Abused Ichthyosaur Fossil Deepens Mystery Of Dolphin-Like Dinos
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A fossil previously used as a stepping stone for mules has deepened the mystery surrounding the evolution of ichthyosaurs, dolphin-like marine reptiles that were contemporaries of the...
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Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online First mentioned in two dialogues (Timaeus and Critias) by Plato in 360 BC, the legendary island of Atlantis has long been sought by historians, archaeologists, and explorers alike. Said to have originally existed between South America and Africa, this sunken island has been searched for in no less than dozens of locations worldwide, from Bimini to the Black Sea. In a new twist, a team of scientists from Brazil and Japan say they...
Plymouth University Researchers at Plymouth University, UK, believe that findings from fieldwork along the North Yorkshire coast reveal strong parallels between the Early Jurassic era of 180 million years ago and current climate predictions over the next century. Through geology and palaeontology, they've shown how higher temperatures and lower oxygen levels caused drastic changes to marine communities, and that while the Jurassic seas eventually recovered from the effects of global...
The March GSA TODAY, the Geological Society of America’s open-access science and news magazine, is now online at http://www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/archive/22/3/. This month’s science article, by Todd LaMaskin of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, presents uranium-lead dating analyses of detrital zircon grains in Paleozoic-Mesozoic basin sediments in the Cordillera of western North America. LaMaskin's analysis shows a systematic variation in age distribution within the...
[ Listen to the Recreation ] An international team of scientists took it upon themselves to recreate the love song of an extinct cricket that lived more than 160 million years ago during the Jurassic Period. The song was reconstructed using microscopic wing features on a fossilized bush cricket (Archaboilus musicus) found in northeast China. The call of the Jurassic cricket was simple, pure and capable of traveling long distances in the night, scientists noted. The reproduced sounds...
Drifting across the world's oceans are a group of unicellular marine microorganisms that are not only a crucial source of food for other marine life "” but their fossils, which are found in abundance, provide scientists with an extraordinary record of climatic change and other major events in the history of the earth. Now, planktonic foraminifera "” single-celled shell building members of the marine microplankton community "” have given up a secret of their very own.A team of experts,...
Evidence suggests that 'sick Earth' extinctions more likelyIn geology as in cancer research, the silver bullet theory always gets the headlines and nearly always turns out to be wrong.For geologists who study mass extinctions, the silver bullet is a giant asteroid plunging to earth.But an asteroid is the prime suspect only in the most recent of five mass extinctions, said USC earth scientist David Bottjer. The cataclysm 65 million years ago wiped out the dinosaurs."The other four have...
By Radley, Jonathan Twitchett, Richard J; Mander, Luke; Cope, John Journal, Vol. 165, 2008, pp. 319-332 Jonathan Radley writes: The Penarth Group (of Late Triassic and possibly ranging to Early Jurassic age) of the southern UK marks a marine transgression and the establishment of a shallow epicontinental seaway (Hallam & El Shaarawy 1982; Warrington & Ivimey-Cook 1992), influenced by regressive-transgressive pulses and characterized by rapid facies changes (Hallam & Wignall 2004; Hesselbo et...
CHEYENNE, Wyo. -- Researchers have found tracks of a previously unknown, two-legged swimming dinosaur with birdlike characteristics in northern Wyoming and are looking for bones and other remains in order further identify and name it. "It was about the size of an ostrich, and it was a meat-eater," said Debra Mickelson, a University of Colorado graduate student in geological sciences. "The tracks suggest it waded along the shoreline and swam offshore, perhaps to feed on fish or...
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Sharpirhynchia sharpi is a species of extinct brachiopod named after fossil collector Samuel Sharp (1814-1882). This species lived during the Lower Bathonian of the Middle Jurassic Period. It is found only in the United Kingdom, and numerous specimens have been taken from several sites, the first from Limekiln Quarry in Northampton, England. S. sharpi is roughly a half-inch long, with a slender beak and 21 to 31 ribs fanning out from the hinge. This lampshell brachiopod lived life as a...
Scelidosaurus, meaning “limb lizard,” is a genus of herbivorous dinosaur from the Hettangian and Sinemurian stages of the Early Jurassic Period (208 to 194 million years ago). Its fossils have been discovered in both England and the United States -- in Arizona. Scelidosaurus has been called the earliest complete dinosaur known. The type specimen was discovered by James Harrison of Charmouth, England, while scouring the cliffs of Black Ven (between Charmouth and Lyme Regis) for raw...
Yangchuanosaurus is a genus of theropod dinosaur from the Oxfordian (and possibly Kimmeridgian) stage of the Late Jurassic Period, and comes from the Upper Shaximiao Formation. A nearly complete skeleton was discovered in June 1977 by a construction worker during the building of the Shangyou Reservoir Dam in the Yongchuan District. This genus was considered the same as Metriacanthosaurus by Gregory S. Paul in 1988, but this has not received the support of other paleontologists. The...
Othnielia is a genus of hypsilophodont dinosaur from the Oxfordian-Tithonian age of the Late Jurassic Period. Several remains have been discovered in the Morrison Formation in the North American states of Wyoming, Utah and Colorado. But, according to revisions made on Morrison ornithischians, the only definite remains are that of a femur belonging to the type species Othnielia rex, named by Peter Galton in 1977. Othnielia was named for its original describer, famed 19th century...
Lourinhanosaurus, meaning "Lourinhã lizard" (from the Lourinhã Formation), is a genus of dinosaur from the Kimmeridgian/Tithonian age of the Late Jurassic Period. It was first discovered in Portugal in 1982, but was not described until 1998 by Portuguese paleontologist Octávio Mateus. The only known species, L. antunesi, is named in honor of paleontologist Miguel Telles Antunes. It is known from a partial skeleton. Around 100 eggs were found in 1993 at a nearby beach that were...
