Paleontology

A team of paleontologists writing in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology has described a new species of dinosaur based upon an incomplete skeleton found in western New Mexico. The new species, Jeyawati rugoculus, comes from rocks that preserve a swampy forest ecosystem that thrived near the shore of a vast inland sea 91 million years ago. Although the fossil remains were discovered in 1996, it has only now been confirmed that the species is unique. Jeyawati is a member of an assemblage of dinosaurs and other animals unknown as recently as 15 years ago. The dinosaur, whose name translates…

The debate over what wiped out the dinosaurs has been raging for three decades, and researchers writing in Science say they have compiled enough evidence to end it. They say it really was an asteroid that was responsible for the mass extinction.  Scientists first proposed the asteroid impact theory of dinosaur mass extinction 30 years ago. The discovery of a massive crater at Chicxulub [CHICK-shuh-loob], in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula in 1991, strengthened that hypothesis. The Chicxulub crater is more than 120 miles wide and scientists believe it was created when an asteroid more than six…

The plant eating dinosaur Azendohsaurus is not actually a dinosaur, only a distant relative, according to a new analysis of A. madagaskarensis based on the entire skull rather than on just the teeth and jaw. Many aspects of Azendohsaurus are far more primitive than previously assumed, which in turn means that its plant-eating adaptations, similar to those of some early dinosaurs, were developed independently. The new analysis is published in Paleontology. "Even though this extraordinary ancient reptile looks similar to some plant-eating dinosaurs in some features of the skull and dentition,…

Paleontologists from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the University of Florida have uncovered the nursery of the ancient shark species Carcharocles megalodon in what is now Panama. Researchers say the nursery provided a safe environment for young, vulnerable sharks. "Adult giant sharks, at 60-70 feet in length, faced few predators, but young sharks faced predation from larger sharks," said Catalina Pimiento, visiting scientist at STRI and graduate student at the University of Florida. "As in several modern shark species, juvenile giant sharks probably spent this vulnerable…

A team of Yale paleontologists have discovered a rich array of exceptionally preserved fossils of marine animals in Morocco that lived during the the early part of the Ordovician, between 480 million and 472 million years ago. The specimens are the oldest yet discovered soft-bodied fossils from a period marked by intense biodiversification. The findings, which appear in Nature, greatly expand scientists' understanding of the sea creatures and ecosystems that existed at a crucial point in evolutionary history, when most of the animal life on the planet was found in the oceans. The team…

A 150 million year old Archaeopteryx fossil, long thought to contain nothing but fossilized bone and rock, has been hiding remnants of the animal's original chemistry, say researchers writing in PNAS. The find provides a chemical link between dinosaurs and modern birds, The authors say. "Archaeopteryx is to paleontology what Tutankhamen is to archaeology. It's simply one of the icons of our field," said University of Manchester paleontologist Phil Manning. "You would think after 150 years of study, we'd know everything we need to know about this animal. But guess what—we were wrong." When…

Researchers at the University of Bonn have found evidence indicating that some Sauropod dinosaurs, typically known for their enormous size, were island dwellers and evolved into dwarfs. By studying the structure of their fossils, researchers confirmed that the sauropod dinosaur Magyarosaurus dacus never grew any larger than a horse. The results appear this week in PNAS. The M. dacus bones were originally discovered in 1895 in Transylvania and interpreted as the remains of dwarfed animals that had once lived on an island. But over the years, palaeontologists debated the question of whether or…

The fossilized jaw of a 95 million-year-old pterosaur discovered in Texas in 2006 has been identified as a new genus and species of flying reptile - Aetodactylus halli. The rare pterosaur — literally a winged lizard — is also one of the youngest members in the world of the family Ornithocheiridae, and only the second ornithocheirid ever documented in North America. The newly-named lizard is described in the Journal of vertebrate Paleontology. Aetodactylus halli would have soared over what is now the Dallas-Fort Worth area during the Cretaceous Period when much of the Lone Star state was under…

Researchers writing in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology say they have discovered an 11 million-year-old species of Pliopithecus primate, Pliopithecus canmatensis, in the Vallès-Penedès basin in Catalonia. Named in honor of the place they were discovered in Catalonia, the new fossil species sheds light on the evolution of the superfamily of the Pliopithecoidea, primates that include various genera of basal Catarrhini, a group that diverged before the separation of the two current superfamilies of the group: the cercopithecoids (Old World monkeys) and the hominoids (anthromorphs…

Paleontologists have discovered a plant-eating dinosaur that live 70 to 80 million years ago. The new species, Texacephale langstoni,  was about as big as a medium sized dog. The discovery represents a new genus of pachycephalosaur, a group of bipedal, thick-skulled dinosaurs. Researchers discovered two skull fragments in Big Bend National Park in southwest Texas in 2008 and compared them to dozens of fossils from related species found in Canada and Montana. The new species is one of about a dozen known to have solid lumps of bone on top of their skulls, which researchers speculate was…