Image: National Museum of Natural History, courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution.
“So what can the story of the Ediacarans tell us about the evolution of life on other planets? First and perhaps most importantly, it tells us that evolution can happen very quickly. The idea – first credited to Darwin - that vast amounts of deep time are required for evolution to occur may not be correct. The speed with which the Ediacarans arose in the aftermath of the final Cryogenian glaciation suggests strongly that the evolution of complex, multicellular organisms was on the blocks and just waiting for the starting pistol”.
(Jean) Louis (Rodolphe) Agassiz was a Swiss-born U.S. naturalist, geologist, and teacher who made revolutionary contributions to the study of natural science with landmark work on glacier activity and extinct fishes. Agassiz began his work in Europe, having studied at the University of Munich and then as chair in natural history in Neuchatel in Switzerland. While there he published his landmark multi-volume description and classification of fossil fish.
In 1846 Agassiz came to the U.S. to lecture before Boston's Lowell Institute. Offered a professorship of Zoology and Geology at Harvard in 1848, he decided to stay, becoming a citizen in 1861. His innovative teaching methods altered the character of natural science education in the U.S. Link
Sarah gets a tip of the hat for playing Lady Charlotte Cunningham is the mostly forgotten Hammer Films adaptation of the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel of the same name.
Douglas is probably best known for playing the Phantom Zone Villianess Ursa in the 1978 Superman movie.
A new theropod genus Tawa hallae, from New Mexico (~ 214 million years ago) stood about 70 cm tall at the hips as a juvenile, and was about 2 m long from snout to tail. It is named after the Hopi word for the Puebloan sun god.
One of Tawa’s most important contributions to science has to do with what it says about Herrerasaurus, an unusual theropod placed either just outside or just inside the evolutionary tree of theropods.
Tawa has a mix of Herrerasaurus-like characteristics (for example, in the pelvis) and features found in firmly established theropod dinosaurs (for example, pockets for airsacs in the backbone). Therefore, the characteristics that Herrerasaurus shares uniquely with theropods such as Tawa confirm the characteristics didn’t arise independently and that Herrerasaurus is indeed a theropod.
The firm placement of Herrerasaurus within the theropod lineage suggests that once dinosaurs appeared, they very rapidly diversified into the three main dinosaur lineages that persisted for more than 170 million years.
Tawa skeletons were found beside two other theropod dinosaurs from around the same period. Lead author Sterling Nesbitt noted that each of the three is more closely related to a known dinosaur from South America than they are to each other. This suggests these three species each descended from a separate lineage in South America, and then later dispersed to North America and other parts of the supercontinent Pangaea. It also suggests there were multiple dispersals out of South America.
Straight from the horse’s mouth – all palaeontological research must be linked to climate change to get grants.
A new study using DNA from equid bones from caves in Eurasia and South America reveal that the Cape zebra and an extinct giant species from South Africa were simply large variants of the modern Plains zebra. The Cape zebra weighed up to 400 kilograms and stood up to 150 centimetres at the shoulder blades.
"The Plains zebra group once included the famous extinct quagga, so our results confirm that this group was highly variable in both coat colour and size." "Previous fossil records suggested this group was part of an ancient lineage from North America but the DNA showed these unusual forms were part of the modern radiation of equid species," Dr Orlando says.
A new species of ass was also detected on the Russian Plains and appears to be related to European fossils dating back more than 1.5 million years. Carbon dates on the bones reveal that this species was alive as recently as 50,000 years ago.
"Overall, the new genetic results suggest that we have under-estimated how much a single species can vary over time and space, and mistakenly assumed more diversity among extinct species of megafauna," Professor Cooper says.
"It also implies that the loss of species diversity that occurred during the megafaunal extinctions at the end of the last Ice Age may not have been as extensive as previously thought.
In contrast, ancient DNA studies have revealed that the loss of genetic diversity in many surviving species appears to have been extremely severe," Professor Cooper says. "This has serious implications for biodiversity and the future impacts of climate change." link
Mary Douglas Nicol Leakey was in London, England. She meet her future husband, Louis Leakey, when he asked her to illustrate his book, 'Adam’s Ancestors'. Mary and Louis spent from 1935 to 1959 at Olduvai Gorge in the Serengeti Plains of northern Tanzania where they worked to reconstruct many Stone Age cultures dating as far back as 100,000 to two million years ago. They documented stone tools from primitive stone-chopping instruments to multi-purpose hand axes.
In October of 1947, while on Rusinga Island, Mary unearthed a Proconsul africanus skull, the first skull of a fossil ape ever to be found. It was dated to be twenty million years old. An Australopithecus boisei skull was uncovered in 1959. Not long afterwards, a less robust Homo habilis was found. In 1965 the duo uncovered a Homo erectus cranium.
After her husband died in 1972, Mary continued her work at Olduvai and Laetoli. She discovered Homo fossils at Laetoli which were more than 3.75 million years old, fifteen new species and one new genus. From 1978-81 Mary and her staff worked to uncover the Laetoli hominid footprint trail which was left in volcanic ashes 3.6 million years ago.
Image from HERE where you will also find a slightly more colourful account of her life with Louis.
Although not vertebrate palaeontology by trade, Dr. Gans had an incredible impact on the field both through his work in comparative morphology and as the the editor of the 23 volume "Biology of the Reptilia" published between 1969 and 2009.
Louis Antoine Marie Joseph Dollo was a French vertebrate paleontologist who stated Dollo's Law of Irreversibilitywhereby in evolution an organism never returns exactly to its former state such that complex structures, once lost, are not regained in their original form. (While generally true, some exceptions are known.)
He began as an assistant (1882), became keeper of mammals (1891) at the Royal Museum of Natural History in Brussels where he stayed most of his life. He was a specialist in fossil fishes, reptiles, birds, and their palaeoecology. He supervised the excavation of the famous, multiple Iguanodons found in 1878 by miners deep underground, at Bernissart, Belgium.image
