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Old June 7th, 2018 #121
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World's Oldest Footprints Discovered on Ancient Seafloor


Neil Armstrong left the first footprint on the moon, on July 20, 1969. But what about Earth — when did animals first leave footprints here?

While we don't know exactly when animals first left tracks on our planet, the oldest footprints ever found were left between 551 million and 541 million years ago during the Ediacaran period, a new study finds. That's hundreds of millions of years before dinosaurs started roaming Earth, about 245 million years ago. The new findings suggest animals evolved primitive "arms" and "legs" earlier than previously thought.

https://www.livescience.com/62755-ol...on-record.html
 
Old June 7th, 2018 #122
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First tetrapods of Africa lived within the Devonian Antarctic Circle


The first African fossils of Devonian tetrapods (four-legged vertebrates) show these pioneers of land living within the Antarctic circle, 360 million years ago.

The evolution of tetrapods from fishes during the Devonian period was a key event in our distant ancestry. Newly found fossils from the latest Devonian Waterloo Farm locality near Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, published today in Science, force a major reassessment of this event

https://phys.org/news/2018-06-tetrap...ircle.html#jCp
 
Old June 8th, 2018 #123
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'Monstrous' new Russian saber-tooth fossils clarify early evolution of mammal lineage


Fossils representing two new species of saber-toothed prehistoric predators have been described by researchers from the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences (Raleigh, USA) and the Vyatka Paleontological Museum (Kirov, Russia). These new species improve the scientists' understanding of an important interval in the early evolution of mammals—a time, between mass extinctions, when the roles of certain carnivores changed drastically.

https://phys.org/news/2018-06-monstr...early.html#jCp
 
Old June 14th, 2018 #124
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For 100 million years, amber freezes a tableau of Burmese bugs’ life-and-death struggle


One day in Myanmar during the Cretaceous period, a tick managed to ensnare itself in a spider web. Realizing its predicament, the tick struggled to get free. But the spider that built the web was having none of it. The spider popped over to the doomed tick and quickly wrapped it up in silk, immobilizing it for eternity.

https://news.ku.edu/2018/06/07/100-m...death-struggle
 
Old June 15th, 2018 #125
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Burmese Amber Preserves 99-Million-Year-Old Tropical Frogs


Four amber-preserved specimens of Electrorana were acquired in the area of Angbamo in Kachin Province of northern Myanmar in 2015.

They provide the earliest direct evidence of frogs living in a wet tropical forest ecosystem and are oldest-known examples of frogs preserved in amber, with the only two previous reports from Cenozoic amber deposits of the Dominican Republic.

http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology...ogs-06102.html
 
Old July 19th, 2018 #126
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Baby snake 'frozen in time' gives insight into lost world


The fossil of a baby snake has been discovered entombed inside amber.

The creature has been frozen in time for 99 million years.

The snake lived in what is now Myanmar, during the age of the dinosaurs.

Scientists say the snake fossil is "unbelievably rare".

"This is the very first baby snake fossil that we have ever found," Prof Michael Caldwell of the University of Alberta in Canada told BBC News.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-44872148
 
Old July 23rd, 2018 #127
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New sources of melanin pigment shake up ideas about fossil animals’ colour

A rethink of how scientists reconstruct the color of fossil birds, reptiles, and dinosaurs.


Numerous ongoing investigations of fossil color have expected that fossilized granules of melanin – melanosomes – originate from the skin. In any case, new confirmation demonstrates that different tissues–, for example, the liver, lungs, and spleen – can likewise contain melanosomes, recommending that fossil melanosomes may not give data on fossil color.

https://www.techexplorist.com/new-so...-colour/15636/
 
Old August 9th, 2018 #128
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Rare teeth from ancient mega-shark found on Australia beach


A rare set of teeth from a giant prehistoric mega-shark twice the size of the great white have been found on an Australian beach by a keen-eyed amateur enthusiast, scientists said Thursday.

Philip Mullaly was strolling along an area known as a fossil hotspot at Jan Juc, on the country's famous Great Ocean Road some 100 kilometres (60 miles) from Melbourne, when he made the find.

https://phys.org/news/2018-08-rare-t...ralia.html#jCp
 
Old August 9th, 2018 #129
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These half-billion-year-old creatures were animals—but unlike any known today


So-called Ediacaran organisms have puzzled biologists for decades. To the untrained eye they look like fossilized plants, in tube or frond shapes up to 2 meters long. These strange life forms dominated Earth’s seas half a billion years ago, and scientists have long struggled to figure out whether they’re algae, fungi, or even an entirely different kingdom of life that failed to survive. Now, two paleontologists think they have finally established the identity of the mysterious creatures: They were animals, some of which could move around, but they were unlike any living on Earth today.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/...ny-known-today
 
Old August 17th, 2018 #130
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99-million-year-old beetle trapped in amber served as pollinator to evergreen cycads


Flowering plants are well known for their special relationship to the insects and other animals that serve as their pollinators. But, before the rise of angiosperms, another group of unusual evergreen gymnosperms, known as cycads, may have been the first insect-pollinated plants. Now, researchers reporting in the journal Current Biology on August 16 have uncovered the earliest definitive fossil evidence of that intimate relationship between cycads and insects.

https://phys.org/news/2018-08-millio...green.html#jCp
 
Old August 23rd, 2018 #131
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Ancient fossil turtle had no shell


Scientists have found new evidence confirming that turtles once lived without shells.

The almost-complete fossil dates back 228 million years and is bigger than a double bed.

It was discovered in the Guizhou province of south west China

Dr Nicholas Fraser, keeper of natural sciences at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, said: "It looked like a turtle but then lacked everything of the shell underneath and also the one on top."

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-45261121
 
Old August 28th, 2018 #132
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Stunning Fossils Show Ancient Parasitic Wasps Still Inside Their Unfortunate Hosts


A meticulous examination of over 1,500 fly pupae fossils has resulted in the discovery of four new species of ancient parasitic wasps, dating back to between 66 million and 23 million years ago in what is now France.

New research published today in Nature Communications offers the first definitive proof of parasitic behavior among wasps, or more accurately, the first definitive proof of endoparasitism among wasps, in which the parasite (like a wasp pupae or tapeworm) develops or lives inside its host.

https://gizmodo.com/stunning-fossils...ins-1828650967

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...d-fly-egg.html
 
Old October 11th, 2018 #133
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Newly described fossils could help reveal why some dinos got so big


By the time non-avian dinosaurs went extinct, plant-eating sauropods like the Brontosaurus had grown to gargantuan proportions. Weighing in as much as 100 tons, the long-neck behemoths are the largest land animals to ever walk the earth.

How they grew so large from ancestors that were small enough to be found in a modern-day petting zoo has remained a mystery. A new, in-depth anatomical description of the best preserved specimens of a car-sized sauropod relative from North America could help paleontologists with unraveling the mystery.

https://phys.org/news/2018-10-newly-...s-big.html#jCp
 
Old October 18th, 2018 #134
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World’s Oldest Fossils Aren’t Actually Fossils, New Research Suggests


Two years ago, researchers from the University of Wollongong in Australia shook the science world by claiming to have discovered 3.7 billion-year-old fossils in a rock formation in Greenland, a finding that pushed back the origin of life on Earth by 200 million years. New research is now casting doubt on this discovery, with scientists saying the rock structures are of non-biological origin.

In the original 2016 study, geologist Allen Nutman and colleagues identified cone-like structures, ranging between 1 and 4 centimeters in length, in 3.7-billion-year-old rock found in the Isua formation in southwest Greenland.

https://gizmodo.com/world-s-oldest-f...res-1829821110
 
Old October 19th, 2018 #135
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Jurassic-era piranha is world's earliest flesh-eating fish


Scientists have unearthed the fossilised remains of a piranha-like species that they say is the earliest known example of a flesh-eating fish.

This bony creature, found in South Germany, lived about 150 million years ago and had the distinctive sharp teeth of modern-day piranhas.

These Jurassic marauders used their razor teeth to tear chunks of flesh and fins off other fish.

Other fish were found nearby which had been attacked by the ancient piranhas.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-45904004
 
Old October 19th, 2018 #136
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A14 road workers find woolly mammoth bones


Road workers building a new bypass have unearthed the Ice Age remains of a woolly mammoth and a woolly rhino.

The team, working on improvements to the A14 between Cambridge and Huntingdon, discovered a number of bones while digging near Fenstanton.

Experts believe the remains, found in what was once an ancient river, could be at least 130,000 years old.

Palaeontologist Dean Lomax said discoveries like this were "exciting" and "quite uncommon".

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-...shire-45905645
 
Old February 6th, 2019 #137
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When did the kangaroo hop? Scientists have the answer


Scientists have discovered when the kangaroo learned to hop - and it's a lot earlier than previously thought.

According to new fossils, the origin of the famous kangaroo gait goes back 20 million years.

Living kangaroos are the only large mammal to use hopping on two legs as their main form of locomotion.

The extinct cousins of modern kangaroos could also hop, according to a study of their fossilised foot bones, as well as moving on four legs and climbing trees.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47130734
 
Old February 6th, 2019 #138
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First feather fossil ever found belongs to a MYSTERY dinosaur (and it’s been linked to the wrong bird for 150 years!)


Faint imprint of a fossil feather was discovered in southern Germany in 1861.

Experts thought that the feather came from the ancient bird the Archaeopteryx.

But now they claim that the feather actually belongs to a mystery dinosaur.

Detailed images showed that the relic is different to Archaeopteryx plumage.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...-dinosaur.html
 
Old February 6th, 2019 #139
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Badass Dinosaur With a 'Mohawk' of Spikes Uncovered in Patagonia


A recreation of the Bajadasaurus at the Cultural Science Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

When dinosaurs roamed the Earth in ancient Patagonia, one particular type of dinosaur might have stuck out amongst the rest.

Living 140 million years ago in the early Lower Cretaceous, the newly discovered herbivore Bajadasaurus pronuspinax had a thing for growing spikes.

https://www.sciencealert.com/this-we...ards-porcupine
 
Old February 12th, 2019 #140
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Discovery of the oldest evidence of mobility on Earth


February 11, 2019

An international multi-disciplinary team coordinated by Abderrazak El Albani at the Institut de chimie des milieux et matériaux de Poitiers (CNRS/Université de Poitiers) has uncovered the oldest fossilised traces of motility. Whereas previous remnants were dated to 570 million years ago, this new evidence is 2.1 billion years old. The fossils were discovered in a deposit in Gabon, where the oldest multicellular organisms were found. The results appear in the 11 February 2019 edition of PNAS.

https://phys.org/news/2019-02-discov...earth.html#jCp
 
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