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☆ Ancient swimming sea bug ‘taco’ had mandibles, new fossils show
▼ + stars: | 2024-07-30 | by ( Mindy Weisberger | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

Newfound fossils of the extinct arthropod Odaraia alata recently provided scientists with a first glimpse of Odaraia’s jawlike structures, called mandibles. He conducted the research at the Royal Ontario Museum while pursuing a doctoral degree in the University of Toronto’s department of ecology and evolutionary biology. For the new investigation, the researchers examined around 150 fossils collected by Royal Ontario Museum during expeditions between 1975 and 2000. The carapace folded over Odaraia’s limbs, so it may have been unable to walk on the seafloor, according to the Royal Ontario Museum. More mandibulate mysteriesOne feature that puzzled and intrigued the scientists had never been seen before in Cambrian animals: a single toothlike structure between Odaraia’s mandibles.

Persons: Odaraia, Alejandro Izquierdo, López, ”, “, Jean, Bernard Caron, Joanna Wolfe, ” Wolfe, Wolfe, ” Mindy Weisberger Organizations: CNN, Royal Ontario Museum, Royal Society, Biological Sciences, University of Toronto’s, Harvard University, “, Scientific Locations: Burgess, British Columbia, Canada, centipedes

☆ A Fossil Mystery, Solved by a Spin
▼ + stars: | 2024-07-15 | by ( Jack Tamisiea | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +8 min

A Fossil Mystery, Solved by a SpinEssexella fossils date back to the Carboniferous period, when northern parts of Illinois hovered just above the equator. Essexella fossils are composed of two structures — a textured, barrel-shaped region and a smooth bulb. “It looked like the bottom of an anemone,” Dr. Plotnick said. Dr. Plotnick, Dr. Hagadorn and their team redescribed Essexella as an ancient anemone last year in the journal Papers in Palaeontology. Dr. Plotnick posits that these animals once lined the floor of the Mazon Creek estuary.

Persons: Roy Plotnick, Francis Tully, Tully, ”, Essexella, Plotnick, James Hagadorn, I've, Marjorie Leggitt, Hagadorn, Edward Drinker Cope, Charles Marsh, couldn’t, De Agostini, Jean, Bernard Caron, Hallucigenia, ” Dr, Caron, Caron’s, Dr Organizations: University of Illinois, Denver Museum of Nature, Field Museum, Getty, Royal Ontario Museum Locations: University of Illinois Chicago, Illinois, Chicago, China, Burgess, Canada

☆ Flipping a famous fossil around reveals our earliest vertebrate ancestor, scientists say
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-24 | by ( Mindy Weisberger | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +9 min

Scientists recently identified the animal’s nerve cord by using a topsy-turvy twist. In 2012, after decades of studying Pikaia fossils, researchers described its fossilized internal structures in great detail. However, recent analysis of Pikaia fossils by another team of scientists, published June 11 in the journal Current Biology, has upended this view and all other earlier studies about Pikaia. The presumed blood vessel was a nerve cord, a feature associated with the animal group known as chordates, in the phylum Chordata. While there are no living analogues for Pikaia, the fossil arthropod data gave the scientists a more detailed frame of reference for Pikaia’s nerve cord.

Persons: Charles Doolittle Wolcott, Giovanni Mussini, Pikaia, ”, Jon Mallatt, Mallatt, “ Pikaia’s, Jakob Vinther, Mussini, ” Mussini, we’ve, ” Mallatt, ” Mindy Weisberger Organizations: CNN, Smithsonian National Museum of, Royal Ontario Museum, University of Idaho, University of Bristol, University of Cambridge, Scientific Locations: Burgess, British Columbia, macroevolution, United Kingdom, mudskippers, chordates

☆ Remarkable fossils reveal jellyfish that lived 505 million years ago
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-02 | by ( Ashley Strickland | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

CNN —The oldest examples of swimming jellyfish, which lived in Earth’s oceans 505 million years ago, have been discovered high within the Canadian Rockies. The multitude of Burgessomedusa phasmiformis fossils at the site showed that large, swimming bell-shaped jellyfish evolved more than 500 million years ago. The Burgess Shale was first discovered in 1909 by Charles D. Walcott, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. The more that researchers study fossils from the Burgess Shale, the more complex the ancient food chain becomes. “This adds yet another remarkable lineage of animals that the Burgess Shale has preserved chronicling the evolution of life on Earth.”

Persons: Burgess, Jean, Bernard Caron, Medusozoans, ”, Joe Moysiuk, Desmond Collins, Raymond Quarry, Charles D, Walcott, Royal Ontario Museum’s Richard Ivey Organizations: CNN, Canadian Rockies, Royal Ontario Museum, Royal Society, University of Toronto, Royal Ontario, Smithsonian Institution Locations: Burgess, Canada's, British Columbia, Washington ,

☆ 505-Million-Year-Old Jellyfish Fossils May Be the Oldest Ever Found
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-01 | by ( Jack Tamisiea | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Jellyfish have been floating through Earth’s oceans seemingly forever. They rarely show up in the fossil record because jellyfish are 95 percent water and are prone to rapid decay. But Dr. Caron and other scientists recently described a cache of jellyfish fossils from the Cambrian period that found an improbable pathway to preservation. In a paper published on Wednesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the scientists posit that these 505-million-year-old animals are among the oldest swimming jellyfish known to science. “These new fossils represent the most compelling evidence of Cambrian jellyfish to date,” said David Gold, a paleobiologist at the University of California, Davis, who was not involved in the new study.

Persons: ”, Jean, Bernard Caron, Caron, David Gold, Davis Organizations: Royal Ontario Museum, Royal Society B, University of California Locations: Toronto

☆ What James Cameron has said about diving to the Titanic wreckage
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-20 | by ( Lisa Respers France | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

CNN —James Cameron isn’t just one of Hollywood’s most successful directors ever, he’s also a lover of deep sea exploration. Here’s what the director has said in the past about the deep sea exploration. Cameron took cameras to document the entire trek in the western Pacific. The sub’s just going like a bat out of hell.”Quickly, he said, he went past Titanic depth. I get to bear witness to a miracle that’s down there all the time,” Cameron told 60 Minutes Australia in 2018 of his deep sea explorations.

Persons: James Cameron isn’t, he’s, ”, Cameron, ’ Cameron, Playboy, “, ‘, ” Cameron, Jacques Cousteau’s, Joe MacInnis, MacInnis, Mariana Trench, Suzy Amis Cameron, Lizzy Calvert, you’ve Organizations: CNN, National Geographic, Royal Ontario Museum, Geographic, Australia Locations: Ontario, Canada, Toronto, Pacific, “

☆ Ankylosaurs used their sledgehammer tails to fight each other
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-09 | by ( Ashley Strickland | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

Scientists also believe ankylosaurs could have used their weapon-like tails to assert social dominance, establish their territory or even while battling for mates. Royal Ontario MuseumThese tails measured up to 10 feet (3 meters) long, with rows of sharp spikes along the sides. The tail’s tip was fortified with bony structures, creating a club that could swing with the force of a sledgehammer. Instead, the pattern looks like the result of receiving a forceful slam from another ankylosaur’s tail club. The Zuul fossil is currently kept in the Royal Ontario Museum’s vertebrate fossil collection.

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