Normal view
The Last Stand of the Woolly Mammoths
Bones reveal first evidence of Down syndrome in Neanderthals
Scales helped reptiles conquer the landβwhen did they first evolve?
![Multipanel image showing reconstruction of the animal and the prints it left.](../themes/icons/grey.gif)
Enlarge / Upper left: a reconstruction of Diadcetes. Below: false color images of its foot and tail prints. Right: the section of the tail that left the print. (credit: Voigt et. al./Urweltmuseum GEOSKOP.)
Their feet left copious traces in muddy Permian floodplains, leaving tracks scattered across ancient sediments. But in one slab of such trackways, scientists uncovered something more: the trace of an animalβs tail as it dragged across the ground. Strikingly, these tail prints come complete with scale impressionsβat 300 million years old, theyβre among the earliest scale impressions we have.
This may seem small, but it shows us that some of the hardened skin structures necessary for our ancestors to survive on land had evolved much earlier than previously suspected. A paper published in Biology Letters this past May describes this discovery in detail.
A rare find
The particular slab holding these traces was discovered in 2020 at the Piaskowiec Czerwony quarry in Poland. Mining had stopped to enable paleontologists to search the red sandstone rocks for fossils. Gabriela CalΓ‘bkovΓ‘ described climbing upon βa huge pile of rubbleβ only to discover a sizable slab of fossil tracks at the very top. There, among one set of footprints, was something new.
Did the First Australians Keep Dingoes as Pets?
Β© Biodiversity Heritage Library
The mythical griffin was not inspired by a horned dinosaur, study concludes
![Painting of a griffin, a lion-raptor chimaera](../themes/icons/grey.gif)
Enlarge / Painting of a gryphon, or griffin, a lion-raptor chimera from ancient folklore. (credit: Mark Witton)
The gryphon, or griffin, is a legendary creature dating back to classical antiquity, sporting the body, legs, and tail of a lion and the wings, head, and front talons of an eagle. Since the 1980s, a popular "geomyth" has spread that the griffin's unique appearance was inspired by the fossilized skeleton of a horned dinosaur known as Protoceratops. It's a fascinating and colorful story, but according to the authors of a new paper published in the journal Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, there is no hard evidence to support such a connection.
"Everything about griffin origins is consistent with their traditional interpretation as imaginary beasts, just as their appearance is entirely explained by them being [mythological] chimeras of big cats and raptorial birds," said co-author Mark Witton, a paleontologist at the University of Portsmouth. "Invoking a role for dinosaurs in griffin lore, especially species from distant lands like Protoceratops, not only introduces unnecessary complexity and inconsistencies to their origins, but also relies on interpretations and proposals that donβt withstand scrutiny.β
There are representations of griffin-like creatures in ancient Egyptian art dated to before 3000 BCE, while in ancient Greek and Roman texts the creatures were associated with gold deposits in Central Asia. By the Middle Ages, griffins were common figures in medieval iconography and in heraldry. The hippogriff named Buckbeak in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is a related mythical creature, the product of a griffin and a mare.
Lokiceratops, a Horned Dinosaur, May Be a New Species
Was This Sea Creature Our Ancestor? Scientists Turn a Famous Fossil on Its Head.
Β© Mussini et al., Current Biology 2024
Bizarre egg-laying mammals once ruled Australiaβthen lost their teeth
![A small animal with spiky fur and a long snout strides over grey soil.](../themes/icons/grey.gif)
Enlarge / The echidna, an egg-laying mammal, doesn't develop teeth. (credit: Yvonne Van der Horst)
Outliers among mammals, monotremes lay eggs instead of giving birth to live young. Only two types of monotremes, the platypus and echidna, still exist, but more monotreme species were around about 100 million years ago. Some of them might possibly be even weirder than their descendants.
Monotreme fossils found in refuse from the opal mines of Lightning Ridge, Australia, have now revealed the opalized jawbones of three previously unknown species that lived during the Cenomanian age of the early Cretaceous. Unlike modern monotremes, these species had teeth. They also include a creature that appears to have been a mashup of a platypus and echidnaβan βechidnapus.β
Fossil fragments of three known species from the same era were also found, meaning that at least six monotreme species coexisted in what is now Lightning Ridge. According to the researchers who unearthed these new species, the creatures may have once been as common in Australia as marsupials are today.
Family Discovers Rare T. Rex Fossil in North Dakota
Β© Denver Museum of Science and Nature
Apex, the Largest Stegosaurus Fossil Ever Found, Heads to Auction
Β© Nina Riggio for The New York Times