Why Were Sails So Popular 300 Million Years Ago

Very recommendable!

(1) Why Were Sails So Popular 300 Million Years Ago - YouTube

What Helped Mammals Survive the Asteroid Impact?

Recommendable!

(518) What Helped Mammals Survive the Asteroid Impact? - YouTube

Did poop/gut evolve with helped fuel the Cambrian explosion?

Amazing stuff! How did bowel movement and excrement develop in the first place? Still an open question, I believe.

One animal's poop is another animal's treasure!

"The driving force behind this biological big bang, they argue in a recent Trends in Ecology & Evolution review paper, just might have been feces.

While many early animals had already appeared in the fossil record during the preceding Ediacaran period, the Cambrian explosion marked the emergence of animal guts, which naturally produced a whole bunch of animal poop. Even so, fossilized turds—known as coprolites—from this time period are hard to come by, and those that are unearthed tend not to attract much attention. Many are left to gather dust in archives, ... or simply abandoned at the dig site.

For the new study, Kimmig and co-author Russell Bicknell analyzed coprolites recovered from more than 35 deposits around the globe, all dating back to before and during the Cambrian explosion. The prehistoric poo came in all shapes and sizes, from microscopic pellets to coprolites measuring several centimeters long and packed with crushed shells and other bits of undigested food. Some had dissolved upon striking the seafloor, creating something evocatively referred to as an “exploded fecal carpet.” (Maybe those marine critters should have laid off the iceberg lettuce...)

The researchers discovered that, as the Cambrian progressed, animal dung became larger, more common, and more complex, reflecting the development of more sophisticated digestive systems. As more and more of this excrement accumulated, the study authors reason, it would have carried organic matter and valuable nutrients from the rich shallows down into the deep ocean, potentially making these environments more habitable. “Together, these fossils show animals were beginning to process and then redistribute organic matter using entirely novel pipelines ,” ... Such a “fecal revolution,” they explain, may have set the stage for an eruption of new life. ..."

From the highlights and abstract:

"Highlights

The ‘Cambrian Radiation’ comprises the rapid diversification of marine organisms and ecological niches during the Ediacaran to Cambrian Periods. It is also the time during which animals with guts first appear. The appearance of guts, in turn, leads to fecal matter, fossils of which are preserved as coprolites.

Fecal matter is rarely preserved in the Cambrian. However, in a few assemblages, the diversity and development of fecal matter are observed. There was little fecal matter available at the onset of the Cambrian, while larger and more diverse fecal matter became available by the middle Cambrian.

We assess the effect that increased availability of fecal matter had on deeper water environments and how this made such environments habitable for Cambrian organisms.

Combining these observations with data on digestive tracts and biogeochemistry of nutrient cycling in the Cambrian demonstrates that fecal matter played a significant role in driving the Cambrian Radiation.

Abstract

Coprolites—fossil material extruded from an animal’s digestive system—represent a rare insight into trophic interactions in deep time. However, while the first animals appeared about 600 million years ago, the first coprolites are only observed in the earliest Cambrian.

Conversely, in modern oceans, fecal pellets are an important part of the particulate organic carbon in the water column and the global flux of organic carbon to deep water.

In this review, we analyze the impact of the advent of fecal matter on the Cambrian Radiation by examining coprolites, analyzing animal biology, and contextualizing this through the role of fecal pellets in the oceanic nutrient cycle. We illustrate the central position of coprolites in driving the Cambrian Radiation."

ScienceAdviser

On the origin of feces: how animal poo drove Earth’s greatest evolutionary event

How an ‘explosion of excrement’ changed Earth's ecosystems forever

The Cambrian fecal revolution: Fueling the Cambrian Radiation (no public access)

A curious collection of Cambrian coprolites (fossilized poop)

Life During the Apocalypse (mass extinction)

Recommendable!

(624) Life During the Apocalypse - YouTube

How did mammals from North America move into South America millions of years ago

Amazing stuff!

"... researchers have found fossil evidence that animals from different latitudes of North America and South America mixed long before the Panamanian land bridge permanently linked the two continents about 3 million years ago.

Since around 10 million years ago, mammals — primarily small ones like sloths and coatis — found a way across the watery barrier. Only larger mammals had to wait for the permanent land corridor. ...

Biologists thought that only after the isthmus formed did animals surge north and south, what biologists refer to as the Great American Biotic Interchange or GABI. That resulted in the extinction of a lot of South American species as North American species took over.

Yet this picture of mammal movements across continents is too simple, ... paleontologists argue. After assembling and analyzing a new database of fossil mammals discovered in Mexico, they conclude that northern North American animals had already migrated into southern North America by about 10 million years ago, where they waited around in a kind of holding pen until opportunities arose for some of them to continue crossing to the south starting about 7 million years ago. ...

During that pre-GABI time, smaller mammals — heralded by racoon-like coatis and ringtails and small rodents — moved to South America via some kind of intermittent corridor, by island hopping through the Caribbean or by rafting on vegetation. Only one major South American group, the sloths, moved to North America. ..."

From the abstract of the Perspective:

"Whenever plants and animals newly come together, there will be some winners and some losers. This was the case for the Great American Biotic Interchange (GABI), which occurred ~2.8 million years ago (Ma), when the emergence of the Isthmus of Panama connected the continents of South and North America. Although species moved both northward and southward during the GABI, a massive taxonomic asymmetry arose between the two continents, with a much greater proportion of species in South America having a North American origin than the opposite. ... Tseng et al. report that a large fossil dataset from Mexico helps to uncover the events that primed mammals for movement across the Isthmus."

From the editor's summary and abstract:

"Editor’s summary

For millions of years after the breakup of the supercontinent Gondwana, South America was disconnected from other landforms, a time period that has been referred to as its “splendid isolation.”

This isolation allowed for the evolution of mammals with distinctive features, including xenarthrans, sprassodont carnivores, and notoungulates.

The formation of the Panamanian land bridge facilitated connection of North and South American faunas, with a bias from north to south. Tseng et al. looked at fossils from low latitudes in México and found that northern mammals accumulated in the region before the connection (see the Perspective by McGuire and Williams). This allowed for more rapid dispersal south and further supports that the land bridge first formed during the Pliocene rather than the Miocene. ...

Abstract

The movement of taxa between North and South America across the Panamanian land bridge, known as the Great American Biotic Interchange (GABI), established modern-day mammal assemblages in the Americas, heralding the decisive end of what has been called the “splendid isolation” of the South American fauna.

Lacking substantive low-latitude records, previous work on this pattern relied on South American and temperate North American fossils to conclude that pulsed interchanges began about 2.8 million years ago (mya).

Based on new low-latitude fossil data from México, we found evidence for a prolonged, triphasic interchange.

Phase 1 consisted of the initial accumulation of northern higher-latitude mammals in a Mexican “holding pen” beginning 10 mya. 

Dispersal began in phase 2, with a strong north-south gradient and increasing biogeographic connections (7 to 3 mya).

The final phase consisted of the already well-described taxonomic pulses (from ~2.8 mya)."

ScienceAdviser

When mammals crossed between continents (no public access)

North and South America weren’t always connected, but their mammals still found a way to intermingle (original news release) "Before the Panamanian land bridge formed about 3 million years ago, mammals on the two continents were isolated — or so biologists thought. New fossils show that they found ways to mix long before that."

A 10-million-year biogeographic holding pen primed the Great American Biotic Interchange (no public access) "Before the Panamanian land bridge formed about 3 million years ago, mammals on the two continents were isolated — or so biologists thought. New fossils show that they found ways to mix long before that."

This illustration depicts (left) large North American mammals — counterclockwise from top, mammoths, llamas, tapirs, peccaries and saber-toothed cats — waiting in a kind of holding pen in Mexico for the bridge to form.

In South America, the mammalian interchange involved, counterclockwise from top, ground sloths, marsupials, capybaras, armadillos, glyptodonts and, incidentally, terror birds. While North American mammals took over in South America, only about 10% of North American mammals today are derived from mammals that originated in South America.

Saber-toothed tiger suffered painful spinal tumors

Amazing stuff! Was the saber-toothed tiger unfit for life and evolution eliminated this species?

Cancer is not a modern disease!

"With its fearsome, fast-growing fangs and burly forelimbs, the saber-toothed cat (Smilodon fatalis) was built to kill. According to new research, however, there was one foe these prehistoric predators couldn’t overpower.

P.S. There appears to be some controversy as what to call this extinct animal, but to call it a cat as done by AAAS  and the authors of the research article is also wrong since it was much bigger than today's cats!

During the Pleistocene, many saber-toothed cats met their doom in California’s sticky La Brea Tar Pits, likely lured there by the distress calls of trapped prey.

In a new study, scientists analyzed these animals’ fossilized spines, ultimately identifying 3722 vertebrae representing at least 849 adult cats.

The team found numerous abnormalities, including dozens of incompletely developed or fused vertebrae and hundreds that had formed incorrectly. Three vertebrae retrieved from three different pits also showed evidence of spinal nerve tumors, which would have caused severe pain and reduced limb function, likely impairing the animals’ ability to hunt.

Carcasses stuck in the tar pits would have been especially tempting. “ A trapped prey animal is very attractive for a predator in pain,”  ..."

From the abstract:

"Tracing the health of extinct populations is important. Documenting this in deep time is challenging, but skeletal markers of disease can be preserved in fossils.

Notably, a high incidence of spinal malformations has been recorded among specimens found in the La Brea Tar Pits, possibly because of an accumulation of expressed deleterious alleles that caused disturbances in developmental processes. The exceptional preservation of hundreds of specimens of the La Brea saber-toothed cat Smilodon fatalis allows us to examine pathologies within and across populations, with dire wolves from the same site and extant large-bodied felids serving as a basis for comparison.

We identified three vertebral specimens from S. fatalis with changes indicating a possible spinal nerve tumor (SNT). The prevalence-like estimate was 353 per 100,000 individuals. The observed prevalence of foraminal widening compatible with presumed SNT among the La Brea S. fatalis sample appears high relative to reported human incidence estimates of 0.22–0.38 per 100,000 individuals, although these values are not directly comparable because the fossil estimate reflects skeletal occurrence in a taphonomically biased assemblage rather than clinical incidence.

The reason for this high incidence in Smilodon fatalis is unclear, but in humans, many SNTs are associated with genetic mutations. Due to the presumed inbreeding toward the end of the species’ existence, a similar mutation could have contributed to the development of the presumed SNTs in S. fatalis."

ScienceAdviser

Saber-toothed cats became inbred—and struggled to move—before they went extinct "Population declines led to spike in spinal deformities and rare tumors, fossil study suggest"

Saber-toothed cats' spinal tumors may show how inbred species struggled to survive

Saber-toothed cats became inbred—and struggled to move—before they went extinct

Foraminal widening indicating a spinal nerve tumor in the saber-tooth cat Smilodon fatalis from Rancho La Brea (open access)

Source

Fig. 1 Photograph of the cranial L7 of HC 12233 showing a smoothly outlined left-sided foraminal widening and bone remodeling forming a ‘cast’-like indentation (arrow) of a presumed SNT (black space-occupying lesion in the drawing) at the level of the foramen.

Paleontologists have published their first comprehensive analysis of a giant fossil site in southern China

Amazing stuff!

"Paleontologists have published their first comprehensive analysis of a giant fossil site in southern China containing the remains of a 512-million-year-old marine ecosystem. The team analyzed thousands of specimens from the site representing 153 species—nearly 60 percent of them new to science."

"The fossils date from the Cambrian period, which began 541 million years ago. The early Cambrian saw an explosion of diversity in animal life which gave rise to most of the major groups alive today.

But this flourishing came to a halt with the Sinsk event around 513.5 million years ago, when oxygen levels in the ocean fell, killing off several groups of animals.

Han Zeng at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology in China and his colleagues began finding fossils at a quarry in the mountainous region of Huayuan County in Hunan Province in 2021.

So far, they have analysed 8681 fossils from 153 species, nearly 60 per cent of which are new to science. ..."

From the abstract:

"Cambrian Burgess Shale-type (BST) fossil biotas document nearly complete snapshots of the oldest Phanerozoic marine ecosystems. However, the rarity of deposits bearing high-diversity BST biotas has restricted our understanding of the evolutionary and ecological dynamics of the Cambrian explosion.

Here we report the Huayuan biota—a lower Cambrian (Stage 4, approximately 512 million years ago) BST Lagerstätte from an outer shelf, deep-water setting of the Yangtze Block in Hunan, South China.

The Huayuan biota yields remarkable taxonomic richness, comprising 153 animal species of 16 phylum-level clades dominated by arthropods, poriferans and cnidarians, among which 59% of species are new. The biota is comprised overwhelmingly of soft-bodied forms that include preserved cellular tissues.

The complex ecosystem contained diverse radiodonts and pelagic tunicates, filling a gap of high-diversity BST biotas from the Cambrian Stage 4.

Critically, multivariate ordination based on a global dataset of Cambrian BST biotas places the Huayuan biota within a main transition of marine animal ecosystems between Cambrian Age 3 and Age 4.

Network analysis reveals close faunal connections between the Huayuan and Burgess Shale biotas, indicating transoceanic dispersal. Dated shortly after the Sinsk event, the Huayuan biota illuminates differences in the impacts of this extinction in shallow- versus deep-water settings during the first Phanerozoic mass extinction and offers critical insights into the transformation of global ecosystems in the early Cambrian."

Doomslayer: Progress Roundup - by Malcolm Cochran

Huge Fossil Bonanza Preserves 512-Million-Year-Old Ecosystem

Huayuan Biota Decodes Earth’s First Phanerozoic Mass Extinction (original news release)

A Cambrian soft-bodied biota after the first Phanerozoic mass extinction (no public access)

Fossil excavation in the field

Soft-bodied fossils from the Huayuan biota

Thousands of years ago bees burrowed into bones of rodents left over by predators

Amazing stuff, but bizarre!

"Thousands of years ago on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, a family of giant prehistoric owls feasted on chunky rodents known as hutias, regurgitating the bones onto the floor of their cave. These grisly leftovers, scientists report in a new study, turned out to be prime real estate for bees.

When researchers excavated Cueva de Mono, a tarantula-infested cave in what is now the southern Dominican Republic, they often found thousands of fossilized skulls and other bones belonging to an extinct species of hutia. Some of the rodent jawbones had smooth, cup-shaped structures lodged in the tooth sockets. These strange deposits bore a striking resemblance to the nests of modern bees, and some even contained grains of ancient pollen. The finding, a paleontological first ..."

From the abstract:

"Bees (Anthophila) are well known for their species and remarkable behavioural diversity, ranging from solitary taxa that nest in burrows to eusocial species that construct highly compartmentalized nests. This nesting variation is partially documented in the fossil record through ichnofossils dating from the Cretaceous to the Holocene.

Here, we report a novel nesting behaviour based on ichnofossils recovered from a late Quaternary cave deposit in Hispaniola. Isolated brood cells, described here as Osnidum almontei ichnogen. et ichnosp. nov., were found inside cavities of vertebrate remains, including mandibular alveoli, pulp chamber and vertebral canal of mammals.
Cell size, morphology and smooth inner walls indicate that the tracemaker was a medium-sized burrowing bee likely from the family Halictidae. Micro-computed tomography scans of the host bones show multi-generational use of the same cavity, suggesting repeated use and some degree of nest fidelity.
Similarly, the high abundance of nests throughout the deposit indicated that this cave was used for a long period as a nesting aggregation area by this solitary bee. The use of vertebrate remains in cave soils represents a poorly documented behaviour in modern bees and may reflect the scarcity of suitable soil substrates in a karstic landscape dominated by denuded limestone."

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Ancient Bees Burrowed Inside Bones, Fossils Reveal "Bones of now extinct species became a haven for bee babies thousands of years ago, scientists report in a first-of-its-kind discovery"

Trace fossils within mammal remains reveal novel bee nesting behaviour (open access)

Fig. 1 (a) Map of cave locality in the Dominican Republic. Purple diamond represents Cueva de Mono.
(b) Photograph of heavily vegetated landscape outside Cueva de Mono.
(c) Photograph of active excavation of Cueva de Mono sediment.
(d) Photograph of entrance to Cueva de Mono.

Fig. 3 CT scan and photograph images of left dentary of Plagiodontia araeum ... and type specimen of the ichnofossil Osnidum almontei.
(a–b) Dentary in occlusal view.
(a) Photograph.
(b) CT scan.
(c) Cross-section view in anterior view from CT scan, highlighting ichnofossil cells with white arrows.
(d) Cross-section view in lateral view from CT scan.
(e) Cross-section view in occlusal view from CT scan.
(f–h) Dentary in lingual view.
(f) Photograph.
(g) Non-transparent view from CT scan.
(h) Transparent view from CT scan, highlighting ichnofossil cell in tan.
(i) Isolated infilling of ichnofossil cell, white lines = maximum cell height and width.
(j) Isolated aperture opening of ichnofossil cell, white line = maximum aperture width.

Trilobites Survived Three Mass Extinctions! What Can Their Fossils Tell Us?

Recommendable!

How 2 million years old Frozen DNA Revealed a Lost World of Greenland

Very recommendable!

At least two vibrant, colorful lichen species have specialized to colonize on exposed dinosaur bones

Amazing stuff!

"... Now, paleontologists and remote sensing scientists working in Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta, Canada have identified an unlikely—and vibrantly colored—ally. 

For decades, researchers have noted anecdotally that bright orange lichens tend to grow on exposed dinosaur bones, serving as a kind of beacon for fossil hunters. ... Back in 1980, paleontologist Darren H. Tanke even speculated that lichen growing on bones belonging to Centrosaurus might be detectable by satellites.

The study authors found that two lichen species—Rusavskia elegans and Xanthomendoza trachyphylla—colonized as much as 50% of exposed fossil bones but left the surrounding rock fragments alone. Dinosaur bones, the team reports, likely provide the alkaline, calcium-rich, and porous substrates these species need to thrive in semi-arid environments like the Canadian Badlands. These lichen-covered fossils create distinctive spectral signatures, which can be detected from 30 meters above the ground using specialized drones. ..."

From the abstract:

"Advances in palaeontology and evolutionary biology are often linked to the discovery of new fossils, yet these discoveries are typically serendipitous.

Here, we report that lichens can serve as biological indicators of vertebrate fossils in western North America and can be identified using remote sensing. Lichens are symbioses between fungi and algae (and/or cyanobacteria) that play important ecological roles and colonise many substrates, including fossils. Preferential colonisation of dinosaur bones by lichen with vibrant orange pigmentation (Figure 1A,B) has been recognised anecdotally for decades (Darren H. Tanke, personal communication).

We found that the spectral reflectance profiles of these lichen pigments and the preferential association between modern lichens and ancient bones can be used to detect dinosaur fossils by remote sensing, for which we propose new spectral indices."

ScienceAdviser

Lichens and drones reveal dinosaur bones (open access)

Orange marks the bone.

Figure 1 Preferential colonisation of dinosaur bones by lichens with distinctive spectral profiles and their detection in drone (RPAS) images.

Crawling Out Of The Water Was An Evolutionary Accident

Recommendable!

The very distant ancestors of ostriches and emus were long-distance fliers

Amazing stuff! Once they found the right place, they settled down! Just kidding!

"... When the theory of plate tectonics became widely accepted in the 1960s, an answer seemed within reach. All of the continents were once united as the supercontinent Pangea, which slowly broke apart during the time of the dinosaurs, starting to split around 200 million years ago. Scientists wondered whether different populations of flightless palaeognaths could have just drifted apart from each other along with the continents they lived on.

However, this once-popular theory has since been discredited for two reasons. One is that the flying tinamous are genetically closer to some flightless palaeognaths than they are to others. This means that ostriches, rheas, emus, cassowaries and kiwi did not share a flightless common ancestor. Instead, in a remarkable case of parallel evolution, they all became flightless separately from each other. ..."

From the abstract:

"Lithornithids are an assemblage of Palaeogene fossil birds thought to represent stem-group members of Palaeognathae.

Among extant palaeognaths, which include flightless ratites such as ostriches, only tinamous can fly, though only in anaerobic bursts. Despite their limited dispersal capabilities, the phylogenetic interrelationships and geographic distributions of palaeognaths imply that their early relatives were capable of long-distance dispersal, although quantitative skeletal evidence has not been applied to this question.

We investigate the flight capabilities and ecology of the Palaeogene lithornithid Lithornis promiscuus using a three-dimensional geometric morphometric dataset spanning the avian crown group.

Our models reject the hypothesis that Lithornis would have relied on tinamou-like burst flight, and show that its sternum morphology is consistent with a range of aerobic, flapping flight styles—closely resembling those of many extant birds exhibiting pronounced dispersal capabilities.

Our results are consistent with inferences from lithornithid wing shape, supporting the hypothesis that at least some stem palaeognaths were capable of long-distance flight, helping to clarify the origins of the transoceanic distributions of extant flightless ratites."

The ancestors of ostriches and emus were long-distance fliers – here’s how we worked this out

Quantitative analysis of stem-palaeognath flight capabilities sheds light on ratite dispersal and flight loss (open access)

A cassowary

Figure 1. Morphospace of the first three axes of sternum shape variation. Convex hulls represent the approximate area of morphospace occupied by each flight style.

Figure 2. Time-calibrated phylogenetic relationships of taxa in our geometric morphometric analysis highlighting the top 10 most similar sterna to Lithornis promiscuus by Euclidean distance.

Fossils are scientific evidence, and shouldn’t be auctioned for millions to private buyers. Really!

When four nutty professors write an article together! Thes nutty and scheming professors only quoted a few, rare and spectacular auction sales of fossils. This far from reality!

There are so many fossils found, many of them even duplicates. Many, if not most auctioned fossils are of little market value and their pricing is low. Why do these nutty professors not visit more auctions and buy cheap fossils?

Auctioning of fossils does not totally prevent or exclude scientific research. Maybe the next owner of a fossil is very willing to donate his acquisition to research!

Some of the arguments made by these four nutty professors are quite dubious and not very convincing! E.g. "Leading scientific journals won’t publish research based on them [auctioned fossils] for a simple reason: science demands permanent access."

"Last year, a Stegosaurus nicknamed “Apex” sold at auction for US$40.5 million. A juvenile Ceratosaurus fetched US$30.5 million just last month.

Supporters of these sales argue that they’re harmless, or even good for science. Others compare fossils to art objects, praising their beauty or historical charm.

As paleontologists, we say plainly: these views could not be more misguided.

Fossils are neither art objects nor trophies. They are scientific data [???] that provide a tangible record of Earth’s deep history. Fossils are essential tools for understanding evolution, extinction, climate change and the origins and disappearances of ecosystems. ...

Science should not be for sale [???]. ..."

Fossils are scientific evidence, and shouldn’t be auctioned for millions to private buyers

A museum in Utah sold a 150-million-year-old dinosaur fossil for $26 million at Sotheby's auction

Not bad! What will this museum do with all that extra money?

"A museum in Utah sold the 150-million-year-old fossil of their juvenile ceratosaurus dinosaur—one of only four fossils of the species ever discovered—for $26 million at auction"

Monday, July 21, 2025 - Join The Flyover

Mountain America Museum of Ancient Life ()

A juvenile specimen of Ceratosaurus nasicornis, one four Ceratosaurus skeletons are known to exist, will be on view at a Sotheby’s exhibition starting in July

Rare Wooden tools discovered in China were now dated to early Paleolithic Period (300,000 years ago) and were used for digging up underground plant food not for hunting

Amazing stuff!

The abstract does not mention the details described in the AAAS news article nor in the AAAS editor's note below. There is an obvious mismatch! Strange!

"Our understanding of ancient toolmaking and tool use suffers from survival bias: We know most about instruments made from durable materials like stone and bone. But we humans are a creative lot; our species and its close relatives fashioned implements from a wide range of materials, many of which have been lost to the archaeological record. But thanks to the preservative properties of a boggy ancient lakeshore in southern China, scientists have a rare chance to analyze prehistoric wooden tools.

Though they were first excavated in the 1980s, the thousands of sharpened wooden pieces went decades without being convincingly dated due to natural limits of radiocarbon dating.

In 2018, new techniques allowed researchers to date the tools as about 300,000 years old. And a new analysis out in Science suggests they were digging sticks, primarily used to pry carbohydrate-rich tubers and roots from the soft ground. “It’s the first time we’ve found such an old site with evidence of hominins exploiting an underground food resource ,” says geochronologist Bo Li, co-author of the study. “This group of hominins knew what plants were edible or not, and were specifically looking for these plants with wooden tools.” ..."

"... Made primarily of pine and hardwoods, the 35 tools are the oldest wooden artefacts yet found in East Asia and include digging sticks, hooks and small handheld implements.  

"This discovery is exceptional because it preserves a moment in time when early humans were using sophisticated wooden tools to harvest underground food resources," ..."

From the editor's note and the abstract:

"Editor’s summary

Wooden tools from the early Paleolithic Period are extremely rare, with only two previously known discoveries, one in Europe and one in Africa. In both cases, the tools were hunting implements, spears, and spear tips. Liu et al. describe several wooden tools from a 300,000-year-old site in China. These tools were not used for hunting, but rather appear to have been designed to obtain and process plant foods. This finding shows that wooden tools were being used across a much wider range at the time, and also provides insight into how cultures from different environments may have developed locally useful implements. ...

Abstract

Evidence of Early and Middle Pleistocene wooden implements is exceptionally rare, and existing evidence has been found only in Africa and western Eurasia.

We report an assemblage of 35 wooden implements from the site of Gantangqing in southwestern China, which was found associated with stone tools, antler billets (soft hammers), and cut-marked bones and is dated from ~361,000 to ~250,000 years at a 95% confidence interval.

The wooden implements include digging sticks and small, complete, hand-held pointed tools. The sophistication of many of these tools offsets the seemingly “primitive” aspects of stone tool assemblages in the East Asian Early Paleolithic. This discovery suggests that wooden implements might have played an important role in hominin survival and adaptation in Middle Pleistocene East Asia."

ScienceAdviser

Oldest wooden artefacts ever found in East Asia reveal plant-based diet of ancient humans (original news release) "Collection of sophisticated, 300,000-year-old tools found preserved in oxygen-deprived clay by global researchers"

300,000-year-old wooden tools from Gantangqing, southwest China (no public access)

Hand-size digging sticks from an ancient lakeshore were used to harvest edible roots.

Chinese palaeontologists discover “life oasis” during worst ever mass extinction at end of Permian period

Maybe the mass extinctions were not so massive?

Maybe the recover took only less than 100,000 years instead of millions?

"The findings suggest the end-Permian extinction 252 million years ago did not affect terrestrial environments as much as marine ecosystems, challenging previous beliefs about the scale of the catastrophe. ..."

From the abstract:

"Searching for land refugia becomes imperative for human survival during the hypothetical sixth mass extinction. Studying past comparable crises can offer insights, but there is no fossil evidence of diverse megafloral ecosystems surviving the largest Phanerozoic biodiversity crisis.

Here, we investigated palynomorphs, plant, and tetrapod fossils from the Permian-Triassic South Taodonggou Section in Xinjiang, China. Our fossil records, calibrated by a high-resolution age model, reveal the presence of vibrant regional gymnospermous forests and fern fields, while marine organisms experienced mass extinction. This refugial vegetation was crucial for nourishing the substantial influx of surviving animals, thereby establishing a diverse terrestrial ecosystem approximately 75,000 years after the mass extinction. Our findings contradict the widely held belief that restoring terrestrial ecosystem functional diversity to pre-extinction levels would take millions of years. Our research indicates that moderate hydrological fluctuations throughout the crisis sustained this refugium, likely making it one of the sources for the rapid radiation of terrestrial life in the early Mesozoic."

Chinese palaeontologists discover “life oasis” during worst ever mass extinction at end of Permian period "Fossils found in China’s Turpan-Hami Basin reveal a refuge, or “life oasis”, for plants and animals during the Permian extinction – the worst mass extinction in Earth’s history."

Refugium amidst ruins: Unearthing the lost flora that escaped the end-Permian mass extinction (open access)

Fig. 1. Geological background of the STD Section.

Fig. 3. Results of palynological analysis of the upper part of the Wutonggou LC in the STD Section.

Fig. 5. Artistic reconstruction of the terrestrial ecological landscape during, before, and after the end of the Permian mass extinction

Dinosaur-era mammals’ fur color revealed for first time. Really!

What a sensational discovery! Pardon my facetiousness!

"Preserved pigments suggest Jurassic mammals had dark fur, consistent with a nocturnal lifestyle"

All News | Science | AAAS

Medieval bear’s teeth shed light on historic heavy metal pollution in Romania

The proverbial good old times!

"Abnormally high levels of lead in the teeth of a brown bear, which died 1000 years ago down a cave shaft in the Southern Carpathian mountains, represent the earliest known evidence of human-induced heavy metal pollution in a wild animal. The finding pushes back the date of such pollution affecting terrestrial wildlife by several centuries before the Industrial Revolution began around 1760. ...

Analyses of sediment cores revealed such pollution had already begun at low levels at the onset of the Bronze Age 5200 years ago in northern Greece. Then, 2150 years ago the pollution intensified, aligning with when the Roman Empire began to occupy Ancient Greece.

However, although historic heavy metal pollution likely affected ecosystems, little is known about its impacts due to a lack of direct evidence. Now, palaeontologist[s] ... have found the earliest evidence yet of lead pollution in a wild animal after analysing the teeth of a bear that lived around 1000 years ago. ..."

From the highlights and abstract:

"Highlights

• multi-elemental concentration maps of the dentition of a sub-fossil brown bear from the Carpathian Mountains.

• Anomalous concentrations of heavy metals (lead, zinc, lithium) are detected in the last deposited layers of dentine.

• Radiocarbon data of the sampled bone indicate the individual is 1000 BP-year-old, at a time and place known for ore smelting.

• Earliest-known evidence for anthropogenic pollution on the wildlife.

Abstract

Effects of past anthropogenic metal pollution on the wildlife are understudied. We investigate trace element incorporation in the dentition of a 1000 BP-year-old brown bear from the Romanian Carpathians, an area known historically for strong metallurgical activities.

Background values as well as unnatural high lead (Pb), lithium (Li) and zinc (Zn) levels in a circa 5‒6-year-old brown bear male were detected using trace element maps across its functional dentition.

High-resolution elemental transects and histological sections reveal the seasonal extent of lead intake, which occurred during five recorded summers, i.e. when the animal was actively foraging.

We interpret the elevated Pb, Li and Zn concentrations in the terminal growth lines as evidence for the earliest-known anthropogenic heavy metal pollution in a wild animal.

Our study underlines the impact of early industrial activities in a large terrestrial omnivore, demonstrating that anthropogenic threats on wildlife were not solely driven by hunting or landscape modification during the most recent decades."

Medieval bear’s teeth shed light on historic heavy metal pollution | Research | Chemistry World

Societal changes in Ancient Greece impacted terrestrial and marine environments (open access)

Earliest evidence for heavy metal pollution on wildlife in Middle Age Europe (open access)

This 20m vertical shaft is the only way in or out of the cave where the bears’ remains were found

Graphical abstract

When Camels Roamed the Arctic before the last Ice Age

There was a Global Warming without anthropogenic CO2! How is that possible! 😊