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

Tiny fossils reveal backstory of the most mysterious amphibian alive

June 25th, 2017

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

Researchers have determined that the fossils of an extinct species from the Triassic Period are the long-missing link that connects Kermit the Frog’s amphibian brethren to wormlike creatures with a backbone and two rows of sharp teeth.

Named Chinlestegophis jenkinsi, the newfound fossil is the oldest relative of the most mysterious group of amphibians: caecilians. Today, these limbless, colorful serpentine carnivores live underground and range in size from 6 inches to 5 feet.

“Our textbook-changing discovery will require paleontologists to re-evaluate the timing of the origin of modern amphibian groups and how they evolved,” said Adam Huttenlocker, senior author of the study and an assistant professor in the Department of Integrative Anatomical Sciences at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on June 19, expands the known history of frogs, toads and salamanders by at least 15 million years and closes a major gap in early caecilian evolution by connecting them to stereospondyls, animals with toilet-seat heads that were the most diverse amphibian group during the Triassic era more than 200 million years ago.

Chinlestegophis jenkinsi was a tiny subterranean carnivore and is an ancient relative of frogs and salamanders.
Credit: Illustration by Jorge Gonzalez

Scientists previously believed the story of the stereospondyl order was a dead-end because, although widespread during the Triassic Period, the animals were believed to be unrelated to anything alive today. The two recently discovered fossils dispel that theory and suggest that the amphibian lineage of today evolved from a common ancestor some 315 million years ago.

“Caecilians are hard to find in the fossil record because most are so small,” Huttenlocker said. “Chinlestegophis jenkinsi still preserves a lot of the primitive morphology that is shared with other Triassic amphibians, namely their four legs.”

Before C. jenkinsi, scientists had found only two other caecilian fossils from the Age of Dinosaurs and — unlike the two recently unearthed — those came later and had reduced limbs, more closely resembling their contemporary living relatives.

“It’s possible that the things that frog and salamander tissue can do when it comes to scarless healing are also present in human DNA but may be turned off,” said Jason Pardo, lead author of the study and a doctoral candidate in the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. “Because humans are also vertebrates, we enhance our understanding of our own evolutionary history and genetic heritage when we gain understanding of the amphibian lineage.”

Solving mysteries in vertebrate evolution

There are currently fewer than 200 species of caecilians, which live in the wet, tropical regions of South America, Africa and Southeast Asia. But the two ancient fossil amphibians found in the late 1990s by Bryan Small, study co-author and a research associate at Texas Tech University, were preserved in the fossilized burrows of Eagle County, Colo.

The paleontologists used 3-D X-rays to reassemble the fossil remains of two C. jenkinsi specimens. Parts of a skull, spinal column, ribs, shoulder and legs survived in the fossils of the first specimen. Only the skull was distinguishable in the second specimen.

“Twenty to 30 years ago, we weren’t even sure of the origins of birds,” Pardo said. “Now we are solving some of the final remaining mysteries when it comes to what sorts of animals the major vertebrate groups evolved from. Caecilians, turtles and some fish are the only major vertebrate groups that paleontologists still have questions about.”

Characteristics of the ancient caecilian

The burrows these fossils were preserved in were almost 2 inches wide, meaning they could not have been very big. Their bullet-shaped skulls were just under 1 inch long, so the ancient caecilian was probably about the size of a small salamander, Huttenlocker said.

The length of the animal is unknown because researchers do not have the full fossil remains of the animal, but Pardo estimates that the ancient caecilian was between 6 inches to a foot long. As a small carnivore, it probably ate insects.

Its eyes would have been functional but tiny. Some of today’s caecilians do not have eyes or they are hidden under moist skin.

During the summer, this central Colorado area would have been scorching, which is probably why these subterranean animals thrived. Big dinosaurs like early relatives of the Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops could not have existed in such conditions, Huttenlocker said.

“The ancient caecilians lived in these burrows deep in the soil down to about the level of the water table so that they could keep wet and avoid the extreme aridity from the dry season,” Huttenlocker said. “I’m going back to Colorado this summer and hope to find more animals with more complete skeletons. We’ll find one. This is just the initial report.”

source-sciencedaily

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WFS News: A Gigantic Shark from the Lower Cretaceous Duck Creek Formation of Texas

June 24th, 2017

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

Citation: Frederickson JA, Schaefer SN, Doucette-Frederickson JA (2015) A Gigantic Shark from the Lower Cretaceous Duck Creek Formation of Texas. PLoS ONE 10(6): e0127162. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127162

Abstract:Three large lamniform shark vertebrae are described from the Lower Cretaceous of Texas. We interpret these fossils as belonging to a single individual with a calculated total body length of 6.3 m. This large individual compares favorably to another shark specimen from the roughly contemporaneous Kiowa Shale of Kansas. Neither specimen was recovered with associated teeth, making confident identification of the species impossible. However, both formations share a similar shark fauna, with Leptostyrax macrorhiza being the largest of the common lamniform sharks. Regardless of its actual identification, this new specimen provides further evidence that large-bodied lamniform sharks had evolved prior to the Late Cretaceous.

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Additional shark vertebrae found in situ in the same locality as OMNH 68860.
The surrounding lithology correlates with the indurated limestone bedforms 10.5 m above the base of the measured section (photo courtesy of L. Hall, 2013).

OMNH 68860 in (descending order) rostral, caudal, ventral, right lateral, dorsal, and left lateral views.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127162.g004

Reconstruction of the large lamniform sharks from the Duck Creek Formation and Kiowa Shale.
KUVP 16343 and OMNH 68860 are both reconstructed as Leptostyrax macrorhiza and modeled after an odontaspidid. This reconstruction was based on dental similarities shared between Eoptolamnidae and Odontaspididae [14]. Both specimens represent the smallest calculated estimate based on the formula of Shimada [2]. Cretalamna appendiculata is reconstructed as a classic lamnid shark based on shared dental patterns between this genus and members of the family Lamnidae @WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev

Fossil holds new insights into how fish evolved onto land

June 22nd, 2017

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

“It’s like a snake on the outside, but a fish on the inside.”

The fossil of an early snake-like animal — called Lethiscus stocki — has kept its evolutionary secrets for the last 340-million years.

Now, an international team of researchers, led by the University of Calgary, has revealed new insights into the ancient Scottish fossil that dramatically challenge our understanding of the early evolution of tetrapods, or four-limbed animals with backbones.

Their findings have just been published in the research journal Nature. “It forces a radical rethink of what evolution was capable of among the first tetrapods,” said project lead Jason Anderson, a paleontologist and Professor at the University of Calgary Faculty of Veterinary Medicine (UCVM).

Before this study, ancient tetrapods — the ancestors of humans and other modern-day vertebrates — were thought to have evolved very slowly from fish to animals with limbs.

“We used to think that the fin-to-limb transition was a slow evolution to becoming gradually less fish like,” he said. “But Lethiscus shows immediate, and dramatic, evolutionary experimentation. The lineage shrunk in size, and lost limbs almost immediately after they first evolved. It’s like a snake on the outside but a fish on the inside.”

University of Calgary Professor Jason Anderson, right, and doctoral student Jason Pardo published a paper in Nature about new insights into the ancient Scottish fossil called Lethiscus stocki.
Credit: Photo by Riley Brandt, University of Calgary

Lethicus’ secrets revealed with 3D medical imaging

Using micro-computer tomography (CT) scanners and advanced computing software, Anderson and study lead author Jason Pardo, a doctoral student supervised by Anderson, got a close look at the internal anatomy of the fossilized Lethiscus. After reconstructing CT scans its entire skull was revealed, with extraordinary results.

“The anatomy didn’t fit with our expectations,” explains Pardo. “Many body structures didn’t make sense in the context of amphibian or reptile anatomy.” But the anatomy did make sense when it was compared to early fish.

“We could see the entirety of the skull. We could see where the brain was, the inner ear cavities. It was all extremely fish-like,” explains Pardo, outlining anatomy that’s common in fish but unknown in tetrapods except in the very first. The anatomy of the paddlefish, a modern fish with many primitive features, became a model for certain aspects of Lethiscus’ anatomy.

Changing position on the tetrapod ‘family tree’

When they included this new anatomical information into an analysis of its relationship to other animals, Lethiscus moved its position on the ‘family tree’, dropping into the earliest stages of the fin-to-limb transition. “It’s a very satisfying result, having them among other animals that lived at the same time,” says Anderson.

The results match better with the sequence of evolution implied by the geologic record. “Lethiscus also has broad impacts on evolutionary biology and people doing molecular clock reproductions of modern animals,” says Anderson. “They use fossils to calibrate the molecular clock. By removing Lethiscus from the immediate ancestry of modern tetrapods, it changes the calibration date used in those analyses.”

source- sciencedaily

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

WFS news: Massive vertebrae sheds new light on Alamosaurus sanjuanensis

June 20th, 2017

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

The discovery nearly two decades ago of nine beautifully articulated vertebrae at Big Bend National Park is shedding new light on a 66 million-year-old sauropod native to Texas and the North American southwest called Alamosaurus sanjuanensis.

Diagrammatic skeletal drawing of Alamosaurus sanjuanensis based on composite skeleton reconstruction exhibited at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, in Dallas, Texas. Reconstruction based on BIBE 45854, TMM 41541-1, USNM 15560 and the distal caudal series of a not-yet-named South American titanosaur. Human silhouette represents a 1.8 m tall individual. Grey-filled elements indicate parts of reconstruction based upon estimates of anatomy or modifications of other taxa.

Paleontologists from the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas have co-authored a scientific paper entitled “An articulated cervical series of Alamosaurus sanjuanensis Gilmore, 1922 (Dinosauria, Sauropoda) from Texas: new perspective on the relationships of North America’s last giant sauropod.” Their findings are now available online as an open access article at the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology website and will appear in its forthcoming January/February 2017 print edition. The lead author is Ronald S. Tykoski, Ph.D., the Perot Museum’s Director of Paleontology Lab, and the co-author is Anthony R. Fiorillo, Ph.D., the Perot Museum’s Chief Curator and Vice President of Research and Collections.

“Giant sauropods like Alamosaurus have amazed people since the 1800s. Their sheer size boggles the mind, and they have forced scientists to re-think the physical limits of land-living animals,” said Tykoski. “The fossils described in our paper reveal new details about the last sauropods in North America, which helps us better understand who Alamosaurus was related to and how this species made it to southern North America by 67 to 66 million years ago — just in time to go extinct at the end of the Cretaceous!”

The name Alamosaurus came from the Ojo Alamo trading post and geological formation in New Mexico from which the first bones of the species were found (not after the historic battle in San Antonio, Texas in 1836). The name of the trading post stemmed from the Spanish word for a huge cottonwood tree growing at the trading post. Alamosaurus was a titanosaur sauropod, one of the groups of long-necked and long-tailed dinosaurs that included the largest animals to walk the Earth.

BIBE 45854, articulated series of nine mid and posterior cervical vertebrae of a large, osteologically mature Alamosaurus sanjuanensis. Series is estimated to represent the sixth to fourteenth cervical vertebrae. A, composite photo-mosaic of the cervical series in right lateral view; identification of each vertebra indicated by C6 to C14, respectively. B, line drawing based on the photo-mosaic in A. C, line drawing in B with labels shown and vertebral fossae indicated by solid grey fill; cross-hatching represents broken bone surfaces and reconstructive material. Abbreviations: C, cervical vertebra; cdf, centrodiapophyseal fossa; clf, centrum lateral fossa; pocdf, postzygapophyseal centrodiapophyseal fossa; prcdf, prezygapophyseal centrodiapophyseal fossa; prcdf1, dorsal prezygapophyseal centrodiapophyseal fossa; prcdf2, ventral prezygapophyseal centrodiapophyseal fossa; sdf, spinodiapophyseal fossa; spof, spinopostzygapophyseal fossa; sprf, spinoprezygapophyseal fossa.

The discovery of the massive bones came in 1997 when a joint field crew from the University of Texas at Dallas (UT-D) and the Perot Museum (known at that time as the Dallas Museum of Natural History) was working in the northeast section of Big Bend National Park. The scientists and volunteers were excavating a site that produced parts of several immature sauropods when Dana Biasatti, then a student at UT-D, “stretched her legs” and came upon the remarkable remains of an adult titanosaur a few hundred yards away. The team was stunned. The nine cervical (neck) vertebrae were the first articulated series of adult Alamosaurus neck bones ever found. The fossils of Alamosaurus from Big Bend National Park currently represent the biggest dinosaurs discovered in Texas.

“It was one of those days one doesn’t ever forget. The part of the animal that was exposed at the surface was the hip region. Probing around the site resulted in the discovery of this incredible neck,” said Fiorillo. “One of the intriguing aspects of this project is that for us to better understand this dinosaur in our home state, we had to also rely, in part, on the results of the scientific work the Perot Museum has been doing in Arctic Alaska over the same window of time.”

Four years later — after gaining the full cooperation and necessary permits from the National Park Service and lining up Bell Helicopter to help transport the fossils (at no cost) from the remote wilderness site — the Perot Museum and UT-D team returned to the West Texas site for their top-secret mission to recover the adult sauropod bones.

For eight mostly hot and dusty days in early May 2001, they gingerly dug out the vertebrae, then hauled almost 3,000 lbs. of plaster, wood, burlap and water on their backs to create the jackets protecting the huge bones. On the final day, the field team, along with excited members of the National Park Service and other spectators, nervously watched as the helicopter gently lifted the plaster jackets — some weighing a half of a ton or more — from the excavation site. Dangling from the chopper about 50 feet above ground, the precious cargo was slowly transported to a flatbed truck about a mile away. Once packed and safely secured, the jackets began their 550-mile journey to the Perot Museum paleo lab at Fair Park in Dallas where they’d undergo years of fossil preparation work.

“This remarkable discovery illustrates the importance of America’s public lands as places where scientists have access to perform research that benefits everyone,” said Cindy Ott-Jones, Superintendent of Big Bend National Park. “While Big Bend National Park is a place that many people enjoy for its scenery and recreational opportunities, visitors should know that a tremendous amount of scientific research is also performed in the park.”

Today, visitors can view the actual fossilized neck bones from Big Bend at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, which opened in December 2012 near downtown Dallas. The enormous bones served as the inspiration for the centerpiece for the Museum’s T. Boone Pickens Life Then and Now Hall, a fully assembled skeleton of the Alamosaurus standing 25 feet tall and stretching more than the length of two school buses, dwarfing a Tyrannosaurus rex standing next to it. Laser digitization and 3D printing were used to create lightweight replicas of the Perot Museum’s dinosaur’s neck, along with portions of the body obtained from another skeleton at the University of Texas at Austin, and tail and leg bones in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. A crowd favorite, the breathtaking cast was fabricated and mounted by Research Casting International of Ontario, and it remains the only rendition of a complete Alamosaurus skeleton on exhibit anywhere in the world.

Once the decision was made in 2009 to feature the Alamosaurus at the new facility, Tykoski recalls it was a three-year Herculean effort to get the vertebrae ready for the Museum’s debut. Extra staff and more than two dozen volunteers worked thousands of hours meticulously whittling away 66 million years of sediment that entombed the dinosaur bones.

Both of the Perot Museum’s paleontologists credit the success of the 19-year initiative to the numerous partners who collaborated and cooperated from start to finish.

“The paper is just the culmination of almost two decades of hard work and incredible collaboration and partnerships between so many agencies and institutions,” said Tykoski. “From people at UT-D, Big Bend National Park, Bell Helicopter, the Smithsonian Institution, the Vertebrate Paleontology Lab at UT-Austin, the dedicated staff and volunteers at the Perot Museum, and other paleontologists who offered advice and insight about these animals, so many people contributed to getting the science done and the information out there for the world to see.”

“This was such an incredible find, and we were able to work with so many people to help us reach a successful conclusion. I guess, at some level, everyone reverted back to their childhood awe of giant dinosaurs,” added Fiorillo.

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

Source:Perot Museum of Nature and Science. “Massive vertebrae sheds new light on Alamosaurus sanjuanensis: Nine massive neck vertebrae discovered at Big Bend National Park.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 21 June 2016. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/06/160621111112.htm>.

World’s ‘first named dinosaur’ reveals new teeth with scanning tech!

June 16th, 2017

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

Pioneering technology has shed fresh light on the world’s first scientifically-described dinosaur fossil — over 200 years after it was first discovered — thanks to research by WMG at the University of Warwick and the University of Oxford’s Museum of Natural History.

Professor Mark Williams at WMG has revealed five previously unseen teeth in the jawbone of the Megalosaurus — and that historical repairs on the fossil may have been less extensive than previously thought.

Artist’s impression of how Victorian palaeontologists thought the Megalosaurus looked (R) is compared with how we now understand it to have looked (L).
Credit: University of Warwick/Mark Garlick

Using state of the art CT scanning technology and specialist 3D analysis software, Professor Williams took more than 3000 X-ray images of the world-famous Megalosaurus jawbone, creating a digital three-dimensional image of the fossil.

In an unprecedented level of analysis, Professor Williams at WMG was able to see inside the jawbone for the first time, tracing the roots of teeth and the extent of different repairs.

Some damage occurred to the specimen when it was removed from the rock, possibly shortly after it was discovered.

Records at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History suggest that some restoration work may have been undertaken by a museum assistant between 1927 and 1931, while repairing the specimen for display — but there are no details about the extent of the repairs or the materials used.

The scans have revealed previously unseen teeth that were growing deep within the jaw before the animal died — including the remains of old, worn teeth and also tiny newly growing teeth.

The scans also show the true extent of repairs on the fossil for the first time, revealing that there may have been at least two phases of repair, using different types of plaster. This new information will help the museum make important decisions about any future restoration work on the specimen.

This research was made possible through a collaboration between Professor Williams’ research group at WMG, University of Warwick — including PhD researcher Paul Wilson — and Professor Paul Smith, director of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

Professor Williams commented: “Being able to use state-of-the-art technology normally reserved for aerospace and automotive engineering to scan such a rare and iconic natural history specimen was a fantastic opportunity.

“When I was growing up I was fascinated with dinosaurs and clearly remember seeing pictures of the Megalosaurus jaw in books that I read. Having access to and scanning the real thing was an incredible experience.”

The Megalosaurus jawbone is on display at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History alongside other bones from the skeleton.

Megalosaurus — which means ‘Great Lizard’ — was a meat-eating dinosaur which lived in the Middle Jurassic, around 167 million years ago. It would have been about 9 metres long and weighed about 1.4 tonnes (1400 kg).

The research was recently presented at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)’s International Instrumentation and Measurement Technology Conference in Torino, Italy.

Source- Sciencedaily

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

Brazilian carnivorous mammal-like reptile fossil may be new Aleodon species

June 15th, 2017

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

Some Late Triassic Brazilian fossils of mammal-like reptiles, previously identified as Chiniquodon, may in fact be the first Aleodon specimens found outside Africa, according to a study published June 14, 2017 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Agustín Martinelli from the Universidade Federal of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, and colleagues.

This is an artistic reconstruction and skeleton made by Voltaire Paes Neto.
Credit: Voltaire Paes Neto; CC-BY

Aleodon is a genus of probainognathian cynodont, a taxon which evolved in the Triassic period, co-existed with dinosaur precursors and other archosaurs and eventually gave rise to mammals. The Aleodon genus was first described using fossils from Tanzania and Namibia, but it was not clear if it belonged within the family of carnivorous mammal-like reptiles known as Chiniquodontids, which includes the morphologically similar Chiniquodon.

The authors of the present study examined the skulls, jaws and teeth of Middle-Late Triassic fossil specimens from the Dinodontosaurus Assemblage Zone in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, most of which were previously thought to be Chiniquodontids, and compared them to a known African Aleodon species, A. brachyrhamphus.

The researchers used tooth morphology to identify one of the specimens as a new Aleodon species, which they named A. cromptoni after Dr Alfred “Fuzz” Crompton, who described the Aleodon genus. They also identified as Aleodon seven Brazilian specimens, previously thought to be chiniquodontids or traversodontids, and possibly one Namibian specimen, noting that this may call the reliability of Chiniquodon identification into question. Phylogenetic analysis indicated that Aleodon cromptoni may be, as suspected, a species in the Chiniquodonidae family.

Whilst the analysis was limited by the partial nature of some of the specimens, the authors note that the identification of these Late Triassic Aleodon specimens in Brazil strengthens the correlation between probainognathians from this epoch in South America and in Africa.

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

source-sciencedaily

WFS News : Corals reveals source of 1586 Sanriku, Japan tsunami

June 13th, 2017

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

A team of researchers, led by Dr. Rhett Butler, geophysicist at the University of Hawai’i at M?noa (UHM), re-examined historical evidence around the Pacific and discovered the origin of the tsunami that hit Sanriku, Japan in 1586 — a mega-earthquake from the Aleutian Islands that broadly impacted the north Pacific. Until now, this was considered an orphan tsunami, a historical tsunami without an obvious local earthquake source, likely originating far away.

Butler and scientists from the National Tropical Botanical Garden, UHM School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, and NOAA’s Pacific Tsunami Warning Center analyzed material deposited into Makauwahi Cave, Kauai during a tsunami — specifically, coral fragments that were previously dated to approximately the sixteenth century using carbon-14. Using specific isotopes of naturally-occurring thorium and uranium in the coral fragments, they determined a very precise age of the tsunami event that washed the coral ashore. Prior carbon-14 dates had an uncertainty of ±120 years, whereas the uranium-thorium date is more precise, 1572±21 years. This increased precision allowed better comparison with dated, known tsunamis and earthquakes throughout the Pacific.

“Although we were aware of the 1586 Sanriku tsunami, the age of the Kauai deposit was too uncertain to establish a link,” said Butler. “Also, the 1586 Sanriku event had been ascribed to an earthquake in Lima, Peru. After dating the corals, their more precise date matched with that of the Sanriku tsunami.”

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These are the coral fragments analyzed in this study. All pieces are small (3-5 cm in longest dimension). Specimens shown are after physical cleaning (in water). All specimens shown are corals of the genus Pocillopora, except 1C, which is Porites, and 3B, which is Montipora. Credit: R. Butler, UHM SOEST

Further, re-analysis of the Peruvian evidence showed that the 1586 Peruvian earthquake was not large enough to create a measurable tsunami hitting Japan. They found additional corroborative evidence around the Pacific which strengthened the case. Earthquakes from Cascadia, the Alaskan Kodiak region, and Kamchatka were incompatible with the Sanriku data in several ways. However, a mega-earthquake (magnitude greater than 9.25) in the Aleutians was consistent with evidence from Kauai and the northeast coast of Japan.

“Hawaii is surrounded by the ‘ring of fire’ where mega-earthquakes generate great tsunamis impacting our island shores — the 2011 Tohoku Japan is the most recent example,” said Butler. “Even though there was no seismic instrumentation in the 16th century, we offer a preponderance of evidence for the occurrence of a magnitude 9 earthquake in the Aleutian Islands. Our knowledge of past events helps us to forecast tsunami effects and thereby enable us to assess this risk for Hawaii.”

Forecast models of a great Aleutian event inform the development of new maps of extreme tsunami inundation zones for the State of Hawai’i. By linking evidence on Kauai to other sites around the Pacific, we can better understand the Aleutian earthquake that generated the tsunami.

Butler and colleagues at UHM are now working to determine how frequently great earthquakes along the Cascadia margin of the Pacific Northwest might occur. These events have the potential to devastate the coasts of Oregon and Washington, and send a dangerous tsunami to Hawai’i’s shores.

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

University of Hawaii at Manoa. “New evidence reveals source of 1586 Sanriku, Japan tsunami.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 6 June 2017. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170606170332.htm>

Rhett Butler, David A. Burney, Kenneth H. Rubin, David Walsh. The orphan Sanriku tsunami of 1586: new evidence from coral dating on Kaua‘i. Natural Hazards, 2017; DOI: 10.1007/s11069-017-2902-7

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

Geology, biology agree on Pangaea supercontinent breakup dates

June 12th, 2017

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

Scientists at The Australian National University (ANU) have found that independent estimates from geology and biology agree on the timing of the breakup of the Pangaea supercontinent into today’s continents.

When continents break up, single species are divided into two and drift apart — physically and genetically.

Lead researcher Sarah McIntyre said geologic dating of the continental drift and biological dating of the genetic drift provided independent estimates of the break-up dates over the past 180 million years.

Cartography of the world. Credit: © Rawpixel.com / Fotolia

“This is by far the most comprehensive comparison of genetic tree-based dates and the geological dates of the continental breakups,” said Ms McIntyre, a PhD scholar at the ANU Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

“After excluding species that could easily move between continents, a new comparison of these two independent dating methods, applied to the breakup of Pangaea over the past 180 million years, finds good agreement between the two methods.

“Geological dating provides important independent support for the relatively new field of using genetic trees to date biological divergences.”

The research is published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

“In collaboration with biologist Professor Colin Groves, we came up with a vetting procedure that excluded species that could easily migrate from one continent to another,” Ms McIntyre said.

Co-author Associate Professor Charley Lineweaver said as genetic sequence data accumulates, dates from biology are becoming increasingly robust.

“Our original goal was to quantify how long continents had been isolated from each other, to see if some species would evolve into the hypothetical ‘intelligence niche’,” said Dr Lineweaver from the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics and the Research School of Earth Sciences at ANU.

“Along the way, we had to verify if geological and biological dating methods agree. We found that they do.”

“This concordance between biology and geology gives phylogenetic dating more street cred,” Dr Lineweaver said.

Dr Lineweaver said the result was only the tip of the iceberg of what can be done with all the new sequence data and the divergence dates that can be extracted.

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

Source-sciencedaily

Deep magma reservoirs are key to volcanic super-eruptions!

June 9th, 2017

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

New study shows the importance of large reservoirs in creating Earth’s most powerful volcanic eruptions and explains why they are so rare

Large reservoirs of magma stored deep in Earth’s crust are key to producing some of Earth’s most powerful volcanic eruptions, new research has shown.

In a new study, an international team of scientists claim that the most powerful volcanic eruptions, dubbed ‘super-eruptions’, are triggered by a slow and steady drip feed of magma from large reservoirs deep within Earth’s crust into smaller reservoirs closer to the surface.

These large reservoirs draw in hot magma from Earth’s mantle and exist as large volumes of partially molten rock that are able to store magma like a sponge.

By conducting a number of numerical simulations of this process, the research team showed that these large reservoirs are crucial to generating the largest volcanic eruptions on Earth.

The team also showed that these large reservoirs can take millions of years to form, hence why ‘super-eruptions’ happen so rarely.

It is believed that these findings could help to understanding why some volcanoes erupt frequently and at certain magnitudes.

The study has been published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The amount of magma that is stored in the upper layer of Earth’s crust determines the frequency and magnitude of volcanic eruptions. Small eruptions that erupt less than one cubic kilometre of material occur very frequently (daily to yearly), whilst the largest eruptions that erupt hundreds of cubic kilometres of material are infrequent, with hundreds of thousands of years between them.

Co-author of the study Dr Wim Degruyter, from Cardiff University’s School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, said: “Our current understanding tells us that hot magma can be injected from Earth’s lower crust into colder surroundings near the surface. At this point, the magma can either erupt or cool down to such a point that the magma solidifies and an eruption does not occur.”

“Up until now, this theory hasn’t been able to explain how the magma can maintain its heat in these near-surface reservoirs and thus produce extremely powerful eruptions.”

“Our study has shown that the key to this is much larger reservoirs deeper below the surface that are able to slowly increase the temperature in the upper part of the crust such that it becomes more amenable to the storage of magma. When the crust has become fully mature, giant reservoirs are able to form in the upper crust and thus we see extremely powerful eruptions.”

Previous research has revealed that a deeper magma body connects to a magma reservoir in the upper part of the crust underneath Yellowstone — one of the world’s largest supervolcanoes. The deeper magma body sits 12 to 28 miles below the surface and it’s believed that the hot molten rock could fill the 1,000-cubic-mile Grand Canyon 11.2 times. The last known eruptions from Yellowstone were 2m, 1.2m and 640,000 years ago, and it is believed that these were fed by the volcanic plumbing system that sits beneath it.

“Our calculations appear to agree with the observations that have been made at Yellowstone,” Dr Degruyter continued.

The study, Lifetime and size of shallow magma bodies controlled by crustal-scale magmatism, was led by researchers at ETH Zurich, and also included researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Source-sciencedaily

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

Gondwanagaricites magnificus:The oldest fossil mushroom

June 8th, 2017

Riffin

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

Roughly 115 million years ago, when the ancient supercontinent Gondwana was breaking apart, a mushroom fell into a river and began an improbable journey. Its ultimate fate as a mineralized fossil preserved in limestone in northeast Brazil makes it a scientific wonder, scientists report in the journal PLOS ONE.

The mushroom somehow made its way into a highly saline lagoon, sank through the stratified layers of salty water and was covered in layer upon layer of fine sediments. In time — lots of it — the mushroom was mineralized, its tissues replaced by pyrite (fool’s gold), which later transformed into the mineral goethite, the researchers report.

Fig 1. Gondwanagaricites magnificus gen. et sp. nov.(A) Photomicrograph of holotype (URM 88000) showing general habitus. (B) Interpretive drawing of (A) with major morphological features indicated. The red box indicates the position of gills shown in Fig 2

“Most mushrooms grow and are gone within a few days,” said Illinois Natural History Survey paleontologist Sam Heads, who discovered the mushroom when digitizing a collection of fossils from the Crato Formation of Brazil. “The fact that this mushroom was preserved at all is just astonishing.

“When you think about it, the chances of this thing being here — the hurdles it had to overcome to get from where it was growing into the lagoon, be mineralized and preserved for 115 million years — have to be minuscule,” he said.

Before this discovery, the oldest fossil mushrooms found had been preserved in amber, said INHS mycologist Andrew Miller, a co-author of the new report. The next oldest mushroom fossils, found in amber in Southeast Asia, date to about 99 million years ago, he said.

“They were enveloped by a sticky tree resin and preserved as the resin fossilized, forming amber,” Heads said. “This is a much more likely scenario for the preservation of a mushroom, since resin falling from a tree directly onto the forest floor could readily preserve specimens. This certainly seems to have been the case, given the mushroom fossil record to date.”

Fig 2. Scanning electron micrographs of the gills of Gondwanagaricites magnificus gen. et sp. nov.(A) Section of preserved gills (location indicated by red box on Fig 1B). (B) close-up view of (A) showing detailed structure.

The mushroom was about 5 centimeters (2 inches) tall. Electron microscopy revealed that it had gills under its cap, rather than pores or teeth, structures that release spores and that can aid in identifying species.

“Fungi evolved before land plants and are responsible for the transition of plants from an aquatic to a terrestrial environment,” Miller said. “Associations formed between the fungal hyphae and plant roots. The fungi shuttled water and nutrients to the plants, which enabled land plants to adapt to a dry, nutrient-poor soil, and the plants fed sugars to the fungi through photosynthesis. This association still exists today.”

The researchers place the mushroom in the Agaricales order and have named it Gondwanagaricites magnificus.

Source: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “World’s oldest fossil mushroom found.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 7 June 2017. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170607141349.htm>

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