D Magazine journalist Dawn McMullan reported on the accomplishments of SMU anthropologist David J. Meltzer in Undiscovering a Killer Comet in the monthly magazine’s “Dallas’ Big Thinkers” article, which published Sept. 21.
A member of the National Academy of Sciences, Meltzer researches the origins, antiquity, and adaptations of the first Americans — Paleoindians — who colonized the North American continent at the end of the Ice Age. He focuses on how these hunter-gatherers met the challenges of moving across and adapting to the vast, ecologically diverse landscape of Late Glacial North America during a time of significant climate change.
Meltzer is chair of SMU’s Department of Anthropology and the Henderson-Morrison Professor of Prehistory in SMU’s Dedman College.
McMullan’s D Magazine piece focuses on six of the region’s scientists who are making a difference in their scientific field: “We gave the world the microchip and the margarita machine. Here are six cool scientists whose brains are making waves,” McMullan writes.
By Dawn McMullan
D Magazine
In the summer of 1971, David Meltzer’s mom was looking for something to get her 15-year-old son out of the house. She asked him his plans. He said he was going to watch TV. “That,” she said, “isn’t good enough.” She read that archaeological excavations would begin the next week in the Shenandoah Valley. She convinced the project director that he needed to take her son. The next week, Meltzer had shovel in hand at the Thunderbird Paleoindian site.
He continued for four summers and is now a world-renowned archaeologist. Meltzer has recently been in the news for disproving a theory that a comet crash killed a culture, but his career research focuses on the first people who came to North America at the end of the Ice Age. It appears they adapted at breathtaking speed.
“What I’m trying to understand is what were the challenges they faced?” he says. “What happened the first time a wayward Siberian encountered a rattlesnake? How did they do all this while figuring out this utterly new landscape?”
In the midst of this research, which got him elected to the National Academy of Sciences, comes the “silliness” of the comet.
A controversial theory was put forth in 2006 that the ancient Clovis culture of North America was killed by a comet crashing. Meltzer and his colleague Vance Holliday were honored for the Undiscovery of the Year by the Archaeological Institute of America after refuting the concept with archaeological evidence proving the population of North America didn’t drop when the comet allegedly hit.
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
D Magazine journalist Dawn McMullan reported on the accomplishments of SMU paleobotanist Bonnie F. Jacobs in the monthly magazine’s “Dallas’ Big Thinkers” article, which published Sept. 21.
Jacobs, one of a handful of the world’s experts on the fossil plants of ancient Africa, is part of a team of paleontologists hunting plant and animal fossils in Ethiopia’s prolific Mush Valley, as well as elsewhere in Africa. Jacobs is an associate professor in SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.
In January Jacobs’ blogged from the field in Ethiopia for The New York Times’ “Scientist at Work” blog, which features scientists’ first-person accounts of their field work as it unfolds day-by-day.
McMullan’s D Magazine piece focuses on six of the region’s scientists who are making a difference in their scientific field: “We gave the world the microchip and the margarita machine. Here are six cool scientists whose brains are making waves,” McMullan writes.
By Dawn McMullan
D Magazine 27-Million-Year-Old Pollen | Dr. Bonnie Jacobs
Associate professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences at SMU and blogger for the New York Times
Bonnie Jacobs’ favorite place to go as a kid was the American Museum of Natural History. She also had a thing for Egyptian artifacts. During visits to the beach, she collected snails and shells, which her mother later discovered, usually by following the smell.
“Growing up, I didn’t know the difference between paleontology and archeology,” she says. “My parents, as wonderful as they are, didn’t know the difference either.”
She eventually became a noted paleobotanist. Earlier this year, she wrote for the New York Times’ Scientist at Work blog, chronicling her work in Ethiopia, where she studies plant fossils to learn about the history of our changing climate. Her work there began years ago, when her husband, Louis Jacobs, a vertebrate paleontologist at SMU, got a job in Kenya. At the time, Jacobs was near the beginning of her Ph.D. research. This was before email. She worried about how she was going to transport boxes of manuscripts from Arizona to Africa. She worried that she wouldn’t finish her Ph.D. She even worried she wouldn’t find a good microscope.
To book a live or taped interview with Thomas Adams in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call News and Communications at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu.
Dallas Morning News reporter Marc Ramirez has written about the big prehistoric crocodile identified by SMU paleontologist Thomas L. Adams, a doctoral candidate in Dedman College’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.
Making its first appearance in Texas, the genus known as Terminonaris was thought to have originated in Europe, but Adams’ research indicates it now appears to have been a native of the Lone Star State.
The switch in origins for Terminonaris is based on the identification of a well-preserved, narrow fossil snout that was discovered along the shoreline of Lake Lewisville near Dallas.
The 96-million-year-old fossil from Texas is the oldest prehistoric crocodile of its kind in the world, says Adams. A distant cousin of modern crocodiles and alligators, Terminonaris was similar to the modern-day Indian gharial, only much larger.
By MARC RAMIREZ
Dallas Morning News
Thanks to a mail carrier’s discovery, it now appears the Beast from the East was actually a Guest from the West.
About five years ago, Brian Condon got tired of being cooped up at his Lakewood Village home and figured he’d go out and find a fossil.
What he found that day at Lewisville Lake would ultimately brand a supposedly European-based prehistoric crocodile as a native Texan instead.
Meet Terminonaris — a 25-foot-long reptile predating the Lone Star State by about 96 million years.
SMU paleontologist Thomas Adams was among the team that identified the creature. The team’s findings were published in May???s issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
The animal is a cousin to today’s crocodiles and alligators, the largest of which is the saltwater crocodile, which can reach 20 feet in length.
Previously, most of the few known Terminonaris specimens were from North America. The oldest known, however, was linked to a single 94 million-year-old jawbone found in Germany, leading scientists to surmise that the animal had originated in Europe and found its way westward.
That theory has probably been upended, with the Texan croc apparently outdating its German counterpart by about 2 million years.
“We have to really rethink: Did this group really originate in Europe and disperse west?” said Adams, who now has the fossilized snout stored in his office. “Or is it more likely that it originated in Texas?”
The discovery of a local Terminonaris now indicates the animals originated in what is now the southern U.S., then spread north along the shallow Western Interior Seaway, which stretched from what is now the Gulf of Mexico to Canada.
Condon, the amateur collector, was used to finding ammonites and shark teeth near the end of the peninsula dividing the two northern forks of Lewisville Lake. Ten years earlier, he’d found most of a plesiosaur.
To book a live or taped interview with Thomas Adams in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call News and Communications at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu.
London Daily Mail reporter Mark Duell has written about the big prehistoric crocodile identified by SMU paleontologist Thomas L. Adams, a doctoral candidate in Dedman College’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.
Making its first appearance in Texas, the genus known as Terminonaris was thought to have originated in Europe, but Adams’ research indicates it now appears to have been a native of the Lone Star State.
The switch in origins for Terminonaris is based on the identification of a well-preserved, narrow fossil snout that was discovered along the shoreline of Lake Lewisville near Dallas.
The 96-million-year-old fossil from Texas is the oldest prehistoric crocodile of its kind in the world, says Adams. A distant cousin of modern crocodiles and alligators, Terminonaris was similar to the modern-day Indian gharial, only much larger.
Mark Duell
London Daily Mail
He measured 25ft, weighed more than a ton and lived almost 100 million years ago.
A palaeontologist has identified the oldest prehistoric crocodile of its kind in the world after the fossil of a Terminonaris was found at Lake Lewisville near Dallas, Texas.
The realisation by Thomas L. Adams has also changed what we know about the species originally thought to have originated in Europe, because it now appears it was a native of Texas.
Mr Adams, of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, identified the reptile from its long snout which is more than 2ft long and 7in wide, reported Physorg.com.
It was discovered by Dallas amateur fossil enthusiast Brian Condon, who found the heavy pieces of the snout and a vertebrate in 2005 while fossil hunting, and donated them to the university.
Mr Condon had originally thought the pieces were petrified wood.
‘This piece looked like a loaf of bread from Subway,’ he said. ‘It was all wrinkled. Then I picked it up and turned it over and saw it had big round conical teeth. I thought: “This is amazing. It’s a jaw.'”
The discovery of the 96-million-year-old reptile’s fossil suggested that its head would have been about one metre long, Mr Adams said.
The Terminonaris is a cousin of the modern-day Indian gharial but was much larger — and it is a distant cousin of modern-day crocodiles and alligators, reported Southern Methodist University.
Mr Adams revealed the find ‘changes a lot about what we thought we knew about this group.’
‘Now we know the group had a wider distribution range, and that it’s much older,’ he said. ‘It represents a unique find for Texas. This is the first occurrence of Terminonaris in Texas.
‘It’s also the oldest occurrence of Terminonaris in the world and it’s also the southernmost occurrence of Terminonaris anywhere.’
Rare find alters origins and distribution of Terminonaris; first home was Texas and North America — not Europe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHS6vE4o3XY
Making its first appearance in Texas, a prehistoric crocodile thought to have originated in Europe now appears to have been a native of the Lone Star State.
The switch in origins for the genus known as Terminonaris is based on the identification of a well-preserved, narrow fossil snout that was discovered along the shoreline of a lake near Dallas.
The 96-million-year-old fossil from Texas is the oldest prehistoric crocodile of its kind in the world, according to paleontologist Thomas L. Adams at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, who identified the reptile.
A distant cousin of modern crocodiles and alligators, Terminonaris was similar to the modern-day Indian gharial, only much larger.
“With the recognition of Terminonaris here in Texas, this actually changes a lot about what we thought we knew about this group,” Adams said.
“Now we know the group had a wider distribution range, and that it’s much older. It represents a unique find for Texas. This is the first occurrence of Terminonaris in Texas. It’s also the oldest occurrence of Terminonaris in the world, and it’s also the southernmost occurrence of Terminonaris anywhere.”
There are six other known Terminonaris fossil specimens: five from North America and one from Europe. The European specimen, from Germany, previously was thought to be the oldest. Scientists had concluded that Terminonaris originated in Europe and then traversed the Atlantic and dispersed throughout North America.
Big Texas crocodile swam the shores of North America’s prehistoric seaway Adams identified the reptile primarily from its long snout, which measures more than 2 feet long and 7 inches wide, or 62 centimeters. With a snout that long, Adams estimates the head would have been about one meter long.
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To book a live or taped interview with Thomas Adams in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call News and Communications at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu.
“Based on Nile crocodiles and the Indian gharial, which are both large crocodiles, a regression analysis indicates this Terminonaris probably would have been 23 to 25 feet long,” said Adams. “The largest living crocodile today is the saltwater crocodile, which can reach up to 20 feet in length.”
The Texas Terminonaris was an adult and most likely weighed more than a ton, he said.
Adams identified the fossils in “First Occurrence of the Long-Snouted Crocodyliform Terminonaris (Pholidosauridae) from the Woodbine Formation (Cenomanian) of Texas” in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
Prehistoric crocodiles such as Terminonaris together with living crocodiles make up a large group called crocodyliformes. While technically there are differences between living crocodiles and each of the different types of fossil crocodile forms, all of them are often commonly referred to as crocodiles.
Today there are only 23 species of living crocodiles, a small number compared to the many species of mammals, birds, lizards, snakes and fish alive today, Adams said. That’s in stark contrast to prehistoric times.
“In the past, the crocodilian forms were very diverse and they were very successful. There were hundreds of species. Even at the time of the Texas Terminonaris, they were found everywhere,” Adams said.
Texas specimen fills gap, expands age and range of group Texas Terminonaris was discovered by Dallas-area amateur fossil enthusiast Brian Condon, a rural mail carrier. Condon discovered the heavy pieces of the snout and a vertebrate in 2005 while fossil hunting near his home on Lake Lewisville, a 26,000-acre recreational and fishing lake managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He spotted the first of the pieces along the shoreline. Condon donated the fossils to SMU’s Shuler Museum of Paleontology.
In prehistoric times, Texas Terminonaris would have made its home in a marine setting, along the eastern shore of North America’s vast prehistoric Western Interior Seaway. One hundred million years ago the seaway was a wide, shallow sea that split the North American continent in half from the Arctic to the Gulf of Mexico, said Adams, lead author on the scientific article. The seaway would have covered Lake Lewisville’s location.
In its day-to-day life on the seaway, Terminonaris would have kept close to shore, perhaps in a shallow lagoon or estuary, also venturing into the seaway’s warm salty water to hunt for fish. Like modern crocodiles and alligators, Terminonaris would have eaten whatever it could catch, Adams said. Its long, slender snout was well-suited for devouring fish, small mammals and even small dinosaurs.
North America’s other Terminonaris fossil specimens also were found along the seaway. A Kansas specimen is the youngest, about 91 million years, while those from Saskatchewan, Canada, and Montana are 93 million years old. The German specimen is 94 million years old.
“Terminonaris now here in Texas fills in a gap that we didn’t have information for,” Adams said. “It tells us that as a group, as a genus, they were around much longer, because we extend the age back to 96 million years. The range for them is now expanded, because this is the most southern occurrence of them.”
Well-preserved fossil offers no clues to adult reptile’s cause of death While the Texas fossil is well-preserved, how the reptile died remains a mystery since only the snout was found.
It probably died in the water or washed out into the open sea, where it floated to the bottom and was buried very quickly, said Adams. The discovery of seven Terminonaris fossil specimens worldwide is significant, he said.
“To be fossilized, it requires they die at the right time in the right place, be buried very quickly, then eventually be exposed and uncovered,” he said. “So the odds of being fossilized and being found as a fossil are very slim.”
Condon found one piece at the water’s edge of Lake Lewisville. The other pieces were further up a bank that sloped toward the shore, Condon said. The pieces had been deposited on the ground by receding water, pulled from the Woodbine Formation by constant waves that had washed away a soil bank and uncovered the heavy fossils. The outcrop of the Woodbine Formation visible at Lake Lewisville starts at the Red River in North Texas and thins as it nears Dallas.
Condon, who had previously found other fossils in the area, initially thought the pieces were petrified wood.
“This piece looked like a loaf of bread from Subway. It was all wrinkled,” Condon said. “Then I picked it up and turned it over and saw it had teeth — big, round conical teeth — and I thought, ‘This is amazing. It’s a jaw.'”
The research was funded by Southern Methodist University???s Institute for the Study of Earth & Man. — Margaret Allen
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
Wildfire on warming planet requires adaptive capacity at local, national, int’l scales
