One Fingered Dinosaur

A team of scientists have dug up the first dinosaur ever known to have only one finger. They found the skeletal remains embedded in an 80 million year old rock formation in Inner Mongolia, China. The dinosaur, named Linhenykus monodactylus, was roughly one meter tall and belongs to the alvarezsauroids family of dinosaurs, a group whose members were previously thought to be flightless birds.

It is well known that carnivorous dinosaurs kept losing fingers as they evolved over their ~160 million year existence. The earliest meat eaters had five fingers, while later species had four or three. Even the infamous and highly popularized Tyrannosaurus Rex only had two fingers. The researchers believe that Linhenykus monodactylus likely adapted to have just one claw-like digit for digging purposes, perhaps to specialize in retrieving certain insects. The findings have been published in the most recent release from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

47 Million Year Old Fossil Hailed as "Missing-Link" Between Humans and Other Primates Open to Skepticism

A perfectly preserved fossil of a 47 million year old primate has been discovered, and is claimed to be a "missing link" between today's higher primates - monkeys, apes and humans - and more distant relatives. The fossil is in such great condition that it is possible to see traces of fur, and scientists have even identified the remnants of its last meal. Although this is a potentially groundbreaking scientific discovery, independent scientists are skeptical of the significance of the fossil, nicknamed Ida.

Ida was discovered in the 1980s in a fossil treasure-trove called Messel Pit, near Darmstadt in Germany. For much of the time period since then, it has been in a private collection. The investigation of the fossil's significance was led by Jorn Hurum of the Natural History Museum in Oslo, Norway.

Hurum claims the fossil creature was "the closest thing we can get to a direct ancestor" and described the discovery as "a dream come true".

The female animal lived during an epoch in Earth history known as the Eocene, which was crucial for the development of early primates.At first glance, Ida resembles a lemur, yet she lacks very specific features which are characteristic of the lemur - including elongated canine teeth.

The team concluded that she was not simply another lemur, but a new species. They have called her Darwinius masillae, to celebrate her place of origin and the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Darwin.

Dr Jens Franzen, an expert on the Messel Pit and a member of the team, described Ida as "like the Eighth Wonder of the World", because of the extraordinary completeness of the skeleton.

It was information "palaeontologists can normally only dream of", he said.

In addition, Ida bears "a close resemblance to ourselves" he said, with nails instead of claws, a grasping hand and an opposable thumb - like humans and some other primates. But he said some aspects of the teeth indicate she is not a direct ancestor - more of an "aunt" than a "grandmother".

"She belongs to the group from which higher primates and human beings developed but my impression is she is not on the direct line."

Independent experts are keen to see the new fossil but somewhat skeptical of any claim that it could be "a missing link".

Skeletons For Sale

Going once, going twice, SOLD! If you are a serious fossil collector, and can afford the hefty cost, those might be the words you'd hear at a Natural History Auction hosted by I.M. Chait Gallery/Auctioneers on Saturday, March 21 in New York City.

Shown above is Lot 250: a mounted complete skeleton of a Dryosaurus dinosaur from the Jurassic Era. There are only two in the world, the other is on display at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pennsylvania. Apparently the one for sale is by far the more impressive specimen. It measures 127.5 inches from nose to tail, stands 36 inches high, and was expected to sell for $440,000 - $500,000.

But if dinosaurs are not really your style, perhaps you coule find more interest in Lot 199: a complete skeleton of a juvenile Wooly Mammoth. This 7-foot high, 15-foot long fossil is approximately 20,000 years old. The perfectly preserved specimen was expected to sell for $80,000 - $100,000, appealing to the more thrifty of shoppers.

Oldest Fossilized Brain Found in Fish

A 300-million-year-old fossilized brain has been discovered by researchers studying a type of fish that once lived in what is now Kansas and Oklahoma.

Researchers report in the online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science that the brain was discovered in a fossilized iniopterygian from Kansas, which they had sent for scanning at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France.

Iniopterygians are extinct relatives of modern ratfishes, also known as ghost sharks.
The scan found a fossilized blob inside the braincase and closer study revealed it was the fossilized brain of the ancient creature.

Easter Hunt

Several years ago, Kenneth Rose, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine anatomy professor found some curious bones while traveling through India. Unable to determine what sort of bones they were, he decided to store them in a drawer. In the spring of 2007, it finally hit him! The foot that he found appears to belong to the world's earliest known rabbit found so far, making it 3-4 million years older than its closest contemporary.

Past studies indicated that rabbits and hares evolved 35 million years ago from pikas - mouse-like mammals part of the order Lagomorpha. But Rose and his colleagues believe the new bones show rabbit-like features evolving as far back as the early Eocene (54.8 to 33.7 million years ago).

Robert Asher, zoologist from Cambrige University agreed with these assumptions: "The particular importance of this is that it documents the oldest occurrence of a crown lagomorph—that is, a lagomorph that shares a closer relationship to rabbits and hares to the exclusion of pikas."

Dino Feather

In western France, seven dinosaur-era feathers have been found perfectly preserved in amber. The team of researchers is uncertain whether the feathers belonged to a bird or a dinosaur, since the 100 year-old plumage has similar features to fibers from both.

Either way, the amber-encased feathers show for the first time the transition from downy filaments toward an aerodynamic, planar shape that enabled flight. Perrichot and colleagues described their research last month in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Studies suggest that primitive feathers first evolved in flightless dinosaurs with the function of generating internal heat. It was not until much later on when feathers evolved for use in flight.

Marine Monster Excavated

An enormous prehistoric sea creature, longer than a humpback whale and with teeth the size of bananas, has recently been excavated. It was first discovered in 2006 on the remote Arctic island Spitsbergen, a polar morgue of fossilized sea creatures.

"It's as big or bigger than the largest plesiosaur ever found," said Jørn Hurum, leader of the excavation team. "This absolutely looks like a new species," he added.

This predator measured ~15 meters, and represents one of the largest marine reptiles ever known. Its skull alone is estimated to be 3 meters long. Due to its short neck and large head, Monster is thought to actually belong to the pliosaur family, the top marine predators during the Jurassic period (200-145 million years ago).

The Svalbard archipelago is now the world's source for seeds (see Frozen Seeds entry) and skeletons... quite the contrast.