Tag: South America
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Brazilian researchers discover dinosaur fossil after heavy rains in Rio Grande do Sul
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Phys.org brings news of the discovery of what may be one of the most ancient dinosaurs. The specimen was found near a reservoir in the municipality of Sao Joao do Polesine in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul after heavy rains in May 2024. The bones are thought to…
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30 million-year-old cousin of chinchillas shows signs of enhanced hearing and living in groups
Brain virtual endocast inside the translucent skull (left), skull reconstruction (middle) and life reconstruction (right) of the late Oligocene Incamys bolivianus (YPM VPPU 21945) from the Salla-Luribay Basin in Bolivia. Credit: Jesús Gamarra González / Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont. Phys.org has a story about a 30 million year old cousin of chinchillas. A…
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Video for ESCONI April 2024 Paleontology Meeting – “Terror Birds”
The April 2024 was held on April 20th, 2024 at 7:30 via Zoom. The presenter was ESCONI member John Catalani. Abstract We begin with an explanation of the “Terror Birds” and their position in Geologic Time. The two major groups of these large cursorial birds are the Phorusrhacidae and the Gastornithidae. The first group was…
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Ancient Foxes Lived and Died Alongside Humans
The New York Times Trilobites column has a story about domesticated foxes. A paper in the Royal Society Open Science describes evidence that foxes lived among people of early South American communities. “It appears to have been intentionally buried within this human cemetery,” said Ophélie Lebrasseur, a zooarchaeologist at the University of Oxford and an…
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Uncovering the Secrets of Colombia’s Rich Fossil Deposits
Smithsonian Magazine has a piece about Columbia’s rich fossil deposits. The formation of the Andes Mountain, about 72 million years ago, revealed many marine fossils from the Cretaceous Period. Ammonites—extinct marine cephalopods with distinctive coiled shells—are embedded in walls, floors and roads all across town. Locals and visitors often find fossils when walking unpaved roads…
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PBS Eons: Darwin Missed An Example of Evolution Right Under His Nose
PBS Eons has a new episode. This one discusses some evidence of evolution that was missed by Charles Darwin. Charles Darwin encountered a tiny fox-like creature during his famous voyage but instead of discovering its fascinating evolutionary story, he just knocked it on the head with his geology hammer.
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PBS Eons: How a Mass Extinction Event Created the Amazon
There’s a new episode of PBS Eons over on Youtube. This one is about the mass extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous and how it helped to create the Amazon rain forest. The Amazon rainforest of South America is a paradise for flowering plants. But long ago, the landscape that we now…
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PBS Eons: How South America Made the Marsupials
PBS Eons has a new video. This one is about the marsupials of South America. Throughout the Cenozoic Era — the era we’re in now — marsupials and their metatherian relatives flourished all over South America, filling all kinds of ecological niches and radiating into forms that still thrive on other continents.
