Paleontologists have identified a new species of ancient, distant mammal relative from two fossil specimens found decades apart in the Manda Beds of Tanzania.
The post New Dicynodont Species from Tanzania Suggests Younger Age for Rocks Tied to Earliest Dinosaurs appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
The first fossilized adult T. rex trackway tells us a lot about how these predators got around
The post Here’s How Fast An Adult Tyrannosaurus Rex Walked appeared first on Nautilus.
El Soplao, a fossil site tucked into the hills of Cantabria in northern Spain, stands out for yielding amber pieces with a blue-violet hue and abundant bioinclusions, according to a new review paper.
The post Spanish Amber Deposit Offers Rare Window into Cretaceous Life appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
Paleontologists from Fundación Dinópolis have identified the first confirmed fossils of the genus Diplodocus found outside North America.
The post Diplodocus, Long Thought Exclusively American, Turns Up in Spain appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
Long before sharks or reptiles ruled the seas, armor-plated fish called placoderms were already experimenting with different jaw designs to crush hard-shelled prey.
The post Devonian Armored Fish Show Multiple Ways to Crush Hard-Shelled Prey appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
Scientists investigating a 66-million-year-old mystery have revealed that a bird feather embedded in fossilized dinosaur excrement suggests that the ancestors of modern birds who survived the dinosaur-killing asteroid that also wiped out all other ancient bird species benefited from the waterproofing properties of their feathers.
The newly analyzed bird feather fossil that provided the missing clues comes from an extinct bird group called Hesperornithiforms and not from the ancestor of modern birds, Neornithes.
However, the team said subtle differences between the species suggest previous theories crediting adaptation to water diving as the key to Neornithes’ survival were likely on the right track.
When a huge piece of space rock slammed into Earth, killing off virtually all dinosaur species save the ancestors of modern birds, the event also left behind a 66-million-year-old mystery. How did these ancient avians survive this apocalyptic event, resulting in every bird species we see today?
Jingmai O’Connor, the associate curator of fossil reptiles at the Field Museum in Chicago, said her career has been spent analyzing fossils to try to answer this single, critical question. However, unlike the new poop-encased bird feathers, most were not so ‘naturally’ protected from the ravages of time.
“It’s such a beautiful, well-preserved feather, from such an unexpected source, and it’s exciting that it could help us answer this huge question in paleontology,” explained the lead author of a study detailing the new analysis. “As far as I know, no one has ever thought to look for feathers or to study feathers in coprolites, so this project was really exciting.”
Researchers discovered the ancient bird feather in 2016 in Montana. Although she initially suspected it could be a coprolite rock (fossilized feces), O’Connor said she couldn’t confirm the theory for a decade.
The situation changed when O’Connor and Nate Carroll, a co-author of the paper and paleontologist at the Carter County Museum in Ekalaka, Montana, gained access to the micro-CT scanner at USC’s medical campus in Los Angeles, California. According to O’Connor, that’s when “the full feathery fabric of this fossil feces” started to finally reveal itself.
“Every hour processing the data revealed another feather, another scale, another bone—in stunning 3D,” Carrol also recalled.
Along with multiple feathers and tiny fish scales, the ancient dinosaur poop, which may have come from a Tyrannosaurus Rex, also contained legs from a hesperonithiform bird.
O’Connor said hesperonithiforms were ancient aquatic birds with similarities to modern loons. Critically, these cousins of the modern bird ancestor group had evolved specialized feet to hunt for fish by diving deep into the water.
“The feathers showed adaptations for being underwater that we see in living aquatic birds,” O’Connor explained.
Notably, the team said this evolution likely cost ancient hesperonithiforms like the one that was consumed by a dinosaur the ability to fly.
Although the bird group represented by the fossilized feather did not survive the dinosaur-killing asteroid, its connection to the ancestor of modern birds appears to support a previously proposed theory that adaptation to water may have helped Neornithes survive. O’Connor said she thinks that small differences in the feathers of the two ancient bird species hold the answer to a 66-million-year-old mystery.
“We think the types of feathers that these birds had, and/or the way they molted those feathers, may have been one of the underlying causes of the selectivity of the end-Cretaceous mass extinction,” the researcher explained, adding that this is “essentially why some birds died out and why others survived.”
Specifically, O’Connor pointed to the “smaller, fuzzy, primitive body feathers” found on the extinct bird “that we associate with dinosaurs and enantiornithines” alongside more modern-looking waterproof adaptations.
The team said that these evolutionary relics suggest that hesperornithiforms like the one that left behind its feathers were an evolutionary bridge between older bird groups and the Neornithes that survived the cosmic collision. Even more critically, the team said these earlier feather structures may not have retained heat as effectively as Neornithes feathers, allowing one species to survive the asteroid and another to die in the extreme cold that followed.
“The hesperornithiforms retain primitive feather types that may not have been as efficient for insulation as modern plumaceous feathers, and that could explain why they went extinct along with the enantiornithines,” O’Connor explained.
The study “Bird feathers from a Late Cretaceous coprolite” was published in Current Biology.
Christopher Plain has spent the last six years as Associate News Editor and Head Science Reporter at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his novels at plainfiction.com, or email him at christopher@thedebrief.org.
Paleontologists have identified a new species of extinct alligatorid that lived in what is now Colorado just a few hundred thousand years after the asteroid impact that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs.
The post Ancient Alligator Relative Lived Right After Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
New research from the Natural History Museum at the University of Oslo suggests ichthyosaurs’ rib cages may have done a job modern whale ribs don’t: acting as ballast to help them dive.
The post Ichthyosaurs Had Surprisingly Dense Ribs, New Study Finds appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
A University of Cambridge-led research team has announced the discovery of a 560-million-year-old animal fossil preserved in three dimensions (3D) in a sheep field in the Norwegian Arctic.
The exceptionally rare Ediacaran Period fossil is the first of its kind in Europe in decades and gives scientists a unique window into a period of Earth’s history when the first complex life forms began to appear.
The discovery suggests the site could hide an entire lost ancient ecosystem that has remained hidden for hundreds of millions of years.
When announcing the historic discovery, the Cambridge-led team noted that the fossil, called a Charnia, resembles a fern more than any animal life we would likely recognize today.
For example, Charnia has none of the organs we typically associate with animals. The archaic life form also lacks a mouth or visible means of locomotion. The closest modern comparison would be a sedentary jellyfish.
While previous efforts have identified ancient animal-life fossils from this period, the team noted that most are found as “flat impressions.” As a result, Professor Neil Davies from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences said that many fossils from this period “occur as impressions where they’ve been squashed down under layers of rock,” like a flower pressed into a book.
“As a fossil record, the Ediacaran has several things working against it, primarily that most organisms were soft-bodied and skeletons hadn’t evolved yet, so that they are harder to preserve,” the team member and co-author of the study detailing the research explained.
Dr Veema agreed, while noting the difficulty in finding such rare specimens.
“Fossils need to be embedded within sedimentary rocks to be found, so if the rocks themselves are less common, then that makes the fossils harder to find,” the researcher explained. “Most Ediacaran fossils come from just a handful of locations, which makes it exciting to find them somewhere new.”
Fortunately, the newly identified 560-million-year-old life form was preserved in all three dimensions. The team said that discovering an ancient life form preserved in 3D is incredibly rare, particularly for soft-bodied organisms like Charnia. Finding one from this extremely ancient time, when animal life first began to appear, is even more unlikely, making the discovery unusually rare.
560 million years ago, when this Charnia was still alive, evidence suggests that it was buried during an ancient underwater avalanche. This sudden submergence also filled the animal’s body with sediment. The researchers said these events caused the fossil to become preserved in 3D
For example, the research team identified small ridges along the animal’s branches. Called keels, these extremely subtle features had never been detected in other, flatter Charnia fossils.
Dr Yorick Veenma, from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences and the lead author of the study detailing the team’s discovery, said finding a 3D fossil from this archaic time has provided them with an entirely new perspective.
“When you see the same species preserved in a different way, you start noticing properties you hadn’t seen before,” Dr. Veenma explained.
Although scientists have found a few fossils from this period, they are often from the same handful of sites. However, this is the first time one has been found in Norway. Dr. Veema said this shows that discoveries can be made “in less familiar places.”
The researchers also successfully identified other components of the ancient ecosystem that this Charnia fossil called home. Future efforts may reveal that it was one small part of a larger, ‘lost’ ancient ecosystem supporting a variety of complex life forms.
“There may be a whole undiscovered community of these very early organisms preserved up there,” Davies explained. “Weird little umbrella-shaped blobs, things that don’t fit with what people know from elsewhere.”
“There are a whole host of different things that were not known before,” the researcher added.
The study “Charnia and other late Ediacaran macrofossils preserved in turbiditic deposits of the Indreelva Member (Finnmark, Norway)” was published in Paleontology.
Christopher Plain has spent the last six years as Associate News Editor and Head Science Reporter at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his novels at plainfiction.com, or email him at christopher@thedebrief.org.
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