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Natural History Museum's First Fridays series: caught between rock and bones

ABDSP Paleontology Society — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 20:40:11 GMT

Natural History MuseumÂs series combines lessons and music (Ryan Miller / Capture Imaging)

By Oliver Gettell, Special to the Los Angeles Times

June 2, 2011

Going out on a Friday night usually means a quest for mindless fun — unless, that is, the quest leads to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County's popular First Fridays series, where the fun is decidedly more mindful.

The series, which concludes its season Friday, combines museum tours and lectures with live rock bands and DJs, transforming a grade-schooler's favorite field-trip destination into a one-stop night life and culture spot.

Su Oh, the director of programs at the museum, described First Fridays as "a place where you can get your intellectual content, your social interaction and your art content."
The closing program features a tour exploring the museum's thought-provoking "What on Earth?" installation, a discussion with paleontologist Luis Chiappe about the link between dinosaurs and birds, and musical performances by the indie-rock supergroup Gayngs and the minimal solo project Dirty Beaches.

On a given night, First Fridays attracts a mix of teenagers, college and post-college types, and older audiences. Visitors take advantage of a rare opportunity to lose themselves among the museum's dioramas while bobbing their heads to music, or chat up curators and scientists while having a drink. Whether they come for the music, the lecture or just a unique experience, they tend to have one thing in common.

"I think this is an event for adults with a curious mind," Oh said.

When she took over the series four years ago, Oh, who has a music industry background, started refining the sound of First Fridays, booking buzz bands as well as established artists. Past performers have included the Tallest Man on Earth, Atlas Sound, the Mountain Goats and DJ Z-Trip.

As the series has progressed, Oh hasn't felt the need to play up any sort of thematic link between performers and lecturers. Her focus is the quality of the music.

She figured the sly smooth-rock stylings of Gayngs — a 25-plus-member collective including neo-folkster Justin Vernon, electro-dance dudes from Solid Gold and project mastermind Ryan Olson — would be a fun, upbeat way to wrap up the season. The wistful, fuzzed-out sounds of Dirty Beaches should be strangely resonant in those long halls of bones and taxidermy.

"I care more about it being a very interesting artist that can enjoy this environment," Oh said.

First Fridays lectures have similarly evolved. Whereas they once highlighted specific exhibits, those displays are now used as jumping-off points for broader discussions.

This year's season, the Nostradamus Edition, explores what modern science tells us about the past and how it might predict the future. It asks, for example, whether the fate of the dinosaurs can give us insight to our own existence and what may be in store for us.

Chiappe, the director of the museum's Dinosaur Institute, will draw on his years of research to discuss what he calls one of the most significant breakthroughs in the history of dinosaur science: "the realization that dinosaurs are not extinct — that birds are the living descendants of dinosaurs."

The idea dates back some 150 years and has fallen in and out of favor since then. Chiappe will examine how multiple lines of evidence support the idea that today's birds are descended from a group of meat-eating dinosaurs called coelurosaurs.

Some evidence is old-school: Dinosaur fossils display skeletal features present in birds, such as the existence of a wishbone. Other revelations are the results of high-tech tools such as CT scans and genome studies, which show similar brain and cell structures in dinosaurs and birds.

The science supporting the dinosaur-bird link has guided the content of the museum's new Dinosaur Hall, a large-scale permanent exhibition opening in July. The hall features more than 300 fossils, 20 articulated skeletons and multimedia content, much of which Chiappe and his team collected on expeditions throughout the world.

What this research tells us, Chiappe said, is "that these animals that we thought were extinct are not, in that we have thousands of species of living dinosaurs flying all around."

The point is not to compare an extinct Tyrannosaurus rex with a local seagull. But, Chiappe said, "Looking at the present, you can understand the past much better."

This kind of encounter is exactly what First Fridays is all about: thought-provoking science mashed up with drinks and danceable beats. The past and the present, a lecture and a concert, dinosaur bones and turntables — as Oh said, "Where else are you going to have that kind of combo?"

3-Foot "Shrimp" Discovered—Dominated Prehistoric Seas

ABDSP Paleontology Society — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 20:38:49 GMT

"It would have made enough scampi to feed an army for a month."

Anomalocaridids (model pictured) grew a third longer and survived 30 million years longer than thought.

Image courtesy Esben Horn

Christine Dell'Amore

National Geographic News

Published May 27, 2011

Fossils of a meter-long (3.3-foot) prehistoric ocean predator have been found in southeastern Morocco.

The specimens include the largest yet of its kind and suggests the spiny, somewhat shrimplike beasts dominated pre-dinosaur seas for millions of years longer than thought.

Early offshoots of an evolutionary line that led to modern crustaceans, the so-called anomalocaridids looked sort of like modern shrimp or cuttlefish. But the fossil creatures had spiny limbs sprouting from their heads and circular, plated mouths, which opened and closed like the diaphragm of a camera.

Previous anomalocaridid fossils had shown the animals grew to perhaps 2 feet (0.6 meter) long, which already would have made them the largest animals of the Cambrian period (542 to 501 million years ago)—an evolutionarily explosive time, when invertebrate life evolved into many new varieties, such as sea lilies and worms.

(See "Earliest Animals Were Sea Sponges, Fossils Hint.")

But at a foot longer than previous specimens, the largest of the new anomalocaridids suggests the segmented animals grew to bigger sizes than scientists had imagined.

"It would have made enough scampi to feed an army for a month—it was giant, and no doubt very tasty," quipped study co-author Derek Briggs, director of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History.

(Watch a video of Briggs describing the anomalocaridids' odd body.)

Fossil Predator Ruled Seas for Millions of Years

The new anomalocaridid fossils also gave scientists another shock: They're surprisingly young.

Dating back to "only" 488 to 472 million years ago, in the Ordovician period, the specimens hint that anomalocaridid species survived for 30 million years longer than previous evidence had suggested. (View a prehistoric time line.)

Anomalocaridids are widespread in fossils from the Cambrian, "then they disappear from the rock record at about 510 million years ago," said Briggs, who received funding from the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration. (The Society owns National Geographic News.)

"The question was, Did they become extinct, or did we simply just not have the right rocks?"

Turns out it was the latter. Because soft tissues tend to break down before they can become fossilized, there are few examples of soft-bodied creatures in the fossil record.

Fortunately for the scientists, a sediment cloud had buried the Moroccan specimens and preserved their soft bodies.

Eventually, though, anomalocaridids did go extinct—leaving no modern descendants, Briggs said.

"It presumably was ultimately replaced by fishes or other kinds of predators in later oceans," he said.

The new anomalocaridid study appears this week in the journal Nature.

Discovery of ‘worms from hell’ deep beneath Earth’s surface raises new questions

ABDSP Paleontology Society — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 20:37:40 GMT

Courtesy Lisa M. PrattThe Trustees of Indiana UniversityNASANational Science Foundation/ - Scientist Tullis Onstott of Princeton University opens a borehole in a section of rock wall in a South African mine near where "radiation eating microbes" were found.

By Marc Kaufman, Wednesday, June 1, 10:00 AM

For the first time, scientists have found complex, multi-celled creatures living a mile and more below the planet’s surface — raising new possibilities about both the spread of life on Earth and potential subsurface life on other planets and moons.

Nicknamed “worms from hell,” the nematodes, or roundworms, were found in several gold mines in South Africa, where researchers have also made breakthrough discoveries about deep subterranean single-cell life.

(Courtesy of Gaetan Borgonie at University of Ghent/ ) - Head of a nematode \"Halicephalobus Mephisto\".

The two lead researchers, Gaetan Borgonie of the University of Ghent in Belgium and Tullis Onstott of Princeton University, said the discovery of creatures so far below ground, with nervous, digestive and reproductive systems, was akin to finding “Moby Dick in Lake Ontario.”

“This is telling us something brand new,” said Onstott, whose pioneering work in South Africa over the past decade has revolutionized the understanding of microbial life known generally as extremophiles, which live in places long believed to be uninhabitable.

“For a relatively complex creature like a nematode to penetrate that deep is simply remarkable,” he said.

An article introducing the subterranean nematodes, one of which was formally named Halicephalobus mephisto after the “Lord of the Underworld,” appears in Wednesday’s edition of the journal Nature. H. mephisto was found in water flowing from a borehole about one mile below the surface in the Beatrix gold mine.

The research is likely to trigger scientific challenges and cause some controversy because it places far more complex life in an environment where researchers have generally held it should not, or even cannot, exist.

Borgonie led the South African nematode investigation largely without professional support or funds. He contacted his future partner with a cold call, and Onstott — who began his own deep mine work with similarly limited funds and amid similar professional skepticism — was both intrigued and inclined to help a fellow risk-taker.

Borgonie said that while nematodes are known to exist on the deep ocean floor, they have generally not been found more than 10 to 20 feet below the surface of the ground or the ocean bed. However, he saw no reason why they wouldn’t be found further down. The nematodes he ultimately discovered live in extremely hot water coming from boreholes fed by rock fissures and pools.

In addition to uncovering a new realm of biology on Earth, Borgonie and Onstott wrote that the nematode findings could also have important implications for extraterrestrial research, or astrobiology.

Scientists seeking life beyond Earth are intrigued by the possibility that microbes could be living below the surface of Mars, in particular — a planet that is now cold, dry and bombarded by harmful radiation but was once much wetter, warmer and better-protected by an atmosphere.

“What we found shows that harsh conditions do not necessarily exclude complexity,” Borgonie said.

He said that if life did originate on Mars and if it had sufficient time to go underground deep enough to survive worsening conditions, “then evolution of Martian life might have continued underground. . . . Life on Mars could be more complex than we imagined.”

Carl Pilcher, director of NASA’s Astrobiology Institute in California, said that the nematode discovery illustrates the usefulness of research on Earth for learning about possible extraterrestrial life.

“It is entirely plausible, in fact extremely likely, that subsurface environments like those described in these papers exist on other worlds in this solar system and in other planetary systems,” he said of the new work and Onstott’s earlier discoveries.

“We can now say that worlds with such subsurface environments could, in theory, harbor subsurface life, both microbial and multicellular,” Pilcher said. “That knowledge . . . can help guide us in developing missions and experiments to study other worlds.”

At least one of the bacteria species discovered earlier by Onstott and Lisa Pratt of Indiana University lives entirely disconnected from anything on the Earth’s surface or produced by photosynthesis. It uses the radioactive decay of nearby rocks as the energy source to break apart molecules that it then feeds on.

Borgonie speculates that the nematodes, which feed on bacteria, traveled through the cracks and crevices of the rock in search of food. While they were determined to have lived deep underground for 3,000 to 10,000 years, the bacteria discovered by Onstott was found to have lived at its great depth between 3 and 40 million years. A major difference between the two appears to be that while the nematodes adapted, the bacteria have evolved.

Complete worms, up to one-third of an inch in length, were found in two mines, and DNA of another was found in a third. They were found in water flowing from boreholes in the rock of the mines at depths from two-thirds of a mile to more than two miles. The worms nearer the surface were brought to a lab and survived, while the specimen at the deepest level was a DNA sample from a nematode but otherwise impossible to identify.

A primary hurdle the team had to overcome was proving that the nematodes had not come into the mines on the shoes or clothing of miners or through mine ventilation water. The contamination issue was resolved through extensive testing of the soil and mining water — which contains two disinfectant bleaches that would kill nematodes.

Borgonie, working with a team from South Africa’s University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, descended into the deep mines about 25 times to collect samples. He said there is good reason to believe nematodes, and other multi-celled organisms, also live deep below the surface of many other parts of the world, and especially below ocean beds.

Research into the distribution of underground microbes in recent decades has led scientists to conclude that more than half of the biological mass on Earth is below the surface.

Mammals win by a nose: Sense of smell drove evolution of big brains

ABDSP Paleontology Society — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 20:36:10 GMT

Courtesy of the University of Texas Jackson School of Geosciences/ - The Hadrocodium skull displayed many of the features of modern mammalian brains. In addition to the larger olfactory bulb, it sported a wrinkly, topmost layer missing in reptiles, the neocortex.

By Brian Vastag, Thursday, May 19, 11:53 AM

If you like your big human brain, you can thank your nose — or at least the noses of your earliest mammal cousins.

That’s because 200 million years ago, a keen sense of smell drove an explosive growth in brain size that pushed mammals out from under the shadow of dinosaurs and other creepy crawlies, a new study concludes.

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(Courtesy of the University of Texas Jackson School of Geosciences/ ) - Reseacrhers analyzed the smallest of skulls, from a paper clip-size species dubbed Hadrocodium.

(Courtesy of the University of Texas Jackson School of Geosciences/ ) - A large neocortex implies improved agility and better motor coordination, other skills handy for scurrying away from predators. As the neocortex grew, so did cognitive abilities, thinking power.

Enhanced smell probably gave the first mammals — tiny shrewlike critters — the ability to sniff out insects and grubs at night while allowing them to avoid stinky, predatory dinosaurs, the study authors suggest.

That enhanced sense of smell “gave mammals our head start,” said Timothy Rowe, the paleontologist who led the work, published Thursday in the journal Science.

For the study, Rowe and his colleagues deployed powerful X-ray machines to scan the fossilized skulls of two of the earliest, and tiniest, mammals.

Although the brains of these early human cousins disappeared long ago, the organs left imprints on the inner surface of the skull. Reading those impressions, called endocasts, revealed for the first time the size, shape and structure of early mammalian brains.

These brains were much bigger, relative to body size, than those of the squat, reptilian ancestors of mammals, Rowe said. Particularly enlarged was the olfactory bulb, a dual-lobed structure at front of the brain that processes odors. An enlarged olfactory bulb implies an exquisitely sensitive sniffer.

Many modern mammals retain this keen sense of smell, as dogs can distinguish between millions of scents, for instance, and bats can sniff and identify their offspring from thousands of others in a dark cave.

But for the tiny shrewlike creatures that scurried underfoot of giant reptiles, a sense of smell was vital. It allowed them to navigate the world at night, when dinosaurs were probably asleep, Rowe said, while steering them away from danger and toward their kin.

“Being able to smell a lot better than your reptile counterparts would be a huge advantage,” said Anjali Goswami, a paleontologist at University College London who was not involved in the research.

The two fossilized skulls Rowe scanned were found in southwest China in the 1980s and date to about 195 million years ago, a period dubbed the Mesozoic that was dominated by the rapid evolution of dinosaurs. But the earliest mammals were born then, too, eking out a living on the margins.

The Chinese paleontologist who discovered the two fossils, Zhe-Xi Luo, invited Rowe to study the specimens in the mid-1980s. As Rowe nervously held the smallest of the skulls, from a paper clip-size species dubbed Hadrocodium, he yearned to peek inside. But 25 years ago, the only way to see inside a fossilized skull was to slice it apart.

In the time since, Rowe and colleagues at the University of Texas helped develop powerful X-ray scanning machines. These scanners work much like CT machines at hospitals, using sophisticated software to reconstruct three-dimensional images of hidden structures.

Rowe began scanning skulls from the reptilian ancestors of mammals, cat-size creatures called cynodonts. The scans showed cynodont brains to be simple and relatively small, with tiny olfactory bulbs.

In contrast, when Rowe finally scanned the Hadrocodium skull, he saw that it already displayed many of the features of modern mammalian brains. In addition to the larger olfactory bulb, the Hadrocodium brain sported a wrinkly, topmost layer missing in reptiles, the neocortex. The neocortex processes tactile information from the skin — and from hair, which the earliest mammals almost certainly possessed, said Rowe’s colleague Thomas Macrini, who worked on the study.

While providing warmth, individual hairs also act like whiskers, sensing the wind and helping animals navigate tight spaces, such as underground dens. It takes a lot of brain power to process all that sensory information, brain power located in the neocortex.

A large neocortex also implies improved agility and better motor coordination, Rowe said, other skills handy for scurrying away from predators. As the neocortex grew, so did cognitive abilities, thinking power.

And so with their noses — and pelts — leading the way, the brains of our tiniest, most distant cousins laid the groundwork for an explosion in ever-larger mammalian brains that evolved after the dinosaurs died out.

The winners of mass extinction: With predators gone, prey thrives

ABDSP Paleontology Society — Mon, 09 May 2011 15:51:00 GMT

This is an artist's rendering of a shallow marine ecosystem during the early Carboniferous Period (359-318 million years ago). Crinoids include the camerates Dizygocrinus (under attack, bottom center, left) and the spiny Dorycrinus (bottom center, right), and the cladids Decadocrinus (bottom left) and Abrotocrinus (bottom right). Fishes include the cochliodont Deltoptychius (bottom center), the petalodont Janassa (left of center, ventral view), the chondrenchelyiform Chondrenchelys (far left), and the actinopterygian Amphicentrum (upper right). Credit: Art by Robert Nicholls

by Staff Writers
by Staff Writers
Chicago IL (SPX) May 03, 2011
In modern ecology, the removal or addition of a predator to an ecosystem can produce dramatic changes in the population of prey species. For the first time, scientists have observed the same dynamics in the fossil record, thanks to a mass extinction that decimated ocean life 360 million years ago.

What was bad for fish was good for the fish's food, according to a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers from the University of Chicago, West Virginia University, and The Ohio State University find that the mass extinction known as the Hangenberg event produced a "natural experiment" in the fossil record with results that mirror modern observations about predator-prey relationships.

"This is the first time that specific, long-term predator-prey interactions have been seen in the fossil record," said Lauren Sallan, graduate student in the Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at the University of Chicago and lead author. "It tells us a lot about the recovery from mass extinctions, especially mass extinctions that involved a loss of predators."

Paleontologists know the Devonian Period, which spanned from 416 to 359 million years ago, as the Age of Fishes, a time of astonishing diversity for marine vertebrate species. That thriving world was devastated by the Hangenberg event, a mass extinction of unknown origin that set the stage for modern biodiversity.

But some species survived the carnage of the Hangenberg event. The next 15 million years in the fossil record are dominated by crinoids, species similar to modern sea lilies and related to starfish. So abundant and diverse were these marine animals that the period is known as the Age of the Crinoids; entire limestone deposits from the era are made up of crinoid fossils.

"We've been puzzled for many years as to why there were so many species and specimens of crinoids," said study co-author Thomas Kammer, PhD, Eberly College Centennial Professor of Geology at West Virginia University. "There had to be some underlying evolutionary and ecological reason for that."

Researchers considered whether a change in the environment, such as water temperature or depth, could explain the crinoid explosion, Kammer said. Changes in predation were also proposed, but hard to test using the fossil record.

"You don't actually find the evidence of a fossil fish with a crinoid in its mouth very often," Kammer said.

The riddle was solved through multi-institutional collaboration and data-sharing. A database of crinoid diversity in the fossil record assembled by Kammer and William Ausich, PhD, study co-author and Professor of Earth Sciences at Ohio State University, was compared to a vertebrate dataset created by Sallan.

When the datasets were placed side by side and analyzed, a clear relationship emerged. As fish populations thrived in the Devonian, crinoid diversity and abundance remained low despite favorable conditions. But after the Hangenberg event devastated fish species, crinoids thrived, diversifying and multiplying. The data suggests the ripple effects of a mass extinction upon ecosystems can last millions of years.

"This study demonstrates a clear example of processes that operate in ecological time - predator-prey relationships - becoming significant in evolutionary time," Ausich said.

"This means that ecological patterns and processes taking place today may have very long-reaching evolutionary effects. And although that idea may not seem particularly surprising at first, respected evolutionary biologists have long argued that it was not possible."

Eventually, the success of crinoids came to an end. As fish species recovered to previous levels, crinoid populations declined in tandem - further evidence for typical predator-prey dynamics known as Lotka-Volterra cycles in modern ecology.

Fossils even suggest that the long period of dominance had left the crinoids especially vulnerable to a new predator strategy. In the Devonian era, crinoids evolved hard armored shells to defend against fish with sharp "shearing" teeth.

But when fish populations returned in force 15 million years after the Hangenberg event, those species used "crushing" teeth well suited for thwarting crinoid defenses.

The persistence of a once-beneficial trait that becomes obsolete should be called a "legacy adaptation," the authors propose. In the absence of a predator-prey arms race, a species' inherited defenses may become outdated, Sallan said.

"There's a complete absence of predation pressure and the crinoids take off, but they retain their defenses as if they can't get out of them," Sallan said.

"When a new form of predator appears, they can go directly for the best solution to cracking a crinoid, which is crushing. The Devonian-era armor of crinoids isn't suited for defending against that attack, but they can't lose it without losing all of their residual defenses."

The paper, "Persistent Predator-Prey Dynamics Revealed by Mass Extinction," will be published the week of May 2, 2011 by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In addition to Sallan, Kammer, and Ausich, Lewis Cook, MD, PhD, of West Virginia University is a study co-author.

Page Museum Blog

ABDSP Paleontology Society — Mon, 09 May 2011 15:42:00 GMT

Subscribe to The Excavatrix for more news about Pit 91

Cleaning and the Media

Posted: 30 Mar 2011 08:51 AM PDT

Spring cleaning started early this year with Pit 91 glopping and maintenance.

Since it is a dirty job, Laura donned our recently donated fishing waders/frog suit

Michelle did some reverse basting to remove water sitting

around the fossils.

Here Karin gets those tough to reach support beams with

her vacuum hose extender handle to suck up the dirt

and leaves that Michelle bravely swept to the edge.

Michelle showcases our new Pit 91 decorations

And here's an ancient grid number I found on the wall!

Our even bigger excitement than cleaning Pit 91 in March was Media Day.

We prepared the compound and Box 1 and 14 for numerous visitors. Both

large fossil deposits from these boxeswere well exposed and shined and the

reporters were given direction on where to stand.

Along with showcasing the boxes, we also had a table of fossils in the compound

including an unprepared large tree branch, some prepared Little Timmy elements

and 6 prepared saber-toothed kitten radii.

photo by Nola Milner

In the lab a table was set up to show off Clyde's skull and mandible, juvenile bison from Box 7B, saber-toothed kitten mandibles and maxillae, elements of Fluffy, Donatello, oak leaves, beetle eaten pine, and millipede.

The fishbowl lab showed off the recently opened skull of Zed and here's the

Project 23 crew standing around him at the end of the day

John and Shelley gave a speech to numerous reporters about what has been

discovered in Project 23 for the last two years and then the reporters were

released to the table, boxes, and lab to interview us.

photo by Nola Milner

Here are some links to articles as a result:

LA Times (Blog): h ttp://latimesblogs.latimes.com/unleashed/2011/03/la-brea-tar-pits.html

La Opinion (Print): http://www.impre.com/laopinion/noticias/la-california/2011/3/10/mamut-cuenta-la-historia-de-la-244025-1.html#commentsBlock

Trekaroo (Web): http://blog.trekaroo.com/2011/03/14/monday-madness-win-a-family-four-pack-of-tickets-for-the-page-museumla-brea-tarpits/

URCA (Radio): http://www.yourcaliforniashow.com/radio-links/prehistoricbonesnearlosangeles-homebrewing101-andmuchmore

LA Weekly (Web): http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2011/03/la_brea_tar_pits_new_fossils.php

KPFK (Radio): www.hearinthecity.org

Plus, close to 300 media outlets ran the AP story from when we were interviewed two days before Media Day

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=134384948

Here are the excavators looking our best on Media Day.

photo by Nola Milner

Continuing on with cleaning, last week we poked through the collection of animal skeletons that are in various states of decay in the "monkey shed." With eagerness and sometimes slight reluctance, Michelle took an inventory to show her forensic anthropology classmates who might assist in preparing them for storage in our modern comparative collection in the lab.

Karin found a shy new friend

And another....the bear labelled "Bozo"

and an apparently to Michelle, an absurd pelican beak

The fun never stops here, even with the recent torrential rain.

During lunchtime the canopy over deposit 14 collapsed from the weight of water

We also brought out the warm and cozy Tyvec suits that Bruce donated

And if you need a fossil fix (aside from looking at our great work in pictures taken by the media), here's a broken bison rib in box 14 currently exposed. At the top left there is a bison sacrum.

And check out our new scaffolding next to Box 1, complete with canopy!

We are ready for spring/summer digging!

Finding Would Reveal Contact between Humans and Gomphotheres in North America

ABDSP Paleontology Society — Mon, 09 May 2011 15:18:00 GMT

addthis_pub = 'artdaily';
Finding Would Reveal Contact between Humans and Gomphotheres in North America


The discovery took place in early January 2011 in El Fin del Mundo, Sonora by researchers from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), during the third field season at the site identified as a hunting and quartering area during the Pleistocene. Photo: INAH.
MEXICO CITY.- Mexican Archaeologists discovered 3 Clovis projectile heads associated to remains of gomphotheres with an age of at least 12,000 years, in the northern region of the Mexican state of Sonora. The finding is relevant because these are the first evidences in North America of this extinct animal linked to the human species. The finding opens the possibility of the coexistence of humankind with gomphotheres, animals similar to mammoths, but smaller, in this region of America, which contrasts with theories that declare that this species disappeared 30,000 years ago in this region of America and did not coexist with humans. The discovery took place in early January 2011 in El Fin del Mundo, Sonora by researchers from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), during the third field season at the site identified as a hunting and quartering area during the Pleistocene. This finding completes a scene in which archaeologists visualized how Clovis groups hunted this elephant ancestor. “This is an unprecedented finding in Mexico since it is the first time that projectile heads are found associated to a bone bed of this kind of proboscides. “There is no other Clovis archaeological site where gomphotheres have been found, not even in the United States, where most important Clovis Culture findings have been registered, and these vestiges are dated between 10,600 and 11,600 years” informed archaeologist Guadalupe Sanchez, director of the Fin del Mundo Research Project. “The discovery took place in the same archaeological context where in 2008 gomphothere bones and different lithic tools were found on the surface, among them, a quartz crystal Clovis head”. Clovis people are also known as hunters of mammoths, one of 3 proboscide species that lived in America, being the other 2 the mastodon and the gomphothere. The last was the smallest and the earliest to appear in the Americas. Gomphotheres have only been found associated to humans in South America, and the southernmost Clovis heads were found in Costa Rica; human evidence associated with proboscides was limited mastodons and mammoths, until now. The INAH archaeologist Natalia Martinez, head of the field research, explained that Clovis projectile heads were discovered in the point named Localidad 1, the remainder of a swamp with deposits of the Pleistocene and Holocene eras, and were freed by scraping carefully a hard soil block. The lithic artifacts manufactured by Clovis people to hunt great animals, were located a few centimeters under the gomphothere discovered in previous field seasons part of the research project conducted by the INAH, the University of Arizona and the National Geographic Society.

http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_new=44345&int_sec=2

May 2011 Year of the Turtle Newsletter now available!

ABDSP Paleontology Society — Mon, 09 May 2011 15:14:00 GMT

The May 2011 Year of the Turtle Newsletter is here! This month's issue of Year of the Turtle News can be found attached with this email and at http://parcplace.org/images/stories/YOT/YoTNewsMay.pdf.

One year after the April 19^th, 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill, we take stock of what we know about turtle conservation efforts in the affected areas of the Gulf.

This month the Year of the Turtle News discusses what we know, and don’t know, one year after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. We remind you of the upcoming World Turtle Day, and we highlight Citizen Science (volunteer) opportunities, including one where you can get involved with Gulf sea turtle conservation in Alabama. We also have an interview with renowned herpetologist, Dr. J. Whitfield “Whit” Gibbons, co-author of Turtles: The Animal Answer Guide, as well as Turtles of the Southeast. In addition, there is a feature on turtle conservation efforts in Arizona as a Southwest PARC spotlight.

Also, congratulations to Sara Viernum for her winning calendar photo of a baby Loggerhead Musk Turtle, photographed while she was canoeing in Alabama in 2005. Sara’s photo was chosen as the May featured photo out of hundreds of photos received since our contest began (read a summary of our photo contest and entries to date in the May issue of the Year of the Turtle News!). All submitted photos will continue to be considered for future calendar months, as well as for use (with photo credit) in other Year of the Turtle products and documents. More information about our ongoing photo contest is available at www.YearoftheTurtle.org. Give us your best shot!

Visit www.YearoftheTurtle.org to find the calendar and photo contest information for upcoming months, the Year of the Turtle screensaver and video, our growing USA Turtle Mapping Project, and our ever-growing list of partners.

As always, please feel free to contact us at yearoftheturtle2011@gmail.com with any feedback you may have on the Year of the Turtle News, calendar, and website as well as ways you believe we can make our efforts stronger. Also, contact us with any questions you may have pertaining to the Year of the Turtle or to partner with us for this important year!

Giant Rabbit Fossil Found: Biggest Bunny Was "Roly-Poly"

ABDSP Paleontology Society — Mon, 09 May 2011 15:13:00 GMT

With no predators on its Spanish island, rabbit was evolutionary "beach bum."

Artist's conception: The newfound prehistoric rabbit species N. rex beside a modern European rabbit.

Illustration courtesy Meike Köhler

Christine Dell'Amore

Published March 22, 2011

The Easter bunny came early this year for a few scientists working on the Spanish island of Minorca

The team has just announced the discovery of Earth's biggest known rabbit species, an oddly unbunny-like giant dubbed Nuralagus rex—"the Minorcan king of the hares."

The 26-pound (12-kilogram) prehistoric species was about six times bigger than the common European rabbit, found on most continents, according to an analysis of several bones. Study leader Josep Quintana is no stranger to giant Minorcan rabbit fossils, though it took a while before he knew exactly how big a find he'd uncovered.

"When I found the first bone I was 19 years old, I was not aware what this bone represented. I thought it was a bone of the giant Minorcan turtle!" said Quintana, a paleontologist at the Institut Català de Palentologia in Barcelona.

The animal, which lived about three to five million years ago, had several "odd" features that have never before been seen in rabbits, living or extinct, according to the study.

For one, the giant rabbit's "short and stiff" vertebral column meant it couldn't bunny hop. And the relatively small sizes of sense-related areas of its skull suggested that the animal had small eyes and stubby ears—a far cry from modern rabbit ears (see picture.)

"I think that N. rex would be a rather clumsy rabbit walking," Quintana said. "Imagine a beaver out of water."

Despite its oddities, N. rex has many skull and teeth features found in rabbits—meaning there’s “no question” it’s a rabbit, according to Brian Kraatz, an expert in rabbit evolution at the Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, California.

“Really, this is a rather typical rabbit head [albeit large] stuck on an atypical rabbit body,” said Kraatz, who was not involved in the study.

Giant Rabbit Was Early "Beach Bum"?

The newfound rabbit's "roly-poly, tanklike" appearance and weird anatomy may have arisen because of its stress-free lifestyle, Kraatz added.

That's because the megarabbit had no predators on Minorca—a luxury that allowed the species to evolve to be bigger and more sedentary he said. Modern rabbits are small, spry, and have sharp vision to escape predators.

(See "Monster Rabbit Stalks U.K. Village [But No Sign of Wallace or Gromit.]")

"He was probably on an evolutionary vacation," said Kraatz, like an "islander beach bum."

Yet, even though the giant rabbit "didn't have too many cares or worries," Kraatz said, "he got too comfortable, and eventually went extinct."

The new giant-rabbit fossil study appeared in the March Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Looking inside the San Andreas

ABDSP Paleontology Society — Mon, 09 May 2011 15:12:00 GMT

Scientists believe a new study of the San Andreas fault within the Salton Trough could change assumptions about the eventual Big One.

Geologist Angel Olguin jams a seismic sensor in a shallow trough scraped in the desert floor near the Salton Sea. This and thousands of other sensors will record seismic waves from detonated explosives to "map" the San Andreas fault and other features of the Earth's crust below. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

By Thomas Curwen, Los Angeles Times

March 23, 2011

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Reporting from the Salton Sea -- Three days after the earthquake and tsunami devastated northeastern Japan, Gary Fuis walked across the San Andreas fault under a moonlit sky. The desert was quiet. A breeze fanned through the creosote. To the west, he could see the Salton Sea, and to the east, the headlamps of the night crew taking up their positions.

In a little more than an hour, they would start detonating their explosives, generating seismic waves that would be recorded by seismometers buried throughout these sandy hills and positioned on the floor of the Salton Sea.

A geophysicist with the United States Geological Survey, Fuis is overseeing an ambitious project to create an underground image of one of the most seismically active and geologically complex regions of the country, a triangle of land extending from Palm Springs to the Mexico border.

This work, he believes, will change current assumptions about the earthquakes that originate here, especially the Big One expected on the San Andreas fault. For nearly three weeks his teams have worked night and day to cover hundreds of miles and position thousands of instruments.

Photos: Monitoring the San Andreas for the Big One

Fuis, 67, sat on the top of a ridge and took out his dinner, a ham and jalapeno sandwich. From here, he would be able to stay in touch with the crew by two-way radio and cellphone in case any problems or confusion arose during the night.

A voice broke over the radio.

"Train south."

A freight speeding along the shore of the lake would interfere with the readings from the detonations, and they'd have to wait until it passed.

Fuis looked south toward Bombay Beach, a community of small homes and double-wide trailers on the edge of the Salton Sea, where the San Andreas fault begins its jagged 800-mile course toward the Mendocino coast.

Three years ago, seismologists imagined the effect of a magnitude 7.8 earthquake with an epicenter less than a mile from where he sat. Their scenario had the full force of the temblor reaching the L.A. Basin in less than two minutes. The shaking would extend as far north as Ventura.

The released energy would be approximately 30 times less than the Japanese earthquake. Still, landslides, fires, collapsed buildings and roadways, severed communication lines, cracked runways, derailed trains, broken aqueducts and dams were projected, along with nearly 2,000 deaths, 50,000 injuries and $200 billion in damage.

The model was based on the last rupture of the San Andreas in this region, dated more than 300 years ago by recent geological studies. Because this stretch of the fault — from Bombay Beach to the Cajon Pass — has not moved since then, it is considered especially vulnerable to a major earthquake.

Fuis describes the fault with dispassionate conviction. It is "near failure," he says, though he believes the seismologists' predictions may not be accurate. Whether the destruction will be worse or not, he's not certain. He just knows that some conclusions have been drawn without enough information.

"Neither the shape of the San Andreas fault nor the sedimentary basins that the cities have been built upon are well enough understood to provide accurate calculations of the shaking," he said.

The chatter on his radio picked up.

He checked the time — 21:59:07 — less than a minute before the first blast.

::

Earlier that morning, just as the sun was rising, the day crew gathered at a warehouse in El Centro.

John Hole paced with clipboard and pen in hand. Hole, 48, is an associate professor of geophysics at Virginia Tech and is managing the study along with Fuis and Joann Stock, 51, professor of geology and geophysics at Caltech.

The Salton Seismic Imaging Project is funded with a $1.2-million grant from the National Science Foundation. Additional money comes from the U.S. Geological Survey. The first findings of the study will be released in September.

Similar research in the 1990s looked at the Los Angeles Basin and the San Andreas north of the Cajon Pass. The results showed a number of faults lying deep beneath Los Angeles that are capable of producing dangerous earthquakes like the one that caused the Northridge earthquake in 1994.

By detonating explosives and measuring the speed of the seismic waves as they move horizontally and vertically underground, seismologists can assemble images of the crust of the Earth, capturing structures like fault lines.

The project was three years in the planning, and the field work got underway late February. During public hearings, Fuis had fielded concerns from residents and local officials who worried that the explosions might set off earthquakes. Rock quarries, he told them, conduct similar blasts without any consequence.

Then less than 24 hours after the earthquake in Japan, the fears arose again. Residents worried about earthquakes, damaged buildings and tainted ground water. An aide to Rep. Mary Bono Mack, whose district includes the Coachella and Imperial valleys, called the U.S. Geological Survey for reassurance.

Now with only six days left, Hole wanted to make sure everyone stayed focused. So far, they had put out more than 4,000 seismometers, and the night crew had set off more than 100 explosions.

"This is huge," he reminded them, "the largest project of its kind."

On the wall behind him was a map of Southern California, showing the precisely delineated routes that crews followed, traversing wilderness areas, military installations, Indian reservations, private property and cities. Scripps Institute of Oceanography set up its own equipment in the Salton Sea.

Penetrated by volcanoes and cut by the San Andreas and Imperial faults, the region is part of the Salton Trough, one of the few rift valleys in the world not covered by an ocean, a place where geologists can see the continent coming apart and a new crust of the Earth being formed.

These processes are the result of the Pacific and North American plates sliding against each other for nearly 6 million years, an action that triggers the earthquakes in the region.

::

Toting 40-pound packs in 80-degree heat, the day crew covered a five-mile route. About every 50 yards, they stopped at mapped locations, dug a trench about a foot deep and buried a seismometer and geophone.

By mid-afternoon, the night crew parked their SUVs, pick-ups and an enclosed truck between the Union Pacific tracks and California Highway 111, just north of the Imperial County line. The 16 blast sites had already been dug; Fuis and the crew needed to wire the detonators to the explosives and lower the explosives into the blast holes, in most cases 15 feet deep.

Fuis stuffed three boxes of detonators and a bottle of water into his day pack and headed out. He began working for the U.S. Geological Survey in the mid-1960s. As a student, he had been interested in planetary science but realized that he would never touch the rocks he was studying. Peering into the Earth intrigued him more.

"What got a lot of us into the earthquake business," he says, "was the hope we could predict earthquakes — and we still have this hope. In the meantime we have had to start working on something that's practical to the public, namely how to predict earthquake effects."

Photos: Monitoring the San Andreas for the Big One

Standing roadside, Fuis talked easily about "planar distributions of hypocenters," "sedimentary velocities," P waves and S waves. When he described the San Andreas fault and the motion of the two tectonic plates, his hands took flight.

"The San Andreas fault actually appears to be propeller shaped," he said, drawing a pirouette in the air and describing how the fault tilts to the northeast in this basin, then tilts in the opposite direction father north, past the Mojave Desert.

Many seismologists, he explained, assume the fault in this region is largely vertical, a configuration that places the Pacific plate squarely up against the North American plate. Fuis and a few colleagues, however, believe that the Pacific plate here is wedged beneath the North American plate.

The implications for Southern California and especially the Coachella and Imperial valleys are significant, whether assessing building standards or establishing emergency preparedness procedures. Past modeling of earthquakes in the region has used a vertical fault in most places, but angled faults focus energy differently, with the overriding plate sustaining most of the damage.

But a greater threat, according to Fuis, is the sedimentary structure of the Salton Trough itself. Excavate this basin of the rocks and soil swept down over the millenniums from the Rocky Mountains and you'd have a canyon larger than the Grand Canyon.

This formation — sediment nearly nine miles deep — can trap earthquake energy and amplify the seismic waves, resulting in longer and more intense shaking. No one has measured the wave speeds throughout the basin until now.

::

By midnight, Fuis was chilled. Orion angled behind the Santa Rosa Mountains, and a cool breeze came in from the east.

For the last hour he had been following the progress of his explosives handlers as they moved from one blast site to the next. Each team had to follow a rigorous schedule that kept them from firing at the same time and distorting the readings.

Coyn Criley and Joe Svitek were running late for their 1 a.m. detonation. Their first blast had taken longer than expected, and Svitek spooled out 200 feet of wire to the clearing where the explosives were buried. He and Criley spliced it to the detonators, connecting the circuit.

With two minutes remaining, they retreated to the shooting box, a small yellow briefcase that contained a clock and the battery that would initiate the explosion. At 25 seconds, Criley pushed the charge button. An orange light started flashing. At 15 seconds, he pushed the arm button.

"Five, four, three, two, one."

Whoomp.

A sharp jolt and a fast undulation raced through the sandy soil.

Fuis heard the blast from the ridge. By then the seismic waves, racing at three miles a second, had already passed beneath him and were dissipating in the distance. The geophones had captured the ground motion; the seismometers recorded the impulse; and soon the information would join the rest of the data, one piece in the larger puzzle.

One day, Fuis knew, another sort of wave would start from this place, and it wouldn't fade so quickly.

thomas.curwen@latimes.com

Odd Saber-Toothed Beast Discovered—Preyed on ... Plants?

ABDSP Paleontology Society — Mon, 09 May 2011 15:10:00 GMT

"It takes some time to believe it when you see this animal," researcher says.

Shown in a paleontologist's illustration, Tiarajudens eccentricus bears its unexpected saber teeth.

Illustration courtesy Juan Cisneros, Science/AAAS

Tiarajudens eccentricus illustration courtesy Juan Cisneros, Science/AAAS

Brian Handwerk

for National Geographic News

Published March 24, 2011

Thriving long before the dinosaur age, Tiarajudens eccentricus was armed with an incredible arsenal of teeth for grinding, tearing, and even scaring. But the newly discovered saber-toothed mammal ancestor was a vegetarian, a new study says.

Not only did the big-dog-size animal have huge canines—each as large as a crayon—but the roof of the animal's mouth appears to have been studded with teeth, which allowed for rapid replacement of lost teeth, as in sharks, researchers say.

Part of the Anomodontia suborder within the Therapsida order—often called mammal-like reptiles—the 260-million-year-old fossil vegetarian "looks like a combination of different animals, and it takes some time to believe it when you see this animal in front of you," said paleontologist Juan Carlos Cisneros, who discovered the fossil in Brazil.

"It has the incisors of a horse, which are very good for cutting and pulling plants; the big molars of a capybara (picture), for grinding; and the canines of a saber-toothed cat."

Paleontologist Jörg Fröbisch said the saber teeth are a particular surprise, considering the animal's diet of fibrous plants.

"You would usually expect saber teeth in a carnivore," said Fröbisch, of the Humboldt University of Berlin.

"The best known animals are obviously saber-toothed cats or tigers, but there are also some [extinct] forms known among the marsupials, relatives of kangaroos and wombats," added Fröbisch, who wasn't involved in the Tiarajudens eccentricus study, to be published tomorrow in the journal Science.

T. eccentricus' saber teeth might have deterred predators or intimidated or wounded rivals of the same species, the study authors speculate.

"Saber teeth used for display or fighting between members of the same species is something that we thought appeared in herbivores less than 60 million years ago," said study leader Cisneros, of Brazil's Federal University of Piauí.

"If Tiarajudens eccentricus [used them this way], then it appeared much earlier, when terrestrial communities were ... dominated by herbivores."

(Also see "Sabertooth Cousin Found in Venezuela Tar Pit—A First.")

Tooth Trials: Secret of Evolutionary Success?

Why did plant-eating Tiarajudens eccentricus—"the eccentric tooth of the Tiarajú region"—have idiosyncratic dentition? The answer may lie in evolutionary experimentation.

(Also see: the first known vegetarian spider and dinosaur evidence of a shift to a vegetarian diet.)

No matter how unusual, Tiarajudens eccentricus' wildly differing teeth fit closely together during a bite—the better to grind up and process fibrous leaves and stems. This early example of a tight tooth fit in a therapsid may offer insights into why humans and other mammals are so equipped today, since mammals evolved from therapsids.

"This animal was already capable of eating like a modern ruminant, and that's very interesting," Cisneros said. Ruminants are animals such as cows and goats, which chew their cud and have complex, multichambered stomachs.

These unique dental adaptations may also offer some clues to the striking success of the anomodonts during the middle Permian era, before dinosaurs dominated Earth. (See a prehistoric time line.)

"Anomodonts were the most successful group of terrestrial vertebrates, with the most species, most diverse morphologies, and most ecological adaptations during this time," the University of Humboldt's Fröbisch said.

"There were burrowing forms, climbing forms, semiaquatic forms, small rat-sized animals, and large cow-sized animals in this same group, and this is unique in the ancestral lineage of mammals," he said.

"This early experimentation in different teeth, I'm sure, is part of why this group became so successful."

Researchers Reveal Remarkable Fossil

ABDSP Paleontology Society — Mon, 09 May 2011 15:09:00 GMT

This is the detail of 525 million-year-old hemichordate. Credit: Credit: Professor Derek Siveter, Oxford University. For the larger version of this image please go here.

by Staff Writers
by Staff Writers
Leicester, UK (SPX) Mar 30, 2011
Researchers from China, Leicester and Oxford have discovered a remarkable fossil which sheds new light on an important group of primitive sea creatures.

The 525-million-year-old fossil belongs to a group of tentacle-bearing creatures which lived inside hard tubes. Previously only the tubes have been seen in detail but this new specimen clearly shows the soft parts of the body including tentacles for feeding.

Details of the discovery have been announced in the journal Current Biology. The study was funded by the Royal Society and the National Natural Foundation of China.

The creature belongs to a group called pterobranch hemichordates which are related to starfish and sea urchins but also show some characteristics that offer clues to the evolution of the earliest vertebrates.

About 30 species of pterobranch are known to exist today although 380-490 million years ago a group of these animals called graptolites were common across the prehistoric oceans.

Pterobranches are creatures which secrete a substance that builds up into a hard tube around their soft body. Tentacles extend from the top of the tube to catch plankton.

Although less than 4cm in length, the new fossil is beautifully preserved and minute details can be seen including 36 tiny tentacles along one feathery arm.

Professor David Siveter from the University of Leicester's Department of Geology commented, "Amazingly, it has exceptionally preserved soft tissues - including arms and tentacles used for feeding - giving unrivalled insight into the ancient biology of the group."

Colleagues from Yunnan University and the Universities of Leicester and Oxford collaborated in identifying and describing the remarkable find which was discovered in Yunnan Province, China.

It has been named Galeaplumosus abilus which means 'feathered helmet from beyond the clouds', referring to both the creature's shape and its location - 'Yunnan' literally translates as 'south of the clouds'.

The team from Yunnan (Professor Hou and Dr Ma), Leicester (Professors David Siveter and Richard Aldridge; Drs Mark Williams and Jan Zalasiewicz) and Oxford (Professor Derek Siveter) are engaged in long term study of these important fossils. Hou, Xian-guang, Aldridge, R.J., Siveter, David J., Siveter, Derek J.,Williams, M., Zalasiewicz, J.A. and Ma Xiao-ya. 2011. A pterobranch hemichordate zooid from the lower Cambrian. Current Biology.

New Dinosaur, Crocodile Cousin Found in Brazil

ABDSP Paleontology Society — Mon, 09 May 2011 15:07:00 GMT

"Incredible" Croc Skull

Photograph by Marcos de Paula, Agencia Estado/AP

The nearly complete skull of a new species of ancient crocodile cousin has been found in Brazil, paleontologists say.

The animal is what's called a crocodyliform, part of a group known as the crocodilians that includes modern-day alligators, caimans, and more. (See alligator and crocodile pictures.)

Dubbed Pepesuchus deiseae, the new species lived between 99 million to 65 million years ago during the late Cretaceous period. Brazilian National Museum paleontologists recently found a skull and jawbone of the crocodile cousin at a fossil site in São Paulo state.

Seen above during a March 16 presentation, the fossil skull is "in incredibly good condition," said team leader Alexander Kellner. "We had enough basis to build a fairly good replica, showing what it probably looked like in real life."

The new crocodile cousin and another newfound species—a meat-eating dinosaur that's the biggest of its kind yet found in Brazil—were described recently in the Annals of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. The fossils are now housed at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro's National Museum.

—Sabrina Valle in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

New "Buck-Toothed Evil Spirit" Dinosaur Found

ABDSP Paleontology Society — Mon, 09 May 2011 15:06:00 GMT

Primitive predator bridges gap in fossil record, experts say.

Illustration by Jeffrey Martz

Brian Handwerk

for National Geographic News

Published April 13, 2011

A newly discovered dinosaur species bridges the gap between the earliest known group of predators and more advanced beasts such as Tyrannosaurus rex, according to a new study.

Found at New Mexico's Ghost Ranch fossil site, the primitive dinosaur lived about 205 million years ago. (Related pictures: "'Nasty' Little Predator From Dinosaur Dawn Found.")

The dinosaur, which stood as tall as a large dog, boasts a very unusual skull, said study co-author Hans-Dieter Sues, a vertebrate paleontologist at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.

"It has a deep, short snout and these monstrous front teeth. That's a kind of skull structure for a predatory dinosaur that's really unexpected for this early point in time," Sues said.

These features helped earn the new dinosaur the name Daemonosaurus chauliodus, or "buck-toothed evil spirit" in Greek.

(Also see "'Weird' Buck-toothed Dino Found in China.")

Earliest Dinosaurs Were Survivors

The oldest known dinosaurs lived in what's now South America during the late Triassic Period, some 230 million years ago. This group included early versions of two-legged predators known as theropods.

But a big gap in the fossil record just after this time led many experts to suggest that these early dinosaurs had simply died out.

"The idea," Sues said, "was that there was this early diversification of dinosaurs ... but then they went extinct, and more advanced predators took over during the late Triassic and diversified later at the Triassic-Jurassic boundary, when we know that dinosaur predators greatly diversified and increased a lot in size."

Now the Daemonosaurus find links the two dinosaur groups.

"Our new dinosaur, along with another one that was found a few years ago ... at the same site, indicates that those basal dinosaurs already included a number of early theropods, and that they survived all the way through the Triassic to nearly the beginning of the Jurassic Period."

(See pictures: "New T. Rex Cousin Suggests Dinosaurs Arose in South America.")

Bucktooth Dino Bridges Evolutionary Gap

For now Daemonosaurus is known only by its fossilized skull and neck vertebrae.

But the fossils show that the dinosaur has several features—including cavities in its vertebrae linked to the respiratory system—that bridge the evolutionary gap between the earliest dinosaurs and the neotheropods, the next group of predatory dinosaurs to evolve.

Finding the dino in New Mexico adds another interesting aspect to the discovery, Sues said.

"We had some inkling that the earliest dinosaurs had made it into the Northern Hemisphere when the supercontinent Pangaea was still in existence and animals could walk around on dry land. But the fossil record was limited to South America," he said.

"The new find gives further evidence that the earliest radiation of dinosaurs did have a wider distribution, and it is due to the incompleteness of the fossil record that we'd found them only in Argentina and Brazil."

The new dinosaur is described in the April 13 issue of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

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With no predators on its Spanish island, rabbit was evolutionary "beach bum."

Looking inside the San Andreas

Scientists believe a new study of the San Andreas fault within the Salton Trough could change assumptions about the eventual Big One.

Odd Saber-Toothed Beast Discovered—Preyed on ... Plants?

"It takes some time to believe it when you see this animal," researcher says.

Researchers Reveal Remarkable Fossil

New Dinosaur, Crocodile Cousin Found in Brazil

"Incredible" Croc Skull

New "Buck-Toothed Evil Spirit" Dinosaur Found

Primitive predator bridges gap in fossil record, experts say.

An artist's rendering of the new dinosaur species Daemonosaurus chauliodus.