90 million years ago, Antarctica was a thriving tropical forest
Fossil evidence of an ancient rainforest has recently been discovered in West Antarctica. A thriving temperate rainforest grew in West Antarctica about 90 million years ago, according to a new study, based on newly discovered fossil roots, pollen and spores.
Six Mass Extinctions in Earth’s History. Are We on the Brink of a Seventh?
Scientists define a mass extinction as the extinction of about three-quarters of all species over a short geological period of time, which is less than 2.8 million years, according to The Conversation. Right now, humans are at the beginning of the last mass extinction, which is moving much faster than any other. Since 1970, vertebrate species populations have declined by an average of 68%, and more than 35,000 species are currently considered threatened with extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). During the 20th century alone, about 543 species of land vertebrates became extinct, according to a research paper in the journal PNAS.
Hit parade of “living fossils”: these 14 species have not changed in millions or even hundreds of millions of years
A living fossil is a species that has not changed significantly over millions of years and closely resembles its ancestors found in the fossil record. Charles Darwin coined the term “living fossil” in 1859 to describe living species that still looked like their ancestors millions of years ago and were often the last surviving lineage. Anatomically, these species tend to appear unchanged, although genetically, the species are constantly evolving. Plate tectonic activity has had a profound effect on the rate of evolution of coelacanths throughout their 400-million-year history.
Matching dinosaur footprints found in Africa and South America
Tens of millions of years ago, South America and Africa were part of the same landmass, an ancient supercontinent called Gondwana. At some point, the two continents began to drift apart until only a thin strip of land remained above, holding them together. A team of scientists in a new study argues that matching dinosaur tracks found in what are now Brazil and Cameroon were left along this narrow passage 120 million years ago, before the continents split apart.
Dinosaurs could live underground
A newly discovered dinosaur may have spent part of its life underground. Paleontologists have recently uncovered a new fossilized animal — and this time, it’s a burrower. Fona herzogae, discovered in Utah by researchers and paleontologists from North Carolina State University, was a small, herbivorous dinosaur that lived during the Cenomanian period — about 100 to 66 million years ago.