Also, I totally wish I were spending my summer in Colorado on a dig like this
“That was from Oct. 14, when workers on a reservoir dam turned over the first fossil bones (of a young female mammoth, promptly nicknamed Snowy) to last weekend, when work on the reservoir resumed. A tight contract schedule dictates that the reservoir, which will supply the condos and ski lodges of Snowmass, must be completed by late this year. The result was a frantic race to find and catalog everything possible before the site was entombed once more by water.
The breakneck pace of the fossil dig was matched only by what scientists said was the extraordinary richness of the site, one of the best windows into the thundering megafauna of its time.
“The speed of this thing is so unlike normal science - from discovery to completion of one of the biggest digs ever in less than nine months,” said Kirk R. Johnson, the chief curator of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, who oversaw the project. (He is no relation to this reporter.)”
Manahatta Project and Welikia are teaming up for botanically historcial EPICNESS
using leaves' characteristics improves accuracy measuring past climates
These diverse microfossils include mostly simple single-celled organisms, but do include some rare multicellular structures with organic walls that measure up to one millimeter long. The team reports that these simple eukaryotes lived in ancient lakes that periodically dried out, exposing life directly to the atmosphere. This discovery places eukaryotes in freshwater settings approximately 500 million years earlier than previously thought.
Life probably originated in the sea more than three billion years ago; however, the first signs of life on land are less well-defined. The identification of eukaryotes in non-marine settings described by Strother’s team indicates that eukaryotic evolution on land may have commenced much earlier than previously thought.
OMG! new genus of 125-million-year-old eudicot from China
Botany expert and nature aficionado Patrick Sweeney is the Collections Manager of the Yale Herbarium, a collection of preserved plant specimens at the Peabody Museum. The herbarium is home to approximately 350,000 specimens from all over the world, ranging from mosses and fungi to vascular plants. Sweeney took WEEKEND on a tour of the herbarium last week to explain why vegetation, Darwin, and exotic fruit get him going.
Hey everyone,
I had this brilliant idea over the weekend, thanks to a revelation I had at the Gutter. I was listening to the x-ray eyeballs and thinking to myself how can I talk about Paleobiology more often? The blog is a start but it’s easier to speak than to type. With that in mind, I asked my boss if I could take some time on Thursday before she’s speaking at an event to film a podcast, and she said YES.
So! Join me on Thursday at http://www.livestream.com/transmedianewyorkcity and watch the podcast live! I’ll put it up here afterwards but you should really make an effort, you’ll be able to follow it on twitter at #transmedianyc or you could theoretically try to go see it live, but you have to RSVP and it’s pretty full.
Do you remember that one episode of Land of the Lost, where they find some kind of weed that the dinosaurs find irresistible? The idea of this is actually a pet dream of mine but it’s a catch-22. Finding such a plant would enable us to understand so much more about the physiology of dinosaurs- but we would need dinosaurs to discover it. I can’t exactly go around waving crab grass at lizards and just hoping for a response.
I mean, I could. It would be more fun than my current job.
I wish I had a boy-repelling weed. Oh wait, I don’t need one, it’s called ‘expecting you to be responsible’. Ffffuuu. Boyfriends and Social Media «««< Extinct plants.
The Japanese Whaling Fleet Caves in Before the Sea Shephard's Hull does.
Aquatic, meat-eating bladderworts are among the world’s best suckers and they have just been named the fastest trapping carnivorous plants, according to a Proceedings of the Royal Society B study.