Latest news with #fossils
Gizmodo
a day ago
- Science
- Gizmodo
We Might Have Been Wrong About Where Spiders Came From
Technically speaking, every living thing on Earth can trace its origins to the sea. Some of these earliest creatures crawled onto land, evolving to become many different kinds of animals and insects—including, scientists believed for a long time, spiders and their relatives. A new study published today in Current Biology challenges the popular conception that spiders first emerged on land, instead suggesting that these arachnids and their relatives originated and evolved in the ocean. The team reached this conclusion by investigating the fossilized central nervous system of Mollisonia symmetrica, a long-extinct animal from the Cambrian era (between 540 and 485 million years ago), thought to be the ancestor of horseshoe crabs. Mollisonia's brain structure closely resembled that of modern spiders and their relatives, not their supposed crab descendants. 'The discovery of an arachnid brain in such an ancient creature as Mollisonia suggests that the major groups of arthropods alive today were already established then,' Nick Strausfeld, study lead author and neuroscientist at the University of Arizona, told Gizmodo in an email. He added that this 'casts a fresh view on the question: Where did arachnids first evolve?' Until now, scientists had assumed—based on the external features of arachnid-like fossils found in sedimentary rocks formed on land—that modern spiders and their relatives evolved on land. For the study, however, Strausfeld and his colleagues looked inside a well-preserved fossil of Mollisonia, which they did using an optical microscope and other imaging techniques to investigate its cerebral arrangements in higher detail. The team uncovered several similarities between modern spiders and Mollisonia, but the most striking feature was that of the creatures' central nervous system. Unlike insects, arachnid brains have a strange backward structure, in which the 'forebrain lies on top of circuits that control the movement of the legs,' Strausfeld explained. It's this that makes spiders and their relatives so 'incredibly versatile in their movements.' As the new research shows, 'the backward organization is enough of a 'tell' to demonstrate [that] Mollisonia's brain arrangement typifies those of living arachnids,' he said. Other common features the team found included external resemblances, such as jointed limbs or pincer-like claws. They bolstered their hypotheses by running a statistical analysis comparing 115 anatomical traits across both living and extinct arthropods (which includes arachnids), which placed Mollisonia as a 'sister' to modern arachnids, the authors reported in the study. 'This is very interesting, but we do not yet know how it relates to the vast array of arachnids other than spiders,' said Paul Selden, a paleontologist and arachnologist at the University of Kansas who wasn't involved in the new work, in an email to Gizmodo. 'Clearly, their conclusions on the phylogenetic [study of evolutionary history using visual cues] placement of Mollisonia are fascinating but merely mark the start of further investigation.' It's probably premature to declare spiders as spawns of the sea, but the good news is that Strausfeld and his colleagues already seem to be on the case. 'Most Cambrian fossils look very different from modern species, so it is really exciting when such outward appearances reveal something inside them—a fossilized brain and nervous system—that tells a different story,' Strausfeld said. 'Arachnids are a crucial feature of our biosphere, and we should pay attention to what they contribute to our well-being.'
South China Morning Post
a day ago
- Business
- South China Morning Post
Blockbuster auctions of dinosaur skeletons don't do science any favours
Few people know that the great auction houses of the United States and Europe are not only some of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery and collectibles, they are also catering to the booming demand for prehistoric fossils. Auction houses acquire these specimens and then sell them off to rich private collectors. Last week, a juvenile specimen of Ceratosaurus nasicornis, one of the four skeletons of the ancient species known to exist, was auctioned off by Sotheby's for US$30.5 million. During many of these sales, it isn't clear who is purchasing the fossil and where it might eventually end up. Some argue that these kinds of sales increase philanthropy in fields such as palaeontology. Take Christie's 2020 sale of 'Stan' for example. The nearly complete Tyrannosaurus rex specimen changed hands for a record-breaking US$31.8 million. After the mystery sale, there was much speculation over its fate, and palaeontologists were relieved when Stan found its home at the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi, expected to be completed this year. The Stegosaurus skeleton 'Apex' was sold at a Sotheby's auction for a staggering US$44.6 million in July 2024, the most expensive auctioned dinosaur fossil. It was bought by Kenneth Griffin, founder and CEO of the hedge fund Citadel, who in turn loaned it to the American Museum of Natural History in New York for four years. In addition to fossils, auction houses have sold skeletons of Triceratops, Diplodocus, Allosaurus, Stegosaurus and the extremely rare and birdlike Deinonychus.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
US team discovers winged reptile that took powered flight with early dinosaurs
In a remote bonebed in Arizona, a Smithsonian team unearthed the oldest pterosaur on record and an entire ecosystem of fossils—over 200 million years old. While looking for prehistoric precursors to mammals in Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona, a Smithsonian-led team of researchers stumbled upon an unexpected site: a remote bonebed that contained an entire Triassic ecosystem. Along with 1,200 individual fossils, they recovered a new pterosaur species that lived 209 million years ago. The recently identified Eotephradactylus mcintireae is the oldest pterosaur ever found in North America. Its teeth, preserved in the bone, gave paleontologists stunning insights into how the earliest pterosaurs lived. Oldest pterosaur in North America was about the size of a seagull Eotephradactylus mcintireae would have been small enough to perch on person's shoulder comfortably. It might not be be the largest pterosaur on record, but its impact might extend far beyond any discovered before it as the most ancient in North America. Its name, 'ash-winged dawn goddess,' refers to the site's volcanic ash, the animals' position near the base of the pterosaur evolutionary tree, and the woman who unearthed it. Suzanne McIntire knew the tooth-studded jaw would make the animal easier to identify. As the teeth were worn down, the team deduced the pterosaur likely fed on the site's fish, as they found many in the fossil bed encased in armor-like scales. In fact, the team led by paleontologist Ben Kligman found so much more than the world's oldest pterosaur on site. After braving the Petrified Forest's rugged badlands, home to rattlesnakes and wild horses, they uncovered a bonebed that gave them a vivid snapshot of the dynamic ecosystem, including giant amphibians, armored crocodile relatives, evolutionary upstarts like frogs, and even the world's oldest turtle fossils. 'The site captures the transition to more modern terrestrial vertebrate communities where we start seeing groups that thrive later in the Mesozoic living alongside these older animals that don't make it past the Triassic,' Kligman said. 'Fossil beds like these enable us to establish that all of these animals actually lived together.' A snapshot of end-Triassic extinction The new site filled a gap in the fossil record: the end-Triassic extinction (ETE). Around 201.5 million years ago, volcanic eruptions broke Pangaea and wiped out 75% of the planet's species, making way for the dinosaurs to rise and dominate the Earth. This new bonebed captured this critical moment in the planet's evolution. This pterosaur would have been among the first to take flight in history. Though incredibly old, these rocks on Owl Rock Member, the park's geologic outcrops, are the youngest in the park. They are the least studied as they lurk in the park's most remote areas, but they might contain new species. The fossil bed Smithsonian researchers just uncovered did. They believe a flood had most likely buried the creatures, as so many fossils were packed into the site. Excavating it was practically impossible. They encased large pieces of the surrounding sediment in plaster and brought them back to the lab, according to the press release. In total, the team picked up more than a thousand individual fossils of bones, teeth, fish scales, and coprolites, or fossilized poop. In all, this impressive assemblage contained 16 different groups of vertebrate animals. The pterosaur would have flown over a rich and diverse ecosystem of braided rivers filled with fish like freshwater sharks, coelacanths, and ancient amphibians, some of which grew up to 6 feet long. The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Move over, Jurassic Park. Manitoba was home to newly discovered 390-million-year-old extinct fish
On a warm, sunny July day, paleontologist Melina Jobbins and her team search an old rock quarry near Lundar, Man., for 390-million-year-old fossils of an extinct fish that swam in what was once a vast inland sea. Jobbins, a postdoctoral fellow at the PaleoSed+ lab at the University of Manitoba's department of earth sciences, spreads a geological map over the hood of her rental car to confirm which era of history they can expect to find fossils from in this area, now part of the Canadian Prairies. "All the orange is Devonian," she tells Kirstin Brink, another paleontologist at the University of Manitoba. The Devonian period is nicknamed the Age of Fishes, Jobbins explains to a CBC reporter. This area is where, in the 1990s, researchers from the University of Manitoba discovered some ancient fossils. They weren't quite sure what they had found, but Jobbins studied them, found a few more fossils and realized it was a brand new discovery — one of the first fish to develop body armour, a jaw and teeth. Jobbins renamed and reclassified the fish as Elmosteus lundarensis, named after the Elm Point Formation, the rock formation it was found in. Her research was published in July's edition of the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. The remnants of this fish are about 150 million years older than the dinosaurs and only about 1½ metres long, the size of a large Chinook salmon. "We're hoping that we can look for more of these fish and more of the placoderms, more of Elmo and its relatives, as well," she said. Jobbins pointed out the teeth, an eye socket and other features of the fossils in the collection of the university's Geological Sciences Museum. The fish have armour made of dermal bone on the head and thorax, but the rest of the skeleton is made of cartilage, similar to sharks. "This makes them a very important group to understand the origin of bone and the early evolution of bone, as well," Jobbins said. "Also the jaws itself, because this is one of the first fish to develop jaws in the first place, and as well as teeth. They kind of come hand in hand. So understanding how this evolved, how it originated, how we got to having something like what we have today, which is on a whole other level of complexity." Jobbins and her team are visiting more quarries this summer, hoping to find more fossils and answer more questions — what the animal looked like, but also its environment and what the conditions were for the evolution of these features. "We can understand much more of what was present at the time and how diverse … which is incredible." Manitoba is well-known for its fossil record, much of it on display at the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre in Morden, Man. The province's Tyndall stone has preserved fossils of the world's largest mosasaurs, marine reptiles from the Cretaceous period. As fellow paleontologist Brink scrambled over rocks, pointing out fossils of corals and sponges and relatives of the starfish, she explained that Manitoba is a great place for finding fossils because so many different ages of rock are preserved. "We can see how life has changed through all these different time periods." Many of the rocks have been dug up because mining "just kind of exposed all these fossils by accident, which is really great for us paleontologists," Brink said. On this day, they found a lot of fossils, including some they'll use to teach students in fall, but unfortunately, Elmosteus lundarensis was elusive. They'll try again another time. Still, Virgil Johnson, the reeve of the rural municipality of Coldwell who helped them access the quarries, was delighted. Johnson grew up around here and spent a lot of time in the quarries. "We used to find all these little fossils when we were crawling around out here and going swimming and stuff, so it was actually pretty neat that when you get the experts out here and kind of show you exactly how old things were and what they are," he said. "It's very exciting."
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Move over, Jurassic Park. Manitoba was home to newly discovered 390-million-year-old extinct fish
On a warm, sunny July day, paleontologist Melina Jobbins and her team search an old rock quarry near Lundar, Man., for 390-million-year-old fossils of an extinct fish that swam in what was once a vast inland sea. Jobbins, a postdoctoral fellow at the PaleoSed+ lab at the University of Manitoba's department of earth sciences, spreads a geological map over the hood of her rental car to confirm which era of history they can expect to find fossils from in this area, now part of the Canadian Prairies. "All the orange is Devonian," she tells Kirstin Brink, another paleontologist at the University of Manitoba. The Devonian period is nicknamed the Age of Fishes, Jobbins explains to a CBC reporter. This area is where, in the 1990s, researchers from the University of Manitoba discovered some ancient fossils. They weren't quite sure what they had found, but Jobbins studied them, found a few more fossils and realized it was a brand new discovery — one of the first fish to develop body armour, a jaw and teeth. Jobbins renamed and reclassified the fish as Elmosteus lundarensis, named after the Elm Point Formation, the rock formation it was found in. Her research was published in July's edition of the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. The remnants of this fish are about 150 million years older than the dinosaurs and only about 1½ metres long, the size of a large Chinook salmon. "We're hoping that we can look for more of these fish and more of the placoderms, more of Elmo and its relatives, as well," she said. Jobbins pointed out the teeth, an eye socket and other features of the fossils in the collection of the university's Geological Sciences Museum. The fish have armour made of dermal bone on the head and thorax, but the rest of the skeleton is made of cartilage, similar to sharks. "This makes them a very important group to understand the origin of bone and the early evolution of bone, as well," Jobbins said. "Also the jaws itself, because this is one of the first fish to develop jaws in the first place, and as well as teeth. They kind of come hand in hand. So understanding how this evolved, how it originated, how we got to having something like what we have today, which is on a whole other level of complexity." Jobbins and her team are visiting more quarries this summer, hoping to find more fossils and answer more questions — what the animal looked like, but also its environment and what the conditions were for the evolution of these features. "We can understand much more of what was present at the time and how diverse … which is incredible." Manitoba is well-known for its fossil record, much of it on display at the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre in Morden, Man. The province's Tyndall stone has preserved fossils of the world's largest mosasaurs, marine reptiles from the Cretaceous period. As fellow paleontologist Brink scrambled over rocks, pointing out fossils of corals and sponges and relatives of the starfish, she explained that Manitoba is a great place for finding fossils because so many different ages of rock are preserved. "We can see how life has changed through all these different time periods." Many of the rocks have been dug up because mining "just kind of exposed all these fossils by accident, which is really great for us paleontologists," Brink said. On this day, they found a lot of fossils, including some they'll use to teach students in fall, but unfortunately, Elmosteus lundarensis was elusive. They'll try again another time. Still, Virgil Johnson, the reeve of the rural municipality of Coldwell who helped them access the quarries, was delighted. Johnson grew up around here and spent a lot of time in the quarries. "We used to find all these little fossils when we were crawling around out here and going swimming and stuff, so it was actually pretty neat that when you get the experts out here and kind of show you exactly how old things were and what they are," he said. "It's very exciting."
