An exquisitely preserved fossil snake has made its debut on the internet the last couple of days and it's getting a lot of attention. Why? Because it has four well-developed legs. No snake fossil has ever been found with four legs. There are a few with two hind legs but none with front legs. The... Continue Reading →
Diatoms are single-celled organisms that live in almost any moist environment. They are found by the millions in a cup of sea water or a puddle in your back yard. They play a critical role in the environment as oxygen producers. But they are best known for their visually stunning homes constructed of glass. I... Continue Reading →
From a net pulled out of the ocean doesn't seem a likely place to find an ancient human fossil. But by scraping the bottom of the ocean,Taiwanese fishermen have been pulling up all sorts of unusual items in addition to their targeted prey. Like some trawlers off the cost of Great Britain these fishermen have... Continue Reading →
Does fossilization require rapid burial as the result of catastrophic global flooding? Literalist creationists would have us believe so for they point to the fossil record as being proof of a cataclysmic global flood. Look a bit deeper though and you will find that creationists frequently concede there are thousands of exceptions to this general... Continue Reading →
Moab will have yet another dinosaur attraction coming this fall. More than 200 reptilian footprints scattered over an area less than a football field have been uncovered after a resident discovered a few tracks while hiking. Dinosaur tracks are known from dozens of locations in this area but this site is unusual because of the... Continue Reading →
A 15-foot-wide metal grate covers a hole in a bare rock outcrop in the high desert of the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming. Beneath the grate lies a 80 foot vertical drop to into a cavern with no other exit. At the base of cavern situated below the hole in the ceiling are up to 30... Continue Reading →
Thousands of dinosaur footprints have been found on a steep mountain slope in Denali National Park in Alaska. These are not the first dinosaur tracks to be found in Denali but the size of the tracksite - at least 500 by 150 feet - and the exceptional preservation of the tracks makes this a notable... Continue Reading →
Most of us remember our first life-like encounter with dinosaurs sitting in a theater watching Jurassic Park (1993). Although dinosaurs had been very popular in picture books for many years the vivid recreation of them on the screen rekindled a sense of awe of these amazing creatures of a past age. Today, movies with depictions... Continue Reading →
There is a very recent form of fossil hunting that I have gotten to partake in to some small extent, and I can do it while sitting in front of a computer screen! With some computer skills and some knowledge of animal genomes it isn't difficult to join this hunt for fossils inside the genome of living organisms.
A small chamber in a deep, dark cave. Tens of thousands of bones. Animal bones and human bones. Buried under dust and dirt and bat dung. Welcome to an ancient chamber of horrors. This is the Pit of Bones (aka Sima de los Huesos). In 1997, scientists discovered this small chamber within a much larger... Continue Reading →
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.
I have one plant in my office that I have managed to keep alive for 5 years but mostly I keep organisms in my office that can't be killed because they are already dead. I'm a bit more extreme in my lab where I keep thousands of samples of DNA in freezers. In my office I... Continue Reading →
What do you think of when someone mentions the Jurassic or Cretaceous ages? Most likely you will immediately think of dinosaurs and other large reptiles such as pterosaurs. Maybe you think of the movie Jurassic Park, filled with dinosaurs and lush vegetation. This time has become known as the Age of the Reptiles and aptly so since... Continue Reading →
What is the largest animal to have ever lived on the Earth? Most people will answer “dinosaurs” or “sauropods” in particular. While some titanosaurs may have been the heaviest land animals they were not the largest animals to have lived on Earth. That distinction goes to an animal that is very much alive today: the... Continue Reading →
Naturalis Historia 