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#paleontology

27 posts21 participants1 post today
Public
Bob Nicholls Art

My 25 years of palaeoart chronology...

The 2022 Korean translation of Locked in Time (by Dr Dean Lomax & published by Columbia University Press) commissioned me to colourise my 50 greyscale illustrations. Here's "A Portrait of Malignance," showing a Telmatosaurus with an ameloblastoma tumour.

#Art#Painting#PaleoArt
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llewelly

newest episode of Common Descent is about saber teeth!

They cover everything from Smilodon to Nimravids to Gorgonopsians to fanged deer (although not Hoplitomeryx)! Even Uintatherium gets a mention. Covers recent research on why Smilodon's canines would have been visible when the mouth was closed, while Homotherium's canines would have been concealed when the mouth was closed.

commondescentpodcast.com/2025/

#fossils
#saber
#fangs
#smilodon
#homotherium
#lips
#paleontology

Public
N-gated Hacker News

🦖🪰🌿 Ah, the groundbreaking revelation: a wasp with a waistline from the Cretaceous period! Because what the world truly needed was yet another ancient bug with a fancy abdomen, proving once again that even in prehistoric times, nature was extra. 🚀🔬
bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/arti #ancientbugs #Cretaceousdiscovery #waspwaistline #paleontology #natureinscience #prehistoricmarvels #HackerNews #ngated

BioMed CentralA cretaceous fly trap? remarkable abdominal modification in a fossil wasp - BMC BiologyBackground Carnivorous insects have evolved a range of prey and host capture mechanisms. However, insect predation strategies in the fossil record remain poorly understood. Results Here, we describe †Sirenobethylus charybdis n. gen. & sp., based on sixteen adult female wasps in Kachin amber from the mid-Cretaceous, 99 Mya (million years ago), and place it in Chrysidoidea: †Sirenobethylidae n. fam. The fossils display unique morphological modifications on the tip of the abdomen consisting of three flaps from the modified abdominal sternum 6 and tergum and sternum 7; the lower flap formed from sternum 6 is preserved in different positions relative to the other flaps in different specimens, indicating that they form some sort of grasping apparatus. Nothing similar is known from any other insect; the rounded abdominal apparatus, combined with the setae along the edges, is reminiscent of a Venus flytrap. Phylogenetic analysis suggests that the new family is a separate lineage close to the base of Chrysidoidea. Conclusions †Sirenobethylus probably was a koinobiont parasitoid wasp; the abdominal grasping apparatus may have been used to temporarily immobilize the host during oviposition. The new fossils suggest that Chrysidoidea displayed a wider range of parasitoid strategies in the mid-Cretaceous than they do today.
Public
Hacker News

A cretaceous fly trap? remarkable abdominal modification in a fossil wasp

bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/arti

BioMed CentralA cretaceous fly trap? remarkable abdominal modification in a fossil wasp - BMC BiologyBackground Carnivorous insects have evolved a range of prey and host capture mechanisms. However, insect predation strategies in the fossil record remain poorly understood. Results Here, we describe †Sirenobethylus charybdis n. gen. & sp., based on sixteen adult female wasps in Kachin amber from the mid-Cretaceous, 99 Mya (million years ago), and place it in Chrysidoidea: †Sirenobethylidae n. fam. The fossils display unique morphological modifications on the tip of the abdomen consisting of three flaps from the modified abdominal sternum 6 and tergum and sternum 7; the lower flap formed from sternum 6 is preserved in different positions relative to the other flaps in different specimens, indicating that they form some sort of grasping apparatus. Nothing similar is known from any other insect; the rounded abdominal apparatus, combined with the setae along the edges, is reminiscent of a Venus flytrap. Phylogenetic analysis suggests that the new family is a separate lineage close to the base of Chrysidoidea. Conclusions †Sirenobethylus probably was a koinobiont parasitoid wasp; the abdominal grasping apparatus may have been used to temporarily immobilize the host during oviposition. The new fossils suggest that Chrysidoidea displayed a wider range of parasitoid strategies in the mid-Cretaceous than they do today.
#HackerNews#cretaceousflytrap#remarkablefossil
Public
tinkel

Prototaxites was an extinct lineage of multicellular terrestrial eukaryotes biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/20

bioRxiv · Prototaxites was an extinct lineage of multicellular terrestrial eukaryotesPrototaxites was the first giant organism to live on the terrestrial surface, reaching sizes of 8 metres in the Early Devonian. However, its taxonomic assignment has been debated for over 165 years1-7. Tentative assignments to groups of multicellular algae or land plants1,2,8-11 have been repeatedly ruled out based on anatomy and chemistry5,7,11-16 resulting in two major alternatives: Prototaxites was either a fungus5,6,17-22 or a now entirely extinct lineage 7,16,23. Recent studies have converged on a fungal affinity5-7,17-20,22. Here we test this by contrasting the anatomy and molecular composition of Prototaxites with contemporary fungi from the 407-million-year-old Rhynie chert. We report that Prototaxites taiti was the largest organism in the Rhynie ecosystem and its anatomy was fundamentally distinct from all known extant or extinct fungi. Furthermore, our molecular composition analysis indicates that cell walls of P. taiti include aliphatic, aromatic, and phenolic components most similar to fossilisation products of lignin, but no fossilisation products characteristic of chitin or chitosan, which are diagnostic of all groups of extant and extinct fungi, including those preserved in the Rhynie chert. We therefore conclude that Prototaxites was not a fungus, and instead propose it is best assigned to a now entirely extinct terrestrial lineage. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.
#biology#Biochemistry#Paleontology
Public
Peter, clear on OPSEC

This looks like the typical alien's clawed hand, according to Hollywood.

It's from a real Earth animal, though.

Duonychus tsogtbaatari, a giant, long-necked, "furry", feathered dinosaur with two-clawed hands used for grabbing its food — vegetation. A distant relative of Tyrannosaurus rex, the well-known two-fingered stomper with the bad attitude of a coffee addict 𝘴𝘢𝘯𝘴 coffee.

smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/

A reptilian hand, with two fingers that are tipped with wicked looking curved, sharp claws longer than the fingers themselves. Nightmare material, and a manicurist's dream.
ALT
#Dinosaurs#Paleontology#Science
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