Gideon Mantel and the dinosaur relic
Deposits Magazine
by jondeposits
5d ago
Rob Hope (France) A break from work, and also from reading about the history of palaeontology, enabled me to get away for a while. And a chance visit to the south of England found me driving through the lovely Sussex town of Lewes. Held up by a red light, I suddenly realised – didn’t Gideon Algernon Mantell once live here? I parked the car and set off to visit this charming town. In particular, I wanted to find the house where Mantell had actually worked and lived. When I eventually found it, there was a large blue plaque on the wall confirming it to be the home of the ‘discoverer of the Iguan ..read more
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Climate events let ice age mammoths go far below 40°N
Deposits Magazine
by jondeposits
1w ago
Dick Mol (Netherlands) and Ralf-Dietrich Kahlke (Germany) The remains of four mammoth bulls have been discovered in southern Spain. They lived about 30 to 40 thousand years ago near Padul, a small city in today’s Granada. These are Europe’s most southerly skeletal remains of Mammuthus primigenius (Fig. 1) and were unearthed in a moor on the 37°N latitude. This is considerably further south of the inhospitable habitat that one usually imagines for mammoths and for the characteristically dry and cold climate that prevailed during the ice ages in northern Eurasia. Fig. 1. Mammuthus primigenius. P ..read more
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A tiny waterfront town’s Big Fossil Festival
Deposits Magazine
by jondeposits
2w ago
Deborah Painter (USA) The breezes from the estuarine Pamlico Sound, which reach the tiny coastal town of Aurora, North Carolina in the USA along a meandering tributary, sometimes carry the evocative and not unpleasant ambiance of salt, mixed with decomposed estuarine life, such as fish, clams, crabs and other “shellfish”. According to the 2020 United States Census, this town is home to 455 persons. It’s also home to the Aurora Fossil Museum (Fig. 1) and the annual Fossil Festival. Fig. 1. Thousands of participants arrive in the small town of Aurora, North Carolina to tour the Aurora Fossil Mus ..read more
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Diversity of trace fossils from the Anisian (Middle Triassic) of Winterswijk, the Netherlands
Deposits Magazine
by jondeposits
1M ago
Henk Oosterink (the Netherlands) Ichnofossils are the non-body remains of organisms. This group of fossils includes burrows, borings, tracks and any other trace formed by the life activity of organisms. They are very important in determining the ecology of extinct organism – although it is not always possible to link a single ichnofossil to the organism that made it. They are also useful in palaeoenvironmental analysis and solving other sedimentary problems. As a result of finds of, for example, reptile bones, the Middle Triassic quarry of Winterswijk (Anisian) is famous for its ichnofossils o ..read more
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Fossil sea urchins as hard substrates
Deposits Magazine
by jondeposits
1M ago
Stephen K Donovan (the Netherlands) and John WM Jagt (the Netherlands) A fossil is a mine of information about just one specimen of one species and many such specimens represent extinct species. Consequently, no observations of the living organism are possible – everything we know about that species will have to be gleaned from fossils. Morphology (the form or shape of an organism or part of it) is obviously a starting point – that is, what are the features of the specimen? Describing a specimen may be laborious, but it provides a factual basis for all later determinations and speculation. And ..read more
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Proboscidean tusks through time: a special case of excavation and displaying experience
Deposits Magazine
by jondeposits
1M ago
Dick Mol (The Netherlands), Evangelos Vlachos (Argentina), Spyridoula Pappa (UK), Nikos Vasileiadis (Greece), Nikos Bacharidis (Greece), Vassilis Makridis (Greece), Evangelia Tsoukala (Greece) Over the past 30 years, systematic excavations by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Northern Greece have unearthed many Proboscidea fossils, including the longest tusks in the world at Milia (Grevena, Greece). Typically, as these fossils belong to the Museum of Geology, Palaeontology, Palaeoanthropology of Aristotle University, they should really be stored there. But due to the lack of necessar ..read more
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Echinoids
Deposits Magazine
by jondeposits
2M ago
Neale Monks Although rarely conspicuous, echinoids – commonly known as sea urchins – are among the most important invertebrates in the sea. They are often very numerous and, in particular, the herbivorous species can be critically important as the grazers that keep large seaweed species, such as kelp, from taking over shallow water communities. The Pacific coastline of North America has been particularly well studied and strong connections between kelp, sea urchins and sea otters have been revealed. The sea urchins eat young kelp plants and the sea otters eat the sea urchins and, between the t ..read more
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The vampire of Csillaghegy
Deposits Magazine
by jondeposits
2M ago
Főzy István (Hungary) Csillaghegy (literally translated, “Star Hill”) is a suburb in the northern part of Budapest, the capital of Hungary. It is home to a waterfront promenade with stunning views of the Danube and the elegant, cable-stayed Megyeri Bridge that crosses Szentendre Island. The riverside is home to kayak rentals, restaurants and trendy bars. The rather cold, but still popular Csillaghegy Bath and Swimming pool is located on the opposite (western) edge of the suburb. Next to it, there is the Forest Hill residential complex. This is where they found the vampire. First of all, we mus ..read more
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The mastodon of Milia – the longest tusks in the world
Deposits Magazine
by Jondeposits
2M ago
Dick Mol and Wilrie van Logchem (The Netherlands) Parts of a skeleton of a Pliocene mastodon were excavated near the village of Milia in West Macedonia, Greece, between 17 and 29 July 2007. Members of the Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, together with the authors, unearthed the specimens in a sandpit, named “Milia 5” (as there had been already four previous excavations sites of fossil mammals in the neighbouring area). The circumstances under which the event took place were rather extreme. While in north-west Europe, the weather resembled an autumn day in October, in Milia, the excavator ..read more
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How soil science helps solve crime
Deposits Magazine
by Jondeposits
3M ago
Liz Porter (Australia) Australia has 14 different major types of soil. Maps showing soil profiles of different areas are very useful for farmers, people planning cities, people who look after natural resources and increasingly … forensic scientists! The foray into the world of crime solving by Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization (CSIRO) soil scientists has already been captured in the international journal Science and in an award-winning Australian forensic casebook. Indeed, an article on the work appeared in the October 2009 issue of Science, entitled: Dirty Science ..read more
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