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Sixty-six million years ago, a massive asteroid crashed into a shallow sea near Mexico. The impact carved out a 90-mile-wide crater and flung mountains of earth into space. Earthbound debris fell to the planet in droplets of molten rock and glass. Ancient fish caught glass blobs in their gills as they swam, gape-mouthed, beneath the strange rain. Large, sloshing waves threw animals onto dry land, then more waves buried them in silt. Scientists working in North Dakota recently dug up fossils of these fish: They died within the first minutes or hours after the asteroid hit, according to a paper...

Dr. Stephen Brusatte, a Palaeontologist at University of Edinburgh and author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, is among those that have questions around the extraordinary claims made by the team that have... ... said he was “very excited about this discovery” but noted aside from a single partial dinosaur hip bone mentioned in the paper, ideas of a dinosaur graveyard being reported in the media lack any real evidence so far. “The New Yorker article reports a dinosaur graveyard with bones of many types of dinosaurs, along with feathers, eggs, and even embryos,” he said. “I’m afraid...

The most immediate effects of the terminal-Cretaceous Chicxulub impact, essential to understanding the global-scale environmental and biotic collapses that mark the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction, are poorly resolved despite extensive previous work. Here, we help to resolve this by describing a rapidly emplaced, high-energy onshore surge deposit from the terrestrial Hell Creek Formation in Montana. Associated ejecta and a cap of iridium-rich impactite reveal that its emplacement coincided with the Chicxulub event. Acipenseriform fish, densely packed in the deposit, contain ejecta spherules in their gills and were buried by an inland-directed surge that inundated a deeply incised river channel before accretion of...

The researchers say they found evidence in North Dakota of the asteroid hit in Mexico, including fish with hot glass in their gills from flaming debris that showered back down on Earth. They also reported the discovery of charred trees, evidence of an inland tsunami and melted amber. Additionally, University of Amsterdam professor Jan Smit said he and his colleagues found footsteps from dinosaurs moments before they met their untimely death. Smit said the footprints — one from a plant-eating hadrosaur and the other of a meat eater, maybe a small Tyrannosaurus Rex — is "definite proof that the dinosaurs...

66 million-year-old deathbed linked to dinosaur-killing meteor By Robert Sanders, Media relations| March 29, 2019March 29, 2019 Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)Click to print (Opens in new window) A meteor impact 66 million years ago generated a tsunami-like wave in an inland sea that killed and buried fish, mammals, insects and a dinosaur, the first victims of Earth’s last mass extinction event. The death scene from within an hour of...

A newly discovered fossil site in China that dates back 518 million years contains more than 50% previously unknown species, according to a new study. The well-preserved Qingjiang site is helping scientists to fill gaps in the fossil record and provide a clearer picture of some of the earliest animal ecosystems. The site is unique in that it not only includes well-preserved fossils but soft-bodied organisms as well. Some of the animals include corals, sponges, sea anemones, jellyfish, comb jellies, arthropods and tiny invertebrates called mud dragons, as well as microscopic fossils.

The find, made in 110-million-year-old deposits in northwest China, is of a new species known as Avimaia schweitzerae and the fossil has been described as "incredibly well preserved." The new species belongs to the group known as Enantiornithes, which were fairly common in the Cretaceous period, living alongside dinosaurs. However, the fossilized egg may have resulted in the death of the so-called mother bird, researchers said. "The egg shell consists of two layers instead of one as in normal healthy bird eggs, indicating the egg was retained too long inside the abdomen," Dr. Alida Bailleul said in comments obtained by...

Scientists have debated whether the dinosaurs were already in decline before a massive asteroid impact finished them off 66 million years ago. New research shows they were thriving in their final days. Help EarthSky keep going! Please donate what you can to our annual crowd-funding campaign.Dinosaurs once reigned on Earth, until a cataclysmic event – now thought to have been a massive asteroid impact, or possibly intense volcanic activity – wiped them out about 66 million years ago during the Maastrichtian age at the end the Late Cretaceous epoch. This mass extinction event was sudden and brutal, powerful enough to...

Megalodon, the largest shark that ever lived, is known only from its gigantic bladelike teeth, which can be more than 7 inches long. But these teeth, described by some scientists as the "ultimate cutting tools," took millions of years to evolve into their final, iconic form. Megalodon's earliest ancestor, Otodus obliquus, sported three-pronged teeth that could have acted like a fork for grasping and tearing fast-moving fishes. In later megatooth shark species, teeth flattened and developed serrated edges, transitioning to a knifelike shape for killing and eating fleshy animals like whales and dolphins.But the final tooth evolution in this lineage...

The Tyrannosaurus rex may be among the most well-known and terrifying dinosaurs to walk the Earth, but a newly discovered 4-foot cousin was likely just as scary. Known as Moros Intrepidus (which means "harbinger of doom"), this tiny tyrannosaur lived 100 million years ago. Despite its diminutive size, it was still lethal, North Carolina State University paleontoloist Lindsay Zanno said. “Moros was lightweight and exceptionally fast,” Zanno said in a statement. “These adaptations, together with advanced sensory capabilities, are the mark of a formidable predator. It could easily have run down prey, while avoiding confrontation with the top predators of...

Titanosaurs were the most speciose and widespread group of sauropod dinosaurs, the largest terrestrial animals in Earth history. They reached their peak diversity in the Late Cretaceous after all other sauropod groups vanished, but their early evolution is poorly understood due to a scarcity of well-preserved titanosaur fossils from before the Late Cretaceous, especially outside of South America. In this study, the authors describe a newly-discovered middle Cretaceous titanosaur from southern Africa. The researchers named the new dinosaur Mnyamawamtuka moyowamkia. It is known from a single specimen excavated from a quarry along the Mtuka River in southwest Tanzania. It is...

A new oviraptorosaur species from the Late Cretaceous was discovered in Mongolia... Oviraptorosaurs were a diverse group of feathered, bird-like dinosaurs from the Cretaceous of Asia and North America. Despite the abundance of nearly complete oviraptorosaur skeletons discovered in southern China and Mongolia, the diet and feeding strategies of these toothless dinosaurs are still unclear. In this study, Lee and colleagues described an incomplete skeleton of an oviraptorosaur found in the Nemegt Formation of the Gobi desert of Mongolia. The new species, named Gobiraptor minutus, can be distinguished from other oviraptorosaurs in having unusual thickened jaws. This unique morphology suggests...

An international and 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. They were discovered in a fossil deposit in Gabon, where the oldest multicellular organisms have already been found (1). These results appear in the 11 February 2019 edition of PNAS. A few years ago, geologist Abderrazak El Albani and his team at the Institut de chimie des milieux et matériaux...

Taking a dip in the ocean and coming face to face with a predator of the deep would be enough to scare anyone. Modern day great white sharks are intimidating creatures, but they wouldn’t have held a candle to the ancient super-sized beast known as megalodon. The long-extinct shark has been the subject of many research efforts in the past, with scientists attempting to determine when and where it lived, and perhaps even figure out why it’s no longer around. Now, new fossil evidence suggests that the colossal creature actually died off quite a bit earlier than was originally thought,...

Taking a dip in the ocean and coming face to face with a predator of the deep would be enough to scare anyone. Modern day great white sharks are intimidating creatures, but they wouldn’t have held a candle to the ancient super-sized beast known as megalodon. The long-extinct shark has been the subject of many research efforts in the past, with scientists attempting to determine when and where it lived, and perhaps even figure out why it’s no longer around. Now, new fossil evidence suggests that the colossal creature actually died off quite a bit earlier than was originally thought,...

A 52-million-year fossil of a "perching bird" has been found in Wyoming with its feathers still attached, a discovery that "no one's ever seen before." Also known as passerines, the perching bird was discovered in Fossil Lake, WY. Passerines are well-known for eating seeds, as most modern-day birds do and account for approximately 65 percent of the 10,000 different species of birds alive today. "This is one of the earliest known perching birds. It's fascinating because passerines today make up most of all bird species, but they were extremely rare back then. This particular piece is just exquisite," said Field...

A new dinosaur species, notable for a row of two-foot spines protruding from its neck, has been discovered by scientists in Argentina. Scientists have dubbed the new dinosaur, “Bajadasaurus,” an herbivore that lived 140 million years ago, according to the scientific journal Nature, which first revealed the findings. Its name is an amalgam of Spanish, Greek, and Latin, meaning “lizard from Bajada with forward-bending spines.” The dinosaur's unusual "spines" have fueled a wave of speculation about what purpose they may have served. Pablo Gallina, a paleontologist who first came across a set of its teeth in 2010, said the “long and sharp...

More than 3.8 billion years ago, in a time period called the Hadean eon, our planet Earth was constantly bombarded by asteroids, which caused the large-scale melting of its surface rocks. Most of these surface rocks were basalts, and the asteroid impacts produced large pools of superheated impact melt of such composition. These basaltic pools were tens of kilometres thick, and thousands of kilometres in diameter. “If you want to get an idea of what the surface of Earth looked like at that time, you can just look at the surface of the Moon which is covered by a vast...

Scientists recently discovered a rare and important hagfish fossil that includes traces of preserved slime dating to 100 million years ago. Eyeless, jawless hagfish — still around today — are bizarre, eel-like, carrion-eating fishes that lick the flesh off dead animals using their spiky tongue-like structures. But their most well-known feature is the sticky slime that they expel for protection. And now, scientists know that hagfish slime is robust enough to leave traces in the fossil record, finding remarkable evidence in a fossilized hagfish skeleton excavated in Lebanon. ..." The fossil dates to the late Cretaceous period (145.5 million to...

Just like the modern platypus, this 250-million-year-old, Triassic-age marine reptile likely used its cartilaginous bill to discover and seize its next meal, a new study finds. "This animal had unusually small eyes for the body, only rivaled by some living animals that rely on senses other than vision and feed in the dusk or darkness — for example some shrews, badgers and the duck-billed platypus," said study lead researcher Ryosuke Motani, a paleobiologist at the University of California, Davis. "So, it most likely used tactile senses [with its] platypus-like bill to detect prey in the dusk or darkness." ..." Previously,...