Following up on a new Ichythosaur discovery last week (When Marine Reptiles Ruled the Sea) the fossilized footsteps of a Nothosaur have been unveiled.   This time we go to China where a geological surveyor stumbled onto a few fossil tracks on a small ledge.  Cutting back into the side of the mountain, paleontologists exposed 350 prints as part of... Continue Reading →
Can you imagine the world’s oceans filled with carnivorous reptiles? Dinosaurs are the most famous members of the age of the reptiles. However, many of the original reptilian fossil discoveries that initiated the idea of the age of reptiles were not dinosaurs. They were instead reptiles that lived in the sea.
During the last ice age some 12 to 13 thousands years ago a young girl found herself wandering in caves of the Yucatan Peninsula likely looking for water.  Hundreds of feet into a cave something happened and she fell in a deep pit breaking her pelvis. With no escape 100 feet down she died a lonely death.  She... Continue Reading →
You might think of the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars as a assortment of space junk floating randomly in space. There are millions of asteroids of which more than 100,000 have been measured and mapped by astronomers. But analysis of those asteroids has shown that there are groups of asteroids that are related to one another and are referred to family members
Imagine you live in northern England and you are out exploring and come upon a hidden cave entrance.  Upon climbing down into the cave you discover hundreds of bones belonging to large mammals. At first you think the bones represent local animals since there are some deer, rabbits, weasels and wolves but soon it becomes clear... Continue Reading →
Everyone has encountered a T. rex in books, movies or museums.  Besides its size and menacing jaws one of the most striking features of a T. rex is its diminutive arms.  So why were the arms of T. rex so short?  There have been many hypotheses including: 1) they had no use and... Continue Reading →
Last night in a public broadcast Ken Ham announced that enough funds have been obtained to break ground for the huge "evangelistic project" - the Ark Encounter. The event was clearly designed to put-to-rest rumors that Answers in Genesis has run into money problems and that the project is in trouble. I do think they rightly pointed... Continue Reading →
Our perceptions of the age of an object are frequently based on our common experience but I have found that for many people those common experiences are of little help when it comes to examining objects for which a person has no experience at all.  A couple of years ago this really hit me as... Continue Reading →
Last week I pointed out that the Bible provides no support for Ken Ham's contention that massive numbers of species have formed following their departure from Noah's ark 4500 years ago (YEC Biblical Evolution: I Have A Book That Says Otherwise). Â Now I'm following up with "observational" evidence from DNA sequences to test whether the... Continue Reading →
A story is breaking today of a significant fossil find made almost a year ago but kept under wraps until the data could be properly evaluated.  What has now been revealed is that over 100 footprints were found in newly uncovered rocks along a shoreline of England.  Study of these footprints has led to... Continue Reading →
Imagine trawling for fish and when you pull up your nets you find a massive bone or a huge tooth along with your catch. For over 100 years fishermen in the North Sea between Britain and Denmark have found such items in their nets but it wasn’t until the 1980s that their value, monetarily and... Continue Reading →
We live in a new golden age of fossil discoveries. It seems that every week a new and dramatic fossil find is revealed. This fossil renaissance can be attributed to the opening up of new fossil sources, particularly China and Mongolia but also South America and to improved technology for retrieving and analyzing fossil remains.... Continue Reading →
One of the great privileges of my job is that I get to participate on committees of graduate students. This allows me to get up close and personal with data from sub-disciplines of biology that often extend far from those of my particular expertise. You know by now that I carry a particular fondness for... Continue Reading →
A colleague has a fossil scallop in his office that he collected while teaching a field course on Chesapeake Bay biology. Â He pulled this scallop from the cliff wall at Calvert Cliffs near Calvert, Maryland. It is particularly impressive not only for its size (more than 5 inches in diameter) but also for its condition.... Continue Reading →
Down a 43 foot vertical shaft, another 40 foot slope, and buried under thousands of cave bear, lion and lynx bones, lies the partially fossilized bones of at least 30 individual humans. Welcome to a chamber of horrors otherwise known as Sima de los Huesos (the pit of bones).  This pit is but a small... Continue Reading →
Naturalis Historia 