Latest Phanerozoic Stories
Lawrence LeBlond for RedOrbit.com In a first of its kind study, researchers from Vanderbilt University found that mammals’ best defense to adapting to climate change was diversity, and families with higher taxonomic diversity were better able to survive ongoing environmental changes. Larisa R. G. DeSantis, Assistant Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Vanderbilt, led researchers in studying how North American mammals adapted to climate change over a 56-million-year...
Caltech researchers say habitat loss and tropical cooling were to blame for mass extinction The second-largest mass extinction in Earth's history coincided with a short but intense ice age during which enormous glaciers grew and sea levels dropped. Although it has long been agreed that the so-called Late Ordovician mass extinction—which occurred about 450 million years ago—was related to climate change, exactly how the climate change produced the extinction has not been known. Now, a...
The dinosaurs of the Cretaceous may have faced an unexpected hazard: fire! In a paper published online today, researchers from Royal Holloway University of London and The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago have shown that during the Cretaceous (145-65 million years ago) fire was much more widespread than previously thought. The researchers traced fire activity in the fossil record through the occurrence of charcoal deposits, compiling a global database for this time interval....
New research suggests that some mammals flourished during the last 20 million years of the dinosaurs' reign. University of Washington paleontologist Gregory P. Wilson suggests the multituberculates, a rodent-like creature, did so well during this time because they developed numerous tubercles on their back teeth that allowed them to feed on flowering plants back then. “These mammals were able to radiate in terms of numbers of species, body size and shapes of their teeth, which...
Conventional wisdom holds that during the Mesozoic Era, mammals were small creatures that held on at life's edges. But at least one mammal group, rodent-like creatures called multituberculates, actually flourished during the last 20 million years of the dinosaurs' reign and survived their extinction 66 million years ago. New research led by a University of Washington paleontologist suggests that the multituberculates did so well in part because they developed numerous tubercles (bumps, or...
The world’s oceans may be acidifying more rapidly than they have at any time in the past 300 million years due to high levels of pollution, according to research published this week in the journal Science. Researchers, led by Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the University of Bristol, assessed a number of climate change events in Earth’s history, including an asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. They warn that too much carbon...
The ancient sifrhippus, the earliest known horse, lived around 50 million years ago. It was very distinct in its appearance because it was only about the size of a modern day house cat, weighing in around 12 pounds. The horse lived in what is known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a 175,000 year period where the Earth's atmospheric temperature rose by about 10 degrees Fahrenheit, caused by a great release of carbon into the atmosphere and oceans. In response to the...
A strange tulip-shaped creature discovered in half-a-billion-year-old rocks had a feeding system unlike any other animal, researchers reported this week. Officially named Siphusauctum gregarium, the fossils, unearthed from the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rockies, reveal a peculiar creature roughly 7-8 inches long with a unique filter feeding system. The creature has a long stem with a bulbous cup-like structure -- similar to that of a tulip -- near the top that...
Newly launched bilingual exhibition is the world’s leading online Burgess Shale resource Toronto, Ontario (PRWEB) December 01, 2011 Today the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and Parks Canada announced the launch of the Burgess Shale online exhibition, as part of the Virtual Museum of Canada. The website provides, for the first time ever, an immersive journey into the world of the bizarre prehistoric creatures that formed the foundation for all animal life on Earth half a billion years...
A cosmic one-two punch of colossal volcanic eruptions and meteorite strikes likely caused the mass-extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous period that is famous for killing the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, according to two Princeton University reports that reject the prevailing theory that the extinction was caused by a single large meteorite. Princeton-led researchers found that a trail of dead plankton spanning half a million years provides a timeline that links the mass...
Latest Phanerozoic Reference Libraries
Thescelosaurus, meaning “godlike”, “wondrous”, or “marvelous” and “lizard” was a genus of small ornithopod dinosaur that appeared at the very end of the Late Cretaceous period in North America. It was a member of the last dinosaurian fauna before the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event around 65.5 million years ago. The completeness and preservation of many of its specimens illustrate that it might have preferred to live near streams. This bipedal ornithopod is known from...
Daspletosaurus, meaning “frightful lizard” is a genus of tyrannosaurid theropod dinosaur that resided in western North America between 77 and 74 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous Period. Fossils of the only named species were found in Alberta, although other possible species from Alberta and Montana wait for description. Daspletosaurus is closely related to the much larger and more current Tyrannosaurus. Like most of the known tyrannosaurids, it was a multi-ton bipedal...
Deinonychus is a genus of carnivorous dromaeosaurid dinosaurs. There’s one described species, Deinonychus antirrhopus. These dinosaurs, which were capable of growing to be 11 ft long, lived during the early Cretaceous Period, around 115 to 108 million years ago. Fossils have been uncovered from the U.S states of Wyoming, Montana, and Oklahoma, in rocks of the Cloverly Formation and Antlers Formation, though teeth that might belong to Deinonychus have been found much farther east in...
Image Caption: Head of Tenontosaurus, Institut de paléontologie humaine, Paris, France. Credit: Rémih/Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0) Tenontosaurus, meaning “sinew lizard”, is a genus of medium to large sized ornithopod dinosaur. The genus is known from the late Aptian to Albian ages of the middle Cretaceious period sediments of western North America, dating roughly between 115 to 108 million years ago. It was formerly thought to be a ‘hypsilophodont’, but since Hypsilophodontia is no...
The Paramyladon, an extinct genus of ground sloth, was native to North America. It lived from the Pliocene era to the Pleistocene era, a period of about 4.889 years. Remains of this creature have been found as far south as Guatemala, throughout North America, and even as far north as Alberta, Canada. Paramyladon has been easily mistaken with another ground sloth called Glossotherium, due to major similarities. Barnum Brown created the Paramyladon genus in 1903 with a species of P....
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