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Geology News
Fossils Current Events

The moa is a large, extinct bird that lived on Gondwana and evolved as the Earth changed. Revising the bird’s family tree using fossilized DNA has given researchers some new ideas about the geology of New Zealand.

Assembling fossils from countless tiny pieces can be quite an endeavor, to say the least. Can computers do a better job of fossil identification than expert paleontologists?

Portable 3D laser technology can be used to scan fossils for data to create three-dimensional replicas. An example of this is in Glen Rose, Texas, where a dinosaur track was built into a courthouse wall.

Foraminifera fossils are tiny calcium carbonate shells, as small as a grain of sand. These fossils yield numerous clues about the water depth, water temperature, climate and other environmental conditions present at the time that they were alive.

The Vatican recently hosted a conference that brought scientists and clergy together for the purpose of exploring the possibility of sentient extraterrestrial life. This AOL article reports on the conference and relationships between the Catholic Church and science.

Marks on a Tyrannosaurus rex skull indicate that the creature may have been fighting with its peers. The young dinosaur, “Jane”, was apparently bitten on the snout, causing the bones to heal asymmetrically.

A fossilized fly found in Burma is thought to represent an all-new family, genus, and species of insect. The strange-looking creature had a horn growing from its head, with three eyes at the tip of the horn. This article includes photos of the fly encased in amber.

This .pdf from the National History Museum of Los Angeles County announces the unveiling of Fruitadens haagarorum. Found in the Morrison Formation of Colorado, it is the smallest dinosaur discovered in North America to date. Weighing slightly less than a kilogram (2 pounds), the creature was quick and nimble, and possibly had an omnivorous diet.

The remnants of a giant pliosaur were found off the Jurassic Coast of the U.K. This article includes a video of a paleontologist describing the massive skull.

The Cambrothyra is an aquatic organism that existed over 500 million years ago. UCSB student John Moore has devoted much of his time to studying the fossilized remnants of these creatures, and shares some of his findings.

A 7.5-acre site in Prince George’s County will become Maryland’s first dinosaur park. County archaeologist, Donald Creveling calls it “one of the most prolific sites for dinosaur and plant fossils east of the Mississippi River.”

“Ida”, the primate fossil found in Germany, was surrounded by hype earlier this year. Many scientists believe that Ida is more closely related to lemurs than monkeys.

Researchers at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County are assembling a dinosaur that is only 28 inches long and weighed about two pounds.

Colombian plant fossils are lending some insight as to how Paleocene rainforests may have looked. The fossils, found at the Cerrejon open-pit coal mine, also indicate that the forests probably existed at higher temperatures and humidity levels than those today.

The Smithsonian Museum is preparing a new addition: The Hall of Human Origins. It will feature how humans evolved over the last 6 million years, and is slated to open on the museum’s 100th anniversary in March 2010.

Some fossils found in northeastern China could be the “missing link” in pterosaur evolution. The Darwinopterus, named after Charles Darwin, has characteristics of both earlier and more recent Mesozoic reptile species.

As new fossil discoveries allow us to learn more about dinosaurs, a puzzling problem has surfaced. A dinosaur’s bone structure could change significantly between youth and maturity. It is possible that the fossils of young dinosaurs may have been mistaken as being those of a separate species. National Geographic is currently airing a show on the subject, called “Dinosaurs Decoded”.

A new prehistoric mammal has been discovered in the Liaoning Province of China. The creature, named Maotherium asiaticus, is helping scientists learn about the evolution of the middle ear.

Electron microscopes used to be the size of a car and cost $1/2 million or more. Now, Hitachi has a table-top model that plugs into a standard wall outlet, sends the view to your laptop, costs about $60,000 and is very easy to use.

Numerous dinosaur imprints measuring up to 2 meters in diameter and covering a distance of over 100 meters have been discovered near the village of Plagne, France.

“Samson” is the name of the third most complete tyrannosaurus skeleton ever found. He was placed up for auction in Las Vegas with the expectation that he would fetch at least $8 million – the price paid about ten years ago for a similar fossil. Bidding fizzled at $3.7 million – less than the reserve price.

A small ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex has been discovered in China. Raptorex lived about 60 million years before T. rex and stood about 9 feet tall.

Once a name attains global popularity it can be very difficult to make a correction. A post at Everything Dinosaur explains the confusion between the names Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus.

PBS has a new children’s series titled “Dinosaur Train”. The star of the show will be Buddy, an animated Tyrannosaurus rex. Paleontologist, Scott Sampson, research curator at the Utah Museum of Natural History will be featured in live-action segments within the show.

This interesting fact sheet has fossil photos, environment descriptions and paleogeographic maps for ten fossil sites in Utah spanning a time range of 500 million years. Featured fossils include trilobites, fish, plants, dinosaurs and ice age mammals.

A Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton named “Samson” will be auctioned on October 3 in Las Vegas, Nevada. In 1997 a similar Tyrannosaurus rex was purchased at auction by Chicago’s Field Museum for $8 million.

“A team of paleontologists and ornithologists has discovered evidence of vivid iridescent colors in fossil feathers more than 40 million years old. Discovery of a color-producing nanostructure in a fossil feather opens up the possibility that we may someday be able to determine such colors in fossil birds, as well as in feathered dinosaurs.” Quoted from the NSF news release.

A twelve-foot-tall Siberian mammoth fossil on display at the Arizona Geological Survey courtesy of the Natural History Museum of Novosibirsk, Russia has been surprising visitors to the survey’s atrium since February. The fossil has been purchased and is moving to a new home. Staff members of the Novosibirsk museum have recovered several mammoth and woolly rhino fossils which were eroding from a stream channel in Siberia.

Today is the 100th anniversary of the discovery of the Burgess Shale fossils by Charles Walcott in British Columbia, Canada. One reason for their fame is that they are an excellent example of soft-bodied preservation of Middle Cambrian organisms.

A flat of fine-grained limestone found in France has what are thought to be 140-million-year-old landing tracks of pterosaurs. This runway might provide interesting information about how these creatures flew, landed and walked.