Via Vancouver Sun: Airborne laser technology has uncovered a network of roadways and canals in Cambodia, illustrating a bustling ancient city linking the country’s famed Angkor Wat temple complex. The discovery was announced late Monday in a peer-reviewed paper released early by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The laser scanning revealed a previously undocumented formally planned urban landscape integrating the 1,200-year-old temples.

From ESCONI Facebook page via member Donald Baumgartner: Lance Grande’s new book on the Green River fossils and 30 years of his research is now for sale at Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Lost-World-Fossil-Lake-Snapshots/dp/0226922960/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1370100966&sr=1-1&keywords=fossil+lake . I just received mine yesterday hot off the presses and it is a fine book, covering not only the fish but many other animals from this deposit.

Nice map of paleontology sites at Utah State Parks.

Via National Parks Traveler: Hidden within the sagebrush covered hills and badlands of eastern Oregon is evidence of past worlds covered by ancient forests and inhabited by strange looking beasts. Although paleontologists have been studying the area for nearly 150 years, the forces of erosion still uncover previously unknown plants and animals buried within the rocks. Many of the most dynamic finds from the John Day Fossil Beds are on display at the Thomas Condon Paleontology Center at the Sheep Rock Unit of the monument, where visitors can peer inside the fossil laboratory as paleontologists work on new finds. John…

Via the University of Machester: The first complete chemical analysis of feathers from Archaeopteryx, a famous fossil linking dinosaurs and birds, reveals that the feathers of this early bird were patterned – light in colour, with a dark edge and tip to the feather – rather than all black, as previously thought.

This is well done –  

Via Michigan Tech News: A new mineral discovered in the Mammoth-St. Anthony mine in Arizona has been named georgerobinsonite. The mineral is named after George W. Robinson, professor of mineralogy and curator of Michigan Tech’s A. E. Seaman Mineral Museum. It is a lead chromate—a salt of chromic acid—that occurs as minute, transparent, orange-red crystals on cerussite, another lead carbonate and secondary lead mineral…. – See more at: http://www.mtu.edu/news/stories/2012/february/story63798.html#sthash.C5jjSKRY.dpuf A new mineral discovered in the Mammoth-St. Anthony mine in Arizona has been named georgerobinsonite. The mineral is named after George W. Robinson, professor of mineralogy and curator of Michigan Tech’s…

Via Smithsonian: The near-complete fossil of a tiny creature unearthed in China in 2002 has bolstered the idea that the anthropoid group of primates — whose modern-day members include monkeys, apes and humans — had appeared by at least 55 million years ago. The fossil primate does not belong to that lineage, however: it is thought to be the earliest-discovered ancestor of small tree-dwelling primates called tarsiers,…  

Via LATimes from Yahoo ESCONI Group: … scientists say they found an even older feathered dinosaur – one that reestablishes Archaeopteryx as part of the bird lineage even as it may simultaneously dethrone Archaeopteryx as the earliest known “bird.” The study, published online in the journal Nature, provides a key link in the evolutionary chain of events that led from dinosaurs to birds. “It pushes [back] the origins of birds — or origin of animals that are very closely related to the bird,” said Luis Chiappe, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles who was not…

Via MSNBC: In the mountains of northeastern Mexico, archaeologists have unearthed thousands of ancient paintings on the walls of caves and ravines from a time before Spanish rule. The rock art offers rare evidence from native cultures living in the area around the Sierra de San Carlos, a mountain range in Mexico’s state of Tamaulipas, researchers say. Almost 5,000 of these paintings were found across 11 different sites in the region, the researchers said. Created with red, yellow, black and white pigments, the images show animals from deer to lizards to centipedes, as well as people. Depictions of tents, hunting,…