Free Republic

For some 85 years, homesteaders, pot hunters and archaeologists have been digging at Paisley Caves, a string of shallow depressions washed out of an ancient lava flow by the waves of a lake that comes and goes with the changing climate. Until now, they have found nothing conclusive-arrowheads, baskets, animal bones and sandals made by people who lived thousands of years ago on the shores of what was then a 40-mile-long lake, but is now a sagebrush desert on the northern edge of the Great Basin. But a few years ago, University of Oregon archaeologist Dennis Jenkins and his students...

Dinosaurs Diversified Over Time, Not SuddenlyMany Species, Many, Many Years July 23, 2008 The belief that dinosaurs underwent explosive species diversification just before they were wiped out is an illusion, for the beasts' main evolutionary shifts took place millions of years before, a study says. The strange demise of the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous era some 65 million years ago has given rise to a popular view that almost has the tinge of Greek tragedy. Just as the rulers of the Earth had reached their evolutionary zenith, a catastrophic event -- possibly a space rock that slammed...

A college student's new discovery of fossils collected in the East Antarctic suggests that the frozen polar cap was once a much balmier place. The well-preserved fossils of ostracods, a type of small crustaceans, came from the Dry Valleys region of Antarctica's Transantarctic Mountains and date from about 14 million years ago. The fossils were a rare find, showing all of the ostracods' soft anatomy in 3-D. The fossils were discovered by Richard Thommasson during screening of the sediment in research team member Allan Ashworth's lab at North Dakota State University. Because ostracods couldn't survive in the current Antarctic climate,...

Humans Wore Shoes 40,000 Years Ago, Fossil SuggestsScott Norris for National Geographic NewsJuly 1, 2008 Humans were wearing shoes at least 10,000 years earlier than previously thought, according to a new study. The evidence comes from a 40,000-year-old human fossil with delicate toe bones indicative of habitual shoe-wearing, experts say. A previous study of anatomical changes in toe bone structure had dated the use of shoes to about 30,000 years ago. Now the dainty-toed fossil from China suggests that at least some humans were sporting protective footwear 10,000 years further back, during a time when both modern humans and Neandertals...

A newly discovered batch of well-preserved dinosaur bones, petrified trees and even freshwater clams in southeastern Utah may provide fresh clues about life in the region some 150 million years ago. The Bureau of Land Management announced the find Monday, calling the quarry near Hanksville "a major dinosaur fossil discovery." Several weeks of excavation have revealed at least four long-necked sauropods, two carnivorous dinosaurs and possibly a stegosaurus, according to the BLM. Nearby, there are also animal burrows and petrified tree trunks six feet in diameter. It doesn't contain any new species - at least not yet - but offers...

An armored fish was about to become a mom some 380 million years ago. Though the primitive fish perished, its fossilized remains remarkably reveal an embryo and umbilical cord inside the soon-to-be mother's body. The discovery marks the oldest evidence of an animal giving live birth, pushing the known record of such reproduction back by some 200 million years. It also supports the idea that internal fertilization in vertebrates (animals with backbones) originated in a group of primitive fish. "When I first saw the embryo inside the mother fish, my jaw dropped," said researcher John Long, a paleontologist at Museum...

Ancient serpent shows its leg By Jonathan Amos Science reporter, BBC News What was lost tens of millions of years ago is now found.A fossil animal locked in Lebanese limestone has been shown to be an extremely precious discovery - a snake with two legs. Scientists have only a handful of specimens that illustrate the evolutionary narrative that goes from ancient lizard to limbless modern serpent. Researchers at the European Light Source (ESRF) in Grenoble, France, used intense X-rays to confirm that a creature imprinted on a rock, and with one visible leg, had another appendage buried just under...

Undated handout photo shows the skull of Toumaï, a seven-million-year-old fossil believed to be the remains of the earliest human ever found, found in 2001. New fossil remains as well as the 3D reconstruction of the skull confirm that the creature is the oldest species of the human branch, a common ancester of the chimpanzee and of homo sapiens French fossil hunters have pinned down the age of Toumai, which they contend is the remains of the earliest human ever found, at between 6.8 and 7.2 million years old. The fossil was discovered in the Chadian desert in 2001...

Missing link feather fossils found in France By Roger Highfield, Science Editor Last Updated: 6:01pm GMT 20/02/2008 Primitive feathers that represent a key missing link in their evolution have been found, fossilised in 100-million-year-old amber from France. The fossils mark a step towards the shape of modern feathers As long as scientists have studied birds, they have puzzled over that most intricate of avian features - the feather. Because it is a marvellous feat of biological engineering, it has been siezed on by creationists trying to find evidence of designs that lie beyond the abilities of evolution. Scientists themselves have...

Giant prehistoric frog hints at ancient land link 22:00 18 February 2008 NewScientist.com news service Rowan Hooper An artist's impression of Beelzebufo shows it facing a modern-day Mantidactylus guttulatus, the largest living Malagasy frog (Image: Luci Betti-Nash) The discovery of a giant frog fossil has opened a rift among researchers over when an ancient land bridge closed. Discovery of the fossil in Madagascar supports the controversial view that South America and Madagascar were linked until 80 million years ago - far more recently than previously thought. The frog, dubbed Beelzebufo, resembles the family of horned toads that are now unique...

This undated handout artist rendering provided by Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy (NEOUCOM) shows The 48 million year old ungulate Indohyus from India. Indohyus is a close relative of whales, and the structure of its bones and chemistry of its teeth indicate that it spent much time in water. In this reconstruction, it is seen diving in a stream, much like the modern African Mousedeer does when in danger. (AP Photo/NEOUCOM) (AP) -- The gigantic ocean-dwelling whale may have evolved from a land animal the size of a small raccoon, new research suggests. What might be...

Amazing find of dinosaur 'mummy' Scientists now think these dinosaurs were more muscular than previously thought Fossil hunters have uncovered the remains of a dinosaur that has much of its soft tissue still intact. Skin, muscle, tendons and other tissue that rarely survive fossilisation have all been preserved in the specimen unearthed in North Dakota, US. The 67 million-year-old dinosaur is one of the duck-billed hadrosaur group. The preservation allowed scientists to estimate that it was more muscular than thought, perhaps giving it the ability to outrun predators like T. rex. The researchers propose that the dinosaur's rump was 25%...

I suggest that the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams read a little history about the British experience in India before he offers politically-correct but historically laughable sermons like the one he gave to a Muslim "lifestyle" magazine: It is one thing to take over a territory and then pour energy and resources into administering it and normalising it. Rightly or wrongly, that's what the British Empire did - in India, for example. It is another thing to go in on the assumption that a quick burst of violent action will somehow clear the decks and that you can move on...

Chinese Scientists Conclude Wushan Man Is Oldest Human Fossil In China November 13, 2007 9:57 p.m. EST Windsor Genova - AHN News Writer Beijing, China (AHN) - Chinese archeologists have concluded that the two million years old human fossils found in Wushan County, Chongqing municipality from 1985 to 1988 belong to the earliest human species in China. The lower jawbone fragment, an incisor and more than 230 pieces of stone tools of the so-called Wushan Man pre-dated the fossils of the Yuanmou Man by 300,000 years, the Chinese news agency Xinhua reported. The Yuanmou Man was discovered in southwestern Yunnan...

PARIS (AFP) - Global warming could cut a swathe through the planet's species over the coming centuries, warns a study released Wednesday that shows a link between rising temperatures and mass extinctions reaching back half a billion years. Each of five major eras of declining biodiversity -- including one in which 95 percent of the Earth's species disappeared -- correspond to cycles of severe warming over the 520-million-year period for which there are fossil records. If emissions of greenhouse gas rise unchecked, the predicted increase in global temperature over the next several hundred years could fall within a similar range...

The discovery of four fossil skeletons of early human ancestors in Georgia, the former Soviet republic, has given scientists a revealing glimpse of a species in transition, primitive in its skull and upper body but with more advanced spines and lower limbs for greater mobility. The findings, being reported today in the journal Nature, are considered a significant step toward understanding who were some of the first ancestors to migrate out of Africa some 1.8 million years ago. They may also yield insights into the first members of the human genus, Homo.Until now, scientists had found only the skulls of...

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - After 3.2 million years in East Africa, one of the world's most famous set of fossils was quietly flown out of Ethiopia overnight for a U.S. tour that some experts say is a dangerous gamble with an irreplaceable relic. Although the fossil known as Lucy had been expected to leave the Ethiopian Natural History Museum this month, some in the nation's capital were surprised the departure took place under cover of darkness with no fanfare Sunday. "This is a national treasure," said Kine Arega, a 29-year-old attorney in Addis Ababa. "How come the public has no...

BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungarian scientists said on Tuesday they have discovered a group of fossilized swamp cypress trees preserved from 8 million years ago which could provide clues about the climate of pre-historic times. Instead of petrifying -- turning to stone -- the wood of 16 Taxodium trees was preserved in an open-cast coal mine allowing geologists to study samples as if they were sections cut from a piece of living wood. "The importance of the findings is that so many trees got preserved in their original position in one place," Alfred Dulai, geologist at the Hungarian Natural History Museum...

...His findings: Overall, approximately 35 percent of the 982 trilobite species exhibited some variation in some aspect of their appearance that was evolving. But more than 70 percent of early and middle Cambrian species exhibited variation, while only 13 percent of later trilobite species did so. "There's hardly any variation in the post-Cambrian," he said. "Even the presence or absence or the kind of ornamentation on the head shield varies within these Cambrian trilobites and doesn't vary in the post-Cambrian trilobites."...

Geologists have found the remains of a huge underground rainforest hidden in a coal mine in Illinois. The fossil forest, buried by an earthquake 300 million years ago, contains giant versions of several plant types alive today. ... Also surprising is the presence of remains from mangrove-like plants. "It was always assumed that mangrove plants had evolved fairly recently," says Falcon-Lang.

Source: University of Copenhagen Date: July 5, 2007 Fossil DNA Proves Greenland Once Had Lush Forests; Ice Sheet Is Surprisingly Stable Science Daily — Ancient Greenland was green. New Danish research has shown that it was covered in conifer forest and, like southern Sweden today, had a relatively mild climate. Eske Willerslev, a professor at Copenhagen University, has analysed the world's oldest DNA, preserved under the kilometre-thick icecap. The DNA is likely close to half a million years old, and the research is painting a picture which is overturning all previous assumptions about biological life and the climate in Greenland....

UWO researcher finds what may be oldest fossil on Earth Tue, May 29, 2007 By JOHN MINER, SUN MEDIA A team led by a University of Western Ontario scientist has discovered direct evidence there was life on Earth 3.35 billion years ago UWO geologist Neil Banerjee and his team found fossilized tunnels of microbes in ancient rock from Australia. The find was dated by scientists at the University of Alberta using a newly developed laser-dating method. “This is very strong evidence,” Banerjee said. The discovery pushes the fossil evidence of life back to the early period of the Earth’s development....

Oldest lobster fossil uncovered in Mexico REUTERS May 4, 2007 MEXICO CITY – Mexican scientists said they have identified the world's oldest lobster fossil, that of a creature alive when Africa was only just breaking apart from the Americas about 120 million years ago. The fossil is 4.7 inches long, and its shell and legs are immaculately preserved by the mud in the southern state of Chiapas, where it was found. It is dated as 120 million years old, about 20 million years older than previous lobster fossils. “This lobster that we found in Chiapas belongs to the genus that...

COAL MINE SEVEN, Svalbard, Norway (Reuters) - Fossils of a hippopotamus-like creature on an Arctic island show the climate was once like that of Florida, giving clues to risks from modern global warming, a scientist said. Fossil footprints of a pantodont, a plant-eating creature weighing about 400 kg (880 lb), add to evidence of sequoia-type trees and crocodile-like beasts in the Arctic millions of years ago when greenhouse gas concentrations in the air were high. "The climate here about 55 million years ago was more like that of Florida," Appy Sluijs, an expert in ancient ecology at Utrecht University in...

My wife was listening to Paul Harvey at lunch and thought she heard him talking of a huge cave discovered in Illinois that contained a fossilized rain forest and perfectly preserved fossils of several extinct creatures.

Silicon Valley’s technology investors have taken to the ramparts, threatening to tear down the oil and gas industries’ dominance with innovations that use ethanol, solar and wind. A chief champion of the cause has been Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of the marquee venture capital firms. Its principals, John Doerr in particular, have passionately advocated development of alternative energies as a way to create energy independence and clean up the carbon-saturated atmosphere. But Kleiner has also poured millions of dollars into Terralliance, a company that makes technology to enable more efficient drilling of oil and gas. The investment underscores...

Australian scientists say they have found morsels of fossilized muscle—the oldest vertebrate tissue ever known—in the remains of two fish that lived 380 to 384 million years ago. Unearthed in western Australia 20 years ago, the specimens belong to two species of an extinct group of primitive, armored fish known as placoderms (map of Australia). The fish's remarkably well-preserved soft tissues include bundles of muscle cells, blood vessels, and nerve cells. They were found during recent electron microscope scans, the research team reported last week in the British journal Biology Letters. Fossilized muscle is quite rare, and the new finds...

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) - A mastodon tooth fossil found in an Ontario, Canada, attic remains a mystery, after a paleontologist concluded it does not belong with a skeleton here that is one of the world's most complete. John Hoganson with the North Dakota Geological Survey climbed a ladder about 10 feet this week to take measurements inside the jaw of the skeleton in the North Dakota Heritage Center on the state Capitol grounds. "The tooth at (the University of) Waterloo was larger than the ones ... here," he said. "The bottom line is it just would not fit." The Earth...

Palaeontologists have unveiled the fossilised skeleton of a two-headed dinosaur that roamed the earth about 100 million years ago (MYA). But before it gets added to the pantheon of prehistoric beasts occupied by luminaries such as Tyrannosaurus Rex and Triceratops, scientists point out the dinosaur was only 70mm tall and died at a very young age. Publishing their findings in the Royal Society journal, the Chinese palaeontologists discovered the specimen in the famed dinosaur stamping grounds of Yixian Formation in the north-east of the country, with its mixture of volcanic and sedimentary rocks an ideal place for fossils to be...

TINY BONES REWRITE TEXTBOOKS: first New Zealand land mammal fossil Part of the fossilised jaw< Part of the fossilised femur Small but remarkable fossils found in New Zealand will prompt a major rewrite of prehistory textbooks, showing for the first time that the so-called "land of birds" was once home to mammals as well. The tiny fossilised bones - part of a jaw and hip - belonged to a unique, mouse-sized land animal unlike any other mammal known and were unearthed from the rich St Bathans fossil bed, in the Otago region of South Island. But the real shock to...

Did the air belong to mammals first? 13 December 2006 From New Scientist Print Edition. Time for some mammalian bragging. It appears, following the discovery of a unique fossil in Inner Mongolia, China, that mammals might have taken to the air before birds. The fossil contains the remains of a small, squirrel-like mammal that was able to glide with the help of a fur-covered membrane like those of modern-day flying squirrels (pictured). At 125 million years old, the fossil is 70 million years older than the most ancient existing fossil of a flying mammal, and roughly the same age as...

Ancient remains, once thought to be a key link in the evolution of mankind, have now been shown to be 400,000 years too young to be a part of man’s family tree. The remains of the apeman, dubbed Little Foot, were discovered in a cave complex at Sterkfontein by a local South African team in 1997. Its bones preserved in sediment layers, it is the most complete hominid fossil skeleton ever found. Little Foot is of the genus Australopithecus, thought by some to be part of the ancestral line which led directly to man. But research by Dr Jo Walker...

In a controversial study, researchers have resurrected a retrovirus that infected our ancestors millions of years ago and now sits frozen in the human genome. Published online by Genome Research this week, the study may shed new light on the history of these genomic intruders, as well as their role in tumors. Although this particular virus, dubbed Phoenix, is a wimpy one, some argue that resuscitating any ancient virus is inherently risky and that the study should have undergone stricter reviews. Retroviruses have the ability to make DNA copies of their RNA genomes and incorporate these into the host's genome....

DISCOVERING a rare, 100 million-year-old fossil is amazing enough. But not as surprising as the way Queensland Museum palaeontologist Alex Cook found it. Keen for a break after more than three hours of driving, Dr Cook thought he would stretch his legs at the northwest Queensland town of Hughenden - and literally stumbled over the fossil. "I found it literally on the side of the road. It's serendipity, a happy accident," Dr Cook said today. It is the third jaw fragment of a pterosaur - a winged, fish-eating reptile that lived in the time of the dinosaurs - found in...

A new species of mouse found in Cyprus is delighting scientists. Identified by researchers at Durham University, it has bigger ears, eyes and teeth than other European mice. The scientists say it is a surviving remnant of indigenous Cypriot fauna which mostly went extinct with the arrival of humans. Most finds of new species occur in tropical regions with sparse human populations, which makes this a highly unusual discovery. "It was generally believed that every species of mammal in Europe had been identified," said Durham's Thomas Cucchi. "This is why the discovery of a new species of mouse on Cyprus...

Damascus: Swiss researchers have discovered the 1,00,000-year-old remains of a previously unknown giant camel species in central Syria. “This is a big discovery, a revolution in science,” Professor Jean-Marie Le Tensorer of the University of Basel said. “It was not known that the dromedary was present in the Middle East more than 10,000 years ago.” “Can you imagine? The camel’s shoulders stood three metres high and it was around four metres tall, as big as a giraffe or an elephant. Nobody knew that such a species had existed.” Tensorer, who has been excavating at the desert site in Kowm since...

Norwegian scientists have discovered a "treasure trove" of fossils belonging to giant sea reptiles that roamed the seas at the time of the dinosaurs. The 150 million-year-old fossils were uncovered on the Arctic island chain of Svalbard - about halfway between the Norwegian mainland and the North Pole. The finds belong to two groups of extinct marine reptiles - the plesiosaurs and the ichthyosaurs. One skeleton has been nicknamed The Monster because of its enormous size. These animals were the top predators living in what was then a relatively cool, deep sea. Palaeontologists from the University of Oslo's Natural History...

Pitt's Jeffrey Schwartz, who with colleague Ian Tattersall compiled the entire human fossil record, says specimen is not from Ethiopia and classification is premature According to University of Pittsburgh anthropology professor Jeffrey Schwartz, author of the four-volume The Human Fossil Record (Wiley-Liss, 2002-05), "the discovery of any largely complete skeleton of an ancient human relative would be unique. The fact that it is a child makes it even more exciting because of what its bones and teeth might reveal that an adult's cannot." However, Schwartz said, there are questions about the species this specimen represents. He explained that the problem...

Link Only: Evolution Attack Goes Global

Think you've seen all there is to see of the dinosaurs? Not so fast: a new statistical study by Drs. Steven C. Wang and Peter Dodson of Swarthmore College has revealed that 71% of dinosaur genera on earth still remain to be discovered. That's good news for paleontologists and amateur dinosaur enthusiasts. But it's also good news for Richard Webber, a New York sculptor who has carved out a professional niche reconstructing fossilized remains. Webber worked on the renovation of the American Museum of Natural History's fossil hall in the mid-90s, where he built the Indricotherium, the world's largest land...

Zoologist Darren Naish has written a thoughtful essay on “Are Sumatran Rhinos Really Living Fossil?” His blog is in response to my comments on the “living fossil” issue, discussed here. I disagree with Naish’s restrictive parameters, of course, as I see this more an issue of educational semantics influenced by zoology, not ruled by it. Darren Naish’s approach is worthy of your attention and he has every right to his very informed point of view. Needless to say, in this case, I was employing the “living fossil” definition that this rhino species is “a living species/clade with many ‘primitive’ characteristics...

Sydney: An Australian fossil find may mean living creatures left the world's oceans for the land much earlier than once thought, rewriting a small part of mankind's evolution. A study of rocks collected near Buchan, in Victoria state's East Gippsland, has yielded a lung fish fossil more than 20 million years older than earlier finds, Macquarie University researcher Zarena Johanson said yesterday. Her colleague, Prof John Talent, who found the rocks, said the fossilised lung fish - or coelacanth - sets back the timeline for when marine animals made their first excursions on to land. "It seems from experimental data...

Paleontologists have uncovered a 25-million-year-old whale fossil with a monstrous set of teeth and enormous eyes on the coast of Australia.The discovery has researchers rethinking whales’ evolutionary history.Scientists were surprised to find that the vicious-looking specimen is an ancestor of modern baleen whales, gentle giants of today’s seas. The fossil suggests a creature that grew to a little more than 11 feet with teeth about an inch-and-a-half long. Baleen whales, which include the blue and humpback, feed by filtering plankton and small fish from seawater through hair-like fibers in their jaws. Their ferocious forebears, on the other hand, appear to...

The skeletal remains found in a cave on the island of Flores, Indonesia, reported in 2004, do not represent a new species as then claimed, but some of the ancestors of modern human pygmies who live on the island today, according to an international scientific team. The researchers also demonstrate that the fairly complete skeleton designated LB1 is microcephalic, while other remains excavated from the site share LB1's small stature but show no evidence of microcephaly, since no other brain cases are known. Microcephaly is a condition in which the head and brain are much smaller than average for the...

A 7 million-year-old primate cranium found in central Chad does not represent the earliest human ancestor as reported previously, according to University of Wyoming Anthropology Professor James Ahern. When it was discovered in 1999, scientists thought the ancient Toumai Skull was the earliest recorded hominid -- a unique human ancestor representing evidence of the human evolutionary line. But due to missing key features that could link previously unknown crania with the earliest hominids, Ahern and his research team dispute the previous findings. In a recent edition of the online journal PaleoAnthropology (www.paleoanthro.org/journal/contents.htm), Ahern writes with colleagues from the universities of...

Experts recently discovered around 1200 Chinese Hynobiidaes in Guiding county Southwest of China's Guizhou province. These are a type of amphibian species around 300 million years old that once used to live in the dinosaur period. The discovery has offered important reference for the study on animals' evolution and welwitschiopsida's ecological environment. It is known from the fishery station of Guiding county that this precious species is found in several townships like Yanxia, Duliu. They live happily with Chinese giant salamanders (Andrias davidianus) in clear streams and ponds, appearing with an amazingly large population with more than 1000 found in...

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—The earliest known hominid fossil, which dates to about 7 million years ago, is actually some kind of ape, according to an international team of researchers led by the University of Michigan. The finding, they say, suggests scientists should rethink whether we actually descended from apes resembling chimpanzees, which are considered our closest relatives. U-M anthropologist Milford Wolpoff and colleagues examined images and the original paper published on the discovery of the Toumaï cranium (TM 266) or Sahelanthropus tchadensis, as well as a computer reconstruction of the skull. Two other colleagues were actually able to examine the skull,...

'Hogwarts' Dragon Unveiled By Larry O'Hanlon, Animal Planet News May 24 — A dragon-like dinosaur named after Harry Potter's alma mater has performed a bit of black magic on its own family tree, say paleontologists who unveiled the "Dragon King of Hogwarts" on Monday in Albuquerque. The newly described horny-headed dinosaur Dracorex hogwartsia lived about 66 million years ago in South Dakota, just a million years short of the extinction of all dinosaurs. But its flat, almost storybook-style dragon head has overturned everything paleontologists thought they knew about the dome-head dinos called pachycephalosaurs. "What you knew about pachycephalosaurs — you...

French scientists who explored the Coral Sea said Friday they discovered a new species of crustacean that was thought to have become extinct 60 million years ago. The "living fossil," a female baptized Neoglyphea Neocaledonica, was discovered 1,312 feet under water during an expedition in the Chesterfield Islands, northwest of New Caledonia, the National Museum of Natural History and the Research Institute for Development said in a statement. Another so-called living fossil from the Neoglyphea group was discovered in 1908 in the Philippines by the U.S. Albatross, a research vessel. It remained unidentified until 1975 when two French scientists from...

The U.S. Department of Interior has designated Nebraska's Ashfall Fossil Beds as a national natural landmark, the first such landmark to be designated in almost two decades. The site, near the town of Neligh (see Nebraska map), is home to hundreds of skeletons of extinct rhinos, camels, three-toed horses, and other vertebrates that were killed and buried by ash from a huge volcanic eruption some 12 million years ago. It is the only place on Earth where large numbers of fossil mammals have been found as whole, three-dimensionally preserved skeletons. "Ashfall has tremendous value for science and education and great...