Tag: Jurassic
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Jurassic pliosaur ‘megapredator’ was a giant ‘sea murderer’
Live Science has a story about a “megapredator” of the Jurassic. The new pliosaur species, Lorrainosaurus, lived about 170 million years ago. Pliosaurs ruled the oceans during the Jurassic. This animal was found in the former region of Lorraine (now part of Grand Est) in northeastern France. A paper in the journal Scientific Reports reexamined…
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Rare Jurassic fossils discovered near Lake Powell
Phys.org has a story about the discovery of some rare fossils new Lake Powell in Utah. Tritylodontid mammaliaforms are rare animals that lived during the Jurassic Period about 180 million years ago. The fossils were discovered in an area that would ordinarily be covered in water… you might say that the paleontologists were in the…
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Fish’s big mistake preserved an unusual fossil for us
Ars Technica has a story about an interesting fish fossil. A fossil fish, Pachycormus macropterus, from Germany shows that even fish sometimes bite off more than they can eat… This particular fish fossil has a fossilized ammonite in its belly. The fossil was found in the Fischer Quarry in Zell unter Aichelberg, Germany and dates…
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The Oldest Plant-Eating Dinosaur Has Been Found in India
The New York Times’ Trilobite column has a story about a new dinosaur from India. The animal, called Tharosaurus indicus, is an early member of the dicraeosaurids, which are sauropods. It lived about 167 million years ago during the Jurassic Period. The fossils were discovered in the Thar Desert, located in the northwest of India. …
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Jurassic era fish fossil found to have died from eating an overly large ammonite
Phys.org has an interesting post about a fish that died from indigestion. The fish, an actinopterygian named Pachycormus macropterus, lived during the Jurassic Period between 174 and 182 million years ago. Its fossil was found in Germany in the Posidonienschiefer Formation. It swallowed an ammonite, which was much to large for it to digest. Read…
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Fossils Where They Don’t Belong? Maybe We Just Didn’t Look Hard Enough
A life reconstruction of Ambondro mahabo, the four-inch-long tribosphenic mammal.Credit…Flynn & Wyss, Scientific American, 2004 The New York Times has an article about an unexpected discovery. In 1996, paleontologists found mammal bones in an unexpected place…. northwestern Madagascar. A tiny 167 million year old jaw fragment from an animal that was out of place by…
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Twice the Size of a Killer Whale – New Evidence Suggests Giant Pliosaurs Swam in Late Jurassic Seas
SciTechDaily has a story about some truly huge pliosaurs that lived during the Jurassic Period. A paper in the journal Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association describes a vertebrae, which suggests a pliosaur that may have reached almost 15 meters in length as depicted by Liopleurodon in the BBC program “Walking with Dinosaurs”. More than two…
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Giants of the Jurassic seas were twice the size of a killer whale, says study
Phys.org has a story about the size of the large marine reptiles that swam the seas of the Jurassic Period. Just how big was Liopleurodon, a large pliosaur from that time? The BBC’s “Walking with Dinosaurs” TV documentary series showed it as 25-meters-long, which was deemed vastly overestimated. New evidence, from the rediscovery of a…
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Worlds Largest “Raptor” Dinosaurs Lived 10 Million Years Earlier Than Thought
SciTechDaily has a story about Utahraptor. New research by paleontologists (one at the University of Kansas) shows that Utahraptor actually lived about 135 million years ago, not 125 million years as previously thought. Utahraptor is the largest known “raptor” dinosaur at 4.9–5.5 m (16–18 ft) long and weighing 280–300 kg (620–660 lb). It’s also one of…
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Scientists Find Plaster Copies of Fossil Destroyed by Nazis
Smithsonian Magazine has a story about an interesting rediscovery. In 1818, Mary Anning discovererd one of most complete ichthyosaur skeletons ever found. The fossil eventually made its way to the Royal College of Surgeons in London, where it was destroyed in WW II by the Nazi bombing. There were a few drawing, but the fossil…
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Ginormous Jurassic fossil in Portugal may be the biggest dinosaur ever found in Europe
Live Science has a story about the discovery of a truly large dinosaur. The sauropod dinosaur has a gigantic rib cage and is possibly a brachiosaurid. It lived about 150 million years ago in what is now Pombal, Portugal, which is north of Lisbon and near the Atlantic coast. By the size of the already…
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Jurassic insect wore eggs on its legs, fossils show
Live Science has a story about a Jurassic insect discovery. Fossils show that a water bug that lived about 160 million years ago carried its eggs on its legs. The fossils were discovered in the Haifanggou Formation, a fossil-filled rock deposit near the village of Daohugou in northeastern China. A paper in the journal Proceedings…
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Dinosaurs took over the planet because they could endure the cold, scientists say
LiveScience has a post about how dinosaurs came to dominate in the early Jurassic. It’s long been theorized that dinosaurs were better adapted to hot weather and so took over from their crocodillian cousins around the Triassic/Jurassic extinction event about 202 million years ago. Now, a paper in the journal Science Advances proposes that it…
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BBC: Mary Anning: Lyme Regis fossil hunter’s statue unveiled
The BBC has a story about the unveiling of a statue of Mary Anning in her home town of Lyme Regis, Dorset, England. The unveiling was done on May 21st, which was her 223rd birthday. She lived her whole life in Lyme Regis and supported her family by collecting and selling fossils from what is…
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NYT: How 2 Pterosaurs’ Last Meals Ended Up in the Fossil Record
Two pterosaur fossils from China dating to the Late Jurassic, with green arrows indicating the pellets; the yellow arrows indicate fish scales.Credit…Jiang et al., Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 2022 The New York Times Trilobite column has a story about some Chinese pterosaurs. A paper in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal…
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Jurassic Oceans: Monsters of the Deep at the Field Museum – Until September 5th, 2022
Illustration courtesy of Bob Nicholls (2009) The Field Museum recently opened a new exhibit… “Jurassic Oceans: Monsters of the Deep”. It runs until September 5th, 2022. More information can be found at the Field Museum website. During the Jurassic period, dinosaurs roamed a landscape covered in lush rainforests—thanks to Hollywood, most of us have a…
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Fossil Friday #93: Pyritized ammonite fossils from the Jurassic Coast in England
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #93. Expect this to be a somewhat regular feature of the website. We will post any fossil pictures you send in to esconi.info@gmail.com. Please include a short description or story. Check the #FossilFriday Twitter hash tag for contributions from around the world! For this week, we have a tale…
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164 million-year-old plant fossil is the oldest example of a flowering bud
LiveScience has a story about the oldest known example of a flower bud. Researchers in China have discovered a fossil flower bud from 164 million years ago. The new plant species, Florigerminis jurassica, was found in Inner Mongolia. The description was published in the journal Geological Society of London. There are two main types of…
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Paleontologists Identify New Species of Long-Necked Dinosaur
SciNews has a story about a new species of dinosaur. The new sauropod species is named Rhomaleopakhus turpanensis and it was identified from fossils found about 30 years ago. The animal lived about 155 million years ago during the Late Jurassic Period. All the details can be found in a paper published in the Journal…
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Never-before-seen ammonite muscles revealed in 3D from Jurassic fossil
Phys.org has a story about an amazing ammonite fossil. The 165 million year old fossil has revealed never-before-seen soft body detail in an ammonite. It was found about 20 years ago in Gloucestershire, UK. Researchers at Cardiff University and Imperial College London, who published their study in the journal Geology, found evidence of muscles and…
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Jurassic World “Dominion” Trailer
Screen Rant has a new movie trailer for Jurassic World 3, schedule for release in June 2022. Say what you will about the science, but the special effects are stunning! This trailer shows scenes from the Cretaceous through the present day in Jurassic World. This one has both the required fight scene between large…
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14 Lies About Dinosaurs and Paleontology Movies and TV Have Told You
Cracked.com has a story about the problems with dinosaurs in movies and on TV. Can you believe Hollywood would lie to us about dinosaurs? We mean… How could they? How can they be so conceited as to think that dinosaurs would need their help to be cool? Dinos are much cooler than any other thing that ever…
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Paleontologists Unearth New Species of Iguanodontian Dinosaur
SciNews has a story about a newly-identified dinosaur. Named Brightstoneus simmondsi, the animal lived about 127 million years ago during the early Cretaceous Period in what is now the Isle of Wight. It weighted about 900 kg (1980 lbs) and measured about 8 meters (26 feet) long. The description was published in the journal Systematic…
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PBS Eons: How Pollination Got Going Twice
PBS Eons has a new episode on Youtube. This one is about how pollination by insects evolved twice. The world of the Jurassic was a lot like ours – similar interactions between plants and insects were happening, but the players have changed over time. Because it looks like pollination by insects actually got going…
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Phys.org: Fossil of ancient squid eating a crustacean while being eaten by an ancient shark
Phys.org has a story about a very strange and rare fossil. It’s sort of the turducken of the fossil world. In this case, researchers described a fossil, which dates to the Jurassic Period about 180 million years ago, of a belemnite eating a crustacean, which was in turn being eaten by a shark. The description…
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PBS Eons: When Crocs Thrived in the Seas
There’s a new episode of PBS Eons. This one is about some ferocious crocodiles that lived in the oceans during the Jurassic and Cretaceous. Check out Animal IQ: https://youtu.be/BXqGkPhU2VE While dinosaurs were dominating the land, the metriorhynchids were thriving in the seas. But taking that plunge wasn’t easy because it takes a very special…
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Smithsonian: Amateur Fossil Hunter Discovers New ‘Sea Dragon’ Species on British Beach
Smithsonian Magazine has a story about the discovery of a new Ichthyosaur in England. The animal, called Thalassodraco etchesi “Sea Dragon”, was discovered on the beach near Dorset, England. It lived about 150 million years ago during the late Jurassic Period. The species name etchesi is for the discoverer Steve Etches. A paper published in…
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We’ve Rarely Seen a Dinosaur Brain Like This Before
The New York Times Trilobites column has a story about a dinosaur brain. The dinosaur in the article is Buriolestes schultzi. It lived about 230 million years ago in what is now modern-day Brazil. This small bipedal animal is distantly related to the large sauropod dinosaurs of the Jurassic. In the paper, which was published…
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NatGeo: This small dinosaur had a marvelous sense of touch, detailed fossils reveal
National Geographic has a story about Juravenator starki. This animal lived about 150 million years ago, during the Jurassic Period, in what is now Germany. A new paper, in the journal Current Biology, proposes that it might have used sensory scales on its tail to sense fish when it foraged at night. A CHICKEN-SIZE DINOSAUR that lived in what is now…
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First complete dinosaur skeleton ever found is ready for its closeup at last
Phys.org has a story about a complete dinosaur found on west Dorset’s Jurassic Coast. The skeleton was collected 160 years ago was sent to Richard Owen at the British Museum. The animal lived around 193 million years ago during the early Jurassic Period. The new research was published in the journal Zoological Journal of the…
