The Congo Basin — with its massive, lush tropical rain forest — was far different 150 million to 200 million years ago.

At that time Africa and South America were part of the single continent Gondwana. The Congo Basin was arid, with a small amount of seasonal rainfall, and few bushes or trees populated the landscape, according to a new geochemical analysis of rare ancient soils.

The embedded track

The laser image preserves what is called a "type specimen" footprint — an original track used many years ago to describe a new species of dinosaur, says paleontologist Thomas L. Adams at SMU.

Portable 3D laser scanners capture original fossil morphology and texture, making it possible to use the data for rapid 3D prototyping in foam or resin, Adams says.

Paleontologist Michael J. Polcyn, director of the Visualization Laboratory in the SMU Huffington Department of Earth Sciences and SMU adjunct research associate, is quoted as an expert source in Real Sea Monsters: The Hunt for Predator X. The article by reporter James O'Donoghue was published in the October 2009 issue of the magazine New Scientist.

Modern land snails

Isotopic measurements performed on fossil land snail shells resulted in oxygen isotope ratios that suggest the relative humidity on the islands was higher 50,000 years ago, then experienced a long-term decrease to the time of maximum global cooling and glaciation about 15,000 to 20,000 years ago, according to new research by Yurena Yanes, a post-doctoral researcher, and Crayton J. Yapp, a geochemistry professor, both in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences at SMU.

Thirty million years ago, before Ethiopia's mountainous highlands split and the Great Rift Valley formed, the tropical zone had warmer soil temperatures, higher rainfall and different atmospheric circulation patterns than it does today, according to new research of fossil soils found in the central African nation.

Neil J. Tabor, associate professor of Earth Sciences at SMU and an expert in sedimentology and isotope geochemistry, calculated past climate using oxygen and hydrogen isotopes in minerals from fossil soils discovered in the highlands of northwest Ethiopia. The highlands represent the bulk of the mountains on the African continent.

For paleobotanist Bonnie Jacobs standing atop a mountain in the highlands of northwest Ethiopia, it's as if she can see forever — or at least as far back as 30 million years ago.

Jacobs is part of an international team of researchers hunting scientific clues to Africa's prehistoric ecosystems.

The researchers are among the first to combine independent lines of evidence from various fossil and geochemical sources to reconstruct the prehistoric climate, landscape and ecosystems of Ethiopia in particular, and tropical Africa in general for the time interval from 65 million years ago — when dinosaurs went extinct, to about 8 million years ago — when apes split from humans.

SMU geologist James E. Quick led a team of geologists that discovered a rare fossil supervolcano in the Sesia Valley of the Italian Alps.

Now news journalists from internet, radio, television and newspaper outlets are interviewing Quick and his team, which was back at the site this September for further research. The team made the discovery two years ago and announced it in July. The discovery will advance scientific understanding of active supervolcanoes, like Yellowstone, which is the second-largest supervolcano in the world and which last erupted 630,000 years ago.

Sesia Valley's unprecedented exposure of magmatic plumbing provides a model for interpreting geophysical profiles and magmatic processes beneath active calderas. The exposure also serves as direct confirmation of the cause-and-effect link between molten rock moving through the Earth's crust and explosive volcanism.

Paleontologist Michael J. Polcyn, director of the Visualization Laboratory in the SMU Huffington Department of Earth Sciences and SMU adjunct research associate, appears as an expert source in Mega Beasts: T-Rex of the Deep. The science documentary aired Sept. 13 on the Discovery Channel.

Fossils in the rock outcrops of the coast of Angola in Africa are a "museum in the ground," says SMU vertebrate paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs. Louise Redvers with Agence France Presse interviewed Jacobs. BBC and others published the story "Angola: Final frontier for fossils."

"Angola is the final frontier for palaeontology," Jacobs is quoted. "Due to the war, there has been little research carried out... but now we are getting in finally and there is so much to find.

"In some areas there are literally fossils sticking out of the rocks, it is like a museum in the ground."

Scientists have found the "Rosetta Stone" of supervolcanoes, those giant pockmarks in the Earth's surface produced by rare and massive explosive eruptions that rank among nature's most violent events. The eruptions produce devastation on a regional scale — and possibly trigger climatic and environmental effects at a global scale.

A fossil supervolcano has been discovered in the Italian Alps' Sesia Valley by a team led by James E. Quick, a geology professor at Southern Methodist University. The discovery will advance scientific understanding of active supervolcanoes, like Yellowstone, which is the second-largest supervolcano in the world and which last erupted 630,000 years ago.

The remarkable 60-year-career of internationally recognized field archaeologist Fred Wendorf, SMU Henderson-Morrison Professor of Prehistory Emeritus, is the subject of an interview with Richard Pettigrew, president and executive director of the nonprofit Archaeological Legacy Institute.

Pettigrew interviewed Wendorf for The Archaeology Channel, exploring Wendorf's productive career: Founding the Fort Burgwin Research Center in New Mexico, now The Archaeological Field School at SMU-in-Taos; founding SMU's Department of Anthropology; and leading the Combined Prehistoric Expedition in the Sahara Desert from 1962 to 1999, the longest international prehistoric expedition in northeastern Africa.

A collection of artifacts from the expedition are housed in The Wendorf Collection of The British Museum.

Listen to the interview

The Archaeology Field School at SMU-in-Taos begins a unique education and research partnership this summer with students and faculty from Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pa., uniting two of the nation's leading archaeology programs on Southern Methodist University's New Mexico campus.

"This collaboration will create one of the strongest archaeology field training programs in the nation, if not the world," said Mike Adler, SMU-in-Taos executive director. "It leverages the strengths of both institutions."

Fossil finds in the rock outcrops of the coast of Angola in Africa are a "museum in the ground," according to SMU vertebrate paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs.

Internationally recognized for his fossil discoveries, Jacobs and a team of researchers have unearthed fossils in the outcrops from Namibe, at the southern end of Angola's coast, to Cabinda, at the northern end.

An SMU anthropologist whose work centers on how people first came to inhabit North America has been elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). David Meltzer, chair of SMU's Department of Anthropology, has been elected a member of the NAS in recognition for his achievements in original scientific research.

A 16th century estate in Peru will offer insight into how expanding empires subjugate people and appropriate their resources to promote a cause. Kylie Quave, an SMU graduate student in archaeology, has received a prestigious Fulbright U.S. Student Fellowship to conduct archaeological fieldwork and research in southeastern Peru, the heart of the ancient Inca empire.

Evolutionary theory expert Ron Wetherington, an SMU professor of anthropology and director of the University's Center for Teaching Excellence, has received the 2009 Grassroots Hero Award from the Texas Freedom Network (TFN). Wetherington will accept the award April 16 at a ceremony in Dallas.

TFN presents the award each year to "a dedicated individual who exemplifies our work to stand up for science."

The work of SMU researchers Timothy Myers and Anthony Fiorillo was featured online March 19, 2009 on the Discovery Channel. "Mass Dino Graves Suggest Young Banded Together" by Jennifer Viegas highlighted findings being published in the April issue of "Science" magazine.

Vertebrate paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, a professor in Dedman College's Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, is quoted in the February 3 online story "Early whales gave birth on land, fossils reveal" by National Geographic News Service.

Jacobs is known for his work documenting changes in fossil mammals in Pakistan, which helps scholars correlate climatic changes with evolutionary changes seen in animals, and which helps calibrate the rate of DNA evolution in mammals. He's also credited for discovery of what's now known as "Malawisaurus," a plant-eating dinosaur that lived in Malawi, Africa, 115 million years ago.

SMU's Meadows Museum honors the 15th anniversary of University Distinguished Professor of Art History P. Gregory Warden's groundbreaking archaeological excavation in Poggio Colla, Italy with an exhibition dedicated to the Etruscans.

"From the Temple and the Tomb: Etruscan Treasures From Tuscany" is the most comprehensive exhibition of Etruscan art ever undertaken in the United States, with more than 400 objects spanning the 9th through 2nd centuries B.C.

It's a case of mistaken dino-identity. The official State Dinosaur of Texas is up for a new name, based on Southern Methodist University research that proved the titleholder has been misidentified.

State Rep. Charles Geren of Fort Worth filed a resolution January 7 to change the name of the state dinosaur from Pleurocoelus to Paluxysaurus jonesi to correctly name the massive sauropod whose tracks and bones litter the central Texas Jones Ranch.

Senior art history major Jayme Clemente was working in trench No. 35 in July at an archaeological dig 20 miles northeast of Florence, Italy, when something caught her eye.

"I saw something green in the dirt," she recalls. Green is the color of oxidized bronze.

Vertebrate paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs is scientific consultant and co-writer of a new 33-minute video just released by the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.

A professor in Dedman College's Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Jacobs introduces the "We Are SVP" video. An internationally known vertebrate paleontologist, he is a former president of the society.

For hundreds of years the beauty and mystery of Taos, New Mexico, have lured thousands of settlers and visitors, from the ancestors of the Taos and Picuris Indians and Spanish settlers to skiing enthusiasts and artists.

Now students participating in SMU's Archaeology Field School have answered the call of Taos in their own way. In summer 2007 they began work on the first phase of a research project that will bring together University faculty and students, Taos community leaders, private landowners, and local, state and federal government agencies.

The multifaceted undertaking will involve surveying on foot and through satellite and Google Earth images, as well as archival research and excavation. The collaboration marks the first time archaeological exploration has been conducted on the Ranchos de Taos Plaza.

New research by a U.S.-U.K. team that included SMU archaeology student Metin Eren assaults the long-held notion that Neanderthals went extinct because their stone tools were inferior to those made by Homo sapiens.

Researchers at Southern Methodist University and the University of Exeter report in the "Journal of Human Evolution" that the early stone tool technologies of Neanderthals were as good as, and sometimes even more efficient, than those of Homo sapiens.

A team of researchers led by paleobotanist Bonnie Jacobs and sedimentologist Neil Tabor of Southern Methodist University returned to northwestern Ethiopia in late December 2007 to spend almost a month collecting additional plant fossils and gaining a more thorough understanding of their geological context.

In December 2006, the team collected more than 600 plant fossils, which are on loan for study in labs at SMU's Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences in Dedman College. All told, the team has documented more than 1,500 plant fossils, hundreds of vertebrate fossils and numerous examples of ancient soils. This year they widen their search to better understand the geology, landscape, plant and animal communities, and climate of Chilga, Ethiopia, 28 million years ago.