Natural History (13.8 billion years BC – 3.3 million BC)

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240 million-year-old fossil of salamander-like creature with 'gnarly teeth' unearthed in rocks for garden wall
News

A retired chicken farmer found the rocks in the mid-1990s and donated it to the Australian Museum, where researchers have now named the newfound species Arenaerpeton supinatus.

https://www.livescience.com/animals/ext ... arden-wall

[Powers]

240 million-year-old fossil of salamander-like creature with 'gnarly teeth' unearthed in rocks for garden wall
News

A retired chicken farmer found the rocks in the mid-1990s and donated it to the Australian Museum, where researchers have now named the newfound species Arenaerpeton supinatus.

https://www.livescience.com/animals/ext ... arden-wall

The rock preserved the entire skeleton and even the outlines of the creature's skin. (Image credit: UNSW Sydney/Richard Freeman)

[wjfox]

An asteroid impact origin of the Hirnantian (end-Ordovician) glaciation and mass extinction

Volume 118, June 2023, Pages 153-159

The buried ∼520 km-diameter Deniliquin multiple-ring impact structure (DMS), southeastern Australia, is regarded as likely to have triggered the ∼ 1.4 million years-long Late Ordovician (Hirnantian) glaciation and mass extinction event (445.2 and 443.8 Ma), which eliminated about 85% of species. The Hirnantian, second in severity relative to the Permian-Triassic boundary extinction (251 Ma) and almost twice as severe as the K–T impact and extinction event (66 Ma), is considered likely to represent the consequence of the Deniliquin mega-impact event. The geophysical evidence for a deep-seated impact origin of the DMS includes its distinct symmetric multiple-ring pattern (Fig. 1), a central magnetically quiet TMI core, radial faults and an underlying mantle dome about 10 km shallower than the regional MOHO. The magnitude of the DMS is consistent with the scale of the Hirnantian glacial and extinction events and much larger than Cambrian extinction events, which occurred on a smaller scale, suggesting the DMS is likely to represent the trigger for Hirnantian glacial and extinction events. A search for impact-deformation effects in proximal and distal Ordovician strata around the Deniliquin mega-impact structure is required to further test this suggestion.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 7X23000655

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First ever remains of a dicraeosaurid sauropod unearthed in India
https://phys.org/news/2023-08-dicraeosa ... india.html
by Bob Yirka , Phys.org

A team of archaeologists from the Indian Institute of Technology and the Geological Survey of India, has unearthed the first ever remains of a dicraeosaurid sauropod in India. In their paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, the group describes the fossil, its condition and where it fits in with other dinosaurs of the Middle Jurassic.

The fossil (a partial dorsal vertebra) was dug up at a site in the Thar Desert near the city of Jaisalmer, in the state of Rajasthan. Prior research has shown that during the Mesozoic Era, the area was a shoreline along the Tethys Ocean. The newly found fossil has been dated to approximately 167 million years ago and identified as a member of the dicraeosaurids, which were a group of dinosaurs with long necks that fed on vegetation. It is the first member of the group to have ever been found in India—and the oldest in the world.

[caltrek]

New Ancient Ape from Türkiye Challenges the Story of Human Origins
August 23, 2023

Introduction:

(Eurekalert) A new fossil ape from an 8.7-million-year-old site in Türkiye is challenging long-accepted ideas of human origins and adding weight to the theory that the ancestors of African apes and humans evolved in Europe before migrating to Africa between nine and seven million years ago.

Analysis of a newly identified ape named Anadoluvius turkae recovered from the Çorakyerler fossil locality near Çankırı with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in Türkiye, shows Mediterranean fossil apes are diverse and are part of the first known radiation of early hominines – the group that includes African apes (chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas), humans and their fossil ancestors.

The findings are described in a study published today in Communications Biology co-authored by an international team of researchers led by Professor David Begun at the University of Toronto (U of T) and Professor Ayla Sevim Erol at Ankara University.

“Our findings further suggest that hominines not only evolved in western and central Europe but spent over five million years evolving there and spreading to the eastern Mediterranean before eventually dispersing into Africa, probably as a consequence of changing environments and diminishing forests,” said Begun, professor in the Department of Anthropology in the Faculty of Arts & Science at U of T. “The members of this radiation to which Anadoluvius belongs are currently only identified in Europe and Anatolia.”

The conclusion is based on analysis of a significantly well-preserved partial cranium uncovered at the site in 2015, which includes most of the facial structure and the front part of the brain case.

Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/999392

[wjfox]

If a time machine took me back to the late Carboniferous period, could I find safe food, water and shelter to survive the remainder of my life?

T. Barczuk
Updated Jul 3

Ladies and gentlemen. Please fasten your seatbelts. We are about to depart to the end of the Carboniferous period, 359 - 299 million years ago. Our current time travel technology can only take us there one way. There is no going back.

• Time travel is only the first temporal effect that the traveler would experience. His circadian rhythm would be severely disrupted and affect their life because the day length was only about 22 hours in the Carboniferous period. There could be insomnia, immune system dysfunction, increased risk of cancer, problems with the heart, and even early death from all the above combined during a multi-decade stay. On a short visit, it should be fine.

• An additional factor that would shorten the life span of travelers would be the increased oxygen level in the atmosphere. It was about 28% at the beginning of the Carboniferous period, it dropped to about 24% in the middle and rose again to about 27% at the end. Over the lifetime, if it was a long lifetime, so much oxygen would damage the tissues and increase the speed of aging of humans not adapted to these levels and cause early wrinkly skin and health problems that would cause premature death.

• Another weird temporal effect would be noticed after landing. Animals would seem slower, more sluggish than us. At the time, they might have perceived reality in fewer frames per second than us on average. We do it at 60Hz after additional hundreds of millions of years of evolution of vertebrate animals. There were no warm-blooded creatures at the time yet, so there were no very active animals. They only had sprawling legs while walking, which made them slower. All of this lead to slower reaction times sufficient for survival. Insects might have been faster, but even they only just evolved relatively recently. They weren’t as great at what they did at the time yet.

• The air was filled with copious amounts of spores of various plants. Breathing after some time might even result in death from an extreme allergic reaction, or anaphylaxis in some susceptible individuals. We are more adapted to pollen, which didn’t exist in the Carboniferous period.

• This also means that there were no fruits, and we need Vitamin C to survive. We would need to eat leaves, make teas from bark or eat buds of leaves of ferns, the fiddleheads.

• The good news is that animals shouldn’t be that dangerous at the time, and it might be easy to hunt them for food, at least on dry land. They weren’t that big, fast, or even smart yet. Although, many formidable crocodile-like and crocodile-size temnospondyl amphibians with massive teeth existed in aquatic habitats and widespread swamps. There were also giant, 2.5 m/8 feet millipedes. It’s hard to tell how dangerous they were, but I’m learning they weren’t. They were outcompeted by reptiles soon and died out anyways. Large, flying, 0.7 m/2 feet insects similar to dragonflies shouldn’t have been dangerous to humans. A more significant danger might be venomous tiny animals like scorpions or spiders.

• Another good news is that there might be less danger from diseases. It’s unlikely that many would affect mammals like humans. But who knows? There might be an odd outlier that could infect us. Maybe some mysterious virus. For bacteria, we should take a lot of antibiotics with us.

If we traveled in a time machine back to the late Carboniferous period, it should be possible to build shelter from trees, which evolved recently. Water should not be a problem. There would be an issue with obtaining a balanced diet because there were no fruits, which evolved less than 180 million years ago. The lifespan of the travelers would be severely shortened from all the issues described above.

https://www.quora.com/If-a-time-machine ... of-my-life

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Fossil of oldest-known koala relative unearthed in central Australia
https://phys.org/news/2023-09-fossil-ol ... ntral.html
by Bob Yirka , Phys.org

A small team of evolutionary biologists at Flinders University, in Australia, working with one colleague from the University of Salford in the U.K. and another from the University of California, Los Angeles, has found fossilized evidence of the oldest-known koala relative in a central part of Australia. In their paper, published in the journal Scientific Reports, the group describes the fossil, where it was found and how it fits into the history of marsupial evolution in Australia.

The fossil was excavated in Pwerte Marnte Marnte in Australia's Northern Territory. The study suggests the animal was approximately the size of a modern housecat and that it likely ate soft leaves. Fossils at the site have been dated back approximately 25 million years, during the Oligocene epoch. It was promptly named Lumakoala blackae. The find is considered important because it helps to clarify the history of mammalian evolution in Australia, particularly during a 30-million-year gap in the fossil record.

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Isle of Wight fossil suggests Europe had its own family of small herbivorous dinosaurs
https://phys.org/news/2023-09-isle-wigh ... amily.html
by University of Bath

Scientists have discovered a new species of small plant-eating dinosaur on the Isle of Wight in southern England (UK). The new species, Vectidromeus insularis, is the second member of the hypsilophodont family to be found on the island, suggesting that Europe had its own family of small herbivorous dinosaurs, distinct from those found in Asia and North America.

Hypsilophodonts were a group of nimble, bipedal herbivores that lived around 125 million years ago. The animals lived alongside early tyrannosaurs, spinosaurs, and Iguanodon. The new fossil represents an animal about the size of a chicken but was a juvenile and may have grown much larger.

Vectidromeus is a close relative of Hypsilophodon foxii, a dinosaur originally described in the Victorian era, and one of the first dinosaurs to be described from relatively complete remains. Small and with gracile, with bird-like hindlimbs, hypsilophodonts were used by famous scientist Thomas Henry Huxley as evidence that birds were related to dinosaurs.