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Newly Discovered: Animal Fossils

This fossil isn't newly discovered, but it's proper identification has been newly established.

One of the weirdest Cambrian creatures was Opabinia:

Opabinia Model_A Paleozoo.jpg

... which was long considered to be a unique Cambrian species with no known relatives.

Further research on a fossil originally attributed to a different branch of the evolutionary tree has reasonably established it is the second example of the same lineage as Opabinia.

NewSpecies1_1024.jpg
Weird, Extinct Animal Species Identified in First Such Finding in Over 100 Years

Peering back hundreds of millions of years into the past can turn up some astonishing findings – as it has with the discovery of a second species of opabiniid, a soft-bodied arthropod with a segmented exoskeleton that lived on the seafloor during the Miaolingian (509-497 million years ago).

The original opadiniid, Opabinia regalis, was first described over a century ago in 1912, and has several notable physical characteristics – not least the five eyes protruding on stalks from its head, a backwards-facing mouth, and its hollow, tubular proboscis.

Now there's another: Opabinia regalis is not as unique a species as first thought, because it's been joined by Utaurora comosa. This creature was previously thought to belong to a different group of animals known as radiodonts, but has now been reclassified as an opabiniid after some extensive research. ...

"Dissection of the phylogenetic support demonstrates that while evidence for radiodont paraphyly is weak, Utaurora can be confidently reassigned to Opabiniidae," the researchers write in their paper.

"The weirdest wonder of the Cambrian no longer stands alone." ...

The research has been published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences.
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FULL STORY: https://www.sciencealert.com/we-ve-...pecies-of-weird-extinct-animal-with-five-eyes

PUBLISHED RESEARCH REPORT:
Pates Stephen, Wolfe Joanna M., Lerosey-Aubril Rudy, Daley Allison C. and Ortega-Hernández Javier 2022
New opabiniid diversifies the weirdest wonders of the euarthropod stem group
Proc. R. Soc. B. 289: 20212093. 20212093
http://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.2093

FULL REPORT: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2021.2093
 

Fossil of largest Jurassic pterosaur found on Skye​

PhD student Amelia Penny spotted its sharp-toothed jaw in a layer of ancient limestone on Skye's coast.

That initial discovery, in 2017, has now been followed up with detailed examination of the fossil skeleton.

Those studies, published in the journal Current Biology, show the flying lizard had a 2.5m (8ft) wingspan.

The research, led by PhD student Natalia Jagielska, also revealed the creature was a species new to science.
Researchers from the Hunterian Museum, in Glasgow, and the Staffin Museum, on Skye, had to extract the rock slab entombing the fossil - a painstaking process and noisy process racing the incoming tide - and bring it to the University of Edinburgh.

"As flying animals, their bones are really light, just like today's birds.
"That makes them incredibly fragile and so they don't usually preserve as fossils.”

The remarkable condition and completeness of this specimen - particularly the detail preserved in its skull - has already allowed scientists from the universities of Edinburgh and St Andrews and National Museums Scotland, where the fossil will be displayed and studied further, to conclude Dearc had good eyesight.

"We look forward to studying Dearc in greater detail to discover more about how it lived and its behaviour," Ms Jagielska added.

"The preservation is amazing, far beyond any pterosaur ever found in Scotland and probably the best British skeleton found since the days of [fossil hunter] Mary Anning in the early 1800s," he said.

And its size "tells us that pterosaurs got larger much earlier than we thought, long before the Cretaceous period when they were competing with birds, and that's hugely significant".
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I'm not sure where to post this but someone found this on West Runton beach near me this morning:

"This is a lower molar of a leaf-eating rhinoceros. This so-called low-crowned molar with a relatively smooth surface of the tooth enamel, according to my knowledge, have to be attributed to the Etruscan rhinoceros, Stephanorhinus etruscus, well known from, among other things, the southern bight of the North Sea between the British Isles and the Netherlands. This rhino species was a common appearance in the Early and Middle Pleistocene."

Someone else has ventured:

"The condition looks as though the tooth came from the Cromer Forest-bed, and so likely to be Dicerorhinus etruscus." ... fantastic find! .. I'm very envious.

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Swifty said:
I'm not sure where to post this but someone found this on West Runton beach near me this morning:

"This is a lower molar of a leaf-eating rhinoceros. This so-called low-crowned molar with a relatively smooth surface of the tooth enamel, according to my knowledge, have to be attributed to the Etruscan rhinoceros, Stephanorhinus etruscus, well known from, among other things, the southern bight of the North Sea between the British Isles and the Netherlands. This rhino species was a common appearance in the Early and Middle Pleistocene."

Someone else has ventured:

"The condition looks as though the tooth came from the Cromer Forest-bed, and so likely to be Dicerorhinus etruscus." ... fantastic find! .. I'm very envious.

View attachment 54810

View attachment 54811
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BRILLIANT!!
 
hunck said:

Fossil of largest Jurassic pterosaur found on Skye​

PhD student Amelia Penny spotted its sharp-toothed jaw in a layer of ancient limestone on Skye's coast.

That initial discovery, in 2017, has now been followed up with detailed examination of the fossil skeleton.

Those studies, published in the journal Current Biology, show the flying lizard had a 2.5m (8ft) wingspan.

The research, led by PhD student Natalia Jagielska, also revealed the creature was a species new to science.

View attachment 52334
Click to expand...

Mary Anning (mentioned in the above post) is now being honoured with a statue.

A statue of Dorset palaeontologist Mary Anning is set to be unveiled in her hometown of Lyme Regis.

Anning's discoveries in the early 19th Century helped shape scientific understanding of prehistoric life, but her work was never properly recognised. She was the first person to discover a complete plesiosaurus in 1823.

Evie Squire, 15, has campaigned for four years for the memorial, which will be unveiled later on what would have been Anning's 223rd birthday.

The fossil hunter lived in Lyme Regis, which is now part of the Jurassic Coast, and began searching the coastline as a child.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-dorset-61520324
 
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Eye-popping fossil fish found in cattle field​


The creature - a tuna-like predator called Pachycormus - is beautifully preserved in three dimensions.

With its big teeth and eyes, it gives the impression it is about to launch an attack.
"It was a real surprise because, when you find fossils, most of the time they've been pressed flat through pressure over time," Neville told BBC News.

"But when we prepared this one, to reveal its bones bit by bit, it was amazing because we suddenly realised its skull was uncrushed.
"Its mouth is open - and it looks like it's coming out at you from the rock.”

The landowner, Adam Knight, had no idea his English longhorn cattle were grazing on top of a rich fossil seam, recalling a time, 183 million years ago, when his farm would have been lying under warm tropical ocean waters.

Mr Knight gave permission to Neville and Sally, and a team led from the University of Manchester, to investigate the bank further.
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3D model here.
 
Not newly discovered as such but there are likely to be undescribed species in the collection.

More than 700 bird fossils, dating back from 54 to 56 million years ago, have been donated to National Museums Scotland.

The collection is believed to include many species new to science, one being a falcon-like bird and another a diver or loon.

The fossils, from the Eocene period, represent the early stages in the evolution of modern birds. Palaeontologists have said there is no other collection like it in the UK.

The rare specimens were collected over the lifetime of amateur palaeontology enthusiast Michael Daniels, who died last year aged 90. He had assembled the several hundred skeletons and part skeletons that he had discovered in nodules of the London Clay, which had eroded out of the cliffs at Walton-on-the-Naze in Essex.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-62456601
 
ramonmercado said:
Funky Gibbon ancestor.

While searching for primate fossils in northern India, paleontologist Christopher Gilbert noticed something small and shiny poking out of the dirt. It turned out to be a roughly 13-million-year-old molar from a small-bodied ape related to modern gibbons.

The tooth is the oldest known fossil from a gibbon ancestor, says Gilbert, of Hunter College at the City University of New York. He and colleagues assigned the fossil, which was eroding out of previously dated sediment at a site called Ramnagar, to a new genus and species, Kapi ramnagarensis.

photo of a browned, ancient tooth


This roughly 13-million-year-old molar tooth (shown from above) was found in India and is the oldest known fossil from a gibbon ancestor.C. GILBERT

Until now, the oldest remains of an ancient gibbon species consisted of a small number of teeth found in China, which date from around 7 million to 9 million years ago. Possibly older fossils of a gibbonlike creature are controversial (SN: 10/29/15). Genetic studies of living primates have suggested that gibbon ancestors emerged by at least 20 million years ago in Africa.

After finding the Ramnagar molar in 2015, Gilbert’s team compared it with corresponding teeth of living and extinct apes and monkeys. Features including low, rounded cusps on the edges of the chewing surface link the ancient tooth to modern gibbons and the gibbon predecessor in China, the scientists report September 9 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. ...

https://www.sciencenews.org/article...tm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest_Headlines
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More on the swinging Funky Gibbon ancestors.

Small-bodied, long-armed apes called gibbons swing rapidly through the trees, far outpacing scientists’ attempts to decipher these creatures’ evolutionary story.

Now, a partial upper jaw and seven isolated teeth found near a southwestern Chinese village have added bite to a suggestion that the earliest known gibbons hung out there about 7 million to 8 million years ago, researchers report in the October Journal of Human Evolution.

Those fossils, as well as 14 teeth previously found at the same site and a nearby site, belong to an ancient hylobatid species called Yuanmoupithecus xiaoyuan, say paleoanthropologist Xueping Ji of the Kunming Natural History Museum of Zoology in China and colleagues. Hylobatids, a family of apes that includes about 20 species of living gibbons and a black-furred gibbon called the siamang, inhabit tropical forests from northeastern India to Indonesia.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/fossil-earliest-gibbon-asia-evolution
 
A new Australian discovery...

They found its legs. Now the search for the rest of the thunderbird ... is go!​

Scientists have found the drumsticks of an ancient Australian bird weighing in at more than 600 kilograms, and now they’re planning to go back and finish the meal.

Dromornis stirtoni, also known as Stirton’s thunderbird, was a massive flightless bird, standing more than three metres tall, which stalked the plains and waterholes of inland Australia about 8 million years ago.

Its estimated size and weight make it one of the largest birds to have ever walked the Earth. In its upper limits, it would have been heavier than New Zealand’s Giant Moa, and taller than the Elephant Bird of Madagascar.
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https://www.smh.com.au/national/the...of-the-thunderbird-is-go-20220930-p5bm75.html
 
Giant tusk discovered in Israel

The 500,000-year-old and 8ft-long tusk was discovered near Reitan, southern Israel

It's thought the tusk could have been from a beast twice the size of the African elephant - which are the largest land mammals on earth today - and was possibly the largest to have ever lived.

The now-extinct straight-tusked elephant is thought to have roamed Europe and the Middle East alongside cattle and other land mammals, before dying out around 400,000 years ago.

“Stone and flint tools as well as animal bone remains – including from elephants – were retrieved here.
“But finding this half a million-year-old complete elephant tusk in such a good condition is something else!
“This is the largest complete fossil tusk ever found at a prehistoric site in Israel or the Near East.”

The tusk is currently under a proper excavation, as its age means it is extremely fragile and likely to disintegrate when exposed to air and sunlight.

“The species is known from only a few sites,” said Lee Perry-Gal of the IAA.

“It apparently appeared in our region about 800,000 years ago, and by 400,000 years ago became extinct.

The straight-tusked elephant could grow up to 4.5m tall and weighed up to 14 tonnes, according to London's Natural History Museum. That’s compared to a height of 3.3m for the African elephant, which weights up to seven tonnes.
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Newly discovered fossil evidence of a prehistoric relative of today's "penis worm" indicates this ancestral species had a brain configured in a circular or ringed form.

Penis worm's ancient cousin fossilized with its doughnut-shaped brain intact

Scientists uncovered something unexpected in the fossilized embryo of a worm-like creature from the Cambrian period: the remains of a tiny, doughnut-shaped brain in the primordial animal's head.

The roughly 500 million-year-old fossil is an example of the marine species Markuelia hunanensis, an ancient cousin of penis worms (priapulids) and mud dragons (Kinorhyncha). To date, scientists haven't found fossils of the worm-like weirdos in their adult form, but researchers have uncovered hundreds of pristine embryos that capture different stages of the animals' early development. Each of these embryos measures only about half a millimeter (0.02 inch) across.

"The thing about Markuelia is, it looks like a mini-adult — it actually looks like a miniature penis worm," which gives scientists an idea of what a mature M. hunanensis likely looked like, Philip Donoghue, a professor of paleobiology at the University of Bristol in England, told Live Science.

Donoghue and his collaborator Xi-ping Dong, a professor in the School of Earth and Space Sciences at Peking University in Beijing, have examined many of these embryos over the years, but this is the first time they've found one with preserved brain tissue hidden inside. They reported their discovery Oct. 4 in the journal Royal Society Open Science ...

FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/cambrian-fossil-embryo-with-brain

PUBLISHED RESEARCH REPORT: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.220115
 
Plesiosaur fossil discovered in Outback Queensland, Australia:

Scientists stunned by find in Outback desert​

A station owner and her friends have discovered a 100-million-year-old creature of the deep – in the middle of the Queensland Outback
In an Australian first, palaeontologists have uncovered the head and body of a 100-million-year-old Plesiosaurs – a long neck marine reptile – in the Queensland desert.
The fossil, which was uncovered near Mckinlay in Western Queensland, has been labelled the “the Rosetta stone of marine reptile palaeontology” by those involved after it was discovered by ‘The Rock Chicks’ – a trio of fossil hunters led by an outback Queensland station owner.

Experts believe the new fossil may hold the key to unlocking the mystery around Australian plesiosaurs.
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https://www.news.com.au/technology/...t/news-story/d7a5c4cbcba95ed142a04fae2c6070b5
 
New theory.

Scientists have uncovered new clues about a curious fossil site in Nevada, a graveyard for dozens of giant marine reptiles.

Instead of the site of a massive die-off as suspected, it might have been an ancient maternity ward where the creatures came to give birth.

The site is famous for its fossils from giant ichthyosaurs — reptiles that dominated the ancient seas and could grow up to the size of a bus. The creatures — the name means fish lizard — were underwater predators with large paddle-shaped flippers and long jaws full of teeth.

Since the ichthyosaur bones in Nevada were excavated in the 1950s, many paleontologists have investigated how all these creatures could have died together. Now, researchers have proposed a different theory in a study published on Monday in the journal Current Biology.

“Several lines of evidence all kind of point towards one argument here: That this was a place where giant ichthyosaurs came to give birth,” said co-author Nicholas Pyenson, curator of fossil marine mammals at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/world/arid-41032010.html
 
ramonmercado said:
New theory.

Scientists have uncovered new clues about a curious fossil site in Nevada, a graveyard for dozens of giant marine reptiles.

Instead of the site of a massive die-off as suspected, it might have been an ancient maternity ward where the creatures came to give birth.

The site is famous for its fossils from giant ichthyosaurs — reptiles that dominated the ancient seas and could grow up to the size of a bus. The creatures — the name means fish lizard — were underwater predators with large paddle-shaped flippers and long jaws full of teeth.

Since the ichthyosaur bones in Nevada were excavated in the 1950s, many paleontologists have investigated how all these creatures could have died together. Now, researchers have proposed a different theory in a study published on Monday in the journal Current Biology.

“Several lines of evidence all kind of point towards one argument here: That this was a place where giant ichthyosaurs came to give birth,” said co-author Nicholas Pyenson, curator of fossil marine mammals at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/world/arid-41032010.html
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Or, ["as it now sits in a dry, dusty landscape near an abandoned mining town,"] said lead author Randy Irmis, a palaeontologist at the University of Utah.
Or, maybe it could also have been the very last place where the water was deep enough, and wide enough for them to exist until they all died out?
 
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Sid said:
Or, ["as it now now sits in a dry, dusty landscape near an abandoned mining town,"] said lead author Randy Irmis, a palaeontologist at the University of Utah.
Or, maybe it could also have been the very last place where the water was deep enough, and wide enough for them to exist until they all died out?
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That sounds like a more plausible suggestion.
 
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Sid said:
"Thank you." :twothumbs:
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In Australia, we have discovered accumulations of mega fauna remains around archaic water holes. It is well known that around about 20,000 years ago that Australia suffered a massive climate change, that produced very arid conditions.

Not only did this anomaly stop normal precipitation cycles, It dried out large areas of Australia.

It sounds like there are parralells between these Ichthiosaur remains, and our mega fauna remains.
 
She's a big one, this one...

Almost-complete skull of Diamantinasaurus dinosaur discovered in western Queensland reveals ancient secrets​

The nearly complete skull of a 95-million-year-old sauropod dinosaur named "Ann" found in western Queensland, has unearthed new insights into how the massive creature lived.

Researchers found the skull belonged to the species Diamantinasaurus matildae, known for having small heads, long necks and tails, barrel-like bodies, and four columnar legs.


Stephen Poropat, lead researcher from Curtin University's School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said Ann is the first sauropod dinosaur found in Australia to include most of its skull, and the first Diamantinasaurus to have its back foot preserved.

"This skull gives us a rare glimpse into the anatomy of this enormous sauropod that lived in north-east Australia almost 100 million years ago," Dr Poropat said.

"In analysing the remains, we found similarities between the 'Ann' skull and the skull of a titanosaur called Sarmientosaurus musacchioi, which lived in South America at about the same time as Diamantinasaurus lived in Queensland.
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https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04...sSo6vewnbL9weqSnJ7Fn5G19ZzTpcwN5e-6_ozg6EjxCU
 
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Ever find fossils in your drawers?

Fossilised bones from a gigantic sea creature that lived 150 million years ago have been found in a drawer in a museum.

Pliosaur remains were discovered by University of Portsmouth palaeontologists at Oxfordshire's Abingdon County Hall Museum.The vertebrae were first found during excavations at a farm near Abingdon. Scans on a backbone found the reptile was between 9.8m (32ft) and 14.4 (47ft) long.

Prof David Martill and PhD student Megan Jacobs unearthed the remains by chance during a visit to the museum to photograph an ichthyosaur skeleton.

Ms Jacobs said: "Dave opened the drawer and there was a huge backbone in it - it was dinner-plate sized. "We got it out had a look and concluded it wasn't a dinosaur but a huge marine reptile."

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-65568581
 
A belligerent badger.

  • 18 JUL 2023 2:00 PM
skeletons of Psittacosaurus and Repenomamus entangled in a fossil
A 125-million-year-old fossil shows the entangled skeletons of a dinosaur (Psittacosaurus) and a mammal (Repenomamus).GANG HAN


Some 125 million years ago in a verdant forest in what today is northern China, a furry, badger-size mammal and a scaly dinosaur three times its size were locked in mortal combat. The small yet savage mammal appears to have had the upper hand and may have been moments away from devouring its dino dinner when suddenly, an avalanchelike flow of volcanic debris swept over the combatants, instantly killing and entombing them both. Cemented in stone, their skeletons intertwined and the mammal’s teeth chomping down onto two of the dinosaur’s ribs, they lay together through the ages until a discovery in 2012 by a farmer.

The researchers who have analyzed the fossil assert today in Scientific Reports that it is rare evidence of a mammal preying on a dinosaur. This finding challenges the popular perception that early mammals tended to cower in the shadows of their dinosaur contemporaries, they say. Other paleontologists are impressed, but caution that more work is needed to verify the fossil’s authenticity.

“This is the kind of specimen that paleontologists dream of—a pristine snapshot of ancient behavior and ecology,” says Raymond Rogers, a geologist at Macalester College who was not involved in the study. “If this remarkable specimen is the real deal, it is a one-in-a-million find.”

https://www.science.org/content/article/one-million-fossil-may-show-mammal-about-chow-down-dinosaur
 
About right "I'm not going to let an avalanche of volcanic debris stop me Pal, I'm having you."
 
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