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…)
Newly recovered fossils confirm that Drepanosaurus, a prehistoric cross between a chameleon and an anteater, was a small reptile with a fearsome finger. The second digit of its forelimb sported a massive claw. (more…)
AUSTIN, Texas — Dinosaurs are often depicted in movies as roaring ferociously, but it is likely that some dinosaurs mumbled or cooed with closed mouths, according to a study published in the journal Evolution. (more…)
The impact decimated slow-growing evergreens and made way for fast-growing, deciduous plants, UA researchers say, and that provides an explanation for those fall colors.
The meteorite impact that spelled doom for the dinosaurs 66 million years ago decimated the evergreens among the flowering plants to a much greater extent than their deciduous peers, according to a study led by UA researchers. The results are published in the journal PLoS Biology. (more…)
A study that originated in the lab of UA biologist Brian J. Enquist with UA alum John Grady suggests dinosaurs had a metabolism that was neither warm- nor cold-blooded, but somewhere in between.
Dinosaurs dominated the Earth for more than 100 million years, but all that remains today are bones. This has made it difficult to solve a long-standing and contentious puzzle: Were dinosaurs cold-blooded animals that lumbered along or swift warm-blooded creatures like those depicted in “Jurassic Park”? (more…)
One-Way Air Flow May Be 270 Million Years Old
Air flows mostly in a one-way loop through the lungs of monitor lizards – a breathing method shared by birds, alligators and presumably dinosaurs, according to a new University of Utah study.
The findings – published online Wednesday, Dec. 11 in the journal Nature – raise the possibility this breathing pattern originated 270 million years ago, about 20 million years earlier than previously believed and 100 million years before the first birds. Why remains a mystery. (more…)
Even as the dinosaurs were becoming extinct 66 million years ago, the ancient ancestor of spiny-rayed fishes flourished, eventually giving rise to tens of thousands of species that can now be found in home aquariums or on dinner plates. Using modern genetic tools and information from the fossil record, a team led by researchers at Yale University, University of Oxford, and University of California-Davis have constructed a detailed evolutionary history of the 18,000 species of spiny-rayed fishes existing today, a diverse group that includes basses, pufferfishes, and cichlids, and that comprises a large portion of the vertebrate tree of life.
The findings published the week of July 15 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences show surprisingly close evolutionary relationships between lineages of fish species such as tunas and seahorses, and suggest some fish lineages — like cichlids, the tiny gobies, and little-studied snailfishes — are experiencing high rates of new species origination. (more…)
