Quartz in ancient bird stomach sheds new light on what it would have eaten
A bizzare, never-before-seen form of preservation could shed new light on a primeval type of bird.
Figuring out the lifestyle of animals can be difficult even for today’s creatures but for those that lived over 100 million years ago, it’s a massive challenge. But sometimes, researchers get lucky and find unusual fossils that shed new light on these ancient creatures.
A reconstruction of the bohaiornithid
Sulcavis, a close relative of Bohaiornis guoi, hunting an insect. Image credits: S. Abramowicz, Dinosaur Institute, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
Crystals Found in Dino-Era Fossil Bird Complicates Mystery of Its Diet courthousenews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from courthousenews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Credit: IVPP
New findings on the brain and inner ear cavity of a 400-million-year-old platypus-like fish cast light on the evolution of modern jawed vertebrates, according to a study led by Dr. ZHU Youan and Dr. LU Jing from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The study was published in
Current Biology on Jan 27.
Back in 1960s, Paleontologist Dr. Gavin C. Young found several fossils of a long-beaked fish, a type of placoderm, in the Burrinjuck limestones in Australia. He named the fish
Brindabellaspis stensioi, and other people jokingly dubbed it platypus fish because of its long beak.
Scientists Examine China’s Meipu Teeth
Thursday, January 14, 2021
BURGOS, SPAIN According to a statement released by Spain’s National Center for the Investigation of Human Evolution (CENIEH), researchers María Martinón-Torres, José María Bermúdez de Castro, and their colleagues at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing examined the Meipu teeth, which were discovered in southern China in the 1970s, with computerized axial microtomography and other high-tech tools. The teeth have been dated to China’s Early Pleistocene period, between 780,000 and 990,000 years ago, and are different from the teeth of
Homo erectus, thought to have been the dominant species in Asia between 300,000 and 500,000 years ago. Castro suggests the Meipu teeth, which lack the deep wrinkles found in the dentin of