Tag Archives: found

Plants Found in Australia

Until now, the first fossil evidence of land plants was from the Devonian period (420 million years ago). However, molecular evidence suggests an earlier origin in the Cambrian period. In a new paper in the journal Science, paleontologists described an assemblage of spore-like microfossils from Early Ordivician (480 million years …

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DNA Found in Georgian Cave

An international team of scientists has retrieved and analyzed nuclear and mitochondrial environmental DNA of humans, wolfs (Canis lupus), and bisons (Bison bonasus) from a 25,000-year-old sediment sample from the Upper Paleolithic site of Satsurblia Cave, western Georgia, Caucasus. Gelabert et al. retrieved human and mammalian nuclear and mitochondrial environmental …

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Giant Vampire Bat Found

Paleontologists in Argentina have found a fossilized jaw of the extinct bat species Desmodus draculae inside an ancient burrow of a giant sloth. Desmodus draculae in a burrow of a giant sloth. Image credit: Daniel Boh / Museo de Ciencias Naturales de Miramar. Desmodus draculae is an extinct species of …

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Mammal Footprints

The newly-discovered fossilized footprints were made by at least two mammalian species around 58 million years ago in a brackish water lagoon in what is now southern Wyoming, the United States, and may represent the earliest evidence of mammals gathering by the sea. Section of the 58-million-year-old tracksite demonstrating near-vertical …

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Rare Meteorite Found

Almost 300 g of the so-called Winchcombe meteorite, a space rock that fell from the fireball that lit up the sky over the United Kingdom and Northern Europe on February 28, 2021, have been located in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, the United Kingdom. A fragment of the Winchcombe meteorite. Image credit: Trustees …

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Engraved Aurochs Bone

The 120,000-year-old animal bone fragment with six incised lines is one of the oldest representations of abstract patterns produced by Middle Paleolithic and Middle Stone Age hominins and the oldest known so far in the Levant. The 120,000-year-old engraved bone with six deliberately produced incisions from the Nesher Ramla site, …

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Purple Dyed Textiles

While evidence for the important role of purple dyes in the ancient Mediterranean goes back to the early 2nd millennium BCE, finds of dyed textiles are extremely rare, and the 3,000-year-old pieces of purple-dyed wool textile from the Timna Valley in Israel are the oldest currently known in the Southern …

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Fossil Praying Mantis

Paleontologists have identified a new fossil genus and species of primitive praying mantis from fore- and hind-wing imprints discovered in Labrador, Canada. Labradormantis guilbaulti. Image credit: Demers-Potvin et al., doi: 10.1111/syen.12457. Paleontologists know that most modern praying mantises, with their characteristic grasping forelegs, look very different from their oldest fossil …

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Bioluminescent Beetle

Found in a piece of mid-Cretaceous amber from northern Myanmar, the wonderfully-preserved male of Cretophengodes azari has a light organ on the abdomen which presumably served a defensive function. An artistic reconstruction of Cretophengodes azari; the larviform female in the background is reconstructed based on extant Phengodidae and Rhagophthalmidae beetles. …

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Archosauriform Footprints

Paleontologists in Italy have discovered an assemblage of fossil footprints left by an Early Triassic archosauriform. Life appearance of the non-archosaurian archosauriform, the most suitable producer of Isochirotherium gardettensis. Image credit: Fabio Manucci. The archosauriform footprints were spotted at a paleontological site on the Gardetta Plateau in the Western Alps, …

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