fossils

New research at the University of Leicester has transformed scientists' understanding of how spectacular fossils with delicate soft tissues form. While most fossils are permineralized "hard" tissues, such as bone, shells or teeth, some rare sites around the world had unique conditions which...

Playing Skyrim with a mod that introduces shells and fossils for one to find and pack-rat over. The distribution matches my own perception (and is therefore totally correct, FACT!) that shells are found in oceans rather than by rivers. Some in rivers, for example water snails, but still... But...

Yes! Okay, it is the fossil of a very extinct flying reptile that has been named that by its discoverers. :) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-61568468 More at the link including some pictures of what it would have looked like. They actually discovered a pair of these reptiles...

Prokaryotic and algal organisms have been discovered encased in halite (rock salt) tentatively dated to 830 million years ago. Even more interesting - the researchers suggest some of these entombed organisms may still be "alive" (viable). FULL STORY...

Maybe early rabbits? Abandoned fossil burrows dating back 330 million years, 100 million years before the appearance of the first dinosaurs, have been found in limestone rock on the coast of Doolin in County Clare. Mar 30, 2022 Dr. Eamon Doyle, the geologist for the Burren and Cliffs of Moher...

This is amazing! A man was doing landscaping work at Rutland reservoir when he noticed a huge 200 million year old marine reptile skeleton sticking out of the mud. As you do. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-59915689

The oldest fossilized sperm discovered to date is circa 100 million years old, and it's remarkably large in comparison with the size of the crustacean who produced it. FULL STORY: https://www.sciencealert.com/oldest-ever-sample-of-animal-sperm-discovered-in-100-million-year-old-amber

There is a lot happening around the mysterious pre-Cambrian Ediacara fossils. They did not survive and have no comparable modern species. They look and feel alien. No one knows what they were but research is continuing. A few nice recent lectures: This lecturer stutters, but the content is...

... just exactly why do we sometimes read about DNA being extracted from fossils? Via precisely what claimed mechanism, since I understood a fossil to be the geobiological equivalent of a lost-wax casting? All organic material exchanged via a deposition-exchange process, with inorganic mineral...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24550167

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 102439.htm

A real giant shark... fossil.

Tracking Living (Or Recently Dead) African Pterosaurs Posted by Chris Parker Dec 17 2009 One might think that the continent of Africa would be the repository of animal fossils of all types but the number of pterosaur fossils discovered there have been few and far between. I say this with the...

Journal reference: Proceedings of the Royal Society B (DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2008.1196) http://publishing.royalsociety.org/index.cfm?page=1569 Evolution - Learn more about the struggle to survive in our comprehensive special report. http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/evolution Related...

http://tinyurl.com/3446aq

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/6568233.stm

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... issue.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3129777.stm Oldest spider silk found The oldest known strand of spider silk has been found, preserved in Lebanese amber. It dates from the Early Cretaceous Period, more than 120 million years ago. This means it comes from about 80-90 million...

Maybe Steve Irwin fans organised a boycott of the auction. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scot ... 385122.stm

New Pleisosaur find in Oz. Australian 'Nessie' fossils found Australia was once home to ancient reptiles that swam in huge icy lakes, fossil evidence suggests. The large, carnivorous reptiles lived 115 million years ago, during the age of the dinosaurs, when much of the continent was...

FOSSIL POINTS TO TIME WHEN FISH WALKED ASHORE By Jennifer Sym, PA A 383-million-year-old fossil has given scientists an insight into a major evolutionary change: when fish first transformed fins into limbs. It took six years of searches in the icy wilderness of the Canadian Arctic before...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4498049.stm Fossils illuminate fish evolution Fossils of an ancient fish - dating back 450 million years, when the creatures had neither bones nor teeth - have been found in South Africa. The finds, which are 50 million years older than any other...

I'm sure there was an article (by Karl Shuker?) in FT about ginat spiders which might have used this ofssil as evidence that spiders got really really big: Source

I always say this is one of the most convincing palaeontological cases to demonstrate evolution - see Stephen Jay Gould's essay "Hooking Leviathan by Its Past" on it in "Dinosaur in a Haystack" and now they have made more finds linking the fossils with the DNA: Source

New Scientist When the dinosaurs ruled the world, the mammals hid in the shadows, daring to grow no bigger than shrew-like insectivores that hunted at night. Or so we thought. Two stunning new fossils from China have overturned this preconception. Not only did large mammals live alongside...

http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_2419563 If anyone is in the area then I'd recommend they go along - it sounds great.

Plenty more Dinosaur smugglers to go :(

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/12/arts/12MAYO.html?pagewanted=2 Her site on this: hometown.aol.com/afmayor/myhomepage/writing.html Link and website are defunct. The MIA webpage can be accessed via the Wayback Machine...

and: http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=92282004

World's oldest insect fossil? http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/11/science/11CND-INSECT.html?ex=1077166800&en=753c4ccb2890b8b6&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

Just ran across this:

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAYUAGO3MD.html Even older than your old friend Keyser :)

I was reading an article in the latest FT when a question arose - how do we get fossil footprints? Actually, more specifically, how do footprints last long enough to become fossils? Wouldn't they get washed away, covered up or otherwise destroyed? And the age of fossils. Whenever an object...

Has anyone here got enough scientific knowledge to confirm the fact that fossils aren't being created now? And can anyone explain why fossils of trees have been found when the tree should have rotted away in the time it took to create the fossil. It seems that the scientific understanding of...