A team of researchers in Australia have been studying a mass of exquisitely preserved fossils found in the Central Tablelands in the Australian state of New South Wales. The deposit contains a great variety of plants and animals, including insects, spiders, fish and a bird feather. The fossils are so well preserved that microscopic structures […]
Jurassic blubber found, according to articles in BBC News, National Geographic and ScienceDaily 5 December 2018, and Nature doi: 10.1038/s41586-018-0775-x. For many years palaeontologists have speculated that ichthyosaurs had a layer of blubber (fatty tissue) under their skin as do living marine mammals such as dolphins and whales. Ichthyosaurs were reptiles, rather than mammals, but […]
Drowned dinosaurs described in articles in Science (AAAS) News 9 May 2017, PhysOrg News, 10 May 2017, National Geographic, and Royal Society Open Science doi: 10.1098/rsos.161086, published online 10 May 2017. A team of researchers at the Royal Tyrell Museum in Canada have studied a fossil of “an exceptionally complete and well-preserved skeleton” of an […]
Amazingly intact ancient arthropod found according to reports in ScienceDaily 7 & 9 February 2011 and Geology, 2011; DOI: 10.1130/G31648.1. The exoskeletons or hard cuticles of arthropods are formed from chitin fibres embedded in structural proteins. Chitin is a modified carbohydrate made from long chains of a glucose derivative named N-acetylglucosamine. Proteins and carbohydrates are […]
A hundred million years of fossil sex revealed, according to BBC News 18 June 2009. A new technique for examining the internal structure of fossils has enabled scientists to examine the reproductive organs of ostracods (tiny shellfish) fossils from the Santana Formation in Brazil. The fossils were embedded in rocks that also contained well preserved […]