Page 9 - Plate Devonian News Today

A team has found some baby lamprey fossils in multiple stages of life that upend our previous ideas about their evolution and development.

 E-Mail IMAGE: Artists reconstruction showing the life stages of the fossil lamprey Priscomyzon riniensis. It lived around 360 million years ago in a coastal lagoon in what is now South Africa. Clockwise... view more  Credit: Kristen Tietjen Ottawa, March 10, 2021 - A new study of fossilized lampreys dating from more than 300 million years ago is challenging a long-held theory about the evolutionary origin of vertebrates (all animals with a backbone). The findings are published March ...

8 MARCH 2021 More and more, it seems that the existence and persistence of life on Earth is the result of sheer luck. According to a new analysis of the history of the Milky Way, the best time and place for the emergence of life isnt here, or now, but over 6 billion years ago on the galaxys outskirts.   That specific location in space and time would have afforded a habitable world the best protection against the gamma-ray bursts and supernovae that blasted space with deadly radiation. As of a...

Faculty-student biology research team publishes findings in Palaois A team of paleontology researchers led by Lycoming College has discovered a well-exposed section of the Catskill Formation in North-Central Pennsylvania that contains abundant macrofossils and sedimentary features that make it well-suited for Upper Devonian fossil occurrences. Their research, entitled, “Vertebrate Taphonomy, Paleontology, Sedimentology, and Palynology of a Fossiliferous Late Devonian Fluvial Succession, Catsk...

Loading video... VIDEO: Virtual skeleton of the early tetrapod Pederpes from micro-CT scanned fossil and musculoskeletal reconstruction of its forelimb. view more  Credit: Copyright 2021, Julia Molnar. When tetrapods (four-limbed vertebrates) began to move from water to land roughly 390 million years ago it set in motion the rise of lizards, birds, mammals, and all land animals that exist today, including humans and some aquatic vertebrates such as whales and dolphins. The earliest tetra...

How were the Top 10 chosen? An international committee of experts, chaired by Janine N. Caira of the University of Connecticut, selected the top 10 new species for this years list. Nominations were invited through the species.asu.edu Web site and also generated by institute staff and committee members. The Caira committee had complete freedom in making its choices and developing its own criteria, from unique attributes or surprising facts about the species to peculiar names. This years committe...