It is with deep regret that I write to confirm that Dr. Wann Langston, Jr. passed away late on Sunday, April 7, 2013. He succumbed following a protracted battle with cancer, but he was surrounded by his children and very much at peace in his last months. Join us for a celebration of his life…
Paleontology/Geobiology News Archive
Marine scientists are using “earthstones” from Southern flounder to determine the age, growth history and migration patterns of fish. Nate Miller’s geochemical analyses are a critical part of the process.
Using a combination of traditional and innovative model-building techniques, scientists in the U.S. and a specialist in Denmark have created a lifelike reconstruction of an ancient mollusk, offering a vivid portrait of a creature that lived about 390 million years ago, and answering questions about its place in the tree of life, as described in…
National Geographic Daily News, September 18, 2012 Featuring: Jakob Vinther
Researchers from Harvard University, The University of Texas at Austin and elsewhere have found evidence that the evolution of birds is the result of a drastic change in how dinosaurs developed. Scientists have long understood that modern birds descended from dinosaurs. Rather than take years to reach sexual maturity, as many dinosaurs did, birds sped…
A team of American and Chinese researchers has revealed the detailed feather pattern and color of Microraptor, a pigeon-sized, four-winged dinosaur that lived about 120 million years ago. A new specimen shows the dinosaur had a glossy iridescent sheen and that its tail was narrow and adorned with a pair of streamer feathers, suggesting the…
A team of scientists announced the first evidence of feather color in Archaeopteryx, a feathered dinosaur that has also long been considered one of the earliest birds. The first fossil remains, consisting of a single feather, were discovered in 1861. It’s this single feather that was analyzed using a technique developed by Jakob Vinther, a…
Mammals first evolved their characteristic large brains to enable a stronger sense of smell, according to a new study published this week in the journal Science by paleontologists from The University of Texas at Austin, Carnegie Museum of Natural History and St. Mary’s University in San Antonio. This latest study is the first to use CT…
When Peter Flaig returned home from Antarctica, he found it pretty amusing that the city of Austin was shut down by an inch of snow, a little bit of ice, and low temperatures in the 20s. The university was closed, as were public schools and many businesses and government agencies. But in what can be…
2008: Early hominid Lucy CT-scanned 2001: Fossil fetus of an Elephant bird CT-scanned and reconstructed without breaking egg shell 1999: Non-vertebrate Paleontology Lab established 1997: High Resolution XRay CT Lab founded 1994: FAUNMAP, database of North American mammals for the last 40,000 years (E. Lundelius) 1971: Discovery of the largest known flying animal, Quetzalcoatlus, in…
