Gus Woltmann » Fossils & Ruins

Tyrannosaurus Rex

admin — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:17:41 +0000

Cretaceous
The Cretaceous period is one of the major divisions of the geologic timescale, reaching from the end of the Jurassic period, about 146 million years ago (Ma), to the beginning of the Paleocene epoch of the Tertiary period (65.5 Ma).
The end of the Cretaceous also defines the boundary between the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras..
Feathered dinosaurs
The realization that dinosaurs are closely related to birds raised the obvious possibility that some dinosaurs had feathers.
Fossils of Archaeopteryx include well-preserved feathers, but it was not until the early 1990’s that clearly nonavian dinosaur fossils were discovered with preserved feathers.
Today there are more than a dozen genera of dinosaurs with fossil feathers, all of which are theropods.
Most are from the Yixian formation in China.
The fossil feathers of one specimen, Shuvuuia deserti, have even tested positive for beta keratin, the main protein in bird feathers, in immunological tests. Particularly well-preserved (and legitimate) fossils of feathered dinosaurs were discovered during the 1990s and 2000s.
The fossils were preserved in a Lagerstätte — a sedimentary deposit exhibiting remarkable richness and completeness in its fossils — in Liaoning, China.
The area had repeatedly been smothered in volcanic ash produced by eruptions in Inner Mongolia 124 million years ago, during the Early Cretaceous Period.
The fine-grained ash preserved the living organisms that it buried in fine detail.
The area was teeming with life, with millions of leaves and the oldest known angiosperms, insects, fish, frogs, salamanders, mammals, turtles, lizards and crocodilians discovered to date. The most important discoveries at Liaoning have been a host of feathered dinosaur fossils, with a steady stream of new finds filling in the picture of the dinosaur-bird connection and adding more to theories of the evolutionary development of feathers and flight..
Tyrannosaurus
Tyrannosaurus is a genus of tyrannosaurid theropod dinosaur.
The species Tyrannosaurus rex, commonly abbreviated to T.rex was one of the largest land carnivores of all time.
It hails from what is now western North America.
Some scientists consider the slightly older Tarbosaurus bataar from Asia to represent a second species of Tyrannosaurus, while others maintain Tarbosaurus as a separate genus. Like other tyrannosaurids, Tyrannosaurus was a bipedal carnivore with a massive skull balanced by a long, heavy tail.
Relative to the large and powerful hindlimbs, Tyrannosaurus forelimbs were small and retained only two digits.
Although other theropods rivaled or exceeded T.rex in size, it was the largest known tyrannosaurid and one of the largest known land predators, measuring over 12 metres (40 feet) in length and weighing as much as an elephant. Fossils of some T.rex have been found in North American rock formations dating to the very end of the Cretaceous Period (late Maastrichtian stage, 65 million years ago); it was among the last dinosaurs to exist prior to the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event.
More than 30 specimens of T.rex have now been identified, some nearly complete, which has allowed significant research into many aspects of its biology, including its life history and biomechanics.
The feeding habits and potential speed of T.rex remain controversial..
Albertosaurus
Albertosaurus is a genus of tyrannosaurid theropod dinosaur that lived in western North America during the Late Cretaceous Period, more than 70 million years ago..

“This article is brought to you by Gus Woltmann”.

Paleontology

admin — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:15:32 +0000

Feathered dinosaurs
The realization that dinosaurs are closely related to birds raised the obvious possibility that some dinosaurs had feathers.
Fossils of Archaeopteryx include well-preserved feathers, but it was not until the early 1990’s that clearly nonavian dinosaur fossils were discovered with preserved feathers.
Today there are more than a dozen genera of dinosaurs with fossil feathers, all of which are theropods.
Most are from the Yixian formation in China.
The fossil feathers of one specimen, Shuvuuia deserti, have even tested positive for beta keratin, the main protein in bird feathers, in immunological tests. Particularly well-preserved (and legitimate) fossils of feathered dinosaurs were discovered during the 1990s and 2000s.
The fossils were preserved in a Lagerstätte — a sedimentary deposit exhibiting remarkable richness and completeness in its fossils — in Liaoning, China.
The area had repeatedly been smothered in volcanic ash produced by eruptions in Inner Mongolia 124 million years ago, during the Early Cretaceous Period.
The fine-grained ash preserved the living organisms that it buried in fine detail.
The area was teeming with life, with millions of leaves and the oldest known angiosperms, insects, fish, frogs, salamanders, mammals, turtles, lizards and crocodilians discovered to date. The most important discoveries at Liaoning have been a host of feathered dinosaur fossils, with a steady stream of new finds filling in the picture of the dinosaur-bird connection and adding more to theories of the evolutionary development of feathers and flight..
Evolution of the horse
The evolution in the structure of their teeth, odd-toed limbs, obvious mobility of the upper lip, and other aspects, joins the horse to the evolutionary line of odd-toed, hoofed mammals: the Perissodactyls.
The tapirs and rhinoceroses remained adapted to their original style of life, conserving forms suitable for life in tropical forests, but the evolutionary line of the horse mainly adapted to life on dryer land in the much-harsher climatic conditions of the steppes..
Trace fossil
Trace fossils are those details preserved in rocks that are indirect evidence of life.
While we are most familiar with relatively spectacular fossil hard part remains such as shells and bones, trace fossils are often less dramatic, but nonetheless very important.
Trace fossils include burrows, track marks, coprolites (fossilized feces), stromatolites (fossilized algal mounds), and rhizoliths or rhizocretions (fossil remains of roots)..
Cretaceous
The Cretaceous period is one of the major divisions of the geologic timescale, reaching from the end of the Jurassic period, about 146 million years ago (Ma), to the beginning of the Paleocene epoch of the Tertiary period (65.5 Ma).
The end of the Cretaceous also defines the boundary between the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras..

“This article is brought to you by Gus Woltmann”.

Fossils

admin — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:13:39 +0000

Paleozoic
The Paleozoic Era is a major division of the geologic timescale, one of four geologic eras.
The Paleozoic includes six geologic periods; from oldest to youngest — the Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous and Permian.
It extended from roughly 542 MYA to roughly 251 MYA (ICS, 2004).
It follows the Precambrian Era and is followed by the Mesozoic Era..
Fossil
Fossils are the mineralized or otherwise preserved remains or traces (such as footprints) of animals, plants, and other organisms.
The totality of fossils and their placement in fossiliferous (fossil-containing) rock formations and sedimentary layers (strata) is known as the fossil record.
The study of fossils across geological time, how they were formed, and the evolutionary relationships between taxa (phylogeny) are some of the most important functions of the science of paleontology. While most fossils are several thousands to several billions of years old, there is no minimum age for a fossil.
Fossils vary in size from microscopic, such as single cells, to gigantic, such as dinosaurs.
A fossil normally preserves only a portion of the deceased organism, usually that portion that was partially mineralized during life, such as the bones and teeth of vertebrates, or the chitinous exoskeletons of invertebrates.
Preservation of soft tissues is exquisitely rare in the fossil record.
Fossils may also consist of the marks left behind by the organism while it was alive, such as the footprint or feces of a reptile.
These types of fossil are called trace fossils (or ichnofossils) as opposed to body fossils.
Finally, past life leaves some markers that cannot be seen but can be detected in the form of chemical signals; these are known as chemical fossils or biomarkers..
Trace fossil
Trace fossils are those details preserved in rocks that are indirect evidence of life.
While we are most familiar with relatively spectacular fossil hard part remains such as shells and bones, trace fossils are often less dramatic, but nonetheless very important.
Trace fossils include burrows, track marks, coprolites (fossilized feces), stromatolites (fossilized algal mounds), and rhizoliths or rhizocretions (fossil remains of roots)..
Homo heidelbergensis
Homo heidelbergensis (”Heidelberg Man”) is an extinct, potentially distinct species of the genus Homo and may be the direct ancestor of Homo neanderthalensis in Europe.
According to the “Recent Out of Africa” theory, similar “Archaic Homo sapiens” found in Africa (ie.
Homo rhodesiensis and Homo sapiens idaltu), existing in Africa as a part of the operation of the Saharan pump, and not the European forms of Homo heidelbergensis, are thought to be direct ancestors of modern Homo sapiens.
Homo antecessor is likely a direct ancestor living 750,000 years ago evolving into Homo heidelbergensis appearing in the fossil record living roughly 600,000 to 250,000 years ago through various areas of Europe. Homo heidelbergensis remains were found in Mauer near Heidelberg, Germany and then later in Arago, France and Petralona, Greece.
The best evidence found for these hominins date between 400,000 and 500,000 years ago. H.
heidelbergensis stone tool technology was considerably close to that of the Acheulean tools used by Homo erectus.
The first fossil discovery of this species was made on October 21, 1907 and came from Mauer where the workman Daniel Hartmann spotted a jaw in a sandpit.
The jaw was in good condition except for the missing premolar teeth, which were eventually found near the jaw.
The workman gave it to professor Otto Schoetensack from the University of Heidelberg, who identified and named the fossil. Most current experts believe Rhodesian Man, found in Africa, to be within the group Homo heidelbergensis.
This would make African heidelbergensis the ancestor of humans while the European variety would be the ancestor of the Neanderthals..

Early Mammals

admin — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:11:24 +0000

Mastodon
Mastodons or Mastodonts are members of an extinct genus Mammut of the order Proboscidea; they resembled, but were distinct from, the woolly mammoth.
While mastodons were furry like woolly mammoths, and similar in height at roughly three meters at the shoulder, the resemblance was superficial.
They differed from mammoths primarily in the blunt, conical shape of their teeth, which were more suited to chewing leaves than the high-crowned teeth mammoths used for grazing.
Their skulls were larger and flatter than those of mammoths, while their skeleton was stockier and more robust.
Mastodons also seem to have lacked the undercoat characteristic of mammoths.
The tusks of the mastodon sometimes exceeded five meters in length, and were nearly horizontal, another contrast with more strongly curved mammoth tusks..
Mammoth
A mammoth is any of a number of an extinct genus of elephant, often with long curved tusks and, in northern species, a covering of long hair.
They lived during the Pleistocene epoch from 1.6 million years ago to around 3,500 years ago.
The woollies were a spectacularly successful species; they ranged from Spain to North America and are thought to have existed in huge numbers.
Researchers have estimated that during the last Ice Age, parts of Siberia may have had an average population density of sixty animals per hundred square kilometres – equivalent to African elephants today.
Most mammoths died out at the end of the last Ice Age..
Smilodon
Smilodon means knife tooth, an entirely appropriate name given its enormous fangs.
The smilodon species are also known as Saber-Toothed Cats (which is inaccurate because there are other, unrelated saber-toothed “cats”) or Saber-Toothed Tigers (which is inaccurate, as they were not tigers)..
Homo heidelbergensis
Homo heidelbergensis (”Heidelberg Man”) is an extinct, potentially distinct species of the genus Homo and may be the direct ancestor of Homo neanderthalensis in Europe.
According to the “Recent Out of Africa” theory, similar “Archaic Homo sapiens” found in Africa (ie.
Homo rhodesiensis and Homo sapiens idaltu), existing in Africa as a part of the operation of the Saharan pump, and not the European forms of Homo heidelbergensis, are thought to be direct ancestors of modern Homo sapiens.
Homo antecessor is likely a direct ancestor living 750,000 years ago evolving into Homo heidelbergensis appearing in the fossil record living roughly 600,000 to 250,000 years ago through various areas of Europe. Homo heidelbergensis remains were found in Mauer near Heidelberg, Germany and then later in Arago, France and Petralona, Greece.
The best evidence found for these hominins date between 400,000 and 500,000 years ago. H.
heidelbergensis stone tool technology was considerably close to that of the Acheulean tools used by Homo erectus.
The first fossil discovery of this species was made on October 21, 1907 and came from Mauer where the workman Daniel Hartmann spotted a jaw in a sandpit.
The jaw was in good condition except for the missing premolar teeth, which were eventually found near the jaw.
The workman gave it to professor Otto Schoetensack from the University of Heidelberg, who identified and named the fossil. Most current experts believe Rhodesian Man, found in Africa, to be within the group Homo heidelbergensis.
This would make African heidelbergensis the ancestor of humans while the European variety would be the ancestor of the Neanderthals..

“This article is brought to you by Gus Woltmann”.

Early Climate

admin — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:08:24 +0000

Geologic temperature record
This article is devoted to temperature changes in Earth’s environment as determined from geologic evidence on multi-million to billion (109) year time scales.
The last 3 million years have been characterized by cycles of glacials and interglacials within a gradually deepening ice age..
Little Ice Age
The Little Ice Age (LIA) was a period of cooling lasting approximately from the 14th to the mid-19th centuries, although there is no generally agreed start or end date: some confine the period to 1550-1850.
This cooler period occurs after a warmer era known as the Medieval climate optimum..
Paleoclimatology
Paleoclimatology is the study of climate change taken on the scale of the entire history of the earth.
Glaciers are a widely employed instrument in paleoclimatology.
The ice in glaciers has hardened into an identifiable pattern, with each year leaving a distinct layer in an ice core.
It is estimated that the polar ice caps have 100,000 of these layers or more.
Inside of these layers scientists have found pollen, allowing them to estimate the total amount of plant growth of that year by the pollen count.
The thickness of the layer can help to determine the amount of rainfall that year.
Sediment layers have been studied, particularly those in the bottom of lakes and oceans.
Characteristics of preserved vegetation, animals, pollen, and isotope ratios provide information.
Sedimentary rock layers provide a more compressed view of climate, as each layer of sediment is made over a period of hundreds of thousands to millions of years.
Scientists can get a grasp of long term climate by studying sedimentary rock..
Sequence stratigraphy
Sequence stratigraphy is a relatively new branch of geology that attempts to link prehistoric sea-level changes to sedimentary deposits. The ’sequence’ part of the name refers to cyclic sedimentary deposits.
The term ’stratigraphy’ refers to the geologic knowledge about the processes by which sedimentary deposits form and how those deposits change through time and space on the Earth’s surface.
Sea level changes over geologic time..

“This article is brought to you by Gus Woltmann”.

Early Birds

admin — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:06:30 +0000

Archaeopteryx
Archaeopteryx lithographica is the earliest and most primitive known bird.
In the 1990s, the discovery of a number of well-preserved feathered dinosaurs solidified the link between dinosaurs and birds..
Feathered dinosaurs
The realization that dinosaurs are closely related to birds raised the obvious possibility that some dinosaurs had feathers.
Fossils of Archaeopteryx include well-preserved feathers, but it was not until the early 1990’s that clearly nonavian dinosaur fossils were discovered with preserved feathers.
Today there are more than a dozen genera of dinosaurs with fossil feathers, all of which are theropods.
Most are from the Yixian formation in China.
The fossil feathers of one specimen, Shuvuuia deserti, have even tested positive for beta keratin, the main protein in bird feathers, in immunological tests. Particularly well-preserved (and legitimate) fossils of feathered dinosaurs were discovered during the 1990s and 2000s.
The fossils were preserved in a Lagerstätte — a sedimentary deposit exhibiting remarkable richness and completeness in its fossils — in Liaoning, China.
The area had repeatedly been smothered in volcanic ash produced by eruptions in Inner Mongolia 124 million years ago, during the Early Cretaceous Period.
The fine-grained ash preserved the living organisms that it buried in fine detail.
The area was teeming with life, with millions of leaves and the oldest known angiosperms, insects, fish, frogs, salamanders, mammals, turtles, lizards and crocodilians discovered to date. The most important discoveries at Liaoning have been a host of feathered dinosaur fossils, with a steady stream of new finds filling in the picture of the dinosaur-bird connection and adding more to theories of the evolutionary development of feathers and flight..
Bird
Birds are bipedal, warm-blooded, oviparous vertebrates characterized primarily by feathers, forelimbs modified as wings, and hollow bones.
Birds range in size from the tiny hummingbirds to the huge Ostrich and Emu..
Dodo and related birds
The Raphinae are a subfamily of extinct flightless birds colloquially called didines or didine birds.
They inhabited the Mascarene Islands of Mauritius and Rodrigues, but became extinct through hunting by humans and predation by introduced non-native mammals following human colonisation in the 1600s.
This clade is part of the order Columbiformes and contains the monotypic genera Pezophaps and Raphus.
The former contains the species Pezophaps solitaria (the Rodrigues Solitaire), the latter the Dodo, Raphus cucullatus.
These birds reached an impressive size..

“This article is brought to you by Gus Woltmann”.

Dinosaurs

admin — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:04:31 +0000

Brachiosaurus
The Brachiosaurus is a famous dinosaur that lived during the Jurassic period.
One of the largest ever dinosaurs to walk the earth, it has become a famous animal synonymous with dinosaurs, and is widely recognized worldwide..
Stegosaurus
Stegosaurus, meaning “plated lizard”, because of the plates on its back was a genus of large herbivorous dinosaurs from the Upper Jurassic of North America.
It is among the most easily identifiable dinosaurs, due to the distinctive double row of kite-shaped plates along the animal’s back and the four long spikes on its tail..
Paralititan
Paralititan stromeri was a giant titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur discovered in coastal deposits in the Upper Cretaceous Bahariya Formation of Egypt.
The fossil represents the first tetrapod reported from the Bahariya Formation since 1935.
Its 1.69 m long humerus is longer than that of any known Cretaceous sauropod.
The autochthonous, scavenged skeleton was preserved in tidal flat deposits containing fossil mangrove vegetation.
Paralititan is one of the most massive dinosaurs ever discovered, with an estimated weight of 65-80 tonnes..
Hadrosaurus
Hadrosaurus is a hadrosaurid dinosaur genus.
In 1858, a skeleton of a dinosaur from this genus was the first full dinosaur skeleton found in North America, and in 1868 it became the first ever mounted dinosaur skeleton.
Hadrosaurus foulkii is the only species in this genus..

“This article is brought to you by Gus Woltmann”.

Early Humans

admin — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:33:56 +0000

Homo (genus)
Homo is the genus that includes modern humans and their close relatives.
The genus is estimated to be between 1.5 and 2.5 million years old.
All species except Homo sapiens are extinct.
Homo neanderthalensis, traditionally considered the last surviving relative, died out 30,000 years ago while recent evidence suggests that Homo floresiensis lived as recently as 12,000 years ago..
Rhodesian Man
Rhodesian Man (Homo rhodesiensis) is a hominin fossil that was described from a cranium found in an iron and zinc mine in Northern Rhodesia (now Kabwe, Zambia) in 1921 by Tom Zwiglaar, a Swiss miner.
In addition to the cranium, an upper jaw from another individual, a sacrum, a tibia, and two femur fragments were also found.
The skull was dubbed Rhodesian Man at the time of the find, but is now commonly referred to as the Broken Hill Skull or the Kabwe Cranium..
Neandertal interaction with Cro-Magnons
Neanderthals apparently co-existed with anatomically modern humans beginning some 100,000 years ago.
However, about 45,000 years ago, at about the time that stoneworking techniques similar to those of Cro-Magnon people appeared in Europe, Neanderthals began to be displaced..
Homo rudolfensis
Homo rudolfensis is a fossil hominin species originally proposed in 1986 by V.
P.
Alexeev for the specimen Skull 1470 (KNM ER 1470).
Originally thought to be a member of the species Homo habilis, the fossil was the center of much debate concerning its species.
Skull 1470 has an estimated age of 1.9 million years..

“This article is brought to you by Gus Woltmann”.

Cultures

admin — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:31:04 +0000

Artifact (archaeology)
An artifact or artefact is any object made or modified by a human culture, and often one later recovered by some archaeological endeavor.
Examples include stone tools such as projectile points, pottery vessels such as amphorae, metal objects such as buttons or guns and items of personal adornment such as jewellery and clothing.
Other examples include bone that shows signs of human modification, fire cracked rocks from a hearth or plant material used for food..
Stone tool
A stone tool is, in the most general sense, any tool made of stone.
Although stone-tool-dependent cultures exist even today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric societies that no longer exist..
Neandertal interaction with Cro-Magnons
Neanderthals apparently co-existed with anatomically modern humans beginning some 100,000 years ago.
However, about 45,000 years ago, at about the time that stoneworking techniques similar to those of Cro-Magnon people appeared in Europe, Neanderthals began to be displaced..
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a period in a civilization’s development when the most advanced metalworking consisted of techniques for smelting copper and tin from naturally occurring outcroppings of ore, and then alloying those metals in order to cast bronze..

“This article is brought to you by Gus Woltmann”.

Anthropology

admin — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:28:57 +0000

Neandertal interaction with Cro-Magnons
Neanderthals apparently co-existed with anatomically modern humans beginning some 100,000 years ago.
However, about 45,000 years ago, at about the time that stoneworking techniques similar to those of Cro-Magnon people appeared in Europe, Neanderthals began to be displaced..
Hominidae
The hominids are the members of the biological family Hominidae (the great apes), which includes humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans.
The exact criteria for membership in the Homininae are not clear, but the subfamily generally includes those species which share more than 97% of their DNA with the modern human genome, and exhibit a capacity for language or for simple cultures beyond the family or band.
The theory of mind including such faculties as mental state attribution, empathy and even empathetic deception is a controversial criterion distinguishing the adult human alone among the hominids.
Humans acquire this capacity at about four and a half years of age, whereas it has neither been proven nor disproven that gorillas and chimpanzees develop a theory of mind.
This is also the case for some new world monkeys outside the family of great apes, as, for example, the capuchin monkeys..
The evolution of human intelligence
The nature and origins of hominid intelligence is a much-studied and much-debated topic, of natural interest to humans as the most successful and intelligent hominid species.
There is no universally accepted definition of intelligence, one definition is “the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend ideas and language, and learn.” The evolution of hominid intelligence can be traced over its course for the past 10 million years, and attributed to specific environmental challenges.
It is a misunderstanding of evolutionary theory, however, to see this as a necessary process, and an even greater misunderstanding to see it as one directed to a particular outcome.
There are primate species which have not evolved any greater degree of intelligence than they had 10 million years ago: this is because their particular environment has not demanded this particular adaptation of them.
Intelligence as an adaptation to the challenge of natural selection is no better or worse than any other adaptation, such as the speed of the cheetah or the venomous bite of the cobra.
It is, however, the only adaptation which has allowed a species to establish complete domination over the rest of the natural world.
Whether our species has yet acquired sufficient intelligence to manage this responsibility is a matter for debate..
Homo habilis
Homo habilis (”handy man”, “skillful person”) is a species of the genus Homo, which lived from approximately 2.5 million to 1.8 million years ago at the beginning of the Pleistocene.
The definition of this species is credited to both Mary and Louis Leakey, who found fossils in Tanzania, East Africa, between 1962 and 1964.
Homo habilis is arguably the first species of the Homo genus to appear..

“This article is brought to you by Gus Woltmann”.