A fossil of the dolphin-bodied marine reptile known as an ichthyosaur, discovered as part of a giant cache of nearly 20,000 fossils in China. Credit: Shixue Hu, Chengdu Geological Center in China.
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Posted on 02/03/2011 12:44:21 PM PST by SeekAndFind
A giant cache of nearly 20,000 fossil reptiles, shellfish and a host of other prehistoric creatures unearthed from a mountain in China is now revealing how life recovered after the most devastating mass extinction on Earth.
This research could help point out which species might be more or less susceptible to extinction nowadays, and how the world might recover from the damage caused by humanity, scientists added.
Life was nearly completely wiped out approximately 250 million years ago by massive volcanic eruptions and devastating global warming. Only one in 10 species survived this cataclysmic end-Permian event.
Much was uncertain regarding the steps life took to piece itself back together after this disaster, or even how long it took. Now the clearest picture yet of this recovery has been discovered by a team of researchers, who excavated away half a mountain in Luoping in southwest China to unearth thousands of marine fossils, the first fully functional ecosystem seen after the end-Permian.
"The pattern and timing of recovery can tell us something about how life today might recover after human-induced crises," said researcher Michael Benton, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Bristol in England.
SNIP
The fossils are exceptionally well-preserved, with more than half of them completely intact, including soft tissues. Apparently they were protected across the ages by mats of microbes that rapidly sealed their bodies off from decay after death.
"Soft tissues can give us more profound information about larger patterns of evolution and relationships, such as the feathers on dinosaurs," Benton said. "Soft tissues in some of the marine creatures may help us understand diet and locomotion."
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
A fossil of the dolphin-bodied marine reptile known as an ichthyosaur, discovered as part of a giant cache of nearly 20,000 fossils in China. Credit: Shixue Hu, Chengdu Geological Center in China.
Click here to watch gallery.
Cool.
If they can clone anything off of the soft tissue, I bet it tastes like chicken. ;-)
Ping!
My question after reading this piece -— How are soft tissues preserved after MILLIONS of YEARS ? It’s amazing to see that DNA and protein can last for 80 to 150 million years.
I believe the paleontologists didn’t expect to find soft tissue. It must have been a pleasant surprise ( a bonus ) to find them.
So now the Permian Extinction was caused by .... Global Warming. Why not. If you can't blame Palin or Beck; blame global warming.
Who can we blame that global warming on?
RE: So now the Permian Extinction was caused by .... Global Warming
If there were no greedy humans burning fossil fuels to create the warming, who did ? ( environmentalists won’t accept nature for an answer ).
“Nature”, phooey, everybody knows Bush went back in time and caused it.
They found Helen Thomas’ childhood pet? Sweet.
Oh my God. These idiots are trying to tie Gore-bull warming to the Permian extinction event. That event had NOTHING to do with life-generated CO2; it was primarily vulcanism, from what I remember from extensive reading back when I was really interested in this.
I LOVE your nickname! I used to have some of those tubes in my junkbox!
The Chinese will extract and grind em up for use as sexual potions.
That report, which I don't recall much else about after it originally appeared, opens up some questions for me about the validity of the "tens and hundreds of millions of years ago" concept of geologic time I've trusted since I was a little kid with my dog eared Illustrated Book of Dinosaurs.
Isn't Palin responsible for global warming?
Soft tissue bones??? I think the word they are searching for is “flaccid”.
Cool is right. It is just what we would expect to find since the Flood catastrophically changed our world.
Curse those darned SUV-driving, big-screen-TV-watching, obese, greedy, greenhouse-gas-belching Dimetrodons and Rugose corals!
These fossils were obviously placed there by God in order to test the Young Earther’s faith. /s
Palin’s fault?
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