One of the most primitive snake fossils have debunked the belief that the slithery reptiles had originated in the sea, suggesting instead that they were the creatures of land. The animal, which lived at the same time as the dinosaurs, probably emerged from a line of burrowing reptiles that eventually lost their legs. Where […]
Posts Tagged ‘Russel T Sajeev’
Fossil Critter Pee Reveals Past Climate Change
March 7th, 2013 
Riffin But that’s nothing to Brian Chase, a researcher at Montpelier University in France. Chase prefers pee of a somewhat older vintage: the crystallized pee of the rock hyrax (Procavia capensis) that dates to some 55,000 years ago. Chase uses the information gathered from crystallized hyrax pee in southern Africa to study Earth’s climate thousands of years […]
Volcano location could be greenhouse-icehouse key
March 5th, 2013 Riffin A new Rice University-led study finds the real estate mantra “location, location, location” may also explain one of Earth’s enduring climate mysteries. The study suggests that Earth’s repeated flip-flopping between greenhouse and icehouse states over the past 500 million years may have been driven by the episodic flare-up of volcanoes at key locations where enormous […]
WFS Profiles: Luis Alvarez 1911 – 1988
March 4th, 2013 Riffin Photo Courtesy :LBNL Image Library — Collection BERKELEY-LAB/PEOPLE/INDIVIDUALS Luis Alvarez was a physicist with wide ranging interests. At the University of Chicago, he took a class called Advanced Experimental Physics: Light, and later claimed, “It was love at first sight.” He graduated in 1932 and stayed at Chicago for his graduate work. He married, had […]
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Tags: Enola Gay, Ernest Lawrence, Luis Alvarez, Riffin T Sajeev, Russel T Sajeev, WFS, world fossil society 
No Comments »Prehistoric colours in fossil insects
March 4th, 2013 Riffin An international research team led by a University of Bristol scientist has explained the preservation of colours in fossil insects for the first time. The discovery explains why colours change and why they are destroyed during fossilisation, revealing hidden gems in the insect fossil record that could help reconstruct the evolution of colours in insects. […]
WFS Dinosaur Diary: Argentinosaurus
March 3rd, 2013 Riffin Argentinosaurus is a genus of titanosaur sauropod dinosaur first discovered by Guillermo Heredia in Argentina. The generic name refers to the country in which it was discovered. The dinosaur lived on the then-island continent of South America somewhere between 97 and 94 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous Epoch. Reconstructed skeleton of Argentinosaurus huinculensis at […]
Dinosaurian Soft Tissues Interpreted as Bacterial Biofilms: Research by Thomas G. Kaye , Gary Gaugler, Zbigniew Sawlowicz
March 2nd, 2013 Riffin A scanning electron microscope survey was initiated to determine if the previously reported findings of “dinosaurian soft tissues” could be identified in situ within the bones. The results obtained allowed a reinterpretation of the formation and preservation of several types of these “tissues” and their content. Mineralized and non-mineralized coatings were found extensively in the […]
Feeding Limbs and Nervous System of One of Earth’s Earliest Animals Discovered
March 1st, 2013 Riffin An extraordinary find allowing scientists to see through the head of the ‘fuxianhuiid’ arthropod has revealed one of the earliest evolutionary examples of limbs used for feeding, along with the oldest nervous system to stretch beyond the head in fossil record. Until now, all fossils found of this extremely early soft-bodied animal featured heads covered […]
A New Non-Pterodactyloid Pterosaur from the Late Jurassic of Southern Germany
February 25th, 2013 Riffin The ‘Solnhofen Limestone’ beds of the Southern Franconian Alb, Bavaria, southern Germany, have for centuries yielded important pterosaur specimens, most notably of the genera Pterodactylus and Rhamphorhynchus. Here we describe a new genus of non-pterodactyloid pterosaur based on an extremely well preserved fossil of a young juvenile: Bellubrunnus rothgaengeri (gen. et sp. nov.). Methodology/Principal Findings […]
Stratigraphy and the Principles of Relative Dating
February 23rd, 2013 Riffin Relative dating falls under the sub-discipline of geology known as stratigraphy. Stratigraphy is the science of rock strata, or layers. Layering occurs in sedimentary rocks as they accumulate through time, so rock layers hold the key to deciphering the succession of historical events in Earth’s past. The fundamental principles of stratigraphy are deceptively simple and […]
