Pentecopterus decorahensis fossils come from Iowa. How do you figure this was Pentecopterus decorahensis when the tracks were found in Scotland? The actual animal that made the tracts was called Hibbertopterus.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/8632427.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/8632427.stm
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So, not very big then!
The article has the headline:
"Human-sized Pentecopterus decorahensis attacked prey with claws attached to its head"
Make your minds up! Is it human sized or Tom Cruise sized? Okay, I'll leave it there. I've had nearly four months, and that's all I've come up with.
We're mixing up two different stories on this thread. Let's take a moment to review the previous posts.
The article has the headline:
"Human-sized Pentecopterus decorahensis attacked prey with claws attached to its head"
Make your minds up! Is it human sized or Tom Cruise sized? Okay, I'll leave it there. I've had nearly four months, and that's all I've come up with.
We're mixing up two different stories on this thread. Let's take a moment to review the previous posts.
The 1st portion of the URL I posted reads as follows below:
A cast is being made of tracks left by a two-metre long ancient animal in north east Fife.
The tracks were made by a giant six-legged "sea scorpion" called Hibbertopterus as it crawled over damp sand about 330 million years ago.
It is the largest known walking trackway of a eurypterid or any invertebrate animal.
...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibbertopterus
I don't know how to further clarify?
A cast is being made of tracks left by a two-metre long ancient animal in north east Fife.
The tracks were made by a giant six-legged "sea scorpion" called Hibbertopterus as it crawled over damp sand about 330 million years ago.
It is the largest known walking trackway of a eurypterid or any invertebrate animal.
...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibbertopterus
I don't know how to further clarify?
My previous post 17 and 21 clearly state that the tracks were left by the eurypterid Hibbertopterus in Scotland. It seemed the purpose of the tread (if staying on topic) was the sensational find of the ancient invertebrate tracts.
This has nothing to do with Pentecopterus decorahensis which is completely separate species of eurypterid found in North America.
I will repost the URL's concerning Hibbertoperus and the tracks it left in Scotland one more time for clarity.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/8632427.stm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibbertopterus
This has nothing to do with Pentecopterus decorahensis which is completely separate species of eurypterid found in North America.
I will repost the URL's concerning Hibbertoperus and the tracks it left in Scotland one more time for clarity.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/8632427.stm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibbertopterus
Last edited:
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Sorry Jim but you original post was this one, which was a response to Ramon's posting of this article, which was specifically and solely about Pentecopterus decorahensis. I don't think you read the article before responding.
For what it's worth, a local news article about that Iowan species - an arthropod so large it even dwarfs Tom Cruise - now immortalised in a municipal artwork:
Waiting 467 million years for a starring role
'The object of all that media attention along the Upper Iowa River in Freeport on Thursday afternoon? That would be the statue of "Pentecopterus Decorahensis," the six-foot-long sea scorpion that roamed the area 467 million years ago'.
Full article here at decorahnews.com
Waiting 467 million years for a starring role
'The object of all that media attention along the Upper Iowa River in Freeport on Thursday afternoon? That would be the statue of "Pentecopterus Decorahensis," the six-foot-long sea scorpion that roamed the area 467 million years ago'.
Full article here at decorahnews.com
The whole family gives me the creeps. Here it compares a few to the size of a man. yuk
http://www.prehistoric-wildlife.com/species/p/pterygotus.html
http://www.prehistoric-wildlife.com/species/p/pterygotus.html
Paleontologists discover 250-million-year-old new species of reptile in Brazil
March 11, 2016 in Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils
An international team of scientists, from three Brazilian universities and one UK university, have discovered a new fossil reptile that lived 250 million years ago in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, southernmost Brazil. The species has been identified from a mostly complete and well preserved fossil skull that the team has named Teyujagua paradoxa.
The fossil was discovered in the beginning of 2015 by a team from the Paleobiology Laboratory of the Universidade Federal do Pampa (Unipampa), in a Triassic rock exposure near the city of São Francisco de Assis. This discovery, published today in the journal Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group), helps to clarify the initial evolution of the group that gave rise to dinosaurs, pterosaurs (flying reptiles), crocodiles and birds.
The name Teyujagua comes from the language of the Guarani ethnic group and means 'fierce lizard'. It references a mythological beast called Teyú Yaguá, usually depicted as a lizard with a dog´s head.Teyujagua is very different from other fossils from the same age. Its anatomy is intermediate between the more primitive reptiles and a diverse and important group called 'archosauriforms'. Archosauriformes include all the extinct dinosaurs and pterosaurs, along with modern day birds and crocodiles.
The discovery of Teyujagua is important because it lived just after the great Permo-Triassic mass extinction event that occurred 252 million years ago. This extinction wiped out about 90 per cent of all species then living and was probably triggered by giant and intense volcanic eruptions in the eastern part of what is now Russia. ...
http://phys.org/news/2016-03-paleontologists-million-year-old-species-reptile-brazil.html
March 11, 2016 in Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils
An international team of scientists, from three Brazilian universities and one UK university, have discovered a new fossil reptile that lived 250 million years ago in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, southernmost Brazil. The species has been identified from a mostly complete and well preserved fossil skull that the team has named Teyujagua paradoxa.
The fossil was discovered in the beginning of 2015 by a team from the Paleobiology Laboratory of the Universidade Federal do Pampa (Unipampa), in a Triassic rock exposure near the city of São Francisco de Assis. This discovery, published today in the journal Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group), helps to clarify the initial evolution of the group that gave rise to dinosaurs, pterosaurs (flying reptiles), crocodiles and birds.
The name Teyujagua comes from the language of the Guarani ethnic group and means 'fierce lizard'. It references a mythological beast called Teyú Yaguá, usually depicted as a lizard with a dog´s head.Teyujagua is very different from other fossils from the same age. Its anatomy is intermediate between the more primitive reptiles and a diverse and important group called 'archosauriforms'. Archosauriformes include all the extinct dinosaurs and pterosaurs, along with modern day birds and crocodiles.
The discovery of Teyujagua is important because it lived just after the great Permo-Triassic mass extinction event that occurred 252 million years ago. This extinction wiped out about 90 per cent of all species then living and was probably triggered by giant and intense volcanic eruptions in the eastern part of what is now Russia. ...
http://phys.org/news/2016-03-paleontologists-million-year-old-species-reptile-brazil.html
A team of researchers from the U.S., Germany and the U.K. has used modern technology to reveal the true nature of an ancient arachnid. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B the team describes the ancient creature as "almost a spider."
Back in the 80's a team of researchers discovered a host of fossils in a part of what is now eastern France, but at least one of them was only partly visible because the rest of its body was encased in ironstone. Because attempting to remove the dense opaque stoneware would have destroyed the fossil, researchers simply put it in a drawer and waited for technology to develop that would allow for examining the fossil while still inside the stone. In this new effort, the researchers have used technology similar to medical CT scans to allow for creating 3D imagery of the fossil and in so doing have added another piece to the puzzle of how spiders evolved.
The fossil, named Idmonarachne brasieri was dated to approximately 305 million years ago, putting it before the dinosaurs, and it resembles modern spiders in many ways, but is missing one critical part: an organ for spinning silk. The fossil also did not have a tail-like appendage, which has been found on other arachnids of nearly the same time period, which suggested that it was a unique species, one that is believed to have gone extinct as its cousins continued to evolve into modern spiders. Because of its age and body structure, the specimen is helping scientists learn more about the manner in whichspiders evolved. They believe it is one of the closet relatives without actually being a true spider. The 1.5cm arachnid was also found to have impressive jaws, which further helped prove it was a unique species.
http://phys.org/news/2016-03-ancient-fossil-bridge-early-arachnids.html
Back in the 80's a team of researchers discovered a host of fossils in a part of what is now eastern France, but at least one of them was only partly visible because the rest of its body was encased in ironstone. Because attempting to remove the dense opaque stoneware would have destroyed the fossil, researchers simply put it in a drawer and waited for technology to develop that would allow for examining the fossil while still inside the stone. In this new effort, the researchers have used technology similar to medical CT scans to allow for creating 3D imagery of the fossil and in so doing have added another piece to the puzzle of how spiders evolved.
The fossil, named Idmonarachne brasieri was dated to approximately 305 million years ago, putting it before the dinosaurs, and it resembles modern spiders in many ways, but is missing one critical part: an organ for spinning silk. The fossil also did not have a tail-like appendage, which has been found on other arachnids of nearly the same time period, which suggested that it was a unique species, one that is believed to have gone extinct as its cousins continued to evolve into modern spiders. Because of its age and body structure, the specimen is helping scientists learn more about the manner in whichspiders evolved. They believe it is one of the closet relatives without actually being a true spider. The 1.5cm arachnid was also found to have impressive jaws, which further helped prove it was a unique species.
http://phys.org/news/2016-03-ancient-fossil-bridge-early-arachnids.html
Ten million years ago, a green and black snake lay coiled in the Spanish undergrowth. Once, paleontologists would have been limited to the knowledge they could glean from its colorless fossil remains, but now they know what the snake looked like and can guess how it acted. Researchers reporting on March 31 in Current Biology have discovered that some fossils can retain evidence of skin color from multiple pigments and structural colors, aiding research into the evolution and function of color.
So far, scientists filling the ancient-Earth coloring book with pigment have been limited to browns, blacks, and muddy reds when melanin lasts as organic material. No other pigments have been shown to survive fossilization. But this snake's skin was fossilized in calcium phosphate, a mineral that preserves details on a subcellular level.
The fossilized snakeskin maintained the unique shapes of different types of pigment cells, which would have created yellows, greens, blacks, browns, and iridescence while the animal was alive. The pigments themselves are now decayed, but with the cell shapes—specific to each kind of pigment—mineralized, there's enough information to reconstruct their colors.
"When you get fossil tissues preserved with this kind of detail, you're just gobsmacked when you're looking at it under the microscope," says first author Maria McNamara, a paleobiologist at University College Cork. "I was astounded. You almost can't believe what you're seeing." ...
http://phys.org/news/2016-03-fossilized-snake-true.html
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-03-fossilized-snake-true.html#jCp
So far, scientists filling the ancient-Earth coloring book with pigment have been limited to browns, blacks, and muddy reds when melanin lasts as organic material. No other pigments have been shown to survive fossilization. But this snake's skin was fossilized in calcium phosphate, a mineral that preserves details on a subcellular level.
The fossilized snakeskin maintained the unique shapes of different types of pigment cells, which would have created yellows, greens, blacks, browns, and iridescence while the animal was alive. The pigments themselves are now decayed, but with the cell shapes—specific to each kind of pigment—mineralized, there's enough information to reconstruct their colors.
"When you get fossil tissues preserved with this kind of detail, you're just gobsmacked when you're looking at it under the microscope," says first author Maria McNamara, a paleobiologist at University College Cork. "I was astounded. You almost can't believe what you're seeing." ...
http://phys.org/news/2016-03-fossilized-snake-true.html
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-03-fossilized-snake-true.html#jCp
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Not new, six years old, but still interesting and I don't think it's been posted here before;
"Meiolaniid or horned turtles are members of the extinct Pleistocene megafauna of Australia and the southwest Pacific. The timing and causes of their extinction have remained elusive. Here we report the remains of meiolaniid turtles from cemetery and midden layers dating 3,100/3,000 calibrated years before present to approximately 2,900/2,800 calibrated years before present in the Teouma Lapita archaeological site on Efate in Vanuatu".
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2932593/
There were Australian Pleistocene species that got very big, a couple of meters in length.
With horned heads, and a fused 'club' section at the end of the tail.
"Meiolaniid or horned turtles are members of the extinct Pleistocene megafauna of Australia and the southwest Pacific. The timing and causes of their extinction have remained elusive. Here we report the remains of meiolaniid turtles from cemetery and midden layers dating 3,100/3,000 calibrated years before present to approximately 2,900/2,800 calibrated years before present in the Teouma Lapita archaeological site on Efate in Vanuatu".
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2932593/
There were Australian Pleistocene species that got very big, a couple of meters in length.
With horned heads, and a fused 'club' section at the end of the tail.
New marsupial predator from the Riversleigh deposits in Queensland. Silly name though.
A new species of extinct flesh-eating marsupial that terrorized Australia's drying forests about 5 million years ago has been identified from a fossil discovered in remote northwestern Queensland. The hypercarnivore is a distant and much bigger cousin of Australia's largest living, flesh-eating marsupial, the Tasmanian devil. Named Whollydooleya tomnpatrichorum, it is the first creature to be formally identified from a range of strange new animals whose remains have been found in a recently discovered fossil site in Queensland dubbed 'New Riversleigh.'
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160725104121.htm
Paper here;
https://museumvictoria.com.au/pages/381441/137-150_MMV74_Archer_5_WEB.pdf
A new species of extinct flesh-eating marsupial that terrorized Australia's drying forests about 5 million years ago has been identified from a fossil discovered in remote northwestern Queensland. The hypercarnivore is a distant and much bigger cousin of Australia's largest living, flesh-eating marsupial, the Tasmanian devil. Named Whollydooleya tomnpatrichorum, it is the first creature to be formally identified from a range of strange new animals whose remains have been found in a recently discovered fossil site in Queensland dubbed 'New Riversleigh.'
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160725104121.htm
Paper here;
https://museumvictoria.com.au/pages/381441/137-150_MMV74_Archer_5_WEB.pdf
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This is currently being reported as a feathered dinosaur's tail preserved in amber ..
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...tail-amber-theropod-myanmar-burma-cretaceous/
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...tail-amber-theropod-myanmar-burma-cretaceous/
It's definitely a dinosaur, and a Mesozoic one at that, the only question is which group. I think it might well turn out to be one of the theropods near to the birds (there is a word for these but I can't spell it, and don't really understand what it means), but that's no less remarkable than any other.
Either way, it is amazing to think that you can see the feathers, their colour and arrangement on the tail of an actual Mesozoic dinosaur. I don't think anyone ever really thought this would happen.
Yes, we had wings last year, but as stupid a thing to say as this is, they're a bit familiar from living birds, this though is something else. It's a type of structure no human eye has ever* seen from across a vest span of time. And it's the real thing. Despite a personal indifference to most non avian (wrong tag I know) dinosaurs, I genuinely think this might be the most amazing thing I've ever seen.
And it proves my theory that dinosaurs came in either beige or magnolia, this one came in both, two tone! so that makes them at least twice as interesting as I thought they were before.
* Although in the version I read there are rumours that 'other' such things turn up from time to time. Are there a little pair of theropod eyes staring out through amber in some fat cat's private collection?
Either way, it is amazing to think that you can see the feathers, their colour and arrangement on the tail of an actual Mesozoic dinosaur. I don't think anyone ever really thought this would happen.
Yes, we had wings last year, but as stupid a thing to say as this is, they're a bit familiar from living birds, this though is something else. It's a type of structure no human eye has ever* seen from across a vest span of time. And it's the real thing. Despite a personal indifference to most non avian (wrong tag I know) dinosaurs, I genuinely think this might be the most amazing thing I've ever seen.
And it proves my theory that dinosaurs came in either beige or magnolia, this one came in both, two tone! so that makes them at least twice as interesting as I thought they were before.
* Although in the version I read there are rumours that 'other' such things turn up from time to time. Are there a little pair of theropod eyes staring out through amber in some fat cat's private collection?
G'day. I ramble around this rather large country, and sometimes find things.
On one occasion I was in Broome, North Western Australia for a look around, where I found what I thought was a rib, but it was too heavy and solid, so I started thinking it's a tooth.
I found it at low tide in the mangroves (yeah, I know, big salties and all that, but the crabs mate! the crabs!), and thought that it was a Dugongs tooth (Dugong dugon) until recently.
The tooth is solid, has no growth rings or porosities for blood vessels which Dugong teeth have. It is also 17 centimetres long, 8 centimetres around, broken off at both ends, so the tooth presumably was longer when it was in situ, and weighs 97 grammes. It is 'D' shaped along most of its length, but is almost circular in circumference at one end. It is curved at an angle from the perpendicular of 22 degrees and it has a distortion (twist) of approximately 3 degrees in an anticlockwise direction
Looking at it, I think that it would've been from the bottom jaw of a large herbivorous animal, and possibly the left lower incisor
My thoughts have turned to mega fauna, possibly a member of the Diprodontia order. It has split along the shaft and It has also been chewed on by animals unknown, but not damaged. There are no visible abrasion marks attributable to humanity
Any thoughts and ideas would be most welcome
Photo's below:
.
On one occasion I was in Broome, North Western Australia for a look around, where I found what I thought was a rib, but it was too heavy and solid, so I started thinking it's a tooth.
I found it at low tide in the mangroves (yeah, I know, big salties and all that, but the crabs mate! the crabs!), and thought that it was a Dugongs tooth (Dugong dugon) until recently.
The tooth is solid, has no growth rings or porosities for blood vessels which Dugong teeth have. It is also 17 centimetres long, 8 centimetres around, broken off at both ends, so the tooth presumably was longer when it was in situ, and weighs 97 grammes. It is 'D' shaped along most of its length, but is almost circular in circumference at one end. It is curved at an angle from the perpendicular of 22 degrees and it has a distortion (twist) of approximately 3 degrees in an anticlockwise direction
Looking at it, I think that it would've been from the bottom jaw of a large herbivorous animal, and possibly the left lower incisor
My thoughts have turned to mega fauna, possibly a member of the Diprodontia order. It has split along the shaft and It has also been chewed on by animals unknown, but not damaged. There are no visible abrasion marks attributable to humanity
Any thoughts and ideas would be most welcome
Photo's below:
.