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

WFS News: Young tourist helps Edmonton researchers in discovery of rare Colombian fish fossil

February 1st, 2018

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

This perfectly-preserved ancient fish fossil was discovered embedded in the flagstones of an old Colombian monastery by a young boy. (Oksana Vernygora)

Edmonton paleontologists are crediting a keen-eyed tourist for spotting a never-before-seen fish fossil in flagstones outside a Colombian monastery.

The perfectly-preserved “lizard fish” specimen is an estimated 90 million years old and has no modern relatives. The extremely rare specimen is the first fossil of its kind to ever be found in South America.

“This fossil was one of those serendipitous, unexpected findings,” said paleontologist Javier Luque, a PhD candidate at the University of Alberta’s biological sciences department and co-author of the research paper on the find.

“It was kind of a once-in-a-lifetime discovery, in many ways.”The discovery was made in 2015 at the Monastery of La Candelaria by a young boy who spotted the outline of a fish in one of the flagstones outside the 17th-century building.

Curious about the strange rock, the boy snapped a photo and shared it with staff at Centro de Investigaciones Paleontologicas, a museum in nearby Ráquira, Boyaca. Workers there recognized it as a fossil right away and shared the discovery with the University of Alberta.

The long-jawed ‘lizard fish’ would have thrived in the oceans that once covered Colombia. (Oksana Vernygora)

The flagstone had been part of the busy pathway for more than 15 years, said Luque.

“A kid was just walking around saw what he thought was a fish and sure enough, he took a photo with the inquiring mind of a child,” Luque said.

“It was a fossil fish, perfectly preserved in two dimensions, just laying down, weathering as people were walking on top of it for so many years.”The museum and the university often partner on fossil finds in the area, said Luque.

After getting the call, a team of U of A researchers joined the local paleontologists in retracing the boy’s steps to locate and lift the stone for further examination.

Researchers were able to trace the origins of the fossil-bearing flagstone to a nearby abandoned quarry from where locals extracted slabs for construction several years ago.

The research paper on the fossil was recently published in the Journal of Systematic Paleontology. It was co-authored by Oksana Vernygora, a fellow PhD candidate at the U of A led the research with assistance from her supervisor, and Allison Murray, a professor of biological sciences.

The rocks date from the Late Cretaceous period, and were deposited at a time when most of the northern Andes was underwater, which accounts for a rich record of marine life in the heart of the Andes mountains.

“It’s an entirely new group of fossil fish from the Cretaceous period in South America,” Luque said.

The fossil is that of a deepwater fish which would have thrived in fast-flowing waters.

It has been named Candelarhynchus padillai, which combines ‘Candelaria,’ the name of the monastery where the fossil was discovered, and the Greek word for nose ‘rhynchos,’ due to its peculiar long and slender needle-like face.

And while the fossil’s backstory has largely been explained, the fish tale has one more mystery.Researchers lost touch with the boy who found the fossil. They have only his name.They are hoping, with the recent publication of the research, the boy might eventually come forward, so they can give him proper credit.

“We certainly will make sure we properly acknowledge this discovery,” Luque said. “It was the keen eye of a young kid that was able to recognize the shape of a fossil that we were not able to see for so many years.

“It gives a beautiful message about keeping curious … and being able to see the world with fresh eyes.”

Source: Article by By Wallis Snowdon, CBC news.

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

WFS news: New Egyptian sauropod (Mansourasaurus ) reveals Late Cretaceous dinosaur dispersal between Europe and Africa

January 30th, 2018

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

When it comes to the final days of the dinosaurs, Africa is something of a blank page. Fossils found in Africa from the Late Cretaceous, the time period from 100 to 66 million years ago, are few and far between. That means that the course of dinosaur evolution in Africa has largely remained a mystery. But in the Sahara Desert of Egypt, scientists have discovered a new species of dinosaur that helps fill in those gaps: Mansourasaurus shahinae, a school-bus-length, long-necked plant-eater with bony plates embedded in its skin.

Skeletal reconstruction of the new titanosaurian dinosaur Mansourasaurus shahinae from the Late Cretaceous of the Dakhla Oasis, Egypt. Bones shown in color are those that are preserved in the original fossil; other bones are based on those of closely related dinosaurs.
Credit: Andrew McAfee, Carnegie Museum of Natural History

The fossilized remains of Mansourasaurus were unearthed by an expedition undertaken by the Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology (MUVP) initiative, an effort led by Dr. Hesham Sallam of the Department of Geology at Mansoura University in Mansoura, Egypt. Sallam is the lead author of the paper published today in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution that names the new species. The field team included several of his students, many of whom — Ms. Iman El-Dawoudi, Ms. Sanaa El-Sayed, and Mrs. Sara Saber — also participated in the study of the new dinosaur. The creature’s name honors both Mansoura University and Ms. Mona Shahin for her integral role in developing the MUVP. According to Sallam, “The discovery and extraction of Mansourasaurus was such an amazing experience for the MUVP team. It was thrilling for my students to uncover bone after bone, as each new element we recovered helped to reveal who this giant dinosaur was.”

“Mansourasaurus shahinae is a key new dinosaur species, and a critical discovery for Egyptian and African paleontology,” says Dr. Eric Gorscak, a postdoctoral research scientist at The Field Museum and a contributing author on the study. Gorscak, who began work on the project as a doctoral student at Ohio University, where his research focused on African dinosaurs, adds, “Africa remains a giant question mark in terms of land-dwelling animals at the end of the Age of Dinosaurs. Mansourasaurus helps us address longstanding questions about Africa’s fossil record and paleobiology — what animals were living there, and to what other species were these animals most closely related?”

Late Cretaceous dinosaur fossils in Africa are hard to come by — much of the land where their fossils might be found is covered in lush vegetation, rather than the exposed rock of dinosaur treasure troves such as those in the Rocky Mountain region, the Gobi Desert, or Patagonia. The lack of a Late Cretaceous fossil record in Africa is frustrating for paleontologists since, at that time, the continents were undergoing massive geological and geographic changes.

During the earlier years of the dinosaurs, throughout much of the Triassic and Jurassic periods, all the continents were joined together as the supercontinent of Pangaea. During the Cretaceous Period, however, the continents began splitting apart and shifting towards the configuration we see today. Historically, it hasn’t been clear how well-connected Africa was to other Southern Hemisphere landmasses and Europe during this time — to what degree Africa’s animals may have been cut off from their neighbors and evolving on their own separate tracks. Mansourasaurus, as one of the few African dinosaurs known from this time period, helps to answer that question. By analyzing features of its bones, Sallam and his team determined that Mansourasaurus is more closely related to dinosaurs from Europe and Asia than it is to those found farther south in Africa or in South America. This, in turn, shows that at least some dinosaurs could move between Africa and Europe near the end of these animals’ reign. “Africa’s last dinosaurs weren’t completely isolated, contrary to what some have proposed in the past,” says Gorscak. “There were still connections to Europe.”

Mansourasaurus belongs to the Titanosauria, a group of sauropods (long-necked plant-eating dinosaurs) that were common throughout much of the world during the Cretaceous. Titanosaurs are famous for including the largest land animals known to science, such as Argentinosaurus, Dreadnoughtus, and Patagotitan. Mansourasaurus, however, was moderate-sized for a titanosaur, roughly the weight of an African bull elephant. Its skeleton is important in being the most complete dinosaur specimen so far discovered from the end of the Cretaceous in Africa, preserving parts of the skull, the lower jaw, neck and back vertebrae, ribs, most of the shoulder and forelimb, part of the hind foot, and pieces of dermal plates. Says study coauthor and dinosaur paleontologist Dr. Matt Lamanna of Carnegie Museum of Natural History, “When I first saw pics of the fossils, my jaw hit the floor. This was the Holy Grail — a well-preserved dinosaur from the end of the Age of Dinosaurs in Africa — that we paleontologists had been searching for for a long, long time.”

Also contributing to the Mansourasaurus research were experts on African paleontology from other institutions in Egypt and the US. MUVP student Iman El-Dawoudi played a particularly important role in the analysis of the new titanosaur, making numerous observations on its skeleton. “The combined effort of multiple institutions across the globe, not to mention the absolutely key role played by students on the project from the field, to the laboratory, to the final analysis and writeup of the results, exemplifies the collaborative nature of expeditionary sciences today,” notes Dr. Patrick O’Connor, study coauthor and professor of anatomy at the Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine.

Funding for the Mansourasaurus study was provided by grants from Mansoura University, the Jurassic Foundation, the Leakey Foundation, the National Geographic Society/Waitt Foundation, and the National Science Foundation (NSF).

“The discovery of rare fossils like this sauropod dinosaur helps us understand how creatures moved across continents, and gives us a greater understanding of the evolutionary history of organisms in this region,” says Dena Smith, a program director in NSF’s Division of Earth Sciences, which partially funded the laboratory portion of the research.

Scientific discoveries are often compared to finding the last missing puzzle piece to complete a picture; Gorscak says that since so little is known about African dinosaurs, Mansourasaurus is better likened to an earlier step in the puzzle-solving process. “It’s like finding an edge piece that you use to help figure out what the picture is, that you can build from. Maybe even a corner piece.”

“What’s exciting is that our team is just getting started. Now that we have a group of well-trained vertebrate paleontologists here in Egypt, with easy access to important fossil sites, we expect the pace of discovery to accelerate in the years to come,” says Sallam.

Hesham M. Sallam, Eric Gorscak, Patrick M. O’Connor, Iman A. El-Dawoudi, Sanaa El-Sayed, Sara Saber, Mahmoud A. Kora, Joseph J. W. Sertich, Erik R. Seiffert, Matthew C. Lamanna. New Egyptian sauropod reveals Late Cretaceous dinosaur dispersal between Europe and Africa. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2018; DOI: 10.1038/s41559-017-0455-5
Ohio University. “New Egyptian dinosaur reveals ancient link between Africa and Europe: Mansourasaurus shahinae helps fill in gaps of African dinosaurs of Late Cretaceous.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 29 January 2018. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180129131345.htm>.

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WFS News: The oldest Archaeopteryx : a new specimen from Bavaria

January 27th, 2018

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

Researchers from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich report the first description of the geologically oldest fossil securely attributable to the genus Archaeopteryx, and provide a new diagnostic key for differentiating bird-like dinosaurs from their closest relatives.

Some 150 million years ago in what is now Northern Bavaria, Archaeopteryx — the oldest bird species yet discovered — inhabited a subtropical environment characterized by reef islands and lagoons set in a shallow sea that was part of the primordial Mediterranean. All the specimens of Archaeopteryx so far recovered were found in the valley of the Altmühl River, in geological settings that represent this habitat — the Jurassic Solnhofen Archipelago. The latest find was made there in 2010, and this new specimen has now been analyzed by a team of researchers led by LMU paleontologist Oliver Rauhut, a professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences who is also affiliated with the Bavarian State Collections for Paleontology and Geology in Munich. Stratigraphic analysis of the find locality reveals that the fossil is the oldest known representative of the genus Archaeopteryx.

Complete slab of the 12th Archaeopteryx, with ammonite, probably Neochetoceras bous, preserved on the same slab.Scale bar is 10 cm.

“Specimens of Archaeopteryx are now known from three distinct rock units, which together cover a period of approximately 1 million years,” Rauhut explains. Notably, the oldest example exhibits features that were so far not known from the other specimens. “Among other things, they reveal that Archaeopteryx was very similar to advanced predatory dinosaurs in many respects,” says Rauhut. Moreover, in the new study, he and his colleagues provide a diagnosis that allows to reliably distinguish Archaeopteryx from its closest relatives, both non-avialan theropod dinosaurs and basal birds. This key will be very valuable, as a whole series of bird-like predatory dinosaurs has been described in recent years, mainly from China, which has greatly complicated the taxonomical classification of the group.

Overview of the skeleton of the new Archaeopteryx specimen under normal light.
Scale bar is 50 mm.

The new specimen is the 12th fossil to be attributed to the genus. However, in a study published in the online journal BMC Evolutionary Biology last year, Rauhut’s group reported that the first of these to come to light — the so-called Haarlem specimen discovered in 1861 — does not actually belong to the group. This result thus reduces the number of Archaeopteryx fossils to 11, although some doubts remain concerning the assignment of two of these. This underlines the necessity for a diagnosis to clearly identify Archaeopteryx.

Overview of the skeleton of the new Archaeopteryx specimen under UV light.
Areas of the skeleton that remain dark have been reconstructed during preparation. fu, furcula; ga, gastralia; is, ischium; lfe, left femur; lhu, left humerus; lma, remains of left manus; lmt, left metatarsus; lra, left radius; lsc, left scapula; lti, left tibia; lul, left ulna; pu, pubis; rfe, right femur; rhu, right humerus; rma, remains of right manus; rmt, right metatarsus; rra, right radius; rsc, right scapula; rti, right tibia; rul, right ulna; sk, skull. Scale bar is 50 mm.

Moreover, the investigation of the 11th specimen demonstrates that the known specimens span a remarkable range of anatomical variation. Potential explanations for the broad spectrum of variation extend from intraspecific developmental polymorphism to evolutionary differentiation, i.e., the possibility that the fossil material so far recovered represents more than one species. “The high degree of variation in the teeth is particularly striking — none of the specimens shows the same pattern of dentition as any other, which could reflect differences in diet,” Rauhut points out. “This is very reminiscent of the famous case of Darwin’s finks on the Galapagos, which show remarkable variation in their beak shapes. It is even conceivable that this primeval bird genus might, in a similar fashion, have diversified into several specialized forms on the islands of the Solnhofener Archipelago. In that case, the Archaeopteryx fossils could represent a species flock, a Jurassic analog of Darwin’s finches.”

The skull and mandibles of the 12th specimen of Archaeopteryx.
Skull and mandibles of the 12th specimen of Archaeopteryx, under normal light (A) and UV light (B). cv, cervical vertebra; lhu, left humerus. Scale bars are 10 mm.

Oliver W.M. Rauhut, Christian Foth, Helmut Tischlinger. The oldest Archaeopteryx (Theropoda: Avialiae): a new specimen from the Kimmeridgian/Tithonian boundary of Schamhaupten, Bavaria. PeerJ, 2018; 6: e4191 DOI: 10.7717/peerj.4191

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. “Paleontology: The eleventh Archaeopteryx.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 26 January 2018. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180126085440.htm>.

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WFS News: Revolutionary theory on horse evolution

January 26th, 2018

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

Scientists have long wondered how the horse evolved from an ancestor with five toes to the animal we know today. While it is largely believed that horses simply evolved with fewer digits, researchers at New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine (NYITCOM) pose a new theory that suggests remnants of all five toes are still present within the hooves of the horse.

Humans and horses are descendants of a common ancestor with five digits. As horses evolved to live on open grassland their anatomy required a more compact design to enable movement across the hard plains. Until now, scientists believed horses adapted to these conditions by gradually evolving with fewer digits than its five-toed ancestor, with the first horse retaining only four digits, its later descendant reduced to three, and today’s horse retaining just the central digit known as the metacarpal, the long bone above the hoof.

Silhouettes show Mesohippus primigenium, an early ancestor of the modern horse that lived 40 million years ago and was previously believed to have three toes, and the modern horse. Photographs of both animals’ hand bones appear alongside renderings of the researchers’ proposed digit identities. The researchers argue that missing digits one and five are partially expressed on the surfaces of the side toes (shown in red/blue). While the horse is described as being monodactyl, with only one complete digit, the researchers demonstrate that digits two and four are expressed as the splint bones and frog (padding of the foot), as shown in yellow/green. Missing digits one and five are expressed as ridges on the splint bones and as the hoof cartilages, as shown in the lower red/blue areas.Credit: NYITCOM

For the first time, as published in the January 24 issue of Royal Society Open Science, NYITCOM researcher, Nikos Solounias, Ph.D., paleontologist and anatomy professor, and a team of researchers propose that the reduction in the number of digits is not a matter of simple attrition; instead, they believe that all five digits have merged to form the compacted forelimbs with hooves that we know today.

Currently, scientists accept that splints, small bones found along the outer sides of the metacarpal in modern horses, are partially formed remnants of second and fourth digits. Tapering mid-way down the metacarpal, these fragments were inherited from an earlier ancestor, but ceased to develop into fully formed digits in modern horses. While the NYITCOM researchers note that this explanation of the second and fourth digits is viable, they argue that it is incomplete and fails to account for the animal’s first and fifth digits. Arguing that the horse is not truly monodactyl, that is, one-toed, these researchers contend that fragments of the “missing” digits can be found in the form of ridges on the backside of the splints. According to the researchers, this demonstrates that the first and fifth digits were not simply lost to evolution, but attached to their neighboring second and fourth digits.

“With a distinct surface from the metacarpal, we know the splints on today’s horses to be the remnants of the second and fourth digits,” said Solounias. “However, these partially formed digits also appear to contain their own elevated surfaces which hold additional evolutionary clues. We find these ridges, located on the posterior of each splint, to be the partially formed remains of the first and fifth digits, which were once connected to the cartilages of the hoof.”

Solounias first considered this theory in 1999 while studying fossil evidence from an eight-million-year-old horse known as Hipparion primigenium. The famous Laetoli footprints in Tanzania demonstrate Hipparion walked alongside early humans, and was believed to have had three digits. However, Solounias noticed that the bottom surface of Hipparion’s fossilized forelimb appeared to be divided in five sections, as though small toes had bonded together. After further studying images of the Laetoli footprints, he confirmed his finding in several of the impressions, and considered that Hipparion not only had five compacted toes, but likely passed this trait on to its descendants.

“Interestingly, we not only find hints of the missing digits on the modern horse, but also its ancestors, such as Hipparion and Mesohippus, two species believed to have three toes,” said Solounias.

Melinda Danowitz, D.O., a recent NYITCOM graduate and Solounias’ co-investigator in the study added, “While the horse’s lineage is classically described as having evolved from four to three toes, and eventually one single toe, we show that its extinct ancestors exhibit the reduced toes both at the wrist and at the hoof. These findings show that today’s horse is not truly monodactyl, and earlier ancestors were not in fact tridactyl or tetradactyl, that is, three-toed or four-toed.”

The researchers have also discovered neurovascular evidence in support of the five-digit theory, with dissections of modern equine fetus forelimbs revealing a greater number of arteries and nerves than would be expected in a single digit.

“If today’s horse does indeed have one digit per forelimb, we would expect each forelimb to have a total of two veins, two arteries, and two nerve bundles,” said Danowitz. “However, our dissections found between five and seven neurovascular bundles per forelimb, suggesting that additional toes begin to develop, but do not become fully differentiated.”

Nikos Solounias, Melinda Danowitz, Elizabeth Stachtiaris, Abhilasha Khurana, Marwan Araim, Marc Sayegh, Jessica Natale. The evolution and anatomy of the horse manus with an emphasis on digit reduction. Royal Society Open Science, 2018; 5 (1): 171782 DOI: 10.1098/rsos.171782

New York Institute of Technology. “Researchers pose revolutionary theory on horse evolution.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 25 January 2018. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180125135537.htm>.

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

WFS News: Rare 450-million-year-old ‘cone-shaped’ fossil discovery

January 24th, 2018

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

Hummelstown Fossils. A) Typical specimen reconstruction showing body mass (white) poking out of the ‘spindle’-shaped cone (patterned). Note the presence of ‘spikes’ on the sides of the exposed body. B) Typical fossil specimen with body mass (with at least one spike) and ‘spindle’-shaped cone. C) Surface of rock slab showing numerous Hummelstown fossils. Credit: University of Leicester

Researchers from the University of Leicester, working with an international team of geologists, have discovered an enigmatic fossil of a 450 million year-old creature resembling a tiny ice-cream cone. Fossils of the creature, in which the ‘body’ resembles a scoop of ice cream atop the cone, was located in the Appalachian Mountains, near Hummelstown in Pennsylvania from the Ordovician period.

Intriguingly, the rocks in which the fossil was found have been ‘cooked’ during mountain building, which usually hinders fossil preservation.

Discovered by consulting geologist Bob Ganis, who obtained his PhD from the University of Leicester, and Mike Meyer of the Carnegie Institute of Science, it has now been described in a paper published in the journal Palaios by them and co-authors Professor Jan Zalasiewicz of the University of Leicester, Jacalyn Wittmer of the State University of New York, Geneseo and Kenneth de Baets of Geozentrum Nordbayern in Erlangen Germany.

The paper discusses the possibilities of this newly found soft-bodied creature, which lived among the plankton before being carried to the sea floor and buried within mud slurries.

Professor Jan Zalasiewicz from the University of Leicester’s School of Geography, Geology and the Environment, said: “The ancient world of the Ordovician, some 450 million years ago, was one of a huge expansion of life in the seas of our planet.

“Fossils are abound in Ordovician strata, but almost all of them are of creatures with hard shells or support structures, and so our understanding of booming Ordovician life is almost completely based on skeleton-bearing animals. There are few of those rare, precious localities where softer-bodied animals might be found, to give a wider insight into the life of those times.

“Was this creature an important but usually unpreserved part of ocean life, or just a bit player among the Ordovician animal communities? It is a new puzzle for palaeontologists.”

Mike Meyer, of the Carnegie Institute of Science, said: “That this fossil still has the soft bits preserved, even though the rocks that hold it have been squeezed and twisted, is remarkable. This enigmatic organism has major implications for how we look for well-preserved fossils.”

Bob Ganis added: “It’s a small fossil with a big story.”

More information: MIKE B. MEYER et al, A LATE ORDOVICIAN PLANKTIC ASSEMBLAGE WITH EXCEPTIONALLY PRESERVED SOFT-BODIED PROBLEMATICA FROM THE MARTINSBURG FORMATION, PENNSYLVANIA, PALAIOS (2018). DOI: 10.2110/palo.2017.036

WFS News: 508-year old bristle worm found

January 22nd, 2018

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

TORONTO — A new fossil species of bristle worm has been found at the 508-million-year-old Marble Canyon site in B.C.’s Kootenay National Park.

The worm found at the Burgess Shale site is helping scientists better understand analids, which include present-day leeches and earthworms.They are found in nearly all marine environments.

Kootenayscolex barbarensis is part of a group of animals called annelids (or the ‚Äòringed worms‚Äô) is shown in this handout image.HO / THE CANADIAN PRESS

The early evolutionary history of analids, in particular the origin of their heads, has a relatively poor fossil record.

The new fossil provides insight into its head, as well as its role in the food chain.The research was published today in the journal Current Biology by scientists from the Royal Ontario Museum and the University of Toronto.

The new species is called Kootenayscolex barbarensis.

“It’s a totally new species to science,” says Karma Nanglu, a PhD candidate in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology. “It’s really small … It’s about two-and-a-half centimetres in total length.

“The bristles on this animal are on the order of 10 to 30 micrometres in width.”

The Marble Canyon fossil site, home to at least a dozen new species, was stumbled upon by researchers in 2012 in Kootenay National Park as they worked at the nearby Stanley Glacier site.

An artist reconstructed this image from Kootenayscolex barbarensis.

It’s believed the area and its fossils will further the understanding of animal life during the Cambrian Period, when most of the major groups of animals appear on the fossil record.

The site is about 40 kilometres south of the original Burgess Shale in Yoho National Park that was discovered more than 100 years ago.

source: By Colette Derworiz in Edmonton

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WFS News: Expedition to explore the Havre volcano reveals surprising underwater details

January 21st, 2018

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

On July 18, 2012, passengers on an airline flight over the Southwest Pacific Ocean glimpsed something unusual — a raft of floating rock known as pumice that indicated an underwater volcanic eruption had occurred on the seafloor northeast of New Zealand. The raft eventually grew to more than 150 square miles (roughly the size of Philadelphia), a sign that the eruption was unusually large.

A new paper published January 10, 2018, in the journal Science Advances describes the first up-close investigation of the largest underwater volcanic eruption of the past century. The international research team led by the University of Tasmania and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) used the autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) Sentry and the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Jason to explore, map, and collect erupted materials from the Havre volcano during a 2015 expedition. They found that the eruption was surprising in many ways.

“We knew it was a large-scale eruption, approximately equivalent to the biggest eruption we’ve seen on land in the 20th Century,” said Rebecca Carey, a volcanologist at University of Tasmania and Co-Chief Scientist on the expedition.

“Heading to the site, we were fully prepared to investigate a typical deep-sea explosive eruption,” added Adam Soule, WHOI associate scientist and chief scientist for the National Deep Submergence Facility. “When we looked at the detailed maps from the AUV, we saw all these bumps on the seafloor and I thought the vehicle’s sonar was acting up. It turned out that each bump was a giant block of pumice, some of them the size of a van. I had never seen anything like it on the seafloor.”

High-resolution seafloor topography of the Havre caldera mapped by the autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) Sentry shows the new 2012 erupted lavas in red. The volcano is nearly a mile deep (1,519 meters). The top of the volcano is at 650 meters below sea level.
Credit: Rebecca Carey, University of Tasmania, Adam Soule, WHOI, ©Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

More than 70 percent of all volcanic activity on Earth occurs on the seafloor, but details of these events are largely hidden from view by seawater. Based on the size of the 2012 pumice raft, the eruption of the Havre Volcano was estimated to be the largest documented underwater silicic eruption — a particular type of eruption that produces viscous, gas-filled lava that often occurs explosively. Despite their violence, very little is known about silicic eruptions and most knowledge about them comes from ancient rock records, which lack details such as the timing, duration, source, and water depth of the events. Scientists have never been able to study a large underwater silicic eruption shortly after it occurred in order to better understand how they happen and what they produce.

Havre is part of the Kermadec Arc, a chain of volcanoes, some of which reach the surface to form the Kermadec Islands, between New Zealand and American Samoa. The volcanoes are formed by conditions at the subduction zone where one of Earth’s largest tectonic plates, the Pacific Plate, dives beneath the Australian Plate. New Zealand scientists mapped the Havre volcano, a caldera nearly three miles (4.5 kilometers) across on the seafloor northeast of the North Island of New Zealand, using shipboard sonar instruments in 2002 and again immediately after the eruption in 2012, revealing the presence of new volcanic material on the seafloor.

In 2015, scientists from the University of Tasmania, WHOI, the University of California Berkeley, the University of Otago in New Zealand, and others traveled to the region on board the research vessel Roger Revelle operated by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. They deployed the AUV Sentry in a series of 11 dives that mapped more than 19 square miles (50 square kilometers) of seafloor. They also conducted 12 ROV Jason dives totaling 250 hours to collect samples of erupted material and to capture high-resolution imagery of the seafloor inside the crater.

The team found that the eruption history of the Havre volcano was much more complicated than they previously thought, with the most recent eruption alone consisting of lava from 14 volcanic vent sites between 900 and 1220 meters (3000 and 4000 feet) below the surface. They also discovered that, what they thought was initially an explosive eruption that would produce mainly pumice, also created ash, lava domes, and seafloor lava flows. Mapping and seafloor observations revealed that, of the material that erupted, which was nearly 1.5 times larger than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, about 75 percent floated to the surface and drifted away with winds and currents. The rest was spread across the seafloor up to several miles away.

“Ultimately we believe that none of the magma was erupted in the ways we assume an explosive eruption occurs on land,” said Soule.

Material collected using ROV Jason confirmed the diverse nature of the eruption, bringing samples of dense lava, ash, pumice, and giant pumice to the surface, including one piece measuring 5 feet (1.5 meters) in diameter that is the first of its kind ever collected and is currently on display at the National Museum of Science and Nature in Tokyo. The physical and chemical composition of these samples are helping scientists learn how the eruption proceeded, what made it act the way it did, and how the material changes over time.

This work was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

Rebecca Carey et al. The largest deep-ocean silicic volcanic eruption of the past century. Science Advances, 2018 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1701121

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. “A close-up look at an uncommon underwater eruption: Expedition to explore the Havre volcano reveals surprising details.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 10 January 2018. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180110141320.htm>.

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WFS News: Crepidosoma Doyleii,435m-year-old starfish fossil

January 20th, 2018

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The discovery has been described by researchers as an “exceptional fossil”

A 435 million-year-old starfish fossil has been discovered in Conamara, Co Galway.The specimen will go on display at the Museum of Natural History in Dublin.It was discovered by geologist Dr Eamon Doyle in Maam Valley.

Details of the find are contained in the latest issue of the Irish Journal of Earth Sciences, published by the Royal Irish Academy.

It is said to be a new species of an ophiuroid starfish, better known as a ‘brittle star’, which evolved around 500m years ago and have survived unchanged to the present day.The ocean that the starfish came from disappeared 400m years ago as a result of tectonic movements.

The discovery has been described by researchers as an “exceptional fossil” that provides a key piece of evidence in the hunt for signs of life in an ocean that covered the country millions of years ago.The fossil was found by Dr Doyle when he was completing his PhD in Galway in the late 1980s but has only been analysed by experts now.

The palaeontologist told RTÉ News that he had been searching for fossils halfway between Maam Cross and Leenane when he discovered a very thin layer of fossils on the side of a hill.

The starfish fossil is about the size of a thumbnail.

The fossil was discovered in Maam Valley

Dr Doyle said the species in question was remarkably resilient. It was on earth hundreds of millions of years before dinosaurs started to evolve and can still be found in the seas off the west coast today.

In all this time, it has hardly changed, having adjusted ideally to living in its environment.It is not unusual for analysis of fossil samples to take a few decades.

The testing on Dr Doyle’s discovery was carried out by international experts, using his resolution microscopes to determine as much as possible about the find.

It has been named ‘Crepidosoma Doyleii’ in honour of Dr Doyle.

Source:www.rte.ie

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WFS News: Caihong juji ,Fossil of a “Rainbow dinosaur “

January 18th, 2018

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A new rainbow coloured dinosaur fossil has been discovered Credit:Velizar Simeonovski, The Field Museum/Reuters

Scientists in China have made a colourful discovery – a bird-like dinosaur with rainbow-coloured feathers.

The fossilised remains were found in the north-east of China and it’s believed to have lived 161 million years ago during the Jurassic Period.It’s been called Caihong juji, which is the mandarin word for ‘rainbow with the big crest’.

When dinosaur experts studied the fossil they could see evidence of brightly-coloured plumage.

Dr Chad Eliason, a bird researcher at The Field Museum in Chicago, said it suggested “a more colourful Jurassic World than we previously imagined!”

When experts examined the preserved feathers under a microscope, they could see tiny imprints of melanosomes – they’re cells that give animals their colour. These dinosaur melanosomes showed similarities with the cells that cause the colourful plumage seen in hummingbirds.

Caihong juji was a two-legged predator similar to a velociraptor and would have probably hunted small mammals and lizards.

Despite the fact that it had feathers, researchers don’t believe it could fly and instead the feathers were more likely have been to attract a mate or to keep itself warm.

The research has been published in Nature Communications.

Source:BBC,UK

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WFS News: Sauropod swimmers or walkers?

January 17th, 2018

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An international team of scientists, led by the China University of Geosciences in Beijing and including palaeontologists from the University of Bristol, has shed new light on some unusual dinosaur tracks from northern China. The tracks appear to have been made by four-legged sauropod dinosaurs yet only two of their feet have left prints behind.

This new study of fossil trackways from Gansu Province in northern China has provided evidence that some feet-only tracks were produced by walking, not swimming animals.
Credit: Lida Xing

Previous studies of such trackways have suggested that the dinosaurs, which were far too big to walk on their hind legs, might have been swimming. Scientists agree that dinosaurs could swim — nearly all animals can — but evidence for swimming has been disputed. It has been suggest that trackways in which only the front or hind feet are imprinted into the sediment could have been made by swimming dinosaurs, their bodies buoyant in deep water while they paddled along with their arms or legs.

Now, a new study of fossil trackways from Gansu Province in northern China has provided evidence that some feet-only tracks were produced by walking, not swimming animals.

The tracks, dating from the Lower Cretaceous, over 120 million years ago, are roughly circular and with a clear set of four or five claw marks at the front. These prints are matched perfectly by the feet of medium-sized sauropod dinosaurs, massive long-necked, plant-eating dinosaurs such as Brontosaurus and Titanosaurus.

But how could only the prints of the hind feet be preserved?

Lead author Lida Xing said: “Nobody would say these huge dinosaurs could stagger along on their hind legs alone — they would fall over. However, we can prove they were walking because the prints are the same as in more usual tracks consisting of all four feet, it’s just that here, we don’t see the hand prints. If they had been swimming, with the hind legs dangling down, some of the foot prints would be scratch marks, as the foot scrabbled backwards.”

The tracks are well preserved, but there is evidence the animals were walking on soft sand. They pressed down because of their weight, and the claws dug deeper so they could gain purchase in the sediment. Most of the animal’s weight was towards the rear, and so the hind-feet pressed deeper. The front feet, on the other hand, did not apply enough pressure to make a lasting mark.

Co-author Professor Mike Benton of the University of Bristol’s School of Earth Sciences said: “This is not to say that sauropods did not swim. We are simply suggesting that a closer study of the details of fossil footprints and the sediments can suggest a rather less romantic idea. The loss of hand prints is down to sedimentology, not dinosaur behaviour.”

Xing, L., Li, D.Q., Falkingham, P.L., Lockley, M.G., Benton, M.J., Klein, H., Zhang, J.P., Ran, H., Persons, W.S., Jr., and Dai, H. ‘Digit-only sauropod pes trackways from China – evidence of swimming or a preservational phenomenon? Scientific Reports, 2016 DOI: 10.1038/srep21138

University of Bristol. “Sauropod swimmers or walkers?.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 18 February 2016. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/160218060731.htm>.

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