Several new species of coelacanths that lived at the end of the Triassic period, some 200 million years ago, have been identified from museum specimens unearthed over 150 years ago in the United Kingdom. An artist’s reconstruction of a large mawsoniid coelacanth from the British Rhaetian. Image credit: Daniel Phillips. Coelacanths are evolutionarily unique lobe-finned fishes that first appeared in …
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Carapace of Syriemys lelunensis: The genus name combines the Greek words Συρία (Suría) and ἐμύς (emús), i.e., “Syria” und “turtle.” Credit: Wafa Adel Alhalabi Scientists discovered Syriemys lelunensis, a 50-million-year-old fossil sea turtle from Syria. Near the city of Afrin in Syria, an international group of scientists, including members of the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the …
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Researchers have named a bizarre, prehistoric species of whale discovered on a beach in Australia. Janjucetus dullardi “might have looked for all the world like some weird kind of mash-up between a whale, a seal, and a Pokémon,” according to Erich Fitzgerald, a senior paleontologist at Museums Victoria Research Institute who co-authored the paper on the discovery. Measuring less than …
Read More »Paleontologists Discover Bizarre Half-Billion-Year-Old Fossil Treasure Trove in the Grand Canyon SciTechDaily A new species of ‘penis worm’ was discovered in the Grand Canyon Science News This bizarre ancient worm had spiky teeth and a retractable throat National Geographic A dragon in the Grand Canyon? Researchers name new fossil for ‘Star Wars’ creature yahoo.com Half A Billion Years Ago, The Grand Canyon Was Filled …
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Paleontologists say they have discovered the 76-million-year-old footprints of a ceratopsian dinosaur-dominated herd in Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta, Canada. The discovery provides the first evidence of mixed-species herding behavior in dinosaurs, similar to how modern wildebeest and zebra travel together on the African plains. A herd of ceratopsians (Styracosaurus albertensis) accompanied by an ankylosaur (Euplocephalus tutus) walk through an …
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