Category Archives: News

Our Skulls Didn’t Evolve to be Punched

A rather ‘interesting’ new paper in Biological Reviews claims that:

‘Hands evolved to punch faces. Faces evolved to take punches. That’s the hypothesis being bandied about by University of Utah researchers Michael Morgan and David Carrier, the pair proposing that the apparent “protective buttressing” of our skulls and hands is a sign of violent prehistoric fights where fists of fury dictated who would mate and who would exit the gene pool.’

Nice critique of the paper can be found here: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/06/10/our-skulls-didnt-evolve-to-be-punched/

And the original paper here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/brv.12112/full

 

Mammalian skull heterochrony

Cool paper by Marcelo Sanchez-Villagra and colleagues.

Mammalian skull heterochrony reveals modular evolution and a link between cranial development and brain size

The multiple skeletal components of the skull originate asynchronously and their developmental schedule varies across amniotes. Here we present the embryonic ossification sequence of 134 species, covering all major groups of mammals and their close relatives. This comprehensive data set allows reconstruction of the heterochronic and modular evolution of the skull and the condition of the last common ancestor of mammals. We show that the mode of ossification (dermal or endochondral) unites bones into integrated evolutionary modules of heterochronic changes and imposes evolutionary constraints on cranial heterochrony. However, some skull-roof bones, such as the supraoccipital, exhibit evolutionary degrees of freedom in these constraints. Ossification timing of the neurocranium was considerably accelerated during the origin of mammals. Furthermore, association between developmental timing of the supraoccipital and brain size was identified among amniotes. We argue that cranial heterochrony in mammals has occurred in concert with encephalization but within a conserved modular organization.
– Jacqueline

Chicken from Hell!

Scientists have discovered a freakish, birdlike species of dinosaur — 11 feet long, 500 pounds, with a beak, no teeth, a bony crest atop its head, murderous claws, prize-fighter arms, spindly legs, a thin tail and feathers sprouting all over the place. Officially, it’s a member of a group of dinosaurs called oviraptorosaurs.

Unofficially, it’s the Chicken From Hell.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/new-dinosaur-called-the-chicken-from-hell/2014/03/19/92cc64d4-af7d-11e3-9627-c65021d6d572_story.html

A New Large-Bodied Oviraptorosaurian Theropod Dinosaur from the Latest Cretaceous of Western North America

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0092022;jsessionid=C7AB21F731D3D109E75C477194447051

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Laura

New Romanian Cretaceous vertebrate site

An article about Romanian locations and Hateg Island

Mátyás Vremir, Ramona Balc, Zoltán Csiki-Sava, Stephen L. Brusatte, Gareth
Dyke, Darren Naish & Mark A. Norell (2014) Petresti-Arini
Cretaceous Research 49: 13-38

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195667114000093

Highlights

•Romania boasts some of the most unusual, insular dinosaurs in the fossil record.
•A new site preserves a unique late Campanian–earliest Maastrichtian fossil record.
•Dinosaurs and pterosaurs from this site are the oldest from the Haţeg Island.
•The Haţeg Island fauna was becoming established by the late Campanian.
•The site may suggest the earliest Haţeg faunas were somewhat distinct from later ones.

The true Colour of Mosasaurs and Ichthyosaurs

Now we know the true colours (I had hoped for something a bit more exciting perhaps

Skin pigmentation provides evidence of convergent melanism in extinct marine reptiles

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12899.html

Nice reconstructions here:

http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology/science-color-mosasaurs-ichthyosaurs-turtles-1672.html

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Laura