(Javier Trueba / Madrid Scientific Films) CBC Radio’s Quirks & Quarks has a segment on what looks to be an ancient murder, the oldest one yet discovered.  The mystery dates back 400,000 years and even pre-dates the Neanderthal people.  The victim was found among 28 skeletons in a Spanish cave, known as the “pit of bones”.  The cause of death is unknown for most of the individuals, however one skull had wounds consistent with those caused by a spear or hand axe.  The original paper appeared in the journal PLoS One.  Here’s another story in National Geographic. The first known…

A microscopic image of the thigh bone (femur) of a dinosaur shows concentric rings. Like tree rings, they formed each year in the dinosaur’s bones during the season when resources were scarce. The rings represent unrecorded time, so an annual growth rate (dashed line in graph) is an underestimate relative to the true growth rate during the favorable growing season. Credit: Scott Hartman Science Daily has an interesting article about the metabolism of dinosaurs.  It’s an old controversy, were they cold-blooded (ectothermic) or warm-blooded (endothermic)?  The study was a re-analysis of a paper that appeared back in 2014 in the…

Phys.org has a story about the origin of sharks.  It has been thought that sharks had a more primitive beginning than other types of fish.  This was due to their distinctive, all-cartilage skeleton.  But now, a new fossil find from the Gogo in the Kimberly in Western Australia has revealed a surprise ‘missing link’ to earlier somewhat bony forms of fish.  The original paper appeared in the journal PLOS One. Published today in the scientific journal PLOS One, research by Flinders University palaeontologist Professor John Long substantially strengthens the theory that the modern shark is less primitive than previously believed. In…

The tools were made by striking stones to knock off sharp-edged flakes. So far no one knows what they were used for. ( MPK-WTAP) CBCNews has a story of the discovery of stone tools that pre-date the genus Homo.  The tools date to about 3.3 million years ago.  That’s about 700,000 years older than the previous record.  The artifacts were discovered in Kenya in the the region of Lake Turkana.  Their use has not yet been determined, but some are believed to be “cores”, stones that were struck with other stones to create sharp-edged flakes.   Other pieces appear to…

Here is great post on state fossils.  All of the good ones are there…  Tullimonstrum gregarium of Illinois, Calymene celebra of Wisconsin, and Isotelus in Ohio.  The Petoskey stone of Michigan is not listed, probably because it’s the state stone not the state fossil (Mastodon, Mammut americanum).  Enjoy, there will be a test!  

Nature has a story about research into the genome of a 40,000 year old jaw that may suggest that humans interbred with Neanderthals.  The mandible was found in Romania in 2002 and represents some of the oldest modern human remains in Europe.  At one time, this topic was quite controversial.  However, in recent years with the advent of DNA sequencing of fossil material, this theory has become more mainstream.        The finding, announced on 8 May at the Biology of Genomes meeting in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, questions the idea that humans and Neanderthals interbred only in the…

CBC’s Quirks & Quarks has an interview with Dr. David Hone.  He’s a paleontologist and lecturer in Zoology at Queen Mary, University of London.  He’s been studying scarring on a Daspletosaurus skull, which was found in Alberta’s Dinosaur Provincial Park.  He and his colleague, Darren Tanke, have concluded that the wounds were caused by other Daspletosaurs.  The original paper appeared in the journal PeerJ.  Dr. Hone has a post that details the findings on his blog, Archosaur Musings.