The La Brea Tar Pits have stirred the imaginations of scientists and the public alike for over a century. But the amount of time it took for ancient animals to become buried in asphalt after enduring their gruesome deaths has remained a mystery. Recent forensic investigations, led by Anna R. Holden of the Natural History […]
Posts Tagged ‘Russel T Sajeev’
Fossil Insect Traces Reveal Ancient Climate, Entrapment, and Fossilization at La Brea Tar Pits
July 5th, 2013 
Riffin 
Posted in Featured Post 
Tags: Fossil Insect, Riffin T Sajeev, Russel T Sajeev, WFS, world fossil society 
No Comments »The Giant Cretaceous Coelacanth (Actinistia, Sarcopterygii) Megalocoelacanthus dobiei Schwimmer, Stewart & Williams, 1994, and Its Bearing on Latimerioidei Interrelationships
July 4th, 2013 Riffin We present a redescription of Megalocoelacanthus dobiei, a giant fossil coelacanth from Upper Cretaceous strata of North America. Megalocoelacanthus has been previously described on the basis of composite material that consisted of isolated elements. Consequently, many aspects of its anatomy have remained unknown as well as its phylogenetic relationships with other coelacanths. Previous studies have […]
After Major Earthquake: A Global Murmur, Then Unusual Silence
July 3rd, 2013 Riffin In the global aftershock zone that followed the major April 2012 Indian Ocean earthquake, seismologists noticed an unusual pattern. The magnitude (M) 8.6 earthquake, a strike-slip event at intraoceanic tectonic plates, caused global seismic rates of M≥4.5 to rise for several days, even at distances thousands of kilometers from the mainshock site. However, the rate […]
How ‘Parrot Dinosaur’ Switched from Four Feet to Two as It Grew
July 1st, 2013 Riffin Tracking the growth of dinosaurs and how they changed as they grew is difficult. Using a combination of biomechanical analysis and bone histology, palaeontologists from Beijing, Bristol, and Bonn have shown how one of the best-known dinosaurs switched from four feet to two as it grew. Psittacosaurus, the ‘parrot dinosaur’ is known from more than […]
Posted in Featured Post Tags: Psittacosaurus, Riffin T Sajeev, Russel T Sajeev, WFS, world fossil society No Comments »Large Dead Zone Forming in the Gulf
June 30th, 2013 Riffin Ocean experts had predicted a large “dead zone” area in the Gulf of Mexico this year, and according to the results from a Texas A&M University researcher just back from studying the region, those predictions appear to be right on target. Steve DiMarco, professor of oceanography and one of the world’s leading experts on the […]
Research Helps Paint Finer Picture of Massive 1700 Earthquake
June 29th, 2013 Riffin In 1700, a massive earthquake struck the west coast of North America. Though it was powerful enough to cause a tsunami as far as Japan, a lack of local documentation has made studying this historic event challenging. Now, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have helped unlock this geological mystery using a fossil-based technique. Their […]
Location of Upwelling in Earth’s Mantle Discovered to Be Stable
June 28th, 2013 Riffin A study published in Nature today shares the discovery that large-scale upwelling within Earth’s mantle mostly occurs in only two places: beneath Africa and the Central Pacific. More importantly, Clinton Conrad, Associate Professor of Geology at the University of Hawaii — Manoa’s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) and colleagues revealed that […]
A Stepping-Stone for Oxygen On Earth
June 27th, 2013 Riffin For most terrestrial life on Earth, oxygen is necessary for survival. But the planet’s atmosphere did not always contain this life-sustaining substance, and one of science’s greatest mysteries is how and when oxygenic photosynthesis — the process responsible for producing oxygen on Earth through the splitting of water molecules — first began. Now, a team […]
Pareiasaur: Bumpy Beast Was a Desert Dweller
June 26th, 2013 Riffin During the Permian era, Earth was dominated by a single supercontinent called Pangea — “All-Earth.” Animal and plant life dispersed broadly across this land, as documented by identical fossil species found on multiple modern continents. But a new study published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology supports the idea that there was an isolated desert […]
Two Mutations Triggered an Evolutionary Leap 500 Million Years Ago
June 25th, 2013 Riffin Evolution, it seems, sometimes jumps instead of crawls. A research team led by a University of Chicago scientist has discovered two key mutations that sparked a hormonal revolution 500 million years ago. In a feat of “molecular time travel,” the researchers resurrected and analyzed the functions of the ancestors of genes that play key roles […]
