Scientists at the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt have described the world’s oldest fossil sea turtle known to date. The fossilized reptile is at least 120 million years old — which makes it about 25 million years older than the previously known oldest specimen. The almost completely preserved skeleton from the Cretaceous, with a length […]
Posts Tagged ‘Russel T Sajeev’
mantle plumes with volcanic hotspots
September 7th, 2015 
Riffin University of California, Berkeley, seismologists have produced for the first time a sharp, three-dimensional scan of Earth’s interior that conclusively connects plumes of hot rock rising through the mantle with surface hotspots that generate volcanic island chains like Hawaii, Samoa and Iceland. Essentially a computed tomography, or CT scan, of Earth’s interior, the picture emerged […]
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Tags: Mantle plumes, Riffin T Sajeev, Russel T Sajeev, volcanic hotspots, WFS, world fossil society 
No Comments »Ariyalur Fossils:Rastellum carinatum
September 6th, 2015 Riffin This is a Cretaceous aged fossil oyster of the species Rastellum carinatum from Dalmiapuram (Kallakkudi formation). It has wide, angled ribs that have led to it being called the ‘denture clam’. The zig-zag join between the two shells stopped coarse dirt and debris entering the shell and damaging its soft body. Like modern oysters it […]
CT scanning in fossil study
September 6th, 2015 Riffin A sophisticated imaging technique has allowed scientists to virtually peer inside a 10-million-year-old sea urchin, uncovering a treasure trove of hidden fossils. The international team of researchers from the United Kingdom, Spain and Germany, including Dr Imran Rahman from the University of Bristol, studied the exceptional specimen with the aid of state-of-the-art X-ray computed tomography […]
pentecopterus, a giant sea scorpion
September 2nd, 2015 Riffin Journal reference: James C. Lamsdell, Derek E. G. Briggs, Huaibao P. Liu, Brian J. Witzke, Robert M. McKay. The oldest described eurypterid: a giant Middle Ordovician (Darriwilian) megalograptid from the Winneshiek Lagerstätte of Iowa. BMC Evolutionary Biology, 2015; 15 (1) DOI: 10.1186/s12862-015-0443-9 Eurypterids are a diverse group of chelicerates known from ~250 species with a […]
Posted in Featured Post Tags: giant sea scorpion, pentecopterus, Riffin T Sajeev, Russel T Sajeev, WFS, world fossil society No Comments »just how good is the fossil record?
August 31st, 2015 Riffin Everyone is excited by discoveries of new dinosaurs – or indeed any new fossil species. But a key question for palaeontologists is ‘just how good is the fossil record?’ Do we know fifty per cent of the species of dinosaurs that ever existed, or ninety per cent or even less than one per cent? And […]
Posted in Featured Post Tags: Fossil record, Riffin T Sajeev, Russel T Sajeev, WFS, world fossil society No Comments »Pigments in fossil feathers
August 29th, 2015 Riffin A study provides multiple lines of new evidence that pigments and the microbodies that produce them can remain evident in a dinosaur fossil. In the journal Scientific Reports, an international team of paleontologists correlates the distinct chemical signature of animal pigment with physical evidence of melanosome organelles in the fossilized feathers of Anchiornis huxleyi, a […]
Gueragama sulamericana: Lizard Fossil
August 27th, 2015 Riffin University of Alberta paleontologists have discovered a new species of lizard, named Gueragama sulamericana, in the municipality of Cruzeiro do Oeste in Southern Brazil in the rock outcrops of a Late Cretaceous desert, dated approximately 80 million years ago. “The roughly 1700 species of iguanas are almost without exception restricted to the New World, primarily […]
Malformed fossil plankton
August 26th, 2015 Riffin Several Palaeozoic mass extinction events during the Ordovician and Silurian periods (ca. 485 to 420 to million years ago) shaped the evolution of life on our planet. Although some of these short-lived, periodic events were responsible for eradication of up to 85% of marine species, the exact kill-mechanism responsible for these crises remains poorly understood. […]
Posted in Featured Post Tags: Malformed fossil plankton, Riffin T Sajeev, Russel T Sajeev, WFS, world fossil society No Comments »microtomography : A new tool in Paleontology
August 25th, 2015 Riffin Researchers from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich have used computed microtomography (micro-CT) to identify to the species level an exceptionally wellpreserved fossil arthropod from the famous Chengjiang Lagerstätte in China. Modern imaging methods make it possible to perform detailed, non-invasive studies on the internal structures of irreplaceable fossil specimens. Researchers led by Dr. Yu Liu of […]
Posted in Featured Post Tags: microtomography, Paleontology, Riffin T Sajeev, Russel T Sajeev, WFS, world fossil society No Comments »
