#fossils and evolution

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Bird wings with feathers and claws found in dinosaur age amber

In one small corner of Burma, scientists have discovered something incredible: The whole wings of two tiny birds preserved in amber. These fossils give us another important glimpse into Cretaceous forest ecosystems.

Feathers are a rarity in the fossil record, and three-dimensional feathers are even rarer. Yet for the first time ever, researchers working in Myanmar have discovered a three-dimensional fossil of two bird wings and attached feathers preserved in amber.

Image by Xing, McKellar, et al (Nature Communications, 2016)

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Clash of the Triassic titans

Battles between big carnivores are a rarity in the fossil record. One find from Triassic rocks in New Mexico reveals something incredible. It is a life-and-death duel between two of the era’s most powerful hunters.

Finds of carnivores preying on one another are rare in the fossil record. Yet for two big Triassic reptiles, a case of predation has shown a great deal about how their rather carnivore-heavy ecosystem may have worked. 

Image by @paleoart

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Sharovipteryx, the Triassic reptile with leg-wings

Sharovipteryx, from the Mid Triassic of Kyrgyzstan had the oddest "wings" of any fossil reptile, stuck to its hind limbs. This unique delta-winged creature glided effortlessly between the trees of its forest home. It was a design that would never again reappear in nature.

Weird reptiles were somewhat commonplace in the Triassic, the earliest days of the dinosaurs. Sharovipteryx, with its preposterous leg-wings was one of the weirdest yet found.

Image credit: @paleoart

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Buzzsaw-toothed leviathans cruised the ancient seas

The so-called “buzzsaw shark” Helicoprion was a prominent feature of the oceans roughly 290 to 250 million years ago. Known mostly for its strange spiral set of teeth, it was also a titanic marine monster that sometimes stretched more than 12 meters in length and was the biggest marine animal of its day.

Helicoprion had a whorl of teeth that fit into the front of its jaws, with some whorls reaching remarkable sizes.

Image by Julio Lacerda / @paleoart

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Footprint of strange dinosaur found in Alaska

Therizinosaurs are among the most unorthodox of dinosaurs. They have a big belly, short legs and tail, a long neck and a set of immense flattened claws to help them manipulate branches. Despite the majority being from Asia, tantalizing remains have surfaced from the unlikeliest of places.

Sometimes, a dinosaur’s footprints can tell us a lot more about the animal than its physical bones.

Image credit: @paleoart

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Our relatives may have been hyena food 500,000 years ago

We pride ourselves on being the world’s greatest predators but once in our long history, we were the hunted and not the hunters. Bones from Morocco reveal the shocking tale of how some human ancestors met their match at the hands of bone-crushing teeth.

More than 500,000 years ago, during the Middle Pleistocene, a incredible event ensued in Morocco. It was an interaction between a hapless hominin or an ancestral human, and a group of fierce hunters that probably finished the unlucky human off.

Image by Julio Lacerda / @paleoart

[eartharchives]

New Japanese dinosaur was no Godzilla

Japan has merely seven dinosaurs altogether, with the most recent being unveiled this year. It was small, omnivorous and related to the famous raptor dinosaurs. It is also the country’s most complete dinosaur yet.

The Japanese dinosaur Fukuivenator was an omnivorous dinosaur closely related to birds, and also is the most complete Japanese dinosaur.

Image by Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum/Kyodo

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Dinosaur relatives lived life in the fast lane

Many of the ancestors of the earliest dinosaurs were small, active and lizard-like animals. Yet their growth patterns have been somewhat of a mystery. Recent studies of their bones suggest that size is not always a good determinant of skeletal maturity.

Different Asilisaurus that had grown at the same place and time did not develop into maturity the same way, instead going through their maturity at different rates.

Image by Andrey Atuchin