An international group of scientists researching a fossil site at Villaggio del Pescatore in north-eastern Italy have found the remains of the “biggest and most complete dinosaur ever found in the country”. This specimen, nicknamed Bruno, along with a smaller specimen named Antonio have been identified as belonging to the species Tethyshadros insularis – a […]
Tree amber contains sea shells, according to reports in Science (AAAS) News and Science Alert 13 May 2019, and PNAS 13 May doi: 10.1073/pnas.1821292116. An international team of scientists has used CT scanning to identify a large number of fossilised creatures trapped in a piece of Burmese amber. Amber is fossilised tree resin and often […]
Worldwide undersea volcanos killed dinosaurs, according to articles in ScienceDaily and Telegraph 7 February 2018, and Science Advances doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aao2994, 7 February 2018. The demise of dinosaurs is currently blamed on Chicxulub meteorite impact and massive volcanic activity in a region of central India known as the Deccan Traps. Joseph Byrnes and Leif Karlstrom, geologists […]
Isle of Wight research as John Mackay visited the Isle to do advance preparation for future field trips to the dinosaur beds there. The exposed Cretaceous strata vary between 600m (1,800ft) and 1,000m (3,000ft) thick and supposedly took 65 million years to form. Walking along the cliffs it soon became obvious that evolutionary time […]
Instant petrified wood reported in BBC Online News, 25 Jan 2005 and news@nature 28 Jan 2005. Petrified wood is commonly believed to have been formed when trees were buried in mud without oxygen and, they slowly absorb minerals from the mud which turns the wood to stone over the following millions of years. A team […]
“Hulking huge” upper Cambrian jellyfish fossils impress palaeontologists of the California Institute of Technology who discovered thousands of fossilised jellyfish, many as large as 70cm (28in) in diameter, in central Wisconsin (USA). According to a report in Nature Science Update, 30 January 2002, the fossils are buried in several different layers of a “fossilised beach” […]
Global warming did them in, according to articles in ScienceNOW, 21 Jan 2005 and the Courier Mail (Australia) 22 Jan 2005. Whilst asteroid impacts are claimed to have caused sudden mass extinctions during earth’s history, palaeontologists from the University of Washington are now claiming that the greatest mass extinction in the history of the world […]
Instant Himalayas in dinosaur crater, according to reports in BBC News, Science News 17 November 2016, Science Perspectives 18 November, and Science vol. 354, pp. 878-882 doi: 10.1126/science.aah6561, 18 November 2016. Scientists have drilled into a part of the Chicxulub crater in Mexico to find clues into the formation of peak rings impact craters. Peak […]
“Biblical style flood” made Britain, according to UK Daily Telegraph, 25 Sep 2006. Britain and continental Europe are believed to have been once connected by a series of chalky hills, but Britain became an island when these were eroded away. A sonar survey of the English Channel carried out by a team led by Sanjeev […]