Free Republic

Famed explorer Robert Ballard's expedition over the Eratosthenes Seamount is currently collecting images during sweeps of the area using the latest technology to explore the sea floor some 70 miles off the island. After two days of exploring, the team's underwater robots, operating at 800 to 1,000 metres, yesterday reached the summit of the Eratosthenes, going over terrain from a previous sweep and then turned west to head to unexplored territory to the west. On Friday night they came across what appeared to be fossilised rib bones commentators suggested might have come from a whale, perhaps even 40,000 years old......

<p>Maybe the 1992 movie Brendan Fraser film Encino Man wasn’t too far from the mark?</p> <p>Fossilized human feces and other evidence from a West Coast cave demonstrates the existence of a long-lost, 13,500-year-old American culture, scientists said Thursday.</p> <p>The fossilized feces, known to researchers as a coprolite, from the Paisley Caves in Oregon has turned assumptions about the history of the Americas on its ear.</p>

Monster titanoboa snake invades New York New York commuters arriving at Grand Central Station were greeted by a monstrous sight: a 48-foot-long, 2,500-pound titanoboa snake. The good news: It's not alive. Anymore. But the full-scale replica of the reptile -- which made its first appearance at the commuter hub -- is intended, as Smithsonian spokesperson Randall Kremer happily admitted, to "scare the daylights out of people" -- actually has a higher calling: to "communicate science to a lot of people." The scientifically scary-accurate model will go a long way toward that: If this snake slithered by you, it would be...

What did Velociraptor have for dinner? Raptor skeleton discovered with bones in its gut If you lie awake at night wondering Velociraptor's favorite food was (and whether it tastes much like human flesh), you're in luck. For the first time, a Velociraptor skeleton has been observed with its last supper still filling its guts, and this little guy feasted on long-dead pterosaur. Paleontologist David Hone has published a new paper describing his findings in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, but for those who don't want to breach the paywall, he's also explaining them on his blog. This especially well preserved specimen was...

EDMONTON — University of Alberta scientist Duane Froese was on sabbatical last summer when he received a call from a Yukon miner who wanted to give him the heads-up about a site he planned to excavate. Like most Klondike miners, Tony Beets is a character. He’s tall, bushy-haired, drives fast and uses colourful language. But he’d also been incredibly helpful over the years, moving in heavy equipment for scientists such as Froese, exposing layers of ancient permafrost that yielded the frozen bones of woolly mammoths, scimitar cats, short-faced bears and other animals that lived in this part of the world...

Dinosaur fossils don't come much more impressive than this. With 98 per cent of its skeleton preserved, this young predatory theropod from southern Germany may be the most complete dinosaur ever found. Oliver Rauhut, curator of the Bavarian State Collection for Palaeontology and Geology in Munich, announced the find yesterday. Although Chinese bird and dinosaur fossils are famed for delicate details such as their feathers, they don't match this 72-centimetre-long theropod in terms of clarity and completeness of preservation. The young dinosaur has been dated at 135 million years old, putting it in the early Cretaceous, but it has yet...

Enlarge Image Old stomping grounds. This landscape in Western Australia is home to these very ancient fossil cells (inset). Credit: David Wacey/University of Western Australia When Martin Brasier discovered what looked like fossil cells in between the cemented sand grains of an ancient beach in Western Australia, he knew he had his work cut out for him. One of the biggest challenges for geologists is deciding when a fossil is really a fossil, particularly when it comes to early life. There are no bones to go by, and the mineralized spheres representing simple cells and sometimes filaments could easily...

The Outback Gondwana Foundation (OGF) has recently completed another two week dinosaur dig near Eromanga and they've made some exciting new discoveries. Mackenzie is the Foundation's chair and said exciting discoveries were unearthed in the lab and at the dig site. In the lab it was 'Sid', a new plant-eating dinosaur that was identified. "While we were working on some of the Cooper material we actually discovered there was another dinosaur there as well," said Mr Mackenzie. The new dinosaur has been tagged 'Sid' after Sir Sidney Kidman and that's because Plevna Downs is in the Cooper Creek area and...

A Suncor oilsands worker near Fort McMurray, Alta., has unearthed a rare dinosaur fossil that could be 110 million years old. On Monday, shovel operator Shawn Funk noticed a large lump of dirt with an odd texture and a diamond pattern in a shovel-load of material. He shut down the shovel, and together he and supervisor Michel Gratton sent photos of the find to the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alta. The find intrigued experts enough that the museum sent a scientist and a technician up to Fort McMurray two days later. Curator Donald Henderson believes the completely intact dinosaur...

'Thunder-Thighs' Dinosaur Discovered: Brontomerus May Have Used Powerful Thigh Muscles to Kick Predators ScienceDaily (Feb. 23, 2011) — A new dinosaur named Brontomerus mcintoshi, or "thunder-thighs" after its enormously powerful thigh muscles, has been discovered in Utah, USA. The new species is described in a paper recently published in the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica by an international team of scientists from the UK and the US. A member of the long-necked sauropod group of dinosaurs which includes Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus, Brontomerus may have used its powerful thighs as a weapon to kick predators, or to help travel over rough, hilly...

T. Rex More Hyena Than Lion: Tyrannosaurus Rex Was Opportunistic Feeder, Not Top Predator, Paleontologists Say ScienceDaily (Feb. 22, 2011) — The ferocious Tyrannosaurus rex has been depicted as the top dog of the Cretaceous, ruthlessly stalking herds of duck-billed dinosaurs and claiming the role of apex predator, much as the lion reigns supreme in the African veld. But a new census of all dinosaur skeletons unearthed over a large area of eastern Montana shows that Tyrannosaurus was too numerous to have subsisted solely on the dinosaurs it tracked and killed with its scythe-like teeth. Instead, argue paleontologists John "Jack"...

ScienceDaily (Mar. 1, 2011) — Fossilized bones discovered in Texas from a flying reptile that died 89 million years ago may be the earliest occurrence of the prehistoric creature known as Pteranodon. Previously, Pteranodon bones have been found in Kansas, South Dakota and Wyoming in the Niobrara and Pierre geological formations. This likely Pteranodon specimen is the first of its kind found in Texas, according to paleontologist Timothy S. Myers at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, who identified the reptile. The specimen was discovered north of Dallas by an amateur fossil hunter who found various bones belonging to the left...

"Too simple" and "not so fast" suggest biological anthropologists from the George Washington University and New York University about the origins of human ancestry. In the upcoming issue of the journal Nature, the anthropologists question the claims that several prominent fossil discoveries made in the last decade are our human ancestors. Instead, the authors offer a more nuanced explanation of the fossils' place in the Tree of Life. They conclude that instead of being our ancestors the fossils more likely belong to extinct distant cousins. "Don't get me wrong, these are all important finds," said co-author Bernard Wood, University Professor...

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...

For fossil hunters, it represents one of those breakthrough moments. A pterosaur has been found in China beautifully preserved with an egg. The egg indicates this ancient flying reptile was a female, and that realisation has allowed researchers to sex these creatures for the first time. Writing in Science magazine, the palaeontologists make some broad statements about differences in pterosaurs, including the observation that only males sported a head-crest. David Unwin, a palaeobiologist in the Department of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester, was part of the research team. He told the BBC the discovery was astonishing: "If somebody...

Topeka — About 80 million years ago, the Pteranodon longiceps flying reptile would not have been powerful enough to swoop down and successfully nab the big Xiphactinus audax fish. In a bid to be designated the official state fossil, though, don't count the pteranodon out yet. On Monday, state Reps. Tom Sloan, R-Lawrence, and Don Hineman, R-Dighton, introduced a bill to declare the fossil of the Xiphactinus audax the official fossil of the state of Kansas. The bill's genesis came from Sloan's constituents. On Wednesday, Sloan said, he started hearing views that the more fitting state fossil was the pteranodon....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republican Sen. Richard Lugar plans to seek a re-election in 2012. Lugar spokesman Mark Helmke said Tuesday that Lugar plans to run a vigorous campaign and is committed to winning a seventh term representing Indiana in the Senate.

I found all of these on my first outting in one creek. I was told the large teeth are from a mastodon but they don't look like the ones I've seen on the web. The vertabra I was told, are maybe from a mosasaur.

Specialists and collectors around the world have long decried the flood of sham fossils pouring out of China. But Science has learned that many composites and fakes are now finding their way into Chinese museums, especially local museums. One paleontologist estimates that more than 80% of marine reptile specimens now on display in Chinese museums have been "altered or artificially combined to varying degrees." One consequence of the fakery is an erosion of trust in museums, which are supposed to enlighten—not con—the public. Scholars, too, pay a price: They waste time sifting authentic specimens from counterfeit chaff. And a genuine...

The Utah reptiles belong to the horned-dinosaur family, which is known for outlandish anatomy, and are wowing seasoned fossil hunters. The species named Kosmoceratops had 15 horns decorating its massive head, giving it the most elaborate dinosaur headdress known to science. At 15 feet long, it was larger than a Ford Fiesta. Its name means "ornate horned-face" in Latin. The newly discovered dinosaurs, close relatives of the famous Triceratops, were announced today. Utah scientists believe most of the horns were used to attract mates and intimidate rivals of the same species. The dinosaur fossils were found in the Grand Staircase-Escalante...