Archive for the ‘Paleontology’ Category
A tropical forest of about 298 million years old was preserved by the ash ejected in a volcanic eruption that devastated an area of what is now northern China. A new study has allowed deducing the characteristics of this habitat from the past that never was known to the human being. The research results provide revealing details about the ecology and climate of that distant era.
Inspected the site, located near Wuda, in China, is unique because it offers a kind of snapshot of a specific time of the remote past. As the volcanic ash covered a large area of forest in just a few days, the plants were preserved as they fell, and in many case the exact places where they had grown.
The team of paleobotanist Hermann Pfefferkorn of the University of Pennsylvania in the United States, Wang Jun of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Yi Zhang of Shenyang Normal University, and Zhuo Feng of Yunnan University, the latter two institutions in China, has been privileged to see in situ the impressive degree of fidelity, walking between branches with leaves still subject to them, and find the common tree stump in various branches. Read the rest of this entry »
We have identified a new species of prehistoric crocodile. The extinct creature called Aegisuchus witmeri, having on his head a shield, consisting of a very thick layer of skin. The beast is one of the oldest ancestors of modern crocodiles. Together with other findings, the study authors have found that the ancestors of the crocodiles are much more diverse than the scientific community thought.
The Aegisuchus witmeri is the last crocodile species discovered and dates from the Late Cretaceous period, about 95 million years. This period is part of the Mesozoic Era, which often has been dubbed the “Age of Dinosaurs”. However, several recent findings have led some scientists to begin to call the “Age of Crocodiles”.
Casey Holliday, professor of anatomy at the School of Medicine, University of Missouri, identified by studying Aegisuchus witmeri an incomplete skull fossil, discovered in Morocco and kept in the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada, for several years before that Holliday analyzes it. Read the rest of this entry »
It was obvious that people enjoy doing gossip, but now scientific research has confirmed the positive effects do, especially when it comes to criticize someone for bad behavior and reveal to others the bad thing that has done.
The results of this study by the group of psychologists Robb Willer, Matthew Feinberg, Dacher Keltner and Jennifer Stellar, University of California at Berkeley, suggests that this activity can promote benefits as diverse as reducing stress levels, and mitigate the misconduct.
The study has also led to the conclusion that gossip can be therapeutic. In the experiments, heart rate increased when the volunteers saw someone behaving badly, but this increase was attenuated when they could pass on to others information about what they saw, to alert them. Disseminate information about the person who had been misbehaving tended to make people feel better. Read the rest of this entry »
Shortly after the discovery of a possible unicellular ancestor of all animals known in rocks 570 million years old located in southern China, we now speak of another discovery that immediately and just as spectacular: the discovery of what appear to be the remains of the first animal that existed on the planet, or at least the oldest known.
This important discovery, made by an international team of experts during a geological survey in the desert of Namibia, Africa, could roll back many tens of millions of years the date of appearance of animal life on Earth.
The discovery appears to be the oldest animal fossils found to date was conducted by the Bob Brain, Ditsong Museum in South Africa, along with Tony Prave from the University of St Andrews in the UK, and Karl-Heinz Hoffmann of the Geological Survey of Namibia. The finding did in ancient rocks of the Etosha National Park. Read the rest of this entry »
A study at the National Museum of Natural Sciences (CSIC) reveals new aspects of brain anatomy in the Neanderthals from the analysis of three skulls found at the site of the Sidron, Asturian.
The fossil remains of Homo neanderthalensis found at the site of the Sidron (Asturias) are helping to understand more deeply the population of this species that settled on the Cantabrian coast about 50,000 years ago.
The team led by Antonio Rosas from the National Museum of Natural Sciences, CSIC, and which brought together researchers from the University of Madrid and University of Oviedo, examined the skulls of three copies of this site. Read the rest of this entry »
Rocks of 570 million years old, in the South of China, found what appears to be a set of evidence for the most recent known unicellular ancestor of all animals. This being existed shortly before multicellular animals arose.
All life on Earth evolved from a universal common ancestor was unicellular. On several occasions in the history of our planet, unicellular organisms collaborated closely to become large multicellular organisms. The results of this include, for example, the great diversity in the animal kingdom. However, fossil evidence of these key evolutionary transitions is extremely sparse.
The fossils of those rocks in China, analyzed by researchers at the Bristol University in the UK, the Swedish Museum of Natural History, Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland, and the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences (CAGS) Read the rest of this entry »
Detailed analysis of an old nest that contains the fossilized remains of 15 juvenile Protoceratops andrewsi dinosaur has revealed new information on the postnatal development of these animals and the care they received from their parents.
It is the first nest found in this genre and the first indication that Protoceratops hatchlings remained on it for an extended period. The bowl-shaped nest is about 70 centimeters in diameter and was found in Djadochta Formation at Tugrikinshire, Mongolia. Read the rest of this entry »
For fossil hunters, always, or at least has been until now, have to rely solely on conjecture, more or less based on evidence, when challenged to find them. This way of working, which relies heavily on luck, is comparable to finding the proverbial needle in a haystack, with the help of hard work and careful planning.
However, thanks to a system based on a digital model, developed and tested by the team of paleoanthropologist Glenn Conroy at Washington University in St. Louis, and colleagues at the Western Michigan University, the two institutions in United States, fossil hunters probably will not have to depend so much on luck from now on.
Using artificial neural networks (computer networks that mimic the functioning of the human brain) Conroy and his colleagues Robert Anemone and Charles Emerson developed the system, which can accurately determine the points most likely to harbor fossils in the Great Divide Basin, a large portion of rocky desert in Wyoming, United States. Read the rest of this entry »
Human beings living 126,000 years ago already reached their hands in their discussions. This seems to reveal an investigation that has found a lesion in the skull of a man of East Asia from the late Middle Pleistocene, known as Maba. Experts point out that the mark of 14 millimeters intentionally provoked a strong attack.
This new finding, published in this week’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), may be an example of human aggression earlier than has been documented.
“The most probable is that the wound was caused by another human being attacking early in the head with a blunt object. Maba was wounded in the head region where today we commonly see these type injuries”, said study researcher Lynne Schepartz at the University of Witwatersrand Read the rest of this entry »
An international study demonstrates that hyperthermic events of global warming from the Eocene (between 34 and 53 million years ago) had a shorter duration and a faster recovery than was thought. The investigators suggest that the exchange of carbon between the atmosphere and the ocean influenced in the events. The findings will help to understand global carbonic cycles during events of extreme heat.
During the Eocene there were six events, promotions hyperthermic global temperature within a period of warm-alone, which had a shorter duration and a faster recovery than the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum (PETM), 53 million years ago, the most extreme case of global warming history.
Among the Paleocene-do between 53 and 65 million years, and the Eocene, the PETM caused a temperature rise of up to 7 ºC. Scientists attribute these climate changes to a massive release of greenhouse gases stored in carbon deposits in the ocean. Read the rest of this entry »