Paleontologists have described an assemblage of marine fish fossils from the 62.2-million-year-old site of Qreiya 3 in the Eastern Desert of Egypt, providing a window into this transition.
The post Fish Fossils from Early Paleocene Fill 10-Million-Year Gap after Dinosaur Extinction appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
Chemical traces preserved in ancient rocks indicate that marine environments were deteriorating long before the catastrophe that wiped out vast numbers of species at the end of the Triassic period, around 201 million years ago.
The post Ancient Oceans Began Losing Oxygen Millions of Years before End-Triassic Mass Extinction appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
By studying fungal microfossils in 66-million-year-old rock samples from the Denver Basin in Colorado, Johns Hopkins University microbiologists have confirmed that the dinosaur-killing asteroid impact triggered a worldwide fungal takeover, and uncovered a second, previously unknown ecological crisis just before it.
The post Fungi Bloomed Twice around End-Cretaceous Mass Extinction appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
On Tuesday, biotech startup Colossal announced its newest development on the road to its announced goal: reversing the extinction of species, in this case, avian species. The development itself is essentially an artificial eggshell, one that allows almost the entire developmental process to occur without the shell. The company transferred the contents of eggs to their specially designed container within a day or two of laying and were able to have normal chicks walk away from it.
Beyond its potential utility for Colossal's intended efforts, the work is personally interesting to me because it may solve a problem I faced in my research days. I'm going to start by describing the research problem that Colossal may have solved, before coming back to what it hopes to use its technology to do—and why the company still has a few key hurdles left to overcome.
For part of my career, I studied the development of vertebrates using chickens. While they're less closely related to us than something like mice, the basics of their development are largely the same. And, unlike mice, they develop outside of their mother's body. If you're careful, you can chip away a hole in the egg, perform manipulations on the developing embryo, and then seal it back up with some tape. The chicken embryo will keep developing, allowing you to see the impact of what you've done on normal development.
© Colossal
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