jamesteohart / svrid79 / Benny Marty / imaginasty / Mara008 / Wikimedia / Flickr / The Atlantic The Atlantic has an interesting story about the evolution of whales.  Whales have a strange history, from a dog-like creature to probably the largest animal ever on Earth.  This article discusses the last 50 million years and how they travelled the oceans looking for food.  During their journey, they had a few passengers – barnacles.  It’s these fossilized barnacles that are revealing new clues to the history of the whales. “Essentially no one knows anything about whale migration in the prehistoric past,” says…

A beetle is trapped in amber alongside a 99-million year old dinosaur feather. It was found in an amber market in Myanmar. (Ryan McKellar) A recreation of what a Maniraptora would have looked like, based on a 99-million year old feather found preserved in amber. (Ryan McKellar) CBC Radio’s Quirks & Quarks has a segment about a 99 million year old dinosaur tail feather locked in amber.  Found at an amber market in Myanmar, the feather was destined for jewellery before a paleontologist named Dr. Lida Xing stepped in an bought it.  The chunk of amber is about the side…

Permia is a Kickstarter for “Prehistoric Clothing & Collectibles – Dinosaur Art & More”.  They are starting with T-shirts.  Check it out!

Palaeocast has a new episode up.  It’s called “Gaptolites”.   If you’ve heard of them (or not heard of them) and wondered what they are, check it out. Graptolites are small colonial organisms, each made up of many tiny, genetically identical zooids joined together by tubes. They’ve been around since the Cambrian and at times in Earth’s history have been very morphologically and taxonomically diverse. Now there is just one living genus, but they are very common in the fossil record, often appearing as a ‘sawtooth’ pattern flattened on surfaces of deep sea sedimentary rocks. In this episode Laura talks to…

A selection of stunning opalised fossils from Lightning Ridge Top: A ‘yabby button’ from a freshwater crayfish; pine cone; crocodile tooth; theropod dinosaur tooth. Bottom: pine cone; snail; turtle vertebra; sauropod dinosaur tooth. IMAGE CREDIT: Robert A. Smith/Australian Opal Centre Australian Geographic has an interesting post on the opalized fossils of Lightning Ridge in Australia.  The post is a first person journal entry on a visit to the locality.   I’D NEVER BEEN on an outback dig before, so travelling to the mining town of Lightning Ridge to spend a week working with Australian Opal Centre (AOC) scientists was an…