#natalia rybczynski

[effyeahladyscientists]

Paleo-Breakthrough (Seal Evolution) from an Arctic Fossil

A "missing link" fossil of a new mammal species from Canada's High Arctic rewrites the evolutionary story of seals. This prehistoric carnivore represents a new branch on a family tree, between an ancestor that walked on land and today's sea-going seals and their relatives. It provides insight into what pinnipeds (true seals, sea lions and the walrus) looked like before they were adapted to hunting in the ocean. It also suggests a different centre of pinniped evolution from that of the prevailing theory. The fossil is 24 to 20 million years old and was found in the Haughton Crater on Devon Island. The research team is led by Dr. Natalia Rybczynski of the Canadian Museum of Nature.

[thecalendarwomen]

The Calendar Woman for 23rd December is Natalia Rybczynski

Natalia Rybczynski is a Canadian paleobiologist and researcher. Her primary areas of focus are evolutionary functional morphology, particularly at the polar climates, and she works as a research scientist with the Canadian Museum of Nature. Through her research into the land-to-sea transition in seals, Natalia and her team found a species of proto-seal called Pujila darwini on Devon Island in the Canadian arctic. It was a carnivorous arctic mammal which is the most primitive member of the seal family yet found (it is about 21 to 24 million years old) and represents a ‘missing link’ between land-dwelling mammals and modern ocean-going seals. It has very minimal physical adaptations for swimming and appears to look quite similar to an otter but the skull and teeth indicate it is a seal. Her other areas of work include developing understanding of the biomechanics of primitive mammals feeding adaptations and looking into the evolutionary history of vertebrate lineages.

(video source)  

[newstfionline]

Canada's North, Home to Bears, and Once, Camels

By Ian Austen, NY Times, March 5, 2013 OTTAWA--Though camels are usually associated with the searing heat of the desert, a group of scientists reported on Tuesday that they had found fossilized remains of a giant camel, with a shoulder height of perhaps nine feet, in Canada's frigid high Arctic.

"It's a surprise when you first hear it," said Natalia Rybczynski, a paleontologist at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, who discovered the bone fragments in 2006. "But the Arctic in the winter was like a desert at that time."

Dr. Rybczynski said that though scientists have long believed that camels originated in North America and then spread throughout the world, the remains were found about 750 miles north of what was previously the northernmost known camel fossil, a giant found in Canada's Yukon Territory in 1913.

"It's just kind of stunning that it's more than 1,000 kilometers away," said Dr. Rybczynski, the lead author of a paper about the camel published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

The camel's remains, 30 pieces that make up a tibia, were found near an area where a number of fossils of small forest mammals have been previously discovered.

[dimestorefind]

When Canadian Museum of Nature paleobiologist Natalia Rybczynski dug up what turned out to be camel bones in a High Arctic ridge in Canada, she recalls thinking: “This is something kind of off the charts.” She was right. Those bones belonged to the first camel ever found in the High Arctic. "The humped creatures once roamed in forests that extended as far north as Ellesmere Island 3.5 million years ago during a global warm spell that the scientists say holds important lessons for the modern world." [National Post]