Saturday Science: Fossils From Way Down Under

Photo:  University of Queensland

As far under as you can get: Antarctica, to be exact.

"It's a very hard place to work, but it's an even harder place to get to," Steve Salisbury, a researcher at the University of Queensland and one of the scientists on the expedition, says in a release.

Salisbury was one of 12 scientists from the U.S., Australia and South Africa that ventured south on a fossil hunting mission to James Ross Island, located on the Antarctic Peninsula. Over five weeks, the team camped on Vega island, hiking over six miles a day to to reach their main hunting grounds where they systematically sorted through rocks.

The scientists retrieved over a ton of fossils from ancient marine creatures, dinosaurs and birds that lived during the late Cretaceous Period. The massive stash could take years for them to catalog and study. For now, they say, the fossils will make their way to Chile and then Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

In case you're thinking "How weird! How could dinosaurs live in Antarctica?" keep in mind that Antarctica wasn't always where it is now, and that at various times, the earth has been much warmer than it is now. So it only stands to reason that there would be fossils there; the only real problem is getting at them. It's not what you call ideal working conditions.

There's video at the link of an interview with Salisbury that gives an idea of what it was like just getting ready to work.

Saturday Science: Wings

I am heartily sick of election post-mortems. Insects are a lot more interesting. The headline for this story sort of says it:

Insects flew 200 million years before any other animal had wings

And that's a long time ago:

The scientists went on to note that the first winged-insects likely came about 400 million years ago. That is a whopping 200 million years before any other organism on Earth acquired wings, and something scientists previously were unable to determine for certain. Currently, the oldest wing fossil that scientists have identified is one that is roughly 340 million years old.

It's not just that they were equipped to fly that early, but get this:

The first insects were found on earth right around the same time as the first land plants were found, according to the scientist who estimated that this took place about 480 million years ago. However, scientists noted that, this date, was nearly 70 million years earlier than the first insect fossil, or the oldest-known insect fossil.

And check out this article. It's focused on Kansas, but it's got some good general information.

Saturday Science: Lotsa Goodies, Cambrian Variety

Paleontologist have struck it rich. I don't know if you've heard of the Burgess Shale, but it's legendary as one of the richest find of Csmbrian fossils ever. Now there's a find that may be even richer:

"Nowhere do we have a better view of exactly what the Cambrian looked like and its relationship to the environment than in the Burgess Shale," [Robert} Gaines told Live Science's Our Amazing Planet.

The new site is also in the Burgess Shale formation, and seems to rival the 1909 original in fossil diversity and preservation, researchers report today (Feb. 11) in the journal Nature Communications. In just two weeks, the research team collected more than 3,000 fossils representing 55 species. Fifteen of these species are new to science. [Gallery: Amazing Cambrian Fossils from Canada's Marble Canyon]

"The rate at which we are finding animals — many of which are new — is astonishing, and there is a high possibility that we'll eventually find more species here than at the original Yoho National Park site, and potentially more than from anywhere else in the world," said Jean-Bernard Caron, lead study author and an invertebrate paleontologist at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

Just one of the cuties they've found:

 A new arthropod species discovered at the Marble Canyon outcrop.
Credit: Jean-Bernard Caron

That's from the gallery -- click through and take a look -- the landscape is as impressive as the specimens.