Skywizard
9th December 2012, 02:48
I just found this and I thought it was simply Amazing! (hope it hasn’t been posted but I searched) The way I understand the story is they have found 9 suspected fossilized mating pairs over the past 30 years but just now getting around to formally analyzing the fossiled pairs for the first time. (maybe they couldn’t make heads or tails of them :o). The story is a very good read and discovery don‘t get me wrong… but it's also a good story to poke a little fun at, like… “I wonder if the little one had a smile on his face” or “Nine! must have been one heck of a party”. :haha:
You guy’s just look over me tonight, been one of those days!
19569
Seriously…
The fossilized mating turtles were exposed in part by the males' smaller size.
Photograph courtesy Stephan Schaal, Senckenberg Society
Kastalia Medrano
for National Geographic News
German scientists have just reported an extraordinary discovery: the first known pairs of mating vertebrate fossils.
And along with the thrill of a fossil first comes another possible breakthrough. The 47-million-year-old turtle remains offer clues to how a prehistoric lake became one of the world’s richest fossil troves.
"Just finding these couples is completely unique worldwide," lead study author Walter Joyce said. "There are no other vertebrate fossils to be found like this."
The turtle pairs were discovered in Messel Pit, a tropical lake turned Lagerstätten—paleontologist speak for a "really, really, really, spectacular place for fossils," according to Columbia University's Mark Norell.
The prehistoric lake somehow killed scores of animals, then preserved the bodies in volcanic sediment. From those sediments—long since turned to oil shale—nine suspected mating pairs of the Allaeochelys crassesculpta species have been recovered in the last 30 years.
By formally analyzing the fossil pairs for the first time, the study authors were able to determine once and for all that each couple was male-female, in part because males are about 20 percent smaller than females and have longer tails. Perhaps most significantly, the team identified two couples with tails positioned for mating.
Read the whole story here.
Source:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/06/120621-fossils-turtles-mating-joyce-biology-letters-science/
Only Now Exists…
~skywizard
You guy’s just look over me tonight, been one of those days!
19569
Seriously…
The fossilized mating turtles were exposed in part by the males' smaller size.
Photograph courtesy Stephan Schaal, Senckenberg Society
Kastalia Medrano
for National Geographic News
German scientists have just reported an extraordinary discovery: the first known pairs of mating vertebrate fossils.
And along with the thrill of a fossil first comes another possible breakthrough. The 47-million-year-old turtle remains offer clues to how a prehistoric lake became one of the world’s richest fossil troves.
"Just finding these couples is completely unique worldwide," lead study author Walter Joyce said. "There are no other vertebrate fossils to be found like this."
The turtle pairs were discovered in Messel Pit, a tropical lake turned Lagerstätten—paleontologist speak for a "really, really, really, spectacular place for fossils," according to Columbia University's Mark Norell.
The prehistoric lake somehow killed scores of animals, then preserved the bodies in volcanic sediment. From those sediments—long since turned to oil shale—nine suspected mating pairs of the Allaeochelys crassesculpta species have been recovered in the last 30 years.
By formally analyzing the fossil pairs for the first time, the study authors were able to determine once and for all that each couple was male-female, in part because males are about 20 percent smaller than females and have longer tails. Perhaps most significantly, the team identified two couples with tails positioned for mating.
Read the whole story here.
Source:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/06/120621-fossils-turtles-mating-joyce-biology-letters-science/
Only Now Exists…
~skywizard