Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus found by Mary Anning. From: W D Conybeare, 1824 Mary Anning was born on Lyme Regis on May 21, 1799. Her father was a carpenter and an amateur fossil collector who died when Mary was eleven. He trained Mary and her brother Joseph in how to look and clean fossils. After the death of her father, Mary and Joseph used those skills to search fossils on the local cliffs, that sold as “curiosities”. The source of the fossils was the coastal cliffs around Lyme Regis, one of the richest fossil locations in England and part of a geological formation known as the Blue Lias. On ..read more

  Megalosaurus’ jaw and teeth drawn by Mary Buckland. From Buckland, 1824. On 20 February 1824, William Buckland read at a meeting of the Geological Society of London, the first scientific report of a large carnivore animal, the Megalosaurus: “I AM induced to lay before the Geological Society the annexed representations of parts of the skeleton of an enormous fossil animal, found at Stonesfield near Woodstock, about twelve miles to the north-west of Oxford… The detached bones here represented must have belonged to several individuals of various ages and sizes; there are others in the Ox ..read more

Carol Heubusch Faul (1934-1989). Image credit: Buffalo Museum of Science. The lack of diversity in Geosciences is a long-standing issue. The  geoscientist is often seen as an athletic, bearded white male, and that stereotype has created an “image problem” that prevents minorities from applying for research opportunities. The  problem is even bigger for people with disabilities. In 1978, during a conference for Science Education for Handicapped Student, Carol Heubusch Faul, a geologist and paleontologist, presented GEOLOGY AS A CAREER FOR THE DISABLE, a resume about the “problems an ..read more

Sidersaura marae. Image credit: Gabriel Diaz Yantén Rebbachisauridae is a family of  small to mid-sized sauropod dinosaurs characterized by their highly modified skulls and cervical and dorsal vertebrae with single neural spines. This clade of basal diplodocoid sauropods are known from the early Late Cretaceous of Africa, South America, and Europe. They were part of the sauropod faunas of Argentina together with macronarians (Titanosauriformes) and other diplodocoids (Dicraeosauridae). It was not until 1990 that sauropod specialist John McIntosh realized that a vertebrba described by Fr ..read more

An artistic reconstruction of the passage of the group of sauropods, a small theropod, and an iguanodon. Image credit: Jorge Gonzalez This year was marked by extreme weather, earthquakes, intense volcanic activity, and political and humanitarian crisis. The end of the year was particulary dramatic for science in Argentina after the winning of the far-right presidencial candidate who is a denier of climate change and has decided to stop funding scientific research. But resilience is a key factor among humans and science is particulary adjusted to persist against all odds. Here is my list of t ..read more

The first Christmas card by artist John Callcott Horsley. From Wikimedia Commons. The tradition of sending Christmas cards became very popular in the Victorian period (1837-1901). Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert, introduced German holiday traditions to England. But it wasn’t until 1846 that the fir tree became a worldwide custom, after the Queen and her husband were sketched in the Illustrated London News standing with their children around a Christmas tree. Early Christmas cards often contained flowers, fairies and little animals. With the increasing popularity and more afford ..read more

An artistic reconstruction of the passage of the group of sauropods, a small theropod, and an iguanodon. Image credit: Jorge Gonzalez Bolivia yields an outstanding dinosaur ichnological record. Different ichnosites in the Chuquisaca Department, and the Potosí Department, reveal an outstanding abundance and diversity of theropod, sauropod, ankylosaur and ornithopod footprints. But most of its deposits were restricted to the Triassic period (220 million years old) and to the last moment of the Upper Cretaceous (between 75 and 65 million years ago). A new ichnosite bearing about 350 dinosaur fo ..read more

Venetoraptor gassenae. Image credit: Matheus Fernandes Pterosaurs were the first flying vertebrates. Their reign extended to every continent and achieved high levels of morphologic and taxonomic diversity during the Mesozoic. During their 160 million year history, the evolution of pterosaurs resulted in a variety of eco-morphological adaptations, as evidenced by differences in skull shape, dentition, neck length, tail length and wing span. Due to the fragile nature of their skeletons and the absence of fossils with transitional morphologies, the origin of pterosaurs is one of the most debate ..read more

Chucarosaurus diripienda. Image credit: Sebastián Rozadilla. The Argentinean record of titanosaurs is particularly abundant. The study of this diverse group of sauropod dinosaurs embrace an extensive list of important contributions, which started with Richard Lydekker’s pioneering work on Patagonian dinosaurs.  Some of them, were the largest animals to ever walk the Earth: Argentinosaurus, Futalognkosaurus, and Puertasaurus surpassed lengths of 37 m and masses of 70 tons.  The best preserved skeletal elements in South American sauropodomorphs are axial and appendicular on ..read more

Histological sampling of the specimen MPM-PV 1002. From D’Angelo et al., 2023. On December 10, 1823, Mary Anning discovered the first complete Plesiosaur skeleton at Lyme Regis in Dorset. Noticed about the oddity of the specimen, George Cuvier wrote to William Conybeare suggesting that the find was a fake produced by combining fossil bones from different animals. But despite their unusual body plan Plesiosaurs were a highly successful group of Mesozoic marine reptiles. Their four limbs are enlarged and modified as propulsive flippers, the trunk is short and stiff, and proportional head size ..read more