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about the size of a grain of rice a trackway like this shows that it had front and back ends and was bilaterally symmetrical with limbs that could move it forward we could call it first explorer see also study resets date of earliest animal life by 30 million years share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x email a link to a friend opens in new window email print opens in new window print more share on reddit opens in new window reddit like loading posted in biology evolution science tags deep time evolution fossils invertebrates 2 comments more about the oldest rocks ever august 26 2010 monado rocks formed from old mantle were found on baffin island in northwestern canada the rocks have been seen before but they awaited dating methods that could distinguish them from the rest of the rocks on earth when lava solidifies elements with their isotopes are frozen into it we can use them to calculate the age of the rock the earth s mantle is the hot stony layer between its crust and the nickel iron core its upper layers can flow however slowly but further down it is compressed into a solid by the weight above it how can the mantle be modern or primitive isn t it just a ball of molten ooze not exactly as the earth formed it melted from the energy of incoming material when the loose material in the inner system was mostly accumulated bombardment slowed and the molten earth cooled off in the molten crust dense material sank to become the core and lighter material floated to the surface slow convection currents in the magma probably helped the continents to form in the cooler areas when less dense material was pushed aside by hot rising plumes continents of lightweight silicon aluminum rock or sial float on denser silicon magnesium rock or sima since the earth s crust cooled and solidified it has cracked into several large slabs or plates the plates slide under or over each other so that the upper plate is lifted into mountains as in the u s rockies they ram into each other and are compressed buckling and folding into mountains as in the canadian rockies the most spectacular example occurs where india collided with asia raising the himalayas over millions of years wind water ice and gravity erode the mountains back into rocks and particles creating new sedimentary rock however particles in this rock still have the age signature of the original crust discovery com has the story but these rocks contain an early earth mixture of helium lead and neodymium isotopes which suggest the mantle rock beneath the crust that yielded them is a virgin pocket of earth s original material that pocket survived for 4 5 billion years under baffin island without being mixed by plate tectonics or erupted onto the surface i was surprised that any of the original mantle survived said geoscientist matthew jackson of boston university he is the lead author on a paper announcing the discovery in this week s issue of the journal nature finding a piece of the original mantle has been a holy grail the original earth was a big ball of magma that s our planet s original composition the discovery has surprised other researchers as well even if a vestige of such material remained it seems unlikely that it would be found in any samples from earth s surface or the shallow subsurface that are available to geologists observed david graham of oregon state university in corvallis who wrote a commentary in the same issue of nature yet that is what this new evidence suggests one of the obstacles in finding rocks from such ancient mantle up to now has been that researchers had assumed early earth was composed of rocks with helium and lead isotope matching those of a type of ancient meteorite called a chondrite that may be true up to a point said jackson some recent research by scientists at the carnegie institution of washington has suggested that the earth s early mantle would also have tell tale neodymium isotopes that are unlike chondrites that turns out to be the same as we find in these lavas from baffin island said jackson the other signs of untouched ancient mantle material which has not before lost any of its material to earth s surface or been otherwise tainted is a large amount of the isotopes helium 3 relative to helium 4 there is also an very old lead isotope signature it was these three criteria the helium lead and neodymium that led jackson and his team to the conclusion that the baffin islands massive volcanic cliffs are made of the oldest material on the planet as for how much of this original mantle might be around the only way to tell is to look at lava rocks and see if they came from such stuff said jackson it occurs to me that if there are longstanding downward currents of cooled magma in the mantle there are places that are between those downdrafts and furthest from their influence those would be the most likely places for old magma to stay in place near the surface share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x email a link to a friend opens in new window email print opens in new window print more share on reddit opens in new window reddit like loading posted in science tags deep time geology leave a comment u haul graphics may 27 2009 monado nevada has an area 51 stealth plane newfoundland has a giant squid and illinois has a cambrian explosion monster text llinois once lay near the equator on the supercontinent of pangea and was home to unique creatures how did the strip mining of illinois coal deposits reveal the secret of the tully monster the tully monster discovered in 1958 in the mazon creek lagerstaaten and named tullimonstrum gregarium in 1966 is the state fossil of illinois many have been found but so far the tully monster is unique to illinois it dates back about 300 million years we do not know what phylum it fits into its shape recalls the anomalocaris but that disappeared 100 million years earlier of course with fossilization of soft bodied organisms being so rare perhaps it is a descendant of anomalocaris share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x email a link to a friend opens in new window email print opens in new window print more share on reddit opens in new window reddit like loading posted in humor visual communication tags deep time invertebrates 1 comment hesperornis the great toothed diver april 8 2009 monado 2008 01 16_rom wingless penguin originally uploaded by monado hesperornis or western bird was discovered by o c marsh in 1872 at one location he found dozens of well preserved specimens from what had formerly been a shallow sea in the middle of north america he name the species hesperornis regalis the birds are four to five feet tall or long you might say as they likely never got farther from the water than seals their hind legs were turned backwards to act as strong paddles so they couldn t really stand up and they certainly couldn t fly their wings are entirely gone hesperornis fossils date back to about 70 million years ago the north american fossils are found all up and down the central continental sea several species are known marsh found another species of hesperornis but he was so reluctant to consider that it might be found in a different range that he gave it another name and it took later paleontologists to sort out the new fossil which they called hesperornis montana when i first saw it at the page museum at la brea i thought wingless penguin other people call it a large wingless loon and that might be more accurate it was an early example of use it or lose it in evolution when birds had teeth by frederic a lucas evolution a journal of nature august 1929 from internet archive separated by millions of years from that earliest of all known birds the toothed archaeopteryx of the jurassic period described last month the next birds that we know come from the chalk beds of western kansas time enough had passed for members of one group to have quite lost their wings yet they still retained teeth the most bird like of them being quite unlike any modern bird in this respect the first specimens were obtained by professor marsh in his expeditions of 1870 and 1871 but not until a few years later after the material had been cleaned and was being studied was it ascertained that these birds were armed with teeth the smaller of these birds was not unlike a small gull the larger however was remarkable the toothed diver hesperornis regalis sic in many ways hesperornis was a great diver in some ways the greatest of the divers slender and graceful in general build looking somewhat like an overgrown absolutely wingless loon the penguins as everyone knows swim with their front limbs we can t call them wings which though containing all the hones of a wing have become transformed into powerful paddles hesperornis on the other hand swam altogether with its legs swam so well with them indeed that through natural selection the disused wings dwindled away and vanished save one bone hesperornis was large upwards of five feet long and if its ancestors were equally bulky their wings were quite too big for swimming under water as do the short winged auks which fly under water quite as they fly over it hence the big wings were closely folded upon the body to offer the least possible resistance and it was advantageous that they and their muscles dwindled while the bones and muscles of the legs increased by constant use by the time the wings were small enough to be used in so dense a medium as water the muscles had become too feeble to move them and so degeneration proceeded until but one bone remained a mere vestige the penguins retain their great breast muscles as did the great auk since it takes even more strength to move a small wing in water than a large wing in the thinner air without evo devo and mathematical analysis to confirm it this is guesswork as a swimming bird one that swims with its legs and not with its wings hesperornis has probably never been equalled for the size and appearance of the bones indicate great power while the bones of the foot were so joined to those of the leg as to turn edgewise as the foot was brought forward thus offering less resistance to the water it is remarkable that these leg bones are hollow because as a rule the bones of aquatic animals are more or less solid inherited from large land dwelling dinosaurs their weight being supported by the water but those of the great diver were almost as light as if it had dwelt on dry land that it did not dwell there is conclusively shown by its feet the most extraordinary thing about hesperornis is the position of the legs relative to the body and this is something that was not even suspected until the skeleton was mounted in a swimming attitude as anyone knows who has watched a duck swim the usual place for the feet and legs is beneath and in line with the body but in our great extinct diver the joints of the leg bones are such that this was impossible and the feet and lower legs must have stood out nearly at right angles to the body like a pair of oars this is such a peculiar attitude for a bird s legs that although apparently indicated by the shape of the bones it was at first thought to be due to the crushing and consequent distortion to which the bones had been subjected and an endeavor was made to place them in the ordinary position even at the expense of a dislocation of the joints but when the mounting of the skeleton had advanced further it became evident that hesperornis was no ordinary bird and could not swim in the usual manner since this would have brought his knee caps uncomfortably up into his body and so at the cost of much time and trouble the mountings were so changed that the legs stood out at the sides of the body as shown in the picture a position verified later by the discovery of the specimen now in the american museum of natural history in which the limbs lay in just the position given them by the artist mr gleeson see image below hesperornis by lucas after gleeson share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x email a link to a friend opens in new window email print opens in new window print more share on reddit opens in new window reddit like loading posted in americas science tags adaptation biology deep time evolution fossils leave a comment new dinosaur gallery now with added barosaurus april 7 2009 monado 2008 01 16_rom barosaurus from front originally uploaded by monado at long last i ve posted to flickr my images of the royal ontario museum s new dinosaur gallery with several shots of their new exhibit the barosaurus share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x email a link to a friend opens in new window email print opens in new window print more share on reddit opens in new window reddit like loading posted in americas nature science tags deep time dinosaurs evolution fossils museums tetrapods leave a comment darwin was right february 24 2009 monado sea sponge a new fossil discovery had proven that another of darwin s hypotheses about evolution was correct during his lifetime no animal fossils were known earlier than the cambrian explosion of diversity 540 million years ago it occurred when animals developed hard body parts that could be fossilized so some people call it an induration it s mostly in rare fine limestones that you find the outlines and sometimes the pigments of soft body parts darwin however reasoned that evolution must have occurred for millions of years before the cambrian explosion for that diversity to develop and he was right fossils push animal life back millions of years a novel technique used to date fossils buried in rock sediment in oman shows that sponges among the most primitive of animal organisms flourished there more than 635 million years ago share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x email a link to a friend opens in new window email print opens in new window print more share on reddit opens in new window reddit like loading posted in biology science tags deep time evolution fossils invertebrates 2 comments softer structures in pikaia february 7 2009 monado maybe it s just my imagination but when i look at understanding evolution s image of a fossil pikaia the first known chordate from the precambrian era i see more than they do here s their image from is pikaia an arthropod enlargement of head of a fossil pikaia facing right in the enlargement i see a couple of feathery antennae or mouth parts suitable for sensing and sweeping small bits of food towards the mouth feathery extensions what do you think take our poll links to more fossils are welcome share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x email a link to a friend opens in new window email print 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