Posts Tagged ‘WFS’

WFS News: Surface exposure dating with cosmogenic nuclides

@WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev Surface exposure dating with cosmogenic nuclides  SUSAN IVY-OCHS & FLORIAN KOBER Eiszeitalter und Gegenwart Quaternary Science Journal,57/1–2,157–189,Hannover 2008 Abstract: In the last decades surface exposure dating using cosmogenic nuclides has emerged as a powerful tool in Quaternary geochronology and landscape evolution studies. Cosmogenic nuclides are produced in rocks and […]

WFS News: An unexpected noncarpellate epigynous flower from the Jurassic of China

@WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev Despite the importance of, the great interest in and intensive effort spent on investigating angiosperms, a controversy remains as to when and how this group came into existence. Since the time of Darwin, some scholars have proposed that angiosperms existed before the Cretaceous (Smith et al., 2010; Clarke et […]

WFS News: Trilobite ancestral range in the southern hemisphere reconstructed

@WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev The first appearance of trilobites in the fossil record dates to 521 million years ago in the oceans of the Cambrian Period, when the continents were still inhospitable to most life forms. Few groups of animals adapted as successfully as trilobites, which were arthropods that lived on the […]

WFS News:The mysteries of a giant prehistoric marine reptile unlocked with the help of Medical scanner

@WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev Descriptive anatomy of the largest known specimen of Protoichthyosaurus prostaxalis (Reptilia: Ichthyosauria) including computed tomography and digital reconstruction of a three-dimensional skull Ichthyosaurs were a highly successful group of predatory marine reptiles that appeared in the late Early Triassic and went extinct in the early Late Cretaceous (Fischer et al., […]

WFS News: Tooth Loss Precedes the Origin of Baleen in Whales

@WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev Rivaling the evolution of feathers in dinosaurs, one of the most extraordinary transformations in the history of life was the evolution of baleen — rows of flexible hair-like plates that blue whales, humpbacks and other marine mammals use to filter relatively tiny prey from gulps of ocean water. […]

Seismic analysis reveals huge amount of water dragged into Earth’s interior

Slow-motion collisions of tectonic plates under the ocean drag about three times more water down into the deep Earth than previously estimated, according to a first-of-its-kind seismic study that spans the Mariana Trench. The observations from the deepest ocean trench in the world have important implications for the global water cycle, according to researchers in […]

Massive impact crater from a kilometer-wide iron meteorite discovered in Greenland

An international team lead by researchers from the Centre for GeoGenetics at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen have discovered a 31-km wide meteorite impact crater buried beneath the ice-sheet in the northern Greenland. This is the first time that a crater of any size has been found under one of Earth’s […]

Ancient DNA reveals history of extinct Caribbean monkey

Analysis of ancient DNA of a mysterious extinct monkey named Xenothrix — which displays bizarre body characteristics very different to any living monkey — has revealed that it was in fact most closely related to South America’s titi monkeys (Callicebinae). Having made their way overwater to Jamaica, probably on floating vegetation, their bones reveal they […]

Demise of Indus Valley civilization could have been a result of climate change.

More than 4,000 years ago, the Harappa culture thrived in the Indus River Valley of what is now modern Pakistan and northwestern India, where they built sophisticated cities, invented sewage systems that predated ancient Rome’s, and engaged in long-distance trade with settlements in Mesopotamia. Yet by 1800 BCE, this advanced culture had abandoned their cities, […]

evolution of animal ecosystem on islands

Islands have been vital laboratories for advancing evolutionary theory since the pioneering work of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in the 19th century. Now, a new paper appearing in PLOS ONE from an international team of investigators describes two new fossil relatives of marsupials that shed light on how a unique island ecosystem evolved […]