Tag: South America
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Throwback Thursday #269: Field Museum Megatherium
This is Throwback Thursday #269. In these, we look back into the past at ESCONI specifically and Earth Science in general. If you have any contributions, (science, pictures, stories, etc …), please send them to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! email:esconi.info@gmail.com. If you’ve been to the Field Museum in the last 100 years or so, you’ve invariably ran…
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PBS Eons: The Mystery of South America’s False Horses
PBS Eons has a new episode on Youtube. This one is about the “false” horses of South America. How did the “false horse,” Thoatherium, and its relatives survive when their hoofed legs seemed to be adapted for an ecosystem that wouldn’t exist for another 12 million years?
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265-million-year-old fossil reveals oldest, largest predator in South America, long before the rise of dinosaurs
Phys.org has a story about a new Permian fossil from Brazil. Pampaphoneus biccai lived about 265 million years ago, during the Permian Period, around what is now São Gabriel in Southern Brazil. It was a dinocephalian, which are related to early mammals. This specimen is the first found in South America. Previously, they were only…
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Ancient platypus-like fossil could rewrite the history of egg-laying mammals
LiveScience has a story about an platypus-like animal from… South America. Patagorhynchus pascuali lived about 70 million years ago in what is now Argentina. It’s was a monotreme, which is an egg laying mammal like Australia’s platypus. This fossil represents the oldest evidence of egg laying mammals ever found in South America. This fossil was…
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NYT: Fossil Shows Cold-Blooded Frogs Lived on Warm Antarctica
The New York Times Trilobites column has a story about the discovery of fossil frogs on Antarctica. The frog lived about 40 million years ago in what is now Seymour Island, which sits on the Antarctic Peninsula roughly 700 miles south of Tierra Del Fuego on South America. The specimen was found in 2015 by…
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Palaeocast Episode 108: Plesiosaurs
Palaeocast has a new episode about Plesiosaurs. The discussion touches on the history of plesiosaurs and some of the opalized fossils from Coober Pedy in South Australia. Plesiosaurs are some of the most easily recognisable animals in the fossil record. Simply uttering the words ‘Loch Ness Monster’ can conjure a reasonably accurate image of what…
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Scientists in Chile have found a 15,000-year-old footprint, the earliest sign of humans’ presence in the Americas
CNN has a story about the oldest footprint in the Americas. It’s 15,000 years old and was found in Chile. All the details appeared in a paper in the journal PLOS-ONE. A team of scientists in Chile say they’ve found a human footprint that dates back more than 15,000 years — the oldest one ever…
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Ancient teeth may help solve a monkey mystery
According to a recent story published in the journal Nature, monkeys have lived in South America for 36 million years. The team of researchers, from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, discovered four molars in Eastern Peru. These molars have been dated to 36 million years ago, which is 10 million years older…
