All about dinosaurs, fossils and prehistoric animals by Everything Dinosaur team members.
5 05, 2016

A Dinosaur Display

By | May 5th, 2016|General Teaching, Key Stage 1/2|Comments Off on A Dinosaur Display

An Attractive Classroom Dinosaur Display

Whilst visiting Great Wood Primary school in Lancashire to deliver a dinosaur themed workshop for two classes of Year 2 children, Everything Dinosaur’s fossil expert was given the opportunity to view the spacious classrooms.  The school, located in Morecambe is expanding and a number of building projects have taken place but skilful planning has kept any disruption to the teaching scheme of work to a minimum.  The Year 2 children are just starting their dinosaur term topic and under the enthusiastic tutelage of the teaching team they have already explored a number of key ideas related to life in the past.

A Dinosaur Drawing

Dinosaurs – Part of a Display Area in One of the Classrooms

Dinosaur drawing.

Blake sent a dinosaur drawing to Everything Dinosaur. Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

The photograph above shows a dinosaur drawing created by young Blake.  The dinosaur drawing exercise was undertaken as part of an extension activity.  This will help to tie in cross-curriculum aspects of the term topic, in this instance, scientific working exploring dinosaurs being linked to geography.  The wall, part of a series of “wow walls” set up by the teachers to showcase the children’s work all have plenty of space on them to allow some of the work undertaken by the children, examples of dinosaur posters and fiction writing, to be posted up so that parents and other school visitors can view how the topic has been developed.

For dinosaur themed toys and games: Dinosaur Toys and Gifts.

Dinosaur Workshop

The children really enjoyed the dinosaur workshops we delivered and given the exciting scheme of work the teaching team have developed, we are confident that these budding young scientists will find this topic great fun.

Visit Everything Dinosaur’s award-winning website: Everything Dinosaur.

5 05, 2016

Ancient Multi-cellular Fossils from New Burgess Shale Type Deposit

By | May 5th, 2016|Dinosaur and Prehistoric Animal News Stories, Main Page, Photos/Pictures of Fossils|0 Comments

Ancient Seaweed Fossils from Mongolia

Research conducted by a team of international scientists from Mongolia, Japan and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (United States), have identified two new species of ancient multi-cellular marine algae from a newly discovered Burgess Shale Type deposit located in the Zavkhan Basin of Zavkhan Province (western Mongolia).

Fossils of Ediacaran Algae

The fossils are exceptionally rare and date from approximately 555 million years ago (Ediacaran geological period), they are helping researchers to pinpoint the development of complex lifeforms from the Kingdom Plantae, the ancestors of all plants that exist today.   A paper on the research into the thin shale beds (representing the  Zuun-Arts biota), has been published in the online, open access journal “Scientific Reports”.

Lead Author of the Study Associate Professor Stephen Dornbos Holds One of the Fossil Specimens

Ediacaran fossil specimen held by palaeontologist Stephen Dornbos.

Ediacaran fossil specimen held by palaeontologist Stephen Dornbos.

Picture credit: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Exceptionally Rare Fossils

The preservation of soft-bodied organisms such as these remains of algae are exceptionally rare in the fossil record.  One such method of preservation is carbonisation in fine-grained strata.  These deposits of exceptional preservation are referred to as Burgess Shale Type deposits, after the famous Cambrian site in British Columbia.

For fossils and replicas of Burgess Shale animals such as Anomalocaris and trilobites (whilst stocks last): CollectA Age of Dinosaurs Popular Figures.

Burgess Shale Type deposits preserving the remains of organisms that lived before the Burgess Shales themselves were formed, can provide scientists with a tantalising glimpse into marine life prior to the evolution of animals with hard bodies such as exoskeletons and shells, but only a handful of pre-Cambrian (Ediacaran) Burgess Shale Type deposits are known.  The research team were exploring ancient marine rocks in western Mongolia when the thin black shales containing carbonised remnants of the prehistoric seaweeds were discovered.

Chinggiskhaania bifurcata and Zuunartsphyton delicatum

Two species of multi-cellular marine algae have been identified, the most common fossils representing the newly described Chinggiskhaania bifurcata.  The other species, known from just three fossil specimens has been named Zuunartsphyton delicatum.

A Cross Polarised Light Image of C. bifurcata

Chinggiskhaania bifurcata fossil (scale bar = 5mm)

Chinggiskhaania bifurcata fossil (scale bar = 5 mm).

Picture credit:  University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Under polarised light the structure of the fine filaments of the ancient seaweed can be clearly seen.

Contrast this picture with the photograph of Stephen Dornbos holding a specimen.  The fossils consist of aluminosilicate clay minerals and some carbon, just like the Burgess Shale fossils, and as such, spotting fossils is a very difficult task.  Natural light has to strike the fossil at the correct angle, otherwise the specimen cannot be distinguished from the surrounding matrix.

Commenting on the discovery of the Zuun-Arts biota, Associate Professor Stephen Dornbos stated:

“This discovery helps tell us more about life in a period that is relatively undocumented.  It can help us correlate the changes in life forms with what we know about the Earth’s ancient environments.  It is a major evolutionary step toward life as we know it today.”

Extremely Hard to Classify

Burgess Shale Type fossils dating from the Proterozoic Eon usually are classified as one of two categories, algae, like seaweed, which is the case of the  Zuun-Arts biota, or the remains of extinct types of organisms so unlike living organisms today, that identifying what they might have been like is very difficult to do.  As a result, interpretation of Ediacaran fossil material is a very controversial area of palaeontology.

Explaining this problem, Stephen Dornbos commented:

“If you find a fossil from this time frame, you really need strong support for your interpretation of what it was.   The further back you go in geologic time, the more contested the fossil interpretations are.”

Visit Everything Dinosaur’s website: Everything Dinosaur.

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