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Showing results for tags 'evolution'.
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Back in May or so I got my hands on some micromatrix from the Harding Sandstone, CO, USA. This formation dates back to the Ordovician: ~450-475 mya. It's chock full of some really cool and important fossils. It has some of the earliest vertebrate material, and some of the earliest steps in the evolution of teeth! I hope this is an informative and fun look into an important period in life's history. If you feel I have mischaracterized something or have left out pertinent information, please do speak up! I do also plan to post more pictures as I sort through material. If there's something specific you would like a better view of, let me know. So without further ado, let's dive in! All the matrix I have came in this small vial (not all of it is in the vial - this is just what I still have to go through). It's been heavily concentrated. What you're seeing is a mix of shells, some sandstone bits, and vertebrate remains. The majority of the vertebrate material is from ostracoderms - armored fish whose skin was made of bone. They had no jaws, teeth, or fins. They look to me like a cross between an armadillo and a potato. Most of the fossils are of their skin-armor which was studded with "tubercles:" little bumps and ridges. These are important and we'll talk about them later. Also in the mix are scales from potentially the earliest sharks. It seems there is still debate on this, as they could also belong to another class of fish named the thelodonts. There are also the well-preserved "teeth" of conodonts. Conodonts were jawless, bug-eyed, hagfish-like animals.
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300-million-year-old fish resembles a sturgeon but took a different evolutionary path
Darbi posted a topic in Fossil News
https://phys.org/news/2020-06-million-year-old-fish-resembles-sturgeon-evolutionary.html?fbclid=IwAR3FE_g9MI_kaL_Nc25IdxqjMQ3F2cfBCq33zml_J4gRkPMkh8nPecNsYjw Jack Stack et al, Tanyrhinichthys mcallisteri, a long-rostrumed Pennsylvanian ray-finned fish (Actinopterygii) and the simultaneous appearance of novel ecomorphologies in Late Palaeozoic fishes, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society (2020). DOI: 10.1093/zoolinnean/zlaa044 -
https://phys.org/news/2020-06-microfossil-spectroscopy-dates-earth-animals.html?fbclid=IwAR15tVkP0pUuvoyi-8ByQN2_GC-wRxUSND-0xkRdv5meV0zwY16MbPNGiqo Ross P. Anderson et al. Aluminosilicate haloes preserve complex life approximately 800 million years ago, Interface Focus (2020). DOI: 10.1098/rsfs.2020.0011
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New Reasearch Ties Endowment Effect To Evolutionary Pressures
Scylla posted a topic in Members' News & Diversions
I didn't know where to put this news article. It really doesn't qualify as fossil news or as a non-fossil web site. However it is the type of insight that many TFF members would find interesting. So the member news is this member read this article. The Endowment Effect is a behavior where we over value something we already own. This is important in economics since it leads to mismatch between selling and buying prices. It makes fossil trades harder too. Not every class of items has the same degree of Endowment Effect though. These researchers found that items more important for our survival or attracting a mate had larger effects. This implicates evolutionary forces in this particular cognitive deficit. Other primates share this trait as well. https://phys.org/news/2020-05-endowment-effect-evolutionary-roots-cognitive.html- 2 replies
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I have finally managed to persuade a teacher to let me do an at least slightly paleontological essay so i'm really happy, however the topic i'm doing is quite broad but i do have 1.5k words to summarise it in, i would like briefly outline the key crossroads in the evolutionary lineage of humans, i have shortened these to: Sarcopterygii-tetrapods , reptile to mammal, 4 legged to 2 legged , i would appreciate any opinions on this and any literature that anyone knew would be helpful, thanks again, will
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Just watched fascinating documentary on equid evolution- bout half on the origin (Dawn horse), then progresses to present-day..........Bone
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I am new to collecting meg teeth so I hope my question is not “dumb.” Are the tooth cusps on a C. chubutensis vestigial structures from the earlier three pronged tooth like on O. obliquus? I read a physics article about how the megs tooth serration evolves from the smaller prong teeth getting sharks caught on larger prey causing them damage. Did the improved serration as the sharks evolved to be larger lead adult C. megladon adults not having cusps at all? I hope the question makes sense.
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I keep thinking I must just be stupidly forgetting/overlooking something, but I haven’t been able to come up with it in a long time. There were birds during the Mesozoic(hesperonis, for example), long before theropods evolved into birds(after the Mesozoic, right? I thought all the already very bird-like Dino’s, like archaeopteryx, dead-ended at the end of the Mesozoic)....what am I missing, here? I’ve been looking at bird evolutionary charts, and none of them seem to make sense of that. I’m not all that learned on this topic, but there are things I at least THOUGHT I knew about it, but I’m now very confused because of it, and questioning how much I really DID know! This is is just another thing that’s caught my eye, that seems strange. I’ve always thought this wasn’t the case, but as I’ve said, I’ve never known very much about this whole subject. According to the charts I’ve seen that specify this aspect, songbirds and most birds in fact, are more closely related to the first Dino/birds than raptors are(hawks/eagles/falcons). Are raptor really some of the furthest related to dinos(seemingly in the furthest 15-20%, or so)? Lastly, I’m having a very hard time finding information on terror bird evolution, and where THEY fall within the bird tree. Is anyone familiar with that?
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A new normal: Study explains universal pattern in fossil record, Santa Fe Institute, June 26, 2019 https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190626160341.htm http://www.terradaily.com/reports/A_new_normal_Study_explains_universal_pattern_in_fossil_record_999.html https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-06/sfi-ann061919.php The paper is: Rominger, A.J., Fuentes, M.A. and Marquet, P.A., 2019. Nonequilibrium evolution of volatility in origination and extinction explains fat-tailed fluctuations in Phanerozoic biodiversity. Science Advances, 5(6), p.eaat0122. (open access paper) https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/6/eaat0122.abstract Yours, Paul H.
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Natural History Museum Maastricht: Exhibition "Whale: Locality Maastricht"
ziggycardon posted a topic in A Trip to the Museum
Hi! I made a small visit to the Natural History Museum in Maastricht today to visit the new small exhibition named "Whale: Locality Maastricht" which centers around some Eocene whale bones from an undescribed whale found in the ENCI quarry in Maastricht. The exhibition explores further into the evolution of whales, it's a small exhibition but worth a visit if you haven't seen the museum or if you are really interested in whale evolution. Should any of our Dutch, Belgian & German members decide to visit (or international members who are in the area), then you should really grab a copy of the exhibition book. It is really cool and informative, it's only €2,50 but 125 pages long (both in dutch & english) and it covers the evolution of whales, the ENCI whale, modern whales & their biology and about whaling and whales in human history & myth. The exhibition book alone is well worth the visit in my opinion, I kinda compare it with the EOS magazine about Iguanodons & the book "Mammoths: ice age giants by Adrian Lister" but then about whales. So here are the photo's I made of the exhibition. The Exhibition Room: left: Metepocetus sp. neurocranium with preserved ear bones from Liessel in the Netherlands (Miocene) Right: Isoluted vertebrae of various whale species from Liessel in the Netherlands (Miocene) Isolated vertebrae of Eocene primordial whales (Archaeoceti) dredged from the buttom of the North Sea, for comparison with those of the "ENCI whale" Isolated vertebrae of Eocene primordial whales (Archaeoceti) dredged from the buttom of the North Sea, for comparison with those of the "ENCI whale" Smallest jaw: possibly Dorudon sp. from the late Eocene of Ad Dakhla in Morocco. Bigger jaw: possibly Pappocetus lugardi, from the middle Eocene of Ben Gueran in Morocco..jpg.2895ea18d402731f7e6926edc26c4cec.jpg)
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Chicken Evolution and Broiler Chicken as A Future Index Fossil
Oxytropidoceras posted a topic in Fossil News
The Evolution of the Chicken. Mark Berres. 2018.02.28 Wednesday Nite @ The Lab Published on Mar 1, 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXL2doMXWfg A related paper is: Bennett, C.E., Thomas, R., Williams, M., Zalasiewicz, J., Edgeworth, M., Miller, H., Coles, B., Foster, A., Burton, E.J. and Marume, U., 2018. The broiler chicken as a signal of a human reconfigured biosphere. Royal Society open science, 5(12), p.180325. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.180325 Some news article are: It Could Be the Age of the Chicken, Geologically With 65 billion chickens consumed each year, the signature fossil of the modern epoch may be the leftovers. James Gorman, New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/11/science/chicken-anthropocene-archaeology.html Are we living in the ‘age of the chicken’? Fossil record of man's time on Earth will be dominated by the bones of factory farmed hens Phoebe Weston Daily Mail https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6487397/Age-chicken-Anthropocene-fossil-record-dominated-bones-factory-farmed-hens.html How the domestic chicken rose to define the Anthropocene. Over the past 70 years, the bird has become a global staple, and could be the key fossil evidence for human-influenced epoch Damian Carrington, The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/31/domestic-chicken-anthropocene-humanity-influenced-epoch https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/29/declare-anthropocene-epoch-experts-urge-geological-congress-human-impact-earth Yours, Paul H.- 1 reply
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Fossil dino bones predate fossil dino eggs by over 100 million years? Wow. New studies of some of the earliest dino eggs shed light on egg evolution. https://www.google.com/amp/s/phys.org/news/2019-03-world-oldest-eggs-reveal-dinosaur.amp
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Multiple episodes of rapid evolutionary change may have been linked to climate and oxygen changes from 571 mya on. https://m.phys.org/news/2019-03-ancient-prompt-rethink-animal-evolution.html
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Below is an example of how weird and rapid evolution can be. I have to wonder how often this has happened in the past and how invisible it would beto a paleontologist with nothing but hard parts as fossils and the lack of temporal resolution in the geologic record. This Mutant Crayfish Clones Itself, and It’s Taking Over Europe Carl Zimmer. New York Times, Feb. 2018 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/05/science/mutant-crayfish-clones-europe.html Decoding the mutant, all-female, self-cloning crayfish Kevin Bersett, University of Illinois, September 12, 2018 https://news.illinoisstate.edu/2018/09/decoding-the-mutant-all-female-self-cloning-crayfish The Genetic Mystery Of The Invasive Crayfish Clones, Science Friday https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/the-genetic-mystery-of-the-invasive-crayfish-clones/ the paper is: Gutekunst, J., Andriantsoa, R., Falckenhayn, C., Hanna, K., Stein, W., Rasamy, J. and Lyko, F., 2018. Clonal genome evolution and rapid invasive spread of the marbled crayfish. Nature ecology & evolution, 2(3), p.567. https://forum.breastcarenetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Gutekunst-et-al.pdf https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-018-0467-9 Maybe it is time for a crayfish broil. Yours, Paul H.
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Fossils key to fulfilling Darwin's 160-year-old prediction
Oxytropidoceras posted a topic in Fossil News
Fossils key to fulfilling Darwin's 160-year-old prediction December 12, 2018, University of Salford https://phys.org/news/2018-12-fossils-key-fulfilling-darwin-year-old.html The paper is: Beck R.M.D., and Baillie C. 2018. Improvements in the fossil record may largely resolve current conflicts between morphological and molecular estimates of mammal phylogeny. Proc. R. Soc. B. 285: 20181632. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/07/20/373191 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2018/07/20/373191.full.pdf https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2018.1632 Yours, Paul H. -
Tracing the evolutionary origins of fish to shallow ocean waters, University of Pennsylvania, October 25, 2018 https://phys.org/news/2018-10-evolutionary-fish-shallow-ocean.html L. Sallan and others, 2018, "The nearshore cradle of early vertebrate diversification," Science 26 Oct 2018: Vol. 362, Issue 6413, pp. 460-464 DOI: 10.1126/science.aar3689 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6413/460 https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2018AM/webprogram/Paper323310.html Yours, Paul H.
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https://phys.org/news/2018-09-tiny-fossils-reveal-essential-successful.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6176315/Shrinking-helped-early-mammals-survive-200-million-years-ago.html
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Trying to find the predecessors to the cretolamna shark and completing an evolution display
mattbsharks posted a topic in General Fossil Discussion
This is a brief evolution circle I threw together of the megalodon lineage. I’m going to put in better condition specimens of angustidens and cretolamna at some point. I was hoping to trace the lineage back even further if possible
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New research suggests evolution might favor 'survival of the laziest' August 21, 2018, University of Kansas http://news.ku.edu/2018/08/15/new-research-suggests-evolution-might-favor-‘survival-laziest’ https://phys.org/news/2018-08-evolution-favor-survival-laziest.html Luke C. Strotz, Erin E. Saupe, Julien Kimmig, and Bruce S. Lieberman, 2018, Metabolic rates, climate and macroevolution: a case study using Neogene molluscs. Proceedings of the Royal Academy B Published 22 August 2018.DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2018.1292 http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/285/1885/20181292 Yours, Paul H.
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I got to spend the day today talking about evolution and fossils with 9 freshman biology classes. It was a lot of fun. Kids these days are smart and ask some well thought out questions.
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New Research on Coleoid Cephalopod Evolution and Taphonomy
Oxytropidoceras posted a topic in Fossil News
Shedding new light on the evolution of the squid University of Bristol, February 28, 2017 https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170228222814.htm The paper is: Tanner, A.R., Fuchs, D., Winkelmann, I.E., Gilbert, M.T.P., Pankey, M.S., Ribeiro, Â.M., Kocot, K.M., Halanych, K.M., Oakley, T.H., da Fonseca, R.R. and Pisani, D., 2017, March. Molecular clocks indicate turnover and diversification of modern coleoid cephalopods during the Mesozoic Marine Revolution. In Proc. R. Soc. B (Vol. 284, No. 1850, p. 20162818). The Royal Society. http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/284/1850/20162818 PDF files: https://curis.ku.dk/ws/files/180602001/Tanner_2017_Molecular_clocks.pdf http://b3.ifrm.com/30233/130/0/p3002384/Molecular_clocks_indicate_turnover_and_diversification_of_modern_coleoid_cephalopods_during_the_Mesozoic_Marine_Revolution.pdf http://static-curis.ku.dk/portal/files/180602001/Tanner_2017_Molecular_clocks.pdf A related paper is: Clements, T., Colleary, C., De Baets, K. and Vinther, J., 2017. Buoyancy mechanisms limit preservation of coleoid cephalopod soft tissues in Mesozoic Lagerstätten. Palaeontology, 60(1), pp. 1-14. http://www.bristol.ac.uk/earthsciences/people/jakob-vinther/pub/94029132 PDF files: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/efc5/e8c2e2e3eda2561feb1e4234afe2b7a4e254.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312524043_Data_from_Buoyancy_mechanisms_limit_preservation_of_coleoid_cephalopod_soft_tissues_in_Mesozoic_Lagerstatten_Dryad_Digital_Repository https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kenneth_De_Baets https://research-information.bristol.ac.uk/files/107708089/Clements_et_al_2017_Palaeontology.pdf Yours, Paul H.- 2 replies
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I have some questions surrounding the extinct species of Giant White Shark, Cosmopolitodus hastalis. I think it was a fascinating creature, but for reason it doesn't seem to be brought up much. As far as I know, it was a very large shark that lived during the Miocene Epoch, and scientists believe it to be a possible ancestor to the extant Great White Shark, the biggest and meanest shark of our present day oceans. What I'd like to know is what was this shark really like? Did it look similar to the Great White? How do we think it behaved? How exactly does it fit into the lineage of the Great White? How big was it? Did it share the seas, or even possibly become prey for, the mighty O. megalodon? And finally, WHY do people call it "Mako" if it clearly isn't one?? Obviously, not all of these questions have concrete answers but I'd like to hear what you all know about the species. Google search results can only tell so much. Do you know of any good sources where I could read up about it in greater detail? I just think it's a really cool species, and I'd love to know more about it. Thanks!
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Researchers Sequence Complete Genomes of Extinct and Living Elephants
Oxytropidoceras posted a topic in Fossil News
Researchers sequence complete genomes of extinct and living elephants, McMaster University, February 26, 2018, https://phys.org/news/2018-02-sequence-genomes-extinct-elephants.html The paper is: Eleftheria Palkopoulou, Mark Lipson, and others, 2018, A comprehensive genomic history of extinct and living elephants PNAS 2018; published ahead of print February 26, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1720554115 Yours, Paul H. -
Land plants arose earlier than thought—and may have had a bigger impact on the evolution of animals By Elizabeth Pennisi, Feb. 19, 2018 http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/02/land-plants-arose-earlier-thought-and-may-have-had-bigger-impact-evolution-animals Plants may have colonized Earth's surface 100 MILLION years earlier than previously thought, Press association, Daily Mail, Feb. 19, 2018 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5410161/New-research-pushes-history-land-plants-100-million-years.html Morris, JL, Puttick, M, Clark, J, Edwards, D, Kenrick, P, Pressel, S, Wellman, CH, Yang, Z, Harald, S & Donoghue, P, 2018, ‘The timescale of early land plant evolution: controlling for competing topologies and dating strategies on divergence time estimates’. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://www.bristol.ac.uk/earthsciences/people/mark-n-puttick/pub/142491407 http://www.bristol.ac.uk/earthsciences/people/mark-n-puttick/index.html Yours, Paul H.
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As stated many times on the forum, brachiopods differ from bivalves regarding symmetry. Brachiopods have sagittal symmetry (side to side), just like humans, birds, reptiles etc. Bivalves have coronal symmetry (front to back). It seems that coronal symmetry is an outlier in biology, and I'm having trouble coming up with many examples in the animal kingdom. Is coronal symmetry a different branch in the evolutionary chain than sagittal symmetry? I guess the question could also apply to radial symmetry or asymmetry. Put another way, is symmetry something very basic within evolutionary chains, or do chains develop with mixed symmetry?
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