165 million-year-old omnivore may have had armadillo-like gait
“We finally have a glimpse of what may be the ancestral condition of all mammals, by looking at what is preserved in Megaconus. It allows us to piece together poorly understood details of the critical transition of modern mammals from pre-mammalian ancestors,” said Zhe-Xi Luo, professor of organismal biology and anatomy. (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…)
