Latest Cretaceous Stories

The debate whether dinosaurs went extinct due to a large space rock that struck the Earth 65.5 million years ago (MYA) may have been answered with the discovery of a distinctive brow horn from a Ceratopsian dinosaur just 13 centimeters (5.1 inches) below the K-T boundary -- the distinct layer of geological sediments separating the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods. Rocks laid down 65.5 MYA show a thin layer abundant in rare elements like Iridium, spherules and shocked Quartz that could only...

Researchers have discovered that an evolutionary change from 65 million years ago may have set the pace for the rapid growth rate of present-day flowering plants.Taylor Feild, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in collaboration with a group of other researchers from around the world, have determined the precise dates that angiosperms, or flowering plants, experienced two surges in growth during the Cretaceous period.Their...

Fossil "“ just stone? No, a research team in Lund, Sweden, has discovered primary biological matter in a fossil of an extinct varanoid lizard (a mosasaur) that inhabited marine environments during Late Cretaceous times. Using state-of-the-art technology, the scientists have been able to link proteinaceous molecules to bone matrix fibres isolated from a 70-million-year-old fossil; i.e., they have found genuine remains of an extinct animal entombed in stone.With their discovery, the...

Sedimentary differences on either side of border date back 120 million yearsCanadians have always seen themselves as separate and distinct from their American neighbors to the south, and now they have geological proof.New research published in April's edition of Geology shows that rock formations roughly along the same political boundary as the two North American countries formed as early as 120 million years ago.Dr. Andrew Leier, of the Department of Geoscience at the University of Calgary,...

An international research team, with Spanish participation, has discovered a new species of mollusk, Polyconites hadriani, in various parts of the Iberian Peninsula. The researchers say this species, which is the oldest in its genus, adapted to the acidification of the oceans that took place while it was in existence. This process could now determine the evolution of modern marine systems.The new species Polyconites hadriani, which was discovered in 2007, has been crowned the oldest in the...

Tiny organisms preserved in marine sediments hold clues about Arctic climate variation during an ancient episode of greenhouse warming.Based on reconstructions of Arctic climate variability in the greenhouse world of the Late Cretaceous, Southampton scientists have concluded that man-made global warming probably would not greatly change the climatic influence associated with natural modes of inter-annual climate variability such as the  El Niño "“ Southern Oscillation (ENSO) or the...

Researchers have discovered the 100 million-year-old ancestor of a group of large, carnivorous, cricket-like insects that still live today in southern Asia, northern Indochina and Africa. The new find, in a limestone fossil bed in northeastern Brazil, corrects the mistaken classification of another fossil of this type and reveals that the genus has undergone very little evolutionary change since the Early Cretaceous Period, a time of dinosaurs just before the breakup of the supercontinent...

University of Alberta researchers determined that a fossilized dinosaur bone found in New Mexico confounds the long established paradigm that the age of dinosaurs ended between 65.5 and 66 million years ago.The U of A team, led by Larry Heaman from the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, determined the femur bone of a hadrosaur as being only 64.8 million years old. That means this particular plant eater was alive about 700,000 years after the mass extinction event many...

Using a special form of X-ray technology, French and American researchers have managed to discern the diets of the extinct, squid-like creatures known as ammonites.The experts used the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble to analyze ammonite fossils using synchrotron X-rays. They discovered that the ancient creatures, which died out more than 65 million years ago and are related to the squid and the octopus, ate plankton.According to an ESRF press release dated January...

Insight into ammonite life history from well-preserved 'oases in water'Although ammonites have been extinct for 65 million years, newly published data based on 35 years of field work and analysis is providing invaluable insights into their paleobiology. Ammonites, shelled mollusks closely related to modern day nautilus and squids, inhabited the oceans for nearly 350 million years. Specimens found in the rock record of the ancient seaway that covered North America during the Cretaceous Period...