Study of Hazda People of Tanzania Provides Insight into our Earliest Social Networks

A team of Anglo/American scientists have concluded that early humans (H. sapiens) built similar social networks to their modern descendants.  A study of a tribe from Tanzania, that live off the land and act as a model for early human settlements reveals that despite our technology, the way we interact with each other has not changed much for the best part of 200,000 years.

Scientists have speculated that one of the reasons for our own species success when compared to the Neanderthals or indeed H.erectus may have been our ability to develop larger social networks and therefore be able to share information and exchange ideas.  A greater amount of social interaction would have helped ideas to catch on more quickly, thus contributing to our species survival in difficult times.  We carry out an experiment with school children where we split the class into two groups to represent two tribes, set them a problem involving the need to store water and then once one tribe has worked out what to do, we extend the session by getting the students to debate whether or not they would share the information with their neighbouring tribe.  Using an ostrich egg, a stick, ants and a handful of straw we can gain a fascinating insight into human psychology.

The Anglo/American study explores similar themes, permitting an insight to how H. sapiens could survive and eventually flourish despite the difficult climate conditions of the Pleistocene Epoch.  Avoiding extinction, the fate of the dinosaurs is the name of the game.

Co-operation between Early Humans a Key to Human Survival?

Working together - Co-operating the "Sesame Street Complex"

Picture Credit: Bedfordshire.go.uk

Writing in the scientific journal “Nature” the research team concludes that prehistoric humans built social networks that resemble those seen in modern societies.  The British and American scientists focused on a single tribe, known as the Hadza who make their living by foraging in the Lake Eyasi region in the Great Rift Valley (Tanzania).  Ironically, this part of Africa is often referred to as the “cradle of humanity” as it is believed, and the fossil record backs this up, that our species evolved in this part of Africa before migrating out of Africa (at least two migrations) and spreading worldwide.

In the study, several interesting patterns of human behaviour emerge.  Humans co-operate readily but also can be selfish.

The patterns that emerged, in which both co-operation and selfishness seemed to be contagious, offer a rare perspective on the question of how the social psychology of early humans has shaped modern social life.  Several hundred Hadza tribes people were involved in the study.  They were given a series of tasks to complete, such as a survey of who their preferred camp-mates were, to whom would they offer food, such as precious sweet honey, the only sweet food item in their diet and highly prized as a result.  The research team also investigated how willing individuals were prepared to work for the good of community – how many would donate honey to a communal pool of the sweet, sticky substance.

Coren Apicella, a post PhD student at Harvard, who analysed the data from the study commented:

“The Hadza represent possibly one of the most extreme departures from life in industrialised societies, and they remain relatively isolated from modern cultural influences,” the authors write.  Yet all the examined properties of social networks seen in modernised societies also appear in the Hadza.”

In a society where the need to build social networks can make the difference between life and death certain common patterns were discovered, patterns that are reflected in modern human interactions.  Popular people befriend other popular people – a pattern of human behaviour reflected in on-line social networks such as Facebook.  People with similar backgrounds and interests are more likely to form a close social tie.  These networks can permit as well as constrain everything from coughs and colds, other diseases to important ideas.  Could this be why the wheel or early metal working caught on so quickly?

Friendship is something that is not preserved in the fossil record.  However, studying nomadic, hunter-gatherer peoples can provide an insight into how social ties and bonds helped our own species survive and then flourish.  Family ties are strong but social co-operation with non related people is a gamble.  The study identified a certain profile of tribe member who was prepared to take the benefits of social co-operation whilst remaining more selfish and self-interested.

The research team postulate that co-operation may be an evolved behaviour, otherwise unco-operative people would have out-competed co-operative groups long ago.  By working together, what we refer to as the “Sesame Street complex”, people can gain mutual benefit and society is strengthened as a whole.  The advantage gained, according to this study can be multiplied, catch and evolve on.

The authors of the paper suggest:

“Although natural selection is said to favour defection in unstructured populations where all individuals have an equal chance of interacting with one another, co-operation can evolve if population structure permits clustering.  This feature allows co-operators to increase in the population because they benefit from the public goods provided by fellow co-operators with whom they interact.”

The effect is for the co-operative and unco-operative to shun each other.  Among the Hadza, the researchers found that variation between groups was much greater than variation within groups.  In other words, co-operative people cluster together and boost their chances of success, while the unco-operative take their chances on their own, with the ultimate effect of making the human race more co-operative.

Technology may have moved on, but the basic human ability to build networks and develop social ties remains fundamental to our own species survival.  Certainly, with seven billion of us now on planet Earth, it is a good thing that most of us have a social nature “wired” into us.

The World’s Oldest Blackbird Takes Flight

A new study suggests that Archaeopteryx could achieve powered flight and provides an indication of this Jurassic creatures colouration.  Using an extremely powerful scanning electron microscope tell-tale melanosomes have been identified in a fossilised feather from the lithographic limestone deposits at Solnhofen.  This new research published in the scientific journal “Nature Communications” not only provides information on the colouration of Archaeopteryx wings – black, but also adds weight to the theory that this primitive bird was an accomplished flier.

The international team of researchers from Brown University (Rhode Island, USA), Yale University, the University of Akron (Ohio, USA) and the Carl Zeiss laboratory (Germany) using advanced microscopy were able to identify the pigment structures found on the fossilised tip of a single feather.  The feather was shed and ended up gently resting on the bottom of a shallow lagoon in what was to become southern Germany by a primitive bird approximately 150 million years ago.  The fine sediments being deposited in the still and anaerobic marine environment enabled the feather to be fossilised.  The unique conditions at Solnhofen, allowed the exquisite preservation of this feather and this fossil specimen is just one of ten ascribed to the prehistoric creature known as Archaeopteryx lithographica.

The researchers identified the colour of the crow-sized creature’s fossilised wing feather, determining it was black at the tip.  The colour and the structures that supplied the pigment suggest that Archaeopteryx’s feathers were rigid and durable - just like a modern birds and this finding has important implications for the way scientists perceive Archaeopteryx.  It adds weight to the hypothesis that this transitional creature between dinosaurs and birds was actually quite a strong flier.

Archaeopteryx is perhaps one of the most famous of all the creatures known from the fossil record.  Identified and named just over 150 years ago, Archaeopteryx was about fifty centimetres long (most of the length being made up of its feathered covered tail).  It had large eyes, teeth in its jaws and the forelimbs had three greatly extended fingers, each ending in a small, curved claw.  The presence of feathers, so clearly seen in a number of specimens such as the “Berlin specimen” and the “London specimen”, helped scientists to interpret this creature as being a transitional fossil from the Dinosauria to birds – sometimes inaccurately called a “missing link”.

Was Archaeopteryx Black?

Commenting on the research work, lead author Ryan Carney, an evolutionary biologist at Brown University stated:

“If Archaeopteryx was flapping or gliding, the presence of melanosomes [pigment-producing parts of a cell] would have given the feathers additional structural support.  This would have been advantageous during this early evolutionary stage of dinosaur flight.”

Until recently, this single feather was regarded as the holotype for Archaeopteryx.  A holotype is the specimen from which the original description of the organism is based.  This is the fossil that is used to provide a scientific description of the organism, with which all other ascribed fossil material is compared to.  Last year the ICZN (International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature) ruled that the so-called “London” specimen the fossil of Archaeopteryx purchased by Sir Richard Owen for what was to become the London Natural History Museum should be regarded as the holotype.

To read more about this development for Archaeopteryx: Natural History Museum Getting the Bird

The Fossilised Feather Used in the Study (compared to that of a Modern Bird)

Modern Feather (left), Archaeopteryx Feather (right)

Picture Credit: Brown University

If Archaeopteryx was one of the first birds, then what did it look like?  This is a question that has intrigued scientists ever since the first fossils of this Jurassic “missing-link” were found back in the late 1850s.  The single feather was analysed and found to be a covert feather, so named because these feathers cover the primary and secondary wing feathers birds use in flight.  After two unsuccessful attempts to image the melanosomes, the group tried a more powerful type of scanning electron microscope at the Carl Zeiss laboratory, where the group located patches of hundreds of the indicative tube-shaped, pigment structures still encased and preserved in the fossilised feather.

The Electron Microscopy Revealing the Dense Pigment Structures

Pointing to the Melanosomes in the Fossil

Image Credit: Brown University

Graduate student, Ryan Carney added:

“The third time was the charm, and we finally found the keys to unlocking the feather’s original color, hidden in the rock for the past 150 million years.”

Melanosomes can provide scientists with an indication of the colouration of long extinct animals.  Professor Mike Benton (University of Bristol) and his colleagues have pioneered this melanosome finding technique.  Such structures had been found in fossils before, but they were interpreted as being bacteria, Professor Mike Benton and his team in conjunction with a number of other research institutes were able to identify pigment structures within the fossilised feathers of a dinosaur, providing the first evidence of the colours of a member of the Dinosauria.

To read more about this research: Melanosomes provide evidence of the Colour of Dinosaurs

The team measured the length and width of the sausage-shaped melanosomes, roughly 1 micron long and 250 nanometers wide.  To determine the melanosomes’ color, Akron researchers Matthew Shawkey and Liliana D’Alba statistically compared Archaeopteryx’s melanosomes with those found in 87 species of living birds, representing four classes: black, grey, brown, and a type found in penguins.  Based on their findings the researchers were able to predict with 95% certainty that this part of the feathers on Archaeopteryx were black.

The scientific instruments and high powered microscopes at the Carl Zeiss laboratory gave the scientists an opportunity to examine the fossilised barbules preserved in the ancient feather.  The barbules are tiny, rib-like appendages that overlap and interlock like a zip to give a feather rigidity and strength.  The barbules and the alignment of melanosomes within them, are identical to those found in modern birds.  If the feather structure of Archaeopteryx is very similar to modern neornithes (modern birds), this implies that Archaeopteryx may have been a capable flier.

The black pigmentation and its significance is less obvious.  The black colour of the Archaeopteryx wing feather may have served to regulate body temperature, act as camouflage as this bird flew about in the understorey of the surrounding woodland or perhaps it was used  for display.

Carney concluded:

“We can’t say it’s proof that Archaeopteryx was a flier.  But what we can say is that in modern bird feathers, these melanosomes provide additional strength and resistance to abrasion from flight, which is why wing feathers and their tips are the most likely areas to be pigmented.  With Archaeopteryx, as with birds today, the melanosomes we found would have provided similar structural advantages, regardless of whether the pigmentation initially evolved for another purpose.”

What is intriguing from Everything Dinosaur’s perspective is that the single feather used in the study has no other fossil material related to it.  The feather is attributed to Archaeopteryx as other fossils which include bones have been found in the same strata at the same location – but there is no definitive proof that the feather actually came from A. lithographica.

If there was one bird-like creature fluttering over the Solnhofen lagoon then there could have been others.

Exciting Science Programme Tonight on BBC 4 (UK)

Tonight on terrestrial television, at 9pm (BBC 4) there is the first episode of a new science series that explores extinction events.  The first programme in this three-part series deals with the period in Earth’s history known as the Permian mass extinction, a time when over a million years or so, life on Earth suffered a series of cataclysms that resulted in an estimated 95% of life becoming extinct.  The Permian mass extinction took place approximately 250 million years ago, one of five major mass extinction events recorded in the known fossil record.

Palaeontologist Richard Fortey (long association with the Natural History Museum – London)  investigates why some of Earth’s species have survived for millions of years, and explores the characteristics that gave them the ability to endure events that led to the extinction of other creatures.  As Richard’s love of Trilobites is well-known, we can expect to hear about these amazing invertebrates as well as horseshoe crabs – Arthropods that have survived nearly unchanged for millions of years.

The second programme in the series is to be shown next week (31st January).  It deals with the events and consequences of perhaps the most famous mass extinction event of all – the mass extinction that occurred at the end of the Cretaceous.  This programme is to be called “Fugitive from the Fire”

Soft and Cuddly Tumbling Dinosaur Soft Toys

Hand-crafted and very importantly sponge washable dinosaur soft toys.  Say hello to Triceratops in his bright orange livery, part of a trend this year that sees the introduction of some particularly colourful Triceratops soft toys.  Joining our “Trike” as we like to call him, is a happy Stegosaurus and a bright red T. rex.

These new soft toys are super soft, very cute and have proved very popular on test with our young, budding palaeontologists.

Dinosaur Soft Toys – Dinosaur Tumblers

Cute and Cuddly Dinosaurs

Picture Credit: Everything Dinosaur

To view these soft toy dinosaurs: Cuddlekins, Dinosaur Soft Toys

Aimed at children from 3 years and upwards these super soft toys with their cute faces inspired team members at Everything Dinosaur to create a Valentines day card (see picture above).  Bright and colourful they make an excellent addition to a  young dinosaur fan’s soft toy collection.

Canadian Scientists Provide Insight into Bizarre New Filter Feeding Animal 

The Burgess Shale (British Columbia, Canada) is regarded as one of the world’s most important fossil locations.  This UNESCO World Heritage site, discovered over one hundred years ago has yielded thousands of Middle Cambrian marine fossils.  The beautifully preserved specimens have provided scientists with a fascinating glimpse into an marine ecosystem that existed approximately 505 million years ago.

Although, these highly fossiliferous shales have been known about since 1909, they are still capable of providing surprises and this week, a team of Canadian researchers have published a paper on a strange, filter feeding animal, that resembled a tulip.

The strata which contains the remains of these “Tulip beds” was first explored more than twenty-five years ago and more than 1,000 actual fossil specimens are known but these strange creatures, a bizarre type of invertebrate that is difficult to place in taxonomic phyla has just been formally named and described.  The newest member of the Burgess Shale ecosystem is to be known as Siphusauctum gregarium.  The formal scientific name describes the filtering feeding mechanism with which this animal obtained nutrients as well as recognising the gregarious nature of this bizarre Cambrian beastie.  The name means (gregarious, large cup).  Although, not living in a colonial structure such as a sponge colony or a coral, these animals did congregate together, perhaps exploiting a particularly rich feeding area.  One slab of shale contains the remains of at least sixty-five individual animals.  It seems that the group (or should we refer to them as a “field”) was wiped out when that area of the seabed suffered some catastrophic event and was covered in a sudden deposit of sediment.

The fossils indicate that these creatures reached lengths in excess of 20 centimetres and a paper analysing these has been published online in the scientific journal “The Public Library of Science”.

Strange Filter Feeder of the Middle Cambrian – S. gregarium

Bizarre filter feeder of the Middle Cambrian

Picture Credit: M. Collins/Royal Ontario Museum/University of Toronto/PLoS One

The organism seems to be adapted to a benthic existence (living on the sea floor).  There is a single hold-fast structure which would have been partially submerged in the mud helping the organism to remain in one place.  A long stem, with an an internal tube, surrounded by a sheath supports the feeding mechanism and the gut above the sea floor.  This new type of stalked filter feeder had its gut, anus, other organs including a simple, straight digestive tract housed in an egg-shaped structure that was perched on top of the stalk.  This bulbous structure (known as a calyx)  resembles the head of a tulip flower.  A flexible sheath covers the calyx, there are six small, circular openings at the base of this structure and a central orifice at the top (believed to be the anus), surrounded by other smaller openings.  The creature seems to have a six-fold radial symmetry with each of its six segments having cilia (fine hair-like appendages), surrounding a body cavity that contained the stomach and other organs.

The paper’s lead author Lorna O’Brien, a PhD student at the University of Toronto, postulates that S. gregarium was a filter feeder, with water passing through the openings and the fine hair-like appendages could “comb out” food particles.  These creatures probably were able to actively pump water through themselves rather than passively waiting for food to drift through their various openings.  Like many other strange creatures from the Burgess Shale, scientists are unsure what animals alive to day are the descendants of these creatures, or whether S. gregarium represents an evolution of a life-form that simply left no modern descendants – a sort of evolutionary experiment that failed to work.

Student Lorna stated:

“Most interesting is that this feeding system appears to be unique among animals.  Recent advances have linked many bizarre Burgess Shale animals as primitive members of many animal groups that are found today but Siphusauctum defies this trend.  We do not know where it fits in relation to other organisms.”

How these strange creatures relate to modern phyla remains unclear, Lorna and her PhD supervisor, Jean-Bernard Caron (Curator of Invertebrate Palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto), suggest that another bizarre fossilised creature Dinomischus – a stalked Cambrian filter feeder may have a similar role in the ecosystem, but S. gregarium seems to have lived at much greater depths and formed an much larger proportion of the fauna. Dinomischus spp  seem to be solitary, but S. gregarium formed large beds.  Nearly all the specimens known are compressed and fragmented, just one specimen has been found so far that was compressed vertically to reveal the six-fold radial symmetry.  It is likely that these animals were soft-bodied, but their relationship to earlier fauna, such as the Ediacaran fauna also is unclear.

Some of the Best Preserved Fossils of Siphusauctum gregarium

Tip-toe Through the "Tulips"

Picture Credit: Royal Ontario Museum/University of Toronto/PLoS One

The Burgess Shale (and the Chengjiang – another important Cambrian fossil site, in Yunnan, China), provide an amazing insight into the diversity of life in the oceans around 500 million years ago.  Who knows what other bizarre fossils lie awaiting discovery and study in these extensive fossil beds.

Not all Horned Dinosaurs were Huge

Ask a child what their favourite plant-eating dinosaur is and the likes of the horned dinosaur Triceratops will be high on their list.  Horned dinosaurs, creatures such as Triceratops, Styracosaurus and Chasmosaurus are perennial favourites with young dinosaur fans.

This dinosaur clade, were one of the last groups of dinosaurs to flourish, rapidly diversifying into a myriad of different types and surviving right up to the end of the age of dinosaurs (end of the Cretaceous geological period).  Triceratops with its two large brow horns and its third, smaller horn sitting further forward on its enormous skull is easily recognised by budding young palaeontologists.  Part of the popularity of this particular group of dinosaurs might be that they are very easy to recognise and most of the dinosaur’s names are not too difficult to pronounce.  In terms of model and replica ranges, dinosaur model manufacturers often include at least one or two representatives of this family within their model ranges.

Another plus, for the Ceratopsida, is that many of the largest and most striking lived in the United States alongside the likes of Tyrannosaurus rex.  No child’s dinosaur collection is complete without a Triceratops or Torosaurus to battle it out with the “King of the Tyrant Lizards”.

For palaeontologists there is still a great deal to learn about this type of dinosaur, otherwise known as the Ceratopsians.   There are very many gaps in our knowledge concerning these Ornithischian (bird-hipped), vegetarians some of which grew to the size of a school bus.  Scientists in the 20th Century concluded that these dinosaurs originated in Asia and then migrated over to North America during the Late Cretaceous when there was a land bridge between these two continents (the Bering Land Bridge).  However, recent fossil discoveries has provided scientists with evidence of Ceratopsida in places that palaeontologists did not expect them to be found.

Small Ceratopsids have been associated with the Hateg Formation (southern Europe – Romania), plus there have been fragmentary fossils found in Belgium and some fossilised teeth, remarkably similar to the teeth from a horned dinosaur discovered in Sweden.  Based on this evidence, it seems that horned dinosaurs may have migrated into Europe from Asia as well as into North America.  The geographical spread and the diversification of these dinosaurs is more complicated than previously thought.

One of the questions, that our experts get asked during their school visits to teach about dinosaurs, is which horned dinosaurs were the smallest?  This is a tricky question as ironically, more is known about the very largest Ceratopsians such as Triceratops and Styracosaurus than the very small ones.

The fossils of the smallest horned dinosaurs have been found to date in China and Mongolia.  The fossils indicate creatures of around one to two metres in length.  Competing for the title of the smallest horned dinosaur known to date are the likes of  Liaceratops which is believed to have been about fifty centimetres long,  Archaeoceratops one metre long, with Helioceratops also a contender at just over a metre in length.  As these horned dinosaurs are all small and found in rocks older than their North American relatives it is thought that the horned dinosaur group originated in China.

One of the smallest and most bizarre horned dinosaurs discovered to date is Koreaceratops – called as its fossils (a single specimen) were found in South Korea.  This dinosaur, which stood perhaps one metre tall, had a broad, deep tail and it has been suggested that this particular Ceratopsian was adapted to live in water – a sort of pygmy, prehistoric hippopotamus.

A Scale Drawing of the Swimming Ceratopsian – Koreaceratops

One of the smallest and most bizarre horned dinosaurs

Picture Credit: Everything Dinosaur

Certainly, Koreaceratops if it was a horned dinosaur that lived in water, would be a contender for being the smallest horned dinosaur known to date and also one of the most bizarre.

Fierce Brazilian Predator that Roamed Long Before the Dinosaurs

Long before the dinosaurs evolved, terrestrial habitats were dominated by different kinds of reptiles, some of which were fearsome hunters, larger than most of the land carnivores found today.  A team of South American scientists have published a paper on one such formidable creature – an animal with huge canine teeth like a modern day tiger, but weighing twice as much as the biggest “big cats” around.

Named Pampaphoneus biccai this new genus of ancient reptile is believed to be the earliest, large predator discovered to date in South America.  The name means “Bicca’s Pampas Killer”, honouring the land owner (José Bicca), as the fossils were found on his farm.  Described as a Dinocephalian Therapsid, a group of Late Permian to Triassic reptile-like synapsids that include the ancestors of mammals, this animal was probably the top predator in the region in the Late Permian.

Pampaphoneus biccai – Vicious Permian Predator

The "Pampas Killer" on the Hunt

Picture Credit: Voltaire Neto/Wits

Known from just a single skull, the fossils were first unearthed back in 2008, but the scientific paper which has been published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was delayed as it took many hundreds of hours to carefully piece the skull together from the many fragments that had been found at the fossil site.

The discovery will help scientists to understand how this type of Therapsid reptile diversified towards the end of the Permian period – Guadalupian/Lopingian epochs (265-260 million years ago), as they gradually replaced the Pelycosaurs (animals such as the sail-backed reptile Dimetrodon), as the dominant large vertebrates on land.

To discover exposed sediments on the extensive grasslands of Brazil, the scientists employed images from Google Earth to assist them in their search.  Satellite images helped the team identify potential fossil sites which were not covered by vegetation, thus permitting the rock layers to be explored more easily.  This is not the first time that satellite technology has been employed to search for fossils in this way, many dinosaur fossils have been found using this technique.  With much of the Earth’s surface comprehensively mapped, scientists are able to pin point with great accuracy potential fossil yielding dig sites.  In the past, such locations were often discovered by painstakingly walking over an area or relying on reports of unusual finds from locals.

The restored skull measures over 35 centimetres in length.  It indicates that with its over-sized canines and other saw-like teeth this predator had a powerful bite.  Using more complete fossil specimens found in the Karoo Basin region of South Africa, the Brazilian palaeontologists have been able to build up a picture of what this four-footed predator looked like.   They estimate that it would have been over 3 metres in length, weighing in excess of 300 kilograms.  This makes it larger and heavier than the largest species of “big cat” predator found today.  Consider the prospect of a Komodo Dragon with the power and strength of a Siberian Tiger, and you are beginning to get an impression of what “Pampas Killer” would have been like.

The Restored Skull of Pampaphoneus biccai

Fierce Permian Predator

Picture Credit: Dr. Juan Cisneros

The Brazilian scientists worked with other palaeontologists and experts from Turkey and South Africa as they studied the skull bones and began to piece them together.  South Africa, the region known as the Karoo Basin, is a particularly rich source of Late Permian reptile fossils.  During the Late Permian, most of the land masses were squeezed together to form a single super-sized continent known as Pangea.  The southernmost portion of Pangea consisted of South America, Africa, India, Antarctica and Australia.  Studies of fossil plants found in these regions indicate that Pampaphoneus biccai lived in a relatively cool, forested climate.  This suggests that during the Late Permian, Brazil was actually much closer to the South Pole than it is today.

Scientists hope to use the fossil evidence from South America to help build up a picture of Therapsid diversification and migration during the Late Permian.  P. biccai may have been a very formidable predator, but this type of reptile was doomed to extinction just a few million years later.  Changing sea levels, an asteroid/comet impact and extensive flood basalt eruptions in what was to become Siberia led to the perhaps the most devastating mass extinction event identified to date in the fossil record.  Ninety-five percent of all types of life on Earth became extinct at the end of the Permian.  The Therapsid group of reptiles were severely affected.  Some twenty-one families of Therapsids (63 percent) died out.

Dusty Cabinet Provides Insight into the Formative Years of Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin, was an English naturalist who significantly influenced modern scientific thinking when he published his theory concerning natural selection in 1859.  As a young man, Darwin travelled on the HMS Beagle as the resident naturalist and companion to the ship’s captain.  The five year voyage impressed upon the young Darwin a sense of the natural world’s beauty and subtlety.  He began to pose searching questions about the complex relationships between organisms, the Earth’s structure and anthropology that led him to question the accepted doctrine regarding the origins of life.

His observations and meticulous notes provided Darwin with the materials needed to develop a new theory that species evolved by a process of  natural selection.  Any materials, notes and specimens collected by Darwin on his epic journey are extremely precious.  To discover an entire cabinet of prepared fossil specimens collected by the great man himself and a number of Darwin’s peers is truly remarkable.  For one young research student, an examination of an old cabinet stored in a “gloomy corner” of the British Geological Survey, has provided an astonishing insight into the formative years of one of the most important scientists of the 19th Century.

Howard Falcon-Lang, a palaeontologist at Royal Holloway (University of London), discovered a total of 314 prepared slides stored in an old wooden cabinet.  The slides represent fossil specimens, many of which were collected by Darwin during his voyage on the Beagle.

One of the Fossilised Slides and Darwin’s Label

A slide from the newly re-discovered Collection

Picture Credit: British Geological Survey

This slide shows a piece of fossil wood that was collected from the Island of Chiloe, Chile in 1834, probably by Darwin himself.   Darwin’s label can also be seen.  The specimen dates from approximately 40 million years ago (Palaeogene Period).

The slides were discovered at the British Geological Survey’s storage site, located at Keyworth, Nottinghamshire (England).  The British Geological Survey is home to more than three million fossils collected over the 180 years or so since the organisation was founded.  Usually the specimens are catalogued with great care and precision, however, this collection, compiled by the Victorian botanist Joseph Hooker, a close friend of Darwin, was not catalogued correctly and had lain forgotten in a dark, and dusty corner.  Hooker had been given the job of sorting out this part of the collection when he worked for the British Geological Survey in 1846.  Unfortunately, before he could complete the task, he was offered the chance to join an exhibition to the Himalayas, so he simply stored all the slides in a cabinet.

The slides are of fossil wood and fungi.  The slides were made by cutting very thin sections through the fossils and then polishing them so that they can become almost transparent, revealing their internal structure.  This was one of only a few techniques known to the Victorian scientists for looking at the internal structure of fossils.  In those days, X-ray machines, CAT scans and the like had not been invented, so the only way that the internal structure of a piece of petrified wood could be studied was by cutting slices off the actual fossil material.

The highly polished specimens were then placed between two sheets of glass so they could be studied under a microscope.  These fascinating specimens provide an insight into the study of fossils in the 19th Century.  The cabinet contains material collected by Darwin, Hooker and a number of other notable scientists including William Nicol, a pioneer in the study of the internal structure of rocks.

Using a torch to illuminate the contents of the dark cabinet, the first slide that Dr. Falcon-Long picked up had the label “C. Darwin Esq.”

Dr. Falcon-Long commented:

“It took me a while just to convince myself that it was Darwin’s signature.”

He added:

“It was quite an important and overlooked specimen.  There are 100 million-year-old fossil trees from the latter age of the dinosaurs.  It’s real Jules Verne stuff, and scientists are only now starting to study it and understand its scientific importance.”

The cabinet was moved to the British Geological Survey’s offices in Charing Cross (London) in 1851.  It was transferred to the Geological Museum (South Kensington – London) in 1935 before being moved to the Nottinghamshire site.  However, in all that time, as far as anybody knows, the cabinet was never opened.

Dr John Ludden, of the Geological Survey, said:

‘This is quite a remarkable discovery.  It makes one wonder what else might be hiding in our collections.”

Who knows what else may lie, awaiting discovery amongst the vast number of specimens stored at the British Geological Survey’s various locations.

New Species of Plant-Eating Dinosaur From China

The Chinese New Year, the Year of the Dragon, is rapidly approaching and true to form a new dinosaur species is discovered in China.  This part of Asia could lay claim to being the most prolific location on the planet for new dinosaur discoveries at the moment.  Over the last twenty or so years, more new types of dinosaur have been discovered and named than in the proceeding two hundred years.  This new dinosaur, described as a member of the Ornithopoda (bird-hipped dinosaurs – Ornithischians) adds greatly to the current knowledge of this type of Chinese dinosaur, as up until now only a handful of Chinese Ornithopods have been scientifically described.

The dinosaur jointly researched by a team of Chinese and Japanese scientists has been named Yueosaurus tiantaiensis.  A paper detailing the  research work has been published in the scientific journal “Cretaceous Research”.

Known from just a single, well-preserved but incomplete specimen Y. tiantaiensis is believed to have been less than a metre tall, and little more than 1.5 metres long.  It has been described as a basal Ornithopod.  The fossils of these type of dinosaurs have been found on all continents but fossil specimens from China are rare.  These animals possessed beaks, were probably mainly vegetarian but some species may have eaten insects and small vertebrates.  They had hind legs longer than their front legs, and were probably facultative bipeds, (running on hind legs usually, but moving around on all fours if required).  Most basal Ornithopods were gracile and small although their descendants were to become the most widespread and common large plant-eating dinosaurs by the Late Cretaceous.

An Illustration of a Typical Basal Ornithopod

Fast running, new species of Chinese Dinosaur

Picture Credit: Everything Dinosaur

The original fossil material was found in 1998 when construction workers uncovered the remains of this small dinosaur during a road building project in Tiantai county,  in the eastern province of Zhejiang.  The location where this prehistoric herbivore’s remains were found was the inspiration behind the specific name of this dinosaur.  The fossils were intensively studied at the Zhejiang Museum of Natural History and it was from this analysis that the joint Sino/Japanese team were able to ascribe the remains to an entirely new species.

Yueosaurus Tiantaiensis lived during the Cretaceous geological period.  The fossils associated with this dinosaur were removed from strata approximately 100 million years old (Albian faunal stage).  The full name of this new dinosaur, one of half a dozen new species described from Zhejiang province in the last twelve months; means ”Tiantai Yue Dinosaur” in Chinese, as it was discovered in the present-day Tiantai county and the region used to be the territory of the ancient state of Yue.  So the name reflects both modern and ancient China.

The new species represents the southernmost basal Ornithopod dinosaur discovered to date on the continent of Asia.  It is surprising how few of this type of dinosaur is known from China, especially given the extensive fossil record of animals such as the related Hypsilophodontids from North America and Europe.  It could be that small Ornithopods are rare in Asia when compared to the northern hemisphere for example, or there could be a bias in the fossil record with these small dinosaurs, perhaps being under-represented in the fossil record.

The closest living analogs to dinosaurs such as  Y. tiantaiensis are wallabies, deer and small antelope.  Fossilised burrows found in North America and what would have been the polar regions of Australia suggest that some types of small Ornithopods may have lived underground.

Deposits Magazine- the International Rock and Fossil Magazine

As subscribers to this magazine we thought it high time that we wrote a brief review on this quarterly bulletin which concerns itself with all things related to geology, palaeontology and fossil collecting.  Team members at Everything Dinosaur have been readers for some time but as yet we have not put anything down in print with regards to this particular publication.  However, with the threat to the foreshore at Bracklesham Bay (West Sussex) we could effectively “kill two birds with one stone” as it were, combining a review with a bit of publicity concerning the campaign to save the Bracklesham Bay site as a location for family fossil hunts.

First the review of Deposits.  This is a full colour glossy, fifty-two page high quality Earth science magazine.  It is aimed at both beginners, enthusiasts and professionals.  The magazine has gained a strong reputation worldwide, for its superb quality of articles in topical areas.   Certainly, each issue does cover a great deal of ground (no pun intended).  Take for example issue 28 (Autumn 2011) which ever since its arrival before Christmas, it has been in residence in our board room available for all the staff to read.  In this particular edition, topics covered include an insight into the working day of a North Sea wellsite geologist, Palaeozoic fossils to be found in the southern Alps of Austria, Ammonites from New Guinea and the last part of a highly informative overview of the geology of Barbados.

The Front Cover of Deposits Magazine

Issue 28 - Deposits Magazine

Picture Credit: UKGE

One of the great benefits of this magazine, is that it is written for the general reader.  Technical areas of geology are discussed using terms and concepts that everyone including casual fossil collectors can understand.  Scientific papers are summarised in such a way that much of the technical language is removed thus permitting all readers to learn about new discoveries and such like.  We at Everything Dinosaur, try to do the same for aspects of vertebrate palaeontology within this humble web log, so we greatly appreciated the efforts of the editorial team behind this excellent publication.

An example of this would be the article on the fossils of the Carpathian Basin (a substantial and highly fossiliferous region of eastern Europe covering Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and portions of Austria).  The authors of what will be a series of articles about the Carpathian Basin (Gareth Dyke and Istvan Fozy), have provided a well-written and hugely enjoyable article and we look forward to reading more about this fascinating area of eastern Europe in future issues of the magazine.

Now for the plea for help.  The foreshore at Bracklesham Bay running to Selsey in West Sussex is under threat and could potentially be closed to fossil collectors.  The local district council intends to close the beach to families, visitors and fossil collectors to the east of the Bracklesham car park, as they want to designate this area as a kite surfing zone.

We know the Bracklesham Bay area very well, although it has been a few years since we visited this site whilst in the Chichester area.  It is a beautiful part of the world and a very popular location for fossil collectors as the foreshore has abundant fossils, bivalves, sharks teeth, teeth from rays, gastropods etc. all dating from the Palaeogene Period (50-45 million years ago).  The site has easy access and fossils can simply be picked up off the beach, it is a great location for families and many a  young fossil collector has started their collection and fired their enthusiasm for geology after a visit to this part of West Sussex.  Proposed changes to sea defences are already threatening the site, but if the Bracklesham Bay site is closed to fossil collectors this would be a great shame.

Whilst we accept that this location is also very popular with wind surfers and surfers, it remains one of the most family friendly fossil hunting locations in the whole of southern England and as such if this site or part of it were to be closed to families, then this would be extremely sad.

A Facebook campaign has been set up to try to lobby Chichester District Council and to influence any decisions taken over the future of Bracklesham Bay: Safeguarding Bracklesham Bay Campaign

It would be very helpful if readers could log onto this Facebook page and write a message of support etc.