Insects and plants are intimately linked in terms of their ecology and evolution. Insects and vascular plants both first appear in the fossil record around 400 MY ago, at the beginning of the Devonian, as terrestrial ecology changed to allow the colonization of the land. Then about 20 MY later, the first arboreal plants appear, [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘Fossils’
30/10/2009
MASSIVE PLIOSAUR FOSSIL
The amazing “Jurassic Coast” in Dorset/Devon has thrown up another fantastic fossil – the skull of a massive pliosaur, which would have been perhaps 15m long. To be honest, the fossil isn’t much to look at (a load of rock), but it’s a pretty impressive find. Pliosaurs, in case you don’t know, were short-necked marine [...]
05/05/2009
NEW FOSSIL – 1
November 2007 New ape fossil from around 10 million years ago, a close relative of the last common ancestor of humans, gorillas and chimps. BBC summary.
05/05/2009
NEW FOSSIL – 2
November 2007 Mike Taylor, a PhD student from Portsmouth was rummaging around in the basement of the Natural History Museum – the way you do – when he came across a new species of sauropod dinosaur, now called Xenoposeidon. Or at least, one of its vertebrae. Guardian summary; BBC summary. Blog by Mike Taylor, including loads of material on [...]
24/04/2009
ALL THAT FROM A TOOTH
November 2007 A tooth found in India suggests that ungulates – hoofed mammals – existed in India before the end of the Cretaceous (ie before the end of the dinosaurs), while the sub-continent was charging across the Indian Ocean towards its current destination. They may even have originated in India. This tooth was found in the lava of the [...]
23/04/2009
EUROPE 1.8 MY AGO – BBC GETS IT WRONG?
November 2007 Giant hyenas, giraffes and sabretooth cats roamed around Southern Spain 1.8 MY ago. A great collection of fossils have been unearthed at Fonelas in Granada. BBC article. Scroll down the BBC page – what’s wrong with the picture of the sabretooth? Highlight from here to the bottom of the post to read the answer: The upper canines [...]
23/04/2009
SPIDER DAVE DIGITALLY DISSECTS
November 2007 Dr David Penney, from the School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, a.k.a. Spider Dave, has used Very High Resolution X-Ray Computed Tomography to dissect a 1mm spider that has been preserved in amber for 53 MY. Amazing pictures. The spider is a male. How can you tell? BBC news item; original Zootaxa article (open access). [...]
23/04/2009
DYNAMITE FOR DINOSAURS
November 2007 Nature magazine article about a palaeontology project in Alaska, where they are blasting out hadrosaur bones from underneath the permafrost – a bit different from the normal image of people using paintbrushes under a baking desert sun… Mind you, they do end up with paintbrushes in the end. You or your institution will need a subscription [...]
23/04/2009
AMAZING REPTILE IMPRESSION
November 2007 Seeing fossilized trackways is always cool, but this unique fossil from Pennsylvania shows body impressions of 330-MY old amphibians. Is it one animal or two? How was the fossil made?
23/04/2009
MORE FOSSIL REPTILES
October 2007 A 32m-long dinosaur has been unearthed in Argentina. Or rather, a few vertebrae have been found. But they are absolutely huge. So’s the name of the new species – Futalognkosaurus dukei. The “dukei” bit comes from the Duke oil company, which sponsored the excavation… Reptile tracks from 315 MY ago, pushing back the origin of reptiles [...]
