PALAEONTOLOGY[online]

Mar12015

Life as a Palaeontologist: A thoroughly suitable job for a woman

by Ellen Currano1 “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,” he used to say. “You step into the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.” — J. R. R. Tolkien The Fellowship of the Ring (Ballantine Books, 1954). Introduction: It was never part of my plan to become the (sometimes bearded) face of women in palaeontology. I was that first grader who fell in love with dinosaurs and set her heart on becoming a palaeontologist. Since I started college, my dream has been to work at the University of Wyoming, travel the world digging up fossils, publish papers in scientific journals and, if I was lucky, be asked to give public lectures on my work. In other words, I wanted to emulate the professors at the top-tier research insti...

Feb12015

Fossil Focus: Elasmosaurs

Fossil Focus

by Sven Sachs1 and Benjamin P. Kear2 Introduction: Elasmosaurs were a group of marine reptiles that lived during the Cretaceous period (about 145 million to 66 million years ago). They were fully adapted to an aquatic lifestyle, and had a distinctive body plan comprising a compact, streamlined body, long, paddle-like limbs and an extremely elongated neck with a large number of vertebrae (Fig. 1). The first named elasmosaur was Elasmosaurus platyurus from the Late Cretaceous (Campanian stage, about 83.6 million to 72.1 million years ago). It was found in Kansas and described by the famous US scientist Edward Drinker Cope (1840–97, Fig. 2), who, when he first wrote about it in 1868, believed that the almost complete series of 72 neck vertebrae came from a massively long tail. Today, many ...

Jan12015

Fossil Focus: Dinosaurs down under

Fossil Focus

by Stephen F. Poropat*1,2 Introduction: Ask the average person in the street to name an Australian dinosaur, and you will be lucky if you get a correct answer. If they say crocodile, they are in the right postcode but have the wrong address. If they say emu, then they are correct, strictly speaking, but they are either lucky or being smart. If they say kangaroo, back away slowly and avoid eye contact. If they say koala bear, run home and take a few Panadol. I could forgive most people for not being able to identify any Australian dinosaurs. First and foremost, there are not many to know: only 18 Australian dinosaurs (including one bird, Nanantius) from the Mesozoic era (251 million to 66 million years ago) have been officially named. And yet, the first discovery of Mesozoic dinosaur r...

Dec12014

Fossil Focus: Tyrannosaurs

Fossil Focus

by Dave Hone(1) Introduction: Thanks to Tyrannosaurus rex, the tyrannosaurs are among the most famous of the extinct dinosaur groups. They receive a disproportionate amount of attention in the media and hold a firm place in the public imagination. However, this also means that more misconceptions and out-of-date ideas are promoted for this group than any other, and the excess of attention detracts from the fact that they are a genuinely interesting clade of animals. In fact, thanks to a great deal of research effort, we may know more about tyrannosaurs than any other group of dinosaurs from the Mesozoic era (252 million to 66 million years ago). This alone makes them a key part of palaeontology. All tyrannosaurs were carnivores, and although the most famous forms from the last part o...

Nov12014

Fossil Focus: Annelids

Fossil Focus

by Luke Parry*1 Introduction: Annelids, whose name comes from the Latin meaning ‘little ring’, make up a phylum of invertebrates with a unique segmented body plan. They are important components of terrestrial and marine ecosystems, and form one of the most diverse invertebrate groups, including as many as 15,000 described species (Fig. 1). Their closest living relatives are the molluscs, brachiopods and nemerteans (proboscis worms). Annelids can broadly be split into two groups, the polychaetes and clitellates. These groups share many features, such as segmented bodies and paired bundles of bristles made of chitin, called chaetae or setae. The most familiar annelids are the clitellates — the earthworms, leeches and their relatives — which have become adapted to a terrestrial lifestyle...

Oct12014

Fossil Focus: Porpoises

Fossil Focus

by Rachel A. Racicot*1 Introduction Porpoises are among the smallest of modern whales, but they are one of the most amazing groups. They use specialized high-frequency hearing and sound production, and they have one of the best fossil records of any marine mammal. Thanks to modern imaging technology, we have been able to learn about how porpoises are able to sense their environment through echolocation and how they evolved. I will be telling you a bit about a particularly interesting porpoise from the fossil record, Semirostrum ceruttii (‘Cerutti’s half-nose’), and using it as an example of how CT scans help scientists to explore ancient and modern anatomy. What are porpoises? People sometimes use ‘porpoise’ interchangeably with ‘dolphin’, but scientists use the term to refer to a dist...

Sep12014

Patterns in Palaeontology: Palaeoart – fossil fantasies or recreating lost reality?

Patterns in Palaeontology

by Mark P. Witton*1 Introduction: Illustrations, sculptures and animations of fossil organisms and the world around them are mainstays of palaeontology. Such restorations, known as palaeoart, are more important than they may at first seem: they help to communicate palaeontological ideas across age and language barriers; have inspired generations of scientists; and have provided the foundation of an international industry of palaeontology-themed merchandise and media worth hundreds of millions of pounds. Due to its increasing prominence and popularity, palaeoart is routinely scrutinized by scientists and the public alike. How can we infer so much about the postures, soft tissues, colours and behaviour of extinct animals when fossil skeletons — be they shells, bones or carapaces — are all ...

Aug12014

Fossil Focus: Diagnosing Dinosaurs

Fossil Focus

by Jennifer Anné*1 Introduction Palaeopathology is the study of the disease and repair of ancient life — most commonly in bone. First coined for the study of diseases in Egyptian mummies, the term was adopted to cover fossil material in 1917 by the first dinosaur doctor, Roy L. Moodie, but has become popular only in recent decades. It is surprising that the study of palaeopathology in the fossil record took so long to catch on in palaeontology. Part of the problem lies with difficulty in getting hold of specimens or accessing the techniques and equipment needed for sensitive analysis. But even if all those problems have been overcome, diagnosing a fossil pathology beyond a vague description brings its own challenges. Difficulties with diagnosing Palaeopathologies may be fairly easy for...

Jul12014

Perspectives: Three years on, palaeontology still online

Perspectives

by the Palaeontology [online] team Palaeontology and the history of life are topics that capture the imaginations of children and adults alike, many of whom are keen to learn all about the latest weird wonders discovered by science. Communicating cutting-edge research to the public can be difficult, however, partly because scientists tend to publish their results in technical papers aimed at other scientists, but also because these papers are generally not freely available to non-academics — although the growth of open access means that this is improving in many countries. Popular-science writers provide accurate and accessible summaries of some of the most topical work, but can cover only a fraction of the research carried out by palaeontologists, naturally focusing on current stories ra...

Jun12014

Fossil Focus: Placodonts

Fossil Focus

by James M. Neenan1 Introduction: The placodonts were a group of marine reptiles that lived in shallow coastal waters, and mostly ate hard-shelled prey such as mussels and other bivalves (that is, they were durophagous). They lived during the Triassic period, and have so far been found in modern-day Europe, the Mediterranean and South China (Fig. 1). The Triassic was a very special time for marine-reptile evolution, with their greatest morphological diversity being known from this period. The beginning of the Triassic was characterized by the largest mass-extinction event that has ever occurred on Earth (the Permian–Triassic extinction), in which around 95% of all marine life went extinct. This marked the start of the Mesozoic era (the ‘age of dinosaurs’ that contains the Triassic, Juras...