New contender for oldest dinosaur

Palaeontologists have found what is likely to be the oldest known dinosaur, filling in a yawning evolutionary gap.

A study in Biology Letters describes Nyasasaurus parringtoni, a new species from 10-15 million years before the previous earliest dinosaur specimens.

It walked on two legs, measured 2-3m in length with a large tail and weighed between 20 and 60kg.

The find suggests that many millions of years passed between dinosaurs' first members and their dominance on land.

"It fills a gap between what we previously knew to be the oldest dinosaurs and their other closest relatives," report co-author Paul Barrett, of the Natural History Museum in London, told BBC News.

The find shores up the idea that dinosaurs evolved on the southern parts of the supercontinent Pangaea

"There was this big gap in the fossil record where dinosaurs should've been present and this fossil neatly fills that gap."

However, the team behind the work has stopped short of definitively calling N parringtoni the earliest dinosaur, because the fossil skeletons used to define it were incomplete: one upper arm bone and six vertebrae.

Continued:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20594147

Great whites 'not evolved from megashark'

A new fossil discovery has helped quell 150 years of debate over the origin of great white sharks.

Carcharodon hubbelli, which has been described by US scientists, shows intermediate features between the present-day predators and smaller, prehistoric mako sharks.

The find supports the theory that great white sharks did not evolve from huge megatooth sharks.

The research is published this week in the journal Palaeontology.

Palaeontologists have previously disagreed over the ancestry of the modern white sharks, with some claiming that they are descended from the giant megatooth sharks, such as Megalodon (Carcharocles megalodon).

"When the early palaeontologists put together dentitions of Megalodon and the other megatooth species, they used the modern white shark to put them together, so of course it's going to look like a white shark because that's what was used as a model," explained Professor Dana Ehret of Monmouth University in New Jersey who lead the new research.

Continued:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20318175

Paleontologists reveal ancient Arctic ecosystem teeming with life (via Herp Digest)

....populated by prehistoric creatures akin to alligators, hippos and flying lemurs - that prevailed some 40 million years ago in what is now Canada's northernmost landmass: Ellesmere Island.

By Randy Boswell, Postmedia News February 10, 2012

Two Canadian scientists have completed a comprehensive portrait of the lush, rainforest-like ecosystem - populated by prehistoric creatures akin to alligators, hippos and flying lemurs - that prevailed some 40 million years ago in what is now Canada's northernmost landmass: Ellesmere Island.

The study of hundreds of fossilized species, published in the latest issue of the journal Geological Society of America Bulletin, paints a picture of the ancient Arctic that contrasts sharply with the barren and bone-chilling place it is today.

But Ellesmere Island's rugged and windswept terrain, a bleak domain now ruled by the shaggy muskox, was once teeming with a diverse array of plant and animal life in a long-lost world that's only recognizable today from Earth's southern latitudes.

Glimpses of Ellesmere's extinct rainforest have been provided in previous scientific studies, including several by Saskatchewan-born paleontologist Jaelyn Eberle. Now a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and curator of fossil vertebrates at the university's natural history museum, Eberle co-authored the new GSA Bulletin paper with Manitoba scientist David Greenwood, a paleobiologist at Brandon University.

Their exhaustive inventory of the known flora and fauna of the Eocene Arctic, a period that lasted from about 50 million to 38 million years ago, reveals what Eberle calls - in refreshingly unscientific phrasing - "a pretty amazing place" at the northern extreme of the future Canada.

"Who would have guessed we had all of those turtle species and primates living in the ancient Arctic?" Eberle told Postmedia News, adding that, "despite all of the fossil discoveries though, there are still a lot of questions unanswered. The Canadian Arctic was, and still is, the last frontier for paleontology."

Among the unexpected inhabitants of ancient Ellesmere was the coryphodon, a semi-aquatic mammal resembling the modern hippopotamus and known from fossilized bone and teeth found on the High Arctic island.

Even though Ellesmere was situated nearly as close to the North Pole 50 million years ago as it is today, the coryphodon - notable for its massive size and fang-like tusks - lived in temperate, swampy forests that thrived in the greenhouse-heated planet of the Eocene age.

Coryphodon - which stood up to one metre tall at the shoulder, was about two metres long and weighed 500 kilograms or more - was one of the largest mammals on Earth at the time. A herbivore, it fed on flowers, leaves and marsh vegetation in the summer months and ate pine needles and fungus during the long, dark winter months that marked life at Arctic latitudes - both then and now.

Eberle said she studies the Eocene environment partly to compare its evolutionary features with today's Arctic. Although the climate warming that the region is undergoing today is happening on a much lesser scale, the Arctic biosphere has nevertheless begun to exhibit significant shifts in the ranges of certain plants and animals.

"The Eocene Arctic biota is arguably our best 'deep time laboratory' for understanding and predicting the impacts of current and future global warming on today's polar biota," Eberle said.

Eberle and Greenwood's prehistoric portrait of the region includes fossil evidence gathered from nearby Axel Heiberg Island and other sites in the vicinity of Ellesmere Island.

The region's fossil deposits are considered a world-class treasure among vertebrate paleontologists, several of which - including Eberle - recently expressed concerns about a proposed coal-mining project near a popular research site on Ellesmere Island.

In 2010, the controversial proposal - potentially one of the planet's most northerly industrial operations - hit a major roadblock after a Nunavut review agency ruled that "the high likelihood of immitigable impacts" to wildlife and globally significant fossil beds demanded that the project be "modified or abandoned" by its British Columbia-based proponent.

The recommendation was hailed at the time by the U.S.-based Society of Vertebrate Paleontology as a major victory for science.

"The news couldn't be better," society president Blaire Van Valkenburgh said in a March 2010 statement. "This is the strongest possible outcome in our favour."

Less than a year earlier, Eberle had revealed the discovery on of a set of coryphodon teeth on Ellesmere Island that was called potential "smoking-gun" evidence showing how a host of prehistoric mammal species arrived in North America.

Eberle's submission to the review board, later quoted in the agency's report to the federal government, said the island's fossils "are a part of Nunavut's heritage and a legacy for generations of Nunavut children. These fossils, and the clues they reveal about Nunavut's ancient past, are irreplaceable."

Sth America's oldest predator fossil found

Palaeontologists say they have found the fossil of a carnivorous predator that lived more than 260 million years ago and is the oldest unearthed in South America.

"This predator lived nearly 40 million years before the dinosaur and is a precursor to mammifers," said Juan Carlos Cisneros, of the Federal University of Piaui.

The fossil, a complete 35-centimetre skull found in 2008 in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, was restored and analysed by South African and Turkish experts who validated the discovery and published it inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"We are talking about the oldest fossil ever found in South America of a species of the last period of the Palaeozoic era - before the separation of the continents, with characteristics of species only known in South Africa and Russia," says Cisneros.

The remains found are those of a species of dinocephalus, a remote relative of mammifers.

The discovery made it possible to reconstruct the body of the predator believed to have been three meters long and to have weighed 300 kilograms.

It had four big hook-shaped canine teeth (two upper and two lowers) to catch its prey as well as other saw-shaped teeth, says Cisneros.

The species may have walked from South Africa to South America but the long distance to Russia, where similar species have also been found, raises questions as to the shape of the single continent which then made up the world to allow the movement these animals, he added.

The dinocephalus became extinct 250 million years ago along with 90 per cent of species on the planet as a result of volcanic explosions.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/01/19/3411499.htm?site=science&topic=latest

Dinosaur that acted like a Vegas showgirl!

Palaeontologists have claimed that a species of bird-like dinosaur acted like Las Vegas showgirls by wiggling tail feathers to attract mates.

A new research, by the University of Alberta, has found that Oviraptor dinosaurs had a fan of feathers, similar to the fan of a flamenco dancer, attached to a flexible tail, the 'Daily Mail' reported.

They may have flashed these feathers to attract attention in a similar way to the modern-day peacock -- or a Las Vegas showgirl, say the palaeontologists who found that Oviraptors, which lived 75 million years ago, had tails with a peculiarly dense arrangement of bones.

"The tail of an Oviraptor by comparison to the tail of most other dinosaurs is pretty darn short," Scott Persons, who led the research team, said.

He added: "But it's not short in that it's missing a whole bunch of vertebrae, it's short in that the individual vertebra within the tail themselves are sort of squashed together. So they're densely packed.

"This dense arrangement of bones would have made the tails flexible."

Read more ...

10 August 2011 Last updated at 11:04

Giant fossil shows huge birds lived among dinosaurs

The fossilised jawbone is nearly twice the length of that of an ostrich, the largest bird found on Earth today

An enormous jawbone found in Kazakhstan is further evidence that giant birds roamed - or flew above - the Earth at the same time as the dinosaurs.

Writing in Biology Letters, researchers say the new species, Samrukia nessovi, had a skull some 30cm long.

If flightless, the bird would have been 2-3m tall; if it flew, it may have had a wingspan of 4m.

The find is only the second bird of such a size in the Cretaceous geologic period, and the first in Asia.

The only other evidence of a bird of such a size during the period was a fossilised spinal bone found in France and reported in a 1995 paper in Nature.

Sharing space

An overwhelming majority of the birds known from the period would have been about crow-sized, but Dr Darren Naish of the University of Portsmouth said that a second find of an evidently different species suggests that large birds were common at the time.

"This fossil is only known from its lower jaw, so unfortunately we can't say anything at all with certainty about the shape and form of the whole animal.

"If it was flightless and sort of ostrich-shaped, it would have been maybe 2-3m tall and somewhere over 50kg," he explained to BBC News. "If it was a flying animal, then maybe it was shaped like a big albatross or a condor."

Dr Naish also wondered about the dinosaurs with which the enormous birds shared their space.

"I think the really interesting thing is that they're living alongside the big dinosaurs we know were around at the time: big tyrannosaurs, long-necked sauropods, duck-billed dinosaurs," he said. "That opens up loads of questions about ecological interactions that we can only speculate about.

"People have said there weren't big birds when there were big pterosaurs, but now we know there were."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14466814

Bones of elephant ancestors discovered in Oman

Fossil discovered in Dhofar region in south of Oman.

Omani Barytherium was found in Dhofar by a joint team from the Ministry of Heritage and Culture, Stony Brook University, US, and Sultan Qaboos University

Staff Report
Published: 17:13 May 21, 2011

Muscat: A team of geologists from the Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) have confirmed discovery of remains of the oldest ancestors of elephant (Barhtyerium), according to a press release from the university Saturday.

The Omani Barytherium, the first one to be found in Oman, was discovered in Aidum area in Dhofar by a joint team of archaeologists from the Ministry of Heritage and Culture and Stony Brook University, US, and geologists from SQU.

The archaeological team was led by Dr Erick Seifert from the Stony Brook University.

The SQU team of geologists, including Prof Dr Sobhi Nasir and Dr Abdulrahman Al Harthy joined the Heritage Ministry consultant at the site in south of the country and assisted in establishing the discovery.

The joint team found a huge area of elephant bones, known as elephant grabs, and collected large quantities of bones to be identified in a laboratory at the SQU.

The group of researchers from SQU, SBU and the Ministry of Heritage are still working on these bones and are expecting new discoveries in the area.

The team has said that this finding is extremely important as it gives the first evidence of the oldest ancestor of elephant found in the world.

The scientists named the new finding as Barytherium Omansi.

Barytherium (meaning heavy beast) is a genus of an extinct family (Barytheriidae) of primitive proboscidean that lived during the late Eocene and early Oligocene in North Africa. The Barytheriidae were the first large size proboscideans to appear in the fossil records and were characterised by a strong sexual dimorphism.

The only known species within this family is Barytherium grave, found at the beginning of the 20th century in the Fayum, Egypt.

More complete specimens have been found since then, at Dor el Talha Libya. In some respects, these animals would have looked similar to a modern Asian Elephant, but with a more slender build.

Eight tusks

The most visible difference, however, would have been the tusks Barytherium had eight very short tusks, four each in the upper and lower jaws, which resembled those of a modern hippopotamus more than those of an elephant. The upper pairs were vertical, while the lower pairs projected forwards from the mouth horizontally. Together, these would have created a shearing action for cropping plants.

Palaeontologists know a lot more about Barytherium's tusks, which tend to preserve better in the fossil record than soft tissue, than they do about its trunk.

This prehistoric elephant had eight short, stubby tusks, four in its upper jaw and four in its lower jaw, but to date no one has unearthed any evidence for its proboscis (which may or may not have looked like that of a modern elephant).

http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/oman/bones-of-elephant-ancestors-discovered-in-oman-1.810855

On their own 2 feet: 3.2 million-year-old fossil foot bone supports humanlike bipedalism in Lucy's species

February 10, 2011

A fossilized foot bone recovered from Hadar, Ethiopia, shows that by 3.2 million years ago human ancestors walked bipedally with a modern human-like foot, a report that appears Feb. 11 in the journal Science, concludes. The fossil, a fourth metatarsal, or midfoot bone, indicates that a permanently arched foot was present in the species Australopithecus afarensis, according to the report authors, Carol Ward of the University of Missouri, together with William Kimbel and Donald Johanson, of Arizona State University's Institute of Human Origins.

The research helps resolve a long-standing debate between paleoanthropologists who think A. afarensis walked essentially as modern humans do and those who think this species practiced a form of locomotion intermediate between the quadrupedal tree-climbing of chimpanzees and human terrestrial bipedalism. The question of whether A. afarensis had fully developed pedal, or foot, arches has been part of this debate. The fourth metatarsal described in the Science report provides strong evidence for the arches and, the authors argue, support a modern-human style of locomotion for this species. The specimen was recovered from the Hadar locality 333, popularly known as the "First Family Site," the richest source of A. afarensis fossils in eastern Africa, with more than 250 specimens, representing at least 17 individuals, so far known.

"This fourth metatarsal is the only one known of A. afarensis and is a key piece of evidence for the early evolution of the uniquely human way of walking," says Kimbel. "The ongoing work at Hadar is producing rare parts of the skeleton that are absolutely critical for understanding how our species evolved."

Humans, uniquely among primates, have two arches in their feet, longitudinal and transverse, which are composed of the midfoot bones and supported by muscles in the sole of the foot. During bipedal locomotion, these arches perform two critical functions: leverage when the foot pushes off the ground and shock absorption when the sole of the foot meets the ground at the completion of the stride. Ape feet lack permanent arches, are more flexible than human feet and have a highly mobile large toe, important attributes for climbing and grasping in the trees. None of these apelike features are present in the foot of A. afarensis.

"Understanding that the foot arches appeared very early in our evolution shows that the unique structure of our feet is fundamental to human locomotion," observes Ward. "If we can understand what we were designed to do and how natural selection shaped the human skeleton, we can gain insight into how our skeletons work today. Arches in our feet were just as important for our ancestors as they are for us."

This species, whose best-known specimen is "Lucy," lived in eastern Africa 3.0𔃁.8 million years ago. Prior to A. afarensis, the species A. anamensis was present in Kenya and Ethiopia from 4.2 to 4.0 million years ago, but its skeleton is not well known. At 4.4 million years ago, Ethiopia's Ardipithecus ramidus is the earliest human ancestor well represented by skeletal remains. Although Ardipithecus appears to have been a part-time terrestrial biped, its foot retains many features of tree-dwelling primates, including a divergent, mobile first toe. The foot of A. afarensis, as with other parts of its skeleton, is much more like that of living humans, implying that by the time of Lucy, our ancestors no longer depended on the trees for refuge or resources.

The Hadar project is the longest running paleoanthropology field program in the Ethiopian rift valley, now spanning more than 38 years. Since 1973, the fieldwork at Hadar has produced more than 370 fossil specimens of Australopithecus afarensis between 3.4 and 3.0 million years ago – one of the largest collections of a single fossil hominin species in Africa – as well as one of the earliest known fossils of Homo and abundant Oldowan stone tools (ca. 2.3 million).

Through ASU's Institute of Human Origins, the Hadar project plays an important role in training Ethiopian scholars by offering graduate degree and postdoctoral opportunities in the U.S. Promotion of local awareness of the global scientific importance and Ethiopian cultural heritage value of the Hadar site is also a project priority. Additionally, the fundraising phase of a planned "Hadar Interpretive Center" at Eloaha town, 30 kilometers from the site, was successfully completed in January 2011.

Provided by Arizona State University (news : web)

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-02-feet-million-year-old-fossil-foot-bone.html

Dinosaur species named for Boise State postdoctoral student and her twin sister

Idaho Statesman
Published: 02/08/11

Boisean Celina Suarez and her twin sister, Marina, had always hoped they'd find dinosaur bones in the backyard of their childhood home in San Antonio, Texas.

The pair never found any dinosaur bones behind their home. But they have found dinosaur bones -- more than once. It was their find in Utah in 2004 that led to the naming of a new species of dinosaur after the sisters, both now 29-year-old geochemists doing post-doctoral research.

"We're very honored," said Celina Suarez, who is doing research at Boise State University. Her sister, Marina, is a researcher at Johns Hopkins University. The sisters are identical, mirror-image twins ("She's a leftie, and I'm a rightie," Celina said.)

At the time of their big find, they were both Temple University master's students working on a summer excavation project near Green River, Utah, with the Utah Geological Survey. While investigating the sediment near the site, they came across a gulley with rocks that had bones sticking out.

"There were toe bones and limb bones. We collected a few that were in danger of getting washed away. The next morning, we scoured the hillside for more limb bones," Celina Suarez said.

Later, after more excavation and study of the bones from the site, researchers determined that the bones came from at least three different dinosaur species, including skull bones from a raptor-like species considered to be the oldest known member of the family Troodontidae and the only one from the Early Cretaceous period ever found in North America (98 to 145 million years ago).

"When we first found the Utah site we knew it was significant, but we had no idea we would become part of history," Celina Suarez said.

That newly discovered dinosaur needed a name, so the team of researchers who published the first paper describing it named it after the Suarez sisters: Geminiraptor suarezarum (Gemini is Latin for twins). It is one of about 700 named species of dinosaur.

Celina Suarez said she found out the dinosaur species would be named for her and her sister in November, after reading a draft paper by Jim Kirkland, John Bird, Phil Senter and Jeff Bartlett (later published in Public Library Science Journal).

Suarez said Geminiraptor suarezarum was close to the size of an ostrich. She estimates it at about 125 million years old.

"It wasn't super-big," she said. "Unfortunately, not a whole lot of the animal had been found - just the skull."

Celina Suarez now specializes in geochemical paleontology. She analyzes the chemical makeup of ancient bones as it relates to the original biology of an animal and the geology of the environment that became its tomb.

Her work is being funded by a two-year, $170,000 National Science Foundation fellowship. Using bone specimens from Hagerman and the Idaho Museum of Natural History, she will examine the chemical and physical processes of fossilization.

Suarez is preparing for a summer trip to China, where she will examine dig sites with scientists from the Chinese Geological Academy of Sciences and the University of Pennsylvania.

http://www.idahostatesman.com/2011/02/07/1518461/dinosaur-species-named-for-boise.html

Two-clawed and parrot-sized: new T.rex cousin unveiled

25 January 2011
By Neil Bowdler
Science reporter, BBC News

A tiny distant cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex has been discovered in China with only a single claw on each forelimb.

Linhenykus monodactylus weighed no more than a large parrot and was found in sediments between 84 and 75 million years old.

The dinosaur belongs to a sub-branch of the theropods, the dinosaur group which includes T.rex and Velociraptor, and which gave rise to modern birds.

Details are published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The new species was named after the Chinese city of Linhe, Inner Mongolia, near where its fossilised remains was uncovered in what is called the Upper Cretaceous Wulansuhai Formation.

The international team found a partial skeleton, including bones of the vertebrae, forelimb, hind limbs, and a partial pelvis

It is part of the Alvarezsauroidea family of theropods, a group of small, long-legged dinosaurs, known for their strange and tiny arms.

Michael Pittman of University College London, who was part of the team, says the animal would hardly have been intimidating.

"You'd see a very small animal, probably below your hip height, with a very small skull. It's not very threatening because its teeth are very small compared to other carnivorous dinosaurs and there's some evidence it may have been an insectivore," he told the BBC.

What is striking is the animal's unusual claws.

"Non-avian theropods start with five fingers but evolved to have only three fingers in later forms," he says. "Tyrannosaurs were unusual in having just two fingers but the one-fingered Linhenykus shows how extensive and complex theropod hand modifications really were."
 
Disappearing fingers

The suggestion is that this mono-digit theropod may represent the end of one evolutionary pathway, in which unused digits disappear as part of a process of natural selection.

"Vestigial structures, like legs in whales and snakes, may appear and disappear seemingly randomly in the course of evolution," says Jonah Choiniere of the American Museum of Natural History, who also worked on the find.

"Linhenykus highlights complexity in evolution of these vestigial fingers."

Dr Paul Barrett of London's Natural History Museum said the discovery was a "nice specimen" to add to a sub-group already known for its weirdness.

"Alvarezsauroids are already known to be an unusual group of theropods with very bizarre hands used primarily for digging, and this new find confirms there was some variation in how weird these hands were."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12262349
(Submitted by Dawn Holloway)

Fossil female pterosaur found with preserved egg

21 January 2011
By Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent, BBC News

For fossil hunters, it represents one of those breakthrough moments.

A pterosaur has been found in China beautifully preserved with an egg.

The egg indicates this ancient flying reptile was a female, and that realisation has allowed researchers to sex these creatures for the first time.

Writing in Science magazine, the palaeontologists make some broad statements about differences in pterosaurs, including the observation that only males sported a head-crest.

David Unwin, a palaeobiologist in the Department of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester, was part of the research team.

He told the BBC the discovery was astonishing: "If somebody had said to me a few years back that we would find this kind of association, I would just have laughed and said, 'yeah, maybe in a million years', because these sorts of things are incredibly rare."

Pterosaurs, also sometimes referred to as pterodactyls, dominated the skies in the Mesozoic Era, 220-65 million years ago. Although reptiles like the dinosaurs were plodding on the ground below them, they were not actually dinosaurs themselves - a common misconception.

This particular specimen has been dated to about 160 million years ago.

It was found by Junchang Lü and colleagues and excavated from sedimentary rocks in the famous fossil-hunting grounds of Liaoning Province in China. Liaoning has yielded many of the great finds in recent years, including a series of feathered dinos that have transformed thinking on bird evolution.

The new creature is from the Darwinopterus genus, or grouping, but has been dubbed simply as "Mrs T" (a contraction of "Mrs Pterodactyl") by the research team.

The state of the egg's shell suggests it was well developed and that Mrs T must have been very close to laying it when she died.

She appears to have had some sort of accident as her left forearm is broken. The researchers speculate she may have fallen from the sky during a storm or perhaps a volcanic eruption, sunk to the bottom of a lake and then been preserved in the sediments.

"The most important thing about this particular individual is that she has a relatively large pelvis compared to other individuals of the same pterosaur, Darwinopterus," explained Dr Unwin.

"This seems quite reasonable - females lay eggs, they probably need a slightly wider pelvis. And then the really exciting thing is that she has a skull which lacks any kind of adornment or decoration whatsoever. When we look at other individuals of Darwinopterus, we find quite a few individuals with a large crest on the skull.

"We're very confident now that we're dealing with two genders here - males with big crests and small hips, and females with no crest on the skull and large hips."

More at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12242596
(Submitted by Dawn Holloway)

Sabretooth cats threatened most ancient human ancestor

3 January 2011
By Paul Rincon Science reporter, BBC News

Humankind's oldest known ancestor probably lived in fear of several large sabretooth cats that roamed the same ancient lakeside habitat in Africa.

Palaeontologists have identified two new sabretooth species among fossils unearthed at Toros Menalla in Chad.

In 2001, a team unearthed remains of a seven million-year-old human-like creature - or hominid - known as "Toumai" at the central African site.

Its discoverers argue that Toumai is the oldest hominid known to science.

The fossilised skull of Toumai (which means "hope of life" in the local Dazaga language of Chad) was found in the Djurab desert by a team led by Michael Brunet of the University of Poitiers, France.

The position of a hole at the bottom of the skull called the foramen magnum suggests that Toumai (Sahelanthropus tchadensis) walked upright - an important signature of the human lineage.

The brainstem enters and exits the skull through this hole; in great apes, it is positioned more towards the back of the skull. But in hominids - including Toumai - it is placed more towards the front of the skull.

The ancient fossil caused a worldwide sensation when it was unveiled in the pages of Nature journal in 2002.

However, the interpretation of Toumai as a human relative is controversial. The skull was distorted and, if any other parts of the skeleton happen to exist, none has yet been published in the scientific literature. It is also older than the date when genetics says that the human and chimp lineages diverged.

Predator's playground

Nevertheless, palaeontologists have been busy studying the abundant fossil material unearthed at the site, steadily building a picture of the environment in which Sahelanthropus eked out its existence.

In Late Miocene times, this area of Chad must have had a lake, because palaeontologists have found the fossilised remains of fish, amphibians and crocodiles.

But they have also found evidence of grasslands, gallery forest and a desert.

Researchers have discovered the fossilised remains of a wide variety of carnivorous mammals at Toros Menalla. Ending up in the sharp jaws of a predator must have been an ever-present threat for primates like Toumai.

Palaentologists had already reported finding remains of a large sabretooth cat from Toros Menalla known as Machairodus kabir which weighed in at 350-490kg.

Writing in the journal Comptes Rendus Palevol, Louis de Bonis from Poitiers University and colleagues add two new sabretooth species to the growing list of carnivores that stalked this region of central Africa in late Miocene times.

The big cat remains were unearthed during recent field expeditions and have been identified as new species belonging to the genus Lokotunjailurus and the genus Megantereon.

Forest refuge

Patrick Vignaud, director of Poitier University's Institute of Palaeo-primatology and Human Palaeontology, told BBC News the cats were about the same size as modern lions.

"With our present data, we don't know what precisely the interactions were between a primate and a big carnivore. But probably these interactions were not so friendly," said Professor Vignaud.

He told BBC News: "Sabretooths hunted all mammals; bovids, equids... and primates. The interactions were also more 'psychological', exercising a stress on potential prey. We can't prove it but it's probably important because in that case, primates had to live near closed environments like gallery forest."

While ancient primates like Sahelanthropus tchadensis gave sabretooth cats a wide berth, they may also have depended on these big carnivores - and others - for their survival.

Sabretooths would have hunted large herbivorous mammals, and probably left enough meat on their kills for scavengers like the jackal-sized Hyaenictherium and perhaps even primates like Sahelanthropus.

Some researchers have proposed that Toumai is more closely related to chimpanzees or gorillas. Even if this were the case, the discovery would be of great significance, as virtually no fossil ancestors of these great apes are known from Africa.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11979934

Rockies fossils yield 8 new species

This is the claw of Stanleycaris, a predatory species newly discovered at the Stanley Glacier fossil field. It was a primitive arthropod, the group of jointed-legged animals that includes insects, spiders and crabs. The claw is about 3 centimetres long and the entire animal was probably less than 20 centimetres in size. (Jean-Bernard Caron/Royal Ontario Museum)

A surprise fossil field at a glacier in B.C.'s Kootenay National Park contains at least eight new species that lived 505 million years ago.

Jean-Bernard Caron, curator of invertebrate paleontology at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum, said the new arthropods (the group to which crabs and insects belong) and worms were found in an environment where paleontologists previously believed fossils could not be preserved or found.

The discovery means paleontologists might be able to find new fossils in similar environments that they had previously ignored.

"It opens up, I guess, a new terrain to explore," said Caron, who returned Thursday from a followup expedition to similar sites. "I think the chance to find new fossils in the future … will expand dramatically."

Descriptions of the new fossil field and the new species collected two years ago were published in the September issue of the journal Geology.

Fossils were first collected by a hiker walking on a trail near the Stanley Glacier in the park in the 1990s. The hiker contacted the Royal Ontario Museum, which sent researchers to collect fallen rock debris in the park in 1996.

Caron examined the rocks when he began working at the museum in 2006 and noticed that the fossils seemed to appear in a type of Rocky Mountain shale rock that hadn't been known for fossils before.

The rock dates back 505 million years ago, to the Middle Cambrian period — the same one represented by the Burgess Shale, which is located in the Rockies of Yoho National Park and considered one of the most important fossil fields in the world.

The Burgess Shale, located 40 kilometres northwest of the new fossil field, was once at the foot of an undersea cliff in tropical waters. Researchers believed the cliff provided an ideal environment for a diverse community of animals, and its harder rock prevented the fossil in the softer mud of the sea floor from being crushed by geological forces in hundreds of millions of years that followed.

The Stanley Glacier site represents a similar undersea environment, but with no evidence of any cliff nearby. It seems to have been above the Burgess Shale cliff.

Caron led a two-week expedition to the site in 2008, where researchers collected 2,000 specimens. Many of the species were previously known from other sites like the Burgess Shale, although some specimens were better preserved than any known before. However, eight were new, including a primitive arthropod predator that would have grabbed prey with its claws. It was named Stanleycaris after the glacier.

Caron said that's a lot of new species, considering that just 200 species have been discovered among more than 200,000 specimens collected from the Burgess Shale. He suggested the newly discovered animals may have been specifically adapted to that environment.

This August, Caron and his team went to look for similar sites along the same geological formation in the Rockies that yielded the Stanley Glacier site. They didn't find any new fossils this time, but plan to go back in the future.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/09/03/bc-kootenay-fossil-stanley-glacier.html#ixzz0yU4HvkOL

Scientists find 'oldest' dog remains

Published: 2 Aug 10 17:44 CET

German scientists have found that fragments of a dog's skull and teeth discovered in a cave in Switzerland date back more than 14,000 years in what could be the oldest known remains of man's best friend.

The fossils were among a haul of archaeological finds uncovered in 1873 in the Kesslerloch cave in northern Switzerland, Swiss news agency ATS said Monday. But it was only last year that researchers at Germany's Tübingen University took a closer look at them, it said.

"During a recent re-analysis of the faunal remains, we identified a cranial fragment and teeth of the domestic dog," the researchers said in an article in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology.

"The large maxillar fragment was directly dated to ...14,100-14,600 BP (Before Present)," it said.

"We argue that the maxilla fragment must now be considered the earliest indisputable directly dated evidence of a domestic dog," they said.

Belgian archaeologists have claimed to have found the cranium of a dog dating back 30,000 years, but researcher Hannes Napierala told ATS: "We are sceptical because the teeth are very similar to those of a wolf."

The fragment found in the cave in Switzerland's Schaffhausen canton, however, was clearly distinct from remains of wolves, the scientists said.

http://www.thelocal.de/sci-tech/20100802-28901.html

Divers find ancient monkey fossil

By Victoria Gill Science reporter, BBC News

Scientists have examined fossilised remains of a tiny, extinct monkey that were retrieved from an underwater cave in the Dominican Republic.

The researchers believe the fossil to be around 3,000 years old, but say the species itself could be very ancient.

This reveals clues about the origin of primates in the region.

It also suggests that many ecologically valuable treasures could be discovered by the unusual field of "underwater palaeontology".

Dr Alfred Rosenberger from Brooklyn College in New York, US, led the examination of the creature's bones, the results of which were published in the Royal Society journal Proceedings B.

He explained that the bones, which included a skull that was almost complete, were found by a team of scuba divers who were exploring an underwater cave in the area.

"It's miraculous that they even saw it," he told BBC News.

"When they discovered it, they were fearful the bones were exposed, so they moved the material to a little nook to protect it."

Having sought official permission to remove the fossil from the cave, Dr Rosenberger returned to with the scuba divers to retrieve it in October of last year.

The divers packed the skeleton into tupperware boxes in order to bring it safely to the surface.

'Stout little monkey'

Dr Rosenberger said the monkey - only the second specimen of the species Antillothrix bernensis ever found - probably measured about 30cm (12in) from head to toe.

But the shape of the legs came as a surprise.

"Its femur or thigh bone was very thick. So it had sort of stout legs, which is something we didn't expect.

"We don't really have any living examples of New World monkeys that have stout legs like that."

Dr Rosenberger thinks the creature went extinct relatively recently.

He said that it may have behaved similarly to a koala - clinging to the trunks of trees, rather than leaping from branch to branch.

"That's a very rough analogy, he said.

"But there's something very interesting about the ecological niche it inhabited."

The fossil also adds to evidence that there were several lineages of primates in the Caribbean, instead of one ancestor that moved into the region millions of years ago from which all modern species evolved.

Dr Rosenberger said it was likely that several species travelled "over the water" to inhabit the island of Hispaniola.

"And even though these particular bones might be relatively young, we're pretty sure that the arrival of these animals occurred well over 10 million years ago.

"That's an exciting part of the story - if you compare the dental remains of our monkey to other fossils that we know of, we see strong similarities with Patagonian fossils that are around 15 million years old."

Dr Sam Turvey, a researcher from the Zoological Society of London in the UK, said the discovery emphasised how much we still had to learn about the "original mammal fauna" of the Caribbean.

"It's now possible to reconstruct what this mysterious animal looked like and how it evolved," he said.

"The Caribbean islands have experienced the world's highest level of mammalian extinction over the past 10,000 years.

"With this improved knowledge of a recently extinct species, it might be possible to understand what caused it to disappear from Hispaniola."

'Sea monster' whale fossil unearthed

RIGHT: Leviathan was an aggressive 17m-long predator which may have preyed on other whales

Wednesday, 30 June 2010 18:02 UK

Researchers have discovered the fossilised remains of an ancient whale with huge, fearsome teeth.

Writing in the journal Nature, the scientists have dubbed the 12 million-year-old creature "Leviathan".

It is thought to have been more than 17m long, and might have engaged in fierce battles with other giant sea creatures from the time.

Leviathan was much like the modern sperm whale in terms of size and appearance.

But that is where the similarity ends. While the sperm whale is a relatively passive animal, sucking in squid from the depths of the ocean, Leviathan was an aggressive predator.

According to Dr Christian de Muizon, director of the Natural History Museum in Paris, Leviathan could have hunted out and fed on large sea creatures such as dolphins, seals and even other whales.

"It was a kind of a sea monster," he said.

"And it's interesting to note that at the same time in the same waters was another monster, which was a giant shark about 15m long. It's possible that they might have fought each other".

The researchers speculate that Leviathan was able to feed on very large prey up to 8m long. It would catch the prey in its huge jaws and tear it apart quickly and effectively with its giant teeth.

A 3m-long fossilised skull of the creature was discovered by researchers in southern Peru in 2008. Dr de Muizon's student, Olivier Lambert was among them.

"It was the last day of our field trip when one of our colleagues came and told us that he thought he'd found something very interesting. So we joined him and he showed it to us," he said.

"We immediately saw that it was a very large whale and when we looked closer we saw it was a giant sperm whale with huge teeth."

The teeth were more than twice the length and diameter of those found in modern sperm whales and they were on the upper and lower jaws.

Sperm whales only have teeth on their lower jaw.

Dr Lambert and his colleagues had speculated that such a fierce creature might once have existed on the basis of discoveries of individual teeth.

Now, the discovery of the skull means that the Leviathan is not merely the stuff of myth and legend.

"Finally we found it," said Dr Lambert. " It was a very exciting moment".

The researchers do not know why this ancient whale died out. They speculate that the ecology and environment changed so that the creature had to change its feeding habits.

That may have led to the emergence of today's much gentler sperm whales, with the carnivorous niche filled by killer whales as conditions swung back again.

The authors of the report in Nature, who are all whale experts, are fans of the novel Moby Dick, which involves a ferocious white sperm whale.

So taken are they with the novel that they decided to dedicate their discovery to the author, Herman Melville, and give the creature its full scientific name of Leviathan melvillei.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/science_and_environment/10461066.stm

New Species of Ancient Flying Reptile Discovered

A pterosaur that flew above what is now the Dallas-Fort Worth area (which was covered by a sea millions of years ago) was identified from its fossilized jaw. Credit: Southern Methodist University.

By Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience Managing Editor
posted: 29 April 2010 10:08 am ET

An ancient reptile with a 9-foot wingspan was soaring over the sea in what is now North Texas some 95 million years ago when – plop – it fell into the water and died.

That paleo-death tale comes from a fossilized jaw that was discovered embedded in soft, powdery shale that had been exposed by excavation of a hillside next to a highway in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in 2006.

Analysis of the jaw now suggests it belongs to a new-to-science genus and species of flying reptile or pterosaur, now called Aetodactylus halli after its discoverer Lance Hall, a member of the Dallas Paleontological Society who hunts fossils for a hobby.

"I was scanning the exposure and noticed what at first I thought was a piece of oyster shell spanning across a small erosion valley," Hall said. "Only about an inch or two was exposed. I almost passed it up thinking it was oyster, but realized it was more tan-colored like bone. I started uncovering it and realized it was the jaw to something — but I had no idea what. It was upside down and when I turned over the snout portion it was nothing but a long row of teeth sockets, which was very exciting."

Paleontologists later told Hall it was a pterosaur (a group of flying reptiles commonly referred to as pterodactyls) and an important find. Such "winged lizards," as their name suggests, are thought to have dominated the skies from more than 200 million years ago until the mass extinction event 65 million years ago that wiped them out along with most dinosaurs and many other plants and animals.

A. halli is also one of the youngest members of the pterosaur family Ornithocheiridae.

The mandible, which is about 15 inches (38 centimeters) long, originally contained 54 slender, pointed teeth, but only two remained in their sockets when discovered, according to paleontologist Timothy S. Myers of Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, who identified and named the animal.

From the way the teeth were spaced, the researchers suspect the upper and lower teeth interlaced when the jaws were closed. Just the fact that this pterosaur had teeth was somewhat surprising as all North American pterosaurs were toothless from that time period, except for Coloborhynchus.

When A. halli was alive, much of Texas was cloaked by the Western Interior Seaway – the massive sea that split North America from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean. On shore, the terrain was flat and dotted with flowering plants, according to paleobotanist Bonnie Jacobs, associate professor of Earth Sciences at SMU.

"There were still conifers and ferns as well, but mostly of the sort that had tiny needle leaves, like junipers," Jacobs said. "Sycamores and their relatives would have been among the flowering plants."

The team describes the flying reptile in the latest issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

http://www.livescience.com/animals/flying-reptile-pterosaur-100429.html

'Gigantic' scorpion fossil found in Fife

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/8632427.stm

'Gigantic' scorpion fossil found in Fife

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 water 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.

The tracks were discovered by Dr Martin Whyte from the University of Sheffield while he was out walking.

Scottish Natural Heritage, which is funding the project, described the find as unique and internationally important because the creature was gigantic.

It said the fossil would be moulded in silicone so that more people could see and research it.

Richard Batchelor from Geoheritage Fife, said: "The trackway is in a precarious situation, having been exposed for years to weathering.

"The rock in which it occurs is in danger of falling off altogether.

"Removing it and housing it in a museum would be prohibitively costly but moulding it in silicone rubber and making copies for educational and research purposes means that we can still see and research this huge creature's tracks in years to come."

The animal, which is related to modern-day scorpions and horseshoe crabs, was about two metres long and about one metre wide.

'Geological treasures'

The trackway, which is preserved in sandstone, consists of three rows of crescent shaped footprints on each side of a central groove.

The groove was made by the tail of the animal as it dragged over the sand.

This contrasts previous fossil evidence which suggested that the creatures lived in the water for most, if not all of the time.

SNH geologist Colin MacFadyen said: "Helping to conserve this important find is vital for our understanding of this period in evolution.

"Such finds as this highlight that all over Scotland there are no doubt other geological treasures awaiting discovery."

__._,_.___

Missing link between man and apes found in South Africa

In a find that could rewrite the history of human evolution, palaeontologists claim to have found the "missing link" between humans and their apelike ancestors.

An international team has found a two-million-year-old skeleton of a child, which it claims belongs to a new species of hominid that may have been an intermediate stage as apemen evolved into advanced humans known as Homo habilis.

According to the palaeontologists, the skeleton shares characteristics with Homo habilis, whose emergence 2.5 million years ago is seen as a key stage in the evolution of humans. The team, led by Lee Berger of the University of Witwatersrand, found the skeleton while exploring cave systems in the Sterkfontein region of South Africa, near Johannesburg, an area known as "the Cradle of Humanity".

Phillip Tobias, an eminent human anatomist and anthropologist at the university who was one of three experts to first identify Homo habilis as a new species of human in 1964, described the discovery as "wonderful" and "exciting".

"To find a skeleton as opposed to a couple of teeth or an arm bone is a rarity. It is one thing to find a lower jaw with a couple of teeth, but it is another thing to find the jaw joined onto the skull, and those in turn uniting further down with the spinal column, pelvis and the limb bones.

"It is not a single find, but several specimens representing several individuals. The remains now being brought to light by Dr Berger and his team are wonderful", the Daily Telegraph quoted him as saying.

The skeleton was found along with a number of other partially complete fossils, encased within breccia rock inside a limestone cave known as Malapa cave. Simon Underdown, an expert on human evolution, said the new finding could help scientists gain a better understanding of our evolutionary tree.

The discovery is the most important find from Sterkfontein since an almost-complete fossil of a 3.3-million- year-old Australopithecus, nicknamed Little Foot, was found in 1994.

PTI

Researchers from the University of Zurich discover new type of hominid

Researchers from the University of Zurich discover new type of hominid
06 April 2010 Zurich, University of

An international team with researchers from the University of Zurich is writing on the development history of humanity. They have discovered a new type of hominid in South Africa. The fossils with an age of about 1.9 million years show features of both the Australopithecus and the homo species. The new type of hominid,
Australopithecus sediba, could therefore be an ancestor of the homo species. The formerly unknown transitional form, which is being introduced in the latest edition of Science, is supplying new findings for the genealogy of the human being.

On 15th August 2008, Matthew Berger, the young son of the paleoanthropologist Lee Berger, found the fragment of a human-type clavicle in South Africa. The first excavation team to work on the new site in Malapa, north of Johannesburg, was the Swiss Field School of the Anthropological Institute of the University of Zurich under the leadership of Peter Schmid. In the meantime, the Zurich-based excavation team has found more than 180 elements of at least four individuals who could be ancestors, unrecognised until now, of the human being.

Peter Schmid and his research colleagues from the University of the Witwatersrand, the Texas A&M University, Duke University and James Cook University have now described two figures in the latest edition of Science. The adolescent individual is comprised of fragments of a skull and lower jaw as well as a partial skeleton. The adult is made up of individual teeth, fragments of the lower jaw and a partial skeleton. "These skeletons are better preserved and more complete than that of the well-known Lucy", states Peter Schmid from the Anthropological Institute of the University of Zurich.

Australopithecus sediba

Peter Schmid goes on to say: "The fossils are between 1.78 and 1.95 million years old". The discoveries do not fit any kind of hominids known until now - they therefore form a new milestone in the history of humanity. On the basis of the age and morphology, the researchers are cautiously allocating the new type of hominid to the
Australopithecus species. They have given it the name of Australopithecus sediba, which means "water-well" or "spring" in the seSotho language. The Australopithecines encompass various types such as the Australopithecus africanus, the Australopithecus afarensis or the Australopithecus garhi. They appeared a good 4 million years ago and died out approximately 1.4 to 1.5 million years ago. They have only been found on the African continent, and from them developed the homo species, and thus the Homo sapiens.

A small skull with similarity to the homo

As Peter Schmid and his colleagues write in Science, the new kind of hominid has a relatively small skull - a typical feature of the Australopithecus. The capacity of the skull amounts to only 420 cubic centimetres and is significantly smaller than that of the Australopithecus africanus with an average of 480 cubic centimetres.

On the other hand, the outline of the face differs from the Australopithecus africanus through narrower cheekbones and the contour of the upper jaw which runs diagonally downwards. The lower jaw shows no sign of a fleeing chin and the canine tooth is rather narrow and small. The pectoral girdle equates to the typical
Australopithecus pattern: The joint of the shoulder-blade is clearly directed upwards and the alar edge is very strong. The ends of the joints of the upper arm are massive. The lower arm bones are long, similar to those of monkeys. The finger bones are robust, curved and have strong contact points for the tendons of the flexors which indicates strong climbing hands.

Numerous characteristics of the thighs, the knee joints and the ankle joints lead to the presumption that Australopithecus sediba moved in a similar way to the other Australopithecines. The ankle joint and the heel bone are shaped in such a way that the foot was able to be turned more strongly towards the inside, which is an advantage when climbing. However, the hominids could stand upright on the ground and walk on two legs. The bones of the legs nevertheless seem to be longer than those of the Australopithecines.

A transitional form

"The entire build of the body corresponds to that of a type of human in the Australopithecine adaptation stage", says Peter Schmid. He believes that the Australopithecus sediba is a descendant of the Australopithecus africanus. On the other hand, some characteristics of the musculoskeletal system permit the conclusion that this new type shows more special features of the earlier representations of the homo species than all the other Australopithecus types. The pelvis, for example, corresponds much more to that of the homo. In addition, the Malapa skull shows several similarities with the Homo erectus.

Up until now, there has been no certain connection between the Australopithecus and homo species. "Our type of hominid could be an ancestral form of the homo species", says Peter Schmid. It is also possible that it is a close relation of that kind of ancestor which, for a period of time, existed alongside the first representatives of
the homo species. The skeletons from Malapa in any case show a transitional form of a hominid which was small in size and lived more in the trees to a two-legged species that possibly lived on the ground, for example the Homo erectus.

http://www.mediadesk.uzh.ch

Full bibliographic information

Lee R. Berger, Darryl J. de Ruiter, Steven E. Churchill, Peter Schmid, Kristian J. Carlson, Paul H.G.M. Dirks and Job M. Kibii: Australopithecus sediba: a New Species of Homo-like Australopith from South Africa, in: Science, 9th April 2010, Vol 327, issue 5974

Paul H.G.M. Dirks; Job M. Kibii; Brian F. Kuhn; Christine Steininger; Steven E. Churchill; Jan D. Kramers; Robyn Pickering; Daniel L. Farber; Anne-Sophie Mériaux; Andy I.R. Herries; Geoffrey C.P. King; Lee R. Berger. “Geological Setting and Age of Australopithecus sediba from Southern Africa” Science vol 328, 9 de abril de 2010