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Fossil and Archaeology News - June 2009 Archives
 | Previously unknown fossil fish bridges the evolutionary gap between flesh-eating piranhas and their plant-eating cousins ...> Full Article |
In December 2007 a team of experts, led by the University of Nottingham, unveiled an extraordinary set of high-resolution images that gave an insight into the plan of the Roman town of Venta Icenorum at Caistor St. Edmund in Norfolk.
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For millions of years, dinosaurs have been considered the largest creatures ever to walk on land. While they still maintain this status, a new study suggests that some dinosaurs may actually have weighed as little as half as much as previously thought.
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 | A new study co-authored by Ian Kuijt, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame, describes recent excavations in Jordan that reveal evidence of the world's oldest known granaries. ...> Full Article |
Researchers at the University of Florida and the University of Winnipeg have developed the first detailed images of a primitive primate brain, unexpectedly revealing that cousins of our earliest ancestors relied on smell more than sight.
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An artificial underground cave, the largest in Israel, has been exposed in the Jordan Valley in the course of a survey carried out by the University of Haifa. Professor Adam Zertal, who headed the excavating team, reckons that this cave was originally a large quarry during the Roman and Byzantine era and was one of its kind. Various engravings were uncovered in the cave, including cross markings, and it is assumed that this could have been an early monastery.
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Researchers from the Teruel-Dinópolis Joint Palaeontology Foundation have compared an Allosauroidea tooth found in deposits in Riodeva, Teruel, with other similar samples. The palaeontologists have concluded that this is the largest tooth of a carnivorous dinosaur to have been found to date in Spain.
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 | Archaeologists have used stone tools to answer many questions about human ancestors in both the distant and near past and now they are analyzing the origin of obsidian flakes to better understand how people settled and interacted in the inhospitable Kuril Islands. ...> Full Article |
The largest animals ever to have walked the face of the Earth may not have been as big as previously thought, reveals a paper published today in the Zoological Society of London's Journal of Zoology.
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New evidence underscores the theory of human origin that suggests humans most likely share a common ancestor with orangutans, according to research from the University of Pittsburgh and the Buffalo Museum of Science. Reporting in the June 18 edition of the Journal of Biogeography, the researchers reject as "problematic" the popular suggestion, based on DNA analysis, that humans are most closely related to chimpanzees, which they maintain is not supported by fossil evidence.
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 | To help trace the origins of the human species, and potential links to other primates, researchers with the Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny -- a joint organized research unit of the University of California, San Diego, and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies -- will begin digitizing and examining skeletal specimens and related medical records this summer from more than two dozen chimpanzees. ...> Full Article |
Research which finally proves that bones found in Shropshire, England, provide the most geologically recent evidence of woolly mammoths in Northwestern Europe publishes today in the Geological Journal. Analysis of both the bones and the surrounding environment suggests that some mammoths remained part of British wildlife long after they are conventionally believed to have become extinct.
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The mystery of giant sperm present in some living animal groups today has now taken on a new dimension -- in one group of micro-crustaceans new evidence shows that it is a feature at least 100 million years old.
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 | Plants or meat: that's about all that fossils ever tell paleontologists about a dinosaur's diet. But the skull characteristics of a new species of parrot-beaked dinosaur and its associated gizzard stones indicate that the animal fed on nuts and/or seeds. These characteristics present the first solid evidence of nut-eating in any dinosaur. ...> Full Article |
 | Evidence found at ancient village of Ceren in El Salvador buried by volcanic ash about 600 A.D. ...> Full Article |
 | More than 100 feet deep in Lake Huron, on a wide stoney ridge that 9,000 years ago was a land bridge, University of Michigan researchers have found the first archeological evidence of human activity preserved beneath the Great Lakes. ...> Full Article |
Researchers at Oregon State University have made a fundamental new discovery about how birds breathe and have a lung capacity that allows for flight -- and the finding means it's unlikely that birds descended from any known theropod dinosaurs.
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 | Warm climate 15 million years ago led to unique bone bed of shark teeth and seal bones ...> Full Article |
 | Rushing to salvage fossils from the Panama Canal earthworks, Aldo Rincon, paleontology intern at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, unearthed a set of fossil teeth. Bruce J. MacFadden, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida in Gainesville, describes the fossil as Anchitherium clarencei, a three-toed browsing horse, in the May 2009 issue of the Journal of Paleontology. ...> Full Article |
 | Light on the phylogenetic and geographic origin of our family, the Hominidae ...> Full Article |
 | A new University of Florida study shows mammals change their dietary niches based on climate-driven environmental changes, contradicting a common assumption that species maintain their niches despite global warming. ...> Full Article |
 | Ancestors of tapirs and ancient cousins of rhinos living above the Arctic Circle 53 million years ago endured six months of darkness each year in a far milder climate than today that featured lush, swampy forests, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder. ...> Full Article |
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Fish can recognize a face based on UV pattern alone
Ancient DNA from rare fossil reveals that polar bears evolved recently and adapted quickly
Scientists locate apparent hydrothermal vents off Antarctica
Mars Express heading for closest flyby of Phobos
Artificial bee silk a big step closer to reality
Predicting the fate of stem cells
Artificial foot recycles energy for easier walking
New fiber nanogenerators could lead to electric clothing
What drives our genes? Researchers map the first complete human epigenome
Juggling enhances connections in the brain
Tracking down the human 'odorprint'
Fill 'er up - with algae
Scientists discover quantum fingerprints of chaos
Researchers help identify cows that gain more while eating less
Dinosaurs might be older than previously thought
Recently analyzed fossil was not human ancestor as claimed, anthropologists say
'Anaconda' meets 'Jurassic Park': Study shows ancient snakes ate dinosaur babies
Tiny shelled creatures shed light on extinction and recovery 65 million years ago
New dinosaur rears its head
New dinosaur discovered head first, for a change
Archaeologist discovers Jerusalem city wall from tenth century B.C.E.
Pitt-led study debunks millennia-old claims of systematic infant sacrifice in ancient Carthage
What was that? Unraveling a 400-million-year-old mystery
Queen's helps produce archaeological 'time machine'
Scientists complete color palette of a dinosaur for the first time
Ancient remains put teeth into Barker hypothesis