History

[CaaC (John)]

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The hidden worlds beneath the UK’s feet

If you live in one of the UK’s major towns or cities, you’ll probably be aware of the world beneath the soles of your shoes.

Train networks, car parks, shopping centres - many of them have been built below ground in recent years, but our history is packed with fascinating stories of subterranean curiosities, both natural and made by human hand. It’s a world of tunnels, treasures, underground rivers and even the occasional ghost story. They are parts of the UK we don’t always see - unless we dig a little deeper.

• A subterranean ‘city’ to shelter from the Blitz
• The secret river which name Belfast
• The Welsh tunnel which saved Leonardo
• The spookiest place in Scotland

 

 

 

[CaaC (John)]

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New species of ancient giant rhino

26 million-year-old fossil reveals new species from northern China

The giant rhino was one of the largest land animals to exist, but its evolutionary history in Asia has been a mystery – except now, scientists have found a new ancient species.

A team of researchers, led by Tao Deng of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, have recovered the remains of a previously undiscovered species and dubbed it Paraceratherium linxiaense, filling in gaps in our understanding.

“Since the 1980s, our team has been searching for mammalian fossils from the Linxia Basin in Gansu Province, in north-western China,” says Deng. “We found very abundant and complete specimens of various late Cenozoic mammalian groups, but only found rare giant rhino fossils in isolated or fragmentary situations.

“Since May 2015, the complete skull and mandible with the associated atlas, and an axis and two thoracic vertebrae of another individual, were discovered from the late Oligocene deposits near the village of Wangjiachuan in Dongxiang County.”

The rhino had a slender skull with a short nose trunk and long neck and had a deeper nasal cavity than other giant rhinos.

“When the specimens appeared, their huge size and completeness was a great surprise for us,” says Deng. “When I and my team began to think it was a new species, our first reaction was to establish its phylogenetic position in the giant rhino lineage.”

After analysis, the team placed the new rhino species on a phylogenetic tree with other giant rhinos, including the giant rhinos of Pakistan. Potentially, the rhinos travelled through the Tibetan region before it became elevated and hard to traverse, as it is today. After that, they may have continued their journey down to the Indian-Pakistani subcontinent during the Oligocene epoch.

“The giant rhino genus Paraceratherium was widely distributed, but many records comprise only fragmentary specimens,” says Deng. His team’s phylogenetic analysis places P. linxiaense as a derived giant rhino, nested within the monophyletic clade of the Oligocene Asian Paraceratherium.

“The extremely specialised nasal notch is unique to the giant rhino.”

The study was published in Communications Biology.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/palaeontology/new-species-of-ancient-giant-rhino/

 

[CaaC (John)]

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A new type of ancient human discovered in Israel

Researchers working in Israel have identified a previously unknown type of ancient human that lived alongside our species more than 100,000 years ago.

They believe that the remains uncovered near the city of Ramla represent one of the "last survivors" of a very ancient human group.

The finds consist of a partial skull and jaw from an individual who lived between 140,000 and 120,000 years ago.

Details have been published in the journal Science.

FULL REPORT

 

[nudge]

Thought this was cool... The oldest existing piece of literature.

 

 

 

[Stan]

I love when finds occur like this, even more when it's my home town 

 

 

 

[Eco]

Did anybody hear about this? Pretty crazy

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The New Genealogical Tree of the Da Vinci Family for Leonardo’s DNA. Ancestors and descendants in direct male line down to the present XXI generation

Abstract

This research demonstrates in a documented manner the continuity in the direct male line, from father to son, of the Da Vinci family starting with Michele (XIV century) to fourteen living descendants through twenty-one generations and four different branches, which from the XV generation (Tommaso), in turn generate other line branches. Such results are eagerly awaited from an historical viewpoint, with the correction of the previous Da Vinci trees (especially Uzielli, 1872, and Smiraglia Scognamiglio, 1900) which reached down to and hinted at the XVI generation (with several errors and omissions), and an update on the living.
Like the surname, male heredity connects the history of registry records with biological history along separate lineages. Because of this, the present genealogy, which spans almost seven hundred years, can be used to verify, by means of the most innovative technologies of molecular biology, the unbroken transmission of the Y chromosome (through the living descendants and ancient tombs, even if with some small variations due to time) with a view to confirming the recovery of Leonardo’s Y marker. This will make available useful elements to scientifically explore the roots of his genius, to find information on his physical prowess and on his possibly precocious ageing, on his being left-handed and his health and possible hereditary sicknesses, and to explain certain peculiar sensory perceptions, like his extraordinary visual quality and synesthesia.

 

https://pontecorbolipress.com/journals/index.php/he/article/view/133

[nudge]

Wasn't sure where to post this, but this is such a powerful monument...

[CaaC (John)]

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Ancient viruses found in Tibetan glacier

Scientists uncover unknown viruses trapped in 15,000-year-old ice.

It sounds like the opening scene of an apocalyptic movie: scientists drilling ice cores from an ancient glacier uncover archaic, previously unknown viruses. But that’s exactly what a team of scientists from Ohio State University (OSU) has achieved by sampling 15,000-year-old ice cores from the Tibetan Plateau in China.

What they found, as reported this week in a study in Microbiome, was a hotbed of unusual and unknown viruses. It’s research that will help uncover the history of viruses – most easily done by accessing ancient, perfectly preserved pathogens – which is a core part of understanding how viruses evolve and change.

“These glaciers were formed gradually and, along with dust and gases, many, many viruses were also deposited in that ice,” says Zhi-Ping Zhong, lead author of the study and a researcher at OSU’s Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center, US.

“The glaciers in western China are not well studied, and our goal is to use this information to reflect past environments. And viruses are a part of those environments.”

The researchers analysed ice cores taken in 1992 and 2015 from the Guliya ice cap in Tibet. According to the authors, the cores contained layers of ice that accumulated year by year, creating a ‘readable’ timeline that allowed them to pinpoint the antiquity of the viruses and other microbes found within.

In order to access the ‘clean’ ice inside the cores – which would have been contaminated with modern-day microbes at the time of removal – the team, led by Zhong, scraped away the exterior with a sterile bandsaw, rinsing the core with 95% ethanol to remove another five millimetres from the surface, and finally washing a final five millimetres away with sterile water. This painstaking method ensured that the inner ice studied was a pristine sample.

Of the viruses found locked within the ice and frozen in time, only four were known to science, with at least 28 new genera. Further, it was found that at least half of the viruses had survived because they were frozen, meaning they were well adapted to extreme environments.

“These viruses have signatures of genes that help them infect cells in cold environments – just surreal genetic signatures for how a virus is able to survive in extreme conditions,” says Matthew Sullivan, co-author of the study and a professor of microbiology at OSU.

Sullivan says the innovative method that Zhong developed to decontaminate the cores and study the microbes within could help scientists searching for the genetic signatures of microbial life in other extreme environments, such as the Atacama Desert or even on Mars.

The discovery of new, ancient viruses will help scientists piece together the history of viral evolution, which has typically been difficult to unravel because viruses don’t share a universal gene.

Lonnie Thompson, the senior author of the study, says the study of viruses in glaciers is relatively new, but it’s an area of science that will need greater focus as the climate warms.

“We know very little about viruses and microbes in these extreme environments, and what is actually there,” he says. “The documentation and understanding of that is extremely important: How do bacteria and viruses respond to climate change? What happens when we go from an ice age to a warm period like we’re in now?”

The ability of glacier ice to perfectly preserve these specimens raises alarming questions about the potential exposure of the viruses as the ice caps melt. The authors note that as glaciers globally are shrinking under the pressure of anthropogenic climate change, ice melt will begin to release new viruses into their surroundings.

Already, there have been cases of pathogens causing havoc after being released from permafrost – in 2016, for example, a Siberian boy died after being exposed to anthrax that had been housed in the carcass of a deer frozen in permafrost for 75 years.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/biology/ancient-viruses-found-in-tibetan-glacier/

 

[Azeem]

The earliest known international agreement, a piece treaty agreed between the Ancient Egyptians and the Hittites after the Battle of Kadesh. Kadesh is also the oldest record of a tactical battle with formations largely preserved. It was a war of superpowers of its time, 6,000+ Egyptian chariots were there. Most probably ended in a stalemate

After Kadesh the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II had a political problem since he had already made peace with his greatest enemy he could no longer sell the savior of Egypt tag to consolidate his power like even today politicians wag wars, create tensions to win elections. He solved this dilemma by using religion, proclaiming his divinity. As a living God who ought to be worshiped not as an oracle or something, this was an unprecedented but genius move that worked. He ruled for 66-67 years more than almost all Pharaohs.

[CaaC (John)]

Ancient conch shells make music for the first time in 17,000 years.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/civillisations/conch-shell-tones/

 

Edited July 23, 2021 by CaaC (John)

[CaaC (John)]

How a 310-million-year-old brain works

A well-preserved horseshoe-stone crab brain fills gaps in evolutionary knowledge.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/palaeontology/310-million-year-old-crab-brain/

[CaaC (John)]

[CaaC (John)]

In ref, to @nudge post above, tried to quote but can't with a picture in so below is to do with the above.

Gilgamesh tablet: US authorities take ownership of artefact

 

A federal court has ordered that a rare ancient artefact, known as the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet, must be surrendered to authorities.

The 3,500-year-old tablet, from what is now Iraq, bears text from the Epic of Gilgamesh - one of the world's oldest works of literature.

Officials say it was illegally imported before being purchased by the Christian-owned brand Hobby Lobby.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-57992957

[CaaC (John)]

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In search of the oldest animal

Sponge-like fossil found in ancient reef might be the earliest evidence of animal life.

In the latest instalment in the quest to find our oldest animal ancestor, a Canadian geologist has unearthed a sponge-like fossil on an ancient reef – from a mind-bending 890 million years ago. If confirmed to actually originate from a sponge, this will become the oldest known physical evidence of animal life on Earth.

If we trace our origins back through the tree of life, we will eventually arrive at the last common ancestor of all animals. But exactly when that oldest animal lived and what it looked like are a matter of fierce debate in the scientific community.

FULL REPORT

 

[Azeem]

In relation to the 666 post in the pandemic thread.

666 according to many scholars refers to the Roman Emperor Nero. 666 is an alphanumeric code by assigning numbers to Hebrew letters, called Gematria. Under Nero the persecution of Christians formally started in the empire. They referred to Nero as 666 in their letters. If you add all the Hebrew letters of Nero's full name as per their Gematria value you get 666.

Gematria and other numerology methods devised from it are widely used in religious, esoteric and astrological texts and practices

https://www.dcode.fr/gematria-numerology My full name adds up to 123, perfect

 

[CaaC (John)]

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Neanderthals painted stalagmites red

Ochre pigments reveal 65,000-year-old Spanish cave paintings.

Deep in Cueva de Ardales (Cave of Ardales) in Spain, stalagmites have been painted red by artistic Neanderthals, according to a study published in PNAS.

Stalagmites, or flowstones, are long, hanging spikes made from calcite and other carbonate materials that form where water flows down cave walls and floors. The stalagmites in Cueva de Ardales, near Málaga on Spain’s south coast, are stained red in places, but it had previously been unclear whether the colouring was natural or painted.

Now, an international team of researchers, led by Africa Pitarch Martí from the University of Barcelona, Spain, has used different forms of microscopy and spectroscopy – studying how light is absorbed – to determine that the red pigment is made of ochre and not the iron-oxide-rich deposits of the cave.

This means they couldn’t have been stained naturally as the stalagmites formed, and so must have been painted.

The team found that the ochre-based pigment was applied twice – once more than 65,000 years ago and again between 45,000 and 49,000 years ago. This is when Neanderthals occupied the area, before early humans came to Europe.

The researchers suggest the pigment was brought from outside the cave, and may have been used to highlight the location of the stalagmites as an archaic form of occupational health and safety.

The two separate applications of ochre also suggest that the stalagmites were marked by different generations that returned to the cave, so may also have had symbolic value.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/archaeology/neanderthals-painted-stalagmites-with-ochre/

 

[CaaC (John)]

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Middle-Eastern genomes fill historical gaps

137 full genomes from eight Middle-Eastern populations reveals links to agriculture

Despite being the cradle of agriculture, the birthplace of urbanisation and the land bridge that brought early hominins out of Africa, the Middle East as a region has flown relatively under the radar when it comes to genetic research. Now, a new study from the University of Birmingham and the Wellcome Sanger Institute, UK, has sequenced 137 full genomes from eight Middle-Eastern populations to reveal fascinating insights about human history.

“The Middle East is an important region to understand human history, migrations and evolution: it is where modern humans first expanded out of Africa, where hunter-gatherers first settled and transitioned into farmers, where the first writing systems developed, and where the first major known civilisations emerged,” says co-author Mohamed Almarri of the Wellcome Sanger Institute. With this in mind, many of our modern languages, cultures and behaviours can trace their roots to the region.

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Read more: East Asians descended from Stone Age residents

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The team, led by Almarri and Marc Haber of the University of Birmingham, were able to reconstruct the genomic history of the region with unprecedented precision, noting that many of their findings vindicate theories in the fields of archaeology and linguistics.

The key findings included the identification of 4.8 million new gene variants that are specific to the Middle East, and that were not identified in the Human Genome Diversity Project. The authors say these genes could provide clues about population health specific to the region.

“These are variants that were not previously discovered in other populations,” Haber says. “Hundreds of thousands of these are common in the region, and any of them could hold medical relevance.”

Bastien Llamas, an expert in population genomics and ancient DNA at the University of Adelaide (who was not involved in the study), says expanding our knowledge of the human genome to cover these blind spots will confer many potential benefits.

“Downstream benefits include addressing health issues specific to these populations that are under-represented in global reference databases, but also improving our understanding of disease molecular mechanisms – and this could be relevant for all humans.”

Another finding was evidence of a population bloom coterminous with the development of agriculture in the Levant region during the transition to the Neolithic some 8,000-10,000 years ago, supporting the long-held belief among archaeologists that farming – and the sedentary lifestyle it afforded – would’ve boosted the region’s population. Meanwhile, the genomes showed evidence some 6,000 years ago of a massive population crash in Arabia, around the time the once-verdant region experienced a dramatic drying event.

Shining light on the field of linguistics, the study also found that population movement in the Bronze Age may have spread the Semitic languages (these form the basis for today’s Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic) out from the Levant into Arabia and East Asia.

Another key finding sheds light on the development of disease susceptibility, with the research showing an increase in the frequency of variants associated with type 2 diabetes in some Middle-Eastern populations over the past 2,000 years, showing that variants that may once have been evolutionarily beneficial can end up coding for disease.

“In this case, it looks like some genetic variants that are associated with diabetes in present-day Emirati populations were at high frequency in the population 2,000 years ago,” says Llamas. “It is entirely possible that these variants were positively selected to survive the arid environment and the nomadic herder lifestyle of the ancestors of Emirati people.”

The research opens a valuable window into the genomics of a population whose history is inextricably linked to much of the rest of the world.

“Our study fills a major gap in international genomic projects by cataloguing genetic variation in the Middle East,” says Chris Tyler-Smith of the Wellcome Sanger Institute. “The millions of new variants we found in our study will improve future medical association studies in the region. Our results explain how the genetics of Middle Easterners formed over time, providing new insights, which complement knowledge from archaeology, anthropology and linguistics.”

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/civilisations/middle-eastern-genomes-fill-historical-gaps/

 

 

[CaaC (John)]

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Prehistoric dragons flew over Australia

Savage pterosaur with seven-metre wingspan named.

 

Australia’s largest flying pterosaur, which was as fearsome as a dragon and swooped like a magpie, has been named.

“The new pterosaur, which we named Thapunngaka shawi, would have been a fearsome beast, with a spear-like mouth and a wingspan around seven metres,” says Tim Richards of the University of Queensland (UQ), who led the study.

The UQ researchers analysed a fossilised pterosaur jaw, originally discovered in Wanamara country in northwest Queensland in 2011.

“It’s the closest thing we have to a real-life dragon,” says Richards.

“It was essentially just a skull with a long neck, bolted on a pair of long wings.

“This thing would have been quite savage. It would have cast a great shadow over some quivering little dinosaur that wouldn’t have heard it until it was too late.”

The skull alone would have been a little over a metre long and was filled with 40 teeth that were perfectly adapted to the pterosaur dropping out of the air to skewer multiple fish from the long-gone Eromanga Sea that once covered much of northern Queensland.

“It’s tempting to think it may have swooped like a magpie during mating season, making your local magpie swoop look pretty trivial – no amount of zip ties would have saved you,” says Richards.

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See more: Anatomical secrets of ‘ridiculously long’ pterosaur necks

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“Though, to be clear, it was nothing like a bird, or even a bat. Pterosaurs were a successful and diverse group of reptiles – the very first backboned animals to take a stab at powered flight.”

Only the third Aussie pterosaur identified, it was part of a group called anhanguerians, which inhabited every continent on Earth during the latter part of the age of dinosaurs. The pterosaur had thin-walled and hollow bones, which made it light enough to fly, but also meant fossils are rare.

“It’s quite amazing fossils of these animals exist at all,” says Richards.

“By world standards, the Australian pterosaur record is poor, but the discovery of Thapunngaka contributes greatly to our understanding of Australian pterosaur diversity.”

The thing that set Thapunngaka apart from other anhanguerians was a massive bony crest on its lower jaw, which was probably part of a pair on the upper and lower jaw bones.

“These crests probably played a role in the flight dynamics of these creatures, and hopefully future research will deliver more definitive answers,” says Steve Salisbury, who supervised Richards.

The fossil was named to honour the First Nations peoples who lived in Wanamara country and the person who discovered the fossil.

“The genus name, Thapunngaka, incorporates thapun [ta-boon] and ngaka [nga-ga], the Wanamara words for ‘spear’ and ‘mouth’, respectively,” says Salisbury.

“The species name, shawi, honours the fossil’s discoverer, Len Shaw, so the name means ‘Shaw’s spear mouth’.”

The research was published in the Journal of Vertebrate Palaeontology.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/palaeontology/huge-australian-pterosaur-named-thapunngakashawi/

 

 

[Azeem]

During the siege of Weinsberg in Germany 1140 the King of Welfs dynasty, gave a condition that women can leave unharmed carrying whatever they can. 

The women choose to carry their husbands on their backs. The King kept to his word. The incident is famously known as ' The loyal wives of Weinsberg '

[CaaC (John)]

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Tusk reveals woolly mammoth's massive lifetime mileage

Scientists have analysed the chemistry locked inside the tusk of a woolly mammoth to work out how far it travelled in a lifetime.

The research shows that the Ice Age animal travelled a distance equivalent to circling the Earth twice.

Woolly mammoths were the hairy cousins of today's elephants, roaming northern latitudes during a prehistoric cold period known as the Pleistocene.

The work sheds light on how incredibly mobile these ancient creatures were.

"It's not clear-cut if it was a seasonal migrator, but it covered some serious ground," said co-lead author of the study Dr Matthew Wooller, from the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

"It visited many parts of Alaska at some point during its lifetime, which is pretty amazing when you think about how big that area is."

• Last mammoths 'died of thirst'

Mammoth tusks were a bit like tree rings, insomuch that they recorded information about the animal's life history.

Furthermore, some chemical elements incorporated into the tusks while the animal was alive can serve as pins on a map, broadly showing where the animal went.

By combining these two things, researchers worked out the travel history of a male mammoth that lived 17,000 years ago in Alaska. Its remains were found near the northern state's Brooks Range of mountains.

"From the moment they're born until the day they die, they've got a diary and it's written in their tusks," said co-author Dr Pat Druckenmiller, director of the University of Alaska Museum of the North.

"Mother Nature doesn't usually offer up such convenient and life-long records of an individual's life."

Mammoths steadily added new layers to their tusks throughout their lives. When the ivory was split length-wise, these growth bands looked like stacked ice cream cones, offering a chronological record of its existence.

The researchers pieced together the animal's journey by studying the different types, or isotopes, of the chemical elements strontium and oxygen contained in the 1.5m-long tusk. These were matched with maps predicting isotope variations across Alaska.

They found that the mammoth had covered 70,000km of Alaskan landscape during its 28 years on the planet. For comparison, the circumference of the Earth is 40,000km.

The study offers clues to the extinction of these magnificent creatures. For animals that ranged so widely, the encroachment of forests into the mammoths' preferred grassland habitat towards the end of the last Ice Age would have placed pressure on herds. It limited how far they could roam for food and placed them at greater risk of predation.

The work, by an international team, has been published in Science journal.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-58191123

 

[CaaC (John)]

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Unicorns did exist – but they were probably rhinos, not horses

Monstrous rhino “unicorn” species survived for longer than previously thought.

What’s four metres long, 2.5 metres high, weighs 3.5 tonnes and has a preposterously large horn in the middle of its face? A really massive unicorn, that’s what.

So unicorns really existed?

Dubbed the “Siberian unicorn”, details of the life, history and extinction of a spectacular species of an extinct member of the rhinoceros family, Elasmotherium sibiricum,  were uncovered in 2018 by Adrian Lister of London’s Natural History Museum, Pavel Kosintsev of the Russian Academy of Sciences and a team of researchers.

E. sibiricum is known as the Siberian unicorn because of its unusually large horn. It was the largest rhinoceros of the Quaternary period – which ran from roughly 2.5 million to 12 thousand years ago.

Despite its huge size it was lithe and seemed adapted to running across its homelands of central Asia: Kazakhstan, western and central Russia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan, and possible areas of Mongolia and China.

Read more: Cryptozoology: the study of mystical creatures

When did the Siberian unicorn live?

DNA analyses of collagen extracted from the bones of a fossil showed that the Siberian Unicorn belonged to a sister taxon to Rhinocerotinae, the group to which all modern rhinoceros belong. The two were thought to have split about thirty-five million years ago, but may even have been as late as forty-seven million years ago.

The unicorn might not be very old at all, and might have still been kicking until 39,000 years ago. This places its extinction “firmly within the late Quaternary extinction event”, between 50,000 and four thousand years ago, in which nearly half of Eurasian mammalian megafauna died out. Interestingly, this adds to the evidence of the decline of megafauna just before the ice sheets of the last ice age reached their maximum extension.

And this might help us to understand the reasons for the unicorn’s demise.

The shape of, and the isotopes within, the remains of E. sibiricum suggest that it found its home in herb- and grass-covered steppes, with an extreme adaptation for feeding close to the ground. Perhaps it dug up vegetation up to consume it roots and all.

However, starting about 35 thousand years ago, as the deep cold extended further south, the steppe became more like tundra, denying the unicorn its primary food source, and this was perhaps a decisive factor in its extinction.

The researchers also speculated that humans might have had something to do with it, although they acknowledge a dearth of supporting evidence.

“The extinction of E. sibiricum,” they write, “could in theory have been exacerbated by human hunting pressure, given the replacement of H. neanderthalensis by H. sapiens in Eurasia around 45–40 [thousand years ago]”

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/palaeontology/unicorns-did-exist-until-they-didnt/

 

[CaaC (John)]

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New prehistoric “Hobbit” from the dawn of the Age of Mammals

Proof that mammals thrived once dinosaurs were out of the way.

 Left to right, artist depictions of Conacodon hettingeri, Miniconus jeanninae, Beornus honeyi. Image credit: Banana Art Studio

Researchers from the University of Colorado have described three previously unknown mammal species that lived not long after the extinction of the dinosaurs – and one is named after a hobbit.

Their findings, described in a new study in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, suggest that mammal evolution was far more rapid in the wake of the extinction than once thought.

The mass extinction event that wiped out the bulk of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago is often seen as the genesis of the “Age of Mammals”, because the opportunistic little creatures were able to thrive, dominate and diversify in the ecological vacuum the dinosaurs left behind. This cataclysmic event was bad for the dinosaurs but serendipitous for us: without the mammalian bloom it precipitated, humans would likely never have evolved.

“When the dinosaurs went extinct, access to different foods and environments enabled mammals to flourish and diversify rapidly in their tooth anatomy, and evolve larger body size,” says lead author Madelaine Attebury, from the University of Colorado’s Geological Sciences Department. “They clearly took advantage of this opportunity, as we can see from the radiation of new mammal species that took place in a relatively short amount of time following the mass extinction.”

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Read more: When mammals were like lounge lizards

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The three newly described species roamed North America during the earliest Palaeocene Epoch, within just a few hundred thousand years of the mass extinction. They were found in the Great Divide Basin in the Red Desert of Wyoming, an arid and rugged region today populated by sand dunes, shrubs and feral horses.

The new creatures are known respectively as Miniconus jeanninae, Conacodon hettingeri, and Beornus honeyi. They belonged to a diverse collection of mammals known as archaic ungulates (or condylarths), and they are the ancestors of today’s hoofed animals, including horses, elephants, cows and hippopotami. They are all part of the family Periptychidae, distinguished from other archaic ungulates by their swollen premolars and vertical enamel ridges.

The largest of the three, Beornus honeyi, would have rivalled the modern house cat in size, which is significantly larger than the rat-sized mammals that lived alongside the dinosaurs. B. honeyi in particular also shows unique dental features, including the inflated molars that gave rise to its name, an homage to The Hobbit character Beorn.

“Previous studies suggest that in the first few hundred thousand years after the dinosaur extinction (what is known in North America as the early Puercan) there was relatively low mammal species diversity across the Western Interior of North America, but the discovery of three new species in the Great Divide Basin suggests rapid diversification following the extinction,” says Atteberry.

“These new periptychid ‘condylarths’ make up just a small percentage of the more than 420 mammalian fossils uncovered at this site. We haven’t yet fully captured the extent of mammalian diversity in the earliest Paleocene, and predict that several more new species will be described.”

“Instead of an initial recovery of perhaps hundreds of thousands of years after the dinosaur extinction, the mammals appear to be quite diverse soon after the extinction,” says Thomas Rich, senior curator of vertebrate palaeontology at Museums Victoria, who was not involved in the study. “[That’s] a most thought provoking difference implying that further study of the topic of the recovery rate of the mammalian fauna after the extinction of the dinosaurs is a topic far from settled.”

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/palaeontology/hobbit-mammal/

 

[CaaC (John)]

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How new X-ray scanning technology is revealing the secret lives of ancient animals

Palaeontologists using synchrotron X-ray scanning are calling it 'the superhero of visualisation'.

Long perceived as the study of a bunch of irrelevant dead things, we are now seeing a radical transformation in palaeontology, the science of extinct life.

But the use of statistical methods to analyse big data, and the routine CT scanning of fossils to reveal their minute microstructures, have opened up entirely new fields of research, including how mammals became the warm-blooded milk-givers of the modern world.

Thanks to new technologies and big-data processing, knowledge of extinct life has exploded from the boundaries to which pen, paper and a keen eye had previously confined it. They reveal the origins of animals that define our planet, providing results used in everything from medicine to conservation and climate change mitigation.

Many of these methods are being deployed on fossils from the UK – such as the ones I work on from the Isle of Skye – contributing to wholesale revisions in our understanding of the evolution of major living groups, including our own lineage.

Using X-ray CT scanning (computed tomography) is a ubiquitous part of modern palaeontology. This is especially true for vertebrate animals, but it can be used for the study of invertebrates, plants and the rocks themselves.

Manual thin-sections are a long-established analytical tool in science, generated by slicing materials so finely that light can be passed through them. The advantage CT provides is a chance to observe the structure of fossils without damaging them.

https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/how-new-x-ray-scanning-technology-is-revealing-the-secret-lives-of-ancient-animals/

 

Edited August 23, 2021 by CaaC (John)
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[CaaC (John)]

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New species of ancient four-legged whale discovered in Egypt

Scientists in Egypt have identified a new species of four-legged whale that lived around 43 million years ago.

The fossil of the amphibious Phiomicetus anubis was originally discovered in Egypt's Western Desert.

Its skull resembles that of Anubis, the ancient Egyptian jackal-headed god of the dead after which it was named.

The ancestors of modern whales developed from deer-like mammals that lived on land over the course of 10 million years.

Weighing an estimated 600kg and three metres (10ft) in length, the Phiomicetus anubis had strong jaws to catch prey, according to the study published by the Proceedings of the Royal Society B on Wednesday. The whale was able to walk on land and swim in water.

 

The partial skeleton was found in Egypt's Fayum Depression and analysed by scientists at Mansoura University. Although the area is now desert, it was once covered by sea and is a rich source of fossils.

"Phiomicetus anubis is a key new whale species, and a critical discovery for Egyptian and African palaeontology," the study's lead author, Abdullah Gohar, told Reuters news agency.

While this is not the first time the fossil of a whale with legs has been found, the Phiomicetus anubis is believed to be the earliest type of semi-aquatic whale to be discovered in Africa.

The first whales are thought to have first evolved in South Asia around 50 million years ago. In 2011, a team of palaeontologists in Peru discovered a 43-million-year-old whale fossil with four legs, webbed feet and hooves.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-58340807

 

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Fossil found in Brazilian police raid is best preserved of its kind

Illegal trade bust reveals a remarkable specimen of a ground-dwelling pterosaur.

An extraordinarily well-preserved pterosaur fossil, fondly referred to as one of the “crown jewels of the Museum of Geological Sciences in São Paolo” by the palaeontologist who has spent five years unlocking its secrets, could well have been lost to science were it not for a lucky police raid in the harbour of São Paolo eight years ago.

The specimen, whose anatomy has been unveiled today for the first time in a new study in the journal PLOS ONE, was uncovered in 2013 among a trove of fossils bound for private sales around the world as part of Brazil’s infamous illegal fossil trade.

In Brazil, fossils are federal assets that can’t be traded or exported, but they’re also a lucrative money-maker on the black market. The massive police bust that saved the specimen resulted in arrests across São Paolo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais and resulted in the seizure of around 1,000 fossils bound for museums in Europe.

This was particularly fortuitous for Victor Beccari, the lead author of the paper, from the University of São Paolo, Brazil.

Beccari and his team have made a number of important discoveries about this mysterious pterosaur, Tupandactylus navigans. Namely, despite pterosaurs being most commonly known for flying on prodigiously large wings, they found that T. navigans likely lived a terrestrial, foraging lifestyle.

“We usually think they [pterosaurs] must be good flyers,” says Beccari, “however, this animal has this head crest that is over 40 centimetres tall, and with only a two and a half metre long wingspan and a very long neck.”

This means T. navigans would likely have found it impossible to fly long distances, thanks to its abnormally heavy load. Beccari likens the creature to the peacock: “The peacock can fly – it will flee predators – but it’s not a very good flyer. It can’t go from one country to another or use flight to acquire food.”

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More reading: Anatomical secrets of ‘ridiculously long’ pterosaur necks

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The team also found that the skeleton had very long legs, suggesting T. navigans spent long hours on the ground foraging for food.

The fossil is the first complete skeleton of its kind: previous specimens of the creature amounted to two skulls, lacking lower jaws, housed in Germany.

“We don’t know how they got to Germany, but probably in these illegal trades,” Beccari says.

He says the illegal fossil and mineral trade that could have vanished T. navigans from Brazil altogether is a major problem for the country’s palaeontologists: “Unfortunately, these things happen because we have places where fossils are very abundant and the wages are not very good.”

Beccari says that, in the northern part of Brazil, many people are faced with pay packets below the minimum wage, so fossils can be their best chance of making an extra buck.

The specimen in question was traced back to a quarry in the north-east of Brazil, based on the type of limestone. But where exactly in the ground the creature was plucked from remains a mystery thanks to its hazy provenance.

Despite the damaging effects of the illegal fossil trade on Brazilian science, Beccari says the specimen’s chequered history has actually turned out to be a boon for his research: its traffickers cut the fossil into six slabs for transportation (something the scientists would never have been able to do), which allowed them to insert each slab into a CT machine and study the creature’s anatomy in precise detail.

This also means they were able to publish three-dimensional models of the creature, which can be accessed and studied by anyone around the world.

The success of the police raid is a win for Brazilian palaeontology, Beccari says.

“A fossil like this would usually be in a private collection so inaccessible to science, or it would be in European institutions,” he says, “so Brazilians would not have access to the fossil – but now we do. “It’s a way to keep the heritage in Brazil.”

https://cosmosmagazine.com/nature/evolution/remarkable-pterosaur-fossil-found-in-police-raid-in-brazil/