by Eva Herbst, Structure & Motion Lab, The Royal Veterinary College, UK. If you would like to contribute a guest post, please get in touch, such as on Twitter or Facebook. Fig. 1 Reconstruction of Crassigyrinus scoticus (Panchen & Smithson 1990) My name is Eva Herbst and I started my PhD with John Hutchinson and co-supervisor…
Tag: fossil
#ThrowbackThursday individual bone cells from ‘Lucy’ tell the story of her growth
This rather abstract-looking image shows a tiny patch (around 110 micrometres across) of an ancient hominid femur. ‘Lucy’ is one of the the oldest and probably the most famous early human-like primate, belonging to the species Australopithecus afarensis. She lived around 3.2 million years ago in sub-Saharan Africa, and her remains were discovered in 1974 in Ethiopia….
#FossilFriday: A four-legged snake from Brazil points to the origins of modern snakes
It sounds like a contradiction, but palaeontologists from the UK and Germany have discovered a snake with legs! This stunning fossil, found in Brazil, dates from the time of the dinosaurs in the early Cretaceous period, which began more than 145 million years ago. The new species, Tetrapodophis [meaning four-legged] amplectus, has the characteristic anatomical features of a snake,…
#fossilfriday: Eudibamus, an early parareptile that shows adaptations to bipedal running
Our chosen fossil today is Eudibamus cursoris,which was first discovered in Germany and dated at 290 millions years old. This ancient parareptile (not a dinosaur, but appearing much earlier) was just 26 cm long and lived among the early amniotes in the early Permian. At this time, terrestrial vertebrates had rapidly diversified but were almost universally constrained…
#fossilfriday: Beautifully-preserved amber lizards reveal chameleons’ evolution in ancient Myanmar.
A researcher working in the American Museum of Natural History, New York, has confirmed the age of the world’s oldest known fossil chameleon in part of a bumper find of fossilised lizards. In an almost Jurassic-Park style story, twelve of these ancient reptiles were encased in amber (sap from a coniferous tree) in what is…
#fossilfriday: Head of Romundina , a 415 million year-old fish, gives glimpse into jaw evolution.
One of the most significant evolutionary innovations in early vertebrates was the jaw. Jawless fishes such as lampreys and hagfish have rows of teeth around the mouth opening which are used to rasp at prey, whereas most modern jawed fish and other vertebrates (collectively Gnathostomes) have an upper and lower jaw, with the lower jaw usually…
#fossilfriday: Preserved brain visible in 520 million year-old arthropod
Almost all fossils represent the hard parts of long-gone animals: teeth, shells, bones and others. But palaeontologists do occasionally find fossilised soft tissue, too. This remarkable fossil was the first to be described where the brain and parts of the nervous system are visible – astonishingly – after more than 500 million years! Fuxianhuia protensa, an ancient…
#fossilfriday: Early sketch of a plesiosaur by discoverer Mary Anning
This drawing shows one of the first plesiosaur (long-necked marine reptile) skeletons found by Mary Anning in the winter of 1823-4. Anning, an English woman living on the south coast in Dorset, was one of the most important fossil collectors in scientific history and, with her family, discovered the remains of many new species, including…
#fossilfriday: the world’s largest known animal finally goes on show!
This week a fossil which was so recently discovered that it hasn’t been officially named yet went on public display for the first time at a New York museum. The titanosaur, which was unearthed in 2014 in Argentina, is so large (more than 37 metres long!) that it spills out of the gallery hall at…
New study brings ancient giraffid Sivatherium back to life
In a new study published today in Biology Letters, RVC researchers Chris Basu, Peter L. Falkingham and Professor John R. Hutchinson have digitally reconstructed the skeleton (and fleshed-out body) of a fossil relative of modern giraffes, Sivatherium giganteum, for the first time. From calculations based on their new model, the authors find that Sivatherium probably weighed in at around 1.25 tonnes…
#fossilfriday: Amber-encased spider’s head revealed
Although this image of a huntsman spider’s head looks modern, it represents the first clear view of a 49 million year-old fossil. Eusprassus crassipes remains encased in resin were scanned using X-ray computed tomography to reconstruct its anatomy in stunning detail for the first time. Researchers from the University of Manchester were able to conclusively described the…
Anatomy To You 