In 1725, Johann Beringer served as the chair of natural history at the University of Würzburg and was chief physician to the prince bishop of Würzburg. By most accounts, he was also deeply arrogant, which made him unpopular with colleagues and inspired some of them to concoct a prank to discredit him and put him in his place. This real prank has morphed into a fictionalized tale of hubris and gullibility, boogeyman to scare young paleontologists. Here’s that story … and the real one. (SSPL via Getty Images)
The “horned gopher”, Ceratogaulus, The only rodent known to have horns.
These prairie-dog-sized guys were found in the great plains of North America between about 17 and 5 million years ago. The exact purpose of their horns has been the subject of a lot of speculation, but the most likely explanation is that they provided some sort of defense against predators.
(via scientificillustration)
Buzzsaw Jaw
If you dug up a fossil that looked like a circular saw blade made of teeth, you’d be forgiven for being a little confused. Was it some sort of toothy nautilus? A relic of a dinosaur’s carpentry shop?
When Helicoprion (meaning “spiral saw”) was first discovered in 1899, its whorl of teeth was one of the few things identified. Even though there were few skeletal clues, it was quickly decided that these teeth were from a cartilaginous fish. But where did these “teeth” fit in? On the body? Some freaky mouth appendage?
Over a century of confusion followed, but recent work using X-ray analysis of fossil specimens has all but confirmed that this fish used a spiral-fed whorl of teeth, constantly regrowing as today’s sharks do, to catch soft prey like squid, 270 million years ago. It’s actually not a shark at all, but a ratfish, a branch of cartilage-skeletoned fish that branched from sharks in prehistoric times.
Check out more great analysis by Brian Switek at Laelaps. He also features even more great art by Ray Troll, a Helicoprion aficionado who did the image at top.
(via shaaarks)
Researchers Solve Darwin’s ‘Abominable Mystery’
Research by Indiana Univ. paleobotanist David Dilcher and colleagues in Europe sheds new light on what Charles Darwin famously called “an abominable mystery:” the apparently sudden appearance and rapid spread of flowering plants in the fossil record.
Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers present a scenario in which flowering plants, or angiosperms, evolved and colonized various types of aquatic environments over about 45 million years in the early to middle Cretaceous Period.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2012/12/researchers-solve-darwin%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98abominable-mystery%E2%80%99
(via scinerds)
Researchers have found what could be the earliest known dinosaur to walk the Earth lurking in the corridors of London’s Natural History Museum.
A mysterious fossil specimen that has been in the museum’s collection for decades has now been identified as most likely coming from a dinosaur that lived about 245 million years ago - 10 to 15 million years earlier than any previously discovered examples.
The creature was about the size of a Labrador dog and has been named Nyasasaurus parringtoni after southern Africa’s Lake Nyasa, today called Lake Malawi, and Cambridge University’s Rex Parrington, who collected the specimen at a site near the lake in the 1930s.
READ ON: Earliest known dinosaur discovered
This is so much better than any of the things I’ve discovered in the back of my closet.
Sorry to disappoint you guys but the Amber Museum is not about everyone’s favorite character from the movie Clueless. Besides being the name of annoying bitches everywhere, it’s also a hard translucent brownish-yellow fossil resin used for making jewelry and other ornamental objects since at least the 4th century BC. Inside Gdańsk’s medieval Fore Gate (once home to a prison tower and torture chamber) is the Muzeum Bursztynu, a multi-story exhibit that extensively focuses on the history of Baltic amber. You couldn’t find a better place to have such an institution. Did you know Gdańsk claims to be the world capital of amber? Well, now you do. The first guild of amber craftsmen was created in this Polish city in 1477 and their workshops created numerous amber works for wealthy merchants, nobility, aristocracy, clergy and Polish kings. But let’s talk more about the museum. The impressive collection shows the diversity of the material as there is everything from inkwells and spoons to chess sets and a Fender Stratocaster guitar. Oh, and let’s not forget about the “inclusions” (what you call it when bugs or plants are caught inside the amber). Those are kind of cool. Because this is the Polish version of the Tower of London, the place is a bit tiny and cramped, which isn’t helped with the occasional piped-in soundtrack of pained cries and screams. Hey, they have some exhibits on torture too, so that’s a bonus for everyone, I guess. Just think of the amber as the Crown Jewels. Well, even if you find fossils to be a bit boring, this place is a must-see, if for no other reason to find out about “thumb screwing” and “heretic’s forks”…be sure to count all your fingers and toes before you go to sleep tonight. Sweet dreams!
The tooth of a WOOLLY MAMMOTH, believed to have roamed the Bay Area 10-15 million years ago, was found beautifully preserved Monday, deep in San Francisco mud at the Transbay Transit Center Project! Learn more about finding patterns in teeth and how we read life stories written in them: http://www.exploratorium.edu/evidence/lowbandwidth/index.html#finding
woolly mammoth (via Mammoth tooth found at Transbay dig - SFGate)
n111_w1150 (by BioDivLibrary)
aw
This is how I feel about dinosaur bones, too.
Extra reading: How Fossils Work.
(via scientificillustration)
![Is the Ida fossil the missing link?
On May 19, 2009, researchers held a press conference at the American Museum of Natural History. From behind a podium bearing the slogan “The Link: This Changes Everything,” speakers talked about a fossil known as Ida. The fossil, they explained, was an amazing find that would change our understanding of evolution. In video clips released as part of the media package, Richard Attenborough said, “Now people can say, ‘You say we’re primates, like monkeys and apes, and that we came from very simple, generalized mammals. Show us the link.’ The link … until now, is missing. Well, it is no longer missing.”
Within hours, the mainstream media and the blogosphere were abuzz with the news about Ida (pronounced EE-dah). “Scientists find the missing link,” declared a headline at the Daily Mail online. But almost immediately, the dust started to settle. Journalists and scientists had a chance to read the academic paper describing the find, published in the journal PLoS ONE on the day of the announcement. Headlines did a 180 over the next couple of days: One, in Time, read, “Ida: Humankind’s Earliest Ancestor! (Not Really).”
The original paper, “Complete Primate Skeleton from the Middle Eocene of Messel in Germany,” contains no reference to a creature called Ida. Instead, it describes a 47-million-year-old fossil of an animal dubbed Darwinius masillae. Collectors excavated the fossil in 1983, split it into two pieces — the fossil known as Ida and its mirror image — and sold them separately. At the time, the two halves were identified as a different animal and weren’t hailed as particularly important.
But almost 20 years later, Dr. Jorn Hurum rediscovered the more complete half of the fossil through an unnamed collector. He shelled out $750,000 to purchase it for the Natural History Museum of the University of Oslo [source: Devlin]. Hurum assembled a team of researchers to analyze the find. The media bonanza that declared it the missing link came after two years of work on the specimen.
But the idea that Ida is the missing link has more to do with the news coverage surrounding the fossil than the research itself. Without ever using the term, the paper does describe the fossil as a missing link — a fossil that has traits from two different types of animals and may form an evolutionary link between them, of which there are many. It doesn’t, however, present the fossil as “the missing link” — a direct bridge between humans and early primate ancestors.
If Ida isn’t the missing link, what is it?](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8jvpcjDl31rpdglno1_400.jpg)
Is the Ida fossil the missing link?
On May 19, 2009, researchers held a press conference at the American Museum of Natural History. From behind a podium bearing the slogan “The Link: This Changes Everything,” speakers talked about a fossil known as Ida. The fossil, they explained, was an amazing find that would change our understanding of evolution. In video clips released as part of the media package, Richard Attenborough said, “Now people can say, ‘You say we’re primates, like monkeys and apes, and that we came from very simple, generalized mammals. Show us the link.’ The link … until now, is missing. Well, it is no longer missing.”
Within hours, the mainstream media and the blogosphere were abuzz with the news about Ida (pronounced EE-dah). “Scientists find the missing link,” declared a headline at the Daily Mail online. But almost immediately, the dust started to settle. Journalists and scientists had a chance to read the academic paper describing the find, published in the journal PLoS ONE on the day of the announcement. Headlines did a 180 over the next couple of days: One, in Time, read, “Ida: Humankind’s Earliest Ancestor! (Not Really).”
The original paper, “Complete Primate Skeleton from the Middle Eocene of Messel in Germany,” contains no reference to a creature called Ida. Instead, it describes a 47-million-year-old fossil of an animal dubbed Darwinius masillae. Collectors excavated the fossil in 1983, split it into two pieces — the fossil known as Ida and its mirror image — and sold them separately. At the time, the two halves were identified as a different animal and weren’t hailed as particularly important.
But almost 20 years later, Dr. Jorn Hurum rediscovered the more complete half of the fossil through an unnamed collector. He shelled out $750,000 to purchase it for the Natural History Museum of the University of Oslo [source: Devlin]. Hurum assembled a team of researchers to analyze the find. The media bonanza that declared it the missing link came after two years of work on the specimen.
But the idea that Ida is the missing link has more to do with the news coverage surrounding the fossil than the research itself. Without ever using the term, the paper does describe the fossil as a missing link — a fossil that has traits from two different types of animals and may form an evolutionary link between them, of which there are many. It doesn’t, however, present the fossil as “the missing link” — a direct bridge between humans and early primate ancestors.
