[Non-Ceph] Bits 'n Pieces

[neuropteris]

Hi AndyS - Well, there you go, maybe Keef was referring to all Andys who post here - your ammonite collection is much better than mine anyway from what I've seen on other websites. Are you holidaying in Robin Hoods Bay again this year?

On the soft tissue Tyrannosaurs I do seem to remember reading something a few years back which claimed to have found preserved red blood cells in T rex bone but have not come across anything since.

All the best

Andy (not S)

 

[AndyS]

Neuropteris / Andy,

I will be in the RHB area again very soon and looking very much forward to it...

AndyS

 

[spartacus]

Sorry AndyS, all that know you are fully aware you too are blessed with megaknowledge & shares in Omega 3 production, sorry you weren't on the list

Jack Horner based his T Rex scavenging theory on one triceratops specimen displaying bites marks impossible to make if it had been alive.
Who's to say Mr.T didn't dispatch his dinner & give the love bite later, talk about blinkered !

I'm sure vertebrate palaeontologists just talk cack to irritate each other.

Keef

 

[Phil]

Just a few miles to north of me at Swalecliff on the North Kent coast, a rare 70,000 yr old woolly rhino skull was recovered yesterday. I'd have loved to have gone and seen it, but I only found out about it this morning. Hopefully I'll be able to get a photo or two in Maidstone museum soon.

BBC NEWS | England | Kent | Woolly rhino skull saved on beach

 

[Phil]

Possibly the most complete specimen of the ancient whale Basilosaurus ever found has just been unearthed in Egypt. It measures 18m long and is 40m years old.

News in Science - Whale found in desert - 19/04/2005

 

[spartacus]

nice one Philpot, still waiting to find a proper 'saurus of my own in the barn !

Keef

 

[Phil]

How about this, an 8 foot millipede?

The recent discovery of a 300m year old track in New Mexico indicates the largest specimen of Arthropleura found to date. Details available here:

http://www.abqtrib.com/albq/nw_science/article/0,2668,ALBQ_21236_3699656,00.html

 

[neuropteris]

Very nice Arthropleurid model!. Here's the real thing. Not quite as complete as the reconstruction but I've had it identified by Lyall Anderson at the National Museums of Scotland and apparently its something called a 'k plate' from the underside of the beastie (a slightly smaller one I think!). From a now infilling opencast coal mine in Lancashire where I hang out when not looking for ammonites. Actually picked up by 'Megalodon' from UK fossils but he kindly passed it on.

All the best

Andy

 

[Phil]

OMG Andy! So jealous...that must be an exceptionally rare fossil indeed. I've wondered how much of Arthropleura was actually known from body parts, and how much from trackways. Is the 'K-Plate' part of an alphabetical sequence of body segments do you think?

Due to the intense global forestation, wasn't the oxygen level of the atmosphere supposed to be somewhat higher in the Carboniferous, somehow allowing insects to reach greater sizes than today? I think the giant millipedes were contemporary to the giant dragonflies. What a sight they would have been!

There's a great new book on insect evolution out in July that has a chapter on arthropleurids, here's a link to the publishers listing for you. Seems like a must buy:

Evolution of the Insects

I've read that publication was due for late last year but has been pushed back due to the redescription of a pair of 400 million year old set of insect jaws from the Scottish Rhynie chert. As the oldest insect known, this discovery apparently forced the re-write of one of the first chapters.

Great stuff Andy!

 

[neuropteris]

Hi Phil

As far as I know no complete Arthropleurids of any size have been found so what it is known is extrapolation from the various parts which have been preserved - body segments, legs etc - I'm still looking for that 6ft elongate nodule though!

The high atmospheric oxygen partial pressure in the Carboniferous is often given as the reason for the large size of the insects of the time though I'm not sure if there is any evidence of this actually having been the case (maybe isotope concentrations?) There was certainly a lot of plant life around though. If there was that much oxygen available at the time the forest fires must have been spectacular! There have been burnt tree stumps found complete with early terrestrial tetrapods skulking within at Joggins in Nova Scotia. I've seen plenty of in situ stumps in the UK coal measures but nothing hiding inside unfortunately.

Andy

 

[spartacus]

cool bug ! got huge spiders here but that's a beast

Keef

 

[Phil]

And introducing 'Nelson', the 450m year old South-African fish!

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Fossils illuminate fish evolution

 

[Phil]

I've seen plenty of in situ stumps in the UK coal measures but nothing hiding inside unfortunately.

Andy

Thanks Andy.

We used to have four coal mines here in SE Kent, i.e Betteshanger, Snowdown, Tilmanstone and Chislett though I think the last of these closed in the mid 80s. As a kid I used to be given slabs of fossil bearing rock from the coal seams by miners who knew my father socially. I've still got a whole box of them containing plant fossils around somewhere; maybe I should go back and see if there is anything of particular interest there. Hard to photograph, coal fossils; they are so dark.

No arthropleurids though. If only....

 

[monty]

And introducing 'Nelson', the 450m year old South-African fish!

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Fossils illuminate fish evolution

"These fossils are important because there is a theory that the origins of fish really took place in the northern continents, and then spread south," he said. "This find [from Southern Africa] dispels that theory."

Funny, I always thought that fish evolved in the ocean, and not on continents at all...

Very interesting find, though. I've read that the rise of the teleost fishes is believed to have been a major factor in the dethroning of the ammonites, but I have a friend (who is very smart, but also sometimes prone to overstate goofy theories) who notes that ammonites seem to have been "drilled" a lot, so he thinks that it was faster, shell-less cephalopods & their radulas that were the most effective ammonite predators. This idea seems to be possibly backed up by this article, since it implies that this early fish was more scavenger-like than agressive predator (but it's always dubious to make sweeping conclusions from a small sample size-- fish may have been as diverse then as they are now!)

- M

 

[neuropteris]

Hi Phil

Have a very close look at your coal measures slabs - at least one of the Kent pits (can't remember which one but Chislett rings a bell) has produced insects from the tips in recent years. You never know - you might also have a bit of an arthropleurid lurking in there!

Andy