Category
Geology Picture of the Day - Badlands Topography
Posted on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 @ 7:07 am by Dave Schumaker
Today’s geology picture of the day is from Petrified Forest National Park and shows a nice example badlands topography.
Christie’s Puts Up a Triceratops for Auction
Posted on Saturday, March 8, 2008 @ 11:34 am by Dave Schumaker
Do you love paleontology? And do you have upwards of $750,000 dollars laying around? If so, then a Christie’s auction on April 16th in France might be of interest to you. On the bidding block that day will be the complete skeleton of a 65 million year old triceratops. It was found in 2004 by a ranch owner in South Dakota and eventually purchased by a private European collector. More than 70% of the bones are original, while the remaining 30% are made from casts. It is the fourth most complete skeleton of a triceratops ever found.
In all, 150 items from natural history collections — fossils, skeletons and minerals — valued at some 1.6 million euros will be up for auction.
The sabre-toothed tiger skull is expected to fetch up to 45,000 euros, while a set of fossilized giant shark teeth have been valued at up to 4,000 euros.
Christie’s said it hoped to build on the success of last year’s paleontology auction that brought in more than a million euros and established 12 world records.
Also up for bids will be a tyrannosaurus egg, mineralized in agate, valued at between 20,000 and 25,000 euros; and an apatosaurus dinosaur tibia from the Jurassic Period, which is expected to raise up to 30,000 euros.
The last time such a notable dinosaur was on the auction block was in 1997, when a tyrannosaurus rex, named Sue, sold for $8.4 million dollars!
[via Physorg]
No need to thank asteroid for mammalian success
Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 @ 11:55 am by Dave Schumaker
New Mammal Discovered from the Mesozoic
Posted on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 @ 10:49 pm by Dave Schumaker
Paleontologists have discovered a new species of mammal in China that existed 125 million years ago. Dubbed Yanoconodon allini, the animal was only about 5 inches long. Among the notable finds in this species is a relatively complex middle ear that appears to bridge the gap between later mammals and early organisms related to mammals.
Mammals have highly sensitive hearing, far better than the hearing capacity of all other vertebrates, scientists have found. Consequently, paleontologists and evolutionary biologists have been searching for more than a century for clues to the evolutionary origins of mammal ear structure.
Dinosaurs “invented” the biplane?
Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 @ 9:24 am by Dave Schumaker
This New Scientist article from last month raises an interesting question on whether or not dinosaurs “invented” the technology that was used in biplanes, 125 million years before man first took to the sky.
Fossilized remains uncovered in China from Microraptor gui show that this four limbed, feathered organism may have glided through the air with 2 sets of parallel wings.
Some scientists remain unconvinced that the Microraptor glided through the air this way however. Sankar Chatterjee of Texas Tech University says that gliding this way would be “aerodynamically inefficient and that Microraptor’s legs could not be splayed sideways.”
More information:
Wikipedia - Microraptor