. . . and left some really cool fossilized skin impressions. Found near Barcelona, Spain, these fascinating fossils were formed in somewhat the same way as more familiar footprints.
Fossilized vocal organ from a late Cretaceous Antarctic bird
Dinosaur tracks incorporated into Ancestral Puebloan Architecture
Fir the first time, researchers document the use of a stone with dinosaur tracks in an Ancestral Puebloan building in Utah. The research was presented at the recent Geological Society of America meeting, but you can read about it here.
A fresh look at fossils collected by ancient Egyptians
Adrienne Mayor writes here about a trove of fossils, originally collected by ancient Egyptians, and now sitting in storage.
Incredible dinosaur fossil permits incredible dinosaur reconstruction
A wonderfully preserved Psittacosaurus specimen from the Jehol province in China has yielded enough information for paleoartist Bob Nicholls to produce the "most accurate depiction of a dinosaur ever created." More at The Guardian.
Predatory Triassic reptile (not a dinosaur) found at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico
This animal lived at the same time as early dinosaurs, but was probably larger than any of its dinosaur contemporaries.
Fossilized food chain
This fossil from 48 million years ago captures three links in the food chain: a lizard ate a bug. Then a snake ate the lizard. Then the snake died.
3D Printing of Fossils
In fields like paleoanthropology, where there aren't that many fossils, and the ones we have are are housed in museums and labs around the world, digital scanning and 3D printing could change how scientists share data. It's now possible to print out Lucy's bones.
See the news story in Nature here.
Little pterosaurs persisted well into the Cretaceous
A new specimen from British Columbia suggests that small-bodied pterosaurs persisted a good deal longer than anyone had thought, and that small pterosaurs must have coexisted with birds for a long time.
Absurdly ancient stromatolites found in Greenland
Scientists are now reporting stromatolite fossils that seem to be around 3.7 billion years old, and 220 million years older than the oldest previously known stromatolites. (For perspective, just think of all that's happened biologically in the last 220 million years.)
Here is an accessible discussion in The New York Times.
And here is the original paper in Nature.
If this holds up, these will be the oldest fossils yet found. And they suggest that microbial life on Earth was well established a good deal earlier than anyone had previously realized.
March of the Trilobites
New evidence from Poland suggests that trilobites migrated in single file, like some living arthropod species.
Exciting Evo-Devo Research on Fins and Hands
Carl Zimmer, at The New York Times, reports on recent research at the University of Chicago. Scientists trying to understand the evolutionary origins of tetrapods have discovered some fascinating similarities in the developmental processes that lead to fins (in fish) and digits (in tetrapods).
And here's the original paper, published in Nature.
Woolly mammoths persisted on St. Paul Island until quite recently, around 5,600 years ago.
This new research is remarkable both for the dating techniques used, and for the suggestion that a lack of freshwater resources might have done in the very last of the mammoths.
A BIG dinosaur footprint in Bolivia
This could be the largest carnivorous dinosaur track found so far. See a news report here.
The effort to reconstruct LUCA
New research is suggesting that LUCA--the last universal common ancestor of life on Earth--may have been an extremophilic microbe. It's a fascinating effort to draw inferences about organisms that lived way, way, back in deep time.
Tiny Arms: A Possible Evolutionary Convergence?
T. rex was not the only therapod with tiny arms. It seems the trait also evolved in the allosaurs. (Also, check out Leonard's essay on the topic!)
New Marsupial Lion
Extinct would like to welcome Microleo attenboroughi, a new (and diminutive!) Australian Marsupial Lion
Why did Stegosaurus have those plates?
Darren Naish, at Tetrapod Zoology, reflects on the functional morphology of Stegosaurus plates. What, if anything, were they for? Thermoregulation is a popular hypothesis, but how strong is the case for that, really?
New Ceratopsid!
Plos One* just published a description of a new ceratopsid, Spiclypeus shipporum (how many dang ceratopsid can there be?) based on a specimen named Judith (who had some really interesting pathology...). There's also a lovely new art-work by Michael Skrepnik, which you can see here.
*what makes a ceratopsid 'Boldly Audacious' is unclear to us here at Extinct, but we'd love to know why!
Atopodentatus: less flamingo, more hammer-head.
When you're inferring a critter's morphology and feeding strategies from a few incomplete finds, hypotheses can be pretty unstable. This is nicely illustrated in the dramatic shift Chun et al have just pushed in the mid-Triassic marine reptile Atopodentatus. Here's the article, and here's a nice summary in the guardian (with pictures!)