Natural History (13.8 billion years BC – 3.3 million BC)

[weatheriscool]

Researchers discover largest 'raptor' dinosaurs lived millions of years earlier than we knew
https://phys.org/news/2023-05-largest-r ... years.html
by University of Kansasl

Utahraptor is going to need 10 million more candles on its next birthday cake.

A geological study of the rock formation that encased a fossilized example of the world's biggest "raptor" shows it's 10 million years older than previously understood. The report, co-written by a researcher with the University of Kansas, recently appeared in the journal Geosciences.

"We determined the age of the dinosaur Utahraptor and found that it was much older than previously supposed," said Gregory Ludvigson, emeritus senior scientist with the Kansas Geological Survey at KU, who collaborated on the investigation. "That finding has important implications for the evolutionary history of dinosaurs."

The fieldwork took place in Utah at the well-known Utahraptor Ridge site, named for larger cousins of the ferocious velociraptor dinosaur (known to fans of "Jurassic Park").

The ridge is home to Stikes Quarry, a fossil quicksand deposit packed with dinosaur fossils that are largely intact and preserved—in much the same positions as when they died. Stikes Quarry is part of the Cedar Mountain Formation, a rock unit containing fossils of more kinds of dinosaurs than any formation in the world.

[caltrek]

Scientists Uncovered Evidence of What Could Be Earth's First Mass Animal Extinction
by Tessa Koumoundouros
May 10, 2023

Introduction:

(Science Alert) Since the Cambrian explosion 538.8 million years ago – a time when many of the animal phyla we're familiar with today were established – five major mass extinction events have whittled down the biodiversity of all creatures great and small.

Last year, researchers from the US published evidence of one occurring earlier, around 550 million years ago during a period known as the Ediacaran.

Though the oceans teemed with a few familiar animals like sponges and jellyfish, most life during this early period of biological history would seem alien to us now. Many of the animals were soft-bodied. Some looked more like plant fronds stuck in place. Others had some form of shell.

Virginia Tech paleobiologist Scott Evans and colleagues compiled data on rare fossils of the squishier kinds of animals from around the world dated to the Ediacaran. They found sudden shifts in biodiversity that had previously been detected weren't mere sampling biases.

Read more here: https://www.sciencealert.com/scientist ... tinction

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Humongous, 100-foot-long dinosaur from Argentina is so big its fossils broke the road during transport
News
By Laura Geggel
published 1 day ago

https://www.livescience.com/animals/din ... -transport
About 90 million years ago, a ginormous long-necked dinosaur measuring nearly 100 feet (30 meters) long lumbered through what is now Patagonia, Argentina.

Paleontologists in Argentina have discovered the remains of a ginormous long-necked dinosaur that measured about 100 feet (30 meters) long when it lived about 90 million years ago, a new study finds.

Examining this enormous dinosaur wasn't always easy. The fossils of the titanosaur — the largest of the long-necked dinosaurs — were so heavy, they caused a traffic accident when the researchers were transporting the herbivore's remains to Buenos Aires to be studied.

"The weight destabilized the vehicle and caused an accident," study senior author Fernando Novas, a paleontologist at the Bernardino Rivadavia Natural Sciences Museum in Buenos Aires and a researcher with the Argentine National Research Council (CONICET), told Live Science in a translated email. "Luckily, no one was seriously injured and the bones of this dinosaur, which flew through the air, were so hard that they were not damaged. On the contrary, they broke the asphalt of the road."

[Powers]

"The weight destabilized the vehicle and caused an accident [...] luckily, no one was seriously injured

Typical.

Humongous, 100-foot-long dinosaur from Argentina is so big its fossils broke the road during transport
News
By Laura Geggel
published 1 day ago
https://www.livescience.com/animals/din ... -transport

One of Chucarosaurus diripienda's femurs next to a shovel for size comparison. The femur spans 6.2 feet (1.9 meters) in length. (Image credit: Nicolas Chimento)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chucarosa ... arison.svg

[weatheriscool]

Portsmouth palaeontologists have published a paper today showing a pliosaur could have grown to 14.4 metres

10 May 2023

Over 20 years ago, the BBC’s Walking with Dinosaurs TV documentary series showed a 25-metre long Liopleurodon. This sparked heated debates over the size of this pliosaur as it was thought to have been wildly overestimated and more likely to have only reached an adult size of just over six metres long.

The speculation was set to continue, but now a chance discovery in an Oxfordshire museum has led to University of Portsmouth palaeontologists publishing a paper on a similar species potentially reaching a whopping 14.4 metres - twice the size of a killer whale.

Professor David Martill from the University of Portsmouth’s School of the Environment, Geography and Geosciences, said: “I was a consultant for the BBC’s pilot programme ‘Cruel Sea’ and I hold my hands up - I got the size of Liopleurodon horrendously wrong. I based my calculations on some fragmentary material which suggested a Liopleurodon could grow to a length of 25 metres, but the evidence was scant and it caused a lot of controversy at the time.

“The size estimate on the BBC back in 1999 was overdone, but now we have some evidence that is much more reliable after a serendipitous discovery of four enormous vertebrate.”

Note bait for scale.

***
more: https://earthsky.org/earth/giant-reptil ... acc1bdc5b0
https://www.port.ac.uk/news-events-and- ... ller-whale

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Study finds 107-million-year-old pterosaur bones are oldest in Australia
https://phys.org/news/2023-05-million-y ... ralia.html
by Curtin University

A team of researchers have confirmed that 107-million-year-old pterosaur bones discovered more than 30 years ago are the oldest of their kind ever found in Australia, providing a rare glimpse into the life of these powerful, flying reptiles that lived among the dinosaurs.

Published in the journal Historical Biology and completed in collaboration with Museums Victoria, the research analyzed a partial pelvis bone and a small wing bone discovered by a team led by Museums Victoria Research Institute's Senior Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology Dr. Tom Rich and Professor Pat Vickers-Rich at Dinosaur Cove in Victoria, Australia in the late 1980s.

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Spinosaur Britain: Multiple species likely roamed Cretaceous Britain
https://phys.org/news/2023-05-spinosaur ... oamed.html
by Darren Naish, PeerJ

Analysis of a British spinosaur tooth by paleontologists at the EvoPalaeoLab of the University of Southampton shows that several distinct spinosaur groups inhabited Cretaceous Britain.

Stored within the collections of the Hastings Museum and Art Gallery in East Sussex, the fossil that forms the basis of the new study was gifted to the museum in 1889. It was collected from the local Lower Cretaceous rocks of the Wealden Supergroup, a thick, complicated rock sequence deposited across south-eastern England between 140 and 125 million years ago.

The Wealden is famous for its spinosaur fossils. Baryonyx—discovered in the Wealden of Surrey in 1983—is one of the world's most significant spinosaur specimens, since it was the first to reveal the true appearance of this crocodile-headed, fish-eating group. Less impressive spinosaur remains—isolated teeth—are common throughout the Wealden, and have often been identified as belonging to Baryonyx.

However, some experts have long suspected that this is incorrect, and such is confirmed by the new study published in PeerJ.

"We used a variety of techniques to identify this specimen, in order to test whether isolated spinosaur teeth could be referred to Baryonyx," said lead author Chris Barker, whose Ph.D. focuses on the spinosaurs of southern Britain. "The tooth did not group with Baryonyx in any of our data runs. It must belong to a different type of spinosaur."

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Ancient 5.5-Million-Year-OId “Elephant Graveyard” Discovered In Northern Florida
by Russell Moul
June 2, 2023

Introduction:

(IFL Science) A team of researchers and volunteers at the Florida Museum of Natural History have discovered an ancient “elephant graveyard” containing the fossilized remains of a long-extinct ancestor to our modern-day pachyderms. The find may also provide the largest known specimen of the animal ever discovered in Florida.

Sometimes around 5.5 million years ago, a number of gomphotheres, an extinct ancestor to elephants, died in or around a now vanished prehistoric river in northern Florida. Although it is likely that the animals died at different times, some hundreds of years apart, their bodies nevertheless ended up deposited in the same location where they were entombed until early 2022.

At the time, the team found parts of gomphothere skeletons in the Montbrook Fossil Dig, which was nothing special. Fragments and isolated bones had been found there in the past, so there was no reason to suspect that anything unusual was happening. Then, a few days later, volunteers unearthed what appeared to be a huge articulated foot. Subsequent work revealed it to be an ulna and radius belonging to a large gomphothere. Soon, they had recovered an entire skeleton. It was an extremely exciting discovery for the team.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime find,” Jonathan Bloch, curator of vertebrate palaeontology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, said in a statement. “It’s the most complete gomphothere skeleton from this time period in Florida and among the best in North America.”

Soon after, however, it became clear that the deceased animal was not alone. In the end, the team recovered entire skeletons from one adult and at least seven juveniles.

Read more here: https://www.iflscience.com/ancient-55- ... ida-69220

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New Dino, ‘Iani,’ Was Face of a Changing Planet
by Tracey Peake
June 7, 2023

Introduction:

(NC State University) A newly discovered plant-eating dinosaur may have been a species’ “last gasp” during a period when Earth’s warming climate forced massive changes to global dinosaur populations.

The specimen, named Iani smithi after Janus, the two-faced Roman god of change, was an early ornithopod, a group of dinosaurs that ultimately gave rise to the more commonly known duckbill dinosaurs such as Parasaurolophus and Edmontosaurus. Researchers recovered most of the juvenile dinosaur’s skeleton – including skull, vertebrae and limbs – from Utah’s Cedar Mountain Formation.

Iani smithi lived in what is now Utah during the mid-Cretaceous, approximately 99 million years ago. The dinosaur’s most striking feature is its powerful jaw, with teeth designed for chewing through tough plant material.

Read more here: https://news.ncsu.edu/2023/06/new-dino ... -planet/

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Remains of new species of duck-billed dinosaur found in Chile

Remains of a species of herbivorous dinosaur previously unknown in the southern hemisphere have been discovered in Chile, challenging long-held beliefs about the range of duck-billed dinosaurs, scientists said Friday.

Measuring up to four meters (13 feet) in length and weighing a ton, Gonkoken nanoi lived 72 million years ago in the extreme south of what is now Chilean Patagonia.

https://phys.org/news/2023-06-species-d ... chile.html

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

‘Not always king’: fossil shows mammal sinking teeth into dinosaur

Tue 18 Jul 2023 16.00 BST

Whether they had sharp teeth, vicious claws or were simply enormous, dinosaurs were creatures to be feared. But a newly identified fossil shows that, at least sometimes, the underdog bit back.

Experts revealed the 125m-year-old fossil that froze in time after being taken on by a small mammal a third of its size. They are tangled together, the mammal’s teeth sunk into the beaked dinosaur’s ribs, its left paw clasping the beast’s lower jaw.

Researchers said the discovery challenged a long-held view of early mammals as “fodder” for dinosaurs.

Dr Jordan Mallon, a co-author of the study, based at the Canadian Museum of Nature, said: “This new fossil teaches us that in the Mesozoic ‘age of dinosaurs’, dinosaurs were not always king. Even the smaller mammals could pose a threat, foreshadowing their rise to dominance 66m years ago.”

https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... mmal-fight



Photograph: Gang Han



Photograph: Michael Skrepnick

[caltrek]

Life on Earth Didn’t Arise as Described in Textbooks
July 18, 2023

Introduction:

(Eurekalert) No, oxygen didn’t catalyze the swift blossoming of Earth’s first multicellular organisms. The result defies a 70-year-old assumption about what caused an explosion of oceanic fauna hundreds of millions of years ago.

Between 685 and 800 million years ago, multicellular organisms began to appear in all of Earth's oceans during what's known as the Avalon explosion, a forerunner era of the more famed Cambrian explosion. During this era, sea sponges and other bizarre multicellular organisms replaced small single-celled amoeba, algae and bacteria, which until then, had had run of the planet for more than 2 billion years.

Up until now, it was believed that increased oxygen levels triggered the evolutionary arrival of more advanced marine organisms. This is being disproved by University of Copenhagen researchers working together with colleagues from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, the University of Southern Denmark and Lund University, among others.

By studying the chemical composition of ancient rock samples from an Omani mountain range, the researchers have been able to "measure" oxygen concentrations in the world's oceans from when these multicellular organisms appeared. Defying expectations, the result shows that Earth’s oxygen concentrations had not increased. Indeed, levels remained 5-10 times lower than today, which is roughly how much oxygen there is at twice the height of Mount Everest.

"Our measurements provide a good picture of what average oxygen concentrations were in the world's oceans at the time. And it’s apparent to us that there was no major increase in the amount of oxygen when more advanced fauna began to evolve and dominate Earth. In fact, there was somewhat of a slight decrease," says Associate Professor Christian J. Bjerrum, who has been quantifying the conditions surrounding the origin of life for the past 20 years.

Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/994748

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New dinosaur species discovered in Thailand
https://phys.org/news/2023-07-dinosaur- ... iland.html
by Bob Yirka , Phys.org

A multi-institutional team of paleontologists has identified a new dinosaur species dug up in Thailand in 2012. In their paper published in the journal Diversity, the group describes where the fossil was found, its characteristics and its condition.

The fossil was uncovered at a dig site in Phu Noi, in Northern Thailand. The geological area is known as the Phu Kradung Formation. The dig site has yielded a large number of fossils over the years. In this new effort, the research team focused their effort on a fossil embedded in stone that was in good condition. It is a previously unknown species, now named Minimocursor phunoiensis.

The research team describes the fossil as an "exceptionally articulate skeleton," and suggest it is one the most well-preserved dinosaurs ever discovered in Southeast Asia. They found it to be of the neornithischian clade, which were plant-eating dinosaurs.

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Colossal new species may be largest animal that ever existed
By Michael Irving
August 02, 2023

https://newatlas.com/biology/perucetus- ... lue-whale/

The blue whale has long been considered the largest animal to have ever existed, even dwarfing the biggest known dinosaurs. But now a new species threatens to steal the crown, and upends what we thought we knew about whale evolution.

In the Ica valley in Southern Peru, paleontologists discovered 13 vertebrae, four ribs and a hip bone that were absolutely gigantic. They belonged to a previously unknown species of ancient whale that lived about 39 million years ago, and the team named the creature Perucetus colossus.

By comparing the bones to modern species, the researchers were able to estimate the size and mass of the animal. It’s thought to have grown to about 20 m (65.6 ft) long and may have weighed as much as 340 tonnes – blue whales, meanwhile, top out at under 200 tonnes. Even with some margin for error, the blue whale has a lot of catching up to do to reclaim its title.

[wjfox]

[Time_Traveller]

Galaxy from the 'teenage' universe reveals its water map for the 1st time

about 4 hours ago



For the first time, scientists managed to develop a map of water distribution in a galaxy that existed when the 13.8-billion-year-old universe was just a cosmic teenager.

The galaxy, designated J1135, is located around 12 billion light-years from Earth and is therefore seen as it was less than 2 billion years after the Big Bang.

J1135's water map, created as part of a Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA) study conducted by the Galaxy Observational and Theoretical Astrophysics (GOThA) team, also has an unprecedented resolution that could reveal never-before-seen dynamics of early universe galaxies.

Though water is an essential ingredient for life, its presence across the universe has a purpose beyond searching for habitable regions. Scientists can use the distribution of water across a galaxy to tell the cosmic story of certain processes occurring within. This is because, as water changes its state from ice to vapor, it indicates areas of increased energy where stars, or even black holes, are being born. In short, that means finding water vapor in a particular region of a galaxy indicates that something very important is happening there.

"Water can be found not only on Earth but anywhere in space, in different states," Francesca Perrotta, lead author of the study and a SISSA researcher, said in a statement. "For example, in the form of ice, water can be found in so-called molecular clouds, dense regions of dust and gas in which stars are born."

https://www.space.com/galaxy-from-teena ... v_5zBKJ8-c

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Fossilized feces found to be infested with parasites from more than 200 million years ago
https://phys.org/news/2023-08-fossilize ... llion.html
by Public Library of Science

Fossilized feces preserve evidence of ancient parasites that infected an aquatic predator over 200 million years ago, according to a study published August 9, 2023, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Thanit Nonsrirach of Mahasarakham University, Thailand, and colleagues.

Parasites are a common and important component of ecosystems, but ancient parasites are difficult to study due to a poor fossil record. Parasites often inhabit the soft tissues of their host, which rarely preserve as fossils. There are, however, cases where traces of parasites can be identified within fossilized feces (coprolites). In this study, Nonsrirach and colleagues describe evidence of parasites in a Late Triassic coprolite from the Huai Hin Lat Formation of Thailand, which is more than 200 million years old.

The coprolite is cylindrical in shape and more than 7cm long. Based on its shape and contents, the researchers suggest it was likely produced by some species of phytosaur, crocodile-like predators which are also known from this fossil locality. Microscopic analysis of thin sections of the coprolite revealed six small, round, organic structures between 50 and 150 micrometers long. One of these, an oval-shaped structure with a thick shell, is identified as the egg of a parasitic nematode worm, while the others appear to represent additional worm eggs or protozoan cysts of unclear identity.

[weatheriscool]

Scientists name new species of extinct giant amphibian from fossil found in retaining wall
https://phys.org/news/2023-08-scientist ... ibian.html
by University of New South Wales

Arenaerpeton supinatus was discovered in rocks cut from a nearby quarry that were intended for the building of a garden wall.

A 240-million-year-old fossil of an amphibian that was found in a retaining wall in the 1990s has been formally named and described by scientists at UNSW Sydney and the Australian Museum.

The fossil was originally found by a retired chicken farmer in rocks obtained from a local quarry intended for use in the construction of a garden retaining wall and was subsequently donated to the Australian Museum in Sydney.

Paleontologist Lachlan Hart, who holds joint roles with UNSW Science and the Australian Museum, says the fossil—named Arenaerpeton supinatus, meaning "supine sand creeper"—shows nearly the entire skeleton, and remarkably, the outlines of its skin.

"This fossil is a unique example of a group of extinct animals known as temnospondyls, which lived before and during the time of the dinosaurs," says Hart, a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences (BEES) at UNSW.

"We don't often find skeletons with the head and body still attached, and the soft tissue preservation is an even rarer occurrence."

[caltrek]

Researchers Discover Small Whale Ancestor in Egypt
by Gabriel Tynnes
August 10, 2023

Introduction:

(Courthouse News) — Moby Dick it wasn’t. In fact, the newly discovered extinct whale species Tutcetus rayanensis was quite the opposite of a modern-day sperm whale. Reaching a length of just eight feet and a mass of a little more than 400 pounds, the average Tutcetus was slightly larger than a dolphin. Herman Melville’s titular character, albeit fictional, was represented as perhaps the largest of its species, more than 60 feet in length and weighing more than 50 tons.

Aside from the fact that both specimens were indeed whales, that is about where the comparisons end.

Tutcetus is among the first fully aquatic whales in the fossil record, a member of the basilosauridae family, which evolved from partially terrestrial whales known as archaeocetes from the Early Eocene to the late Oligocene period, at least 41 million years ago. The specimen first identified as a new species was discovered in the Sath El-Hadid Formation of the Fayum Depression near Cairo, Egypt, one of the world’s richest whale fossil sites.

Notably, according to an article published Thursday in the journal Communications Biology, it is the “smallest basilosaurid whale yet discovered, but it is also one of the oldest records worldwide.” The discovery expands the size range of known basilosaurids, while also demonstrating that whales “achieved considerable disparity” during the middle Eocene, a period of approximately 22 million years.

Prior to that, the world’s whales were not like they appear today. Partially terrestrial, early whales had feet rather than fins and in some cases even fur. Indeed, paleontologists today regard the “wolf-like” Pakicetus as the most basal whale. The thread to modern whales can be seen in the inner ear bone, which is unlike those of other living mammals. During the time of Tutcetus, whales developed characteristics they still possess today, including a streamlined body, a strong tail, flippers, and a tail fin.

Read more here: https://www.courthousenews.com/researc ... n-egypt/