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Discoveries - brotherbear - 11-04-2018
http://www.panarmenian.net/eng/news/260336/Oldest_known_animal_fossil_discovered_in_Russia
Oldest known animal fossil discovered in Russia
September 21, 2018 - 14:27 AMT
PanARMENIAN.Net - Hailed as “the Holy Grail of palaeontology”, scientists have confirmed that an unusual oval shape found preserved in Russian cliffs is the oldest known animal fossil, The Independent reports.
Debate has raged in the research community for decades over the identity of Dickinsonia, which roamed the Earth 558 million years ago during the Ediacaran period.
Life forms from this period are thought to be the first ever large, multicellular creatures, but they are so different to anything alive today that their exact identity has remained a mystery.
Previously experts have suggested the metre-long Dickinsonia could be a fungus or a giant amoeba.
But experiments using a specimen from north west Russia has revealed their true identity as some of the first ever animals.
The fossil was so well preserved that when researchers drilled into it they found traces of cholesterol, a type of fat that is a clear indicator of animal life.
“The fossil fat molecules that we’ve found prove that animals were large and abundant 558 million years ago, millions of years earlier than previously thought,” said Professor Jochen Brocks from the Australian National University.
The current received wisdom in palaeontology is that large animals began to dominate around the time of the Cambrian explosion around 541 million years ago.
At this point creatures recognisable as worms, molluscs and other modern groups appear in the fossil record, but the new discovery suggests they were preceded by a wave of animals that looked like Dickinsonia.
Besides high levels of cholesterol, the fossil was lacking in chemical markers known to be associated with fungi.
“Scientists have been fighting for more than 75 years over what Dickinsonia and other bizarre fossils of the Edicaran biota were,” said Professor Brocks, who “couldn’t believe” the results when they were first brought to him by PhD student Ilya Bobrovskiy.
He added: “The fossil fat now confirms Dickinsonia as the oldest known animal fossil, solving a decades-old mystery that has been the Holy Grail of palaeontology.”
The specimen was excavated from a remote cliff face near the White Sea by Bobrovskiy.
“I took a helicopter to reach this very remote part of the world – home to bears and mosquitoes – where I could find Dickinsonia fossils with organic matter still intact,” he said.
Bobrovskiy noted the difficulty in finding a fossil as old as this Dickinsonia specimen that still contained traces of organic material.
“Most rocks containing these fossils such as those from the Ediacara Hills in Australia have endured a lot of heat, a lot of pressure and then they were weathered after that,” he said. “These are the rocks that palaeontologists studied for many decades, which explained why they were stuck on the question of Dickinsonia’s true identity.”
The results of this work, published in the journal Science, mark a new way for scientists to examine the prehistoric world.
“Looking at molecules in these ancient organisms is a game changer,” said Professor Brocks.
Historically, palaeontologists have exclusively looked at the structure of ancient creatures, but adding molecular analysis to these studies allows them to explore them in far greater depth.
RE: Discoveries - brotherbear - 11-07-2018
https://www.thesciencebreaker.org/breaks/evolution-behaviour/what-were-the-ice-age-stilt-legged-horses-of-north-america
What were the ice age ‘stilt-legged’ horses of North America?
RE: Discoveries - brotherbear - 11-11-2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeTvZ1AH7mM
RE: Discoveries - Kingtheropod - 11-23-2018
Fossil of gigantic ‘mammal-like’ reptile which co-existed with dinosaurs discovered in Poland
Lisowicia bojani weighed nine tonnes and was the size of an elephant
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/fossil-therapsid-dicynodont-prehistoric-discovered-poland-dinosaurs-uppsala-university-a8646746.html
RE: Discoveries - Spalea - 11-23-2018
@Kingtheropod :
About #4: this amazing discovery tends to prove that dinosaurs and therapsids struggled to have the supremacy during the Triassic period. Lisowicia bojani had to coexist with some pro-sauropodomorph reptiles like plateosaurus. The first dinosaurs, having definitely the upper hand at the Triassic period end, could later reign on the whole Jurassic and Cretaceous period. Fascinating !
RE: Discoveries - brobear - 03-04-2019
http://westerndigs.org/700000-year-old-horse-found-in-yukon-permafrost-yields-oldest-dna-ever-decoded/?fbclid=IwAR1AYzkWyqfHKNUfLEU1x_GW7c7kilQb0h4QzB2ShXyeJFXp5GoDj4dwYK4
700,000-Year-Old Horse Found in Yukon Permafrost Yields Oldest DNA Ever Decoded.
RE: Discoveries - Sully - 04-21-2019
New hyeanodon species found
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/04/18/researchers-find-fossil-desk-drawer-ancient-giant-lion-roamed/
RE: Discoveries - Spalea - 11-23-2019
" Dinornis, The North and South Island Giant Moa, are the largest of the flightless birds called Moa. Like all Moa they had a small head, a broad flattened beak and small eyes, a long neck and a hefty body, supported by thick legs. They had well-developed nostrils and nasal bones, so they probably had a very good sense of smell. Moa are unique amongst flightless birds because they have lost any trace that they once had wings — not even tiny wing bones or a wishbone are left.
Dinornis giganteus lived in the North Island of New Zealand and D. robustis in the South Island.
The preserved stomach contents of the Giant Moa show that they snipped twigs off plants such as the daisy–bush, Olearia, and ate them. They also ate berries and leaves. Like many birds, they had to swallow stones to grind up the food in the gizzard. Stones polished smooth by being rubbed together in the gizzard are often found with Moa skeletons. They normally browsed on food about 2m off the ground. If they leaned back and stretched out their necks, they could pluck food as high up as 3m.
Moa only laid one or two eggs at a time. Eggshell fragments have been found at many sites, including at prehistoric Maori settlements.".
RE: Discoveries - Spalea - 12-05-2019
A young child australopithecus abducted by a giant eagles... By Mauricio Anton.
About this australopithecus : " The Taung Child (or Taung Baby) is the fossilised skull of a young Australopithecus africanus. It was discovered in 1924 by quarrymen working for the Northern Lime Company in Taung, South Africa. Raymond Dart described it as a new species in the journal Nature in 1974.
The Taung skull is in repository at the University of Witwatersrand. Dean Falk, a specialist in brain evolution, has called it "the most important anthropological fossil of the twentieth century."
We did not evolve from modern apes, but we share a common ancestor with them. In other words, if we back the clock up a few million years, we will find an ape-like ancestor whose populations split, and different groups went down different evolutionary paths. One group evolved into us, and another group evolved into chimps. So we and chimps share a great, great, great…great grandparent who went extinct a few million years ago, but we did not evolve from chimps, monkeys, or modern apes. "
RE: Discoveries - Spalea - 12-25-2019
" Argentavis magnificens was among the largest flying birds ever to exist, quite possibly surpassed in wingspan only by Pelagornis sandersi, which was described in 2014. A. magnificens, sometimes called the Giant Teratorn, is an extinct species known from three sites in the Epecuén and Andalhualá Formations in central and northwestern Argentina dating to the Late Miocene (Huayquerian), where a good sample of fossils has been obtained. "
RE: Discoveries - Sully - 02-04-2020
Couple years back
First bone-cracking dog coprolites provide new insight into bone consumption in Borophagus and their unique ecological niche
Abstract
Borophagine canids have long been hypothesized to be North American ecological ‘avatars’ of living hyenas in Africa and Asia, but direct fossil evidence of hyena-like bone consumption is hitherto unknown. We report rare coprolites (fossilized feces) of Borophagus parvus from the late Miocene of California and, for the first time, describe unambiguous evidence that these predatory canids ingested large amounts of bone. Surface morphology, micro-CT analyses, and contextual information reveal (1) droppings in concentrations signifying scent-marking behavior, similar to latrines used by living social carnivorans; (2) routine consumption of skeletons; (3) undissolved bones inside coprolites indicating gastrointestinal similarity to modern striped and brown hyenas; (4) B. parvus body weight of ~24 kg, reaching sizes of obligatory large-prey hunters; and (5) prey size ranging ~35–100 kg. This combination of traits suggests that bone-crushing Borophagus potentially hunted in collaborative social groups and occupied a niche no longer present in North American ecosystems.
RE: Discoveries - Spalea - 02-10-2020
" Ammonoids are an extinct group of marine mollusc animals in the subclass Ammonoidea of the class Cephalopoda. These molluscs are more closely related to living coleoids (i.e., octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish) than they are to shelled nautiloids such as the living [i]Nautilus species. The earliest ammonites appear during the Devonian, and the last species died out during the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event. Ammonites are excellent index fossils, and it is often possible to link the rock layer in which a particular species or genus is found to specific geologic time periods. Their fossil shells usually take the form of planispirals, although there were some helically spiraled and nonspiraled forms (known as heteromorphs).
The name “ammonite”, from which the scientific term is derived, was inspired by the spiral shape of their fossilized shells, which somewhat resemble tightly coiled rams’ horns. Pliny the Elder (d. 79 AD near Pompeii) called fossils of these animals ammonis cornua (“horns of Ammon”) because the Egyptian god Ammon (Amun) was typically depicted wearing ram’s horns. Often the name of an ammonite genus ends in –ceras, which is Greek (κέρας) for “horn”."[/i]
Extracted from the link: https://paleontologyworld.com/exploring-prehistoric-life/ammonoidea
RE: Discoveries - Spalea - 03-05-2020
Bawitius: Fish polypterid - fish with lung but without trachea - living during the Upper Cretaceous and discovered in Egypt. Up to 3 m long.
RE: Discoveries - Spalea - 03-27-2020
" Scientists first discovered Tiktaalik in 2004 while hunting fossils on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic. Its extraordinary blend of gills, scales, fins and lungs, combined with a movable neck, sturdy ribcage and crocodile-like head, placed Tiktaalik half way between fish and the earliest four-legged land animals.
In work published on Monday, researchers describe fossils of the back half of Tiktaalik for the first time. The report shows that the animal had a large, robust pelvic girdle, a prominent hip joint, and long hind fins. The powerful fins could have propelled the beast in the water, but also helped it walk on riverbeds, or scramble around on mudflats.
ART: Kayomi Tukimoto "
RE: Discoveries - Spalea - 04-05-2020
I don't know where to put this account about the biggest ancestors of the extant species: