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Scientists from South Africa, Australia and France have discovered a world first association while scanning a 250 million year old fossilized burrow from the Karoo Basin of South Africa. The burrow revealed two unrelated vertebrate animals nestled together and fossilized after being trapped by a flash flood event. Facing harsh climatic conditions subsequent to the Permo-Triassic (P-T) mass extinction, the amphibian Broomistega and the mammal forerunner Thrinaxodon cohabited in a burrow. Scanning shows that the amphibian, which was suffering from broken ribs, crawled into a sleeping mammal's shelter for protection. This research suggests that short periods of dormancy, called aestivation,...

Prof Christian Sidor and his colleagues headed by Dr Linda Tsuji, also from the University of Washington, created two ‘snapshots’ of four legged-animals about 5 million years before and again about 10 million years after the Earth’s largest mass extinction (about 252 million years ago). Prior to the extinction event, for example, the pig-sized Dicynodon was a dominant plant-eating species across southern Pangea. Pangea is the name given to the landmass when all the world’s continents were joined together. Southern Pangea was made up of what is today Africa, South America, Antarctica, Australia and India. After the mass extinction at...

Chinese paleontologists led by Dr Tao He from the Zhejiang Museum of Natural History in Hangzhou have identified a new species of thalattosaur from a fossil found in the Xiaowa Formation of Guanling, China. Thalattosaurs (meaning ‘ocean lizards’) were a group of prehistoric marine reptiles that lived during the mid and late Triassic period in North America and Eurasia. They resembled large, up to 13 feet (4 m) in length, aquatic lizards, with long, flexible bodies and short limbs. Dr He’s team has described a new species of thalattosaur, named Concavispina biseridens, in the latest issue of the Journal of...

This undated handout photo provided by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and the University of Göttingen shows photomicrographs of the two new species of ancient gall mites in 230-million-year-old amber droplets from northeastern Italy. The gall mites were named: Triasacarus fedelei, left, and Ampezzoa triassica. (AP Photo/A. Schmidt, University of Göttingen, Proceedings of the National Academy) • WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists have found three well preserved ancient insects frozen in amber — and time — in what is Earth's oldest bug trap. The discoveries of amber-encased insects in Italy may sound like something out of "Jurassic Park"...

It took some 10 million years for Earth to recover from the greatest mass extinction of all time, latest research has revealed. Life was nearly wiped out 250 million years ago, with only 10 per cent of plants and animals surviving. It is currently much debated how life recovered from this cataclysm, whether quickly or slowly. Recent evidence for a rapid bounce-back is evaluated in a new review article by Dr Zhong-Qiang Chen, from the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan, and Professor Michael Benton from the University of Bristol. They find that recovery from the crisis lasted some 10...

Scientists have uncovered a lot about the Earth's greatest extinction event that took place 250 million years ago when rapid climate change wiped out nearly all marine species and a majority of those on land. Now, they have discovered a new culprit likely involved in the annihilation: an influx of mercury into the eco-system. "No one had ever looked to see if mercury was a potential culprit. This was a time of the greatest volcanic activity in Earth's history and we know today that the largest source of mercury comes from volcanic eruptions," says Dr. Steve Grasby, co-author of a...

A great explosive burning of coal set fire and made molten by lava bubbling from the Earth's mantle , looking akin to Kuwait's giant oil fires but lasting anywhere from centuries to millennia, could have been the cause of the world's most-devastating mass extinction, new research suggests. The event, called the Great Dying, occurred 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period. "The Great Dying was the biggest of all the mass extinctions," said study researcher Darcy Ogden of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. "Estimates suggest up to 96 percent of all marine species...

Five times in the last half a billion years, tremendous, global-scale extinctions have wiped out a significant fraction of life on Earth - and each of them presents a grand puzzle. The most recent and the most familiar is the extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs - between the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods, about 65 million years ago. But before that, 205 million years ago, was the "End-Triassic Event" - it set the stage for the Jurassic Period, which saw the rise to prominence of the dinosaurs. Just what happened that killed off half the species on the planet, though,...

MONDAY, Oct. 10 (HealthDay News) -- Head to the American Museum of Natural History's Web site, and you'll see the major draw this fall is a splashy exhibit on dinosaurs. And not just any dinosaurs, but two-legged carnivorous, feathered "theropods" like the 30-inch-tall Bambiraptor -- somewhat less cuddly than its namesake. The heyday of the theropods, which included scaly terrors like T. rex and velociraptor, stretched from the late Triassic (220 million years ago) to the late Cretaceous (65 million years ago) periods.

Boulder, CO, USA - Long before whales, the oceans of Earth were roamed by a very different kind of air-breathing leviathan. Snaggle-toothed ichthyosaurs larger than school buses swam at the top of the Triassic Period ocean food chain, or so it seemed before Mount Holyoke College paleontologist Mark McMenamin took a look at some of their remains in Nevada. Now he thinks there was an even larger and more cunning sea monster that preyed on ichthyosaurs: a kraken of such mythological proportions it would have sent Captain Nemo running for dry land. McMenamin will be presenting the results of his...

A 200 million year old reptilian fossil was discovered by Alaskan scientists along the shores of Tongass National Forest. It was the low tide that made the discovery possible as a rare marine creature called Thalattosaurs was submerged in water and rocks. The last Thalattosaurs to survive was after the Triassic period, roughly 200 million years ago. An almost complete skeleton was recovered along with an outline of the body embedded onto surrounding rocks. The creature is usually between 3 to 10 feet long with padded limbs and flat tails. The snout turns downward and contains both pointy teeth for...

The end-Permian extinction, by far the most dramatic biological crisis to affect life on Earth, may not have been as catastrophic for some creatures as previously thought, according to a new study led by the University of Bristol.An international team of researchers studied the parareptiles, a diverse group of bizarre-looking terrestrial vertebrates which varied in shape and size. Some were small, slender, agile and lizard-like creatures, while others attained the size of rhinos; many had knobbly ornaments, fringes, and bony spikes on their skulls. The researchers found that, surprisingly, parareptiles were not hit much harder by the end-Permian extinction than...

Massive volcanic eruption, burning coal and accelerated greenhouse gas choked out lifeAbout 250 million years about 95 per cent of life was wiped out in the sea and 70 per cent on land. Researchers at the University of Calgary believe they have discovered evidence to support massive volcanic eruptions burnt significant volumes of coal, producing ash clouds that had broad impact on global oceans. "This could literally be the smoking gun that explains the latest Permian extinction," says Dr. Steve Grasby, adjunct professor in the University of Calgary's Department of Geoscience and research scientist at Natural Resources Canada. Grasby and...

A new study claims that the ancient winged reptiles known as pterosaurs used a "pole-vaulting" action to take to the air.They say the creatures took off using all four of their limbs. The reptiles vaulted over their wings, pushing off first with their hind limbs and then thrusting themselves upwards with their powerful arm muscles - not dissimilar to some modern bats. The research is published in the open-access journal Plos One. Pterosaurs lived at the same time as the dinosaurs, but belonged to a different group of reptiles. They existed from the Triassic Period until the end of the...

Long, long ago, some of the first dinosaurs walked the Earth. But scientists have not known with any confidence where those initial dino prints were made. Much more recently, hikers stumbled across a few bits of bone at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, leading to the discovery of a game-changing dinosaur that reveals where it all began. The dinosaur, now called Tawa hallae, had a body that was only the size of a medium to large dog, but its remains have helped scientists shore up where dinosaurs came from. The research team used the extremely well-preserved and complete skeletal remains...

The cool climate of Antarctica was a refuge for animals fleeing climate change during the biggest mass extinction in Earth's history, suggests a new fossil study. The discovery may have implications for how modern animals will adapt to global warming. Around 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, about 90 per cent of land species were wiped out as global temperatures soared. A cat-sized distant relative of mammals, Kombuisia antarctica, seems to have survived the extinction by fleeing south to Antarctica. Jörg Fröbisch, a geologist at the Field Museum in Chicago, and colleagues rediscovered fossils of...

Were major extinction events real biological catastrophes or were they merely the result of gaps in the fossil record? Research by a team of geologists from the Universities of Bristol, Plymouth, and Saratov State in Russia, has shed new light on a debate that has divided scientists of late and was recognised as far back as Darwin’s Origin of Species. The team has uncovered evidence in the Russian Urals that demonstrates the presence of the world’s single most severe mass extinction event which took place at the end of the Permian and start of the Triassic ages, some 250 million...

Cat-sized reptiles once roamed what is now the icebox of Antarctica, snuggling up in burrows and peeping above ground to snag plant roots and insects. The evidence for this scenario comes from preserved burrow casts discovered in the Transantarctic Mountains, which extend 3,000 miles (4,800 km) across the polar continent and contain layers of rock dating back 400 million years. "We've got good evidence that these burrows were made by land-dwelling animals rather than crayfish," said lead researcher Christian Sidor, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Washington and curator at UW's Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. Ancient...

Recovering From A Mass ExtinctionFossilised skull of the sabre-toothed Lycaenops, a top predator of the latest Permian. (Credit: Photo by Michael Benton) ScienceDaily (Jan. 20, 2008) — The full recovery of ecological systems, following the most devastating extinction event of all time, took at least 30 million years, according to new research from the University of Bristol. About 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian, a major extinction event killed over 90 per cent of life on earth, including insects, plants, marine animals, amphibians, and reptiles. Ecosystems were destroyed worldwide, communities were restructured and organisms were left...

An apparent crater as big as Ohio has been found in Antarctica. Scientists think it was carved by a space rock that caused the greatest mass extinction on Earth, 250 million years ago. The crater, buried beneath a half-mile of ice and discovered by some serious airborne and satellite sleuthing, is more than twice as big as the one involved in the demise of the dinosaurs. The crater's location, in the Wilkes Land region of East Antarctica, south of Australia, suggests it might have instigated the breakup of the so-called Gondwana supercontinent, which pushed Australia northward, the researchers said. "This...