Where were the first Baryonyx fossils found?
Spinosauridae
In 1983, a relatively complete skeleton was excavated from the Smokejacks pit in Surrey, Engand. These remains were described by British paleontologists Alan J. Charig and Angela C. Milner in 1986 as the holotype of a new species, "Baryonyx walkeri." After the discovery of "Baryonyx," many new genera have since been described, the majority on very incomplete remains. However, other finds bear enough fossil material and distinct anatomical features to be assigned with confidence. Paul Sereno and colleagues described "Suchomimus" in 1998"," a baryonychine from Niger on the basis of a partial skeleton found in 1997. Later in 2004, partial jaw bones were recovered from the Alcântara Formation, these were referred to a new genus of spinosaurine named "Oxalaia" in 2011 by Alexander Kellner.
Iguanodon
The largest find of "Iguanodon" remains to that date occurred on 28 February 1878 in a coal mine at Bernissart in Belgium, at a depth of , when two mineworkers, Jules Créteur and Alphonse Blanchard, accidentally hit on a skeleton that they initially took for petrified wood. With the encouragement of Alphonse Briart, supervisor of mines at nearby Morlanwelz, Louis de Pauw on 15 May 1878 started to excavate the skeletons and in 1882 Louis Dollo reconstructed them. At least 38 "Iguanodon" individuals were uncovered, most of which were adults. In 1882, the holotype specimen of "I. bernissartensis" became one of the first ever dinosaur skeletons mounted for display. It was put together in a chapel at the Palace of Charles of Lorraine using a series of adjustable ropes attached to scaffolding so that a lifelike pose could be achieved during the mounting process. This specimen, along with several others, first opened for public viewing in an inner courtyard of the palace in July 1883. In 1891 they were moved to the Royal Museum of Natural History, where they are still on display; nine are displayed as standing mounts, and nineteen more are still in the Museum's basement. The exhibit makes an impressive display in the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, in Brussels. A replica of one of these is on display at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and at the Sedgwick Museum in Cambridge. Most of the remains were referred to a new species, "I. bernissartensis", a larger and much more robust animal than the English remains had yet revealed. One specimen, IRSNB 1551, was at first referred to the nebulous, gracile "I. mantelli", but is currently referred to "Mantellisaurus atherfieldensis". The skeletons were some of the first complete dinosaur skeletons known. Found with the dinosaur skeletons were the remains of plants, fish, and other reptiles, including the crocodyliform "Bernissartia".
Palaeochiropteryx
The fossil record of bats extends back at least to the early Eocene, and chiropteran fossils are known from all continents except Antarctica. "Icaronycteris", "Archaeonycteris", "Hassianycetris", and "Palaeochiropteryx", unlike most other fossil bats, have not been referred to any extant family or superfamily. These Eocene taxa are known from exceptionally well-preserved fossils, and they have long formed a basis for reconstructing the early evolutionary history of Chiroptera.
Baryonyx
In 1997, Charig and Milner noted that two fragmentary spinosaurid snouts from the Elrhaz Formation of Niger (reported by the French palaeontologist Philippe Taquet in 1984) were similar enough to "Baryonyx" that they considered them to belong to an indeterminate species of the genus (despite their much younger Aptian geological age). In 1998, these fossils became the basis of the genus and species "Cristatusaurus lapparenti", named by Taquet and the American palaeontologist Dale Russell. The American palaeontologist Paul Sereno and colleagues named the new genus and species "Suchomimus tenerensis" later in 1998, based on more complete fossils from the Elrhaz Formation. In 2002, the German palaeontologist Hans-Dieter Sues and colleagues proposed that "Suchomimus tenerensis" was similar enough to "Baryonyx walkeri" to be considered a species within the same genus (as "B. tenerensis"), and that "Suchomimus" was identical to "Cristatusaurus". Milner concurred that the material from Niger was indistinguishable from "Baryonyx" in 2003. In a 2004 conference abstract, Hutt and Newberry supported the synonymy based on a large theropod vertebra from the Isle of Wight which they attributed to an animal closely related to "Baryonyx" and "Suchomimus". Later studies have kept "Baryonyx" and "Suchomimus" separate, whereas "Cristatusaurus" has been proposed to be either a "nomen dubium" or possibly distinct from both. A 2017 review paper by the Brazilian palaeontologist Carlos Roberto A. Candeiro and colleagues stated that this debate was more in the realm of semantics than science, as it is generally agreed that "B. walkeri" and "S. tenerensis" are distinct, related species.
Coryphodon
Since the first fossil was found in Wyoming, the taxonomy of "Coryphodon" and its family have been in disarray — five described genera have been synonymized with "Coryphodon" and thirty-five proposed species have been declared invalid.
"Coryphodon" evolved from the Late Paleocene "C. proterus", one of the largest species found and the only one known from the Clarkforkian NALMA. The body size then decreased until "C. eocaenus" appears at the Clarkforkian-Wasatchian transition (55.4 Ma, near the PETM), from where "Coryphodon" evolved into the large species "C. radians". "C. radians" in its turn evolved into two contemporaneous species that appear in the Early Eocene, the small "C. armatus" and the very large "C. lobatus". These changes in size are thought to be linked to global climate change, with the size minimum in the "Coryphodon" lineage occurring shortly after Paleocene-Eocene boundary.
Jaggermeryx
The first fossils of the species were described in a monograph published by a French scientist in 1918. It was not until 2014, however, that the fossils were identified as a unique species from further specimens collected at Wadi Moghra in the Qattara Depression of Egypt. The fossils have been deposited at the Cairo Geological Museum, Cairo University, and Duke University.
Eohyosaurus
"Eohyosaurus" is known solely from the holotype SAM-PK-K10159, a partial skull missing the front end, with associated incomplete lower jaws currently housed at the Iziko South African Museum, Cape Town. The specimen was discovered by Frederik Petrus Wolvaardt in December 2000, loose on boulder-strewn slopes at the base of a cliff, at Farm Lemoenfontein 44, Rouxville District of the Free State Province. It was collected from the middle deposits of the Burgersdorp Formation of Beaufort Group. This horizon belongs to Subzone B of the "Cynognathus" Assemblage Zone, dating to the early Anisian stage of the early Middle Triassic period, about 246 million years ago. Farm Lemoenfontein 44 also yielded remains of the archosauriform "Erythrosuchus africanus", the bauriid "Microgomphodon oligocynus", the cynodont "Trirachodon", the kannemeyeriid "Kannemeyeria" as well as unidentified procolophonid remains. All known basal rhynchosaurs came from similar deposits in the Beaufort Group, and while "Howesia browni" and "Mesosuchus browni" are also known from Subzone B of Burgersdorp Formation (from different localities), "Noteosuchus colletti" is known from the earliest Triassic Katberg Formation ("Lystrosaurus" Assemblage Zone).
Dorygnathus
The first remains of "Dorygnathus", isolated bones and jaw fragments from the Schwarzjura, the Posidonia Shale dating from the Toarcian, were discovered near Banz, Bavaria and in 1830 described by Carl Theodori as "Ornithocephalus banthensis", the specific name referring to Banz. The holotype, a lower jaw, is PSB 757. The fossils were studied by Christian Erich Hermann von Meyer in 1831 and again by Theodori in 1852 when he referred them to the genus "Rhamphorhynchus". In this period a close affinity was assumed with a pterosaur known from Britain, later named "Dimorphodon". Some fossils were sent to a professor of paleontology in Munich named Johann Andreas Wagner. It was he who, having studied new finds by Albert Oppel in 1856 and 1858, after Richard Owen had named "Dimorphodon" concluded that the German type was clearly different and that therefore a new genus of pterosaur should be erected, which he formally named "Dorygnathus" in 1860, from Greek "dory", "spear" and "gnathos", "jaw". Much more complete remains have been found since in other German locales and especially in Württemberg, including Holzmaden, Ohmden, and Zell. One specimen, SMNS 81840, has in 1978 been dug up in Nancy, France. "Dorygnathus" fossils were often found in the spoil heaps where unusable rock was dumped from slate quarries worked by local farmers. Most fossils were found in two major waves, one during the twenties, the other during the eighties of the twentieth century. Since then the rate of discovery has slowed considerably because the demand for slate has strongly diminished and many small quarries have closed. At present over fifty specimens have been collected, many of them are preserved in the collection of the State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart, as by law paleontological finds in Baden-Württemberg are property of this Bundesland. Due to the excellent preserval of the later found fossils, "Dorygnathus" has generated much interest by pterosaur researchers, important studies having been dedicated to the species by Felix Plieninger, Gustav von Arthaber, and more recently Kevin Padian.
In 1971 Rupert Wild described and named a second species: "Dorygnathus mistelgauensis", based on a specimen collected in a brick pit near the railway station of Mistelgau, to which the specific name refers, by teacher H. Herppich, who donated it to the private collection of Günther Eicken, a local amateur paleontologist at Bayreuth, where it still resides. As a result the exemplar has no official inventory number. The fossil comprises a shoulder-blade with wing, a partial leg, a rib and a caudal vertebra. Wild justified the creation of a new species name by referring to the great size, with an about 50% larger wingspan than with a typical specimen; the short lower leg and the long wing.
Lamprey
Lamprey fossils are rare because cartilage does not fossilize as readily as bone. The first fossil lampreys were originally found in Early Carboniferous limestones, marine sediments in North America: "Mayomyzon pieckoensis" and "Hardistiella montanensis", from the Mississippian Mazon Creek "lagerstätte" and the Bear Gulch limestone sequence. None of the fossil lampreys found to date have been longer than 10 cm (3,9 inches), and all the Paleozoic forms have been found in marine deposits.
Palaeomerycidae
One of the first known members of this group, "Palaeomeryx", was thought to be a hornless form distantly related to the Giraffidae before paleontologist Miguel Crusafont found remains of "Triceromeryx" in middle Miocene Spain. This "Palaeomeryx"-like form carried two ossicones over its orbits that were straight and short, similar to those of true giraffids. However, the most striking feature of "Triceromeryx" was the third, Y-shaped appendage that prolonged the occipital bone at the back of the skull. Discoveries during the 1980s and 1990s showed a surprising variety in these occipital appendages.
Seymouria
Fossils of "Seymouria" were first found near the town of Seymour, in Baylor County, Texas (hence the name of the type species, "Seymouria baylorensis", referring to both the town and county). The first fossils to be discovered were a pair of incomplete skulls, one of which was preserved with a few pectoral and vertebral elements. These fossils were described by German paleontologist Ferdinand Broili in 1904, and are now stored in Munich. American paleontologist S.W. Williston later described a nearly complete skeleton in 1911, and noted that ""Desmospondylus anomalus"", a taxon he had recently named from fragmentary limbs and vertebrae, likely represented juvenile or even embryonic individuals of "Seymouria".Likewise, English paleontologist D.M.S. Watson noted in 1918 that "Conodectes", a dubious genera named by the famous Edward Drinker Cope back in 1896, was likely synonymous with "Seymouria". Robert Broom (1922) argued that the genus should be referred to as "Conodectes" since that name was published first, but Alfred Romer (1928) objected, noting that the name "Seymouria" was too popular within the scientific community to be replaced.
Bathynotus
Bathynotus is a genus of trilobites of the family Bathynotidae. Its fossils have been found in the paleocontinents Laurentia (specifically in what are now Nevada and Vermont), Gondwana (in South China and South-Australia), and - doubtfully - Siberia. It is characterized by a very wide axis in the thorax and an enlarged 11th segment that bears a long, backwardly directed spine on each side. Additionally, the 12th and 13th segments are narrow and fuse with the edge of the spine of the 11th segment.
Dinosaur
"Archaeopteryx" was the first fossil found that revealed a potential connection between dinosaurs and birds. It is considered a transitional fossil, in that it displays features of both groups. Brought to light just two years after Darwin's seminal "The Origin of Species", its discovery spurred the nascent debate between proponents of evolutionary biology and creationism. This early bird is so dinosaur-like that, without a clear impression of feathers in the surrounding rock, at least one specimen was mistaken for "Compsognathus". Since the 1990s, a number of additional feathered dinosaurs have been found, providing even stronger evidence of the close relationship between dinosaurs and modern birds. Most of these specimens were unearthed in the lagerstätte of the Yixian Formation, Liaoning, northeastern China, which was part of an island continent during the Cretaceous. Though feathers have been found in only a few locations, it is possible that non-avian dinosaurs elsewhere in the world were also feathered. The lack of widespread fossil evidence for feathered non-avian dinosaurs may be because delicate features like skin and feathers are not often preserved by fossilization and thus are absent from the fossil record.
Paleontology in West Virginia
In 1993, two pieces of a "Megalonyx" shoulder blade were found in Haynes Cave of Monroe County, West Virginia, suggesting it may have been the true location where the "Megalonyx" bones examined by Thomas Jefferson were discovered, rather than Organ Cave. In 1995 Fred Grady further debunked the association between the "Megalonyx" fossils and Organ Cave since the original discovery site was owned at the time of the discovery by a man named Frederic Gromer, who had never owned Organ Cave. However, he did own Haynes Cave. Additional details gleaned from descriptions of Haynes Cave taken from the correspondence of subsequent owner, Tristram Patton, add more evidence that it was the true site of the discovery of Megalonyx. In 2008 "Megalonyx jeffersonii", would be designated the West Virginia state fossil.
Euryale ferox
Evidence from archaeobotany indicates that "Euryale ferox" was a frequently collected wild food source during the Neolithic period in the Yangtze region, with large numbers of finds coming from the sites of Kuahuqiao, Hemudu, and Tianluoshan. The earliest recorded use of "E. ferox" was found in Gesher Benot Ya'aqov, Israel, among artifacts of the Acheulean culture 790-750,000 years ago.
Boreonykus
The holotype specimen of "Boreonykus", TMP 1989.055.0047, was found in a layer of the Wapiti Formation in central Alberta, which dates from the late Campanian, 73.27 ± 0.25 million years ago. It consists of a right frontal bone. Fourteen loose teeth have been referred to the species, as well as several postcranial bones, perhaps of the same individual: the specimen TMP 1988.055.0129, a rear caudal vertebra; UALVP 53597, a claw of the second finger, and the specimen TMP 1986.055.0184.1, a sicle claw of the foot.
Paleontology in West Virginia
Near the end of the 18th century, workers operating saltpeter vats in a cave then considered part of Greenbrier County, Virginia discovered fossil limb bones. In 1796, man named John Stuart sent these remains to Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson recognized them as being from a genus unknown to science and named the creature "Megalonyx". The cave from which these fossils were taken later came to be identified with Organ Cave. Since the industrial revolution, the process of mining coal has responsible for many discoveries of fossil trackways. Some have been discovered serendipitously in West Virginia. Such discoveries frequently occur when the excavation of coal mines removes the rock underlying the trackway, leaving it exposed on the tunnel's ceiling. More recently, in 1990, Frederick A. Sundberg, and other colleagues erected the new ichnospecies "Hylopus hamesi" to hold fossil amphibian footprints from the latest Mississippian Bluefield Formation. This ichnospecies represented the oldest evidence for terrestrial vertebrates in the eastern United States. Based on the anatomy of the foot responsible for the traces, the researchers concluded that the tracks were left by anthracosaurs, possibly the species "Protergyrinus scheelei", which was also known from West Virginia's Mississippian deposits. Variations in the structure of the trackways suggested that some of them were left while the animal was swimming, and thus the tracks suggest it was capable of walking on land and swimming underwater.
Barosaurus
The first "Barosaurus" remains were discovered in the Morrison Formation of South Dakota by Ms. E. R. Ellerman, postmistress of Pottsville, and excavated by Othniel Charles Marsh and John Bell Hatcher of Yale University in 1889. Only six tail vertebrae were recovered at that time, forming the type specimen (YPM 429) of a new species, which Marsh named "Barosaurus lentus", from the Classical Greek words "βαρυς"/"barys" ("heavy") and "σαυρος"/"sauros" ("lizard"), and the Latin word "lentus" ("slow"). The rest of the type specimen was left in the ground under the protection of the landowner, Ms Rachel Hatch, until it was collected nine years later, in 1898, by Marsh's assistant, George Rieber Wieland. These new remains consisted of vertebrae, ribs and limb bones. In 1896 Marsh had placed "Barosaurus" in the Atlantosauridae; in 1898 it was by him classified as a diplodocid for the first time. In his last published paper before his death, Marsh named two smaller metatarsals found by Wieland as a second species, "Barosaurus affinis", but this has long been considered a junior synonym of "B. lentus".
Baryonyx
In January 1983 the British plumber and amateur fossil collector William J. Walker explored the Smokejacks Pit, a clay pit in the Weald Clay Formation near Ockley in Surrey, England. He found a rock wherein he discovered a large claw, but after piecing it together at home, he realised the tip of the claw was missing. Walker returned to the same spot in the pit some weeks later, and found the missing part after searching for an hour. He also found a phalanx bone and part of a rib. Walker's son-in-law later brought the claw to the Natural History Museum of London, where it was examined by the British palaeontologists Alan J. Charig and Angela C. Milner, who identified it as belonging to a theropod dinosaur. The palaeontologists found more bone fragments at the site in February, but the entire skeleton could not be collected until May and June due to weather conditions at the pit. A team of eight museum staff members and several volunteers excavated of matrix in 54 blocks over a three-week period. Walker donated the claw to the museum, and the Ockley Brick Company (owners of the pit) donated the rest of the skeleton and provided equipment. The area had been explored for 200 years, but no similar remains had been found before.
Nothronychus
The first fossil evidence later attributed to "Nothronychus" was discovered by a team of paleontologists working in the Zuni Basin of New Mexico at the Haystack Butte site. A therizinosaur ischium (a hip bone) had originally been mistaken for a squamosal, a part of the skull crest of the newly discovered ceratopsian "Zuniceratops". However, closer examination revealed the true identity of the bone, and soon more parts of the skeleton were found. The New Mexico team, led by paleontologists Jim Kirkland and Doug Wolfe, published their find in the "Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology" on 22 August 2001, making it the type specimen of the new species "Nothronychus mckinleyi". The "Arizona Republic" newspaper, however, was first to announce the name on 19 June 2001, in a column by R.E. Molnar. The generic name is derived from Greek νωθρός, "nothros", "heavy" or "slothful", and ὄνυξ, "onyx", "claw". The specific name honours rancher Bobby McKinley on whose land the find was made. The holotype, specimen MSM P2106, consists of two skull fragments, a braincase, some vertebrae and parts of the shoulder girdle, forelimbs, pelvis and hindlimbs.
A second, more complete therizinosaur specimen, UMNH VP 16420, was discovered from the Tropic Shale formation (dating to the early Turonian stage) of southern Utah in 2000 by Merle Graffam, a resident of Big Water, Utah. The area around Big Water had been subject to several expeditions by teams from the Museum of Northern Arizona (MNA), and was known for its abundance of marine reptile fossils, especially plesiosaurs. During part of the late Cretaceous period, the region had been submerged under a shallow sea, the Western Interior Seaway, and preserves extensive marine deposits. Graffam's initial discovery (a large, isolated toe bone) came as a surprise to scientists, as it clearly belonged to a land-dwelling dinosaur, rather than a plesiosaur. However, the location of the bone at the time would have been nearly 100 kilometers from the Cretaceous shoreline. An excavation of the area by an MNA crew revealed more of the skeleton, and the scientists found that it was a therizinosaur, and the first example of that group to be found in the Americas. All previous therizinosaur fossils had come from China and Mongolia. It is the most complete therizinosaurid specimen known but lacks the skull.
Iberosuchus
The first fossil of "Ibersosuchus" consisting of cranial remains was excavated in the Feligueira Grande Formation located in the Vale Furado in Nazaré of Leiria Province in Portugal. Formation consists of sand stone, with gravel and silt, and in the site various mammals and turtles were found such as Paralophiodon cf. leptorhynchum. The formation is composed of ante-Bartonian rocks.
Palaeoxonodon
The first fossils of "Palaeoxonodon ooliticus" were found in the Kirtlington cement quarry, Oxfordshire, England. This site was rich in Mesozoic mammal remains from the Bathonian Forest Marble Formation. Later, two more species of "Palaeoxonodon" were named from the same site, "P. leesi" and "P. freemani". All of these fossils were individual teeth.
Baryonyx
A 2007 finite element analysis of CT scanned snouts by the British palaeontologist Emily J. Rayfield and colleagues indicated that the biomechanics of "Baryonyx" were most similar to those of the gharial and unlike those of the American alligator and more-conventional theropods, supporting a piscivorous diet for spinosaurids. Their secondary palate helped them resist bending and torsion of their tubular snouts. A 2013 beam-theory study by the British palaeontologists Andrew R. Cuff and Rayfield compared the biomechanics of CT-scanned spinosaurid snouts with those of extant crocodilians, and found the snouts of "Baryonyx" and "Spinosaurus" similar in their resistance to bending and torsion. "Baryonyx" was found to have relatively high resistance in the snout to dorsoventral bending compared with "Spinosaurus" and the gharial. The authors concluded (in contrast to the 2007 study) that "Baryonyx" performed differently than the gharial; spinosaurids were not exclusive piscivores, and their diet was determined by their individual size. A preceding 2005 beam-theory study by the Canadian palaeontologist François Therrien and colleagues was unable to reconstruct force profiles of "Baryonyx", but found that the related "Suchomimus" would have used the front part of its jaws to capture prey, and suggested that the jaws of spinosaurids were adapted for hunting smaller terrestrial prey in addition to fish. They envisaged that spinosaurids could have captured smaller prey with the rosette of teeth at the front of the jaws, and finished it by shaking it. Larger prey would instead have been captured and killed with their forelimbs instead of their bite, since their skulls would not be able to resist the bending stress. They also agreed that the conical teeth of spinosaurids were well-developed for impaling and holding prey, with their shape enabling them to withstand bending loads from all directions.
Paleontology in North Dakota
The first scientifically documented fossils in North Dakota were collected during the Lewis and Clark expedition between 1804 and 1806 as they mapped the course of the Missouri River. The first fossil written about in the state were petrified wood preserved in sandstone concretions discovered at the Cannonball River. In 1833 a German named Alexander Philip Maximilian observed leaf impressions preserved in sandstone in the upper Missouri River area. He thought the plants were similar to modern phanerogammic plants still growing in the area. Maximilian collected a large number of them but in 1835 his fossils were destroyed near what is now Bismarck in a fire on the steam ship transporting them. In 1843 John James Audubon collected fossils like petrified wood and marine shells in the area but the specimens were of low quality.
Deinonychus
The first remains were uncovered in 1931 in southern Montana near the town of Billings. The team leader, paleontologist Barnum Brown, was primarily concerned with excavating and preparing the remains of the ornithopod dinosaur "Tenontosaurus", but in his field report from the dig site to the American Museum of Natural History, he reported the discovery of a small carnivorous dinosaur close to a "Tenontosaurus" skeleton, "but encased in lime difficult to prepare." He informally called the animal "Daptosaurus agilis" and made preparations for describing it and having the skeleton, specimen AMNH 3015, put on display, but never finished this work. Brown brought back from the Cloverly Formation the skeleton of a smaller theropod with seemingly oversized teeth that he informally named "Megadontosaurus". John Ostrom, reviewing this material decades later, realized that the teeth came from "Deinonychus", but the skeleton came from a completely different animal. He named this skeleton "Microvenator".
Angela Milner
Angela Milner is a British paleontologist who, in 1986, described a new species of "Baryonyx". Milner, who has a PhD, currently works at the Natural History Museum in London, where she continues her study on theropoda such as "Darwinius masillae", otherwise known as Ida. She also studied the brain work of "Archaeopteryx", which proved that the species was a bird. She also studies bird species from the Eocene period which are found in the southern England.
Palaeontinidae
The earliest palaeontinid discovered, is the poorly known genus "Asiocossus", based on a forewing fragment recovered from the Upper Triassic of Kyrgyzstan. Palaeontinid fossils are abundant in Eurasia and South America. Fossils have been recorded in Brazil, China, Russia, Germany, the Transbaikal region, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Important localities for palaeontinid fossils include the Crato Formation Lagerstätte of Brazil and the Yixian Formation, Haifanggou (or Jiulongshan) Formation, and the Daohugou Beds of China.
Baryphracta
Baryphracta is an extinct genus of diplocynodontinecrocodilian. It is closely related to the genera "Diplocynodon" and "Tadzhikosuchus". Fossils have been found from the Messel Pit near Messel, Germany, which was deposited during the Middle Eocene epoch of the Paleogene period. It was not the only crocodilian found from the pit; others include the closely related "Diplocynodon" as well as crocodylids such as "Asiatosuchus" and "Allognathosuchus". In 1999, the genus was proposed to be synonymous with "Diplocynodon", and a subsequent study showed that "Baryphracta deponiae" is nested within "Diplocynodon", which validates this proposed synonymy
Specimens of Archaeopteryx
This specimen first came to light around the end of 2001, when it was offered to the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt by an anonymous collector. No details were provided about the specific place or time of discovery. More information came to light in 2005 via a statement issued by the Wyoming Dinosaur Center (WDC), which asserted that the fossil came originally from the private collections of a Swiss fossil collector who had died in the 1970s, and whose wife then offered the fossil for sale to the Senckenberg Museum shortly thereafter. Unable to raise the requisite funds, the museum approached the Wyoming Dinosaur Center’s founder Burkhard Pohl, who was able to find an anonymous donor willing to offer up the funds. After an initial period of display and scientific study in Germany, the specimen would then be given to the WDC on a long-term loan.
Brachyhyops
In 1934, crew members of the Carnegie Museum paleontological expedition discovered the holotype of "Brachyhyops wyomingensis" (CM 12048) from the uppermost beds of the Eocene White River Formation, in a member known as the Big Sand Draw Sandstone Lentil, at Beaver Divide, Wyoming. The specimen consists of a single, exceptionally well preserved, but severely distorted, isolated skull with no mandibles or post cranial material. Since its initial discovery, several other partial specimens of "Brachyhyops" have been recorded within North America and Asia. Currently, four species of "Brachyhyops" have been recognized; two from Asia and two within North America, and include "Brachyhyops trofimovi" from Mongolia, "B. neimongoliensis" from northern China, "B. viensis" from Saskatchewan, Canada; Wyoming, and New Mexico, USA, and lastly, "B. wyomingensis" from Wyoming, Utah, and Texas, USA.
Surameryx
"Surameryx acrensis" was first named and described in 2014, based on the fossil jaw discovered in the Madre de Dios Formation extending along the Acre River in the area between Cobija, Bolivia and Assis Brasil. "Surameryx" is a representative of the palaeomerycids, an extinct family of Miocene artiodactyls related to cervids and giraffids. More specifically, "Surameryx" was a member of the dromomerycines, a group of palaeomerycids endemic to North America; within these, it seems to have a close relationship with "Barbouromeryx trigonocorneus", a primitive dromomerycine of the middle Miocene (20–16 million years ago). The name "Surameryx" is derived from the Spanish word "sur", "south" and the Greek "meryx", "ruminant"; the species name "acrensis" refers to the Acre River.
Liaoning
Liaoning contains some of the foremost paleontological sites in the world. Known collectively as the Jehol Group, they include the Yixian Formation, Jiufotang Formation and Tiaojishan Formation. The name "Jehol" derives from a now defunct provincial division of that name, which covered an area that is now Western Liaoning, Eastern Hebei, and a small part of Inner Mongolia. Fossils were first found there during the 1920s. During the Japanese occupation of the area through the 1930s and early 1940s, more fossils were found, but records of them were lost after World War II ended. The area remained relatively unexplored until the 1990s. It was in 1996 that Liaoning made the headlines with the announcement of the discovery of "Sinosauropteryx prima", the first example of a filamented "feathered" dinosaur. "Sinosauropteryx prima" was a small feathered meat-eating dinosaur, from the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation. This discovery pushed the evolution of feathers back in time and showed that dinosaurs, not only birds, had feathers. It also showed a direct evolutionary link between theropod dinosaurs and modern birds.
Paleontology in New Mexico
In 1874 Cope arrived at New Mexico accompanying the G. M. Wheeler Survey. While in the area he found the first known Eocene mammal from the southwestern United States, "Coryphodon". Other discoveries Cope made during his stay included camels, crocodiles, deer, dogs, horses, and mastodon remains. In total he discovered about 90 species. This was a major boon to his reputation as his research was foundational to understanding that interval of American geologic history. The Puerco Formation was discovered in 1875 but significant numbers of fossils were not described until David Baldwin's 1881 expedition on behalf of Edward Drinker Cope. The American Museum of Natural History sent in several paleontologists in 1892 to uncover more fossils and the area became regarded as one of the best sources of Paleocene fossils in the world. In 1877 the lengthy official report of the Wheeler Survey of New Mexico was published. Cope wrote the report's coverage of fossil vertebrates, while invertebrates were covered by Charles A. White. In 1878 and 1879 the United States Geological Survey documented New Mexican Carboniferous invertebrates from places such as Mora Creek, Ferdinand Creek, Taos Peak, Cebolla, Manuellitos Creek, Coyote Creek, and Black Lake.
Paleontology in Maryland
In 1894, Arthur Bibbins was hired by the Woman's College of Baltimore (now known as Goucher College) to teach biology, geology, and curate their museum. Bibbins began collecting fossils from the Arundel Clay that year and demonstrated significant skill in finding the trunks of fossil cycads. During the summer of 1894, Bibbins learned that more dinosaur bones had been discovered locally both in the same iron mine Marsh had prospected and new localities. Bibbins began prospecting these sites and quickly amassed a sizable collection of dinosaur bones, although he described the excavation work as "attended by much difficulty". The only known dinosaur footprints in Maryland were discovered the next year in 1895 by James A. Mitchell in a Frederick County quarry north of Emmitsburg. The prints were preserved in the rock of the Late Triassic Gettysburg Formation. In addition to discovering them he also illustrated them.
Suchomimus
Within the Spinosauridae, "Suchomimus" was a member of the subfamily Baryonychinae. Apart from its possibly higher back crest, "Suchomimus" was very similar to the spinosaurid "Baryonyx" from the Barremian of England which also had strong forelimbs and a huge sickle-curved claw on its "thumb". And, as with "Suchomimus", the claw of "Baryonyx" had been the first fossil part to be found in the field. The holotype of "Suchomimus" was considerably larger than that of "Baryonyx", but the ages of the two individuals are not known.
In 2002, the German palaeontologist Hans-Dieter Sues and colleagues concluded that "Suchomimus" was identical to "Cristatusaurus lapparenti" found in the same formation of Niger and, despite "Cristatusaurus" having been named somewhat earlier than "Suchomimus", proposed them to represent a second species of "Baryonyx" called "Baryonyx tenerensis". Sereno and colleagues in 1998 analyzed the distribution of forty-five traits to produce a cladogram that showed "Suchomimus" and "Baryonyx" to be distinct but closely related.
Caudipteryx
"Caudipteryx" fossils were first discovered in the Yixian Formation of the Sihetun area of Liaoning Province, northeastern China in 1997.
Bryozoa
Fossils of about 15,000 bryozoan species have been found. Bryozoans are among the three dominant groups of Paleozoic fossils. The oldest species with a mineralized skeleton occurs in the Lower Ordovician. It is likely that the first bryozoans appeared much earlier and were entirely soft-bodied, and the Ordovician fossils record the appearance of mineralized skeletons in this phylum. By the Arenigian stage of the Early Ordovician period, about , all the modern orders of stenolaemates were present, and the ctenostome order of gymnolaemates had appeared by the Middle Ordovician, about . The Early Ordovician fossils may also represent forms that had already become significantly different from the original members of the phylum. Ctenostomes with phosphatized soft tissue are known from the Devonian. Other types of filter feeders appeared around the same time, which suggests that some change made the environment more favorable for this lifestyle. Fossils of cheilostomates, another order of gymnolaemates, first appear in the Mid Jurassic, about , and these have been the most abundant and diverse bryozoans from the Cretaceous to the present. Evidence compiled from the last 100 million years show that cheilostomates consistently grew over cyclostomates in territorial struggles, which may help to explain how cheilostomates replaced cyclostomates as the dominant marine bryozoans. Marine fossils from the Paleozoic era, which ended , are mainly of erect forms, those from the Mesozoic are fairly equally divided by erect and encrusting forms, and more recent ones are predominantly encrusting. Fossils of the soft, freshwater phylactolaemates are very rare, appear in and after the Late Permian (which began about ) and consist entirely of their durable statoblasts. There are no known fossils of freshwater members of other classes.
Archaeopteryx
Over the years, twelve body fossil specimens of "Archaeopteryx" and a feather that may belong to it have been found. All of the fossils come from the limestone deposits, quarried for centuries, near Solnhofen, Germany.
The initial discovery, a single feather, was unearthed in 1860 or 1861 and described in 1861 by Hermann von Meyer. It is currently located at the Natural History Museum of Berlin. This is generally assigned to "Archaeopteryx" and was the initial holotype, but whether it is a feather of this species, or another, as yet undiscovered, proto-bird is unknown. There are some indications it is not from the same animal as most of the skeletons (the "typical" "A. lithographica").
Paleontology in Iowa
In 1928, a femur was discovered in the Missouri River bluffs, not far from Decatur, Nebraska. Although it was impossible to identify the specimen as belonging to an individual species, the femur's anatomy was informative enough that paleontologists could identify it as belonging to an ornithopod about 32 feet long. This was the first scientifically documented dinosaur bone discovered in the Dakota Formation. In 1930 B. H. Bean made another big discovery when he obtained a limestone block that was being removed from a quarry. This single block preserved 183 individual starfish, which is significant because starfish fossils are very uncommon, even in the local area.
Baryonyx
Now recognised as a member of the family Spinosauridae, "Baryonyx" affinities were obscure when it was discovered. Some researchers have suggested that "Suchosaurus cultridens" is a senior synonym (being an older name), and that "Suchomimus tenerensis" belongs in the same genus; subsequent authors have kept them separate. "Baryonyx" was the first theropod dinosaur demonstrated to have been piscivorous (fish-eating), as evidenced by fish scales in the stomach region of the holotype specimen. It may also have been an active predator of larger prey and a scavenger, since it also contained bones of a juvenile "Iguanodon". The creature would have caught and processed its prey primarily with its forelimbs and large claws. "Baryonyx" may have had semiaquatic habits, and coexisted with other theropod, ornithopod, and sauropod dinosaurs, as well as pterosaurs, crocodiles, turtles and fishes, in a fluvial environment.
Dimetrodon borealis
Dimetrodon borealis, formerly known as "Bathygnathus borealis," is an extinct species of pelycosaur-grade synapsid that lived about 270 million years ago (Ma) in the Early Permian. A partial maxilla or upper jaw bone from Prince Edward Island in Canada is the only known fossil of "Bathygnathus". The maxilla was discovered around 1845 during the course of a well excavation in Spring Brook in the New London area and its significance was recognized by geologists John William Dawson and Joseph Leidy. It was originally described by Leidy in 1854 as the lower jaw of a dinosaur, making it the first purported dinosaur to have been found in Canada, and the second to have been found in all of North America (the first was "Clepsysaurus" from Pennsylvania, now known to be a phytosaur rather than a dinosaur). The bone was later identified as that of a pelycosaur. Although its current classification as a sphenacodontid synapsid was not recognized until after the discovery of its more famous relative "Dimetrodon"in the 1870s, "Bathygnathus "is notable for being the first discovered sphenacodont. A 2015 study by the researchers from U of T Mississauga, Carleton University and the Royal Ontario Museum reclassified the species into the genus "Dimetrodon".
Baryonyx
Most of the bones collected were encased in siltstone nodules surrounded by fine sand and silt, with the rest lying in clay. The bones were and scattered over a 5 x 2 m (17 x 8 ft) area, but most were not far from their natural positions. The position of some bones was disturbed by a bulldozer, and some were broken by mechanical equipment before they were collected. Preparing the specimen was difficult, due to the hardness of the siltstone matrix and the presence of siderite; acid preparation was attempted, but most of the matrix was removed mechanically. It took six years of almost constant preparation to get all the bones out of the rock, and by the end, dental tools and air mallets had to be used under a microscope. The specimen represents about 65 percent of the skeleton, and consists of partial skull bones, including premaxillae (first bones of the upper jaw); the left maxilla (second bone of the upper jaw); nasal bones; the left lacrimal bone; the left prefrontal bone; the left postorbital bone; the braincase including the occiput; dentary bones (the front bones of the lower jaw); various bones from the back of the lower jaw; teeth; cervical (neck), dorsal (back), and caudal (tail) vertebrae; ribs; a sternum; both scapulae (shoulder blades); both coracoids; both humeri (upper arm bones); left radius and ulna (lower arm bones); finger bones and unguals (claw bones); hip bones; upper end of the left femur (thigh bone) and lower end of the right; right fibula (of the lower leg); and foot bones including an ungual. The original specimen number was BMNH R9951, but it was later re-catalogued as NHMUK VP R9951.
Synodontis
The earliest fossils of "Synodontis" in East African are from the Early Miocene. Many "Synodontis" fossils are the spines because they are very sturdy and so they are preserved better. The fossils of spines that are found are used to determine the family or genera of the fish but it cannot determine the species. "Synodontis" species that have survived and are still living can be identified by the shape of their whisker like organs on their heads called barbels, which relate to touch. The can also be identified by the color of their skin, the skull bones, and the number and length of the teeth.
Bat
The delicate skeletons of bats do not fossilise well, and it is estimated that only 12% of bat genera that lived have been found in the fossil record. Most of the oldest known bat fossils were already very similar to modern microbats, such as "Archaeopteropus" (32 million years ago). The extinct bats "Palaeochiropteryx tupaiodon" (48 million years ago) and "Hassianycteris kumari" (55 million years ago) are the first fossil mammals whose colouration has been discovered: both were reddish-brown.
Pristerognathus Assemblage Zone
The first fossils to be found in the Beaufort Group rocks that encompass the current eight biozones were discovered by Andrew Geddes Bain in 1856. However, it was not until 1892 that it was observed that the geological strata of the Beaufort Group could be differentiated based on their fossil taxa. The initial undertaking was done by Harry Govier Seeley who subdivided the Beaufort Group into three biozones, which he named (from oldest to youngest):
Elizabeth Philpot
The Philpot sisters' extensive and meticulously labelled fossil collection was used for research by many geologists. All three sisters contributed to the collection, but it was Elizabeth Philpot who corresponded with leading geologists like William Buckland, William Conybeare, and Henry De la Beche about the collection. The collection was well known for its fossil fish. It also contained the fossil teeth that William Buckland combined with a famous partial skeleton discovered by Mary Anning when he described the pterosaur "Pterodactylus macronyx" (later renamed by Richard Owen to "Dimorphodon macronyx"), in 1829. In his famous 1824 paper that described the almost complete plesiosaur skeleton discovered by Anning in 1823 Conybeare mentioned examining a plesiosaur skull in the possession of "Miss Philpot".
Spinosauridae
The first spinosaurid fossil, a single conical tooth, was discovered circa 1820 by British paleontologist Gideon Mantell in the Wadhurst Clay Formation. In 1841 Sir Richard Owen mistakenly assigned it to a crocodilian he named "Suchosaurus" ("crocodile lizard"), a second species, "S. girardi", was later named in 1897. However, the spinosaurid nature of "Suchosaurus" was not recognized until a 1998 redescription of "Baryonyx."
Cristatusaurus
Originally proposed to be an indeterminate species of "Baryonyx", the identity of "Cristatusaurus" has been subject to debate, in part due to the fragmentary nature of its fossils. Some argue that it is probably the same dinosaur as "Suchomimus," which has also been found in Niger, in the same sediment layers. In that case the genus "Cristatusaurus" would have priority, since it was named two months earlier. Others have concluded, however, that "Cristatusaurus" is a "nomen dubium", considering it indistinguishable from both "Suchomimus" and "Baryonyx". Some distinctions between the fossils of "Cristatusaurus" and "Suchomimus" have been pointed out, but it is uncertain whether these differences separate the two genera or if they are due to ontogeny (changes in an organism during growth).
Specimens of Archaeopteryx
Hermann von Meyer learned of the discovery of what would later be known as the London Specimen before he published his analysis of the single "Archaeopteryx" feather. In September 1861 he wrote to the "Neues Jahrbuch" about being informed of the discovery by Friedrich Ernst Witte, an avid fossil collector and jurist by profession, and commented on the coincidental nature of learning of a feathered skeleton from the Solnhofen strata while studying the feather. Witte had visited a well-known collector of Solnhofen fossils, Dr. Karl Häberlein, in the summer of 1861 whereupon he had first seen this "skeleton of an animal furnished with feathers" at the fossil collector's home in Pappenheim. Clearly recognizing the significance of such a fossil, he then immediately wrote to Hermann von Meyer as well as Andreas Wagner, the Munich Professor of Paleontology. He subsequently traveled to Munich in order to convince Wagner to purchase the fossil for the Bavarian State Collections.
Dioon
The earliest fossil finds date back to the Eocene and were found on Kupreanof Island in Alaska. However, it is probable that "Dioon" dates back to the Jurassic (145.5 - 199.6 ka) or even further, since fossils of other, closely related but more developed cycads were already detected from this era. In the Pleistocene (0.011784-1.8 ka) and Holocene (today -0.011784 ka) eras species have probably carried out several north-south migrations and have followed the warm climatic conditions.
Cynognathus Assemblage Zone
The first fossils to be found in the Beaufort Group rocks that encompass the current eight biozones were discovered by Andrew Geddes Bain in 1856. However, it was not until 1892 that it was observed that the geological strata of the Beaufort Group could be differentiated based on their fossil taxa. The initial undertaking was done by Harry Govier Seeley who subdivided the Beaufort Group into three biozones, which he named (from oldest to youngest):
History of paleontology in the United States
In 1858 the United States was home to the world's first "reasonably complete" dinosaur skeleton. A member of the Academy of Natural Sciences named William Foulke heard about fossil bones that had been found on a local farm while spending the summer in Haddonfield. That fall Foulke hired a team to reopen the marl pit the bones had been taken from. Roughly 10 feet down they found bones. Paleontologist Joseph Leidy later formally described the fossils. He interpreted the fossils as the remains of a bipedal amphibious reptile that had been swept out to sea by the river it lived alongside. Leidy called the creature "Hadrosaurus foulkii" after Foulke. A decade later, in 1868 Leidy worked with artist Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins to mount "Hadrosaurus foulkii" for the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. This became both the first mounted dinosaur skeleton ever mounted for public display but also one of the most popular exhibits in the history of the Academy. Estimates have the "Hadrosaurus" exhibit as increasing the number of visitors by up to 50%.
Megalonychidae
Megalonychidae is a group of sloths including the extinct "Megalonyx" and the living two toed sloths. Megalonychids first appeared in the early Oligocene, about 35 million years ago, in southern Argentina (Patagonia), and spread as far as the Antilles by the early Miocene. Megalonychids first reached North America by island-hopping, about 9 million years ago, prior to the formation of the Isthmus of Panama. Some megalonychid lineages increased in size as time passed. The first species of these were small and may have been partly tree-dwelling, whereas the Pliocene (about 5 to 2 million years ago) species were already approximately half the size of the huge Late Pleistocene "Megalonyx jeffersonii" from the last ice age. Some West Indian island species were as small as a large cat; their dwarf condition typified both tropical adaptation and their restricted island environment. This small size also enabled them a degree of arboreality.
Baryonyx
"Baryonyx" had a rudimentary secondary palate, similar to crocodiles but unlike most theropod dinosaurs. A rugose (roughly wrinkled) surface suggests the presence of a horny pad in the roof of the mouth. The nasal bones were fused, which distinguished "Baryonyx" from other spinosaurids, and a sagittal crest was present above the eyes, on the upper mid-line of the nasals. This crest was triangular, narrow, and sharp in its front part, and was distinct from those of other spinosaurids in ending hind wards in a cross-shaped process. The lacrimal bone in front of the eye appears to have formed a horn core similar to those seen, for example, in "Allosaurus", and was distinct from other spinosaurids in being solid and almost triangular. The was narrow, with the paroccipital processes pointing outwards horizontally, and the were lengthened, descending far below the basioccipital (the lowermost bone of the occiput). Sereno and colleagues suggested that some of "Baryonyx" cranial bones had been misidentified by Charig and Milner, resulting in the occiput being reconstructed as too deep, and that the skull was instead probably as low, long and narrow as that of "Suchomimus". The front 140 mm (5.5 in) of the dentary in the mandible sloped upwards towards the curve of the snout. The dentary was very long and shallow, with a prominent Meckelian groove on the inner side. The mandibular symphysis, where the two halves of the lower jaw connected at the front, was particularly short. The rest of the lower jaw was fragile; the hind third was much thinner than the front, with a blade-like appearance. The front part of the dentary curved outwards to accommodate the large front teeth, and this area formed the mandibular part of the rosette. The dentary had many (openings), which were passages for nerves and blood vessels.
Inverloch, Victoria
Australia’s first dinosaur bone, the Cape Paterson Claw, was discovered here in 1903 by William Ferguson in Cape Paterson or what is now Eagles Nest, Bunurong Marine National Park, Inverloch. Today, the Dinosaur Dreaming fossil excavation at the Flat Rocks coastal site by Anderson Inlet attracts both Australian and international visitors. More than 6000 bones and teeth of small dinosaurs, mammals, birds, turtles and fish have been excavated.
Fodonyx
Fodonyx (meaning "digging claw") is an extinct genus of rhynchosaur from the middle Triassic epoch of Devon in England. Its fossils (25 specimens) were discovered in Otter Sandstone Formation (late Anisian age) and were first assigned to "Rhynchosaurus spenceri". This species was reassigned to its own genus, "Fodonyx" (the type and only species is "Fodonyx spenceri") the holotype of which is EXEMS 60/1985/292 , that described by David W. E. Hone and Michael J. Benton in 2008. More recently, one skull was reassigned to the new genus "Bentonyx". It is distinguished from other rhynchosaurs by a single autapomorphy, the ventral angling of the paraoccipital processes. In all other rhynchosaurs these processes angle dorsally or are horizontal. It is not known if this conferred any advantage to "Fodonyx. Fodonyx" was between 40 and 50 cm long.
Carnyx
Until 2004, fragments of only five carnyces had been preserved, from modern Scotland, France, Germany, Romania and Switzerland, but in 2004 archaeologists discovered a first-century-BC deposit at Tintignac in Corrèze, France.
Palaeopteryx
BYU 2022 was collected in the 1970s by paleontological expeditions from Brigham Young University directed by J. A. Jensen. It was found in Late Jurassic deposits in the "Dry Mesa" quarry on the Uncompahgre Upwarp in western Colorado (Brushy Basin Member, Morrison Formation). It was found among mixed fossil remains that included pterosaur and dinosaur material. One notable specimen found with it is the right femur of a derived maniraptoran theropod (BYU 2023). BYU 2023 is missing the distal end and is about 63 mm long. It is probably too small to be from the same individual as BYU 2022. BYU 2023 shows apomorphies known only in advanced maniraptorans, including "Microvenator", "Microraptor", and "Archaeopteryx".
Baryonyx
In 2016, the Spanish palaeontologist Alejandro Serrano-Martínez and colleagues reported the oldest known spinosaurid fossil, a tooth from the Middle Jurassic of Niger, which they found to suggest that spinosaurids originated in Gondwana, since other known Jurassic spinosaurid teeth are also from Africa, but they found the subsequent dispersal routes unclear. Candeiro and colleagues suggested in 2017 that spinosaurids of northern Gondwana were replaced by other predators, such as abelisauroids, since no definite spinosaurid fossils are known from after the Cenomanian anywhere in the world. They attributed the disappearance of spinosaurids and other shifts in the fauna of Gondwana to changes in the environment, perhaps caused by transgressions in sea level.
Spinosauridae
Spinosaurids are known to exist from as early as the Late Jurassic, through characteristic teeth which were found in Tendaguru, Tanzania, and attributed to "Ostafrikasaurus." Baryonychines were common, as represented by "Baryonyx", which lived during the Barremian of England and Spain. "Baryonyx"-like teeth are found from the earlier Hauterivian and later Aptian sediments of Spain, as well as the Hauterivian of England, and the Aptian of Niger. The earliest record of spinosaurines is from Africa; they are present in Albian sediments of Tunisia and Algeria, and in Cenomanian sediments of Egypt and Morocco. Spinosaurines are also found in Hauterivian and Aptian-Albian sediments of Thailand, and Southern China. In Africa, baronychines were common in the Aptian, and then replaced by spinosaurines in the Albian and Cenomanian.
Paleodictyon nodosum
Fossils of "Paleodictyon nodosum" were first found in the cliffs of Spain in the 1950s. Since then, they have been discovered all over Europe and in Wales. They are generally found in flysch deposits from the Eocene period, which began with the arrival of mammals.
The oldest fossils show much less uniformly hexagonal burrows, but in higher strata (i.e. later in geological time) their burrows become much more consistent and precise.
Paranthodon
In 1845, amateur geologists William Guybon Atherstone and Andrew Geddes Bain discovered several fossils near Dassieklip, Cape Province, in the Bushmans River Valley. This was the first dinosaur find in all of the Southern Hemisphere and Africa. In 1849 and 1853, Bain sent some of the fossils to palaeontologist Richard Owen for identification. Among them was an upper jaw Bain referred to as the "Cape "Iguanodon"", so the site was named "Iguanodonhoek". Atherstone published a short paper about the discovery in 1857, but lamented in 1871 that it had thus far received no attention in London. Only in 1876 were a series of specimens from the collection named by Owen as "Anthodon serrarius", basing the generic name on the resemblance of the teeth to a flower. The partial holotype skull BMNH 47337, the left jaw BMNH 47338, the matrix BMNH 47338 including bone fragments and impressions of the anterior skull, and the vertebrae BMNH 47337a were all assigned to "Anthodon." In 1882, Othniel Charles Marsh assigned "Anthodon" to Stegosauridae based on BMNH 47338, and in 1890, Richard Lydekker found that although "Anthodon" was a pareiasaur, its teeth were similar to those of the Stegosauridae. Lydekker in 1890 also corrected a mistake of Owen, who had incorrectly summarized all the material as coming from a single locality, whereas there was separate material from two clearly distinct localities.
Tapinocephalus Assemblage Zone
The first fossils to be found in the Beaufort Group rocks that encompass the current eight biozones were discovered by Andrew Geddes Bain in 1856. However, it was not until 1892 that it was observed that the geological strata of the Beaufort Group could be differentiated based on their fossil taxa. The initial undertaking was done by Harry Govier Seeley who subdivided the Beaufort Group into three biozones, which he named (from oldest to youngest):
Victorian Desalination Plant
The site is located on Bunurong aboriginal land, specifically the Boakoolawal clan which lived in the area south of the Bass River before white settlement. Middens containing charcoal and shellfish mark the location of their campsites along the coast. Many significant archaeological artifacts have previously been discovered around the construction site, including Australia's first dinosaur bone, the Cape Paterson Claw, discovered nearby in 1903 by William Ferguson near what is now Eagles Nest, Bunurong Marine National Park in Inverloch.
João Guilherme Fischer
In 1902, he collected fossils at the Sanga da Alemoa paleontological site which he sent to Hermann von Ihering, director of the Museu Paulista in Sao Paulo. Three vertebral bodies were nearly complete, a fragment of a vertebra, one finger and four phalanges and ungual phalanx alone. The material was sent to Arthur Smith Woodward, the eminent paleontologist of the British Museum in London to study, which resulted in the determination of the first terrestrial reptile fossil in South America, the Rhynchosaur named by Woodward, with the name of Scaphonyx fischeri, in his honor. It officially started paleontological research in Paleorrota.
Archaeopteryx
The Berlin Specimen (HMN 1880/81) was discovered in 1874 or 1875 on the Blumenberg near Eichstätt, Germany, by farmer Jakob Niemeyer. He sold this precious fossil for the money to buy a cow in 1876, to innkeeper Johann Dörr, who again sold it to Ernst Otto Häberlein, the son of K. Häberlein. Placed on sale between 1877 and 1881, with potential buyers including O. C. Marsh of Yale University's Peabody Museum, it eventually was bought for 20,000 Goldmark by the Berlin's Natural History Museum, where it now is displayed. The transaction was financed by Ernst Werner von Siemens, founder of the famous company that bears his name. Described in 1884 by Wilhelm Dames, it is the most complete specimen, and the first with a complete head. In 1897 it was named by Dames as a new species, "A. siemensii"; though often considered a synonym of "A. lithographica", several 21st century studies have concluded that it is a distinct species which includes the Berlin, Munich, and Thermopolis specimens.
Brachyhyops
"Brachyhyops" is an extinct genus of entelodont artiodactyl mammal that lived during the Eocene Epoch of western North America and southeastern Asia (including Mongolia, China, and Kazakhstan). The first fossil remains of "Brachyhyops" are recorded from the late Eocene deposits of Beaver Divide in central Wyoming and discovered by paleontology crews from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History during the early 20th century. The type species, "Brachyhyops wyomingensis", is based on a single skull and was named by E.H. Colbert in 1937, but was not officially described until 1938. During the latter half of the 20th century, additional specimens from North America have been recorded from Saskatchewan and as far south as Texas, indicating that "Brachyhyops" had a broad distribution and was well-dispersed throughout western North America.
Eucommia eocenica
"Eucommia eocenica" is known from a number of specimens recovered from Claiborne Formation fossil sites in Tennessee, Missouri, and Mississippi. Two fossils of the species were first described by Edward W. Berry in 1930 from the Holly Hills sand of Tennessee as "Carpolithus banisteroides" and "Simaroubites eocenica" respectively. The two fossils were reexamined by Roland W. Brown in 1940, who recognized them to belong to the same species. Brown moved the species to "Eucommia" as "Eucommia eocenica" and made "Carpolithus banisteroides" a synonym. The species was again examined in 1997 by paleobotanists Victor B. Call and David L. Dilcher, both of the University of Florida in Gainesville. In their reexamination they noted that the species "Leguminosites copaiferanus" which was also described by Berry in 1930 is likely also a "E. eocenica" fruit rather than a separate taxon.
Transitional fossil
The first complete specimen was announced in 1861, and ten more "Archaeopteryx" fossils have been found since then. Most of the eleven known fossils include impressions of feathers—among the oldest direct evidence of such structures. Moreover, because these feathers take the advanced form of flight feathers, "Archaeopteryx" fossils are evidence that feathers began to evolve before the Late Jurassic.
Santa Maria, Rio Grande do Sul
The city is the birthplace of paleontology in Rio Grande do Sul and Brazil. The Paleontological Sites of Santa Maria are internationally known. In 1902, a Rhynchosaur was collected in Santa Maria, one of the first fossil collections made in South America since Darwin's voyage on the Beagle between 1831 and 1836. Llewellyn Ivor Price, a Santa Maria-born paleontologist and one of the first Brazilian ones, collected a Staurikosaurus, the first Brazilian dinosaur. The city is located on a huge deposit of fossils, with more than 20 Paleontological Sites.
Temnocyoninae
The first fossils are recorded in North America at Logan Butte in the John Day beds of Oregon 29–29.5 Mya, in the Sharps Formation of the Wounded Knee area, South Dakota 28–29.5 Mya, and in the Gering Formation at Wildcat Ridge, Nebraska 28.3 Mya. These early temnocyonines attained the size of coyotes or small wolves (15–30 kg), and are identified by a uniquely specialized dentition. The last documented occurrences of temnocyonines are found in sediments in northwest Nebraska and southeastern Wyoming.
Caudipteryx
All "Caudipteryx" fossils were recovered from the Yixian Formation in Liaoning, China. Specifically, they come from a small area of the Jianshangou bed, near the town of Zhangjiakou. They appear to have been fairly common, though isolated to this small region. The specific region in which "Caudipteryx" lived was home to the other feathered dinosaurs "Dilong" and "Sinornithosaurus".
Mary Anning
Anning searched for fossils in the area's Blue Lias cliffs, particularly during the winter months when landslides exposed new fossils that had to be collected quickly before they were lost to the sea. She nearly died in 1833 during a landslide that killed her dog, Tray. Her discoveries included the first ichthyosaur skeleton correctly identified; the first two more complete plesiosaur skeletons found; the first pterosaur skeleton located outside Germany; and important fish fossils. Her observations played a key role in the discovery that coprolites, known as bezoar stones at the time, were fossilised faeces. She also discovered that belemnite fossils contained fossilised ink sacs like those of modern cephalopods. When geologist Henry De la Beche painted "Duria Antiquior", the first widely circulated pictorial representation of a scene from prehistoric life derived from fossil reconstructions, he based it largely on fossils Anning had found, and sold prints of it for her benefit.
Paleontology in Texas
Archaeologist Jack. T. Hughes has found evidence that the paleo-Indians of Texas collected fossils. After the establishment of paleontology as a formal science, in 1878, professor Jacob Boll made the first scientifically documented Texan fossil finds in Archer and Wichita counties while collecting fossils on behalf of Edward Drinker Cope. In 1880 W. E. Cummins began a series of expeditions into Texas and other regions of the American southwest. Like Boll, Cummins was collecting for Cope. C. H. Sternberg also did "very successful" fieldwork in Texas between 1896 and 1917. In 1938, Barnum Brown of the American Museum of Natural History sent Roland T. Bird to Texas in search of dinosaur footprints uncovered by local moonshiners. At the town of Glen Rose he noticed a medium sized footprint left by a carnivorous dinosaur in a limestone block forming part of the Somervell County courthouse's bandstand. Local residents guided him to yet further carnivorous dinosaur tracks preserved in situ along the Paluxy River. While he was cleaning mud from these footprints, he noticed another kind of footprint, apparently left by a long-necked sauropod dinosaur. Brown was intrigued by the find. At the time, Dr. E. H. Sellards of the University of Texas was organizing the Texas Statewide Paleontological Survey. Brown arranged for a collaborative expedition between the American Museum of Natural History and the Survey. In 1940, Bird resumed his Texas fieldwork with the help of paleontologists from the Survey and labor employed by the Works Progress Administration. Some of the tracks excavated here were sent to the American Museum of Natural History and incorporated into an exhibit featuring "Allosaurus" and "Apatosaurus" even though they were 35 million years older than the dinosaurs that left behind the tracks in Texas and aren't even known from the state. Other track fossils uncovered during these excavations were sent to institutions like the Baylor University, Brooklyn College, the United States National Museum, Southern Methodist University, and the University of Texas. In 1964 Bob Slaughter found two genera of mosasaurs south of Dallas as well as Miocene and Pleistocene fossils from the Livingston Reservoir basin. In 1994, Bill Sarjeant and Wann Langston published a monograph documenting fossil footprints laid down in the volcanic ash of the Vieja Group 36 to 38 million years ago during the late Eocene. They observed the tracks of six birds, two invertebrates, nineteen mammals, and two turtles. Among the mammals were relatives of camels and tapirs as well as carnivores and insectivores. This monograph was the culmination of almost twenty years of research and its subject the most spectacular known Tertiary-aged fossil tracksite in the western United States.
Patranomodon
The skull fossil of "Patranomodon" was found in the "Eodicynodon" Assemblage Zone of South Africa, belonging to the lowest biozone of the Beaufort Group. The Beaufort Group time period extends from the middle of the Permian to the early Triassic era. It is one of the three main subdivisions of the Karoo Supergroup in what today is southern Africa. Rubidge and Hopson were the first to discover the skull of "Patranomodon". These paleobiologists also named "Patranomodon" and were the first to publish literature on it starting in 1990. The most abundant remains of "Patranomodon" were found on the Eastern Cape of South Africa; however, fossil parts were also found in Europe, China, as well as India, which indicated migration occurring among these terrestrial creatures. The paleontologist Nyaphuli collected the fossil of this creature in South Africa and gave it the species name of ""Patranomodon nyaphuli"".
"Patranomodon" have a short exposure of their palatine and premaxilla, which creates a shorter face compared to other anomodontons. This gives "Patranomodon" a shorter facial structure, shorter in length as well as small in size. They also have a reduced tabular, a slit-like interpterygoid vacuity, three sacral vertebrae, and a screw-shape jaw. The genus has many features indicating its herbivorous behavior: the division of the external adductor muscles in the jaw into two separate components, the medial and lateral side, as well as using a propalinal jaw movement while feeding on plant material.
Ornimegalonyx
The first fossil specimen was mistakenly described as a bird in the family Phorusrhacidae, in part because the bones were so large. In 1961, Pierce Brodkorb reviewed the findings and placed them properly, with the owls. Remains have been abundant throughout the island, in cave deposits from the Late Pleistocene period (126,000 to 11,700 years ago) and at least three nearly complete skeletons have been found.
Spinosauridae
The subfamily Spinosaurinae was named by Sereno in 1998, and defined by Holtz and colleagues in 2004 as all taxa closer to "Spinosaurus aegyptiacus" than to "Baryonyx walkeri". And the subfamily Baryonychinae was named by Charig & Milner in 1986. They erected both the subfamily and the family Baryonychinae for the newly discovered "Baryonyx", before it was referred to the Spinosauridae. Their subfamily was defined by Holtz and colleagues in 2004, as the complementary clade of all taxa closer to "Baryonyx walkeri" than to "Spinosaurus aegyptiacus". Examinations in 2017 by Marcos Sales and Cesar Schultz indicate that the South American spinosaurids "Angaturama" and "Irritator" were intermediate between Baronychinae and Spinosaurinae based on their craniodental features and cladistic analysis. This indicates that Baryonychinae may in fact be non-monophyletic. Their cladogram can be seen below.
Antrozoini
The oldest fossils identified as "Antrozous" come from the Barstovian (Middle Miocene) of Nebraska; however, their attribution to the genus is tentative. Undoubted "Antrozous" come from the Hemphillian (Late Miocene) of Texas and additional fossils are from the Pliocene of Texas, Idaho, and Florida. No fossils of "Bauerus" or "Baeodon" are known; the only fossils of "Rhogeessa" come from the Pleistocene of Inciarte in Venezuela. In 1969, John A. White named the genus "Anzanycteris" on the basis of Pliocene fossils from California (originally identified as Pleistocene) and included it in Nyctophilinae. Later, Malcolm C. McKenna and Susan K. Bell listed "Anzanycteris" under Antrozoini in their 1997 "Classification of Mammals".
Banff National Park
Archaeological evidence found at Vermilion Lakes indicates the first human activity in Banff to 10,300 B.P. Prior to European contact, aboriginals, including the Stoneys, Kootenay, Tsuu T'ina, Kainai, Peigans, and Siksika, resided in the region where they hunted bison and other game.
Baryonyx
The Weald Clay Formation consists of sediments of Hauterivian (Lower Weald Clay) to Barremian (Upper Weald Clay) age, about 130–125 million years old. The "B. walkeri" holotype was found in the latter, in clay representing non-marine still water, which has been interpreted as a fluvial or mudflat environment with shallow water, lagoons, and marshes. During the Early Cretaceous, the Weald area of Surrey, Sussex, and Kent was partly covered by the large, fresh-to-brackish water Wealden Lake. Two large rivers drained the northern area (where London now stands), flowing into the lake through a river delta; the Anglo-Paris Basin was in the south. Its climate was sub-tropical, similar to the present Mediterranean region. Since the Smokejacks Pit consists of different stratigraphic levels, fossil taxa found there are not necessarily contemporaneous. Dinosaurs from the locality include the ornithopods "Mantellisaurus", "Iguanodon", and small sauropods. Other vertebrates from the Weald Clay include crocodiles, pterosaurs, lizards (such as "Dorsetisaurus"), amphibians, sharks (such as "Hybodus"), and bony fishes (including "Scheenstia"). Members of ten orders of insects have been identified, including "Valditermes", "Archisphex", and "Pterinoblattina". Other invertebrates include ostracods, isopods, conchostracans, and bivalves. The plants "Weichselia" and the aquatic, herbaceous "Bevhalstia" were common. Other plants found include ferns, horsetails, club mosses, and conifers.
Sinonyx
Sinonyx ("Chinese Claw") is an extinct, superficially wolf-like ungulate Mesonychid mammal from the late Paleocene of China that lived about 56 million years ago. It was an early primitive form of mesonychid, which some experts regard as a distinctive group of carnivorous condylarths, which gave rise to artiodactyls. "Sinonyx" was discovered in the Anhui province, China (, paleocoordinates ).
Baryonyx
Discoveries in the 1990s shed more light on the relationships of "Baryonyx" and its relatives. In 1996, a snout from Morocco was referred to "Spinosaurus", and "Irritator" and "Angaturama" from Brazil (the two are possible synonyms) were named. "Cristatusaurus" and "Suchomimus" were named based on fossils from Niger in 1998. In their description of "Suchomimus", Sereno and colleagues placed it and "Baryonyx" in the new subfamily Baryonychinae within Spinosauridae; "Spinosaurus" and "Irritator" were placed in the subfamily Spinosaurinae. Baryonychinae was distinguished by the small size and larger number of teeth in the dentary behind the terminal rosette, the deeply keeled front dorsal vertebrae, and by having serrated teeth. Spinosaurinae was distinguished by their straight tooth crowns without serrations, small first tooth in the premaxilla, increased spacing of teeth in the jaws, and possibly by having their nostrils placed further back and the presence of a deep neural spine sail. They also united the spinosaurids and their closest relatives in the superfamily Spinosauroidea, but in 2010, the British palaeontologist Roger Benson considered this a junior synonym of Megalosauroidea (an older name). In a 2007 conference abstract, the American palaeontologist Denver W. Fowler suggested that since "Suchosaurus" is the first named genus in its group, the clade names Spinosauroidea, Spinosauridae, and Baryonychinae should be replaced by Suchosauroidea, Suchosauridae, and Suchosaurinae, regardless of whether or not the name "Baryonyx" is retained. A 2017 study by the Brazilian palaeontologists Marcos A. F. Sales and Cesar L. Schultz found that the clade Baryonychinae was not well supported, since serrated teeth may be an ancestral trait among spinosaurids.
Baryonyx
In their original description, Charig and Milner found "Baryonyx" unique enough to warrant a new family of theropod dinosaurs: Baryonychidae. They found "Baryonyx" to be unlike any other theropod group, and considered the possibility that it was a thecodont (a grouping of early archosaurs now considered unnatural), due to having apparently primitive features, but noted that the articulation of the maxilla and premaxilla was similar to that in "Dilophosaurus". They also noted that the two snouts from Niger (which later became the basis of "Cristatusaurus"), assigned to the family Spinosauridae by Taquet in 1984, appeared almost identical to that of "Baryonyx" and they referred them to Baryonychidae instead. In 1988, the American palaeontologist Gregory S. Paul agreed with Taquet that "Spinosaurus", described in 1915 based on fragmentary remains from Egypt that were destroyed in World War II, and "Baryonyx" were similar and (due to their kinked snouts) possibly late-surviving dilophosaurs. Buffetaut also supported this relationship in 1989. In 1990, Charig and Milner dismissed the spinosaurid affinities of "Baryonyx", since they did not find their remains similar enough. In 1997, they agreed that Baryonychidae and Spinosauridae were related, but disagreed that the former name should become a synonym of the latter, because the completeness of "Baryonyx" compared to "Spinosaurus" made it a better type genus for a family, and because they did not find the similarities between the two significant enough. Holtz and colleagues listed Baryonychidae as a synonym of Spinosauridae in 2004.
Baryonyx
The holotype specimen, which may not have been fully grown, was estimated to have been between long and to have weighed between . "Baryonyx" had a long, low, and narrow snout, which has been compared to that of a gharial. The tip of the snout expanded to the sides in the shape of a rosette. Behind this, the upper jaw had a notch which fitted into the lower jaw (which curved upwards in the same area). It had a triangular crest on the top of its nasal bones. "Baryonyx" had a large number of finely serrated, conical teeth, with the largest teeth in front. The neck formed an S-shape, and the neural spines of its dorsal vertebrae increased in height from front to back. One elongated neural spine indicates it may have had a hump or ridge along the centre of its back. It had robust forelimbs, with the eponymous first-finger claw measuring about long.
Priscomyzon
The lamprey fossil was discovered on Waterloo Farm in rocks of the Witteberg Group near Grahamstown in South Africa. The species was described by Robert W. Gess & Bruce S. Rubidge of the Bernard Price Institute (Palaeontology) Wits University, and Michael I. Coates of the Department of Organismal Biology University of Chicago in the journal "Nature" of 26 October 2006. The shale containing the fossil was discovered as far back as 1985 during construction of the N2 bypass outside Grahamstown. The site consists of black carbonaceous shale formed from anaerobic mud deposited in a marine estuary on the Agulhas Sea. A variety of organic remains are found in this setting, including algae, terrestrial plants and fish. Invertebrate remains are of small bivalves, ostracods, clam shrimp, and a eurypterid. Fossil material has been greatly compressed and original tissue replaced by metamorphic mica altered to chlorite during uplift. To prevent rockfalls onto the road from the unstable formation, the steep slopes were cut back again in 1999 and once more in 2007/8. During these upgrades Gess managed to obtain a large sample of rock blocks with the help of the road construction company, and worked intermittently on exposing their contents.
Petroxestes
Petroxestes is a shallow, elongate boring (a type of trace fossil) originally found excavated in carbonate skeletons and hardgrounds of the Upper Ordovician of North America (Wilson and Palmer, 1988, 2006). These Ordovician borings were likely made by the mytilacean bivalve "Corallidomus" as it ground a shallow groove in the substrate to maintain its feeding position (Pojeta and Palmer, 1976). They are thus the earliest known bivalve borings (Taylor and Wilson, 2003). "Petroxestes" was later described from the Lower Silurian of Anticosti Island (Canada) by Tapanila and Copper (2002) and the Miocene of the Caribbean by Pickerill et al. (2001).
Caranx
The first representative of "Caranx" found in the fossil record dates back to the mid-Eocene, a period when many modern Perciform lineages appeared. Fossils mostly consist of otoliths, with the bony skeletal material rarely preserved. They are generally found in shallow marine or brackish water sedimentary deposits.
A number of extinct species have been definitively identified and scientifically named, including:
Aurorazhdarcho
A specimen originally classified as "Pterodactylus micronyx" (now "Aurorazhdarcho micronyx") was one of the earliest, if not the earliest, documented pterosaur fossil ever found. The holotype specimen of "P. micronyx", also known as the "Pester Exemplar", was originally part of the private fossil collection held by Archduchess Maria Anna of Austria. Evidence suggest that the Pester Exemplar was unearthed at some point between 1757, when Maria Anna was recovering from serious cases of pneumonia and tuberculosis, after which she began collecting fossils, and 1779, when the specimen was first studied by scientists. This overlaps with the possible time of discovery of the holotype specimen of "Pterodactylus antiquus", often considered the first pterosaur found, which was unearthed sometime between 1767 and 1784.
Origin of birds
"Archaeopteryx", the first good example of a "feathered dinosaur", was discovered in 1861. The first specimen was found in the Solnhofen limestone in southern Germany, which is a "lagerstätte", a rare and remarkable geological formation known for its superbly detailed fossils. "Archaeopteryx" is a transitional fossil, with features clearly intermediate between those of non-avian theropod dinosaurs and birds. Discovered just two years after Darwin's seminal "Origin of Species", its discovery spurred the nascent debate between proponents of evolutionary biology and creationism. This early bird is so dinosaur-like that, without a clear impression of feathers in the surrounding rock, at least one specimen was mistaken for "Compsognathus".
Baryonyx
The disarticulation of the bones may have been the result of soft-tissue decomposition. Parts of the skeleton seem to have weathered to different degrees, perhaps because water levels changed or the sediments shifted (exposing parts of the skeleton). The girdle and limb bones, the dentary, and a rib were broken before fossilisation, perhaps from trampling by large animals while buried. Most of the tail appears to have been lost before fossilisation, perhaps due to scavenging, or having rotted and floated off. The orientation of the bones indicates that the carcass lay on its back (perhaps tilted slightly to the left, with the right side upwards), which may explain why all the lower teeth had fallen out of their sockets and some upper teeth were still in place.
Elgin Reptiles
Elgin Reptiles is the name given to the Permian and Triassic fossils found in the sandstone deposits in and around the town of Elgin, in Moray, Scotland. They are of great historical and scientific importance, and many of the specimens are housed in the Elgin Museum, and some in the Hunterian in Glasgow, and the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. The Elgin Reptiles include the dinosauriform "Saltopus elginensis", the dicynodont "Gordonia", and the pareiasaur "Elginia". There are also many footprints and tail-drags associated with the same Permian and Triassic sandstone deposits.
The sandstone in the Elgin area was originally quarried for building materials. The quarries were where the first reptile fossils were found, and they have continued to yield fossils to this day.
The first Elgin Reptile was discovered in 1844, but because it was only a few scales scientists of the time believed it was an Old Red Sandstone fish fossil, which were relatively well-known from sites across Northern Scotland. In 1851 a second indisputably reptilian fossil was found. Fossils of "Gordonia" were first found by Scottish naturalist Ramsay Heatley Traquair in 1885 and E.T. Newton described several key fossil specimens.
Borzinskiy district Museum
The paleontological collections of the Borzya Museum were commenced in 70-th years of the last century. The bulk of the collection comes from the Kharanorskaya coal mine. From there, the Museum receivbeed to the skull of a woolly rhinoceros, the end part of the Tusk and teeth of a mammoth, and frontal part with the remnants of the horns and teeth of prehistoric bull (bison).
Ankylopollexia
In a first for any terrestrial fossil vertebrate, Brasier "et al." (2017) reported mineralized soft tissues from the brain of an iguanodontian dinosaur, from the Valanginian age (around 133 million years ago) Upper Tunbridge Wells Formation at Bexhill, Sussex. Fragmentary ornithopod remains were associated with the fossil, and though assigning the specimen to any one taxon with certainty wasn't possible, "Barilium" or "Hypselospinus" were put forward as likely candidates. The specimen compared well to endocasts of similar taxa, such as one from a "Mantellisaurus" on display at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Detailed observations were made with the use of a scanning electron microscope. Only some parts of the brain were preserved; the cerebellar and celebral expansions were best preserved, whereas the olfactory lobes and medulla oblongata were missing or nearly so. The neural tissues seemed to be very tightly packed, indicating an EC closer to five (with hadrosaurs having even higher ECs), nearly matching that of the most intelligent non-avian theropods. Though it was noted this was in-line with their complex behaviour, as had been noted by Hopson, it was cautioned the dense packing may have been an artifact of preservation, and the original lower estimates were considered more accurate. Some of the complex behaviours ascribed can be seen to some extent in modern crocodilians, who fall near the original numbers.
Paleontology in New Mexico
The first record of fossils in New Mexico was written by Santa Fe Trader Josiah Gregg, who described local petrified wood in his 1846 book "" . The next mention comes from J. W. Abert, who traveled through the area between 1846 and 1847. While there he wrote about fossils including petrified wood, shark teeth, shells and bones. His writings were incorporated into an 1848 Congressional Document by J. W. Bailey. Between 1853 and 1856 preparations for the construction of the transcontinental railroad had geologists in the area. While there they wrote about the local fossils they found. They sent some to New York hoping that Albany resident James Hall would be able to identify them. Around this time more and more prominent paleontologists became involved in New Mexico paleontology. Joseph Leidy described the new mastodon "Mastodon obscurus" from New Mexican bones he received. Edward Drinker Cope became so involved that he wrote 66 papers on New Mexican fossils between 1871 and 1893.
Paleontology in the United States
Native Americans have been familiar with fossils for thousands of years, but the first major fossil discovery to attract the attention of formally trained scientists were the Ice Age fossils of Kentucky's Big Bone Lick. These fossils were studied by eminent intellectuals like France's George Cuvier and local statesmen like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington. By the beginning of the 19th century, Dinosaur footprints were discovered near the country's east coast. Later in the century, as more dinosaur fossils were uncovered, eminent paleontologists Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh were embroiled in a bitter rivalry to collect the most fossils and name the most new species.
Alan J. Charig
This trip was the most fascinating of his many foreign experiences. However, the next year, a rather less exotic location – a brick-pit near Ockley, in Surrey, England – provided Charig with the most exciting research project of his career. He excavated "Baryonyx walkeri", a remarkable fish-eating dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous Period.
Tapinocephalus Assemblage Zone
Despite the rarity of fossils, the fossil taxa that have been found from the "Tapinocephalus" Assemblage Zone are extremely diverse. Parareptile species such as the pareiasaur, "Bradysaurus," and the perplexing putative pantestudine "Eunotosaurus africanus" are confined to this biozone. One of the few pelycosaur species found in South African deposits, "Elliotsmithia longiceps", and the biarmosuchian "Hipposaurus boonstrai" are likewise found, including a variety of basal gorgonopsid, anomodont, and therocephalian species. The dicynodont "Diictodon feliceps" first appeared in this biozone and remained ubiquitous until the Permian-Triassic boundary. Other dicynodont species found include "Robertia broomiana" and "Pristerodon brachyops". Finally, fossils of temnospondyl amphibians such as "Rhinosuchus tenuceps", remains of the fish "Namaichthys digitata", invertebrate fossils of molluscs, invertebrate trackways and burrows, vertebrate footprints of therapsids, and a variety of plant fossils, namely of "Glossopteris", "Dadoxylon", and "Schizoneura", have been recovered.
History of paleontology in the United States
Among the earliest major fossil discoveries in America occurred in Massachusetts during the spring of 1802. At that time a boy uncovered a piece of reddish sandstone with bird-like three toed footprints while ploughing on his father's farm in South Hadley. This was the first recorded dinosaur footprint discovery in North America. A short while later, Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804 through 1806 made several fossil discoveries along its journey, including the first documented fossils from what is now North Dakota. However, only a fish jawbone from Iowa remains of the fossils they collected along the way. Another significant, but unrelated event from the early 19th century was the 1817 organization of the Lyceum of Natural History of New York by Samuel L. Mitchill. In 1869 the American Museum of Natural History was organized out of the Lyceum.
Gymnogyps varonai
The species is known from at least six fragmentary fossils housed in the Museo Nacional de Historia Natural in Havana, Cuba, and includes a premaxilla, coracoid, the basal end of a right radius. The specimens were collected from the Las Breas de San Felipe tar seep site San Filipe II, which is located west of Martí, Cuba. Based on the geology of the sites, the seeps are suggested to date from the Quaternary, being younger than the weathered serpentinites found under the seeps, and older than the of undisturbed topsoil which covers the deposits. A Pleistocene age has been given to both the mollusk fauna, studied in 1935 and the seed flora, studied in 1940. The fossils were first studied by the Cuban Quaternary paleontologist Oscar Arredondo who described the species and placed it into a new genus "Antillovultur" as Antillovultur varonai. The erection of the genus was subsequently questioned by other paleontologists, with Storrs L. Olson in 1978 suggesting it should was possibly a member of the genus "Gymnogyps". The fossils were fully redescribed in 2003 by William Suárez and Steven Emslie, who concluded that the species belonged to "Gymnogyps" and synonymized "Antillovultur" into the genus resulting in the species being "Gymnogyps varonai".
Palaeochiropteryx
Along with "Onychonycteris", "Icaronycteris", "Hassianycetris", and "Archaeonycteris"; members of "Palaeochiropteryx" are among the oldest known bats. All are identifiable by more or less complete skeletons. While there are fossils of other older bats such as "Australonycteris", these are only recognisable from fragmented examples. Close relatives of "Palaeochiropteryx" include the Middle Eocene "Cecilionycteris", "Lapichiropteryx" and "Microchiropteryx", all recovered from partial remains from Germany, China, and India, respectively.
Triceratops
The first named specimen now attributed to "Triceratops" is a pair of brow horns attached to a skull roof, found near Denver, Colorado in the spring of 1887. This specimen was sent to American paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh, who believed that the formation from which it came dated from the Pliocene, and that the bones belonged to a particularly large and unusual bison, which he named "Bison alticornis". He realized that there were horned dinosaurs by the next year, which saw his publication of the genus "Ceratops" from fragmentary remains, but he still believed "B. alticornis" to be a Pliocene mammal. It took a third and much more complete skull to change his mind. The specimen, collected in 1888 by John Bell Hatcher from the Lance Formation of Wyoming, was initially described as another species of "Ceratops". After reflection, Marsh changed his mind and gave it the generic name "Triceratops", accepting his "Bison alticornis" as another species of "Ceratops" (it would later be added to "Triceratops"). The sturdy nature of the animal's skull has ensured that many examples have been preserved as fossils, allowing variations between species and individuals to be studied. "Triceratops" remains have subsequently been found in the American states of Montana and South Dakota (in addition to Colorado and Wyoming), and in the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta, Canada.