Tag: Scotland
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Volunteer Discovers 1,000-Year-Old Ring on the Last Day of an Excavation in Scotland
Smithsonian Magazine’s “Smart News” has a piece on the discovery of a 1,000-year-old ring in Scotland. The ring was found by a volunteer on an archaeology dig led by a researcher at the University of Aberdeen. The ring is believed to have belonged to the Picts, a group of people that lived parts of present-day…
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PBS Eons: Animals Might Be Much Older Than We Thought
PBS Eons has a new episode. This interesting video is about the origin of complex life. When did animals first show up? How long before the Cambian Explosion did complex life arrive on Earth. What are animal-like fossils doing in rocks a billion years old, and what does that mean for our understanding of their…
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Fossils Reveal Pterosaur Relatives Before They Evolved Wings
The New York Times Trilobites column has a story about pterosaur origins. Paleontologists have long wondered about the evolutionary ancestors of pterosaurs as the animals were most likely small and thus less likely to fossilize. A paper in the journal Nature proposes that Scleromochlus taylori is one of the missing ancestors. It lived about 237 million years ago in what is…
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Remains of ‘world’s largest Jurassic pterosaur’ recovered in Scotland
The Guardian has a story about the recent discovery of a large Jurassic pterosaur. Described as the largest Jurassic pterosaur, the animal is named Dearc sgiathanach and had a wingspan of about 2.5 meters. It lived about 170 million years ago on what is now the Isle of Skye. Prof. Steve Brusatte of the University…
