Tag: Morocco
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Trilobite Tuesday #49: Most pristine trilobite fossils ever found shake up scientific understanding of the long extinct group
Phys.org has an article about an amazing fossil find in Morocco. A recently discovered deposit of Cambrian trilobites is being described as Pompeii-like, in that the fossils were preserved in volcanic ash (like the Roman city of Pompeii). The fossils are preserved with such fidelity that some never before seen anatomical features are seen preserved…
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Fossil Reveals Ancient Seafloor Communities
An artist’s reconstruction of the tube-like animals attached to the dead phragmocone..Credit…Franz Anthony The New York Times Trilobites column has a story about some very old ocean floor communities. Research published recently in the journal Communications Biology looked at a 480-million-year-old cephalopod from Morocco that was posthumously converted into a condominium. It’s the earliest known…
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Fossil site reveals giant arthropods dominated the seas 470 million years ago
Phys.org has a story about some interesting arthropod fossils from Morocco. The fossils date to the Ordovician Period about 470 million years ago. The locality holds new species and while some are fragmentary, the fragments suggest large animals, maybe up to 2 meters long. The research was published in Science Advances. Discoveries at a major…
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Scientists discover fossils of giant sea lizard that ruled the oceans 66 million years ago
Phys.org has a story about the discovery of a huge mosasaur in Morocco. It’s been named Thalassotitan atrox, and it probably preyed on other large marine reptiles like plesiosaurs, sea turtles, and even other mosasaurs. Mosasaurs are not dinosaurs, but actually are distant relatives of modern iguanas and monitor lizards. The research was published in…
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Phys.org: Enormous ancient fish fossil discovered in search of pterodactyl remains
Phys.org has a post about an absolutely enormous fish fossil. A paper published in the journal Cretaceous Research describes a coelacanth from the Cretaceous Period that may have measured 5 meters in length. Compared to modern day coelacanth, which rarely grow to 2 meters, this specimen is a giant. The animal lived about 66 million…
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Trilobite Tuesday #26: Trilobite Enrollment
As we’ve said previously, the AMNH has an awesome Trilobite website. Today, we want to highlight the one about Trilobite Enrollment. It is generally accepted that trilobites enrolled to protect themselves from predators and other potentially other events in the surrounding environment. This page has a good discussion about the history and the usefulness of…
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Trilobite Tuesday #13: Trilobite Conga Line
Clues to animal behavior are very rare in the fossil record. However, a Moroccan fossil of 22 small trilobites might provide some of the earliest evidence. These trilobites lived about 480 million years ago. And, their lineup might be a display of complex social behavior long before it was expected. The details appear in a…
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Nature: Palaeontologists Think They Have Found ‘The Most Dangerous Place’ in Earth’s History
Nature’s Science Alert has a story about the Kem Kem Group in eastern Morocco. Due to the shear number of large-bodied carnivores, abelisaurs, Spinosaurs aegyptiacus, Carcharodontonsaurus saharicus, Deltadromeus agilis, and several large crocodyiforms, it’s hard to imagine how one would avoid being eaten! The seeming overabundance of predatory versus herbivorous dinosaurs has become known as…
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Four New Species of Prehistoric Flying Reptiles Unearthed in Morocco
Smithsonian Magazine has an article about the recent discovery of not 1. not 2, but 4 new species of pterosaur. These animals were found in the famous Kem Kem fossil beds in southeastern Morocco. They lived about 100 million years ago during the middle Cretaceous Period. All the details are in a paper published in…
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Ancient ‘Cockroaches of the Sea’ Fossilized While Playing ‘Follow the Leader’
LiveScience has a piece on a new trilobite discovery in Morocco. Morocco is famous for fossils and one particularly notable animal from there is the trilobite. In this case, a whole line of these animals died and were preserved together in line. Behavior is rarely fossilized, but this window into the past, shows collective…
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NHM: The oldest stegosaur ever has been discovered in Morocco
The Natural History Museum in London has a post about a newly described Stegosaur. This animal lived about 168 million years ago, during the middle Jurassic, in what is now the Middle Atlas mountains of Morocco. It’s the first stegosaur found in North Africa and is called Adratiklit boulahfa. The paper describing it appeared in…
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480-Million-Year-Old Mystery Creature Finally Identified from Its Preserved Guts
LiveScience has an interesting story about some bizarre creatures found in Morocco. The animals are called stylophorans and lived during the Ordovician. The fossils were discovered in 2014 in the Fezouata Formation. They are now identified as echinoderms and are related to modern animals such as sea urchins, starfish, brittle stars, and sea lilies. The…
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Laelaps: Strange Fossil Filter Feeder Was an Ancient Survivor
Over on the Laelaps blog on National Geographic, there’s an interesting post about a new Anomalocaridids – “anomalous shrimp”. The group was named originally by Joseph Frederick Whiteaves, because he only had the front appendages. Much later, the rest of the body of the large arthropod was described by Conway Morris and Harry B. Whittington. …
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ZRS Moroccan Field Trip
Our friends over at ZRS Fossils are working on another field trip to Morocco. This will be the 5th annual trip. Here are the details: Sounds like a amazing adventure!
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Trip Report from Spirifer Minerals
Gorgeous and interesting photographs are included in this trip report about Morocco. Apatites with feldspars from a new find in Anomzy. T. Praszkier photo. Incredible faults with waterfall on the way to Tasraft. T. Praszkier photo.
