[Non-Ceph] Bits 'n Pieces

Thanks for the link Clem.

Interesting to see images of Neville Hollingworth displaying soft-bodied morphology! :smile:
 
Another interesting fossil invertebrate story today.

This concerns the announcement of the discovery of a section of a 428 million year old Silurian period fossil millipede from Stonehaven in Scotland. This predates the earliest air breathing invertebrate by 20 million years and is therefore of extreme importance in determining when the land was first colonised. Apparantly this millipede was already quite advanced implying that the earliest terrestrial invertebrates had evolved several million years before that.

Details here: http://www.sundayherald.com/39496
 
Clem: I have a copy of "Atlas of Primitive Man in China" which I picke dup secondhand partly due to the rampant nationalism in it - one picture is captioned somehting like "a mamoth tusk that was touched by Chairman Mao" and there is a whole section trying to use palaeontology and palaeoanthropology to prove that Taiwan has always been a part of China - its quite scary when ideology warps science in such a way (anthropology has been most abused but palaeontology has suffered too).

I love that headline "First-ever breathing animal was Scottish"!!

Its a great find - other (less partisan) news here:

BBC NEWS | UK | Scotland | Fossil find 'oldest land animal'

but this beat that headline "Life on earth began in... Stonehaven ":

News | The Scotsman

There is a beautiful giant millipede on the NE of the Isle of Arran - someone has tried to cut it out with some kind of saw (unsuccessfully thankfully).

Emps
 
Thank you for finding the photos Um... I failed to find any pictures yesterday so I'm pleased you got them. I can only assume that is a camera lucida drawing underneath and it does help to explain what is going on. Given the size of this fragment it seems amazing that this fossil was ever identified at all.

I expect there will be future similar discoveries from the site to come now that paleontologists will be actively looking. I doubt if they will be reported in the popular press like this one though.
 
By the way, the figure is from:

Wilson, Heather M. & Anderson, Lyall I. MORPHOLOGY AND TAXONOMY OF PALEOZOIC MILLIPEDES (DIPLOPODA: CHILOGNATHA: ARCHIPOLYPODA) FROM SCOTLAND. Journal of Paleontology 78(1) 169-184 (2004).

Pneumodesmus newmani is just one of the several little buggers they discuss.
 
Another fantastic find from Scotland! What's going on up there???

Here we have a truly amazing discovery, an early Devonian insect from Rynie in Aberdeenshire that is the oldest ever discovered with wings. This is dated at the early Devonian approx 396-407 mya. That implies that flying developed in the preceding Silurian period.

Here's a link if anyone is interested:

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Oldest insect delights experts
 
with all this fossil news you must be as happy as a frog in a bog..... whats next, you finding the secret nautiloid burial ground?
 
More detailed images of the plesiosaur are available at the link below. It transpires, without exaggeration, that this is possibly the most stunning and complete plesiosaur specimen ever found in the UK, and may even have some soft tissue preservation:

http://www.plesiosaur.com/somerset_ples/somerset.htm

Also today we have the announcement of raptor teeth from the Isle of Wight, almost unheard of in the UK:

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Dino hunts net rare raptor teeth

It seems that Southern Britain must be twinned with Jurassic Park at the moment! Nothing happens for months then all the announcements come along at once! I'm having a busy time trying to keep abreast of all this stuff.

Elasmosaurus_1.gif
 

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