Formation of sedimentary layers of white clay, Tamilnadu, India

Fossil site for wood fossils, Tamilnadu, India

Fossil site in Kerala, India

Fossil site in Kerala, India

Fossil wood park maintained by geological survey of India at Tamilnadu

Cretaceous fossil sites india

Fossils in rack:-Cyad

Fossils in rack:-echiniderms

Fossils in rack:-Rastellum sp

Pre-historic seabed, Cretaceous period

A fossilized snake shows its true colors

April 7th, 2016 Riffin

Ten million years ago, a green and black snake lay coiled in the Spanish undergrowth. Once, paleontologists would have been limited to the knowledge they could glean from its colorless fossil remains, but now they know what the snake looked like and can guess how it acted. Researchers reporting on March 31 in Current Biology have discovered that some fossils can retain evidence of skin color from multiple pigments and structural colors, aiding research into the evolution and function of color.

So far, scientists filling the ancient-Earth coloring book with pigment have been limited to browns, blacks, and muddy reds when melanin lasts as organic material. No other pigments have been shown to survive fossilization. But this snake’s skin was fossilized in calcium phosphate, a mineral that preserves details on a subcellular level.

Preserved Skin in the Fossil Colubrid Snake MNCN 66503 (A) Entire specimen; inset shows anterior. Cream-colored material is fossil skin. Numerals 1–7 indicate sample locations. (B) Overlapping scales. (C–E) Scanning electron micrographs (SEMs) of fractured vertical sections through the skin, showing epidermis (Epi), dermis (De), basement membrane (B), chromatophores (iridophores [I], melanophores [M], and xanthophores [X]), stratum spongiosum (Sp), stratum compactum (Sc), and collagen fibers (C). The voids in SEM images typically represent structures that have separated into the counterpart of the sample during preparation. (F–I) Details of iridophore (F), xanthophore (G), and melanophores (H and I). (J and K) Transmission electron micrographs of xanthophore (J) and melanophore (K).

                                          Preserved Skin in the Fossil Colubrid Snake MNCN 66503
(A) Entire specimen; inset shows anterior. Cream-colored material is fossil skin. Numerals 1–7 indicate sample locations.(B) Overlapping scales.(C–E) Scanning electron micrographs (SEMs) of fractured vertical sections through the skin, showing epidermis (Epi), dermis (De), basement membrane (B), chromatophores (iridophores [I], melanophores [M], and xanthophores [X]), stratum spongiosum (Sp), stratum compactum (Sc), and collagen fibers (C). The voids in SEM images typically represent structures that have separated into the counterpart of the sample during preparation.(F–I) Details of iridophore (F), xanthophore (G), and melanophores (H and I).(J and K) Transmission electron micrographs of xanthophore (J) and melanophore (K).

The fossilized snakeskin maintained the unique shapes of different types of pigment cells, which would have created yellows, greens, blacks, browns, and iridescence while the animal was alive. The pigments themselves are now decayed, but with the cell shapes–specific to each kind of pigment–mineralized, there’s enough information to reconstruct their colors.”When you get fossil tissues preserved with this kind of detail, you’re just gobsmacked when you’re looking at it under the microscope,” says first author Maria McNamara, a paleobiologist at University College Cork. “I was astounded. You almost can’t believe what you’re seeing.”

Color Reconstruction of the Fossil Snake MNCN 66503 (A) Schematic representation of the relative abundance and position of chromatophores in samples of skin from different body regions. Numerals denote samples discussed in the text. See also Tables S1 and S2. (B) Color plate by Jim Robbins.

                                        Color Reconstruction of the Fossil Snake MNCN 66503
(A) Schematic representation of the relative abundance and position of chromatophores in samples of skin from different body regions. Numerals denote samples discussed in the text. See also Tables S1 and S2.
(B) Color plate by Jim Robbins.

McNamara first came across the fossilized snake while conducting her PhD research on fossils from the Libros site in Spain, but she only recently analyzed the specimen. Her team discovered the mineralized skin cells when viewing the fossil under a high-powered scanning electron microscope and then matched the shapes up with pigment cells in modern snakes to determine what colors they might have produced.

“For the first time, we’re seeing that mineralized tissues can preserve evidence of color,” says McNamara. The researchers determined that the fossilized snakeskin had three types of pigment cells in various combinations: melanophores, which contain the pigment melanin; xanthophores, which contain carotenoid and pterin pigments; and iridophores, which create iridescence. All told, the snake was a mottled green and black, with a pale underside–colors that likely aided in daytime camouflage.

“Up until this discovery, the only prospect for skin color being preserved in fossils was organic remains related to melanin,” says McNamara. “But now that we know color can be preserved even for tissues that are mineralized, it’s very exciting.”

Calcium phosphate mainly shows up in fossil bones and shells, but records do exist of so-called phosphatized skin. This discovery opens the door for re-analysis of these fossils, occurring across a wide range of creatures and locations, for evidence of color preservation. And knowing the color of an animal can also clue researchers in to some aspects of its behavior and evolution.

“It’ll mean re-evaluating a lot of specimens that might have been overlooked,” says McNamara.

Citation :Cell Press. “A fossilized snake shows its true colors.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 31 March 2016. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160331133402.htm

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

Aquilonifer spinosus, an arthropod that lived about 430 million years

April 5th, 2016 Riffin

Scientists have discovered an ancient animal that carried its young in capsules tethered to the parent’s body like tiny, swirling kites. They’re naming it after “The Kite Runner,” the 2003 bestselling novel.

The miniscule creature, Aquilonifer spinosus, was an arthropod that lived about 430 million years ago. It grew to less than half an inch long, and there is only one known fossil of the animal, found in Herefordshire, England. Its name comes from “aquila,” which means eagle or kite, and the suffix “fer,” which means carry.

Aquilonifer spinosus, the Kite Runner, was an arthropod that lived about 430 million years ago. It carried its young in capsules or pouches tethered to its body. Credit: D. Briggs, D. Siveter, D. Siveter, M. Sutton, D. Legg

Aquilonifer spinosus, the Kite Runner, was an arthropod that lived about 430 million years ago. It carried its young in capsules or pouches tethered to its body.
Credit: D. Briggs, D. Siveter, D. Siveter, M. Sutton, D. Legg

Researchers from Yale, Oxford, the University of Leicester, and Imperial College London described the new species in a paper published online the week of April 4 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Modern crustaceans employ a variety of strategies to protect their eggs and embryos from predators — attaching them to the limbs, holding them under the carapace, or enclosing them within a special pouch until they are old enough to be released — but this example is unique,” said lead author Derek Briggs, Yale’s G. Evelyn Hutchinson Professor of Geology and Geophysics and curator of invertebrate paleontology at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. “Nothing is known today that attaches the young by threads to its upper surface.”

The Kite Runner fossil shows 10 juveniles, at different stages of development, connected to the adult. The researchers interpret this to mean that the adult postponed molting until the juveniles were old enough to hatch; otherwise, the juveniles would have been cast aside with the shed exoskeleton.

The adult specimen’s head is eyeless and covered by a shield-like structure, according to the researchers. It lived on the sea floor during the Silurian period with a variety of other animals including sponges, brachiopods, worms, snails and other mollusks, a sea spider, a horseshoe crab, various shrimp-like creatures, and a sea star. The juvenile pouches, attached to the adult by slender, flexible threads, look like flattened lemons.

Briggs said he and his colleagues considered the possibility that the juveniles were parasites feeding off a host, but decided it was unlikely because the attachment position would not be favorable for accessing nutrients.

“We have named it after the novel by Khalid Hosseini due to the fancied resemblance of the juveniles to kites,” Briggs said. “As the parent moved around, the juveniles would have looked like decorations or kites attached to it. It shows that arthropods evolved a variety of brooding strategies beyond those around today — perhaps this strategy was less successful and became extinct.”

The researchers were able to describe Aquilonifer spinosus in detail thanks to a virtual reconstruction. They reconstructed the animal and the attached juveniles by stacking digital images of fossil surfaces revealed by grinding away the fossil in tiny increments.

Co-authors of the paper were Derek Siveter of the University of Oxford and the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, David Siveter of the University of Leicester, Mark Sutton of Imperial College London, and David Legg of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

The Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, the Natural Environmental Research Council, the John Fell Oxford University Press Fund, and the Leverhulme Trust supported the research.

Citation:Yale University. “Chasing after a prehistoric Kite Runner.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 4 April 2016. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160404152916.htm>

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

Evolution of some of the largest dinosaurs explained

March 31st, 2016 Riffin

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

Scientists from the University of Liverpool have developed computer models of the bodies of sauropod dinosaurs to examine the evolution of their body shape.

Sauropod dinosaurs include the largest land animals to have ever lived. Some of the more well-known sauropods include Diplodocus, Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus. They are renowned for their extremely long necks, long tails as well as four thick, pillar-like legs and small heads in relation to their body.

To date, however, there have been only limited attempts to examine how this unique body-plan evolved and how it might be related to their gigantic body size. Dr Karl Bates from the University’s Department of Musculoskeletal Biology and his colleagues used three-dimensional computer models reconstructing the bodies of sauropod dinosaurs to analyse how their size, shape and weight-distribution evolved over time.

This is a Giraffatitan model of a Sauropod. Credit: Dr Peter L Falkingham (Liverpool John Moores University)

This is a Giraffatitan model of a Sauropod.
                                                                 Credit: Dr Peter L Falkingham (Liverpool John Moores University)

Evolutionary history

Dr Bates found evidence that changes in body shape coincided with major events in sauropod evolutionary history such as the rise of the titanosaurs. The early dinosaurs that sauropods evolved from were small and walked on two legs, with long tails, small chests and small forelimbs. The team estimate that this body shape concentrated their weight close to the hip joint, which would have helped them balance while walking bipedally on their hind legs.

As sauropods evolved they gradually altered both their size and shape from this ancestral template, becoming not only significantly larger and heavier, but also gaining a proportionally larger chest, forelimbs and in particular a dramatically larger neck.

The team’s findings show that these changes altered sauropods’ weight distribution as they grew in size, gradually shifting from being tail-heavy, two-legged animals to being front-heavy, four-legged animals, such as the large, fully quadrupedal Jurassic sauropods Diplodocus and Apatosaurus.

The team found that these linked trends in size, body shape and weight distribution did not end with the evolution of fully quadrupedal sauropods. In the Cretaceous period — the last of the three ages of the dinosaurs — many earlier sauropod groups dwindled. In their place, a new and extremely large type of sauropod known as titanosaurs evolved, including the truly massive Argentinosaurus and Dreadnoughtus, among the largest known animals ever to have lived.

Front heavy

The team’s computer models suggest that in addition to their size, the titanosaurs evolved the most extreme ‘front heavy’ body shape of all sauropods, as a result of their extremely long necks.

Dr Bates said: “As a result of devising these models we were able to ascertain that the relative size of sauropods’ necks increased gradually over time, leading to animals that were increasingly more front-heavy relative to their ancestors.”

Dr Philip Mannion from Imperial College London, a collaborator in the research, added: “These innovations in body shape might have been key to the success of titanosaurs, which were the only sauropod dinosaurs to survive until the end-Cretaceous mass extinction, 66 million years ago.”

Dr Vivian Allen from the Royal Veterinary College London, who also collaborated in the research, added: “What’s important to remember about studies like this is that there is a very high degree of uncertainty about exactly how these animals were put together. While we have good skeletons for many of them, it’s difficult to be sure how much meat there was around each of the bones. We have built this uncertainly into our models, ranging each body part from emaciated to borderline obesity, and even using these extremes we still find these solid, trending changes in body proportions over sauropod evolution.”

Citation: University of Liverpool. “Scientists explain evolution of some of the largest dinosaurs.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 30 March 2016. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160330085622.htm

Synemporion keana : An Extinct Bat

March 27th, 2016 Riffin

The Hawaiian Islands have long been thought to support just one endemic land mammal in the archipelago’s brief geologic history, the Hawaiian hoary bat. But new fossil evidence indicates that a second, very different species of bat lived alongside the hoary bat for thousands of years before going extinct shortly after humans arrived on the islands. The research, published in the journal American Museum Novitates, describes the mysterious bat, named Synemporion keana, whose remains were first discovered in a lava tube more than 30 years ago.

“The Hawaiian Islands are a long way from anywhere, and as a result, they have a very unique fauna–its native animals apparently got there originally by flying or swimming,” said Nancy Simmons, a co-author on the paper and curator-in-charge of the American Museum of Natural History’s Department of Mammalogy. “Besides the animals that humans have introduced to the islands, like rats and pigs, the only mammals that we’ve known to be native to Hawaii are a monk seal, which is primarily aquatic, and the hoary bat. So finding that there actually was a different bat–a second native land mammal for the islands–living there for such a long period of time was quite a surprise.”

Skeleton of Synemporion keana in situ on the floor near the lower end of Māhiehie Cave.

                                             Skeleton of Synemporion keana in situ on the floor near the lower end of Māhiehie Cave.

Co-author Francis Howarth, an entomologist at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, was investigating lava tubes in Maui in 1981 when he discovered skeletal remains of the bat. He took the fossils to his colleague Alan Ziegler, a mammalogist at the Bishop Museum, and later they and colleagues found remains on four other islands: Hawaii, Kauai, Molokai, and Oahu.

“The initial specimens included skeletons embedded in crystals on the lava tube wall and thus were likely very old,” Howarth said. “Ziegler eagerly guided me through the bat collection at the Bishop Museum to identify the bat and show me features to look for in order to find additional material for study.”

Ziegler immediately recognized that the small bat was very different from anything else he had seen and started the long process of investigating where it sits in the tree of life. When he died in 2003, the project was put on hold until Simmons was brought in to continue the work.

Smaller than the hoary bat, Synemporion keana first appeared in the fossil record on the islands around 320,000 years ago and survived until at least 1,100 years ago–possibly much later. The two species of bats coexisted for several thousand years. Synemporion keana, which is a kind of vesper, or evening bat, had an array of features that so far have thwarted efforts to identify its closest relatives. Simmons and Howarth hope that future work with ancient DNA extracted from the fossils might help them solve the mystery.

“This extinct bat really is something new, not just a slight variation on a theme of a known genus,” Simmons said. “The new bat contains a mosaic of features from taxa seen on many different continents. At some point, their ancestors flew to Hawaii, but we can’t tell if they came from North America, Asia, or the Pacific Islands–they really could have come from anywhere based on what we know now.”

The authors think that the extinction of Synemporion keana may have been a direct or indirect result of human colonization of the islands and the invasive non-native species that accompanied human explorers and settlers.

“It seems possible that the reduction of native forests and associated insects after human colonization of the islands contributed not just to the extinction of plants, birds, and invertebrates, but also to the extinction of this endemic bat,” Howarth said.

The study can be found at: http://digitallibrary.amnh.org/handle/2246/6641

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

Seaweed fossils : Chinggiskhaania bifurcata

March 23rd, 2016 Riffin

Honing in on when life on Earth evolved from single-celled to multicellular organisms is no easy task. Organisms that old lacked many distinguishing characteristics of modern life forms, making their fossils exceptionally rare.

But University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee paleontologist Stephen Dornbos and his research partners have discovered new clues in the quest. The team found fossils of two species of previously unknown ancient multicellular marine algae, what we now know as seaweed — and they’re among the oldest examples of multicellular life on Earth.

(a–h) Chinggiskhaania bifurcata. Photographs taken under cross-polarized light. Scale bars = 5 mm. (a) Specimen showing characteristic thin, rarely branching filaments (IEZAB0002). (b) Specimen of a thallus containing four filaments, one branching, that converge toward the lower right of the photograph (holotype; IEZAB0001). Base of specimen is poorly preserved. (c) Fragmentary filaments preserved in a bundle (IEZAB0003). (d) Basal portion of a thallus showing stipe comprised of closely grouped filaments above a narrow holdfast (IEZAB0004). (e) Another specimen of basal portion of a thallus from the same slab as 2d showing stipe and holdfast (IEZAB0004). (f–h) Typical branching of filaments (IEZAB0002, IEZAB0003, and IEZAB0002, respectively). (i,j) Zuunartsphyton delicatum. Photomicrographs taken under normal light. Scale bars = 1 mm. (i) Larger specimen showing shrub-like thallus with curly filaments (holotype; IEZAB0007). (j) Smaller specimen also showing shrub-like thallus with curly filaments (IEZAB0008).

(a–h) Chinggiskhaania bifurcata. Photographs taken under cross-polarized light. Scale bars = 5 mm. (a) Specimen showing characteristic thin, rarely branching filaments (IEZAB0002). (b) Specimen of a thallus containing four filaments, one branching, that converge toward the lower right of the photograph (holotype; IEZAB0001). Base of specimen is poorly preserved. (c) Fragmentary filaments preserved in a bundle (IEZAB0003). (d) Basal portion of a thallus showing stipe comprised of closely grouped filaments above a narrow holdfast (IEZAB0004). (e) Another specimen of basal portion of a thallus from the same slab as 2d showing stipe and holdfast (IEZAB0004). (f–h) Typical branching of filaments (IEZAB0002, IEZAB0003, and IEZAB0002, respectively). (i,j) Zuunartsphyton delicatum. Photomicrographs taken under normal light. Scale bars = 1 mm. (i) Larger specimen showing shrub-like thallus with curly filaments (holotype; IEZAB0007). (j) Smaller specimen also showing shrub-like thallus with curly filaments (IEZAB0008).

Their age is estimated to be more than 555 million years old, placing the fossils in the last part of Precambrian times, called the Ediacaran Period. They provide a crucial view of Earth’s earliest evolution of multicellular life, which scientists now think started millions of years earlier than previously thought.

The team’s work is detailed in a paper in the open-access online journalScientific Reports, published March 17.

“This discovery helps tell us more about life in a period that is relatively undocumented,” said Dornbos, UWM associate professor of geosciences and first author on the paper. “It can help us correlate the changes in life forms with what we know about the Earth’s ancient environments. It is a major evolutionary step toward life as we know it today.”

(a) One filament and its EDS images. Original backscatter image on left. Scale bar is 600 μm. Note high concentrations of Al, Si, and some C in filament. There is also one small zone of high Fe concentration shown in blue. (b) One filament and its EDS images. Original backscatter image on left. Scale bar is 600 μm. Note high concentrations of Al, Si, and some C in filament.

(a) One filament and its EDS images. Original backscatter image on left. Scale bar is 600 μm. Note high concentrations of Al, Si, and some C in filament. There is also one small zone of high Fe concentration shown in blue. (b) One filament and its EDS images. Original backscatter image on left. Scale bar is 600 μm. Note high concentrations of Al, Si, and some C in filament.

Scientists think that an explosion of animal diversity and complexity began near the start of the Cambrian Period, about 541 million years ago. But Dornbos said this fossil find is the latest example of multicellular life forms appearing in the preceding Ediacaran Period.

Certain kinds of sedimentary rocks, called Burgess Shale-type (BST) deposits, have the right characteristics to preserve soft-bodied organisms as thin carbon films. During the Cambrian Period, BST deposits are more common, and they preserve fossils of increasingly complex animals. But only a handful of Ediacaran BST deposits are known globally.

Team members were searching for Ediacaran fossils in western Mongolia limestone when they uncovered a new BST deposit. That’s where they found the seaweed fossils.

Dornbos’ collaborators on the fieldwork, funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and NASA’s Wisconsin Space Grant Consortium, were Tatsuo Oji and Akihiro Kanayama of the Nagoya University Museum in Japan, and Sersmaa Gonchigdorj of the Mongolian University of Science and Technology in Ulaanbaatar.

BST fossils from the Ediacaran usually fall into two categories: multicellular algae, like seaweed, and fossils that are extremely difficult to classify, often the remains of extinct types of organisms. Consequently, Dornbos said, determining exactly what is preserved in Ediacaran fossil deposits can be hotly contested.

“If you find a fossil from this time frame, you really need strong support for your interpretation of what it was,” he said. “And the farther back you go in geologic time, the more contested the fossil interpretations are.”

Citation: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. “Ancient seaweed fossils some of the oldest of multicellular life.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 22 March 2016. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160322134110.htm

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

How Mount Kosciuszko came to exist

March 19th, 2016 Riffin

Geologists from the University of Sydney and the California Institute of Technology have solved the mystery of how Australia’s highest mountain — Mount Kosciuszko — and surrounding Alps came to exist.

Most of the world’s mountain belts are the result of two continents colliding (e.g. the Himalayas) or volcanism. The mountains of Australia’s Eastern highlands — stretching from north-eastern Queensland to western Victoria — are an exception. Until now no one knew how they formed.

Topography of Eastern Australia is shown. Credit: Professor Dietmar Müller

Topography of Eastern Australia is shown.Credit: Professor Dietmar Müller

A research team spearheaded by Professor Dietmar Müller from the University’s School of Geosciences used high performance computing code to investigate the cause of the uplift which created the mountain range. The team found the answer in the mountains’ unusually strong gravity field.

“The gravity field led us to suspect the region might be pushed up from below so we started looking at the underlying mantle: the layer of rock between the Earth’s core and its crust,” said Professor Müller.

The team found the mantle under Australia’s east coast has been uplifted twice.

The first occurred during the Early Cretaceous Period, when Australia was part of Gondwanaland.

Over Earth’s lifespan or ‘geological time’ the largely solid mantle has continuously been stirred by old, cold tectonic plate sections sinking into the deep mantle, under another plate. This process, called subduction, was occurring during the Early Cretaceous Period.

“Eastern Australia was drifting over a subducted plate graveyard, giving it a sinking feeling,” said co-author Dr Kara Matthews, a former PhD candidate at the University now at the University of Oxford. “But around 100 million years ago subduction came to a halt, resulting in the entire region being uplifted, forming the Eastern Highlands.”

The next 50 million years was a time of relative inactivity.

“Then, about 50 million years ago Australia’s separation from Antarctica accelerated and it started moving north-northeast, gradually taking it closer to a vast mantle upwelling called the South Pacific Superswell,” said co-author Dr Nicolas Flament. “This provided a second upward push to the Eastern Highlands as they gradually rode over the edge of the superswell.”

Professor Müller said the two-phase uplift suggested by supercomputer models is supported by geological features from rivers in the Snow Mountains, where river incision occurred in two distinct phases.

“The model we built explains why the iconic Australian Alps exist and is also a new mechanism for figuring out how some other mountainous regions elsewhere in the world were formed.”

The team’s findings have been published in Earth and Planetary Sciences.

Ref:R. Dietmar Müller, Nicolas Flament, Kara J. Matthews, Simon E. Williams, Michael Gurnis. Formation of Australian continental margin highlands driven by plate–mantle interaction. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 2016; 441: 60 DOI: 10.1016/j.epsl.2016.02.025.Science Daily.com

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

Tullimonstrum gregarium: Solving the mystery of the Tully Monster

March 17th, 2016 Riffin

The Tully Monster, an oddly configured sea creature with teeth at the end of a narrow, trunk-like extension of its head and eyes that perch on either side of a long, rigid bar, has finally been identified.

A Yale-led team of paleontologists has determined that the 300-million-year-old animal — which grew to only a foot long — was a vertebrate, with gills and a stiffened rod (or notochord) that supported its body. It is part of the same lineage as the modern lamprey. “I was first intrigued by the mystery of the Tully Monster. With all of the exceptional fossils, we had a very clear picture of what it looked like, but no clear picture of what it was,” said Victoria McCoy, lead author of a new study in the journal Nature. McCoy conducted her research as a Yale graduate student and is now at the University of Leicester.

A reconstruction of the Tully Monster as it would have looked 300 million years ago. Credit: Sean McMahon/Yale University

A reconstruction of the Tully Monster as it would have looked 300 million years ago.
                                                                Credit: Sean McMahon/Yale University

For decades, the Tully Monster has been one of the great fossil enigmas: It was discovered in 1958, first described scientifically in 1966, yet never definitively identified even to the level of phylum (that is, to one of the major groups of animals). Officially known as Tullimonstrum gregarium, it is named after Francis Tully, the amateur fossil hunter who came across it in coal mining pits in northeastern Illinois.

Thousands of Tully Monsters eventually were found at the site, embedded in concretions — masses of hard rock that formed around the Tully Monsters as they fossilized. Tully donated many of his specimens to the Field Museum of Natural History, which collaborated on the Nature study along with Argonne National Laboratory and the American Museum of Natural History.

The Tully Monster has taken on celebrity status in Illinois. It became the state fossil in 1989, and more recently, U-Haul trucks and trailers in Illinois began featuring an image of a Tully Monster.

“Basically, nobody knew what it was,” said Derek Briggs, Yale’s G. Evelyn Hutchinson Professor of Geology and Geophysics, curator of invertebrate paleontology at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, and co-author of the study. “The fossils are not easy to interpret, and they vary quite a bit. Some people thought it might be this bizarre, swimming mollusk. We decided to throw every possible analytical technique at it.”

Using the Field Museum’s collection of 2,000 Tully Monster specimens, the team analyzed the morphology and preservation of various features of the animal. Powerful, new analytical techniques also were brought to bear, such as synchrotron elemental mapping, which illuminates an animal’s physical features by mapping the chemistry within a fossil.

The researchers concluded that the Tully Monster had gills and a notochord, which functioned as a rudimentary spinal cord. Neither feature had been identified in the animal previously.

“It’s so different from its modern relatives that we don’t know much about how it lived,” McCoy said. “It has big eyes and lots of teeth, so it was probably a predator.”

Some key questions about Tully Monsters remain unanswered, however. No one knows when the animal first appeared on Earth or when it went extinct. Its existence in the fossil record is confined to the Illinois mining site, dating back 300 million years.

“We only have this little window,” Briggs said.

Additional Yale co-authors are Erin Saupe, Lidya Tarhan, Sean McMahon, Christopher Whalen, Elizabeth Clark, Ross Anderson, Holger Petermann, Emma Locatelli, and former Yale researcher James Lamsdell, who is at the American Museum of Natural History.

Courtesy: Yale University. “Solving the mystery of the Tully Monster.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 16 March 2016. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160316151355.htm

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

How Tyrannosaurus rex became top predator

March 15th, 2016 Riffin

The fossilized remains of a new horse-sized dinosaur reveal how Tyrannosaurus rex and its close relatives became top predators, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Paleontologists have long known from the fossil record that the family of dinosaurs at the center of the study–tyrannosaurs–transitioned from small-bodied species to fearsome giants like the T. rex over the course of 70 million years. But now, newly discovered dinosaur fossils suggest that much of this transition and growth in size occurred suddenly, toward the end of this 70 million-year period. The study also shows that before the evolution of their massive size, tyrannosaurs had developed keen senses and cognitive abilities, including the ability to hear low-frequency sounds. This positioned them to take advantage of opportunities to reach the top of their food chain in the Late Cretaceous Period after other groups of large meat-eating dinosaurs had gone extinct about 80-90 million years ago.

Until now, little was known about how tyrannosaurs became the giant, intelligent predators that dominated the landscape about 70 to 80 million years ago. The newly discovered species, named Timurlengia euotica, lived about 90 million years ago and fills a 20 million-year gap in the fossil record of tyrannosaurs. The new species is a tyrannosaur but not the ancestor of the T. rex.

“Timurlengia was a nimble pursuit hunter with slender, blade-like teeth suitable for slicing through meat,” said Hans Sues, chair of the Department of Paleobiology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. “It probably preyed on the various large plant-eaters, especially early duck-billed dinosaurs, which shared its world. Clues from the life of Timurlengia allow us to fill in gaps and better understand the life and evolution of other related dinosaurs, like T. rex.”

This is a life reconstruction of the new tyrannosaur Timurlengia euotica in its environment 90 million years ago. It is accompanied by two flying reptiles (Azhdarcho longicollis). The fossilized remains of a new horse-sized dinosaur, Timurlengia euotica, reveal how Tyrannosaurus rex and its close relatives became top predators, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Credit: Original painting by Todd Marshall.

This is a life reconstruction of the new tyrannosaur Timurlengia euotica in its environment 90 million years ago. It is accompanied by two flying reptiles (Azhdarcho longicollis). The fossilized remains of a new horse-sized dinosaur, Timurlengia euotica, reveal how Tyrannosaurus rex and its close relatives became top predators, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Credit: Original painting by Todd Marshall.

Sues and Alexander Averianov, a senior scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences, collected the fossils at the center of the study between 1997 and 2006 while co-leading international expeditions to the Kyzylkum Desert of Uzbekistan.

“Central Asia was the place where many of the familiar groups of Cretaceous dinosaurs had their roots,” Sues said. “The discoveries from the Kyzylkum Desert of Uzbekistan are now helping us to trace the early history of these animals, many of which later flourished in our own backyard in North America.”

Sues and a team of paleontologists led by Steve Brusatte at the University of Edinburgh studied tyrannosaur fossils collected from the international expedition and discovered the new species. The team later reconstructed the brain of the dinosaur using CT scans of its brain case to glean insights into the new species’ advanced senses.

“The ancestors of T. rex would have looked a whole lot like Timurlengia, a horse-sized hunter with a big brain and keen hearing that would put us to shame,” Brusatte said. “Only after these ancestral tyrannosaurs evolved their clever brains and sharp senses did they grow into the colossal sizes of T. rex. Tyrannosaurs had to get smart before they got big.”

The species’ skull was much smaller than that of T. rex. However, key features of Timurlengia‘s skull reveal that its brain and senses were already highly developed, the team says.

Timurlengia was about the size of a horse and could weigh up to 600 pounds. It had long legs and was likely a fast runner.

The first tyrannosaurs lived during the Jurassic Period, around 170 million years ago, and were only slightly larger than a human. However, by the Late Cretaceous Period–around 100 million years later–tyrannosaurs had evolved into animals like T. rex, which could weigh up to 7 tons.

The new species’ small size some 80 million years after tyrannosaurs first appeared in the fossil record indicates that its huge size developed only toward the end of the group’s long evolutionary history.

The new study was funded by the European Commission. The fieldwork was supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society. The work was carried out in collaboration with researchers at the University of Edinburgh, Russian Academy of Sciences and Saint Petersburg State University.

 Citation: Smithsonian. “Newly discovered dinosaur reveals how T. rex became king of the Cretaceous.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 14 March 2016. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160314161237.htm
Key: WFS,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev,World Fossil Society

Fossil of oldest pine tree discovered

March 11th, 2016 Riffin

Scientists have discovered the oldest-know fossil of a pine tree.The charred pine twigs date back 140 million years to a time when fires raged across large tracts of land.Pine trees now dominate the forests of the Northern Hemisphere.

The research suggests the tree’s evolution was shaped in the fiery landscape of the Cretaceous, where oxygen levels were much higher than today, fuelling intense and frequent wildfires.

False-colour image of the fossil

                                    False-colour image of the fossil

“Pines are well adapted to fire today,” said Dr Howard Falcon-Lang of Royal Holloway, University of London, who discovered the fossils in Nova Scotia, Canada.

“The fossils show that wildfires raged through the earliest pine forests and probably shaped the evolution of this important tree.”

Serendipitous find: The specimens, which are described in Geology journal, were preserved as charcoal within rocks from a quarry.”It was only when I digested [the samples] in acid that these beautiful fossils fell out,” Dr Falcon-Lang told BBC News.

“They were sitting in my cupboard for five years before I actually worked out what was there.”

Plant oddities

The fossils are just a few mm long but probably came from trees resembling the Scots Pine that now cover large areas of Scotland.

Pines are well adapted to fire, containing inflammable deadwood that makes them burn easily.They also produce cones that will only germinate after being scorched, ensuring a new generation of trees is seeded after the fire has passed by and other vegetation has been destroyed.

Pine cones burning in a forest fire

Pine cones burning in a forest fire

Scientists have debated for many years why some trees seem to thrive on wildfires.

“One of the oddities about pine trees today is that they are one of the most fire adapted species on our planet,” explained Dr Falcon-Lang.

“These oldest pine fossils are preserved as charcoal, the product of fire, suggesting that the co-occurrence of fire and pines is something that’s very ancient, that goes back to the very origin of these first pine trees.”

Dr Falcon-Lang plans to return to the quarry this summer to recover more specimens.He hopes to find fossils of flowering plants, which were evolving at the same time as the ancient pines.

Taken from: Article By By Helen Briggs,BBC News

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

Electrokoenenia yaksha : The minute fossilized microwhip scorpion

March 10th, 2016 Riffin

It’s smaller than a grain of rice, yellowish, trapped in amber and lived 100 million years ago alongside dinosaurs. Meet Electrokoenenia yaksha, a newly described type of microwhip scorpion, or palpigrade, from Myanmar, whose minute fossilised remains have been found, trapped in Burmese amber. It has been described by an international team led by Michael S. Engel of the University of Kansas and the American Museum of Natural History in the US and Diying Huang of the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology in the People’s Republic of China in Springer’s journal The Science of Nature.

Photomicrographs of holotype (NIGP 163253) of Electrokoenenia yaksha Engel and Huang, gen. n. et sp. n., in mid-Cretaceous amber from northern Myanmar. a Dorsal view. b Ventral view

Photomicrographs of holotype (NIGP 163253) of Electrokoenenia yaksha Engel and Huang, gen. n. et sp. n., in mid-Cretaceous amber from northern Myanmar. a Dorsal view. b Ventral view

Despite the name, the microwhip scorpion is only distantly related to true scorpions. Engel discovered a single example of Electrokoenenia yaksha while investigating the diversity of arthropods preserved in pieces of Burmese amber from the Hukawng Valley in northern Myanmar. These are kept in the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Many of the finer details commonly used to compare fossilised remains with those of living microwhip scorpions are not visible in the sample. This is because it is contained in amber and it is obscured by microscopic fractures and debris.

Reconstructed habitus of Electrokoenenia yaksha Engel and Huang, gen. n. et sp. n., with meso- and metapeltidia reconstructed as they appear to have been formed (chaetotaxy omitted). a Dorsal habitus. b Expanded detail of reconstructed frontal organ

Reconstructed habitus of Electrokoenenia yaksha Engel and Huang, gen. n. et sp. n., with meso- and metapeltidia reconstructed as they appear to have been formed (chaetotaxy omitted). a Dorsal habitus. b Expanded detail of reconstructed frontal organ

Nonetheless, the researchers believe the sample to be that of a yellowish female of 1.47 millimetres long that lived some 100 million years ago during the Mesozoic period. It is the first microwhip scorpion fossil from this period to be found, and also the only one of its order known of to be contained in amber. The only other fossil record from this order is encased in limestone from the Onyx Marble Formation, and is therefore in geological terms between 94 and 97 million years younger than Electrokoenenia yaksha. Because it looks so similar to other microwhip scorpions still found today, it most probably shared the same habitat and preferences as its modern-day kin.

Details of holotype (NIGP 163253) of Electrokoenenia yaksha Engel and Huang, gen. n. et sp. n., in mid-Cretaceous amber from northern Myanmar. a Frontal view of cheliceral chela as preserved (note that the right chela [left in image] is turned such that its leading edge is more angled toward the viewer, while the left is more in profile). b Reconstruction of chela, from observable details. c Detail of dorsal surface of prosoma and anterior legs (the fine lines radiating from body are not setae but rather minute, reflective fractures within the amber itself resulting from weakness around the inclusion)

Details of holotype (NIGP 163253) of Electrokoenenia yaksha Engel and Huang, gen. n. et sp. n., in mid-Cretaceous amber from northern Myanmar. a Frontal view of cheliceral chela as preserved (note that the right chela [left in image] is turned such that its leading edge is more angled toward the viewer, while the left is more in profile). b Reconstruction of chela, from observable details. c Detail of dorsal surface of prosoma and anterior legs (the fine lines radiating from body are not setae but rather minute, reflective fractures within the amber itself resulting from weakness around the inclusion)

The fossilised microwhip scorpion’s name is partly derived from electrum, which means “amber.” The research team further acknowledged that the fossil was found resting in Burmese amber by naming it after “yaksha.” These nature spirits in South Asian mythology are said to have held stewardship over the wonders hidden in the earth.It is hoped that similar examples might yet be discovered to further the study of these tiny, soft-bodied arthropods in more detail. Because of their minute size, they are easily overlooked, particularly if placed near other fossilised items, debris, or when situated among fissures in the material it is trapped in. In the case of Electrokoenenia yaksha, it was initially overlooked owing to its placement among a series of reflective fractures, and appeared to be a slightly darker, thick area. It was discovered upon more careful examination.

Confocal and microphotographic images of holotype (NIGP 163253) of Electrokoenenia yaksha Engel and Huang, gen. n. et sp. n., in mid-Cretaceous amber. a Ventral view of specimen excluding flagellum. b Frontal view of chela. c Detail of apex of right pedipalp

Confocal and microphotographic images of holotype (NIGP 163253) of Electrokoenenia yaksha Engel and Huang, gen. n. et sp. n., in mid-Cretaceous amber. a Ventral view of specimen excluding flagellum. b Frontal view of chela. c Detail of apex of right pedipalp

“Preservation in amber is perhaps the only medium through which such minute animals could be adequately characterized, their fine features and fragile forms too readily destroyed or rendered unidentifiable in sediments,” says Engel. He believes that further specimens might be discovered in amber deposits from India, the Dominican Republic, Lebanon, eastern North America and Archingeay in France.

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

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