Thylacoleo carnifex A sabre-toothed cat that sported the fearsome teeth of felines also had the body and gait of a bear, making it a “super-predator”. So says a team led by Stephen Wroe at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, which found that the ferocious marsupial lion (Thylacoleo carnifex) shared the same super-predator body plan as Smilodon fatalis, North America’s ice age sabre-tooth cat. Wroe and his team compared the skulls, teeth and body proportions of seven extinct mammalian predators with those of 22 living species, in a bid to better understand how the extinct animals behaved. They [...]
Hobbits Walk Was Distinctive
Tolkien’s hobbits walked an awful long way, but the real “hobbit”, Homo floresiensis, would not have got far. Its flat, clown-like feet probably limited its speed to what we would consider a stroll, and kept its travels short, says Bill Jungers, an anthropologist at the State University of New York in Stony Brook. “It’s never going to win the 100-yard dash, and it’s never going to win the marathon,” he says. He presented his conclusion at last week’s meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Columbus, Ohio. By analysing the nearly complete left foot of an 18,000-year-old hobbit [...]
Elephantopotamus Discovered
At least one species of proboscidean, a prehistoric relative of the elephant, lived in an aquatic environment, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The extinct water-lover, which belonged to the genus Moeritherium and lived around 37 million years ago, appears to have munched on freshwater plants and spent most of its days in swamps or river systems, according to Alexander Liu, an earth sciences expert at the University of Oxford and the lead author of the study. The research team based its findings on a group of fossilized teeth found in [...]
“Feathered” Dinosaur Was Bald
A close-up view of the head and neck of a 120-million-year-old Sinosauropteryx fossil (top) shows imprints around the body that have long been believed to be early versions of feathers. Recent analysis – (this news is a year old but what has become of this?) – of another fossil of this turkey-size dino species (model at bottom) concludes that the features are actually the remains of collagen fibers and that the dinosaur was bald. The work casts a shadow on the popular theory that Sinosauropteryx and other members of the dinosaur group known as therapods are the ancestors of modern [...]
Gynormous larkosuros Discovered
They, in turn, forwarded the picture to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, which is where Cape Cod keeps all of its smart people. Woods Hole sent a team, led by famed archeologist, Dr. A. J. Oke, to the site. Within an hour Dr. Oke confirmed that the January storm had exposed one of the largest flying dinosaurs ever discovered. This huge creature is known to paleontologists as “Gynormous larkosuros” and is thought to have been 17 feet long, with a 25-foot wingspan. Suddenly, every ancient bone-freak in the world was headed to Orleans. Source for the rest of the story… Hint [...]
New Prehistoric Crocodilian
This image released by Rio de Janeiro Federal University, shows a new pointy-nosed prehistoric crocodile species that inhabited the Earth’s oceans 62 million years ago. Brazilian scientists unveiled a model of the nine foot (three meter) long Guarinisuchus munizi on Wednesday, March 26, 2008. The discovery may shed new light on the evolutionary history of the extinct group, which was a predecessor to modern crocodile species, and the theorized spreading of the species from Africa to South America.
European Humans: 1.2 Million Years Ago
The March 27, 2008, issue of the scientific journal Nature has announced the earliest finds of human fossils in Europe, pushing back the accepted date by a half-million years. A jawbone and teeth discovered at the famous Atapuerca site in northern Spain have been dated between 1.1 and 1.2 million years old. The fossils have been linked to Homo antecessor, or Pioneer Man, possibly a common ancestor to Neanderthals and modern humans, which was first found in 1997, at this same site. The new find appears to be from the same species, researchers said. The new specimens have tentatively been [...]
Mysteries of the Oimyakon Baby Mammoth
This is not the Oimyakon mammoth, but a better preserved specimen being studied in 2007. It was found by hunter Yuri Khudi in Russia’s Arctic Yamalo-Nenetsk region, in May 2007. On September 27, 2004, the front part of a baby mammoth’s body was found in Olchan mine in the Oimyakon Region of Yakutia. Specialists of the Museum of Mammoth of the Institute of Applied Ecology of the North, Academy of Sciences of Sakha Republic (Yakutia), have been thoroughly studying the finding and they have published the first outcomes. Not the Oimayakon specimen; a group of scientists examines the 2007 Yamalo-Neneetsk [...]
Pinky Expedition: Dinosaur World
Since I’m exploring the Florida wilds of the St. Johns River, looking for evidence or indications of Pinky, the living dinosaur, I thought I’d take a side trek into civilization to visit Dinosaur World. Located just north of Tampa, it is off I-4, at Exit 17 in Plant City. It took me several hours of driving to reach it, but I figured if anyone would know anything about Pinky the dinosaur, it would be these folks. With over 150 life-size dinosaur statues and other creations to be seen on the walking tour of the grounds of Dinosaur World, you would [...]
Micronesian Fossil Pygmies Discovered
Breaking news out of Micronesia appears to confirm both the notion that Homo floresiensis were “normal” and that “little people” tales are worthy of pursuing for more fossil evidence. Since the reporting of the so-called “hobbit” fossil from the island of Flores in Indonesia, debate has raged as to whether these remains are of modern humans (Homo sapiens), reduced, for some reason, in stature, or whether they represent a new species, Homo floresiensis. Reporting in this week’s PLoS ONE in a study funded by the National Geographic Society Mission Programs, Lee Berger and colleagues from the University of the Witwatersrand, [...]
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