Tag: Miocene
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New Prehistoric Cat Species Discovered in Spain
SciNews has a post about the discovery of a new species of ancient cat. Magerifelis peignei lived about 15.5 million years ago during the Miocene epoch in what is now Spain. It was discovered in 2007 near Madrid at Príncipe Pío-2, which was then a recently discovered fossil locality. The description was published recently in…
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Fossil of a ‘Giant’ Trapdoor Spider Found in Australia, And Just Look at It!
Science Alert has a story about a spider fossil from Australia. This new species of spider, Megamonodontium mccluskyi, dates to the Miocene, which lasted from 11 to 16 million years ago. The fossil was found in a locality called McGraths Flat located in a grassland in New South Wales. McGraths Flat is classified as a…
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Exquisite Fossils Show an Entire Rain Forest Ecosystem
Scientific American has a story about a fossil deposit in New Zealand. The deposit formed around a shallow-sided volcanic crater about 23 million years ago during the Miocene epoch. This site is about an hour’s drive from the city of Dunedin in New Zealand. There are fossils of plants and animals and the preservation is…
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Fossils of a Prehistoric Rainforest Hide in Australia’s Rusted Rocks
The New York Times Trilobites column has a story about the discovery of a fossil rain forest in the outback of Australia. The deposit is located hundreds of miles northwest of Sydney in a place called McGraths Flat. The fossils date to the Miocene Epoch when Australia was much wetter. There’s flowers, insects, spiders, and…
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NYT: Fossils of a Prehistoric Rainforest Hide in Australia’s Rusted Rocks
The New York Times has a story about an amazing fossil rain forest. Dating to about 15 million years ago during the Miocene Epoch, this deposit hold exquisitely preserved insects, spiders, plans, even a feather. A description of the site was published recently in the journal Science Advances, Fifteen million years ago, a river carved…
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Puzzling Extinction Event Decimated Sharks 19 Million Years Ago
SciTechDaily has an article about a shark extinction, which took place about 19 million years ago during the early Miocene. A new study published in the journal Science looked at shark diversity over the last 40 million years and found an extinction event that reduced shark diversity by about 90%. In a related Perspective…
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PBS Eons: How the Andes Mountains Might Have Killed a Bunch of Whales
PBS Eons has a new episode and what happened to a bunch of whales. The Andes Mountains might have some explaining to do… At a site known as Cerro Ballena or Whale Hill, there are more than 40 skeletons of marine mammals — a graveyard of ocean life dating back 6.5 million to 9…
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PBS Eons: How a Supervolcano Made the Cenozoic’s Coolest Fossils
PBS's Eons Channel on YouTube has an episode about the supervolcano under Yellowstone. Twelve million years ago saw the creation of Ashfall Fossil Beds in Nebraska. Truly, a bad day in the Miocene!
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NY Times: Ancient Fossil Offers a New European Ancestor to Giraffes
The NY Times has a story about giraffes, more specifically… the ancestors of giraffes. Decannatherium rex lived during the late Miocene in Spain. The fossil specimen fills in a lot of gaps in what we knew about giraffes. The lead author of the study was Dr. Maria Rios, a researcher with the Museo Nacional de…
