A paleontologist at the University of Leicester has described a new genus and species of enigmatic multisegmented arthropod using a fossilized specimen found over two decades ago in South Africa.
Keurbos susanae. Image credit: Sarah Gabbott /…
Category: Paleontology
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Preserved carbon isotope compositions in 3.7 billion year old detrital organic matter from the Isua Supracrustal Belt
Geological background
The Isua Supracrustal Belt (ISB) in SW Greenland is one of few Eoarchean supracrustal terranes on Earth. Metamorphosed volcanic, hypabyssal and plutonic rocks as well as sediments are exposed along the ~30 km long arcuate…
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100-Million-Year-Old Dinosaur and Crocodile Eggshell Fossils Unearthed in Utah
A team of paleontologists from Lake Forest College, Stellenbosch University, the University of Minnesota and North Carolina State University has described a new assemblage of fossil eggshells from the Mussentuchit Member of the Cedar Mountain…
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A genetic tree as a movie: Moving beyond the still portrait of ancestry
University of Michigan researchers have developed a statistical method that can be used for such wide-ranging applications as tracing your ancestry, modeling disease spread and studying how animals spread through geographic regions.
One of the…
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Melting ice, more rain drive Southern Ocean cooling
Global climate models predict that the ocean around Antarctica should be warming, but in reality, those waters have cooled over most of the past four decades.
The discrepancy between model results and observed cooling, Stanford University…
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How calcium may have unlocked the origins of life’s molecular asymmetry
A new study led by researchers at the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at Institute of Science Tokyo has uncovered a surprising role for calcium in shaping life’s earliest molecular structures. Their findings suggest that calcium ions can…
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Earliest days of Earth’s formation
New research led by a York University professor sheds light on the earliest days of the earth’s formation and potentially calls into question some earlier assumptions in planetary science about the early years of rocky planets. Establishing a…
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Cuneiforms: New digital tool for translating ancient texts
The UNESCO World Heritage Site of Boğazköy-Hattuša is located in the north of Turkey. It was once the capital of the Hittite Empire, a great power in the late Bronze Age around 1650 to 1200 BC.
The cuneiform tablets discovered there and in…
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Were large soda lakes the cradle of life?
Along with nitrogen and carbon, phosphorus is an essential element for life on Earth. It is a central component of molecules such as DNA and RNA, which serve to transmit and store genetic information, and ATP (adenosine triphosphate), which cells…
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The evolution of low-temperature adapted enzymes
Life has evolved over billions of years, adapting to the changing environment. Similarly, enzymes — proteins that speed up biochemical reactions (catalysis) in cells — have adapted to the habitats of their host organisms. Each enzyme has an…
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