Latest news with #fossils
The Independent
3 days ago
- Science
- The Independent
Fossils of ancient shark species discovered in Kentucky cave
Fossils of an ancient shark species have been discovered in a Kentucky cave, officials announced during Shark Week. The Discovery Channel isn't the only one educating shark lovers this week. Mammoth Cave National Park recently announced the discovery of an ancient shark species with unique teeth. The ancient shark species, known as Macadens olsoni, 'is notable for its unique tooth whorl, a curved row of teeth designed for crushing small sea creatures,' Mammoth Cave said in a press release issued Thursday. The shark species likely grew to less than a foot long and probably ate mollusks and worms, according to the park. The fossils were found in the Ste. Genevieve Formation, which dates back to around 340 million years ago, when Mammoth Cave was submerged in a warm, shallow sea. 'This discovery is a remarkable addition to our understanding of ancient marine life and underscores the importance of preserving and studying our natural history,' Mammoth Cave Superintendent Barclay Trimble said. The shark species was named after Mammoth Cave and Rickard Olson, a retired park scientist, 'who played a crucial role in documenting shark fossils in the park as part of a recent Paleontological Resource Inventory', according to the park. 'This finding not only enhances our knowledge of ancient marine ecosystems but also emphasizes the critical role of paleontological research in our national parks,' Trimble said. He added: 'Every discovery connects the past with the present and offers invaluable educational opportunities for students and the public.' At least 70 species of ancient fish from more than 25 caves and cave passages have been identified at Mammoth Cave, including more than 40 species of sharks and relatives.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
My Donkey Kong Bananza playthrough is being haunted by the remains of numerous iconic enemies and allies from classics like Donkey Kong Country
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Donkey Kong Bananza has seemingly confirmed the demise of many beloved characters in the Donkey Kong Country series thanks to the in-game fossils. Donkey Kong Bananza seems to be playing things very loose with the timeline, thanks to the inclusion of Pauline as a young girl, despite her being kidnapped by Donkey Kong's grandfather, who features in-game as an old ape. But now that players have their hands on it, there's another huge implication for the lore, that being that some of Donkey Kong's greatest allies are dead. Donkey Kong Bananza features several types of collectibles, with fossils serving as the currency for the in-game style shop. You find Fossils in each layer of the world, with the main layers having three different types in terms of rarity. While these start as typical fossils like dinosaurs and ammonites, they quickly get sinister. The Forest Layer is where the game starts taking no prisoners, as you'll quickly find the remains of the DKC enemy Gnawty, which I suppose is not a huge deal, considering DK himself dispatched a lot of them in the old days, but I took it pretty hard, to tell the truth. But then that Layer's medium fossil is Professor Chops, the glasses-wearing pig who helps the kongs out at every checkpoint in DKC Returns and Tropical Freeze (although a Reddit post was quick to say "he won't be missed"). Finally, the giant fossil found on this layer is perhaps the most devastating, as it reveals the massive remains of DKC2's animal buddy, Squitter the Spider, complete with his trainers. This continues throughout the game as the Tempest Layer features the remains of one of the most beloved friends, Enguarde the Swordfish, alongside the likes of the Banana birds. Not only is it truly devastating to know that some of DK's closest allies are gone, but his finding their remains only makes things that much worse... although trading their remains for new fits has some moral implications I'm not sure I want to think about. Nintendo is probably regretting those Switch 2 mouse controls as players flock to Donkey Kong Bananza's artist mode to create penises and other cursed sculptures.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Fossils unearthed in Grand Canyon reveal new details of evolutionary explosion of life
Paleontologists have discovered remarkable fossils in the Grand Canyon that reveal fresh details about the emergence of complex life half a billion years ago. The newfound remains of fauna from the region suggest that it offered ideal conditions for life to flourish and diversify, in a 'Goldilocks zone' between harsh extremes elsewhere. This evolutionary opportunity produced a multitude of early animals, including oddballs with peculiar adaptations for survival, according to new research. During the Cambrian explosion, which played out in the coastal waters of Earth's oceans about 540 million years ago, most animal body types that exist today emerged in a relatively short time span, scientists believe. Back then, the Grand Canyon was closer to the equator, and the region was covered by a warm, shallow sea teeming with burgeoning life — aquatic creatures resembling modern-day shrimp, pill bugs and slugs — all developing new ways to exploit the abundant resources. Researchers turned to the Grand Canyon's layers of sedimentary rock to unlock secrets of this pivotal moment in the history of life, digging into the flaky, claylike shale of the Bright Angel Formation where most of the canyon's Cambrian-era fossils have been found. The study team expected to recover mostly the fossilized remains of hard-shelled invertebrates typical of the region. Instead, the team unearthed something unusual: rocks containing well-preserved internal fragments of tiny soft-bodied mollusks, crustaceans, and priapulids, also known as penis worms. 'With these kinds of fossils, we can better study their morphology, their appearance, and their lifestyle in much greater resolution, which is not possible with the shelly parts,' said Giovanni Mussini, the first author of the study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. 'It's a new kind of window on Cambrian life in the Grand Canyon.' Using high-powered microscopes, the team was able to investigate innovations such as miniature chains of teeth from rock-scraping mollusks and the hairy limbs and molars of filter-feeding crustaceans, providing a rare look into the biologically complex ways Cambrian animals adapted to capture and eat prey. The 'Goldilocks zone' for innovation For most of the planet's 4 billion-year history, simplicity reigned. Single-celled microbes remained stationary on the ocean floor, thriving on chemical compounds such as carbon dioxide and sulfur molecules to break down food. What changed? Scientists still debate what drove the Cambrian explosion, but the most popular theory is that oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere slowly began to increase about 550 million years ago, said Erik Sperling, an associate professor of Earth and planetary sciences at Stanford University. Oxygen provided a much more efficient way to metabolize food, giving animals more energy to mobilize and hunt for prey, suggested Sperling, who was not involved in the new study. 'The (emergence of) predators kicked off these escalatory arms races, and then we basically got the explosion of different ways of doing business,' Sperling said. During the Cambrian, the shallow sea covering the Grand Canyon was especially oxygen-rich thanks to its perfect, 'Goldilocks' depth, said Mussini, a doctoral student in Earth sciences at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. Ranging from 40 to 50 meters (about 130 to 165 feet) in depth, the ecosystem was undisturbed by the shoreline's constant waves shifting around sediments, and sunlight was still able to reach photosynthesizing plants on the seafloor that could provide oxygen. The abundance of food and favorable environmental conditions meant that animals could take more evolutionary risks to stay ahead of their competition, Mussini said. 'In a more resource-starved environment, animals can't afford to make that sort of physiological investment,' Mussini said in a news release from the University of Cambridge. 'It's got certain parallels with economics: invest and take risks in times of abundance; save and be conservative in times of scarcity.' Many soft-bodied fossil finds before this one have come from regions with harsh environments such as Canada's Burgess Shale formation and China's Maotianshan Shales, noted Susannah Porter, a professor of Earth science at the University of California in Santa Barbara who was not involved in the study. 'It's not unlike if paleontologists far in the future only had great fossil records from Antarctica, where harsh cold environments forced people to adapt. … But then found great human fossils in New York City, where people flourished,' Porter explained. 'We have an opportunity to see different sorts of evolutionary pressures that aren't like, it's really cold, it's really hot, there's not a lot of water.' Weird adaptations of Cambrian animals While some of the feeding mechanisms uncovered in the Grand Canyon fossils are still around today, others are much more alien. Among the most freakish: penis worms that turned their mouths inside out, revealing a throat lined with hairy teeth. The worms, also known as cactus worms, are mostly extinct today, but were widespread during the Cambrian. The fossilized worm found in the Grand Canyon represents a previously unknown species. Due to its relatively large size — about 3.9 inches (10 centimeters) — and distinct teeth, it was named Kraytdraco spectatus, after the fictional krayt dragon from the Star Wars universe, Mussini said. This particular penis worm appears to have had a gradient of hundreds of branching teeth used to sweep food into an extendable mouth. 'It's a bit hard to understand how exactly it was feeding,' Mussini said. 'But it was probably eating debris on the seafloor, scraping it away with some of the most robust teeth that it had, and then using these other, more delicate teeth to filter and retain it within this long, tube-like mouth.' Rows of tiny molars, sternal parts and comblike limbs that once belonged to crustaceans were also among the findings, which all date back 507 million to 502 million years. Similar to today's brine shrimp, the crustaceans used these fine-haired limbs to capture floating food from the water and bring it to the mouth, where molars would then grind down the particles, Mussini explained. Nestled among the molars, researchers even found a few unlucky plankton. Other creatures resembling their modern counterparts included sluglike mollusks. The fossils revealed chains of teeth that likely helped them scrape algae or bacteria from along the seafloor. 'For each of these animals, there's different components, but most of what we found directly relates to the way these animals were processing their food, which is one of the most exciting parts, because it tells us a lot about their lifestyle, and as a consequence, their ecological implications,' Mussini said. Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Neither Scales Nor Feathers: Bizarre Appendage Discovered on Reptile Fossil
A bizarre reptile once scurried through the Triassic treetops with an extravagant crest on its back, one made from neither scale, nor bone, nor feather. The extinct creature's 247-million-year-old fossils immediately stood out to paleontologists. The impressive appendage on its back looks like a frill of overlapping feathers at first glance, but it's much older than the earliest fossilized feather, and there's no branching to indicate a plume. The elaborate structure also lacks bony spines, such as those seen in later dinosaurs, like Spinosaurus. Related: "This had to be something new," Stuttgart State Museum of Natural History paleontologist Stephan Spiekman told ScienceAlert. "Prior to our discovery, complex outgrowths from the skin were restricted to mammals and birds and their closest relatives, predominantly in the form of feathers and hair. "We now have another, different type of complex appendage, in a very early reptile." Long before dinosaurs evolved plumage, it appears that some early reptiles were already putting together a genetic toolkit for complex appendages. The dorsal crests discovered by Spiekman and his colleagues are "basically novel to science", so they don't yet have a name. In their study, the researchers essentially refer to them as skin outgrowths, but they aren't actually similar to reptile skin. Spiekman thinks the outgrowths may be made of keratin, similar to nails, hairs, scales, or claws. Confirming that suspicion will require further analysis. Altogether, Spiekman and his colleagues studied more than 80 fossils of the outgrowths, recently donated to the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, Germany. The vast majority had lost their corresponding skeletons; only one of the fossils featured the bird-like skull of a small, ancient reptile. The extinct animal has been named Mirasaura grauvogeli, the first part of which means 'wonderous reptile'. Technically, the species is a drepanosaur – a small, early reptile that lived in the trees, hunting insects with its velociraptor-like claws. But its crest is the real stand-out feature. "Mirasaura developed an alternative to feathers very early in Earth's history, long before the dinosaurs, which we did not expect and which will stimulate discussion and research," says reptile paleontologist Rainer Schoch, from the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart. The exact function of the Mirasaura's dorsal appendage is unknown, but based on the physics, it probably wasn't used for flight or insulation. A role in visual communication, such as predator deterrence or intraspecies signaling, is more likely. The best preserved Mirasaura fossils were found to contain traces of melanosomes, which are organelles within pigment cells. Interestingly, their geometry is consistent with the melanosomes that color feathers, but not those found in reptile skin or mammal hair. "Mirasaura really shows how surprising evolution can be, and how much we can still learn from palaeontology," Spiekman told ScienceAlert. "We already knew from genetics and developmental biology that much of the pathway to form feathers, hairs, and scales, is shared between mammals, reptiles, and birds. Now, with Mirasaura, we can say that such complex structures did indeed grow in other animals, too." Turns out, reptiles aren't the scaly, simple animals we often paint them out to be. They deserve more credit. The study was published in Nature. Related News America's Largest Crater Has Surprise Link to Grand Canyon, Study Finds 500-Million-Year-Old Fossil Suggests Ocean Origin For Spiders Secret Bone Armor Discovered Beneath Skins of Australian Lizards Solve the daily Crossword
CTV News
3 days ago
- Science
- CTV News
Fossils unearthed in Grand Canyon reveal new details of evolutionary explosion of life
Paleontologists have discovered remarkable fossils in the Grand Canyon that reveal fresh details about the emergence of complex life half a billion years ago. The newfound remains of fauna from the region suggest that it offered ideal conditions for life to flourish and diversify, in a 'Goldilocks zone' between harsh extremes elsewhere. This evolutionary opportunity produced a multitude of early animals, including oddballs with peculiar adaptations for survival, according to new research. During the Cambrian explosion, which played out in the coastal waters of Earth's oceans about 540 million years ago, most animal body types that exist today emerged in a relatively short time span, scientists believe. Back then, the Grand Canyon was closer to the equator, and the region was covered by a warm, shallow sea teeming with burgeoning life — aquatic creatures resembling modern-day shrimp, pill bugs and slugs — all developing new ways to exploit the abundant resources. Researchers turned to the Grand Canyon's layers of sedimentary rock to unlock secrets of this pivotal moment in the history of life, digging into the flaky, claylike shale of the Bright Angel Formation where most of the canyon's Cambrian-era fossils have been found. The study team expected to recover mostly the fossilized remains of hard-shelled invertebrates typical of the region. Instead, the team unearthed something unusual: rocks containing well-preserved internal fragments of tiny soft-bodied mollusks, crustaceans, and priapulids, also known as penis worms. 'With these kinds of fossils, we can better study their morphology, their appearance, and their lifestyle in much greater resolution, which is not possible with the shelly parts,' said Giovanni Mussini, the first author of the study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. 'It's a new kind of window on Cambrian life in the Grand Canyon.' Using high-powered microscopes, the team was able to investigate innovations such as miniature chains of teeth from rock-scraping mollusks and the hairy limbs and molars of filter-feeding crustaceans, providing a rare look into the biologically complex ways Cambrian animals adapted to capture and eat prey. The 'Goldilocks zone' for innovation For most of the planet's 4-billion-year history, simplicity reigned. Single-celled microbes remained stationary on the ocean floor, thriving on chemical compounds such as carbon dioxide and sulfur molecules to break down food. What changed? Scientists still debate what drove the Cambrian explosion, but the most popular theory is that oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere slowly began to increase about 550 million years ago, said Erik Sperling, an associate professor of Earth and planetary sciences at Stanford University. Oxygen provided a much more efficient way to metabolize food, giving animals more energy to mobilize and hunt for prey, suggested Sperling, who was not involved in the new study. Animal Organ Fossils Grand Canyon Researchers uncovered the internal body parts of Cambrian fauna, such as these bits of sternums from crustaceans. (Mussini et al. via CNN Newsource) 'The (emergence of) predators kicked off these escalatory arms races, and then we basically got the explosion of different ways of doing business,' Sperling said. During the Cambrian, the shallow sea covering the Grand Canyon was especially oxygen-rich thanks to its perfect, 'Goldilocks' depth, said Mussini, a doctoral student in Earth sciences at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. Ranging from 40 to 50 metres (about 130 to 165 feet) in depth, the ecosystem was undisturbed by the shoreline's constant waves shifting around sediments, and sunlight was still able to reach photosynthesizing plants on the seafloor that could provide oxygen. The abundance of food and favourable environmental conditions meant that animals could take more evolutionary risks to stay ahead of their competition, Mussini said. 'In a more resource-starved environment, animals can't afford to make that sort of physiological investment,' Mussini said in a news release from the University of Cambridge. 'It's got certain parallels with economics: invest and take risks in times of abundance; save and be conservative in times of scarcity.' Many soft-bodied fossil finds before this one have come from regions with harsh environments such as Canada's Burgess Shale formation and China's Maotianshan Shales, noted Susannah Porter, a professor of Earth science at the University of California in Santa Barbara who was not involved in the study. 'It's not unlike if paleontologists far in the future only had great fossil records from Antarctica, where harsh cold environments forced people to adapt. … But then found great human fossils in New York City, where people flourished,' Porter explained. 'We have an opportunity to see different sorts of evolutionary pressures that aren't like, it's really cold, it's really hot, there's not a lot of water.' Weird adaptations of Cambrian animals While some of the feeding mechanisms uncovered in the Grand Canyon fossils are still around today, others are much more alien. Among the most freakish: penis worms that turned their mouths inside out, revealing a throat lined with hairy teeth. The worms, also known as cactus worms, are mostly extinct today, but were widespread during the Cambrian. The fossilized worm found in the Grand Canyon represents a previously unknown species. Due to its relatively large size — about 3.9 inches (10 centimetres) — and distinct teeth, it was named Kraytdraco spectatus, after the fictional krayt dragon from the Star Wars universe, Mussini said. This particular penis worm appears to have had a gradient of hundreds of branching teeth used to sweep food into an extendable mouth. 'It's a bit hard to understand how exactly it was feeding,' Mussini said. 'But it was probably eating debris on the seafloor, scraping it away with some of the most robust teeth that it had, and then using these other, more delicate teeth to filter and retain it within this long, tube-like mouth.' Rows of tiny molars, sternal parts and comblike limbs that once belonged to crustaceans were also among the findings, which all date back 507 million to 502 million years. Similar to today's brine shrimp, the crustaceans used these fine-haired limbs to capture floating food from the water and bring it to the mouth, where molars would then grind down the particles, Mussini explained. Nestled among the molars, researchers even found a few unlucky plankton. Other creatures resembling their modern counterparts included sluglike mollusks. The fossils revealed chains of teeth that likely helped them scrape algae or bacteria from along the seafloor. 'For each of these animals, there's different components, but most of what we found directly relates to the way these animals were processing their food, which is one of the most exciting parts, because it tells us a lot about their lifestyle, and as a consequence, their ecological implications,' Mussini said. By Kameryn Griesser, CNN
