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Evolution, Civil War History Entwine in Fossil Find

By Guest PostDecember 14, 2013Sciencebenjamin butler, civil war history, dutch gap, early cretaceous, eudicots, evolution, flowering plant evolution, fossil, fossil beds, fossil leaf fragment, freedmen, geologic deposits, greek word, james river, leo j hickey, nathan jud, North America, oldest flowering plants, paleobotanist, plant evolution, pollen, potomac river region, potomacapnos, potomacapnos apeleutheron, smithsonian institution, steven miller, union army, university of maryland, virginia canal bank

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – A fossil leaf fragment collected decades ago on a Virginia canal bank has been identified by a University of Maryland doctoral student as one of North America’s oldest flowering plants, a 115- to 125-million-year-old species new to science. The fossil find, an ancient relative of today’s bleeding hearts, poses a new puzzle in the study of plant evolution: did Earth’s dominant group of flowering plants evolve along with its distinctive pollen? Or did pollen come later?

The find also unearths a forgotten chapter in Civil War history reminiscent of the film “Twelve Years a Slave,” but with a twist. In 1864, Union Army troops forced a group of freed slaves into involuntary labor, digging a canal along the James River at Dutch Gap, Va. The captive men’s shovels exposed the oldest flowering plant fossil beds in North America, where the new plant species was ultimately found. (more…)

Strange phallus-shaped creature provides crucial missing link

By Guest PostMarch 20, 2013Nature19th century, acorn worms group, biodiversity, burgess shale, cambrian period, canada, characteristics as chordates, chris cameron, christopher cameron, enteropneusts, fibrous tubes, fossil beds, graptolites, hemichordate evolution, jean bernard caron, phallus shaped creature, pterobranchs, scientific discovery, seawater, simon conway morris, spartobranchus tenuis, taxonomy, university of cambridge, university of montreal, yoho national park

Christopher Cameron of the University of Montreal’s Department of Biological Sciences and his colleagues have unearthed a major scientific discovery – a strange phallus-shaped creature they found in Canada’s Burgess Shale fossil beds, located in Yoho National Park. The fossils were found in an area of shale beds that are 505 million years old.

Their study published online in the journal Nature on March 13, 2013, confirms Spartobranchus tenuis is a member of the acorn worms group which are seldom-seen animals that thrive today in the fine sands and mud of shallow and deeper waters. Acorn worms are themselves part of the hemichordates, a group of marine animals closely related to today’s sea stars and sea urchins. “Unlike animals with hard parts including teeth, scales and bones, these worms were soft-bodied, so their fossil record is extremely rare,” said author Dr. Chris Cameron of the University of Montreal. “Our description of Spartobranchus tenuis, a creature previously unknown to science, pushes the fossil record of the enteropneusts back 200 million years to the Cambrian period, fundamentally changing our understanding of biodiversity from this period.” (more…)

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Evolution, Civil War History Entwine in Fossil Find

Strange phallus-shaped creature provides crucial missing link