prehistoricplanet-blog

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Feathery fossils peg early birds to even earlier date

Based on the age of the surrounding rocks, this is the earliest known member of the clade that produced today's birds: Ornithuromorpha.

It rushes back the branching-out of this evolutionary group by at least five million years.

The little bird appears to have been a wader, capable of nimble flight.

The discovery is reported in the journal Nature Communications.

Birds began to evolve from the dinosaurs some 150 million years ago at the tail end of the Jurassic period. This is the age of the famous but hotly contested "first bird"Archaeopteryx - now considered by many to be a feathered dinosaur.

Some 20 million years later, when the newfound species was wading and flitting through what would become north-eastern China, palaeontologists believe there was quite a variety of bird life.

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Ancient scorpion reveals its land legs: 430 million-year-old fossils suggest the sea creatures may have walked out of the ocean

When researchers at Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto analysed the remains, they found that the scorpion's legs had a structure similar to those found in today's species.

Similar fossils were also passed to museum curators by chance – with one given by a woman who originally thought she had found an 'insect' in a stone wall.

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Unidentified fossils may belong to primitive ancestor that lived 120,000 years ago

The fossils, discovered in a cave in the Xujiayao site in 1976, are made up of skull fragments, and nine teeth from four individuals.

Maria Martinón-Torres of the National Research Centre on Human Evolution in Burgos, Spain recently made a new analysis of the teeth.

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Scotland’s Jurassic past has emerged with the discovery of a prehistoric sea creature so terrifying it makes the Loch Ness monster look like an overgrown seahorse. The ancient marine reptile, called Dearcmhara shawcrossi, had a mouth full of teeth and dolphin-like flippers, measured 14 feet (4.3 meters) long and was a highly skilled swimmer, according to a study published Sunday in the Scottish Journal of Geology.

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Clearly T-Rex's were not fierce enough!

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Daily Dinosaur - Parasaurolophus

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Daily Dinosaur - parasaurolophus

PARASAUROLOPHUS (beside Saurolophus) ———————————————————— LENGTH: 9m (30ft) WEIGHT: 4 tons TIME: Late Cretaceous CLASSIFICATION: Ornithischia Neornithischia Ornithopoda Iguanodontia DIET: Herbivorous DESCRIPTION: Short deep head with narrow beak. Long, thick, tube-like crest curving over neck from the back of the head. Body deep. Back bends strongly downwards towards the neck. Tall, fleshy ridge on top of back and tail.

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So why are there so many dinosaur discoveries these days? More people are looking for them. Evans estimates that the number of dinosaur paleontologists has more than quadrupled in the last 30 years.

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Feathered Fossils Give Scaly Dinosaurs a Makeover

At a recent Berlin conference, scientists celebrated continuing revelations from the most famous feathered dinosaur, Archaeopteryx, in the city where the most complete specimen resides. Long considered the "first bird," it lived 150 million years ago and sparked the notion that birds are the living remnants of the dinosaur line, intriguing even Darwin.

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Ancient sea turtle fossils found in Austriallia

THEY'RE known for being slow but a very old turtle has moved Australian science forward in leaps and bounds.

IN fact, the fossilised remains of two five-million-year-old sea turtles have been found at Melbourne's Beaumaris beach, with experts saying the discovery has redefined science in the field.

Museum Victoria senior curator Dr Erich Fitzgerald says the fossils, a shell bone and jaw, highlight the value of the rich Beaumaris site.

"These fossils are the first discovered and only known evidence of the evolution of sea turtles in Australia after the extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago," he said in a statement issued by the museum on Friday.

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Fossils of rare, ancient animals found in Tegal

The Yogyakarta Archaeology Agency has said that it has found fossils of two rare, ancient animals in Semedo, an archaeology site in Semedo village in Kedungbanteng district, Tegal regency, Central Java.

The unearthed fossils of the species -- dwarf elephant (stegodon) and giant ape -- are considered to be an extraordinary finding as the agency says those species have never been seen before.

Agency head Siswanto said the two fossils were found separately. The dwarf elephant fossil was discovered in 2013 while the giant ape fossil was found this year.

“These two findings are important because after we examined them further, we found that the dwarf elephant was an endemic fauna in Semedo. That’s why we named the species stegodon [pygmy] semedoensis,” Siswanto said. The archaeologist explained the findings in a general lecture at the University of Soedirman (Unsoed) in Purwokerto, Central Java, on Monday.

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Famed “Lucy” Fossils Discovered in Ethiopia, 40 Years Ago

While hunting for fossils in Ethiopia’s Afar Triangle on November 24, 1974, paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson and graduate student Tom Gray stumbled upon the partial remains of a previously unknown species of ape-like hominid. Nicknamed “Lucy,” the mysterious skeleton was eventually classified as a 3.2 million-year-old “Australopithecus afarensis”—one of humankind’s earliest ancestors. The headline-grabbing find filled in crucial gaps in the human family tree, but it also shook up ideas about early human evolution and upright walking. Forty years later, learn the story behind the fossil that permanently changed scientists’ understanding of human origins.

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Fossils reveal TWO new species of dinosaurs that roamed North America 75 million years ago

A British paleontologist has discovered not one, but two new species of dinosaur while studying fossils in a Canadian museum. Dr Nick Longrich was examining fossilised bones from two horned dinosaurs, which had been kept in the Canadian Museum of Nature for 75 years. And he found that, while they had previously been classified as a species from Canada, they more closely resembled dinosaurs from the American south west - suggesting they are a new species.

The fossils had previously been classified as Anchiceratops and Chasmosaurus, species known to be from Canada, but now that classification may need to be changed. One represents a new species of Pentaceratops, said Dr Longrich, named Pentaceratops aquilonius - a buffalo-sized plant-eating dinosaur from around 75 million years ago.

The fossils had previously been classified as Anchiceratops and Chasmosaurus, species known to be from Canada, but now that classification may need to be changed.

One represents a new species of Pentaceratops, said Dr Longrich, named Pentaceratops aquilonius - a buffalo-sized plant-eating dinosaur from around 75 million years ago.

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Jurassic World official trailer