Ziapelta, an ankylosaur with a fully developed tail club. (Artist: Sydney Mohr) Quirks & Quarks as a segment about Ankylosaurs.  They were plant-eating dinosaurs with full body armour and a large club-like tail.  There is evidence that it was used to battle other Ankylosaurs and probably provided some protection from predators.  Dr Victoria Aubour, a Canadian Post-doctoral researcher at North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, is interview about her paper on the evolution of the tail structure.  Her original paper appeared in the Journal of Anatomy. Other interesting segments include: Homo naledi – New Species of Human Relative Plastics –…

Credit John Hawks/University of Wisconsin-Madison, via European Pressphoto Agency The Guardian has a story about the recent discovery of new ancient human fossils.  The bones were found in a deep narrow cave in South Africa.  They are believed to be part of a new species of Homo, Homo naledi.  National Geographic has a video that describes the find in detail.  Additionally, Nova has a special, “Dawn of Humanity”, which appears on PBS on Sept 16th, 2015, at 9 p.m. ET/8 p.m. CT.  The original paper was published in the journal eLIFE.  

Livescience has a story about the oldest snake fossil.  It doesn’t look too different from a modern snake, except…  it has four legs!  Named Tetrapodophis amplectus (literally, four-legged snake), it lived about 120 million years ago in what is now Brazil.  The fossil was discovered in an exhibit of specimens from the Crato Formation by David Martill, a professor of paleobiology at the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom.  The original paper appeared in the jounal Science. Previous research has detailed two-legged snake fossils, but this is the first known snake ancestor to sport four legs, he said. It likely…

Picture Credit: Patrick Lynch/Yale University A new oldest Eurypterid was discovered in 2010 from the Winneshiek lagerstätte (site of special preservation) near Decorah, Iowa.  The animal is called Pentecopterus decorahensis.  It lived between 467.3 and 458.4 million years ago (Middle Ordovician), and it predates the previous oldest by about 9 million years.  This show is an interview with the lead autthor Dr James Lamsdell of Yale University.  He discusses Eurypterids in general and gives many details about this new species.   The original paper appeared in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology.

Geology Page has piece on the April 1st earthquake in Chile.  The quake, an 8.2, occurred in a gap on a fault unruptured since 1877.  The current thinking is it didn’t release stress in the right place and may have opened the possibility of another large quake. “We assumed that the area of the 1877 earthquake would eventually rupture, but all indications are that this 8.2 event was not the 8.8 event we were looking for,” said Kevin P. Furlong, professor of geophysics, Penn State. “We looked at it to see if this was the big one.” But according to…

National Geographic has a great story and video about the shrinking ice in the Arctic.  Many want to deny the warming planet, but the evidence is obvious when you look at the extent of ice in the Arctic Ocean. Unveiling his most aggressive plan yet to combat climate change, President Obama on Monday referenced recent dramatic changes that National Geographic made to its atlas because of melting sea ice. “Shrinking ice caps forced National Geographic to make the biggest change in its atlas since the Soviet Union broke apart,” Obama said during a speech at the White House. He’s right.…

The Field Museum Science NewsFlash blog has a great post about a recent donation of Mazon Creek fossils.  The Thomas V. Testa collection of Mazon Creek fossils was just received from Field Associate (and ESCONI member) Jack Wittry.  It’s probably one of the largest private and certainly one of the best collections.  The donation, which consists of about 7000 Mazon Creek fossils, brings the Field Museum’s total to over 50000 specimens. Mazon Creek, an area about 50 miles southwest of Chicago, is one of the richest fossil sites in the world. It was once the swampy coastline of a warm…