AUSTIN, Texas — The oldest known vocal organ of a bird has been found in an Antarctic fossil of a relative of ducks and geese that lived more than 66 million years ago during the age of dinosaurs. (more…)
Scientists build new ‘tree of life’ for placentals, visualize common ancestor
Scientists have reconstructed the common ancestor of placental mammals–an extremely diverse group including animals ranging from rodents to whales to humans–using the world’s largest dataset of both genetic and physical traits. (more…)
The asteroid collision widely thought to have killed the dinosaurs also led to extreme devastation among snake and lizard species, according to new research — including the extinction of a newly identified lizard Yale and Harvard scientists have named Obamadon gracilis.
“The asteroid event is typically thought of as affecting the dinosaurs primarily,” said Nicholas R. Longrich, a postdoctoral associate with Yale’s Department of Geology and Geophysics and lead author of the study. “But it basically cut this broad swath across the entire ecosystem, taking out everything. Snakes and lizards were hit extremely hard.” (more…)
*Few parallels for today’s rapid ocean changes in geologic record*
The oceans may be acidifying faster today than they did in the last 300 million years, according to scientists publishing a paper this week in the journal Science.
“What we’re doing today really stands out in the geologic record,” says lead author Bärbel Hönisch, a paleoceanographer at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. (more…)
