The Palaeo Pad

A new species of plant-eating dinosaur, which sports a grapefruit sized mass of bone on the top of its skull, has been uncovered in Texas’ Big Bend National Park. The find, which would have lived 70 to 80 million years ago, is reported in the latest issue of Cretaceous Research.

The ecological information which can be gleaned from the fossil record is controlled by the processes of accumulation involved, according to a paper by the University of Chicago, which is to be published in the May issue of The American Naturalist.

Well, the field trip was fun – not, perhaps, quite as we had planned it, mind – but it wasn’t without some amusement.

We are on the beach, and have just made this fantastic echinoid find!

For a little treat tomorrow, The Palaeo Pad shall be going on a little jaunt to Peacehaven, in East Sussex, on a fossil hunt.

A new species from the terminal Ediacaran, Cloudina carinata, has been discovered in Spain. The tubular fossil, described in a recent issue of the journal Precambrian Research, lived between 550 and 543 million years ago and was one of the first animals to leave behind evidence of reproduction.

One of the rarest fossils has been found in the most unexpected of locations – the capital city of Canada. Described in the current issue of Palaeontology, the 450 million year old specimen of the annelid machaeridian worm Plumulitids canadensis is one of only eight such finds in the world.