How big is a mega shark? Really huge, according to reports in ScienceDaily 3 September 2020, SciTech Daily 4 September 2020 and Scientific Reports, 3 September 2020; doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-71387-y. Because sharks have a skeleton made of cartilage, rather than bone, fossils of whole sharks are very rare, so it is difficult to estimate their exact […]
Deadly dinosaur cancer found, according to reports in Science (AAAS) News, ScienceDaily and Smithsonian Magazine 3 August 2020, and The Lancet Onlcology, August 2020 doi: 10.1016/S1470-2045(20)30171-6. A group of scientists, including palaeontologists, pathologists, an orthopaedic surgeon, and a radiologist have studied a deformed bone found in the Dinosaur Park deposit in Alberta, Canada. The bone […]
Fungus unchanged for 400 million years, as reported in Botany One 29 June 2020, and Annals of Botany 24 June 2020, doi: 10.1093/aob/mcaa113. Scientists have studied thin sections of the fossil bearing Lower Devonian Rhynie chert in Scotland, which is dated as 410 million years old. They found exquisitely preserved reproductive structures, known as spore-saccule […]
Oldest mahogany found, according to ScienceDaily and University of Kansas News 15 April 2020, and American Journal of Botany 5 January 2020 doi: 10.1002/ajb2.1416. Brian Atkinson of University of Kansa has studied a fossilised fruit found in a rock collected on Shelter Point on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada, and identified it as belonging to […]
Antarctic rainforest found, according to BBC News and ScienceDaily 1 April 2020, and Nature 2 April 2020, doi: 10.1038/s41586-020-2148-5. A team of scientists from Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI), Germany and the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) have examined a core of rock from West Antarctica, approximately 900km from the South Pole and found it contained fossilised […]
Biggest giant turtle found, according to reports in Science (AAAS) News and ScienceDaily 12 February 2020, and Science Advances 12 February 2020, doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aay4593. Palaeontologists in South America have studied fossilised shells and jaws of a huge extinct turtle with the splendid name Stupendemys geographicus. The largest shell is 2.4 metres (7.9ft) long, making it […]
Diseased dino tail bones found, according to reports in ScienceDaily 11 February 2020, Live Science 20 February 2020, and Scientific Reports 10 February 2020, doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-59192-z. An international team of researchers led by two scientists at Tel Aviv University have studied two dinosaur tail bones from a hadrosaur, and found evidence of a bone disease […]
Oldest fossil scorpions show transition to land, claim scientists in reports in Science (AAAS) News and ScienceDaily 16 January 2020 and Scientific Reports, 16 January 2020 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-56010-z. Palaeontologists have studied two “exceptionally preserved” scorpion fossils from the Waukesha Biota, a fossil deposit in Wisconsin, USA. Scorpions are arachnids, the class of invertebrates that also […]
Insect pollination extended by 50 million years, claim scientists in Science (AAAS) News and ScienceDaily 11 November 2019, and PNAS 11 November 2019 doi: 10.1073/pnas.1916186116. Scientists from China, Germany and USA have studied a beetle preserved in Burmese amber and found it was carrying pollen grains from a flowering plant. The beetle belongs to a […]
Antarctic Notable Quotable from the Director of the British Antarctic Survey, Dame Jane Elizabeth Francis, broadcast on BBC 29 November 2019. Interviewer Martha Kearney asked: “Now your own work on ancient climates shows such a different world in Antarctica. Well we go back 100 million years to the age of the dinosaurs as you showed […]