Rare discovery near Norton could help fill fossil gap, researchers say - CBC.ca

-

A rare fossil discovery near Norton could help fill a key knowledge gap of how ancient creatures walked the Earth, according to researchers from the New Brunswick Museum.

Last summer, Olivia King and Matt Stimson were in the area, about 50 kilometres northwest of Saint John, looking for invertebrate tracks, when they stumbled upon fossilized footprints of a four-legged amphibian. 

King said they immediately knew it was an important find.

"This is an area that researchers have been going over for ages to find evidence of these amphibians, whether it's bones or footprints or anything," said King, who's also a master's student in paleontology at St. Mary's University in Halifax.

"It was very exciting when we flipped over a rock and then another one, and we started finding all these footprints."

New Brunswick Museum researchers Matt Stimson, left, and Olivia King made the discovery near Norton. (Matt Stimson/Submitted)

They found a "couple hundred" fossils, she said. Some were trackways, footsteps with a trailing tail, while others were a single firm impression.

The researchers described the amphibians as big salamanders that were 10 to 20 centimetres long with four toes in the front and five in the back. 

Pictured is the track of an ancient amphibian preserved in rock discovered in Norton. (New Brunswick Museum/Submitted)

Stimson said the fossils were 330 million to 360 million years old, when terrestrial vertebrate life made the transition from water to land. But it's a block of time where there's a fossil gap, known as Romer's Gap, and the find could provide plenty of fresh insight. 

"They tell us something about the invasion of continental environments 350 million years ago," said Stimson, the assistant curator of geology at the museum and a PhD student at St. Mary's.

Last summer, New Brunswick Museum curator Matt Stimson and his field partner Olivia King discovered fossil records of the first vertebrate life that made the transition from water to land. No other fossils from that time period were previously found. 7:37

There are only two other known sites in the world — Scotland and Blue Beach, N.S. — where the fossils were preserved at the right age and environment, he said.

What separates the Norton site is that it's inland near freshwater. The other two are coastal and close to salt water.

"It also represents a whole new environment," Stimson said.

Researcher Matt Stimson pictured at a dig site. Stimson said the Norton-area discovery could help fill an important fossil gap. (Matt Stimson/Submitted)

In Scotland, researchers excavated skeletons, he added. 

"But they don't have the footprints and we do," he said, "and these footprints tell us a little bit about how the animals moved, how they walked and interacted with each other and their environments, which you can't get from a skeleton."

The researchers will continue to study the fossils to learn about the environment and ecology at the time.



https://ift.tt/2MRrHLh

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

All In The Family: Maine Mother & Son Charged in Massive Drug Bust

-
Image
corso dog :: Article Creator Woman Hospitalized After Attack By 2 Dogs At Same Edmonton Home Where Boy Died: Lawyer UPDATE: On April 15, 2024, the City of Edmonton provided an update on the fatal attack. It said that prior to the deadly incident on April 1, "the city had no lawful basis to remove the dogs from the home." The city added that "all prior complaints about the dogs involved in this incident were investigated thoroughly and appropriate action was taken in accordance with the applicable legislation." The city also said a review found that its staff "acted appropriately in accordance with our standard practices and in compliance with the relevant legal constraints given the nature of past complaints and reports." A woman was hospitalized after being attacked in February by two large Cane Corso dogs at the same home where an 11-year-old boy was killed last week, the woman's lawyer told Global News. "I
Read more

Rare Frogs And Illegal Drugs - Palisades Hudson Financial Group

-
Image
Colombian conservationist Ivan Lozano has hit on a brilliantly promising strategy to protect his country’s rare and endangered amphibians. His plan: Flood the market with them. Lozano is not hunting rare frogs in Colombia’s Andean forests. He is raising them himself and selling them at prices designed to undercut poachers and smugglers. If he can raise the frogs cheaply enough, and in large enough numbers, he might manage to drive down the market price to the point that poachers no longer find it worthwhile to harvest and smuggle the creatures onto the black markets. Lozano told The Associated Press that his company also encourages collectors to breed their own frogs. Picture yourself as a poacher. If the government toughens the legal penalties and steps up enforcement, you will shrug your shoulders; legal risks are a basic cost of doing business. Since the demand for your product already exists among foreign collectors and other buyers, tougher enforcement merely reduces supply a
Read more

Burn scars, winter storms threaten rare and endangered species in San Gabriel Mountains - The Bakersfield Californian

-
Image
LOS ANGELES — Up until a few weeks ago, the West Fork of the San Gabriel River was one of the most abundant wildlife habitats in Los Angeles County, a secluded and rugged area defined by its steep peaks, lush canyons and mixture of rare and endangered species. Recently however, a team of federal biologists and forest rangers was aghast when it visited the stream following the Bobcat fire, which has burned more than 115,000 acres in the heart of the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument. Terrain that once resembled a High Sierra granite gorge now looked like ground zero after a nuclear explosion, and the usually clean mountain air was sharp with the stench of smoke. Particularly unsettling were the bare and ashen slopes that were now primed to dissolve under pounding winter storms. A heavy mudslide, experts said, could reverse decades of conservation efforts by inundating the last outposts for such federally protected species as the Santa Ana sucker fish and Southern California m
Read more