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

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Lorem Ipsum
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Re: Natural History (13.8 billion years BC – 3.3 million BC)

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weatheriscool wrote: Thu Jul 07, 2022 4:33 pm New giant carnivorous dinosaur discovered with tiny arms like T. rex
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-giant-car ... -arms.html
by Cell Press
[...]
The harder question is what exactly the functions were.
Grab their prey?
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caltrek
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Re: Natural History (13.8 billion years BC – 3.3 million BC)

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Study Reveals Yunnanozoans as the Oldest Known Stem Vertebrates
July 7, 2022

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) Scientists have long puzzled over the gap in the fossil record that would explain the evolution of invertebrates to vertebrates. Vertebrates, including fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, and humans, share unique features, such as a backbone and a skull. Invertebrates are animals without backbones.

The process that moved invertebrates toward becoming vertebrates — and what those earliest vertebrates looked like — has been a mystery to scientists for centuries.

A research team has now conducted a study of yunnanozoans, extinct creatures from the early Cambrian period (518 million years ago), and discovered evidence that they are the oldest known stem vertebrates. The term stem vertebrate refers to those vertebrates that are extinct, but very closely related to living vertebrates.
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/957799
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caltrek
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Re: Natural History (13.8 billion years BC – 3.3 million BC)

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500-Million-Year-Old Fossilized Brains of Stanleycaris Prompt a Rethink of the Evolution of Insects and Spiders
July 8 , 2022

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) TORONTO, ON, July 8, 2022 – ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) revealed new research based on a cache of fossils that contains the brain and nervous system of a half-billion-year-old marine predator from the Burgess Shale called Stanleycaris. Stanleycaris belonged to an ancient, extinct offshoot of the arthropod evolutionary tree called Radiodonta, distantly related to modern insects and spiders. These findings shed light on the evolution of the arthropod brain, vision, and head structure. The results were announced in the paper, “A three-eyed radiodont with fossilized neuroanatomy informs the origin of the arthropod head and segmentation”, published in the journal Current Biology.

It’s what’s inside Stanleycaris’ head that has the researchers most excited. In 84 of the fossils, the remains of the brain and nerves are still preserved after 506 million years. “While fossilized brains from the Cambrian Period aren’t new, this discovery stands out for the astonishing quality of preservation and the large number of specimens,” said Joseph Moysiuk, lead author of the research and a University of Toronto (U of T) PhD Candidate in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, based at the Royal Ontario Museum. “We can even make out fine details such as visual processing centers serving the large eyes and traces of nerves entering the appendages. The details are so clear it’s as if we were looking at an animal that died yesterday”.

The new fossils show that the brain of Stanleycaris was composed of two segments, the protocerebrum and deutocerebrum, connected with the eyes and frontal claws, respectively. “We conclude that a two-segmented head and brain has deep roots in the arthropod lineage and that its evolution likely preceded the three-segmented brain that characterizes all living members of this diverse animal phylum,” added Moysiuk.
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/957715
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Re: Natural History (13.8 billion years BC – 3.3 million BC)

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Oldest European salamander fossil, discovered in Scotland, informs amphibian origins
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-oldest-eu ... tland.html

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by University College London
Fossils discovered in Scotland represent some of the world's oldest salamanders, according to a new study led by UCL researchers.

The research team analyzed 166-million-year-old fossils of a type of animal called Marmorerpeton, found in Middle Jurassic rocks on the Isle of Skye.

They found that it has several key salamander traits, but is not part of the modern group of salamanders. Their results are reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The specimen is believed to be the oldest salamander fossil found in Europe.

Marmorerpeton was first described over 30 years ago, but only a few isolated fossil vertebrae and partial jaw bones were found, making it somewhat enigmatic. The new Scottish material adds a wealth of new data, and it also represents a new species: Marmorerpeton wakei, named after the late Professor David Wake, a leading American authority on salamander evolution.
Last edited by weatheriscool on Fri Jul 15, 2022 7:06 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Natural History (13.8 billion years BC – 3.3 million BC)

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Earliest known example of brood care found in extinct insects from China
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-earliest- ... china.html

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by Bob Yirka , Phys.org

At a dig site in China, a team of researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences working with a colleague from the Netherlands has uncovered the earliest known example of brood care in an insect. In their paper published in Proceedings of The Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, the group describes the extinct water bugs and the results of close inspection of their legs.

Prior to this find, the earliest known example of brood care in insects was from samples dated back approximately 122 million years. The water bugs found by the team in China were dated back 160 million years and have been named Karataviella popovi. The researchers found them while digging in rock deposits at a site near Daohugou in a northeastern part of China. In all, they found 30 fossilized specimens, all female, and all with a unique leg characteristic. Each of them had a stalk extending from their mesotibia (middle) left leg for the purpose of holding eggs, likely until they hatched.
Last edited by weatheriscool on Fri Jul 15, 2022 7:00 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Natural History (13.8 billion years BC – 3.3 million BC)

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Rare sauropod dinosaur teeth uncovered in Australia
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-rare-saur ... vered.html

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by Bob Yirka , Phys.org

A team of researchers at the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Natural History Museum The Jump-Up, working with colleagues from the University of New England and University College London, has uncovered sauropod teeth fossils at the Upper Cretaceous Winter Formation of Queensland in Australia. In their paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, the group describes their find and its importance to understanding the history of the creatures in Australia.

Sauropods were big, plant-eating dinosaurs with long necks that lived in many parts of the world. Fossils have been found in many countries, but have been rare in Australia due to its unique geography. The country has very few places where rocks from the Cretaceous or Jurassic are exposed at the surface. The dig site for this new effort, called Mitchell, is little more than a small mound sticking up out of a vast, flat landscape used to graze sheep. The site has thus far yielded 17 sauropod teeth.

The researchers note that sauropods did not chew their food and thus, they had no molars. All of their teeth were semi-conical and curved with a pointed end and were slightly offset. The dinosaurs would have used them in conjunction with their tongue and jaw to grab leaves and snip them into their mouths, which they would consume as is—no pre-processing occurred in the mouth. Thus, the gut would have had to do all the work, a process that could take as long as two weeks.
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Re: Natural History (13.8 billion years BC – 3.3 million BC)

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Newly discovered Liexi fauna reveals early stage of great Ordovician biodiversification event
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-newly-lie ... early.html
by Li Yuan, Chinese Academy of Sciences
From the beginning of the Ordovician, marine life began its great radiation outward, which was characterized by the rapid appearance of new orders, families, and genera, together with the replacement of existing groups.

The Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event (GOBE) constructed the essential framework for Paleozoic evolutionary faunas. During the GOBE, Cambrian faunas dominated by arthropods were replaced by Paleozoic faunas represented by filter feeders and reef-forming organisms.

Recently, a joint research team from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NIGPAS), Hunan Museum, and Central South University has reported a new Lagerstätte, Liexi fauna, from the Lower Ordovician of Yongshun County, Hunan Province. This discovery helps advance our understanding of the early GOBE.

This study was published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B on July 13.

The GOBE was originally studied and defined using skeletonized taxa rather than non-mineralized taxa. Exceptionally preserved Lagerstätte accurately reflects the living community, providing new evidence for understanding the Ordovician marine world. However, only a few Ordovician Lagerstätten have been discovered, especially from the Lower Ordovician.
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Re: Natural History (13.8 billion years BC – 3.3 million BC)

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Mammals Were Not the First to be Warm-blooded
July 20, 2022

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) Endothermy, or warm-bloodedness, is the ability of mammals and birds to produce their own body heat and control their body temperature.

This major difference with the cold-blooded reptiles underpins the ecological dominance of mammals in almost every ecosystem globally. Until now, it was not known exactly when endothermy originated in mammalian ancestry. A team of international scientists, including researchers from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University) in Johannesburg, South Africa, has found the smoking gun of this key evolutionary event in the inner ears of fossils from South Africa and around the globe.

A new study suggests that endothermy appeared in mammalian ancestors about 233 million years ago, well before the origin of mammals, which occurred about 200 million years ago. This study, titled Inner ear biomechanics reveals Late Triassic origin of mammalian endothermy is published in Nature.

“For the first time, we are able to trace through evolution the direct consequence of the origin of endothermy on the skeletal anatomy of our pre-mammalian ancestors,” says Dr Julien Benoit, Senior Researcher in Palaeontology at the Evolutionary Studies Institute at Wits University. “This is an exciting time for our field of study.”
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/959231
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Re: Natural History (13.8 billion years BC – 3.3 million BC)

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Idea of Ice Age 'Species Pump' in the Philippines Boosted by New Way of Drawing Evolutionary Trees
July 20, 2022

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) LAWRENCE — Does the Philippines’ astonishing biodiversity result in part from rising and falling seas during the ice ages?
Scientists have long thought the unique geography of the Philippines — coupled with seesawing ocean levels — could have created a “species pump” that triggered massive diversification by isolating, then reconnecting, groups of species again and again on islands. They call the idea the “Pleistocene aggregate island complex (PAIC) model” of diversification.

But hard evidence, connecting bursts of speciation to the precise times that global sea levels rose and fell, has been scant until now.

A groundbreaking Bayesian method and new statistical analyses of genomic data from geckos in the Philippines shows that during the ice ages, the timing of gecko diversification gives strong statistical support for the first time to the PAIC model, or “species pump.” The investigation, with roots at the University of Kansas, was just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“The Philippines is an isolated archipelago, currently including more than 7,100 islands, but this number was dramatically reduced, possibly to as few as six or seven giant islands, during the Pleistocene,” said co-author Rafe Brown, curator-in-charge of the herpetology division of the Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum at KU. “The aggregate landmasses were composed of many of today’s smaller islands, which became connected together by dry land as sea levels fell, and all that water was tied up in glaciers. It’s been hypothesized that this kind of fragmentation and fusion of land, which happened as sea levels repeatedly fluctuated over the last 4 million years, sets the stage for a special evolutionary process, which may have triggered simultaneous clusters or bursts of speciation in unrelated organisms present at the time. In this case, we tested this prediction in two different genera of lizards, each with species found only in the Philippines.”
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/959411 and here: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2121036119
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Re: Natural History (13.8 billion years BC – 3.3 million BC)

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