of Gottingen

The 3 million-year-old fossil found in Germany of an extinct species of field mouse. Credit: University of Gottingen

For this new study, the researchers worked with two specimens of an extinct field mouse, Apodemus atavus. Three million years ago, several of these mice died, and were washed into a pond in what is now Willershausen, Germany. Quickly buried by sediment, they were spared many of the ravages of bacteria and time, and ended up in a fossil drawer at the Geoscientific Museum at the University of Göttingen.

Phillip Manning spotted them in the museum’s collection a few years back.

“I saw the exceptional preservation of fur,” said Dr. Manning, a geologist at the University of Manchester and the paper’s lead author. “I realized, ‘Bloody hell, these are going to be worth scanning!’”

The mice were sent to the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California, where they were run through a special X-ray that revealed their chemical structure. The X-ray works at a fine enough scale to detect “a little bit of sulfur, or a little bit of zinc or copper,” said Uwe Bergmann of Stanford. “We can get maps of different elements very fast.” (Dr. Bergmann originally came up with this technique in the early 2000s, to reveal ink on erased and occluded pages of the Archimedes Palimpsest.)

Next, the team used spectroscopy to zoom in on two key elements: zinc and sulfur. In mammals and birds living today, pheomelanin is closely associated with particular zinc-sulfur compounds. The researchers saw these in the fossils as well, meaning their fur had been filled with the reddish pigment. They found a higher concentration of them on the dorsal side, suggesting the mouse had a lighter-colored belly.

“By understanding that delicate relationship between zinc and sulfur, for the first time, we can confidently say, ‘Yes, this is pheomelanin pigment in the fossil record,’” Dr. Manning said.

More important than their conclusion about the mouse’s color is what their process makes possible. Previous approaches to detecting color were piecemeal or destructive. But “this new method appears to allow mapping of color-giving pigments across a whole fossil,” without chipping any of it away, said Mike Benton, a paleontologist at the University of Bristol who was not involved in the study.

The group is working on further streamlining the scanning method, “so that it’s easy for anyone to come and bring in fossils,” Dr. Bergmann said.

Source: Article by By Cara Giaimo, the New York Times.

@WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev

 

WFS News: Amber imitation?

May 17th, 2019 Riffin

@WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev

Samples studied in this paper.

                                                            Samples studied in this paper.

Prehistoric Iberians created “imitation amber” by repeatedly coating bead cores with tree resins, according to a study published May 1, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Carlos Odriozola from Universidad de Sevilla, Spain, and colleagues.

Many studies have confirmed the ornamental and symbolic importance of amber to European prehistoric peoples. This study is the first to discuss potential prehistoric Iberian “imitation amber” beads made using the application of repeated resinite coatings on top of a bead core.

The authors obtained beads from two prehistoric sites in Spain: two from a cave tomb at the La Molina site in Sevilla, dating from the 3rd millennium BC, and four from a burial site in Cova del Gegant near Barcelona, dating from the 2nd millennium BC. Using infrared spectroscopy, an electron microscope probe, x-ray diffraction, and spectroscopy, the authors were able to study the chemical composition and structure of all six bead cores and coatings.

Detailed microphotographs of La Molina’s beads.

                                          Detailed microphotographs of La Molina’s beads.

The beads from Cova del Gegant had a mollusk shell core, covered by a multilayered coating made up of tree resins, most likely pine. The beads were covered by a calcium-containing white deposit, which likely precipitated post-burial from the bone tissue of buried individuals. The beads from La Molina were also composed of a core covered by an amber-like resin, as well as two topmost layers of cinnabar and calcite which probably coated the beads post-burial.

The authors speculate these coating technologies were used to imitate amber’s translucence, shine, and color, since during this prehistoric period, amber was relatively rare and highly in demand. However, both tomb sites contained other exotic materials such as ivory, gold and cinnabar, so it’s not clear why individuals able to obtain these rare goods would use amber alternatives. The authors speculate that, especially in the Cova del Gegant where “imitation amber” was found directly alongside true amber beads, unscrupulous traders may have substituted low-cost fake amber to cheat their buyers. The authors also suggest chemical analysis of apparent “amber” artifacts could prevent erroneous amber identification in future studies of such Iberian sites.

  1. Odriozola CP, Garrido Cordero JÁ, Daura J, Sanz M, Martínez-Blanes JM, Avilés MÁ. Amber imitation? Two unusual cases of Pinus resin-coated beads in Iberian Late Prehistory (3rd and 2nd millennia BC). PLoS One, 2019 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0215469
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WFS News: Two-legged dinosaurs may have begun to flap their wings as a passive effect of running along the ground

May 12th, 2019 Riffin

@WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev

Identification of avian flapping motion from non-volant winged dinosaurs
based on modal effective mass analysis

Before they evolved the ability to fly, two-legged dinosaurs may have begun to flap their wings as a passive effect of running along the ground, according to new research by Jing-Shan Zhao of Tsinghua University, Beijing, and his colleagues.

Seven-rigid-body system of Caudipteryx. The simplified rigid body system illustrates the mechanism of moving parts, main body, wings, legs, neck and head, and the tail of the Caudipteryx. The masses of all parts are represented by lumped mass points and the muscles at the joints are replaced with springs (As damping coefficient does not significantly affect the natural frequency, we simplified the joints which are composed of tendons, muscles, ligaments and soft tissues as purely elastic springs with no damping). Different effective masses of these seven primary modes of the simplified Caudipteryx show different possibilities to be excited.

Seven-rigid-body system of Caudipteryx.
The simplified rigid body system illustrates the mechanism of moving parts, main body, wings, legs, neck and head, and the tail of the Caudipteryx. The masses of all parts are represented by lumped mass points and the muscles at the joints are replaced with springs (As damping coefficient does not significantly affect the natural frequency, we simplified the joints which are composed of tendons, muscles, ligaments and soft tissues as purely elastic springs with no damping). Different effective masses of these seven primary modes of the simplified Caudipteryx show different possibilities to be excited.

The findings, published in PLOS Computational Biology, provide new insights into the origin of avian flight, which has been a point of debate since the 1861 discovery of Archaeopteryx. While a gliding type of flight appears to have matured earlier in evolutionary history, increasing evidence suggests that active flapping flight may have arisen without an intermediate gliding phase.

To examine this key point in evolutionary history, Zhao and his colleagues studied Caudipteryx, the most primitive, non-flying dinosaur known to have had feathered “proto-wings.” This bipedal animal would have weighed around 5 kilograms and ran up to 8 meters per second.

First, the researchers used a mathematical approach called modal effective mass theory to analyze the mechanical effects of running on various parts of Caudipteryx‘s body. These calculations revealed that running speeds between about 2.5 to 5.8 meters per second would have created forced vibrations that caused the dinosaur’s wings to flap.

Real-world experiments provided additional support for these calculations. The scientists built a life-size robot of Caudipteryxthat could run at different speeds, and confirmed that running caused a flapping motion of the wings. They also fitted a young ostrich with artificial wings and found that running indeed caused the wings to flap, with longer and larger wings providing a greater lift force.

“Our work shows that the motion of flapping feathered wings was developed passively and naturally as the dinosaur ran on the ground,” Zhao says. “Although this flapping motion could not lift the dinosaur into the air at that time, the motion of flapping wings may have developed earlier than gliding.”

Zhao says that the next step for this research is to analyze the lift and thrust of Caudipteryx‘s feathered wings during the passive flapping process.

Biophysical vibration of the wings. (A) Wearable devices to detect the performance of wings. The back bracket was manufactured through 3D printer with ABS plastics. The angular accelerometer sensor, force sensor and SD card were all mounted on the bracket (S3B Fig). The accelerometer sensor on the back and the wings were used to measure the rolling angle of body and wings respectively during locomotion on the ground. A force sensor is embedded between the arm and the body to measure the lift generated by the flapping wings (S3A Fig). (B) Simplified wing mechanism. Every wing has a flexible structure that is jointed with the body via elastic rubber belts, which are used to simulate the function of muscles. (C) Reconstruction of wings of different sizes. The first wing represents the forearm with filament feathers. From the second one to the fourth one, the length of feathers increases gradually. The second one represents the short feather, the third one represent middle feather while the fourth one with the longest feathers represents the largest wing (the realistic wing is the third one in accordance to the fossil).

Biophysical vibration of the wings.
(A) Wearable devices to detect the performance of wings. The back bracket was manufactured through 3D printer with ABS plastics. The angular accelerometer sensor, force sensor and SD card were all mounted on the bracket (S3B Fig). The accelerometer sensor on the back and the wings were used to measure the rolling angle of body and wings respectively during locomotion on the ground. A force sensor is embedded between the arm and the body to measure the lift generated by the flapping wings (S3A Fig). (B) Simplified wing mechanism. Every wing has a flexible structure that is jointed with the body via elastic rubber belts, which are used to simulate the function of muscles. (C) Reconstruction of wings of different sizes. The first wing represents the forearm with filament feathers. From the second one to the fourth one, the length of feathers increases gradually. The second one represents the short feather, the third one represent middle feather while the fourth one with the longest feathers represents the largest wing (the realistic wing is the third one in accordance to the fossil).

  1. Yaser Saffar Talori, Jing-Shan Zhao, Yun-Fei Liu, Wen-Xiu Lu, Zhi-Heng Li, Jingmai Kathleen O’Connor. Identification of avian flapping motion from non-volant winged dinosaurs based on modal effective mass analysis. PLOS Computational Biology, 2019; 15 (5): e1006846 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006846
PLOS. “Running may have made dinosaurs’ wings flap before they evolved to fly: New evidence suggests that passive wing flapping may have arisen earlier than gliding flight.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 2 May 2019. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190502143530.htm>.
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WFS News: Plate Tectonics new evidences…

April 30th, 2019 Riffin

@WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T sajeev,Russel T Sajeev

Neither the continents nor the oceans have always looked the way they do now. These 'paleomaps' show how the continents and oceans appeared before (top) and during (bottom) 'the collision that changed the world,' when the landmass that is now the Indian subcontinent rammed northward into Asia, closing the Tethys Sea and building the Himalayas. Global ocean levels were higher then, creating salty shallow seas (pale blue) that covered much of North Africa and parts of each of the continents. A team of Princeton researchers, using samples gathered at the three starred locations, created an unprecedented record of ocean nitrogen and oxygen levels from 70 million years ago through 30 million years ago that shows a major shift in ocean chemistry after the India-Asia collision. Another shift came 35 million years ago, when Antarctica began accumulating ice and global sea levels fell. Credit Credit: Images created by Emma Kast, Princeton University, using paleogeographic reconstructions from Deep Time Maps, with their permission

Neither the continents nor the oceans have always looked the way they do now. These ‘paleomaps’ show how the continents and oceans appeared before (top) and during (bottom) ‘the collision that changed the world,’ when the landmass that is now the Indian subcontinent rammed northward into Asia, closing the Tethys Sea and building the Himalayas. Global ocean levels were higher then, creating salty shallow seas (pale blue) that covered much of North Africa and parts of each of the continents. A team of Princeton researchers, using samples gathered at the three starred locations, created an unprecedented record of ocean nitrogen and oxygen levels from 70 million years ago through 30 million years ago that shows a major shift in ocean chemistry after the India-Asia collision. Another shift came 35 million years ago, when Antarctica began accumulating ice and global sea levels fell. Credit: Images created by Emma Kast, Princeton University, using paleogeographic reconstructions from Deep Time Maps, with their permission

When the landmass that is now the Indian subcontinent slammed into Asia about 50 million years ago, the collision changed the configuration of the continents, the landscape, global climate and more. Now a team of Princeton University scientists has identified one more effect: the oxygen in the world’s oceans increased, altering the conditions for life.

“These results are different from anything people have previously seen,” said Emma Kast, a graduate student in geosciences and the lead author on a paper coming out in Science on April 26. “The magnitude of the reconstructed change took us by surprise.”

Kast used microscopic seashells to create a record of ocean nitrogen over a period from 70 million years ago — shortly before the extinction of the dinosaurs — until 30 million years ago. This record is an enormous contribution to the field of global climate studies, said John Higgins, an associate professor of geosciences at Princeton and a co-author on the paper.

“In our field, there are records that you look at as fundamental, that need to be explained by any sort of hypothesis that wants to make biogeochemical connections,” Higgins said. “Those are few and far between, in part because it’s very hard to create records that go far back in time. Fifty-million-year-old rocks don’t willingly give up their secrets. I would certainly consider Emma’s record to be one of those fundamental records. From now on, people who want to engage with how the Earth has changed over the last 70 million years will have to engage with Emma’s data.”

In addition to being the most abundant gas in the atmosphere, nitrogen is key to all life on Earth. “I study nitrogen so that I can study the global environment,” said Daniel Sigman, Princeton’s Dusenbury Professor of Geological and Geophysical Sciences and the senior author on the paper. Sigman initiated this project with Higgins and then-Princeton postdoctoral researcher Daniel Stolper, who is now an assistant professor of Earth and planetary science at the University of California-Berkeley.

Every organism on Earth requires “fixed” nitrogen — sometimes called “biologically available nitrogen.” Nitrogen makes up 78% of our planet’s atmosphere, but few organisms can “fix” it by converting the gas into a biologically useful form. In the oceans, cyanobacteria in surface waters fix nitrogen for all other ocean life. As the cyanobacteria and other creatures die and sink downward, they decompose.

Nitrogen has two stable isotopes, 15N and 14N. In oxygen-poor waters, decomposition uses up “fixed” nitrogen. This occurs with a slight preference for the lighter nitrogen isotope, 14N, so the ocean’s 15N-to-14N ratio reflects its oxygen levels.

That ratio is incorporated into tiny sea creatures called foraminifera during their lives, and then preserved in their shells when they die. By analyzing their fossils — collected by the Ocean Drilling Program from the North Atlantic, North Pacific, and South Atlantic — Kast and her colleagues were able to reconstruct the 15N-to-14N ratio of the ancient ocean, and therefore identify past changes in oxygen levels.

Oxygen controls the distribution of marine organisms, with oxygen-poor waters being bad for most ocean life. Many past climate warming events caused decreases in ocean oxygen that limited the habitats of sea creatures, from microscopic plankton to the fish and whales that feed on them. Scientists trying to predict the impact of current and future global warming have warned that low levels of ocean oxygen could decimate marine ecosystems, including important fish populations.

When the researchers assembled their unprecedented geologic record of ocean nitrogen, they found that in the 10 million years after dinosaurs went extinct, the 15N-to-14N ratio was high, suggesting that ocean oxygen levels were low. They first thought that the warm climate of the time was responsible, as oxygen is less soluble in warmer water. But the timing told another story: the change to higher ocean oxygen occurred around 55 million years ago, during a time of continuously warm climate.

“Contrary to our first expectations, global climate was not the primary cause of this change in ocean oxygen and nitrogen cycling,” Kast said. The more likely culprit? Plate tectonics. The collision of India with Asia — dubbed “the collision that changed the world” by legendary geoscientist Wally Broecker, a founder of modern climate research — closed off an ancient sea called the Tethys, disturbing the continental shelves and their connections with the open ocean.

“Over millions of years, tectonic changes have the potential to have massive effects on ocean circulation,” said Sigman. But that doesn’t mean climate change can be discounted, he added. “On timescales of years to millenia, climate has the upper hand.”

  1. Emma R. Kast, Daniel A. Stolper, Alexandra Auderset, John A. Higgins, Haojia Ren, Xingchen T. Wang, Alfredo Martínez-García, Gerald H. Haug, Daniel M. Sigman. Nitrogen isotope evidence for expanded ocean suboxia in the early Cenozoic. Science, 2019; 364 (6438): 386 DOI: 10.1126/science.aau5784source: 
Source: Princeton University. “New fallout from ‘the collision that changed the world’.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 26 April 2019. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190426142057.htm>.
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WFS News: ‘Giant lion’ fossil found in Kenya museum drawer

April 20th, 2019 Riffin

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Simbakubwa's skull is believed to have been as large as a rhinoceros skull. (Supplied: Mauricio Anton)

Simbakubwa’s skull is believed to have been as large as a rhinoceros skull. (Supplied: Mauricio Anton)

Of all the places you could imagine discovering a giant meat-eating mammal, a drawer is probably not one.

But a pair of researchers from Ohio University have done just that.

Matthew Borths was studying fossils at the Nairobi National Museum in Kenya when he decided to have a poke around.

“On a lunch break I decided to pull open some different drawers just to kind of see what else was there,” Dr Borths said.

uckily for Dr Borths — and the world of palaeontology — his area of expertise just so happened to be an order of extinct meat-eating mammals called the hyaenodonta.

While he immediately recognised the lower jaw bone as a hyaenodont, he knew it was from a species that had not been described before.

“I was like, ‘how did I not know this was here?’ I felt really responsible,” he said.

“I’m one of the few people on the planet that really cares about this group of animals.”

Knowing he was onto something special, he contacted his research adviser who put him in touch with a colleague at Ohio University, Nancy Stevens, who had also done some palaeontology work in Kenya.

“When I contacted her, I discovered that yeah, she’d been in Nairobi about three years earlier than I had, and she’d had the exact same experience,” Dr Borths said

“She’s also interested in all kinds of mammals … but doesn’t have as much insider knowledge of the carnivore evolution. That’s kind of my little niche.”

Together, they identified the species and figured out where it sat in the hyaenodonta order. They’ve published their findings on Thursday in the Journal of Vertebrate Palaeontology.

After six years, they concluded that the animal was the biggest meat-eating beast in Africa of its time, between about 23 and 20 million years ago.

A mammal with a head about the size of a rhino’s and weighing in at around 1,500 kilograms, they called their discovery Simbakubwa kutokaafrika.

While “Simbakubwa” is a Swahili word meaning “big lion”, the hyaenodonts aren’t related to any modern-day African mammals.

The fossils were found decades before by a group of researchers on the hunt for ancient ape remains at a western Kenyan dig site called Meswa Bridge.

The palaeoanthropologists who found it were experts in apes, not quadripedal carnivores, and so put it away in a museum drawer for someone else to get to.

In their research into the Simbakubwa, Dr Borths and Dr Stevens discovered that plenty of other researchers had also opened the drawer before them.

But while they all expressed astonishment at what lay inside, they had other projects to get to and didn’t possess the particular knowledge needed to recognise the find.

This highlights not only how niche a field of expertise can be in palaeontology, but the importance of museums.

Around the world, it’s likely that there are millions of undescribed species sitting in collections awaiting classification.

In Australia, we name around 2,500 new species each year, according to Museums Victoria senior curator Kevin Rowe.

“That’s around 192,000 species, but we estimate there’s another 420,000 awaiting description.”

Many of those are sitting in drawers of their own.

But at the current rate, it will take around 400 years to classify all of Australia’s species, by which time many will be extinct.

In 2018, the Australian Academy of Science launched the Decadal Plan, which detailed a roadmap to radically boost the rate of taxonomic research in Australia.

The plan was endorsed by Sir David Attenborough, who said at the time that palaeontology around the world was being stripped of funding at a time when species are under the greatest threat.

“This has serious consequences for the future of life on Earth,” he said.

While serendipity led to the discovery of Simbakubwa, we may end up losing many species before we even know they exist, Dr Rowe said.

“It’s increasingly difficult because funding for taxonomy is getting harder and harder to get,” he said.

“If you lose museums, you lose the ability to name and define species, [but] it’s about getting the time and people to do that.”

Source:ABC Science By environment reporter Nick Kilvert

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WFS News: Sollasina cthulhu, The ‘Monstrous’ ancient fossil

April 10th, 2019 Riffin

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Artist's reconstruction of Sollasina cthulhu ( Elissa Martin, Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History )

                  Artist’s reconstruction of Sollasina cthulhu ( Elissa Martin, Yale Peabody                                                                                   Museum of Natural History )

An incredibly well-preserved fossil unearthed in Herefordshire has been named after a hideous creature from fiction: Sollasina cthulhu.

Although no larger than 3cm wide, its array of tentacles reminded the team who discovered it of the monster Cthulhu created by American author H.P. Lovecraft. A gigantic entity worshipped by cultists, the writer describes its appearance is described as looking like an octopus, a dragon, and a caricature of human form.

The fossil meanwhile, is thought to be a relative of tube-shaped sea cucumbers and spiny sea urchins still alive today. Scientists from both Oxford University and University College London said their “monstrous” new discovery provides new insights into the evolution of this group.

After grinding away at layer after layer of rock, they were able to create a digital reconstruction of the soft body preserved for 430 million years.

“We carried out a number of analyses to work out whether Sollasina was more closely related to sea cucumbers or sea urchins. To our surprise, the results suggest it was an ancient sea cucumber,” said Dr Jeffrey Thompson. “This helps us understand the changes that occurred during the early evolution of the group, which ultimately gave rise to the slug-like forms we see today.”

Publishing their findings in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the scientists said that like its descendants that still crawl along the ocean floor today, their specimen would have used its tentacles to shift itself around and catch food.

The excellent preservation of the creature’s soft tissues even captured elements of the hydraulic system that this group of animals use to manoeuvre themselves around.

“Sollasina belongs to an extinct group called the ophiocistioids, and this new material provides the first information on the group’s internal structures,” said Dr Imran Rahman from the University of Oxford, who led the study. “This includes an inner ring-like form that has never been described in the group before. We interpret this as the first evidence of the soft parts of the water vascular system in ophiocistioids.”

Within this system, modern starfish, sea cucumbers and sea urchins have a system of canals connecting their numerous tube feet. They then move by contracting muscles and forcing water around the canals.

Source: Josh Gabbatiss,Science Correspondent,Independent.

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WFS News:The First Definite Lambeosaurine Bone From the Liscomb Bonebed of the Upper Cretaceous Prince Creek Formation, Alaska, United States

April 3rd, 2019 Riffin 
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The First Definite Lambeosaurine Bone From the Liscomb Bonebed of the Upper Cretaceous Prince Creek Formation, Alaska, United States

Scientific Reports  9, Article number: 5384 (2019)

Schematic drawing of differential habitat preference between hadrosaurines and lambeosaurines.

              Schematic drawing of differential habitat preference between hadrosaurines and                                                                                                 lambeosaurines.

The Prince Creek Formation of Alaska, a rock unit that represents lower coastal plain and delta deposits, is one of the most important formations in the world for understanding vertebrate ecology in the Arctic during the Cretaceous. Here we report on an isolated cranial material, supraoccipital, of a lambeosaurine hadrosaurid from the Liscomb Bonebed of the Prince Creek Formation. The lambeosaurine supraoccipital has well-developed squamosal bosses and a short sutural surface with the exoccipital-opisthotic complex, and is similar to lambeosaurine supraoccipitals from the Dinosaur Park Formation in having anteriorly positioned squamosal bosses. Affinities with Canadian lambeosaurines elucidate more extensive faunal exchange between the Arctic and lower paleolatitudes which was previously suggested by the presence of Edmontosaurus, Pachyrhinosaurus, tyrannosaurids, and troodontids in both regions. The presence of one lambeosaurine and nine hadrosaurine supraoccipitals in the Liscomb Bonebed suggests hadrosaurine dominated faunal structure as in the Careless Creek Quarry of the USA that was also deposited under a near-shore environment. It differs from the lambeosaurine dominant structures of localities in Russia and China interpreted as inland environments. This may suggest that lambeosaurines had less preference for near-shore environments than hadrosaurines in both Arctic and lower paleolatitudes.

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WFS News: Fossil site shows signs of meteor impact

March 30th, 2019 Riffin

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Sixty-six million years ago, a giant meteor slammed into Earth off the coast of modern-day Mexico. Firestorms incinerated the landscape for miles around. Even creatures thousands of miles away were doomed on that fateful day, if not by fire and brimstone, then by mega-earthquakes and waves of unimaginable size.

Now, scientists have unearthed a remarkable trove of fossils that appear to date from the very day of the impact. The burial site consists of more than four feet of sediments and organic remains that were dumped in North Dakota almost instantly and transformed into rock over the eons. It evidently captures, in unparalleled detail, the repercussions of the giant doomsday rock that cleared the way for the evolution of mammals, including the primates known as humans.

A tangled mass of articulated fish fossils uncovered in North Dakota. The site appears to date to the day 66 million years ago when a meteor hit Earth, killing nearly all life on the planet.CreditCreditRobert DePalma/University of Kansas

A tangled mass of articulated fish fossils uncovered in North Dakota. The site appears to date to the day 66 million years ago when a meteor hit Earth, killing nearly all life on the planet. Credit Robert DePalma/University of Kansas

In an article made available to reporters Friday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a leading science journal, an international team of 12 scientists described a dig near Bowman, N.D., that encapsulated the swift demise of an ancient lake and its inhabitants.

When the meteor smashed into waters near what is now Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, it left a giant crater known as Chicxulub and prompted upheavals thousands of miles away, including what is now North Dakota. Within hours and perhaps minutes of the titanic collision, sea creatures were swept inland by tsunamis and earthquakes, tossed together and deposited with a diverse array of landlocked life, including trees, flowers and vanished types of freshwater fish.The jumble was swiftly entombed, and exquisitely preserved. Permeating the deposit were tiny spheres of clay and glass, known as tektites, which formed as molten rock, ejected by the impact, showered from the sky.

In the paper, the researchers argue that the fossil bed captures the Chicxulub impact’s immediate ramifications for life on Earth. It appears to be the best-ever snapshot of that day, one that advances the scientific understanding of “the full nature and extent of biotic disruptions that took place,” the authors write.

The lead researcher, Robert A. DePalma, is a curator of paleontology at the Palm Beach Museum of Natural History, in Florida, as well as a graduate student at the University of Kansas. Thirty-seven years old, he was granted access to the rich fossil bed by a rancher in 2012, then mined it secretly for years. His efforts are detailed in an article in The New Yorker that was posted online on Friday.

Gradually, Mr. DePalma shared his findings with top scientists, some of whom have now joined him as co-authors. They include Walter Alvarez, a geologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who pioneered the idea decades ago that the dinosaur extinction was the result of such a cosmic impact.

The paper describes how tektites, raining into the water, clogged the gills of fish, which were then killed by surges of water. The water could have traveled up from the Gulf of Mexico through an inland sea that cut through North America at the time. But the authors argue for another, more likely explanation: That cataclysmic waves from the impact — which produced the equivalent of a magnitude 10 or 11 earthquake — sloshed water out of distant lakes and seas and up their connected river channels.

“It basically agitates water like a washing machine,” said Phillip L. Manning, a paleontologist at the University of Manchester in England and one of the authors of the paper. “When that shock wave dissipates, it almost instantly drops out what was in this water body.”

Those contents, he said, formed the North Dakota deposit that he, Mr. DePalma and their colleagues described in their paper.

A partially exposed, perfectly preserved 66-million-year-old fish fossil uncovered by Mr. DePalma and his colleagues.CreditRobert DePalma/University of Kansas

A partially exposed, perfectly preserved 66-million-year-old fish fossil uncovered by Mr. DePalma and his colleagues.CreditRobert DePalma/University of Kansas

Mr. DePalma initially was disappointed with what he found, he said. He had hoped that the site would reveal rhythmic seasonal changes over a period of years. Instead, the material had been dumped in one big surge. “My idea of multi-season pond deposits was out the window,” he said.

In the deposit, the team discovered an ancient freshwater pond whose occupants had been quickly cemented together by waves of sediment and debris. The fossils include sturgeon and six-foot-long paddlefish, their scales intact but their bodies ripped and smashed; marine mollusks; leaves and tree fronds, and the burned trunks of trees. The fish carcasses were not bloated, decayed, or scavenged, suggesting that they were buried quickly — and that few animals were left alive after the cataclysm to come digging.

The fossil deposit also teems with tektites, tiny glass beads that are the telltale fallout of planetary-scale impacts. Fifty percent of the fossilized fish were found with tektites in their gills, as if the fish had inhaled the material. Also recovered were tektites trapped in amber. Their chemical composition was unchanged in 66 million years, and it closely matched the unique chemical signature of other tektites associated with the Chicxulub event.

The top layer of the fossil bed was found to be rich in iridium, a rare metal that Dr. Alvarez had originally identified at other sites as arising from the giant object that struck the Earth. Iridium, a precious metal belonging to the platinum group of elements, is more abundant in meteorites than in terrestrial rocks.

“Just the idea of fish with impact particles stuck in their gills from 66 million years ago, and trees with amber with impact particles, it’s so extraordinary that you do a double take for sure,” said Matthew Lamanna, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, who was not involved with the research. “With the caveat that what they’re trying to show is really, really hard to show, I think they’ve done an excellent job of making that case.”

The Chicxulub impact and the global disaster it wrought are sometimes held up as the death stroke for the dinosaurs. But many scientists argue that an array of other factors, including volcanic eruptions and climatic disruptions, contributed to the demise of the giant reptiles.The article in The New Yorker describes information about the discovery site that goes well beyond what is found in the scientific paper. Mr. DePalma is quoted as having also found the remains of many dinosaurs in the deposit, implying that the North Dakota site might turn out to be the world’s first to clearly associate the cosmic blow to the end of the dinosaur age.

In an interview, Steve Brusatte, a vertebrate paleontologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Edinburgh, called The New Yorker portrayal of the fossil find “a remarkable story” that he wanted to believe. “But it’s disappointing that the dinosaurs are not mentioned in the peer-reviewed paper,” he said. “And because they’re not, there simply isn’t any evidence for me to assess.”

For now, Dr. Brusatte said, “I am left with more questions than answers when it comes to the dinosaur aspect of this story.”

Mr. DePalma said the purpose of this first paper was to establish the geology and timing of what happened on that catastrophic day. Subsequent papers will go into more detail about the residents, including dinosaurs, that died, he said: “It wasn’t a paper about dinosaurs. This was a basic overview of the site and how it was formed.”

Source: Article by  William J. Broad and Kenneth Chang, New York times.

@WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev

WFS News: Fossil barnacles reveal prehistoric whale migrations

March 27th, 2019 Riffin

@WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev

Isotopes from fossil coronulid barnacle shells record evidence of migration

in multiple Pleistocene whale populations

Many whales take long journeys each year, spending summers feeding in cold waters and moving to warm tropical waters to breed. One theory suggests that these long-distance migrations originated around 5 million years ago, when ocean productivity became increasingly patchy. But patterns of ancient whale migrations have, until recently, been shrouded in mystery. Scientists from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and the University of California, Berkeley approached this question with an ingenious technique: barnacles.

“Instead of looking for clues to migration patterns from the whale’s bones, we used hitch-hiking whale barnacles instead,” said Larry Taylor, STRI visiting scientist and doctoral student at UC Berkeley who led the study.

Barnacles are crustaceans (crabs, lobsters, shrimp) that live stuck in one place in a hard shell. Most glue themselves to rocks, but whale barnacles attach to a whale’s skin by sucking the skin in.

Fossil whale barnacles from the Pleistocene were retrieved from the Burica Peninsula of Panama for analyses. Credit: Larry Taylor

Fossil whale barnacles from the Pleistocene were retrieved from the Burica Peninsula of Panama for analyses. Credit: Larry Taylor

“Whale barnacles are usually species specific — one species of barnacle on one type of whale,” said Aaron O’Dea, staff scientist at STRI and co-author of the study. “This gives the barnacle several advantages — a safe surface to live on, a free ride to some of the richest waters in the world and a chance to meet up with others when the whales get together to mate.”

As whale barnacles grow, their shells record the conditions by taking up oxygen isotopes from the water. By carefully reading the unique isotope signatures left in the shells, the barnacles can reveal the water bodies the barnacle passed through, helping reconstruct the whale’s movements over time.

The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences looked at a number of fossil and modern whale barnacles from the Pacific coast of Panama and California.

“The signals we found in the fossil barnacles showed us quite clearly that ancient humpback and grey whales were undertaking journeys very similar to those that these whales make today,” Taylor said. “It seems like the summer-breeding and winter-feeding migrations have been an integral part of the way of life of these whales for hundreds of thousands of years.”

“We want to push the technique further back in time and across different whale populations,” said Seth Finnegan, co-author from UC Berkeley. “Hunting for fossil whale barnacles is easier than whales, and they provide a wealth of information waiting to be uncovered.”

Journal Reference:

  1. Larry D. Taylor, Aaron O’Dea, Timothy J. Bralower, Seth Finnegan. Isotopes from fossil coronulid barnacle shells record evidence of migration in multiple Pleistocene whale populations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2019; 201808759 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1808759116
  2. Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. “Deep time tracking devices: Fossil barnacles reveal prehistoric whale migrations.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 25 March 2019. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190325163019.htm>.

@WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev

WFS News: Surprise beach find adds missing piece to fossil record

March 19th, 2019 Riffin

@WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev

A beach can be a place of discovery. Broken shells, whimsical weathered bits of wood, flotsam from a foreign corner of the globe. You never know what treasure you might find.

Tapir Fossil at the Museum of the North (KTUU)

                            Tapir Fossil at the Museum of the North (KTUU)

In July of 2017, the Reising family of Seward, Alaska was enjoying a picnic lunch on a popular beach near Homer, Alaska, taking a break from a favorite hobby, beachcombing.

“We were looking for plant fossils,” said Kai Reising. He was five years old at the time and running late for lunch. As he joined the rest of his family, he spotted a rock almost under his Dad’s feet. “It looked like a piece of petrified wood and I picked it up,” he recalled.

It was a bread loaf-sized piece of brown sandstone. Kai thought it was interesting, so he passed it to his dad for a second opinion. George Reising, Kai’s father, is a science and math teacher at Seward High School. “We flipped it over and right on the bottom were all these teeth,” George Reising said.

Kai’s mom, Deb Klien, is a biologist. She homeschools Kai and his younger brother Silas. “We just had a lot of fun speculating on what it might be,” she said. That’s when everyone got excited– making guesses as to what type of animal Kai’s find might be.

On their way home to Seward, they stopped by a rock shop in Sterling, Alaska for an additional opinion. It was pointed out that there was coal present in the sandstone. That’s when George Reising knew what they had found was about 10 million years old. “All of our lights went on. And we said, wait a minute, this is not Pleistocene at all. This is something significant. Nothing in the record,” George Reising said.

Dr. Patrick Druckenmiller, Director of the University of Alaska Museum of the North in Fairbanks, explains why there would be something new to Alaska’s fossil record. “We have dinosaur fossils in Alaska up to about 69-70 million years ago. And we have ice age mammal fossils in Alaska about just several thousand years old. And in between is a big gap that we have almost nothing in terms of fossil vertebrates.”

The Reisings had met Druckenmiller on a trip to Fairbanks they made earlier in the year. So they sent him some pictures of the fossil. When he saw the pictures, his heart rate went up. “This was something we had never seen before,” Druckenmiller said. A hand-off of the rock was arranged and a basic identification of what had been found quickly followed. “These teeth are very distinctly Tapir Teeth,” Druckenmiller said.

Tapirs can still be found in some parts of South America but they are a fraction of the size of their fossilized cousin. “This is the first evidence of this group of animals ever found in the state of Alaska,” Druckenmiller said. He thinks it is possible this might even be a new species.

A dark spot on the fossil offers an important clue to Druckenmiller. “It is very clearly a fresh break and this is probably right where this was attached to more of the skull in the side of the hill before it weathered out and tumbled down the bluff.”

That speculation prompted a trip back to the Homer beach this past summer. Hopes were high of finding additional pieces of the Tapir. But a group of scientists couldn’t duplicate the luck of a 5-year-old boy and no other pieces were found.

Druckenmiller wasn’t surprised this important fossil was found by a family on a picnic. “A lot of major fossil finds, whether they be dinosaurs or mammals or whatever, they’re not made by professional paleontologists,” he said. “They’re made by people out walking on the beach or out hunting or out fishing… because they are out in a place people don’t normally go.”

Also, he adds, “Five-year-olds are a lot closer to the ground.”

Druckenmiller wants to remind people that fossils found on state land are property of the state. He says, if you find something interesting, you can help by taking lots of pictures of the find and of the area. And if possible, note the GPS coordinates.

Source: www.ktuu.com

@WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev

 

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