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: Tectonic Shift in Early Earth’s Carbon

February 27th, 2017

Riffin

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

A study of tiny mineral ‘inclusions’ within diamonds from Botswana has shown that diamond crystals can take billions of years to grow. One diamond was found to contain silicate material that formed 2.3 billion years ago in its interior and a 250 million-year-old garnet crystal towards its outer rim, the largest age range ever detected in a single specimen. Analysis of the inclusions also suggests that the way that carbon is exchanged and deposited between the atmosphere, biosphere, oceans and geosphere may have changed significantly over the past 2.5 billion years.

Gem quality diamond from Letlhakane, containing multiple orange garnets.Credit: M. Gress, VU Amsterdam

‘Although a jeweller would consider diamonds with lots of inclusions to be flawed, for a geologist these are the most valuable and exciting specimens,’ said Prof Gareth Davies, of Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam, who co-authored the study. ‘We can use the inclusions to date different parts of an individual diamond, and that allows us to potentially look at how the processes that formed diamonds may have changed over time and how this may be related to the changing carbon cycle on Earth.’

Sixteen diamonds from two mines in north eastern Botswana were analysed in the study: seven specimens from the Orapa mine and nine from the Letlhakane mine. A team at VU Amsterdam measured the radioisotope, nitrogen and trace element contents of inclusions within the diamonds. Although the mines are located just 40 kilometres apart, the diamonds from the two sources had significant differences in the age range and chemical composition of inclusions.

The Orapa diamonds contained material dating from between around 400 million and more than 1.4 billion years ago. The Letlhakane diamond inclusions ranged from less than 700 million and up to 2-2.5 billion years old. In every case, the team were able to link the age and composition of material in the inclusions to distinct tectonic events occurring locally in the Earth’s crust, such as a collision between plates, continental rifting or magmatism. This suggests that diamond formation is triggered by heat fluctuations and magma fluid movement associated with these events.

The Letlhakane diamonds also provided a rare opportunity to look back in time to the early Earth. The oldest inclusions date back to before the Great Oxidation Event (GOE) around 2.3 billion years ago, when oxygen produced by multicellular cyanobacteria started to fill the atmosphere, radically changing the weathering and sediment formation processes and thus altering the chemistry of rocks.

‘The oldest inclusions in the diamonds contain a higher proportion of the lighter carbon isotope. As photosynthesis favours the lighter isotope, carbon 12, over the heavier carbon 13, this ‘light’ ratio finding suggests that organic material from biological sources may have been more abundant in diamond-forming zones early in the Earth’s history than we find today,’ explained Suzette Timmerman, lead author on the study. ‘Higher temperatures in the Earth’s interior before the GOE may have affected the way that carbon was released into the diamond forming regions beneath the Earth’s continental plates and may be evidence of a fundamental change in tectonic processes. However, we are currently working with a very small dataset and need further studies to establish if this is a global phenomenon.’

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Citation:S. Timmerman, J.M. Koornneef, I.L. Chinn, G.R. Davies. Dated eclogitic diamond growth zones reveal variable recycling of crustal carbon through time. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 2017; 463: 178 DOI: 10.1016/j.epsl.2017.02.001

Europlanet Media Centre. “Diamond’s 2-billion-year growth charts tectonic shift in early Earth’s carbon cycle.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 23 February 2017. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170223102126.htm>.

Key: WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev

WFS Dinofact : SYNTARSUS “Fused or Flat Ankle”

February 19th, 2017

Riffin

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

ANATOMY
Syntarsus was a small, lightly-built dinosaur that walked on two long legs. This predator was about 10 feet long (3 m) and weighed about 60-70 pounds. It had light, hollow bones, a long, pointed head with dozens of small, serrated teeth, and a long neck. Syntarsus had large, four-fingered hands with sharp claws. Syntarsus had four-toed feet with fused ankle bones (these ankle bones were like those of early ornithopods although it was an early saurischian dinosaur – these ankle bones were what Syntarsus was named for).

Syntarsus

In a bonebed in Zimbabwe, Africa, about 30 fossils were found together. Two types of Syntarsus were found; the more abundant type was about 15% bigger than the less abundant types. Paleontologists, citing examples of modern-day predatory birds, think that the larger, more numerous fossils were females; the smaller, less numerous fossils were males.

Syntarsus kayentakatae, the first Syntarsus found in North America, had double crests; the species found in Africa had no crest.

CLASSIFICATION
Syntarsus (pronounced sin-TAR-sus) was a saurischian (“lizard-hipped”) dinosaur, and a theropod. It was a ceratosaurian and a podokesaur. The type species is S. rhodesiensis. Syntarsus is closely related to Rioarribasaurus and Coelophysis.

WHEN SYNTARSUS LIVED, CLIMATE
Syntarsus lived during the early Jurassic period, about 208 million-194 million years ago. It lived in what was then a seasonally dry, desert-like environment – a Savanna-type climate perhaps like modern-day Kenya but without the grasses (grasses and other flowering plants hadn’t evolved yet).

DIET
Syntarsus was a carnivore, a meat eater. It may also have been a scavenger. Fossilized stomach contents have been found, containing small vertebrates.

BEHAVIOR
Syntarsus probably lived and hunted in packs; this is suggested by the existence of a fossil bonebed (a collections of many fossils of one location) of about 30 Syntarsus found in Zimbabwe, Africa.

LOCOMOTION
Slightly built, long legged, and very light because of its hollow bones, Syntarsus was a very fast, bipedal runner. Dinosaur speeds are estimated using their morphology (characteristics like leg length and estimated body mass) and fossilized trackways. Syntarsus’ footprint is about 4 inches long and the stride length is roughly 2.5 ft (0.75 m).
DISCOVERY OF FOSSILS
Many Syntarsus fossils have found in Zimbabwe, in Africa and Arizona, USA. About 30 Syntarsus fossils were found in a single bonebed in Zimbabwe, suggesting that these predators lived in packs. Along with the Syntarsus fossils was a Massospondylus, a plant-eating prosauropod dinosaur.

Syntarsus was named in 1969 by paleontologist M. A. Raath.

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WFS News: Live birth in an archosauromorph reptile

February 16th, 2017

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

A remarkable 250 million-year-old “terrible-headed lizard” fossil found in China shows an embryo inside the mother — clear evidence for live birth.

Head of The University of Queensland’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences and co-author Professor Jonathan Aitchison said the fossil unexpectedly provided the first evidence for live birth in an animal group previously thought to exclusively lay eggs.

“Live birth is well known in mammals, where the mother has a placenta to nourish the developing embryo,” Professor Aitchison said.

“Live birth is also very common among lizards and snakes, where the babies sometimes ‘hatch’ inside their mother and emerge without a shelled egg.”

The phylogenetic tree is derived from a combination of published sources18,45. O, egg-laying (oviparous); V, live-bearing (viviparous).

The phylogenetic tree is derived from a combination of published sources. O, egg-laying (oviparous); V, live-bearing (viviparous).

Until recently it was thought the third major group of living land vertebrates, the crocodiles and birds (part of the wider group Archosauromorpha) only laid eggs.

“Indeed, egg-laying is the primitive state, seen at the base of reptiles, and in their ancestors such as amphibians and fishes,” Professor Aitchison said.

He said the new fossil was an unusual, long-necked marine animal called an archosauromorph that flourished in shallow seas of South China in the Middle Triassic Period.The creature was a fish-eater, snaking its long neck from side to side to snatch its prey.

Its fossil was one of many astonishingly well-preserved specimens from new “Luoping biota” locations in south-western China. There were no known fossils like this (marine vertebrates of this age) from Australia.Lead author Professor Jun Liu from Hefei University of Technology China, said the researchers were “excited” when they first saw this embryonic specimen.

“We were not sure if the embryonic specimen was the mother’s last lunch or its unborn baby,” Professor Liu said.

“Upon further preparation and closer inspection, we discovered something unusual.”

He said the embryo was inside the mother’s rib cage, and it faced forward; swallowed animals generally face backward because the predator swallows its prey head-first to help it go down its throat.

(a) Photograph. The three separate blocks are arranged following their original positions in the field. (b) Interpretive drawing. Dotted line indicates the rough course of the vertebral column of the adult. The different colour in the cervical region aims to facilitate the association of cervical ribs with corresponding vertebrae. (c) Photo showing a close-up of the embryo preserved in the stomach region of LPV 30280. (d) Interpretive drawing of the embryo. (e) Photo showing a close-up of the perleidid fish preserved in the stomach region of LPV 30280. (f) Artist’s reconstruction of Dinocephalosaurus showing the rough position of the embryo within the mother. ax, axis; car, caudal rib; crh, cervical rib head; cv, cervical vertebrae; d4, fourth digit; f, perleidid fish; fe, femur; fi, fibula; h, humerus; ha, haemal arch; m, mandible; mt1, metatarsal 1; mt5, metatarsal 5; poz, postzygapophysis; prz, prezygapophysis; ra, radius; ti, tibia; ul, ulna. Scale bar, 20 cm.

Furthermore, the small reptile inside the mother was an example of the same species.

“Further evolutionary analysis revealed the first case of live birth in such a wide group containing birds, crocodilians, dinosaurs and pterosaurs among others, and pushes back evidence of reproductive biology in the group by 50 million years,” Professor Liu said.

“Information on reproductive biology of archosauromorphs before the Jurassic Period was not available until our discovery, despite a 260 million-year history of the group.”

Professor Chris Organ from Montana State University said evolutionary analysis showed that this instance of live birth was also associated with genetic sex determination.

“Some reptiles today, such as crocodiles, determine the sex of their offspring by the temperature inside the nest,” he said.

“We identified that Dinocephalosaurus, a distant ancestor of crocodiles, determined the sex of its babies genetically, like mammals and birds.

“This new specimen from China rewrites our understanding of the evolution of reproductive systems.”

Professor Mike Benton of the University of Bristol said analysis of the evolutionary position of the new specimens showed no fundamental reason why archosauromorphs could not have evolved live birth.

“This combination of live birth and genotypic sex determination seems to have been necessary for animals such as Dinocephalosaurus to become aquatic,” he said.

“It’s great to see such an important step forward in our understanding of the evolution of a major group coming from a chance fossil find in a Chinese field.”

The work is part of ongoing wider collaborations between palaeontologists in China, the United States, the UK and Australia.

Ref:Jun Liu, Chris L. Organ, Michael J. Benton, Matthew C. Brandley, Jonathan C. Aitchison. Live birth in an archosauromorph reptile. Nature Communications, 2017; 8: 14445 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms14445

Key: WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev

WFS News: How old were the oldest dinosaurs?

February 11th, 2017

Riffin

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

How old were the oldest dinosaurs? This question remains largely unanswered. The natural life span of these long-extinct giants is of interest to scientists, in combination with questions regarding how fast they could grow and how they could obtain sufficient nutrients from their habitat. Palaeontologists at the University of Bonn estimate by means of bone structures whether a particular dinosaur fossil is a young, adult or very old animal. The results have now been published in the journal Paleobiology.

“Many animals show growth lines in their bones while they are growing — similar to annual rings in a tree trunk,” reports palaeontologist Jessica Mitchell from the Steinmann Institute of the University of Bonn. However, as bone ages, regular repair procedures are carried out to renew bone. These repair structures in the bone (osteons) are so small that they can only be detected with a microscope.

Palaeontologist Jessica Mitchell of the Steinmann Institute, University of Bonn with the thigh bone of the long-necked dinosaur Apatosaurus.Credit: © Photo: Volker Lannert/Uni Bonn

In adult dinosaurs, the bone is transformed such that the growth lines are completely destroyed. Instead, only the repair structures are visible in the bones, which eventually overlap each other. “We can see several generations of osteons in the bone of animals with advanced age,” says Jessica Mitchell. “Our research objective was to investigate whether these repair structures could be used as indicators of age.” The research team compared differently sized bones of 79 specimens of several long-necked dinosaurs, representing young to old individuals: the bones of an adolescent have a few repair structures, while bones of an older individual are completely rebuilt.

The researchers are able to roughly estimate whether the animals are young or adult in age. But is it possible to determine a higher age between two adult dinosaurs? This question can be answered by analysing the repair structures. For this, the researchers only need a small sample of the fossilized bone: a drill core is ground and polished until only a small, translucent plate remains. Under a light microscope, the bone plate can be examined and the structures of interest can be measured.

Bone reconstruction in dinosaurs is similar to humans

Despite the size difference, inside, the bones of aging dinosaurs are very similar to those of us humans: the repair processes in dinosaurs, humans and many vertebrate animals follow the same pattern. “This reconstruction process is continually taking place within us and ensures that we have a new skeleton more or less every ten years,” emphasizes the palaeontologist. In forensics and anthropology, bones are also examined to determine the age of humans. The bone structure analysis helped determine that “Ötzi” the 5,000-year-old ice man died roughly at the age of 45.

Although bones do not appear to be active organs, such as the heart or lungs, they are much more than just the solid structures inside our body. Bones contain blood vessels that supply nutrients and bone cells that signal to each other that a repair is necessary. The study showed that the number of osteon generations, which have gradually formed during the reconstruction of the bones, gives an important indication as to whether an animal is younger or older in a comparative study.

Great potential in extinct animals

“With this method an absolute value for age is not yet possible,” says Mitchell. Extending the study with more dinosaur bones could further improve the outcome. Another future approach is to compare the bone structures of dinosaurs with living vertebrate animals, the actual age of which can be known. This comparison might also allow for more specific ages for dinosaurs.

Journal Reference:Jessica Mitchell, P. Martin Sander, Koen Stein. Can secondary osteons be used as ontogenetic indicators in sauropods? Extending the histological ontogenetic stages into senescence. Paleobiology, 2017; 1 DOI: 10.1017/pab.2016.47

Citation:Universität Bonn. “Dinosaurs: Juvenile, adult or senior?.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 7 February 2017. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170207104348.htm>.

KeY: WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev

WFS News: Soot may have killed off the dinosaurs and ammonites

February 8th, 2017

Riffin

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

A new hypothesis on the extinction of dinosaurs and ammonites at the end of the Cretaceous Period has been proposed by a research team from Tohoku University and the Japan Meteorological Agency’s Meteorological Research Institute.

The researchers believe that massive amounts of stratospheric soot ejected from rocks following the famous Chicxulub asteroid impact, caused global cooling, drought and limited cessation of photosynthesis in oceans. This, they say, could have been the process that led to the mass extinction of dinosaurs and ammonites.

Global climate change caused by soot aerosol at the K-Pg boundary.Credit: Kunio Kaiho

The asteroid, also known as the Chicxulub impactor, hit Earth some 66 million years ago, causing a crater more than 180 km wide. It’s long been believed that that event triggered the mass extinction that led to the macroevolution of mammals and the appearance of humans.

Tohoku University Professor Kunio Kaiho and his team analyzed sedimentary organic molecules from two places — Haiti, which is near the impact site, and Spain, which is far. They found that the impact layer of both areas have the same composition of combusted organic molecules showing high energy. This, they believe, is the soot from the asteroid crash.

(a–d) The 30-year average precipitation for the no ejection case (the pre-industrial climate conditions in the control experiment) (a), mean precipitation for 2 years from 6 months after the impact for the 500-Tg (b), 1500-Tg (c), and 2600-Tg (d) BC scenarios calculated by the climate model. The precipitation substantially decreased due to the impact in the 15°N to 15°S region on land, resulting in desert-like climates. The figure was created using the Grid Analysis and Display System (GrADS) Version 2.0 (http://www.iges.org/grads/).

Soot is a strong, light-absorbing aerosol, and Kaiho’s team came by their hypothesis by calculating the amount of soot in the stratosphere estimating global climate changes caused by the stratospheric soot aerosols using a global climate model developed at the Meteorological Research Institute. The results are significant because they can explain the pattern of extinction and survival.

While it is widely accepted that the Chicxulub impact caused the mass extinction of dinosaurs and other life forms, researchers have been stumped by the process of how. In other words, they’d figured out the killer, but not the murder weapon.

(a–c) Changes in the global averages of seawater temperature at 2-m, 50-m, 100-m, 200-m, 400-m, and 600-m water depths for the 500-Tg (a), 1500-Tg (b), and 2600-Tg (c) BC scenarios calculated by the climate model. Monthly anomalies from the control experiment (no ejection scenario) are shown. The 30-year global averages of seawater temperature at 2-m, 50-m, 100-m, 200-m, 400-m, and 600-m water depths in the control experiment were 293, 292, 290, 287, 283, and 280 K, respectively. The regions with seawater temperatures below zero at the 2-m water depth in the control experiment were excluded for the estimation of the anomalies and the 30-year averages to exclude the sea ice area.

Earlier theories had suggested that dust from the impact may have blocked the sun, or that sulphates may have contaminated the atmosphere. But researchers say it is unlikely that either phenomenon could have lasted long enough to have driven the extinction.

The new hypothesis raised by Kaiho’s team says that soot from hydrocarbons had caused a prolonged period of darkness which led to a drop in atmospheric temperature. The team found direct evidence of hydrocarbon soot in the impact layers and created models showing how this soot would have affected the climate.

According to their study, when the asteroid hit the oil-rich region of Chicxulub, a massive amount of soot was ejected which then spread globally. The soot aerosols caused colder climates at mid-high latitudes, and drought with milder cooling at low latitudes on land. This in turn led to the cessation of photosynthesis in oceans in the first two years, followed by surface-water cooling in oceans in subsequent years.

This rapid climate change is believed to be behind the loss of land and marine creatures over several years, suggesting that rapid global climate change can and did play a major role in driving extinction.

Kaiho’s team is studying other mass extinctions in the hopes of further understanding the processes behind them.

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

Journal Reference: Kunio Kaiho, Naga Oshima, Kouji Adachi, Yukimasa Adachi, Takuya Mizukami, Megumu Fujibayashi, Ryosuke Saito. Global climate change driven by soot at the K-Pg boundary as the cause of the mass extinction. Scientific Reports, 2016; 6: 28427 DOI: 10.1038/srep28427

Tohoku University. “Soot may have killed off the dinosaurs and ammonites.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 15 July 2016. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160715113558.htm>.J

WFS News: Researchers confirm the existence of a ‘lost continent’ under Mauritius

February 6th, 2017

Riffin

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

Scientists have confirmed the existence of a “lost continent” under the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius that was left-over by the break-up of the supercontinent, Gondwana, which started about 200 million years ago. The piece of crust, which was subsequently covered by young lava during volcanic eruptions on the island, seems to be a tiny piece of ancient continent, which broke off from the island of Madagascar, when Africa, India, Australia and Antarctica split up and formed the Indian Ocean. “We are studying the break-up process of the continents, in order to understand the geological history of the planet,” says Wits geologist, Professor Lewis Ashwal, lead author on the paper “Archaean zircons in Miocene oceanic hotspot rocks establish ancient continental crust beneath Mauritius,” published in the journal Nature Communications.

By studying the mineral, zircon, found in rocks spewed up by lava during volcanic eruptions, Ashwal and his colleagues Michael Wiedenbeck from the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) and Trond Torsvik from the University of Oslo, guest scientist at GFZ, have found that remnants of this mineral were far too old to belong on the island of Mauritius.

This is Indian Ocean topography showing the location of Mauritius as part of a chain of progressively older volcanoes extending from the presently active hot-spot of Réunion toward the 65-million-year-old Deccan traps of northwest India.Credit: Wits University

“Earth is made up of two parts — continents, which are old, and oceans, which are “young.” On the continents you find rocks that are over four billion years old, but you find nothing like that in the oceans, as this is where new rocks are formed,” explains Ashwal. “Mauritius is an island, and there is no rock older than 9 million years old on the island. However, by studying the rocks on the island, we have found zircons that are as old as 3 billion years.”

Zircons are minerals that occur mainly in granites from the continents. They contain trace amounts of uranium, thorium and lead, and due to the fact that they survive geological process very well, they contain a rich record of geological processes and can be dated extremely accurately.

Mauritius (M) is reconstructed in a likely location near Archaean–Neoproterozoic rocks in central-east Madagascar just prior to break-up2. The exact size and geometries of Mauritius and other potential Mauritian continental fragments (collectively known as Mauritia, including SM Saya de Malha; C, Chagos; CC, Cargados-Carajos Banks; LAC, Laccadives; N, Nazreth; see present location in Fig. 6) are unknown, and are generously drawn in the diagram. We propose that Mauritia is dominantly underlain by Archaean continental crust, and part of the ancient nucleus of Madagascar25,46 and India20,21 (stippled black line). A Large Igneous Province event (linked to the Marion plume) occurred from 92 to 84 Ma, and most of Madagascar was covered with flood basalts (full extent not shown for simplicity). Blue stippled line indicates the site of Cretaceous pre-breakup strike-slip faulting. AG, Analava gabbro (91.6 Ma); LR, Laxmi Ridge; S, Seychelles; SM, St Mary rhyolites (91.2 Ma)41. The black–white box (geology of Madagascar) is enlarged in the inset to Fig. 5. Inset map shows simplified geology of Mauritius, including trachyte plugs7. Star symbol marked MAU-8 is the sampling area for the present study and black bars indicate locations of zircons recovered from beach sand samples2.

“The fact that we have found zircons of this age proves that there are much older crustal materials under Mauritius that could only have originated from a continent,” says Ashwal.

This is not the first time that zircons that are billions of years old have been found on the island. A study done in 2013 has found traces of the mineral in beach sand. However, this study received some criticism, including that the mineral could have been either blown in by the wind, or carried in on vehicle tyres or scientists’ shoes.

These three grains were recovered from the MAU-8 trachyte sample. Backscattered electron (BSE) images (a–c) of the three grains taken after completing all U–Th–Pb isotopic analyses. Cathodoluminescence (CL) images (d–f) taken prior to acquiring our SIMS data. The indicated analysis numbers correspond to those in Supplementary Data 1. The indicated ages are the radiogenic 207Pb/206Pb ages for the corresponding craters.

“The fact that we found the ancient zircons in rock (6-million-year-old trachyte), corroborates the previous study and refutes any suggestion of wind-blown, wave-transported or pumice-rafted zircons for explaining the earlier results,” says Ashwal.

Ashwal suggests that there are many pieces of various sizes of “undiscovered continent,” collectively called “Mauritia,” spread over the Indian Ocean, left over by the breakup of Gondwanaland.

“According to the new results, this break-up did not involve a simple splitting of the ancient super-continent of Gondwana, but rather, a complex splintering took place with fragments of continental crust of variable sizes left adrift within the evolving Indian Ocean basin.”

These include Mauritia (brownish shading), Laxmi Ridge and the Seychelles (yellowish shading). During the opening of the Mascarene Basin at about 84 Ma, India, together with most of Mauritia and the Seychelles/Laxmi Ridge, broke away from Madagascar. Mauritia was subsequently fragmented into a ribbon-like configuration because of a series of mid-ocean ridge jumps2, which were partly related to the Marion plume and later the Reunion plume (after 66 Ma). The current configuration with Mauritius/Cargados-Carajos Banks/Nazareth/Saya de Malha forming the Southern Mascarene Plateau (part of the African/Somali Plate), and with the Laccadives and Chagos being part of the Indian Plate, arose at 41 Ma (black arrow shows where Chagos originated at 41 Ma). North of Mauritia, seafloor spreading was initiated between the Laxmi Ridge and the Seychelles at around 62–63 Ma, and the Seychelles became part of the African/Somalian plate after 61 Ma when seafloor spreading in the Mascarene Basin ceased2. Background bathymetry is ETOPO147 and continental plate polygons with continental-ocean boundaries are from Torsvik & Cocks48.

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

Journal Reference:Lewis D. Ashwal, Michael Wiedenbeck, Trond H. Torsvik. Archaean zircons in Miocene oceanic hotspot rocks establish ancient continental crust beneath Mauritius. Nature Communications, 2017; 8: 14086 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms14086

Citation:University of the Witwatersrand. “Researchers confirm the existence of a ‘lost continent’ under Mauritius.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 31 January 2017. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170131124126.htm>.

WFS News: Dinosaur (Lufengosaurus) rib bones reveal remnants of 195-million-year-old protein

February 3rd, 2017

Riffin

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

Is fossilized rock all that remains when a dinosaur decomposes?

New research from scientists at the University of Toronto and researchers in China and Taiwan provides the first evidence that proteins have been preserved within the 195-million-year-old rib of the sauropodomorph dinosaur Lufengosaurus. The study appears in the Jan. 31 issue of the journal Nature Communications.

“These dinosaur proteins are more than 100 million years older than anything previously discovered,” says Professor Robert Reisz, a specialist in vertebrate paleontology in the department of biology at U of T Mississauga. “These proteins are the building blocks of animal soft tissues, and it’s exciting to understand how they have been preserved.”

Skeleton of the 195-million-year-old dinosaur “Lufengosaurus” preserved as found in the ground in Yunnan Province, China.
Credit: Photo courtesy of Robert Reisz

The Canada-Taiwan research team, led by Reisz, used the synchrotron at the Taiwanese National Synchrotron Radiation Research Centre to find the substance in place, known as collagen type I, preserved within the tiny vascular canals of the rib where blood vessels and blood would be in the living dinosaur.

The collagen was found together with lots of small, spherical hematite particles. Hematite is a mineral that can be formed from the iron in hemoglobin, the oxygen-transport protein in red blood cells. The chemical bond between iron and oxygen is what gives blood cells their red colour.

(a) Rib before sectioning, (b) transverse section of the rib, small black circles are the central vascular canals in the osteons, (c) longitudinal section of the rib showing distribution of infilled vascular canals, (d–h) close ups of preserved collagen-infilling materials within the vascular canals of the rib; flat transparent preserved protein fragments that were washed out from the cut canals, as explained in the main text, are indicated by red arrows, f,h are the dark-field images of e,g, respectively, (i) SR-TXM image of microcrystals of haematite within the vascular canal, indicated by red squares, (j) microcrystal of haematite inside the vascular canal, (k) tomographic images of haematite crystal in different views, (l) lacuna within the bone matrix and (m) tomographic images of lacunae in different views.

Reisz and his colleagues believe that these hematite particles were derived from the original blood of the dinosaur, and that they acted as the catalyst for preserving the protein in the vascular canals of the bone. These collagen pieces are probably remnants of the blood vessels that supplied blood to the bone cells in the living dinosaur.

“Interestingly, there was no evidence of preservation of organic remains in the main mass of the bone, only in the small vascular canals that ran along the length of the rib, where hematite was also present” says Reisz.

“Our localized search, in areas of the bone that are likely to preserve remnants of the original soft tissues, is more likely to succeed than previously used methods. This approach has great future potential, because localized searches will yield important results even when the amount of organic remains is miniscule.”

Transient absorption images of vascular canal (a) and lacunae (b). These show high concentration of haematite particles.

Previous evidence of preserved collagen date back to the Late Cretaceous Period — more than 100 million years younger than this discovery — but those studies extracted the organic remains by dissolving away all other parts of the fossil, without a clear understanding of the precise origins of the collagen.

This research allowed the scientists to find the collagen in place without dissolving the rest of the fossil, and it has helped them understand how the organic remains were preserved. Reisz believes that future explorations for even older proteins will be possible if this technique is used.

Citation:University of Toronto. “Good ribbance: Dinosaur rib bones reveal remnants of 195-million-year-old protein.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 1 February 2017. www.sciencedaily.com / releases /2017/02 / 170201140952.htm>

Key: WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev

WFS News:Exceptionally preserved fossilized mantle of a vampyropod

February 1st, 2017

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A trove of exceptionally preserved Jurassic marine fossils discovered in Canada, rare for recording soft-bodied species that normally don’t fossilize, is expanding scientists’ view of the rich marine life of the period.

The preservation of the fossils — which include soft body parts as well as shells and bones — ranks the site among the highest quality sources of Jurassic (183 million year old) marine fossils in the world, and the only such site in North America. A paper describing the site and fossils recovered from it was published online in the journal Geology in January.

The presence of fossilized soft tissue is especially significant because it offers a more complete view of life in ancient ecosystems and can help fill the gaps in knowledge connecting extinct organisms to those living today, said Rowan Martindale, a professor at The University of Texas at Austin’s Jackson School of Geosciences who led research on the fossils.

A fossilized mantle of a vampyropod, a relative to the modern vampire squid (pictured on bottom right). The ink sack is the raised structure in the center, and muscles have a striated appearance.Credit: Rowan Martindale/The University of Texas at Austin Jackson School of Geosciences and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.

“In a normal fossil deposit, you only preserve a fraction of the organisms that were alive in the past. When you get an extraordinary fossil deposit with soft tissues preserved, you see significantly more of the community that would have been alive,” said Martindale, a paleontologist in the Department of Geological Sciences. “Normally, we wouldn’t find many of the animals because they lack a skeleton or have a very soft skeleton.”

Collaborators include researchers from Harvard University, Virginia Tech and Florida State University.

The new site was found on the Parks Canada Ya Ha Tinda Ranch near Banff National Park in southwest Alberta. Co-author Benjamin Gill, a professor at Virginia Tech, spotted the first exceptional fossil when he noticed his Ph.D. student and co-author, Theodore Them, standing right on top of a lobster.

“The lighting was just right to make out the outline of the lobster,” Gill said. “Then we looked around and noticed fossils all around us.”

The lobster was the first sign the site could be special because lobsters’ flexible exoskeletons usually aren’t preserved as fossils. Other unusual fossils recovered from the site include delicate shrimp, complete fish skeletons with scales and gills, large dolphin-like marine reptiles called ichthyosaurs, as well as “vampyropods” (related to modern vampire squid and octopus) with their delicate ink sacks still intact.

The presence of many well-preserved, soft-bodied animals marks the new site as a “Konservat-Lagerstätte,” a term for fossil beds that preserve an array of organisms with soft tissues as well as hard ones. These sites are rare. There are only three other sites, all located in Europe, that are known to contain fossils from the Early Jurassic like the Ya Ha Tinda site. Another famous example of a Canadian Lagerstätte is the Burgess Shale, which preserves a community of soft tissue organisms from the Cambrian Explosion (540 million years ago), named for the burst of animal diversity that appears in the fossil record from this time.

The new site is about 183 million years old, meaning the fossilized life was alive during the Early Jurassic. At this time, Ya Ha Tinda and the similarly aged European sites were on opposite sides of an ancient continent that became modern-day North America and parts of Europe. Having an array of well-preserved fossils from marine ecosystems on opposite sides of the continent will help scientists understand the distribution of sea life millions of years ago.

“This is the first time we have a site like this outside of Europe, so the Ya Ha Tinda fossilized community will give us a unique snapshot of life in the Early Jurassic Panthalassa Ocean,” Martindale said.

The researchers have been visiting the site every summer since 2013 and have recovered dozens of fossils, including some that are probably newly discovered species. Notable specimens include a lobster with bulky arms capped with diminutive, scissor-like claws, and 16 new vampyropod specimens, a number that Gill estimates increases known diversity of specimens from North America by threefold.

“Every time we’ve gone, we’ve found something new,” Gill said. “It’s a really abundant place.”

The next step of the research is to investigate how so many diverse organisms were fossilized together. Researchers think that the high-quality preservation is related to a widespread extinction of marine life caused by a period of extremely low levels of oxygen in parts of the Jurassic oceans. Free of most scavengers, these low oxygen areas could have been an ideal place for a carcass to lay undisturbed and become beautifully fossilized.

“If a carcass sinks into anoxic water, you’re more likely to get the conditions that will favor the preservation of soft tissues, feathers and articulated skeletons,” Martindale said. “These ‘fossil jackpots’ are really special.”

Journal Reference:

Rowan C. Martindale, Theodore R. Them, Benjamin C. Gill, Selva M. Marroquín, Andrew H. Knoll. A new Early Jurassic (ca. 183 Ma) fossil Lagerstätte from Ya Ha Tinda, Alberta, Canada. Geology, 2017; G38808.1 DOI: 10.1130/G38808.1

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WFS News: mio-pliocene Oysters from East coast of India

January 29th, 2017

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Crassostrea Sp. Image copyright @WFS,world Fossil Society, Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev

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Pyritized in situ trilobite eggs from the Ordovician of New York

January 28th, 2017

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For the past two years, Western Illinois University Assistant Professor of Geology Thomas Hegna has been part of a three-member team conducting research on what are believed to be the first-ever discovered trilobite eggs paired with a fossil of the segmented creature.

The ancient eggs, believed to be about 450 million years old, were found in New York by Markus Martin, an amateur paleontologist and friend to Hegna. The team also includes Assistant Professor Simon Darroch of Vanderbilt University.

Hegna said trilobites most closely resemble modern “rolly-polly” bugs. The trilobites are fossilized inside black shale, which Hegna said likely happened as a result of them being forced out of their habitat by an event such as an undersea mudslide.

“They would have had to be buried quickly to have been preserved,” Hegna said.

Martin collected the rocks in New York and then cracked them in an effort to examine what was inside. The trilobites from this locality are replaced with the mineral pyrite. Hegna said if Martin saw pyrite, also known as fools gold, in the crack, he then used an air abrasion system to go through the layers to get down to the trilobite.

A light photograph of a pyritized, egg-bearing specimen of Triarthrus eatoni. A cluster of nine eggs is present on the right side of the head. Credit: Image courtesy of Western Illinois University

“After Markus showed me the pictures of what he found we had a ‘eureka’ moment,” said Hegna. “My first thought was ‘What else could they be?’ People have found trilobites before, but never found the actual animal and eggs together.”

As fossil invertebrates, trilobites lived exclusively in the ocean during the Paleozoic Era.

After conducting visual research on the unearthed trilobites, Hegna said the team used a micro CT scanner at Vanderbilt University to get a “flipbook of slices” through the preserved trilobites and eggs.

“We digitally dissected the fossils,” said Hegna. “The CT scans help us see if the eggs were attached to the body without disturbing the fossil. It helped verify the egg’s replacement relative to the trilobite.”

The three-member team collaborated to write up the results of their research into a paper that was recently published in the academic journal Geology.

The team also presented its findings at the Central Regional and National meetings of the Geologic Society of America. Hegna said the attention the presentations received helped confirm the findings the team had made through its research.

Prior to the team’s discovery, nothing was known about this early phase of the development of trilobites.

“By knowing more about their reproductive biology, we expand our knowledge about trilobite autecology and can begin to address long-standing research questions about trilobite mating behavior and reproductive strategies,” said the team’s paper. “Pyritized in situ trilobite eggs from the Ordovician of New York (Lorraine Group): Implications for trilobite reproductive biology.”

Many of the specimens that were part of the team’s research were donated to the Peabody Museum at Yale University, where Hegna completed his doctoral research. The museum also received the three-dimensional digital model of the specimens the team produced using the CT scan data.

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