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Humans pushed cave bears to extinction, their DNA suggests Washington Post, By Ben Guarino, August 15 2019 https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/08/15/humans-pushed-cave-bears-extinction-their-dna-suggests/ Gretzinger, J., Molak, M., Reiter, E., Pfrengle, S., Urban, C., Neukamm, J., Blant, M., Conard, N.J., Cupillard, C., Dimitrijević, V. and Drucker, D.G., 2019. Large-scale mitogenomic analysis of the phylogeography of the Late Pleistocene cave bear. Scientific reports, 9. (open access) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-47073-z Yours, Paul H.

What were the largest animals to survive the KT extinction?

It seems to me that our feral horses should be considered "Native Wildlife" like any other. Why did horses in North America go extinct?

Anyone seen the new paper on the possible causes of megalodon extinction? Haven't had a chance to read more than the abstract yet, but looks interesting: https://peerj.com/articles/6088/ @Gizmo

Here's Why Over 80% of All Life on Earth Was Wiped Out 250 Million Years Ago. A chain reaction of death. https://www.sciencealert.com/end-permian-triassic-extinction-event-volcano-eruption-lithospheric-halogens https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180827121348.htm https://phys.org/news/2018-08-geologists-uncover-clues-largest-mass.html https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-08/uota-gun082418.php the paper is: Michael W. Broadley, Peter H. Barry, Chris J. Ballentine, Lawrence A. Taylor and Ray Burgess, 2018, End-Permian extinction amplified by plume-induced release of recycled lithospheric volatiles. Nature Geoscience https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-018-0215-4 Yours, Paul H.

Hello! I´m learning more about earlier mammoth species, and have some questionmarks when it comes to mammoth meridionalis. Most of the literature says that the specie lived between 2,5 - 1,5 million years ago. But I´ve been in contact with a seller, and this seller claims that there were meridionalis mammoths living in Hungary between 800.000 - 1.000.000 years ago. The seller also said that meridionalis fossils they´ve found/bought from north sea have sometimes been between 1.000.000 - 1.500.000 years old. The fact that the information is so different, have made me pretty confused. And I´m also questioning the fact that I haven´t found a more detailed story of the actual extinction of the specie? It´s a very trustful team of sellers I´m talking about, and I´ve been buying several fossils from them and haven´t been given any reason to not trust them so far. But since there is a gap of fivehundred thousand years, at least, I still want to reach out for the opinion of others. Because now I don´t really know what to think.. Ps. I´m thankful for any little details you can give me!

About 3 years ago I was walking along the dunes by the river, across from Farewell Bend State park on the Idaho side. I noticed that there was what looked to be an abnormal amount of crystallized and glassy material, conglomerates, basalt and lots of sand. The sand can be explained by the presence of mud volcanos and hydrothermal vents that can be seen in satellite photos. My premature analysis and imagination were wild with fantasy. The samples I was collecting were like nothing I've ever seen. I knew something was up, but there were and are, still more questions to answer. Idaho Falls sits at ~4700ft above sea level. Farewell Bend is ~2300ft. Making the Treasure Valley of Idaho a 340mi basin that becomes a bottleneck at Farewell Bend, which would explain the accumulation and abnormal variety of material. I have always been good to pay attention to the composition of the soil and rock in my environment. Usually the material is pretty consistent, but I've seen nothing like the variety that is here. Traveling upriver deposits of glacial stone are evident in the bends of the river, indicating ice jams that built up on the tips of islands. The stones are always upriver of the islands. About 30mi to the Northwest is a very large cement plant run by the largest cement manufacturer in the nation, Ash Grove. I'm still working on understanding the erosion and possibility of run-off and river flows changing the route in which the Treasure Valley drains. The Idaho State Fossil is the Hagerman Horse, which is from an abnormal collection. "Ultimately five nearly complete skeletons, more than 100 skulls, and forty-eight lower jaws as well as numerous isolated bones were found." (wikipedia) There are a few theories as to how the bones made it there is such large numbers. One theory being that they were swept up in a flash flood, ~3.5mya. My own personal theory is if the horses could have been herded by the Native peoples and eaten. The more I look into it though, I see that it is more likely that this is not an isolated event. The deposits in the Hagerman beds may have been, but the odd numbers of bones vs. complete skeletons points at dismembered animals in my opinion. Just as this flash flood 3.5mya could have wiped out the Hagerman Horse, so too could have the human population that would have been very likely to have populated the Treasure Valley region in much larger numbers than we currently understand. Further passed Farewell Bend the Snake River winds into Hells Canyon. The Hells Canyon is the deepest gorge on the North American Continent. Which, to me, says a couple of things. #1 Must be the oldest, Orrrrr #2 Must have had the most aggressive run off which carved it deeper than the Grand Canyon. These are questions will be investigated further as my collection of maps and topographics grows. I am working on understanding what allowed the formation of valleys and plains through the Treasure/Magic Valley ranges, and the lower elevations from the Blue Mountains north to the Cascade range which also has the not so mountainous regions that, by the tectonics in the area, should not exist like they do. Ancient inland seas are what I am looking at currently. Satellite photographs seem to suggest there was a drainage that went to the south and I believe that there were more salts in the waters in these Idaho waters. Which looks to have drained towards Salt Lake. This easily could have been via aquifer, or by displacement from meteoric impact. There has been some problem with correlation because "~" timelines are a bit loose when it comes to lining up events. For instance, the flood that apparently killed the horses in the Hagerman beds was ~3.5mya. Geologists seem to like this ~3my marker for some reason. Same with this is the 12,000 - 15,000ya mentions, some reports mention that the abrupt end to the last Ice Age was ~12-15,000ya. Which, only really gives me direction to look into whether or not, and how the end of this ice age caused the flooding and debris to completely chew up the fossil record and make it incredible hard to identify locations and patterns in events. The "quaternary" deposits at Farewell Bend do and do not make sense. So, while the standard may be to look at a USGS map of deposits to determine what minerals and fossils might be where, it becomes a problem in Idaho because by the elevation drop and the likely age of the Snake River, literally every single time period "should" be represented in the deposits that have accumulated at Farewell Bend. Though, they might just fit somehow in the corresponding periods of deposits, but will need to be given a new description for how the periods are represented in these constantly modified deposits. Suevite chucks, Still working on getting the equipment to make slices. Recommendations I need to head back to the site to take photos of the large suevite boulders that are very clearly ejecta from an impact. Where the top of the boulder is exposed and shattered from weathering. The boulders have a mix of glass, crystal, concretions and stones showing shock induced spallation. The "eggs" previously hypothesized are likely to be shock induced spallation, still wondering how that may occur in an egg though. If an egg were to be fossilized prior to the shock, what would the effects be? Picture showing glass on concretion from suevite boulder. The glass inclusion shattered when chipping it free from the suevite. Part two of this post will be more photos that show the variety of samples collected. It is taking me quite a while to set all of this up. I plan for this to be a regularly updated post. Please, if anyone has any feedback or wisdom, please by all means, I'm here for correction in this critical analysis. One of my favorite things in learning is to be wrong, because that means my autistic thought process has investigated why it's not right, even if I don't know it yet. Suggestions, regarding missing considerations or needed analysis, please school me. I find it difficult to manage my tangents at times. Cited: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagerman_horse (web, 2018) https://www.britannica.com/place/Hagerman-Fossil-Beds-National-Monument (web, 2018)

Poisonous angiosperms might has caused the dinosaur extinctions because they could not taste the poisons in the plants. Warning, do not suffer the same fate; do not eat large amounts of spinach. http://www.techtimes.com/articles/224517/20180405/turns-out-dinosaurs-were-killed-off-by-flowers-then-the-asteroid-put-the-nail-in-the-coffin.htm

NICE!!http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.2001663&type=printable 51 Mb,highly recommended, first description of a new species,Alcione. A cladistic analysis is included,BTW. Very ,very solid documentation of the material

This ancient climate catastrophe is our best clue about Earth’s future Sarah Kaplan, the Washington Post, March 27, 2018 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2018/03/27/this-ancient-climate-catastrophe-is-our-best-clue-about-earths-future/?utm_term=.9b31f277e13c https://www.sciencealert.com/this-ancient-climate-catastrophe-may-provide-clues-for-for-facing-ours Yours, Paul H.

Below is an interesting paper about mass extinctions. Racki, G. 2012. The Alvarez impact theory of mass extinction; limits to its applicability and the "great expectations syndrome". Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 57 (4): 681-702. https://www.app.pan.pl/archive/published/app57/app20110058.pdf https://www.app.pan.pl/article/item/app20110058.html https://www.researchgate.net/publication/239739714_The_Alvarez_impact_theory_of_mass_extinction_limits_to_its_applicability_and_the_great_expectations_syndrome https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Grzegorz_Racki http://agro.icm.edu.pl/agro/element/bwmeta1.element.agro-d1182c96-9ae1-48af-858c-a2f844a3d830/c/app20110058_681.pdf Other papers are: Racki, G., 2015. Catastrophism and neocatastrophism versus cosmic hazard: Ager versus Alvarez; Cuvier versus Laplace. Palaios, 30(6), pp. 432-434. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.894.7456&rep=rep1&type=pdf https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279238673_Catastrophism_and_neocatastrophism_versus_cosmic_hazard_Ager_versus_Alvarez_Cuvier_versus_Laplace Racki, G., 2014. Dmitri Sobolev and other forgotten forerunners of mass extinction science and volcanic catastrophism. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, 59(4), pp. 1006-1008. http://yadda.icm.edu.pl/yadda/element/bwmeta1.element.agro-c20648d9-6f1c-454b-b6ce-c2fd0eb7a061/c/app20141004_1006_1008.pdf https://www.infona.pl/resource/bwmeta1.element.agro-c20648d9-6f1c-454b-b6ce-c2fd0eb7a061 Yours, Paul H.

The Alien Observatory --"The Vast Majority of Fossils Discovered in the Universe Will Be Extinct Microbial Life, Not Dinosaurs or Humanoids" The Daily Galaxy January 14, 2018 http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2018/01/the-alien-observatory-the-vast-majority-of-fossils-discovered-in-the-universe-will-be-extinct-microb.html A paper is: Chopra, A. and Lineweaver, C.H., 2016. The case for a Gaian bottleneck: the biology of habitability. Astrobiology, 16(1), pp. 7-22. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291334824_The_Case_for_a_Gaian_Bottleneck_The_Biology_of_Habitability? https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Charley_Lineweaver http://magonia.com/files/the-case-for-a-gaian-bottleneck.pdf http://www.nso.lt/science/content/bottleneck.pdf Another paper is: Lineweaver, C.H., 2009. Paleontological tests: human-like intelligence is not a convergent feature of evolution. In From fossils to astrobiology (pp. 353-368). Springer, Dordrecht. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/241315068_Paleontological_Tests_HumanLike_Intelligence_Is_Not_a_Convergent_Feature_of_Evolution https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Charley_Lineweaver Yours, Paul H.

A bit of an old one, but from a local perspective: https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2017/05/218258/last-african-dinosaur-discovered-in-morocco-oulad-abdoun-basin/

Today I managed to explore and observe an exposure of the Queenston formation up close here in Hamilton, Ontario. I chose a site along the Red Hill Valley Expressway that was easy to access and get down to for a close look. The creek is right next to the highway. I have always passed by this exposure and anticipated the day I'll be able to observe it. The Queenston formation is the last Ordovician formation in south-western Ontario before the rocks hit the Silurian age. The Queenston is what overlains the Georgian Bay formation, the formation I use to hunt in frequently in Toronto, Ontario. This is Red Hill Creek as it passes by next to the Highway.

Fossils reveal how bizarre mammal beat extinction Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, August 24, 2017 https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/08/170824182708.htm https://phys.org/news/2017-08-fossils-reveal-bizarre-mammal-extinction.html https://phys.org/news/2017-08-caribbean-mammal-extinctions-spurs-renewed.html Yours, Paul H.

Extinction of Mainland and Island Mammoth Populations in Alaska 6,000 Years Ago, Royal Tyrrell Museum Speaker Series 2017 Dr. Duane Froese, University of Alberta, presents new research on the extinction of mammoths and other megafauna from Arctic North America and the causes of the final extinction of a population on St. Paul Island, Alaska, about 6000 years ago. Some of the papers referenced in the talk are: Graham, R.W., Belmecheri, S., Choy, K., Culleton, B.J., Davies, L.J., Froese, D., Heintzman, P.D., Hritz, C., Kapp, J.D., Newsom, L.A. and Rawcliffe, R., 2016. Timing and causes of mid-Holocene mammoth extinction on St. Paul Island, Alaska. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, p. 9310–9314. Guthrie, R.D., 2006. New carbon dates link climatic change with human colonization and Pleistocene extinctions. Nature, 441(7090), pp. 207-209. Palkopoulou, E., Dalén, L., Lister, A.M., Vartanyan, S., Sablin, M., Sher, A., Edmark, V.N., Brandström, M.D., Germonpré, M., Barnes, I. and Thomas, J.A., 2013, November. Holarctic genetic structure and range dynamics in the woolly mammoth. In Proc. R. Soc. B (Vol. 280, No. 1770, 9 pp.) The Royal Society. Yours, Paul H.

Hugolee has a recent post showing pictures of dugong bone. The responses to his post tickled my interest in the subject and caused me to do a little research on both manatees and dugongs. I am now more intelligent regarding this subject, BUT could not figure out a question that came to mind. Any help in educating me is appreciated!! Waters in Florida must have been infested with dugongs for as many bones that are found. Dugongs in Florida died out at the time that manatees arrived. WHY???? Was it possible that manatees outcompeted the dugongs? I saw a cold snap was given as a reason for a particular population studied. Was this the reason for all dugongs? If so, why did the manatees survive the cold? Just askin!!! Mike

Does anyone know when Bison died out in Iowa? I myself have a single vertebrae and the front lower left half of a buffalo jaw with 2 teeth in it. I think it must be any wear from 500-to a couple thousand years as it is dark brown in color. 16 - 1.webp

Back to the Cretaceous badlands. Fall has come to the Alberta Badlands and cooler temperatures. This is a positive for exploring the steeper slopes and KT dino extinction boundary high above the Red Deer River. This report is a bit top heavy in scenery photos. Didn't want to get sidetracked by fossils along long trek through lower levels or would never make it up to the destination. Encountered Bullwinkle a couple of kms before our driving destination. Lots of wildlife this day including grouse, mule deer , coyotes and a million migrating waterfowl. Need to push our way through some non-badland topography. Boreal and aspen forests.

According to this recent study, the popular belief that mammals diversified after the extinction that killed the non-avian dinosaurs is incorrect; mammals diversified in the shadow of the dinos long before the extinction, and actually had a drop in diversity after it. The reason for this diversification was the evolution of angiosperms (flowering plants), which provided mammals with new food sources. Research paper: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/283/1832/20160256 Simplified version: http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology/early-mammals-diversification-03931.html

Interesting paper that suggests ichthyosaurs went extinct because of climate change. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-09/ichthyosaurs-may-have-been-wiped-out-by-climate-change/7230400 Izak

Could all of the large meteorite impacts, especially the one(s) that drove the dinosaurs to extinction, increase the earths gravity? And if so is it likely this is a big factor in the next evolutionary step for dinosaurs, feathered flight?

Taken from my recent blog post: http://redleafz.blogspot.ca/2013/04/five-islands-provincial-park-2012.html Here's another of my belated posts on one of my trips last year. Me and my buddy Craig went for one of many trips to the beautiful town of Parrsboro, Nova Scotia. From town, we headed East towards the small village of Five Islands, which has a Provincial park of the same name: Five Islands Provincial Park. Islands from right to left: Moose i., Diamond i., Long i., Pinnacle i., Egg i., Pinnacle rock Five Islands Provincial Park is a location that has witnessed several events, including a major extinction. Most of the rocks South of the park, towards Red Head and continuing on to Lower Economy, are of a red sandstone from the Triassic Period. These red sandstones from around Red Head are indicative of an arid, desertic climate. On top of the Triassic rock is a layer that corresponds to the Triassic-Jurassic boundary, sandwiched between Triassic sandstone and Jurassic basalts right on top of it. This Triassic-Jurassic layer is identified by its white sandstone and mudstone. The importance of this layer is that it represents one of the major extinction events that had occurred at the boundary. It is still being studied today. The basalts that top these sandstone layers South of the park and protrude West and created the islands, are of the same found at Blomidon and Cape d'Or. These Jurassic age ancient lava flows and dykes could have been part of an active volcanic network seen all over the Minas Basin. The Old Wife is a result of this contorted, violent past. The islands which dot the landscape are also mostly composed of this Jurassic basalt, and some sections of Jurassic sandstones. "Old Wife", with Moose Island in the background The red cliffs just North of the basalt and separated by faults is of Jurassic age. Dinosaur tracks and other fossils have been found occasionally from either the cliff face, or from loose rocks on the beach. A local by the name of Eldon George had found, among many other wonderful fossils, the smallest dinosaur tracks ever found back in the 1980s at Wasson's Bluff, sandstones of the same age and formation not too far from here. See Jon Tattrie's article. Organic layers within water channel Jurassic McCoy Brook Frm. (left), Jurassic North Mountain Frm. (right) But I digress, as I keep rambling on the technical and less on the practical. We arrived at the park when the tide was going down. We walked down the beach and was met with a thick band of fog that was going out the bay. Lava flows Heading South after searching the beach for agate and fossil fragments, the fog lifted and the Sun came out. We went around the Old Wife and headed towards Red Head. Fault running through columnar basalt Beach made up of basalt and minerals "Red Head", seperating the Triassic-Jurassic Blomidon Frm. (West) and Triassic Wolfville Frm. (East) Triassic Wolfville Frm. red sandstone cliffs Modern day trackways (crab) This area is only accessible at extreme low tide, so the window of opportunity is very small. Getting trapped or stranded is a very highly probable so good planning and looking up the tide charts before heading down this way is an ABSOLUTE MUST! This is one of the places in Nova Scotia that I highly recommend visiting, among other sites of course. =)