Posts

fossil

Scientists May Have Solved the Mystery of an Ancient ‘Alien Goldfish’

/in , /by

Scientists may have finally figured out where an ancient sea animal fits into the “tree of life.” The animal, known as Typhloesus wellsi, perplexed scientists for nearly 50 years, leading them to dub it the “alien goldfish.”

Typhloesus was just 90 mm long when it was alive. It had no fins other than a singular large tail fin. Bizarrely, it also had no backbone, anus, eyes or shell.

Scientists previously thought the creature was a conodont, a group of jawless vertebrates that resembled eels. Upon closer inspection, scientists realized that the Typhloesus fossil specimen actually showed the animal had the remains of a conodont inside its digestive tract, indicating the Typhloesus ate conodonts.

The recent discovery of a tooth-covered ribbon-like structure in the Typhloesus helped scientists figure out its possible taxonomic placement. Paleontologists believe they were most likely a marine mollusk and an ancient relative of gastropods like sea slugs.

Embed from Getty Images

Dr. Jean-Bernard Caron and Dr. Simon Conway Morris, paleontologists at the University of Cambridge, made the discovery after examining several Typhloesus fossil specimens taken from a 330-million-year-old fossil deposit in the Bear Gulch Limestone site in Montana, US.

Dr. Caron found the toothed tonguelike structure under a high-powered scanning microscope. The structure was similar to that of a radula, an anatomical structure snails and mollusks use to scrape food into their mouths.

The scientists believe the structure was likely attached to a retractable trunk. The alien goldfish would extend it whenever it was feeding, much like a lizard. The existence of the Typhloesus’ radula led scientists to deduce that the mysterious creature may be a mollusk.

Embed from Getty Images

Dr. Caron believes the creature was similar to a sea slug, which swims through water, sticking its radula through trunklike proboscis to hunt prey. Typhloesus also had a flexible body and large tail. They were likely good swimmers and did not move along the sea floor.

Professor Mark Purnell from the Center for Paleobiology at the University of Leicester in the UK suggests that scientists cannot definitively say “the very strange animal” is a mollusk.

“[The researchers] have found some tantalizing new information, but it is far from being a slam-dunk case in terms of definitely knowing what this weird thing is.”

Typhloesus fossils predate the rest of the swimming snail fossil record by over 100 million years. Dr. Christopher Whalen, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History, said that since sea slugs lacked shells and other features commonly imprinted in fossils and quickly swam in the water, they are not as present in fossil records.

Understanding the Typhloesus will help paleontologists learn more about the evolution of mollusks, the planet’s second largest group of invertebrates.

According to Dr. Caron, studying the strangest creatures often unearths the most valuable discoveries.

 “They are enigmatic, but they reveal a lot of important evolutionary information.”

Scientists Discover Tiny Fossil Found In 16-Million-Year-Old Amber, ‘A Once-In-A-Generation Find!’

/in , /by

Microscopic tardigrades are a species that have lived on Earth for more than 500 million years. It’s thought that these miniscule creatures will also outlive humans, however, due to their extremely small size, they don’t typically leave behind fossils for us to learn about them. 

Recently, however, scientists discovered the third-ever tardigrade fossil on record, and they found it suspended in a piece of 16-million-year-old Dominican amber. 

Embed from Getty Images

The species found within the amber has been classified as Paradoryphoribius chronocaribbeus, a new species thought to be a relative of the modern living family of tardigrades known as Isohypsibioidea. This is the first tardigrade fossil to appear during the Cenozoic era, the current geological era that the Earth is in which began 66 million years ago. 

The study on this discovery was published this week in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a scientific publication. 

Beneath a microscope, these tardigrades look like little water bears. They’re known for their ability to survive and thrive in extreme environments, which is why they’ve been around for so long. They’re no longer than one millimeter, have eight legs with claws at the end, a brain, nervous system, and a pharynx behind their mouth used to pierce food.

“All of these details are incredibly well preserved in the new fossil specimen, down to its tiny claws. The discovery of a fossil tardigrade is truly a once-in-a-generation event,” said Phil Barden, senior author of the study.

Embed from Getty Images

“What is so remarkable is that tardigrades are a ubiquitous ancient lineage that has seen it all on Earth, from the fall of the dinosaurs to the rise of terrestrial colonization of plants. Yet, they are like a ghost lineage for paleontologists with almost no fossil record. Finding any tardigrade fossil remains is an exciting moment where we can empirically see their progression through Earth history,” Barden said.

The fossil will now allow scientists to observe all the evolutionary changes this species has endured within the past hundreds of millions of years. Javier Ortega-Hernandez, the study’s co-author, claimed that at first, they didn’t even notice the fossil in the piece of amber they collected. 

“It’s a faint speck in amber. In fact, Pdo. chronocaribbeus was originally an inclusion hidden in the corner of an amber piece with three different ant species that our lab had been studying, and it wasn’t spotted for months. Close observational analysis helped us determine where the new species belongs on the tardigrade family tree. The fact that we had to rely on imaging techniques usually reserved for cellular and molecular biology shows how challenging it is to study fossil tardigrades. We hope that this work encourages colleagues to look more closely at their amber samples with similar techniques to better understand these cryptic organisms,” Ortega-Hernández said in a statement. 

“We are just scratching the surface when it comes to understanding living tardigrade communities, especially in places like the Caribbean where they’ve not been surveyed. This study provides a reminder that, for as little as we may have in the way of tardigrade fossils, we also know very little about the living species on our planet today,” said Barden.

Israeli Flag

New 130,000-Year-Old Human Fossils Discovered In Israel 

/in , /by

Scientists have recently discovered a new kind of early human after studying pieces of a fossilized bone that was dug up at a cement plant located in central Israel. The fragments of the skull and lower jaw included teeth that suggested the fossils were about 130,000-years-old. 

The researchers were from Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and spoke about the discoveries this past week. The fossils are called Nesher Ramla Homo, after the location in which they were discovered. 

Embed from Getty Images

The earliest humans had very large teeth and no chin, and the study suggested that they may have been ancestors of the Neanderthals, which would challenge current thinking that our evolutionary cousins originated in Europe. 

“The discovery of a new type of Homo is of great scientific importance. It enables us to make new sense of previously found human fossils, add another piece to the puzzle of human evolution, and understand the migrations of humans in the old world.”

Dr Yossi Zaidner works for Hebrew University and is the one who found the fossils while exploring a mining area of the Nesher cement plant near Ramla. The team of scientists discovered the bones about 25-feet deep along with some stone tools and the bones of horses and deer. 

The study said the Nesher Ramla “resembled pre-Neanderthal groups in Europe. This is what makes us suggest that this Nesher Ramla group is actually a large group that started very early in time and are the source of the European Neanderthal,” said Hila May, a physical anthropologist at the Dan David Center and the Shmunis Institute of Tel Aviv University.

Embed from Getty Images

May explained how before this discovery experts were never able to explain how Homo sapien genes were present in earlier Neanderthal populations, but now, the Nesher Ramla group may be the reason for that.

The jaw bone of these fossils had no chin and the skull was flat. 3D shape analysis revealed that the group was not related to any known group of early humans. “What they did match were a small number of enigmatic human fossils found elsewhere in Israel, dating back even earlier, that anthropologists had never been able to place,” May said. 

“As a crossroads between Africa, Europe and Asia, the land of Israel served as a melting pot where different human populations mixed with one another, to later spread throughout the Old World,” said Dr Rachel Sarig, from Tel Aviv University.

Sheela Athreya, a Texas A&M University paleoanthropologist said the new research “gives us a lot to think about in terms of the history of population groups in this region, and how they may have interacted with populations in other regions, in Europe and North Africa.”

The Nesher Ramla fossils “look like something on a lineage heading toward Neanderthal. They seem to be categorized as fossils of an intermediate variety — this group may be predecessors to Neanderthals in this area.”

New Fossils Reveal Giant Rhinos Were Once The Largest Land Mammals To Walk The Earth 

/in , /by

It’s been a widely known fact in the science community that giant rhinos once roamed the Earth some 25 million years ago. While they have long been considered one of the largest land mammals that ever lived, experts were still confused as to how they were able to evolve into the rhinos we more commonly see today.

Additionally, scientists had little to no information about how these rhinos travelled throughout Asia and ended up in the parts of the world where rhinos are most commonly found now. 

Embed from Getty Images

Now, paleontologists have found new fossils that are finally answering some of these questions. The fossils were specifically a part of a new, sixth species of extinct giant rhino, Paraceratherium linxiaense, and where they were discovered has given experts a greater insight into how these giants move across China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, and Pakistan. 

The team of researchers was led by Deng Tao from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology. 

The researchers uncovered one fossil of a completely preserved skull, jawbone, and teeth with their associated atlas; the part of the body where the head meets the spine. Another discovered fossil has three preserved vertebrae. 

The remains gave the team enough information to create a digital 3D model of this new species so that they can compare them to other giant rhinos. The team was able to determine this newest discovery was a newer rhino species due to its longer and more flexible neck. 

Embed from Getty Images

The fossils were found in Gansu Province, China right at the northeastern border of the Tibetan Plateau. The fossils were likely from the Late Oligocene period which lasted from about 34 million years ago to about 23 million years ago. These rhinos were significantly larger than the rhinos of today, with an estimated shoulder height of 16 feet and a weight of over 40,000 pounds. These rhinos also lacked horns. 

“The Tibetan region likely hosted some areas with low elevation, possibly under 2,000 meters during Oligocene, and the lineage of giant rhinos could have dispersed freely along the eastern coast of the Tethys Ocean and perhaps through some lowlands of this region,” researchers wrote in the study. 

Researchers determined that, “in the Early Oligocene, the animal dispersed westward to Kazakhstan, with a descendant expanded to South Asia, then returning north to cross the Tibetan area to eventually produce P. linxiaense to the east in the Linxia Basin.”

“Late Oligocene tropical conditions allowed the giant rhino to return northward to Central Asia, implying that the Tibetan region was still not uplifted as a high-elevation plateau,” Deng said.