#fossil park

[scooblicous]

went to the fossil park today! The fossil park near where I live is unique in the sense that you can take the fossils home with ya. Now dont get me wrong, youre not walking home with a dimetrodon skull. Till recent history my entire state was underwater. But because of that we were a giant coral reef for the entire devotion.

So now I can go to this park absolutely LOUDY with fossilized mollusks of all shapes and sizes and fill a suitcase with em. It was fun.

We also went on a hike and ate at a bar but that's not as cool as fossils

[dinosaurnews]

Tweet by @ElyKreimendahl

“my toxic trait is that if they opened Jurassic park I would still totally go”

10:44 am • 3/23/24

[amnhnyc]

Heads up… it's Fossil Friday! In this archival image, Museum preparators work on a trio of Tyrannosaur skulls. With 4-ft- (1.2-m-) long jaws and powerful bone-crushing teeth, T. rex was one of the largest and most fearsome carnivores of all time. In fact, this dinosaur could bite with about 7,800 pounds of force (34,500 N)—the equivalent to the weight of three cars! No living animal, and few extinct ones, could rival its bite. 

Although Tyrannosaurus rex is one of the most renowned dinosaurs, few of the fossil specimens recovered by paleontologists are complete. The first partial T. rex skeleton was discovered by a curator from the Museum—the legendary Barnum Brown—and we have one of the few specimens of T. rex on public display! Fun fact: The Museum’s T. rex specimen, AMNH 5027, inspired the cover of Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park. 

Photo: Image no. 129039 © AMNH Library

[ardenrosegarden]

Women in Paleontology on Film + Paleontological Subdisciplines

Laura Dern as Dr. Ellie Sattler, Jurassic Park (1993) Julianne Moore as Dr. Sarah Harding, The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Dr. Kate Lloyd, The Thing (2011) Kate Winslet as Mary Anning, Ammonite (2020) Ine Marie Wilmann as Dr. Nora Tidemann, Troll (2022) Alex Oliver as Alex Haynes, Unconformity (2022)

[probablyasocialecologist]

Ecuadorians voted overwhelmingly on Sunday to reject oil drilling in a section of Yasuní National Park, the most biodiverse area of the imperiled Amazon rainforest. Nearly 60% of Ecuadorian voters backed a binding referendum opposing oil exploration in Block 43 of the national park, which is home to uncontacted Indigenous tribes as well as hundreds of bird species and more than 1,000 tree species.

[...]

Sunday's vote makes Ecuador the first country to restrict fossil fuel extraction through the citizen referendum process, according to Nemonte Nenquimo, a Waorani leader. "Yasuní, an area of one million hectares, is one of the most biodiverse places on Earth," Nenquimo wrote in a recent op-ed for The Guardian. "There are more tree species in a single hectare of Yasuní than across Canada and the United States combined. Yasuní is also the home of the Tagaeri and Taromenane communities: the last two Indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation in Ecuador." "Can you imagine the immense size of one million hectares?" Nenquimo added. "The recent fires in Quebec burned a million hectares of forest. And so the oil industry hopes to burn Yasuní. It has already begun in fact, with the Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini (ITT) oil project on the eastern edge of the park."

[taphonomenon]

Series of drawings for a personal project. Featuring the Cretaceous dinosaur Acrocanthosaurus atokensis, one of the largest and most successful theropods found in North America.

[blueiscoool]

New Mexico Footprints are Oldest Sign of Humans in Americas

Fossil footprints date back to between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago, upending previous theory that humans reached continent later.

New research confirms that fossil human footprints in New Mexico are probably the oldest direct evidence of human presence in the Americas, a finding that upends what many archaeologists thought they knew.

The footprints were discovered at the edge of an ancient lakebed in White Sands national park and date back to between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago, according to research published on Thursday in the journal Science.

The estimated age of the footprints was first reported in Science in 2021, but some researchers raised concerns about the dates. Questions focused on whether seeds of aquatic plants used for the original dating may have absorbed ancient carbon from the lake – which could, in theory, throw off radiocarbon dating by thousands of years.

The new study presents two additional lines of evidence for the older date range. It uses two entirely different materials found at the site, ancient conifer pollen and quartz grains.

The reported age of the footprints challenges the once conventional wisdom that humans did not reach the Americas until a few thousand years before rising sea levels covered the Bering land bridge between Russia and Alaska, perhaps about 15,000 years ago.

“This is a subject that’s always been controversial because it’s so significant – it’s about how we understand the last chapter of the peopling of the world,” said Thomas Urban, an archaeological scientist at Cornell University, who was involved in the 2021 study but not the new one.

Thomas Stafford, an independent archaeological geologist in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who was not involved in the study, said he “was a bit skeptical before” but now is convinced.

The new study isolated about 75,000 grains of pure pollen from the same sedimentary layer that contained the footprints.

“Dating pollen is arduous and nail-biting,” said Kathleen Springer, a research geologist at the US Geological Survey and a co-author of the new paper.

Ancient footprints of any kind can provide archaeologists with a snapshot of a moment in time. While other archeological sites in the Americas point to similar date ranges – including pendants carved from giant ground sloth remains in Brazil – scientists still question whether such materials really indicate human presence.

“White Sands is unique because there’s no question these footprints were left by people, it’s not ambiguous,” said Jennifer Raff, an anthropological geneticist at the University of Kansas, who was not involved in the study.

[wandering-jana]

Petrified wood.

Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona

Nov. 2020

[ofsunnydays-and-moonlitnights]

Moon the Utahraptor!!!

From this silly au idea XDD

The amber heart that powers Moon came from a collection of fossils from a utahraptor, it and the fossils are full of remnant that give him the ability to transform into his dinosaur form.

Moon is 6ft in this fossil form and 5ft (from floor to head) and 13ft long (from snoot to tail) in his dino form. He is curious, adorable and playful.

He along with Sun run the kids cave, a section of the Freddy's Mega Fossil Park dedicated to entertaining the younger children, with an outdoor playground and a fossil digging activity for the little ones and much more.

[fluffytheocelot]

Diversity win! The werewolf and her girlfriend are autistic!

Sticking Carmen in stupid t shirts is so fun :)

Oh here’s the original shirts btw

[draken-rotzi]

Chibi Fossils pt. 1

[silvermeww]

okay, when was someone going to tell me that

oh, idk, steven started at 19, burgh has a younger sister, clay actually isn't born american, skyla's whole fam thing and ELESA IS 15???? (even younger than skyla like wtf???)

(also the 'alder' at the bottom is supposed to be drayden lol)

and that's not all

say hello to:

viola being 18??? 'black whirlwind' korrina, RAMOS MEETING AZ'S FLOETTE AS A KID, genderfluid and apparently also age-fluid olympia, CLEMONT?? AND HIS WHOLE THING DOWN TO BEING 12 OF ALL AGES???

(you know what, marlon being 30 definitely makes sense with the hippie vibes)

wikstrom SAYING that he only wears that suit in pokemon battles but i've never seen his casual wear, malva being pr for flare lol, drasna selling dragon merch + great family lore if you want to know, siebold having to third-wheel lysandre and sycamore while eating (move aside malva, you're not the only elite 4 dealing with this) and 20?? YEARS OLD?? DIANTHA????????????

(way too many men in kalos are getting ladies, c'mon)

ethan being into history is such a neat detail hmmm, idk much of the frontier brains ngl, and we've finally got the region for looker and it's... hoenn??? you know what, makes sense with his chaotic vibes so i'll take it (throws away unova taped to a rock behind my back). also he's abolsutely cheating we all see that he's just relying on knowing us as protags, should've known smh

(um i think someone said that 'caitlin' should've been anabel but idk)

oh and the last one is charon, if we care about how much of a loser he really is. forget about birch and the poochyena, this guy is the lowest heh. imagine being charon (please don't).

(when the protags of johto are the same age as clemont lol) (yeah i know there are years between those events just let me have this)

and last but not least:

aaron 🤝 valerie: wanting to be pokemon (and ig gotta toss in shauntal with the ao3 writer gift heh, don't know if they would commission her or stay away), bertha's description???? i love flint just saying, cynthia 👀👀 is absolutely doing something illegal 👀👀, roark is WHAT??? (child labour laws in sinnoh must be lax ngl), maylene as well???? fantina watching scary movies is something i'll have to incorporate into my worldview and bryon?? are you okay??

so yeah. credit goes to @/KuroBlitz96 on the twitter/x for having this up, i'm just here to project sheer surprise at this massive dump of ages... my thoughts on pokemon have completely turned on its head once more lol (this is fine)

[nicolefuns]

a rawr sketch 🦖

(buy me a coffee on kofi!)

[briery]

Nautiloid fossil in Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico. By Carlsbad Caverns on Flickr. (Hi-Res).

[mineralsrocksandfossiltalks]

Damn, why are you so popular?

I 100% guarantee that if you were to ask random people on the street, adult and child alike, to name a dinosaur, Tyrannosaurus rex will be in the top 5. To not know about this dinosaur would imply you grew up in a hole behind a rock in a cave.

Tyrannosaurus, why are you so popular? You're like a pumpkin spice latte; the basic bitch of the dinosaur world and yet you are beloved by pretty much everyone. WHY?!?!?!?!?

Is it because you have one of the most badass names in scientific literature? I mean, Tyrant Lizard King has a nice ring to it.

Maybe it has to do with the sheer size and bulk of this animal. There aren't many terrestrial predators that could compare (yes there are other dinosaurs but we are focusing on this one this month). Tyrannosaurus could reach upwards of 40ft long (12 m), with a skull a little over 5 ft long (1.5 m) and teeth the size of bananas (around 12 in). It had a bite force strong enough to penetrate concrete.

It could simply be that it has been featured in films since post WWI. I mean, in 1933 King Kong famously fought one and has done so in many remakes.

This is a horrible rendition of a Tyrannosaurus too. I mean, come on, why do modern movies keep showing theropods with their teeth like that? It's so stupid! Anyway, there are other less horrendous tyrannosaurus depictions in film.

Three-year-old me would not have included Barney though. I couldn't stand him. However, he technically is a Tyrannosaurus and he has probably instilled the love of dinosaurs in many children so I can't be too upset with him.

There is, of course, the famous Sharp Tooth from The Land Before Time which was a boss movie that I grew up on.

The most famous is probably this girl from Jurassic Park though. The roar is easily recognizable, she was a beautiful puppet, and let's face it, she had some of the best scenes in that movie.

It's also turned up in many other TV shows like Doctor Who (a few times), Primeval, Power Rangers and Transformers.

You can also find it in a few novels including The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, We're Back! A Dinosaur Story by Hudson Talbott and the Dinosaur Lords series by Victor Milan.

Whatever the reasons, everyone knows this dinosaur and this month we're going to delve into Tyrannosaurus and it's family members. Fair warning, there are some VERY strong biases when it comes to tyrannosaurs and while I don't study them for that very reason (and let's face it, T.rex really is just a basic bitch), I don't totally dislike them and there are some pretty cool ones, so look forward to that.

(Like this one from New Mexico with a super badass name but I will save that for a later post.)

If Tyrannosaurus is your favorite dinosaur, maybe you can sway me to think they aren't so bad...but good luck. My dad has been trying to sway me for 30 years to no avail. Tune in tomorrow for some bone-crunching trivia! Fossilize you later!

[dinosaurnews]

“…at a news conference at the Prince George’s County park Wednesday, officials and paleontologists announced the April discovery of the largest theropod fossil in eastern North America, a three-foot-long shin bone they hypothesize is from Acrocanthosaurus, a spiny, sharp-toothed carnivore from the Early Cretaceous period — about 38 feet long.

The discovery of additional dinosaur fossils soon followed, a trove of prehistory wrested from ironstone and clay. More than 100 fossils, estimated to be 115 million years old, have been found so far in a dinosaur bone bed along what had once been a river. A bone bed is the term paleontologists use to describe a concentration of bones of one or more species within a geologic layer.

The finding ‘marks a fundamental, extraordinary milestone in the field of paleontology and opens a window into our ancient world and to the species that once roamed this land,’ Peter A. Shapiro, chairman of the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, said at a news conference.”

Read more here!