Tag: Louis L. Jacobs

Ancient “Sea Monsters” Reveal How the Ever-Changing Planet Shapes Life, Past and Present

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date June 4, 2018

Never-Before-Seen Fossils From Angola Bring a Strange Yet Familiar Ocean Into View

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History will open a new exhibition Nov. 9, 2018 revealing how millions of years ago, large-scale natural forces created the conditions for real-life sea monsters to thrive in the South Atlantic Ocean basin shortly after it formed. “Sea Monsters Unearthed: Life in Angola’s Ancient Seas” will offer visitors the opportunity to dive into Cretaceous Angola’s cool coastal waters, examine the fossils of striking marine reptiles that once lived there and learn about the forces that continue to mold life in the ocean and on land.

Over 134 million years ago, the South Atlantic Ocean basin did not yet exist. Africa and South America were one contiguous landmass on the verge of separating. As the two continents drifted apart, an entirely new marine environment — the South Atlantic — emerged in the vast space created between them. This newly formed ocean basin would soon be colonized by a dizzying array of ferocious predators and an abundance of other lifeforms seizing the opportunity presented by a new ocean habitat.

“Because of our planet’s ever-shifting geology, Angola’s coastal cliffs contain the fossil remains of marine creatures from the prehistoric South Atlantic,” said Kirk Johnson, the Sant Director of the museum. “We are honored by the generosity of the Angolan people for sharing a window into this part of the Earth’s unfolding story with our visitors.”

For the first time, Angolan fossils of colossal Cretaceous marine reptiles will be on public display. Through Projecto PaleoAngola — a collaboration between Angolan, American, Portuguese and Dutch researchers focused on Angola’s rich fossil history — paleontologists excavated and studied these fossils, which were then prepared for the exhibition by a team of scientists and students at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas. The exhibition was made possible by the Sant Ocean Hall Endowment Fund.

“Fossils tell us about the life that once lived on Earth, and how the environments that came before us evolve over time,” said Louis Jacobs, professor emeritus of paleontology at SMU and collaborating curator for the exhibition. “Our planet has been running natural experiments on what shapes environments, and thereby life, for millions of years. If it weren’t for the fossil record, we wouldn’t understand what drives the story of life on our planet.”

The exhibition will immerse visitors in this Cretaceous environment with lively animations and vivid paleoart murals of life beneath the waves — courtesy of natural history artist Karen Carr — that bring to life 11 authentic fossils from Angola’s ancient seas, full-size fossil reconstructions of a mosasaur and an ancient sea turtle, as well as 3-D scanned replicas of mosasaur skulls. Photomurals and video vignettes will transport visitors to field sites along Angola’s modern rugged coast, where Projecto PaleoAngola scientists unearth the fossil remains from this lost world.

A Strange but Familiar Ocean
“Sea Monsters Unearthed” paints the picture of a flourishing ocean environment that in some ways will look strange to modern eyes, yet still bears striking similarities to today’s marine ecosystems.

Peculiar plesiosaurs — massive reptiles with long necks, stout bodies and four large flippers — swam alongside 27-foot-long toothy marine lizards called mosasaurs and more familiar creatures like sea turtles. From surprising mosasaur stomach contents to the one of the oldest known sea turtles found in Africa, fossils and reconstructions of these species will offer visitors a fuller picture of their remarkable life histories and the ecosystems they were a part of.

The exhibition will also explore deeper similarities across the ecology and anatomy of ocean animals then and now. After the marine reptiles that dominated these waters went extinct 66 million years ago, modern marine mammals would not only later replace them as top predators in the world’s ocean, but also converge on many of the same body shapes and survival strategies.

The Forces That Shape Life, Then and Now
This unique period in Earth’s history reveals how key geologic and environmental forces contributed to the early establishment and evolution of life in the South Atlantic. As Africa and South America drifted apart and a new ocean basin formed, trade winds blowing along the new Angolan coastline created the conditions for upwelling, an ocean process that drives the circulation of nutrients from the deep ocean to its surface. These nutrients in turn jump-started the food web that attracted the ferocious marine reptile predators featured throughout the exhibition.

Just as tectonic forces helped create this Cretaceous marine environment, they also shaped the arid coastal cliffs where the fossils are found today. Starting 45,000 years ago, a geologic process called uplift caused Earth’s crust to bulge along Angola’s coast, lifting part of the seafloor out of the water — and along with it, the layers upon layers of fossil-filled rocks where Projecto PaleoAngola scientists work.

Though humans do not operate on a tectonic scale, their actions also have major impacts on ocean life. Humans are now the ocean’s top predators, with one-fifth of the world’s population relying on food from upwelling-based ecosystems. Scientists caution that with such great pressure on modern upwelling-based fisheries, overfishing could change the future of life in the ocean by threatening fish populations, marine ecosystems and even human health. — National Museum of Natural History

About the National Museum of Natural History
The National Museum of Natural History is connecting people everywhere with Earth’s unfolding story. The museum is one of the most visited natural history museums in the world with approximately 7 million annual visitors from the U.S. and around the world. Opened in 1910, the museum is dedicated to maintaining and preserving the world’s most extensive collection of natural history specimens and human artifacts. It is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. (closed Dec. 25). Admission is free. For more information, visit the museum on its website and on Facebook and Twitter.

Tags Dedman College, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, Louis L. Jacobs, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences

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Class of 2017: SMU professor named outstanding teacher by UT Regents

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date August 31, 2017

The jaw of a 20 million-year-old cane rat was discovered by scientists at a hominoid locality in northern Uganda. The specimen is at the Uganda National Museum, Kampala.

Alisa Winkler is an SMU adjunct faculty member and research assistant professor of paleontology in the SMU Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.

The University of Texas System has recognized SMU Research Assistant Professor Alisa J. Winkler for extraordinary classroom performance and innovation in undergraduate instruction.

Winkler, who is an SMU adjunct faculty member in the SMU Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, was named to the Class of 2017 for the Regent’s Outstanding Teaching Awards of The University of Texas. It is the Board of Regents’ highest honor. It recognizes faculty for the highest quality of instruction in the classroom, laboratory, field and online.

Winkler earned her Ph.D. in geology from SMU in 1990, specializing in mammalian vertebrate paleontology.

“To be honest, when I was young I never thought about being a teacher. Later in life it just came with the territory of being in academia,” Winkler said. “What I discovered as a teacher, however, is how much I enjoy, learn from, and am inspired by my students. Their passion for knowledge is both a challenge and a stimulus for me to continue learning myself.”

She is an associate professor at U.T. Southwestern Medical Center in the Department of Cell Biology, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.

In addition to her teaching commitments and some contributions to the higher education literature, Winkler maintains an active research program in vertebrate paleontology as a research professor in SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences in Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences.

In recent work, she analyzed research literature for “Fossil Rodents of Africa,” the first comprehensive summary and distribution analysis of Africa’s fossil rodents since 1978, according to SMU professor of geological sciences and vertebrate paleontologist Louis Jacobs, a world-renowned dinosaur expert and president of SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man.

“Alisa has been recognized for her teaching skills at U.T. Southwestern, but she is also globally recognized for her research on East African fossil mammals, which constrains the age and paleo-environments of human evolution,” Jacobs said. “Working from her research office in the Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, and in the field in Kenya and Uganda, she is a great asset to our students and adds depth to our program.”

Winkler received a B.A. in Biology from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville in 1978. She then earned an M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin in 1982.

She has been teaching anatomy at U.T. Southwestern since 1990. Winkler is currently co-director of the Human Structure course (anatomy, embryology and radiology) for first year medical students, and director of the Anatomy course for health professions students. Both courses focus on a cadaver-based dissection laboratory, and require extensive administrative, organizational and teaching commitments.

Winkler is the recipient of numerous teaching awards from the medical students, including seven pre-clinical teaching awards and a Katherine Howe Muntz Award for Teaching in Anatomy (2010). The Human Structure course was awarded the best course award for first year courses in 2016. She was awarded an outstanding educator award in health care sciences from the health professions students in 2014.

The Regent’s Outstanding Teacher Award was established in 2008 and is offered annually in recognition of faculty members at the The University of Texas System’s eight academic and six health institutions. With a monetary award of $25,000, the Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Awards are among the largest and most competitive in the nation for rewarding outstanding faculty performance.

Faculty members undergo a series of rigorous evaluations by students, peer faculty and external reviewers. The review panels consider a range of activities and criteria in their evaluations of a candidate’s teaching performance, including classroom expertise, curricula quality, innovative course development and student learning outcomes.

Winkler is one of 56 faculty members from across U.T.’s 14 academic and health institutions honored with the award by the Regents Aug. 23 in Austin. — SMU, U.T. System

Tags Alisa J. WInkler, Dedman College, Louis L. Jacobs, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences

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LiveScience: Newfound dino looks like creepy love child of a turkey and ostrich

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date July 27, 2017
No Comments on LiveScience: Newfound dino looks like creepy love child of a turkey and ostrich

A new giant bird-like dinosaur discovered in China has been named for SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, Corythoraptor jacobsi, by the scientists who identified the new oviraptorid.

Live Science Senior Writer Laura Geggel covered the discovery of a new Cretaceous Period dinosaur from China that is named for paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, an SMU professor in SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.

Jacobs mentored three of the authors on the article. First author on the paper was Junchang Lü, an SMU Ph.D. alum, with co-authors Yuong–Nam Lee and Yoshitsugu Kobayashi, both SMU Ph.D. alums.

The Live Science article, Newfound dino looks like creepy love child of a turkey and ostrich, published July 27, 2017. The dinosaur’s name, Corythoraptor jacobsi, translates to Jacobs’ helmeted thief.

The scientific article “High diversity of the Ganzhou Oviraptorid Fauna increased by a new “cassowary-like” crested species” was published July 27, 2017 in Nature’s online open access mega-journal of primary research Scientific Reports.

Jacobs in 2016 co-authored an analysis of the Cretaceous Period dinosaur Pawpawsaurus based on the first CT scans ever taken of the dinosaur’s skull.

He is president of SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man.

A world-renowned vertebrate paleontologist, Jacobs in 2012 was honored by the 7,200-member Science Teachers Association of Texas with their prestigious Skoog Cup for his significant contributions to advance quality science education. He joined SMU’s faculty in 1983.

Jacobs is the author of “Quest for the African Dinosaurs: Ancient Roots of the Modern World” (Villard Books and Johns Hopkins U. Press, 2000); “Lone Star Dinosaurs” (Texas A&M U. Press, 1999), which is the basis of a Texas dinosaur exhibit at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History; “Cretaceous Airport” (ISEM, 1993); and more than 100 scientific papers and edited volumes.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Laura Geggel
Live Science
The newly identified oviraptorid dinosaur Corythoraptor jacobsi has a cassowary-like head crest, known as a casque.

A Chinese farmer has discovered the remains of a dinosaur that could have passed for the ostrich-like cassowary in its day, sporting the flightless bird’s head crest and long thunder thighs, indicating it could run quickly, just like its modern-day lookalike, a new study finds.

The newfound dinosaur’s 6-inch-tall (15 centimeters) head crest is uncannily similar to the cassowary’s headpiece, known as a casque, the researchers said. In fact, the crests have such similar shapes, the cassowary’s may provide clues about how the dinosaur used its crest more than 66 million years ago, they said.

The findings suggest that the dinosaur, which would have towered at 5.5 feet (1.6 meters), may have had a similar lifestyle to the modern cassowary bird (Casuarius unappendiculatus), which is native to Australia and New Guinea, the study’s lead researcher, Junchang Lü, a professor at the Institute of Geology, Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, told Live Science in an email.

Researchers found the oviraptorid — a type of giant, bird-like dinosaur — in Ganzhou, a city in southern China, in 2013. The specimen was in remarkable shape: The paleontologists found an almost complete skeleton, including the skull and lower jaw, which helped them estimate that the creature was likely a young adult, or at least 8 years of age, when it died.

The long-necked and crested dinosaur lived from about 100 million to 66 million years ago during the late Cretaceous period, and likely used its clawed hands to hunt lizards and other small dinosaurs, Lü added.

The research team named the unique beast Corythoraptor jacobsi. Its genus name refers to the raptor’s cassowary-like crest, and the species name honors Louis Jacobs, a vertebrate paleontologist at Southern Methodist University who mentored three of the study’s researchers.

The researchers think the crest likely served the dinosaur in different ways, they said, including in display, communication and perhaps even as an indication of the dinosaur’s fitness during the mating season.

Read the full story.

Tags Dedman College, Junchang Lü, Louis L. Jacobs, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Yoshitsugu Kobayashi, Yuong–Nam Lee

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LiveScience: Tough Turtle — Dino-Killing Asteroid Spared Sea Creature

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date November 14, 2016

“If these sea turtles do, in fact, form a tightly knit group, evolutionarily speaking, the [African] specimen provides proof that members of that group survived the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous.” — Timothy Myers, SMU

Live Science Senior Writer Laura Geggel covered the research of paleontologist Timothy Scott Myers, a postdoctoral researcher in SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.

Myers analyzed an ancient sea turtle, discovered in Angola in 2012, with a triangular-shaped head that lived about 64 million years ago and that is closely related to earlier sea turtles that lived before scientists think an asteroid smashed into the earth sparking a massive mass extinction event.

The article “Tough Turtle: Dino-Killing Asteroid Spared Sea Creature,” cites new findings from Myers’ research, which studied the specimen. It was found along sea cliffs near the town of Landana, in the Angolan province of Cabinda in June 2012.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Laura Geggel
Live Science
Shortly after an asteroid smashed into Earth about 65.5 million years ago, obliterating much of life on Earth,an ancient sea turtle with a triangular-shaped head swam along the relatively arid shores of southern Africa, a new study finds.

The creature, a newly identified species, lived about 64 million years ago during the Paleocene, an epoch within the Paleogene period, the researchers said. The animal is closely related to earlier sea turtles that lived before the asteroid struck, an event known as the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary, which marks the mass extinction that killed about 75 percent of all species on Earth, including the nonavian dinosaurs.

“If these sea turtles do, in fact, form a tightly knit group, evolutionarily speaking, then the [African] specimen provides proof that members of that group survived the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous,” study lead researcher Timothy Myers, a research assistant professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at Southern Methodist University in Texas, told Live Science in an email.

Paleontologists found the specimen along the sea cliffs near the town of Landana, in the Angolan province of Cabinda in June 2012. Study senior researcher Louis Jacobs, a vertebrate paleontologist at Southern Methodist University, noticed part of the bone protruding from the rock. He and his team soon realized it was a nearly complete turtle skull and most of a hyoid, a U-shaped neck bone that supports the tongue.

Read the full story.

Tags Dedman College, Louis L. Jacobs, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Timothy S. Myers

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Laser Beats Rock: Armored Dinosaur May Have Relied Most on Sense of Smell

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date July 26, 2016

CT scans offer new insight into the little-understood Pawpawsaurus: One clue that led the researchers to determine that the sense of smell was Pawpawsaurus’s strongest sense was the large olfactory ratio.

Independent science journalist Sarah Puschmann covered the research of SMU Earth Sciences Professor Louis L. Jacobs in a post on her blog “Armored Dinosaur May Have Relied Most on Sense of Smell.”

A professor in Dedman College‘s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Jacobs is co-author of a new analysis of the Cretaceous Period dinosaur Pawpawsaurus based on the first CT scans ever taken of the dinosaur’s skull.

A Texas native from what is now Tarrant County, Pawpawsaurus lived 100 million years ago, making its home along the shores of an inland sea that split North America from Texas northward to the Arctic Sea.

The Laser Beats Rock article published July 25, 2016.

Pawpawsaurus campbelli is the prehistoric cousin of the well-known armored dinosaur Ankylosaurus, famous for a hard knobby layer of bone across its back and a football-sized club on its tail.

Jacobs, a world-renowned vertebrate paleontologist, joined SMU’s faculty in 1983 and in 2012 was honored by the 7,200-member Science Teachers Association of Texas with their prestigious Skoog Cup for his significant contributions to advance quality science education.

Jacobs is president of SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Sarah Puschmann
Laser Beats Rock
In 1819, the German naturalist Lorenz Oken found something astonishing inside a pterodactyl’s broken skull: petrified mud in the form of the long deceased dinosaur’s brain, so well molded into the crevices as to reveal the brain’s two distinct halves.

This so-called “fossil brain” is one of the first known instances of a cranial endocast, an internal cast of the skull that makes the impressions of the decayed soft tissue visible. For paleoneurologists not lucky enough to uncover a natural endocast, some have opted to slice open skulls and made molds using liquid latex rubber or plaster of Paris.

But cutting open a skull for study isn’t always an option, particularly if it is a holotype, the singular specimen used to define a species for the first time. This is the case for the 100 million year old skull from a dinosaur called Pawpawsaurus campbelli studied by Ariana Paulina-Carabajal of the National Research Council of Argentina (CONICET) and the Institute of Investigations in Biodiversity and the Environment (INIBIOMA) and her team, led by Louis Jacobs.

By CT scanning the skull, it was possible to make important insights about the dinosaur’s olfaction and hearing while leaving the precious holotype intact. Their analysis led the researchers to conclude that smell was the sense Pawpawsaurus most likely relied on most, as reported in the journal PLOS ONE.

This is valuable information, especially because so little is known about this dinosaur. What is known is that the four-legged herbivore most likely had long spines on its shoulders and neck, as was the case for other members of the same family of nodosaurids. It also probable that Pawpawsaurus wasn’t endowed with the knob of bone in its tail characteristic of ankylosaurids, a related dinosaur family, nor did it experience the satisfaction of slamming a club tail against, well, anything. (Was there such a thing as tail envy?)

Read the full story.

Tags Dedman College, Louis L. Jacobs, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences

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KERA: Thanks To CT Scans, Scientists Know A Lot About Texas’ Pawpawsaurus Dinosaur

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date June 30, 2016

“There’s no relationship between dinosaurs and armadillos, which are mammals, but it is interesting that something that looked like an armadillo was here in Texas 100 million years before highways.” — Jacobs

KERA public radio journalist Justin Martin covered the research of SMU Earth Sciences Professor Louis L. Jacobs in a KERA interview “Thanks To CT Scans, Scientists Know A Lot About Texas’ Pawpawsaurus Dinosaur.”

The KERA interview was aired June 29, 2016.

Pawpawsaurus campbelli is the prehistoric cousin of the well-known armored dinosaur Ankylosaurus, famous for a hard knobby layer of bone across its back and a football-sized club on its tail.

Jacobs is president of SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man.

Hear the KERA segment.

EXCERPT:

By Justin Martin
KERA
CT scans aren’t just for people — they can also be used on dinosaurs.

A skull from the Pawpawsaurus was discovered in North Texas in the early ’90s. It was recently scanned, allowing scientists to digitally rebuild the dinosaur’s brain. Louis Jacobs is a professor of paleontology at SMU and he talks about his research.

Interview Highlights: Louis Jacobs …

… on the reason behind the name Pawpawsaurus: “It was named Pawpawsaurus because the rock unit that it was found in is called the Pawpaw formation and that’s in Fort Worth.”

… on what the CT scan uncovered: “Basically, a CT scan, you are X-raying through the body and then you can make 3D digital models of what’s recorded. We do it with humans and medicine all the time, but dinosaurs and fossils require more energy. So, the X-rays are put through with more energy and you can get a good model.”

… on how you go from scanning to rebuilding a brain: “Visualization through software is … you can see inside the Earth, you can see inside the clouds, you can see inside people, you can see inside everything. The advances in the software make digital visualization accessible. We had the data from scanning the skull of Pawpawsaurus and then from that we rendered 3D models of the brain and also the nasal passages to figure out how the air went through.

Hear the KERA segment.

Tags Dedman College, Louis L. Jacobs, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences

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Dallas Morning News: North Texas dino had tough armor, keen sense of smell

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date May 31, 2016

Jacobs said large nostrils that look “like a trumpet bell” and wide air passages helped Pawpawsaurus smell predators, look for food or find mates.

Dallas Morning News journalist Charles Scudder covered the research of SMU Earth Sciences Professor Louis L. Jacobs in a Guide Live article “North Texas dino had tough armor, keen sense of smell.”

The Dallas Morning News article published May 27, 2016.

Pawpawsaurus campbelli is the prehistoric cousin of the well-known armored dinosaur Ankylosaurus, famous for a hard knobby layer of bone across its back and a football-sized club on its tail.

Jacobs is president of SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Charles Scudder
Dallas Morning News
A prehistoric skull found 24 years ago by a teenager in Fort Worth is now helping scientists understand the brain functions of a North Texas native. Pawpawsaurus campbelli lived 100 million years ago and was identified in 1996 by Yuong-Nam Lee, then a doctoral student at Southern Methodist University.

Lee and Louis Jacobs, a paleontologist at SMU, have co-authored a new paper that used CT imaging to study the brain of Pawpawsaurus. It’s the first time we’ve seen inside the Pawpawsaurus skull, as few studies have been done on the endocranial anatomy — scientist-speak for brain and skull — of its biological family.

This North Texas dino is named for the Paw Paw Formation, a geological feature where fossils are found in Texas. It lived on the shores of an inland sea that stretched from the Gulf coast to the Arctic. Think the Narrow Sea from Game of Thrones. Dallas is somewhere around Valyria. Arizona is Dorne.

Pawpawsaurus was a herbivore with armored plates on its back and eyelids, but without the clubbed tail characteristic of its younger cousin, Ankylosaurus. It didn’t have the stable vision of Ankylosaurus that helped it wield the clubbed tail. And although Pawpawsaurus had impressive sensory ability compared to its contemporaries, it was still less-evolved than Ankylosaurus.

Read the full story.

Tags Dedman College, Louis L. Jacobs, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences

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Live Science: Dino Senses: Ankylosaurus Cousin Had a Super Sniffer

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date May 26, 2016

Louis Jacobs is co-author of a new analysis of the Cretaceous dinosaur Pawpawsaurus based on the first CT scans ever taken of the dinosaur’s skull.

Science journalist Laura Geggel covered the research of SMU Earth Sciences Professor Louis L. Jacobs in her article “Dino Senses: Ankylosaurus Cousin Had a Super Sniffer.”

Pawpawsaurus campbelli is the prehistoric cousin of the well-known armored dinosaur Ankylosaurus, famous for a hard knobby layer of bone across its back and a football-sized club on its tail.

Jacobs is president of SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Laura Geggel
Live Science
The armored cousin of the Ankylosaurus dinosaur didn’t have a football-size club on its tail, but it did have a super sense of smell, said scientists who examined its skull.

The Cretaceous-age Pawpawsaurus campbelli walked on all fours and lived in ancient Texas about 100 million years ago, the researchers said. It was an earlier version, so to speak, of the heavily armored Ankylosaurus, which lived about 35 million years later, they said.

But even without an impressive tail club, P. campbelli wasn’t totally defenseless. It sported armored plates on its back and eyelids. A computerized tomography (CT) scan of its braincase also suggests that the dinosaur had an excellent sense of smell for finding prey and avoiding predators.

“CT imaging has allowed us to delve into the intricacies of the brains of extinct animals, especially dinosaurs, to unlock secrets of their ways of life,” study co-author Louis Jacobs, a vertebrate paleontologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, said in a statement.

P. campbelli could have outsniffed other primitive dinosaur predators, including Ceratosaurus, a bipedal, meat-eating dinosaur with blade-like teeth and a horn on its snoutthat lived during the Jurassic period, the researchers said.

CT scans suggest that P. campbelli’s sense of smell — calculated by comparing the size of the brain’s olfactory bulb to the cerebral hemisphere — is somewhat less powerful than that of Ankylosaurus, said study lead researcher Ariana Paulina-Carabajal, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Biodiversity and Environment Research Institute (CONICET-INIBIOMA) in San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina.

“Although both [P. campbelli and Ankylosaurus] have high ratios when compared with most carnivorous dinosaurs,” she said, “they are exceeded only by carcharodontosaurids and tyrannosaurids.”

Read the full story.

Tags Dedman College, Louis L. Jacobs, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences

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Early armored dino from Texas lacked cousin’s club-tail weapon, but had a nose for danger

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date May 23, 2016

Pawpawsaurus’s hearing wasn’t keen, and it lacked the infamous tail club of Ankylosaurus. But first-ever CT scans of Pawpawsaurus’s skull indicate the dino’s saving grace from predators may have been an acute sense of smell.

Well-known armored dinosaur Ankylosaurus is famous for a hard knobby layer of bone across its back and a football-sized club on its tail for wielding against meat-eating enemies.

It’s prehistoric cousin, Pawpawsaurus campbelli, was not so lucky. Pawpawsaurus was an earlier version of armored dinosaurs but not as well equipped to fight off meat-eaters, according to a new study, said vertebrate paleontologist Louis Jacobs, Southern Methodist University, Dallas. Jacobs is co-author of a new analysis of Pawpawsaurus based on the first CT scans ever taken of the dinosaur’s skull.

A Texas native, Pawpawsaurus lived 100 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period, making its home along the shores of an inland sea that split North America from Texas northward to the Arctic Sea.

Like Ankylosaurus, Pawpawsaurus had armored plate across its back and on its eyelids. But unlike Ankylosaurus, Pawpawsaurus didn’t have the signature club tail that was capable of knocking the knees out from under a large predator.

Ankylosaurus lived about 35 million years after Pawpawsaurus, around 66 million years ago toward the end of the Cretaceous. During the course of its evolution, ankylosaurids developed the club tail, and bone structure in its skull that improved its sense of smell and allowed it to hear a broader range of sounds. “Stable gaze” also emerged, which helped Ankylosaurus balance while wielding its clubbed tail.

“CT imaging has allowed us to delve into the intricacies of the brains of extinct animals, especially dinosaurs, to unlock secrets of their ways of life,” said Jacobs, a professor in the SMU Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.

While Pawpawsaurus’s sense of smell was inferior to Ankylosaurus, it was still sharper than some primitive dinosaur predators such as Ceratosaurus, said vertebrate paleontologist Ariana Paulina-Carabajal, first author on the study.

“Pawpawsaurus in particular, and the group it belonged to — Nodosauridae — had no flocculus, a structure of the brain involved with motor skills, no club tail, and a reduced nasal cavity and portion of the inner ear when compared with the other family of ankylosaurs,” said Paulina-Carabajal, researcher for the Biodiversity and Environment Research Institute (CONICET-INIBIOMA), San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina. “But its sense of smell was very important, as it probably relied on that to look for food, find mates and avoid or flee predators.”

Most dinosaurs don’t have bony ridges in their nasal cavities to guide airflow, but ankylosaurs are unique in that they do.

“We can observe the complete nasal cavity morphology with the CT scans,” Paulina-Carabajal said. “The CT scans revealed an enlarged nasal cavity compared to dinosaurs other than ankylosaurians. That may have helped Pawpawsaurus bellow out a lower range of vocalizations, improved its sense of smell, and cooled the inflow of air to regulate the temperature of blood flowing into the brain.”

First CT scans shed light on Pawpawsaurus’s sensory tools
Pawpawsaurus is more primitive than the younger derived versions of the dinosaur that evolved later, Jacobs said, although both walked on all fours and held their heads low to the ground.

“So we don’t know if their sense of smell also evolved and improved even more,” Jacobs said. “But we do suspect that scenting the environment was useful for a creature’s survival, and the sense of smell is fairly widely distributed among plant eaters and meat eaters alike.”

The team’s measurements and conclusions are reported in the journal PLosONE in the article “Endocranial Morphology of the Primitive Nodosaurid Dinosaur Pawpawsaurus campbelli from the Early Cretaceous of North America.” It is published online at PLosONE.

The skull was identified in 1996 by Yuong-Nam Lee, Seoul National University, Korea, a co-author on the paper, who was then a doctoral student under Jacobs.

The team’s discoveries emerged from Computed Tomography (CT) scans of the braincase of Pawpawsaurus campbelli’s skull. Pawpawsaurus belongs to one of the least explored clades of dinosaurs when it comes to endocranial anatomy — the spaces in the skull housing the brain.

The Pawpawsaurus skull was discovered 24 years ago by 19-year-old Cameron Campbell in the PawPaw Formation of Tarrant County near Dallas. Conventional analysis of the skull was carried out years ago to identify it as a never-before-seen nodosaurid ankylosaur. However, these are the first CT scans of Pawpawsaurus’s skull because it’s only been in recent years that fossils have been widely explored with X-rays.

In humans, a medical CT will scan the body to “see inside” with X-rays and capture a 3-D picture of the bones, blood vessels and soft tissue. In fossils, a much stronger dose of radiation than can be tolerated by humans is applied to fossils to capture 3-D images of the interior structure.

From the scans, paleontologists can then digitally reconstruct the brain and inner ear using special software.

“Once we have the 3D model, we can describe and measure all its different regions,” Paulina-Carabajal said. “We can then compare that to existing reptile brains and their senses of hearing and smell. Hearing, for example, can be determined from the size of the lagena, the region of the inner ear that perceives sounds.”

The size of the lagena in Pawpawsaurus suggests a sense of hearing similar to that of living crocodiles, she said.

Olfactory acuity, the sense of smell, is calculated from the size ratio of the olfactory bulb of the brain and the cerebral hemisphere.

“In Pawpawsaurus, the olfactory ratio is somewhat lower than it is in Ankyloxaurus, although both have high ratios when compared with most carnivorous dinosarus,” Paulina-Carabajal said. “They are exceeded only by carcharodontosaurids and tyrannosaurids. The olfactory ratios of ankylosaurs in general are more or less similar to those calculated by other authors for the living crocodile.”

The research was funded by the Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica (Argentina), Seoul National University, and SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man. — Margaret Allen, SMU

Tags Dedman College, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, Louis L. Jacobs, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences

Earth & Climate Fossils & Ruins Plants & Animals Researcher news SMU In The News

Live Science: Fearsome Dinosaur-Age ‘Hammerhead’ Reptile Ate … Plants?

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date May 10, 2016

SMU paleontologist Louis Jacobs quoted by Live Science for article on prehistoric plant-eating reptile

Science journalist Laura Geggel tapped the expertise of SMU Earth Sciences Professor Louis L. Jacobs for a recent article about a prehistoric plant-eating reptile.

A professor in Dedman College‘s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Jacobs is a world-renowned vertebrate paleontologist.

He joined SMU’s faculty in 1983 and in 2012 was honored by the 7,200-member Science Teachers Association of Texas with their prestigious Skoog Cup for his significant contributions to advance quality science education.

Jacobs is president of SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Laura Geggel
Live Science
Despite its rows and rows of chisel- and needle-like teeth, a newly described prehistoric marine reptile wasn’t a fearsome predator but rather an herbivorous giant that acted like a lawnmower for the sea, a new study finds.

The crocodile-size reptile lived about 242 million years ago, during the Middle Triassic period. Researchers discovered the first specimen in 2014 in southern China, but because it was poorly preserved, they reported that it had a beak like a flamingo’s.

Now, two newly discovered specimens show that the beast was far more bizarre: It sported a hammerhead-shaped snout that it likely used to graze on plants lining the ocean floor, the researchers said. It’s also the earliest herbivorous marine reptile on record by about 8 million years, they said. [The 12 Weirdest Animal Discoveries]

“I haven’t seen anything like it before,” said study co-researcher Olivier Rieppel, the Rowe family curator of evolutionary biology at The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.

Weird reptile
The reptile’s name — Atopodentatus unicus — hints at its weird anatomy. In Latin, the genus and species names translate to “unique strangely toothed,” the researchers said. The newly analyzed specimens show that the creature had a mouthful of chisel-shaped teeth — one row on the upper jaw and two rows on the lower jaw.

“The remaining parts of the jaw [are filled with] densely packed needle-shaped teeth forming a mesh,” the researchers wrote in the study, published online today (May 6) in the journal Science Advances. This mesh likely helped A. unicus collect plant material, much like a baleen whale catches krill, said Louis Jacobs, a vertebrate paleontologist at Southern Methodist University in Texas who was not involved in the study.

The chisel-like teeth probably acted as a rake and trimmer, helping A. unicus scrape and dislodge plants from the seafloor, Jacobs said. Next, the reptile likely sucked in a mouthful of water, letting bits of plants get stuck in the mesh formed by its thin, needle-like teeth, he said.

“Then, they squish the water out of their mouth, and those little teeth along the sides of the jaw and on the roof of the mouth strain out all of the plant bits,” Jacobs told Live Science. “That’s an amazing way to feed. I’d like to do that myself.”

Read the full story.

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For more SMU research see www.smuresearch.com.

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.

Tags Dedman College, Louis L. Jacobs, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences

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SMU 2015 research efforts broadly noted in a variety of ways for world-changing impact

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date January 8, 2016

SMU scientists and their research have a global reach that is frequently noted, beyond peer publications and media mentions.

By Margaret Allen
SMU News & Communications
It was a good year for SMU faculty and student research efforts. Here is a small sampling of public and published acknowledgements during 2015:

Hot topic merits open access
Taylor & Francis, publisher of the online journal Environmental Education Research, lifted its subscription-only requirement to meet demand for an article on how climate change is taught to middle-schoolers in California.

Co-author of the research was Diego Román, assistant professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning, Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development.

Román’s research revealed that California textbooks are teaching sixth graders that climate change is a controversial debate stemming from differing opinions, rather than a scientific conclusion based on rigorous scientific evidence.

The article, “Textbooks of doubt: Using systemic functional analysis to explore the framing of climate change in middle-school science textbooks,” published in September. The finding generated such strong interest that Taylor & Francis opened access to the article.

Research makes the cover of Biochemistry
Drugs important in the battle against cancer were tested in a virtual lab by SMU biology professors to see how they would behave in the human cell.

A computer-generated composite image of the simulation made the Dec. 15 cover of the journal Biochemistry.

Scientific articles about discoveries from the simulation were also published in the peer review journals Biochemistry and in Pharmacology Research & Perspectives.

The researchers tested the drugs by simulating their interaction in a computer-generated model of one of the cell’s key molecular pumps — the protein P-glycoprotein, or P-gp. Outcomes of interest were then tested in the Wise-Vogel wet lab.

The ongoing research is the work of biochemists John Wise, associate professor, and Pia Vogel, professor and director of the SMU Center for Drug Discovery, Design and Delivery in Dedman College. Assisting them were a team of SMU graduate and undergraduate students.

The researchers developed the model to overcome the problem of relying on traditional static images for the structure of P-gp. The simulation makes it possible for researchers to dock nearly any drug in the protein and see how it behaves, then test those of interest in an actual lab.

To date, the researchers have run millions of compounds through the pump and have discovered some that are promising for development into pharmaceutical drugs to battle cancer.

Click here to read more about the research.

SMU, Simpson Rowe, sexual assault, video

Strong interest in research on sexual victimization
Teen girls were less likely to report being sexually victimized after learning to assertively resist unwanted sexual overtures and after practicing resistance in a realistic virtual environment, according to three professors from the SMU Department of Psychology.

The finding was reported in Behavior Therapy. The article was one of the psychology journal’s most heavily shared and mentioned articles across social media, blogs and news outlets during 2015, the publisher announced.

The study was the work of Dedman College faculty Lorelei Simpson Rowe, associate professor and Psychology Department graduate program co-director; Ernest Jouriles, professor; and Renee McDonald, SMU associate dean for research and academic affairs.

The journal’s publisher, Elsevier, temporarily has lifted its subscription requirement on the article, “Reducing Sexual Victimization Among Adolescent Girls: A Randomized Controlled Pilot Trial of My Voice, My Choice,” and has opened it to free access for three months.

Click here to read more about the research.

Consumers assume bigger price equals better quality
Even when competing firms can credibly disclose the positive attributes of their products to buyers, they may not do so.

Instead, they find it more lucrative to “signal” quality through the prices they charge, typically working on the assumption that shoppers think a high price indicates high quality. The resulting high prices hurt buyers, and may create a case for mandatory disclosure of quality through public policy.

That was a finding of the research of Dedman College’s Santanu Roy, professor, Department of Economics. Roy’s article about the research was published in February in one of the blue-ribbon journals, and the oldest, in the field, The Economic Journal.

Published by the U.K.’s Royal Economic Society, The Economic Journal is one of the founding journals of modern economics. The journal issued a media briefing about the paper, “Competition, Disclosure and Signaling,” typically reserved for academic papers of broad public interest.

Chemistry research group edits special issue
Chemistry professors Dieter Cremer and Elfi Kraka, who lead SMU’s Computational and Theoretical Chemistry Group, were guest editors of a special issue of the prestigious Journal of Physical Chemistry. The issue published in March.

The Computational and Theoretical research group, called CATCO for short, is a union of computational and theoretical chemistry scientists at SMU. Their focus is research in computational chemistry, educating and training graduate and undergraduate students, disseminating and explaining results of their research to the broader public, and programming computers for the calculation of molecules and molecular aggregates.

The special issue of Physical Chemistry included 40 contributions from participants of a four-day conference in Dallas in March 2014 that was hosted by CATCO. The 25th Austin Symposium drew 108 participants from 22 different countries who, combined, presented eight plenary talks, 60 lectures and about 40 posters.

CATCO presented its research with contributions from Cremer and Kraka, as well as Marek Freindorf, research assistant professor; Wenli Zou, visiting professor; Robert Kalescky, post-doctoral fellow; and graduate students Alan Humason, Thomas Sexton, Dani Setlawan and Vytor Oliveira.

There have been more than 75 graduate students and research associates working in the CATCO group, which originally was formed at the University of Cologne, Germany, before moving to SMU in 2009.

Vertebrate paleontology recognized with proclamation
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings proclaimed Oct. 11-17, 2015 Vertebrate Paleontology week in Dallas on behalf of the Dallas City Council.

The proclamation honored the 75th Annual Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, which was jointly hosted by SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences in Dedman College and the Perot Museum of Science and Nature. The conference drew to Dallas some 1,200 scientists from around the world.

Making research presentations or presenting research posters were: faculty members Bonnie Jacobs, Louis Jacobs, Michael Polcyn, Neil Tabor and Dale Winkler; adjunct research assistant professor Alisa Winkler; research staff member Kurt Ferguson; post-doctoral researchers T. Scott Myers and Lauren Michael; and graduate students Matthew Clemens, John Graf, Gary Johnson and Kate Andrzejewski.

The host committee co-chairs were Anthony Fiorillo, adjunct research professor; and Louis Jacobs, professor. Committee members included Polcyn; Christopher Strganac, graduate student; Diana Vineyard, research associate; and research professor Dale Winkler.

KERA radio reporter Kat Chow filed a report from the conference, explaining to listeners the science of vertebrate paleontology, which exposes the past, present and future of life on earth by studying fossils of animals that had backbones.

SMU earthquake scientists rock scientific journal

Modelled pressure changes caused by injection and production. (Nature Communications/SMU)

Findings by the SMU earthquake team reverberated across the nation with publication of their scientific article in the prestigious British interdisciplinary journal Nature, ranked as one of the world’s most cited scientific journals.

The article reported that the SMU-led seismology team found that high volumes of wastewater injection combined with saltwater extraction from natural gas wells is the most likely cause of unusually frequent earthquakes occurring in the Dallas-Fort Worth area near the small community of Azle.

The research was the work of Dedman College faculty Matthew Hornbach, associate professor of geophysics; Heather DeShon, associate professor of geophysics; Brian Stump, SMU Albritton Chair in Earth Sciences; Chris Hayward, research staff and director geophysics research program; and Beatrice Magnani, associate professor of geophysics.

The article, “Causal factors for seismicity near Azle, Texas,” published online in late April. Already the article has been downloaded nearly 6,000 times, and heavily shared on both social and conventional media. The article has achieved a ranking of 270, which puts it in the 99th percentile of 144,972 tracked articles of a similar age in all journals, and 98th percentile of 626 tracked articles of a similar age in Nature.

“It has a very high impact factor for an article of its age,” said Robert Gregory, professor and chair, SMU Earth Sciences Department.

The scientific article also was entered into the record for public hearings both at the Texas Railroad Commission and the Texas House Subcommittee on Seismic Activity.

Researchers settle long-debated heritage question of “The Ancient One”

The skull of Kennewick Man and a sculpted bust by StudioEIS based on forensic facial reconstruction by sculptor Amanda Danning. (Credit: Brittany Tatchell)

The research of Dedman College anthropologist and Henderson-Morrison Professor of Prehistory David Meltzer played a role in settling the long-debated and highly controversial heritage of “Kennewick Man.”

Also known as “The Ancient One,” the 8,400-year-old male skeleton discovered in Washington state has been the subject of debate for nearly two decades. Argument over his ancestry has gained him notoriety in high-profile newspaper and magazine articles, as well as making him the subject of intense scholarly study.

Officially the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Kennewick Man was discovered in 1996 and radiocarbon dated to 8500 years ago.

Because of his cranial shape and size he was declared not Native American but instead ‘Caucasoid,’ implying a very different population had once been in the Americas, one that was unrelated to contemporary Native Americans.

But Native Americans long have claimed Kennewick Man as theirs and had asked for repatriation of his remains for burial according to their customs.

Meltzer, collaborating with his geneticist colleague Eske Willerslev and his team at the Centre for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen, in June reported the results of their analysis of the DNA of Kennewick in the prestigious British journal Nature in the scientific paper “The ancestry and affiliations of Kennewick Man.”

The results were announced at a news conference, settling the question based on first-ever DNA evidence: Kennewick Man is Native American.

The announcement garnered national and international media attention, and propelled a new push to return the skeleton to a coalition of Columbia Basin tribes. Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) introduced the Bring the Ancient One Home Act of 2015 and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has offered state assistance for returning the remains to Native Tribes.

Science named the Kennewick work one of its nine runners-up in the highly esteemed magazine’s annual “Breakthrough of the Year” competition.

The research article has been viewed more than 60,000 times. It has achieved a ranking of 665, which puts it in the 99th percentile of 169,466 tracked articles of a similar age in all journals, and in the 94th percentile of 958 tracked articles of a similar age in Nature.

In “Kennewick Man: coming to closure,” an article in the December issue of Antiquity, a journal of Cambridge University Press, Meltzer noted that the DNA merely confirmed what the tribes had known all along: “We are him, he is us,” said one tribal spokesman. Meltzer concludes: “We presented the DNA evidence. The tribal members gave it meaning.”

Click here to read more about the research.

Prehistoric vacuum cleaner captures singular award

Paleontologists Louis L. Jacobs, SMU, and Anthony Fiorillo, Perot Museum, have identified a new species of marine mammal from bones recovered from Unalaska, an Aleutian island in the North Pacific. (Hillsman Jackson, SMU)

Science writer Laura Geggel with Live Science named a new species of extinct marine mammal identified by two SMU paleontologists among “The 10 Strangest Animal Discoveries of 2015.”

The new species, dubbed a prehistoric hoover by London’s Daily Mail online news site, was identified by SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, a professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, and paleontologist and SMU adjunct research professor Anthony Fiorillo, vice president of research and collections and chief curator at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science.

Jacobs and Fiorillo co-authored a study about the identification of new fossils from the oddball creature Desmostylia, discovered in the same waters where the popular “Deadliest Catch” TV show is filmed. The hippo-like creature ate like a vacuum cleaner and is a new genus and species of the only order of marine mammals ever to go extinct — surviving a mere 23 million years.

Desmostylians, every single species combined, lived in an interval between 33 million and 10 million years ago. Their strange columnar teeth and odd style of eating don’t occur in any other animal, Jacobs said.

SMU campus hosted the world’s premier physicists

The SMU Department of Physics hosted the “23rd International Workshop on Deep Inelastic Scattering and Related Subjects” from April 27-May 1, 2015. Deep Inelastic Scattering is the process of probing the quantum particles that make up our universe.

As noted by the CERN Courier — the news magazine of the CERN Laboratory in Geneva, which hosts the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest science experiment — more than 250 scientists from 30 countries presented more than 200 talks on a multitude of subjects relevant to experimental and theoretical research. SMU physicists presented at the conference.

The SMU organizing committee was led by Fred Olness, professor and chair of the SMU Department of Physics in Dedman College, who also gave opening and closing remarks at the conference. The committee consisted of other SMU faculty, including Jodi Cooley, associate professor; Simon Dalley, senior lecturer; Robert Kehoe, professor; Pavel Nadolsky, associate professor, who also presented progress on experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider; Randy Scalise, senior lecturer; and Stephen Sekula, associate professor.

Sekula also organized a series of short talks for the public about physics and the big questions that face us as we try to understand our universe.

Click here to read more about the research.

Tags Alan Humason, Alisa J. WInkler, Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development, Anthony Fiorillo, Beatrice Magnani, Bonnie F. Jacobs, Brian W. Stump, Chris Hayward, Christopher Strganac, Dale A. Winkler, Dani Setlawan, David Meltzer, Dedman College, Diana Vineyard, Diego Román, Dieter Creme, Elfi Kraka, Ernest Jouriles, Fredrick Olness, Gary Johnson, Heather R. DeShon, Jodi Cooley, John F. Graf, John Wise, Kate Andrzejewski, Kurt Ferguson, Lauren Michael, Lorelei Simpson Rowe, Louis L. Jacobs, Marek Freindorf, Matthew Clemens, Matthew J. Hornbach, Michael J. Polcyn, Neil Tabor, Pavel Nadolsky, Pia Vogel, Randy Scalise, Renee McDonald, Robert Gregory, Robert Kalescky, Robert Kehoe, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Santanu Roy, Simon Dalley, SMU Department of Anthropology, SMU Department of Biological Sciences, SMU Department of Chemistry, SMU Department of Economics, SMU Department of Physics, SMU Department of Psychology, Stephen J. Sekula, Thomas Sexton, Timothy S. Myers, Vytor Oliveira, Wenli Zou

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Live Science: The 10 Strangest Animal Discoveries of 2015

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date January 5, 2016

Paleontologists Louis Jacobs, SMU, and Anthony Fiorillo, Perot Museum, have identified a new species of marine mammal from bones recovered from Unalaska, a North Pacific Aleutian island. (Hillsman Jackson, SMU) — Paleontologists Louis Jacobs, SMU, and Anthony Fiorillo, Perot Museum, have identified a new species of marine mammal from bones recovered from the Aleutian island Unalaska in the North Pacific. (Hillsman Jackson, SMU)

Science writer Laura Geggel with Live Science named a new species of extinct marine mammal identified by two SMU paleontologists among “The 10 Strangest Animal Discoveries of 2015.”

The new species was identified by SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, a professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, and paleontologist and SMU adjunct research professor Anthony Fiorillo, vice president of research and collections and chief curator at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science.

The LiveScience article published Dec. 23, 2015.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Laura Geggle
Live Science
[/fusion_builder_column][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][ … ] It might not help clean the living room, but about 23 million years ago a hippo-size mammal used its long snout as a vacuum cleaner, suctioning up tasty morsels of marine algae and sea grass along the coast.

The newly identified extinct animal (Ounalashkastylus tomidai) belongs to the order Desmostylia, the only known order of marine mammals to go completely extinct, the researchers told Live Science in October.

The scientists found four O. tomidai skeletons, including one baby, on the Aleutian Islands’ Unalaska.

“The baby tells us they had a breeding population up there,” said study co-author Louis Jacobs, a vertebrate paleontologist at Southern Methodist University in Texas. “They must have stayed in sheltered areas to protect the young from surf and currents.” [ … ]

Read the full story.

Follow SMUResearch.com on twitter at @smuresearch.

Tags Anthony Fiorillo, Dedman College, Louis L. Jacobs, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences

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KRBD FM: Local artist illustrates newly identified species

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date October 22, 2015

Ray Troll holds a Desmostylus tooth. (Leila Kheiry)

KRBD Radio reporter Leila Kheiry covered the research of SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, a professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences and paleontologist Anthony Fiorillo, vice president of research and collections and chief curator at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, Dallas, and an adjunct research professor at SMU.

Jacobs and Fiorillo are co-authors of a study about the identification of new fossils from the oddball creature Desmostylia, discovered in the same waters where the popular “Deadliest Catch” TV show is filmed. The hippo-like creature ate like a vacuum cleaner and is a new genus and species of the only order of marine mammals ever to go extinct — surviving a mere 23 million years.

The KRBD coverage was included in a piece about Ketchikan artist Ray Troll, who contributed illustrations of the new species.

Troll is the artist who has most illustrated desmostylians, prompting Jacobs to dub a “group” of desmostylians a “troll.” KRBD is the Ketchikan FM community radio covering southern southeast Alaska.

[/fusion_builder_column][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”]

Desmostylians, every single species combined, lived in an interval between 33 million and 10 million years ago. Its strange columnar teeth and odd style of eating don’t occur in any other animal, Jacobs said. The new specimens — from at least four individuals — were recovered from Unalaska, an Aleutian island in the North Pacific.

Jacobs and Fiorillo reported their discovery in a special volume of the international paleobiology journal, Historical Biology. The article published online Oct.1 at http://bit.ly/1PQAHZJ.

The KRBD story aired Oct. 21, 2015.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Leila Kheiry
KRBD Radio
Paleontologists recently announced the discovery of a new species of prehistoric marine mammal, found in Unalaska. While the fossils were discovered many years ago, the announcement in early October that they were of a separate species was new information.

Ketchikan artistand self-described paleo-nerd Ray Troll had an inside line on the story, and contributed illustrations of the new species for the scientists.

Ray Troll has made a name for himself among the nerdy set with his scientifically accurate paintings, most often depicting fish and, more recently, extinct creatures known only by the fossils they’ve left behind.

Troll arrived at the station carrying a fossil that someone gave him many years ago in Oregon. Troll said that person thought it was a fossilized tooth from an ancient horse.

“Twenty-some years later, I start getting interested in this animal, and I was literally sitting there, googling Desmostylus tooth, looking at them on eBay, and I looked over and said, ‘I’ve got one! That’s what that is! It’s not a horse tooth!’”

The tooth is an odd-shaped square, a little more than an inch on each side. It’s made up of columns, each about the width of a pencil, and one edge of the tooth is worn smooth. Troll said Desmostylia’s name comes from its unusual dental development.

“Desmo means a bundle, it’s Latin for bundle. Stylus means a pillar,” he said. “So, it’s a bundle of pillars. It looks like a little six-pack.”

Desmostylia lived for about 23 million years, and then just died out, leaving behind its fossils.

“They’re found in the Pacific. The north Pacific, to be specific. Ba-dum-bump,” Troll said. “They range from the tip of Baha all the way over to Japan.”

Troll said he became interested in Desmos through his friend, Kirk Johnson, who worked with Troll on a book, “Cruisin’ the Fossil Freeway.”

Johnson was the connection between Troll and Dr. Louis Jacobs, a Texas paleontologist and one of the researchers who determined that the Unalaska fossils were a previously unidentified species.

Jacobs said he had been at the Smithsonian, looking at Desmostylian skeletons, and was about to leave for the day.

“And then, there was the Director of the National Museum of Natural History, Kirk Johnson, coming in,” Jacobs said. “We shook hands and said hello, and he asked me what I was doing. I told him, looking as Desmostylians. He said, ‘I love Desmostylians!’ he said, ‘Ray Troll and I are working on those things now, because we’re doing another book.’”

Read the full story.

Follow SMUResearch.com on twitter at @smuresearch.

Tags Anthony Fiorillo, Dedman College, Louis L. Jacobs, Michael J. Polcyn, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Yuri Kimura

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KERA: Thousands Of Vertebrate Paleontologists Descend On Dallas

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date October 21, 2015

SMU faculty and students presented research and led field trips for various sessions of the 2015 annual meeting in Dallas of the international Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Reporting for KERA News, North Texas’ public media news source, journalist Kat Chow covered the 2015 annual meeting in Dallas in October of the international Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.

The meeting was hosted locally by the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences at SMU and the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas. SMU faculty and students presented research and led field trips for various SVP sessions.

Chow’s coverage also covered the research of SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, a professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences.

He carried out the study with paleontologist Anthony Fiorillo, vice president of research and collections and chief curator at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, Dallas, and an adjunct research professor at SMU.

The authors reported their discovery in a special volume of the international paleobiology journal, Historical Biology. The article published online Oct.1 at http://bit.ly/1PQAHZJ.

The KERA article aired and published Oct. 14, 2015.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Kat Chow
KERA News
Everything I knew about paleontology conferences, I learned from TV and “Friends.” There was that time Ross and his girlfriend were prepping for a conference in Barbados.

“By using CT scans and computer imaging, we can in a very real way bring the Mesozoic era into the 21st century,” Ross says.

In the real world, at the conference put on by the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, the lingo isn’t so simple. Here are some of the session titles:

“A new large non-pterodactyloid pterosaur from a late-Jurassic interdunal desert environment with a neo-eolian nugget sandstone of Northeastern Utah.”

“The hemodynamics of vascular retia: Testing a hypothesis of blood pressure regulation through the artiodactyl carotid rete.”

“The effects of substrate, body position, and plasticity on the morphology of ruminant unguals.”

Louis Jacobs, a vertebrate paleontologist at Southern Methodist University, and Anthony Fiorillo, a paleontologist at Dallas’ Perot Museum, are helping organize the conference. Walking with them is like trailing a rock star — they’re inundated with fans and well-wishers.

”We specialize in animals with backbones, and how they’re preserved in the rocks, and what they mean, and what they tell us about the earth got to be the way it is,” Jacobs explains.

Read the full story.

Tags Anthony Fiorillo, Dedman College, Louis L. Jacobs, Michael J. Polcyn, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences

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Daily Mail: The prehistoric hoover — 23 million-year-old fossils reveal how giant hippo-like creature used its snout to suck up food

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date October 19, 2015

Writing for London-based the Daily Mail, the world’s largest online news source, science news journalist Ellie Zolfagharifard covered the research of SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, a professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, and paleontologist Anthony Fiorillo, vice president of research and collections and chief curator at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, Dallas, and an adjunct research professor at SMU.

The authors reported their discovery in a special volume of the international paleobiology journal, Historical Biology. The article published online Oct.1 at http://bit.ly/1PQAHZJ.

The Daily Mail article published Oct. 8, 2015.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Ellie Zolfagharifard
Daily Mail
A bizarre hippo-like creature, that lived 23 million years ago, had a long snout that allowed it to suck up food like a vacuum cleaner.

This is according several fossils of the species which were discovered on the island of Unalaska in the North Pacific.

They reveal a unique tooth and jaw structure for the creature, which scientists believe belonged to a group of aquatic mammals called Desmostylia.

Desmostylians lived between 33 million and 10 million years ago. But unlike other marine mammals alive today, they went completely extinct.

Researchers have named the vegetarian species Ounalashkastylus tomidai, and describe it as having strange columnar teeth that allowed it to vacuum food.

While alive, the creatures lived in what is now Unalaska’s Dutch Harbor, where fishing boats depart on Discovery channel’s ‘Deadliest Catch’ reality TV show.

‘The new animal — when compared to one of a different species from Japan — made us realise that desmos do not chew like any other animal,’ said Professor Louis Jacobs at the Southern Methodist University in Texas.

‘They clench their teeth, root up plants and suck them in.’

To eat, the animals buttressed their lower jaw with their teeth against the upper jaw, and used the powerful muscles that attached there.

Combined with the shape of the roof of their mouth, this allowed them to suction-feed vegetation from coastal bottoms.

Read the full story.

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Tags Anthony Fiorillo, Dedman College, Huffington, Louis L. Jacobs, Michael J. Polcyn, Yuri Kimura

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Alaska Dispatch News: Giant extinct mammal identified from Unalaska fossils

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date October 8, 2015
No Comments on Alaska Dispatch News: Giant extinct mammal identified from Unalaska fossils

Alaska news reporter Mike Dunham with the Alaska Dispatch News covered the research of SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, a professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, and paleontologist Anthony Fiorillo, vice president of research and collections and chief curator at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, Dallas, and an adjunct research professor at SMU.

The authors reported their discovery in a special volume of the international paleobiology journal, Historical Biology. The article published online Oct.1 at http://bit.ly/1PQAHZJ.

The article published Oct. 7, 2015.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Mike Dunham
Alaska Dispatch News
It had the face of a walrus, swam like a polar bear, was as big as a hippopotamus and sucked its food off the rocks and mud around the Aleutian Islands 23 million years ago. “Ounalashkastylus tomidai” was described by a team of paleontologists from Texas, Canada and Japan in an article published in the scientific journal Historical Biology on Oct. 1.

Louis L. Jacobs, a vertebrate paleontologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and co-author of the study, said in a press release the extinct marine mammal was a vegetarian with a long snout and tusks. It grazed on plants growing along the shoreline, rooting them out then sucking them in like a vacuum cleaner. It was a style of eating not found in any other animal.

The new species, a member of the order Desmostylia (des-mo-STILL-ee-uh), was identified from four specimens found on Unalaska over a period of years beginning in 1950, when fossils were discovered in a quarry. More emerged during excavations for the foundation of Eagle View Elementary School, said Alaska artist Ray Troll, an avid follower of paleontology and illustrator of extinct animals.

Anthony Fiorillo of the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas, another co-author of the study, told Alaska Dispatch News the find involved a good deal of serendipity. Fiorillo, who has made several important paleontological discoveries in Alaska, had planned to work in the Yukon-Charlie area in 2004, but wildfires and smoke made that impossible.

“I looked at the weather map, and the only place I could find that wasn’t affected was Unalaska,” he said. So he switched his destination. While there he gave a talk at the Museum of the Aleutians, where he learned about the fossils. They were being kept at the headquarters of the local Native corporation. “The Unalaska museum facilitated the loan of the fossils to the Perot Museum where we could study them. Louis Jacobs was with me, so it made sense for us to work on it together.”

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Tags Anthony Fiorillo, Dedman College, Louis L. Jacobs, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences

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HuffPo: This Hippo-Sized Prehistoric Beast Ate Like A Vacuum Cleaner

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date October 8, 2015

Apparently, chewing is just slowing us all down.

Jacqueline Howard, associate science editor for The Huffington Post, covered the research of SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, a professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, and paleontologist Anthony Fiorillo, vice president of research and collections and chief curator at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, Dallas, and an adjunct research professor at SMU.

Desmostylians, every single species combined, lived in an interval between 33 million and 10 million years ago.

Its strange columnar teeth and odd style of eating don’t occur in any other animal, Jacobs said.

The new specimens — from at least four individuals — were recovered from Unalaska, an Aleutian island in the North Pacific.

The authors reported their discovery in a special volume of the international paleobiology journal, Historical Biology. The article published online Oct.1 at http://bit.ly/1PQAHZJ.

The article published Oct. 7, 2015.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Jacqueline Howard
The Huffington Post
Scientists have discovered a previously unknown creature — and it ate in a unique way that hasn’t been seen before.

The extinct species, which belonged to a group of aquatic mammals called Desmostylia that lived across the North Pacific some 23 million years ago, hoovered up vegetation like some sort of beastly vacuum cleaner, according to a study published last week in the journal Historical Biology.

“The new animal — when compared to one of a different species from Japan — made us realize that desmos do not chew like any other animal,” Dr. Louis Jacobs, professor of paleontology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and a co-author of the study, said in a written statement. “They clench their teeth, root up plants and suck them in.”

The researchers concluded that the species, which was dubbed Ounalashkastylus tomidai, might have braced its lower jaw and teeth against the upper jaw and used its powerful muscles to suck up vegetation.

Fossilized bones of the species were recently found on the island of Unalaska in the North Pacific, where the Discovery Channel show “Deadliest Catch” is filmed. The fossils were shipped to the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas for the researchers to examine — and after taking a close look, the scientists realized the fossils represented a previously unknown animal.

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Tags Anthony Fiorillo, Dedman College, Louis L. Jacobs, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences

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LiveScience: Extinct Hippo-like Creature Was Prehistoric Vacuum Cleaner

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date October 8, 2015

Science writer Laura Geggel with Live Science covered the research of SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, a professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, and paleontologist Anthony Fiorillo, vice president of research and collections and chief curator at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, Dallas, and an adjunct research professor at SMU.

Desmostylians, every single species combined, lived in an interval between 33 million and 10 million years ago.

Its strange columnar teeth and odd style of eating don’t occur in any other animal, Jacobs said.

The new specimens — from at least four individuals — were recovered from Unalaska, an Aleutian island in the North Pacific.

The authors reported their discovery in a special volume of the international paleobiology journal, Historical Biology. The article published online Oct.1 at http://bit.ly/1PQAHZJ.

The article published Oct. 7, 2015.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Laura Geggel
Live Science
About 23 million years ago, an ancient hippo-size mammal used its long snout like a vacuum cleaner, suctioning up food from the heavily vegetated shoreline whenever it was hungry, a new study finds.

Fossils of the newfound species — found on the Aleutian Islands’ Unalaska, the location of the popular reality TV show “Deadliest Catch” — show that it had a long snout and tusks. Its unique tooth and jaw structure indicates it was a vegetarian, said study co-author Louis Jacobs, a vertebrate paleontologist at Southern Methodist University in Texas.

“They were marine mammals, but they were not completely marine, like whales,” Jacobs said in a video about his research. It’s likely they lived both on land and in water, like seals, and could move around on land like a “big, lumbering, clumsy sort of giant sloth,” he said.

“But when they were in the water, they swam like polar bears,” Jacobs said. “They were front-limb-powered swimmers.”

Researchers named the new species Ounalashkastylus tomidai. The word Ounalashka translates to “near the peninsula” in the Aleut language of the indigenous Aleutian Island people, and stylus is Latin for “column,” a reference to the creatures’ column-shaped teeth. The species name tomidai honors the Japanese vertebrate paleontologist Yukimitsu Tomida.

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Tags Anthony Fiorillo, Dedman College, Louis L. Jacobs, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences

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New fossils intensify mystery of short-lived, toothy mammals unique to ancient North Pacific

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date October 5, 2015

Oddball creature, Desmostylia, from waters where “Deadliest Catch” TV show is filmed, ate like a vacuum cleaner and is new genus and species of the only order of marine mammals ever to go extinct — surviving a mere 23 million years

Identification of a new species of the marine mammal Desmostylia has intensified the rare animal’s brief mysterious journey through prehistoric time, finds a new study.

Desmostylians were a big, hippo-sized animal with a long snout and tusks. The new species is 23 million years old and has a unique tooth and jaw structure, said vertebrate paleontologist and study co-author Louis L. Jacobs, Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

Those features indicate it was not only a vegetarian, but literally sucked vegetation from shorelines like a vacuum cleaner, Jacobs said.

But unlike other marine mammals alive today — such as whales, seals and sea cows — desmostylians went totally extinct. Desmostylians, every single species combined, lived in an interval between 33 million and 10 million years ago.

Its strange columnar teeth and odd style of eating don’t occur in any other animal, Jacobs said.

The new specimens — from at least four individuals — were recovered from Unalaska, an Aleutian island in the North Pacific.

While alive, the creatures lived in what is now Unalaska’s Dutch Harbor, where fishing boats depart on Discovery channel’s “Deadliest Catch” reality TV show.

“The new animal — when compared to one of a different species from Japan — made us realize that desmos do not chew like any other animal,” said Jacobs, a professor in SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences. “They clench their teeth, root up plants and suck them in.”

To eat, the animals buttressed their lower jaw with their teeth against the upper jaw, and used the powerful muscles that attached there, along with the shape of the roof of their mouth, to suction-feed vegetation from coastal bottoms. Big muscles in the neck would help to power their tusks, and big muscles in the throat would help with suction.

“No other mammal eats like that,” Jacobs said. “The enamel rings on the teeth show wear and polish, but they don’t reveal consistent patterns related to habitual chewing motions.”

The new specimens also represent a new genus — meaning desmostylians in the same family diverged from one another in key physical characteristics, particularly the tooth and jaw structure, said Jacobs, who is one of 10 scientists collaborating on the research.

Discovery of a new genus and species indicates the desmostylian group was larger and more diverse than previously known, said paleontologist and co-author Anthony Fiorillo, vice president of research and collections and chief curator at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, Dallas, and an adjunct research professor at SMU.

“Our new study shows that though this group of strange and extinct mammals was short-lived, it was a successful group with greater biodiversity than had been previously realized,” said Fiorillo.

Unique from other marine mammals in their diet, eating, lifespan
A large, stocky-limbed mammal, desmos’ modern relatives remain a mystery. They’ve been linked previously to manatees, horses and elephants.

Compared to other mammals, desmos were latecomers and didn’t appear on earth until fairly recently — 33 million years ago. Also unusual for mammals, they survived a mere 23 million years, dying out 10 million years ago.

Unlike whales and seals, but like manatees, desmos were vegetarians. They rooted around coastlines, ripping up vegetation, such as marine algae, sea grass and other near-shore plants.

They probably swam like polar bears, using their strong front limbs to power along, Jacobs said. They walked on land a bit, lumbering like a sloth.

Adult desmostylians were large enough to be relatively safe from predators.

The authors report their discoveries in a special volume of the international paleobiology journal, Historical Biology. The article published online Oct.1 at http://bit.ly/1PQAHZJ.

The research was funded by the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, U.S. National Park Service — Alaska Region Office, and SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man.

Home was the North Pacific, on wave-battered “Deadliest Catch” island
The newest desmo made its home on Unalaska Island, the farthest north of any occurrence of the group, which only lived along the shores of the North Pacific.

“That’s the only place they’re known in the world — from Baja, California, up along the west coast of North America, around the Alaska Peninsula, the storm-battered Aleutian Islands, to Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula and Sakhalin Island, to the Japanese islands,” Jacobs said.

The Unalaska fossils represent at least four individuals, and one is a baby.

“The baby tells us they had a breeding population up there,” Jacobs said. “They must have stayed in sheltered areas to protect the young from surf and currents.”

In addition, “the baby also tells us that this area along the Alaska coast was biologically productive enough to make it a good place for raising a family,” said Fiorillo.

Just as cattle assemble in a herd, and a group of fish is a school, multiple desmostylians constitute a “troll” — a designation selected by Jacobs to honor Alaskan Ray Troll, the artist who has depicted desmos most.

To make the Unalaska and Japanese specimens readily available to scientists anywhere in the world, each fossil was modeled as a 3-D image to reconstruct the skull and provide interactive animations of the fossils, said Michael J. Polcyn, research associate and director of SMU’s Digital Earth Sciences Laboratory.

Also, 3-D renders of the digital models are available to download without restriction at http://bit.ly/1JWbLLy, including instructions for downloading. The renderings are in QuickTime Virtual Reality format, QTVR, and are large files that take time to download. Once downloaded, each fossil can be virtually examined and manipulated.

Journey from the land to the ocean to a quarry
The first Unalaska fossils were discovered in the 1950s in a rock quarry during U.S. Geological Survey mapping.

Others found more recently were on display at the Ounalashka Corporation headquarters. Those specimens were offered to Fiorillo and Jacobs for study after Fiorillo gave a public presentation to the community on his work in Alaska.

“The fruits of that lecture were that it started the networking with the community, which in turn led us to a small, but very important collection of fossils that had been unearthed in the town when they built a school a few years earlier,” Fiorillo said. “The fossils were shipped to the Perot Museum of Nature and Science for preparation in our lab and those fossils are the basis for our work now.”

From there, the researchers discovered that the fossils were a new genus and species.

The researchers named the new mammal Ounalashkastylus tomidai. “Ounalashka,” means “near the peninsula” in the Aleut language of the indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands.

“Stylus” is from the Latin for “column” and refers to the shape of cusps in the teeth.

“Tomida” honors distinguished Japanese vertebrate paleontologist Yukimitsu Tomida.

The article appears in a special volume of Historical Biology to honor the career accomplishments of Tomida upon his retirement from the Department of Geology and Paleontology in Tokyo’s National Museum of Nature and Science.

In addition to Jacobs, Fiorillo and Polcyn, other authors were Yosuke Nishida, SMU; Yuri Kimura, Smithsonian Institution and the Tokyo Museum; Kentaro Chiba, University of Toronto; Yoshitsugu Kobayashi, Hokkaido University Museum, Naoki Kohno, National Museum of Nature and Science; and Kohei Tanaka, University of Calgary.

The Historical Biology article is titled “A new desmostylian mammal from Unalaska (USA) and the robust Sanjussen jaw from Hokkaido (Japan), with comments on feeding in derived desmostylids.” It appears in the special issue “Contributions to vertebrate palaeontology in honour of Yukimitsu Tomida.” — Margaret Allen

Tags Anthony Fiorillo, Dedman College, Huffington Departhment of Earth Sciences, Louis L. Jacobs, Michael J. Polcyn, Ray Troll, Yuri Kimura

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Smithsonian: Take a Deep Dive Into The Reasons Land Animals Moved to the Seas

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date April 16, 2015

Synthesizing decades of discoveries, scientists have revealed links between changing environments and animal movements

Smithsonian magazine online tapped the expertise of SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, a professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences of SMU’s Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences.

Science journalist Alicia Ault interviewed Jacobs on the subject of why land animals moved to the seas over the past 250 million years. The article, “Take a deep dive into the reasons land animals moved to the seas,” delves into a new scientific paper published by two Smithsonian scientists and appearing in the latest issue of the highly ranked prestigious journal Science.

Jacobs is a world-recognized vertebrate paleontologist and has served as president of the international Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. He leads SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man.

Currently his field research is focused on Angola in southwestern Africa. He co-leads Projecto PaleoAngola, a collaborative international scientific research program to understand the effect of the opening of the South Atlantic Ocean on ancient life. In the laboratory, Jacobs’ research utilizes advanced imaging and stable isotope techniques to investigate paleoenvironmental, biogeographic and phylogenetic issues of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras.

Jacobs serves on the National Park Service Science Committee Advisory Board, which recommends National Natural Landmarks to the U.S. Department of the Interior. He has served as president of the international Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, and in 1999 he was director ad interim of the Dallas Museum of Natural History. Before joining SMU, he served as head of the Division of Paleontology at the National Museum of Kenya. He has been a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University, a Specially Appointed Professor at Hokkaido University, Japan, and a Visiting Professor at Richard Leakey’s Turkana Basin Institute in Kenya.

Jacobs is the author of “Quest for the African Dinosaurs: Ancient Roots of the Modern World” (Villard Books and Johns Hopkins U. Press, 2000); “Lone Star Dinosaurs” (Texas A&M U. Press, 1999), which is the basis of the Texas dinosaur exhibit at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History; “Cretaceous Airport” (ISEM, 1993); and more than 100 scientific papers and edited volumes.

The Smithsonian article published April, 16, 2015.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Alicia Ault
Smithsonian.com
The movement of animals from the land into the sea has happened several times over the last 250 million years, and it has been documented in many different and singular ways. But now, for the first time, a team of researchers has created an overview that not only provides insight into evolution, but may also help more accurately assess humans’ impact on the planet.

The oceans are teeming with tetrapods—“four-legged” birds, reptiles, mammals and amphibians—that have repeatedly transitioned from the land to the sea, adapting their legs into fins. The transitions have often been correlated with mass extinctions, but the true reasons are only partly known based on fossils and through study of Earth’s climate, for instance.

Those transitions are considered to be “canonical illustrations” of the evolutionary process and thus ideal for study; living marine tetrapods—such as whales, seals, otters and sea lions—also have a big ecological impact, according to Neil P. Kelley and Nicholas D. Pyenson, the two Smithsonian scientists who compiled the new look at these tetrapods, appearing this week in the journal Science.

Instead of gathering evidence from a single field, the pair pulled together research from many disciplines, including paleontology, molecular biology and conservation ecology, to give a far larger picture of what was happening when animals transitioned from the land to the sea across millennia.

Almost by necessity, scientists tend to work in narrow silos, so this research will help broaden their views and potentially make for quicker progress in understanding evolution. Knowing how these creatures adapted over the last few hundred million years, and especially how they’ve changed in the era since humans appeared, could help us become better stewards of the planet.

“It’s a one-of-a-kind summation of all that’s known about those different groups that evolved to go back to the sea,” says Louis L. Jacobs, a professor of earth sciences and president of the Institute for the Study of Earth and Man at Southern Methodist University. The paper lays it all out in a way that allows scientists to make comparisons across species, he adds.

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Tags Dedman College, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, Louis L. Jacobs, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences

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NBC, CBS & CW33: Jurassic Jackpot — 5-Year-Old Finds Dinosaur in Mansfield

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date April 9, 2015

The folks at SMU say a find like this is extremely rare, and for a five-year-old kid to have found it, may be more rare than the Dino itself.

The fossil bones of a 100 million-year-old dinosaur discovered at a shopping center construction site will be studied and identified by paleontologists at Southern Methodist University’s Shuler Museum of Paleontology.

The bones were discovered by a Dallas Zoo employee and his young son. The fossils have been transported to SMU’s Shuler research museum in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.

The discovery of the bones, believed to be from the family of armored dinosaurs called nodasuaridae, was covered by local TV stations NBC Channel 5, CBS Channel 11 and Channel CW 33.

Dale Winkler, SMU, paleontologist, dinosaur

mike-polcyn, SMU, paleontology, Huffington

Book a live interview

To book a live or taped interview with Dale Winkler in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call SMU News at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu.

To book a live or taped interview with Michael Polcyn in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call SMU News at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu.

To book a live or taped interview with Louis Jacobs in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu.

The Huffington Post: 4-Year-Old Boy Finds Rare 100-Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Bones In Texas

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date April 9, 2015

The SMU scientists started excavating the dinosaur bones on Friday. They speculate the bones belong to a group of dinosaurs called Nodosaurs — herbivorous creatures that lived in the late Jurassic to early Cretaceous periods.

The bones were discovered by a Dallas Zoo employee and his young son. The fossils have been transported to SMU’s Shuler research museum in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.

The discovery of the bones, believed to be from the family of armored dinosaurs called nodasuaridae, was covered by journalist Dominique Mosbergen, reporting for The Huffington Post.

Book a live interview

To book a live or taped interview with Dale Winkler in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call SMU News at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu.

To book a live or taped interview with Michael Polcyn in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call SMU News at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu.

To book a live or taped interview with Louis Jacobs in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu.

KERA: 4-Year-Old Texas Boy Finds 100-Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Bones

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date April 9, 2015

Nodosaurs are plant eating animals that are built a little like tanks with a relatively broad body with armor in their skin.

The bones were discovered by a Dallas Zoo employee and his young son. The fossils have been transported to SMU’s Shuler research museum in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.

The discovery of the bones, believed to be from the family of armored dinosaurs called nodasuaridae, was covered by science journalist Lauren Silverman, reporting for KERA public radio.

Book a live interview

To book a live or taped interview with Dale Winkler in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call SMU News at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu.

To book a live or taped interview with Michael Polcyn in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call SMU News at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu.

To book a live or taped interview with Louis Jacobs in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call News and Communications at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu.

More SMU Research news

17 million-year-old whale fossil provides 1st exact date for East Africa’s puzzling uplift

The story aired April 8, 2015.

Hear the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Lauren Silverman
KERA Public Radio
A Dallas Zookeeper went on a fossil hunt with his little boy at a construction site. And the 4-year-old picked up what turned out to be a dinosaur bone – likely 100 million years old. On Wednesday, scientists found another key bone.

Wiley Brys and his dad Tim were digging through the dirt, just looking for some shark teeth last August when it happened.

“My son walked ahead of me and walked back with a chunk of bone that looked like rib bone,” Brys says.

Wylie Brys, now 5-years-old, discovered a bone in a construction site behind a Mansfield shopping center.
Wylie Brys, now 5-years-old, discovered a bone in a construction site behind a Mansfield shopping center.

A few inches long, it was a bit moist and a purplish gray. The bone, experts say, is likely 100-million years old.

For a kid who still counts half birthdays, that many years is hard to imagine.

“I don’t think he completely understands what’s going on,” Brys, a zookeeper who works with reptiles at the Dallas Zoo, says. “He’s just as interested in as playing in the dirt as the fossils I think.”

What Brys and his kid uncovered behind a Mansfield shopping center is thought to be part of a group of dinosaurs called Nodosaurs. They’re plant eating animals that are built a little like tanks.

“They’re these little armored, squatty-looking animals, relatively broad body with armor in their skin,” says Mike Polcyn, director of SMU’s Digital Earth Sciences Lab.

Polcyn has been working at the dig site, preparing the bones to be moved. Just when the team thought they’d uncovered it all, Polcyn says, they unearthed the Nodosaur’s upper leg bone.

Hear the full story.

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Tags Dale A. Winkler, Dedman College, Louis L. Jacobs, Michael J. Polcyn, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Shuler Museum of Paleontology

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Los Angeles Times: Fossilized whale bone in African desert holds clues to human evolution

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date March 23, 2015

Ancient whale swam hundreds of miles up African river and left behind clues about geology and climate change

Paleontologist James G. Mead excavating a whale specimen in an open-pit mine in Kenya in 1964. The long-lost specimen has helped date the onset of uplift on the East African Plateau, a change that altered the local environment and shaped the evolution of human ancestors. (Courtesy of James G. Mead)

The Los Angeles Times covered the research of SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, a professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences of SMU’s Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences.

Jacobs is co-author of a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Findings of the research provide the first constraint on the start of uplift of East African terrain from near sea level.

Uplift associated with the Great Rift Valley of East Africa and the environmental changes it produced have puzzled scientists for decades because the timing and starting elevation have been poorly identified.

Jacobs and his colleagues tapped a fossil from the most precisely dated beaked whale in the world — and the only stranded whale ever found so far inland on the African continent — to pinpoint for the first time a date when East Africa’s mysterious elevation began.

The 17 million-year-old fossil is from the beaked Ziphiidae whale family. It was discovered 740 kilometers inland at a elevation of 620 meters in modern Kenya’s harsh desert region.

supervolcano, fossil, Italy, James Quick, Sesia Valley

The article published March 16, 2015.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Geoffrey Mohan
Los Angeles Times
A 22-foot beaked whale that apparently took a wrong turn up an African river about 17 million years ago may offer clues to the climate-change forces that shaped human evolution.

Lost for more than 30 years, the fossilized beak with part of the jaw bone helps determine that the East African Plateau probably began rising no earlier than 17 million years ago, according to a study published online Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

That geologic upheaval in an area known as the cradle of humankind is believed to be responsible for the gradual conversion of dense, humid forests into more sparsely treed grasslands that made upright locomotion on two feet advantageous to evolving human ancestors.

“The whale is telling us all kinds of things,” said study coauthor Louis Jacobs, a paleontologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “It tells us the starting point for all that uplift that changed the climate that led to humans. It’s amazing.”

Jacobs had been searching for the specimen since 1980, when he was head of paleontology at the National Museums of Kenya. He had read about the 1964 find, by James G. Mead of the Smithsonian Institution, in a 1975 research paper.

Every time Jacobs visited Harvard, Washington or Nairobi, he would try to find it.

“It was protected by a plaster jacket, so you couldn’t really see it,” he said. “I suspect nobody knew what it was. It was just kept in the collections there.”

Finally, just before another trip to Kenya in 2011, a collections official at Harvard located the fossil, sheathed in the protective jacket, Jacobs said.

Jacobs had the specimen scanned and analyzed, then contacted Henry Wichura, a structural geologist at the University of Potsdam in Germany, who had been studying plateau region, trying to determine when it started rising. He had found evidence that rivers and lava had flowed east from high points on the plateau at least 13 million years ago.

Read the full story.

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Tags Andrew Lin, Dale A. Winkler, Dedman College, Louis L. Jacobs, Matthew Clemens, Michael J. Polcyn, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences

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Daily Mail: The 17 million-year-old whale that reveals when man first walked on two feet: Mammal’s wrong turn up river sheds light on Africa’s ancient swamplands

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date March 18, 2015

The marine mammal’s remains were unearthed 459 miles from the ocean; East Africa was flatter, wet and covered in forest.

17 million year old fossil whale, kenya, Louis Jacobs

London’s Daily Mail covered the research of SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, a professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences of SMU’s Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences.

Jacobs is co-author of a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Findings of the research provide the first constraint on the start of uplift of East African terrain from near sea level.

The 17 million-year-old fossil is from the beaked Ziphiidae whale family. It was discovered 740 kilometers inland at a elevation of 620 meters in modern Kenya’s harsh desert region.

The article published March 17, 2015.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Richard Gray
Daily Mail
A whale that swam hundreds of miles up an African river after taking a wrong turn 17 million years ago is helping shed light on a key moment in human evolution.

Palaeontologists discovered the fossilised remains of the ancient ancestor to modern beaked whales in the middle of one of the harshest desert areas of Turkana, Kenya.

It has allowed scientists to pinpoint when the landscape in east Africa began to change as the land around the Great Rift Valley began to rise up.

This was a crucial moment in human evolution from primates as it created the dry open habitats that led our ape-like ancestors to walk upright for the first time.

They say that for the whale to have travelled so far inland in a river the area must have been much wetter, far flatter and dominated by forests.

Professor Louis Jacobs, a vertebrate palaeontologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas who led the study, said: ‘The whale was stranded up river at a time when east Africa was at sea level and was covered with forest and jungle.

‘As that part of the continent rose up, that caused the climate to become drier and drier. So over millions of years, forest gave way to grasslands.

‘Primates evolved to adapt to grasslands and dry country. And that’s when – in human evolution – the primates started to walk upright.’

The whale fossil was first discovered in Loperot, west Turkana, Kenya in 1964 by palaeontologist James Mead, a curator at the Smithsonian Instution at the time.

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Tags Andrew Lin, Dale A. Winkler, Dedman College, Huffington Departhment of Earth Sciences, Louis L. Jacobs, Matthew Clemens, Michael J. Polcyn

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17 million-year-old whale fossil provides 1st exact date for East Africa’s puzzling uplift

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date March 16, 2015

Uplift and aridification of East Africa causing changes in vegetation has been considered a driver of human evolution. Now a fossil whale stranded far inland in Kenya marks the first time scientists can pinpoint how many millions of years ago the uplift began.

Uplift associated with the Great Rift Valley of East Africa and the environmental changes it produced have puzzled scientists for decades. Timing and starting elevation have been poorly understood.

Now paleontologists have tapped a fossil from the most precisely dated beaked whale in the world to pinpoint for the first time a date when East Africa’s mysterious elevation began. The stranded whale is the only one ever found so far inland on the African continent.

The 17 million-year-old fossil is from the beaked Ziphiidae whale family. It was discovered 740 kilometers inland at a elevation of 620 meters in modern Kenya’s harsh desert region, said vertebrate paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

At the time the whale was alive, it would have been swimming far inland up a river with a low gradient ranging from 24 to 37 meters over more than 600 to 900 kilometers, said Jacobs, a co-author of the study.

A map of Africa and Kenya showing where a 17-million-year-old whale fossil was found far inland . (Wichura/PNAS)

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provides the first constraint on the start of uplift of East African terrain from near sea level.

“The whale was stranded up river at a time when east Africa was at sea level and was covered with forest and jungle,” Jacobs said. “As that part of the continent rose up, that caused the climate to become drier and drier. So over millions of years, forest gave way to grasslands. Primates evolved to adapt to grasslands and dry country. And that’s when — in human evolution — the primates started to walk upright.”

Identified as a Turkana ziphiid, the whale would have lived in the open ocean, like its modern beaked cousins. Ziphiids, still one of the ocean’s top predators, are the deepest diving air-breathing mammals alive, plunging to nearly 10,000 feet to feed, primarily on squid.

In contrast to most whale fossils, which have been discovered in marine rocks, Kenya’s beached whale was found in river deposits, known as fluvial sediments, said Jacobs, a professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences of SMU’s Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences.

The whale fossil bones were originally thought to be those of a turtle specimen, as was recorded in the fossil catalogue for the Harvard Loperot Expedition in 1964. (Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University.)

The ancient large Anza River flowed in a southeastward direction to the Indian Ocean.

The whale, probably disoriented, swam into the river and could not change its course, continuing well inland.

“You don’t usually find whales so far inland,” Jacobs said. “Many of the known beaked whale fossils are dredged by fishermen from the bottom of the sea.”

Determining ancient land elevation is very difficult, but the whale provides one near sea level.

“It’s rare to get a paleo-elevation,” Jacobs said, noting only one other in East Africa, determined from a lava flow.

Beaked whale fossil surfaced after going missing for more than 30 years
The beaked whale fossil was discovered in 1964 by J.G. Mead in what is now the Turkana region of northwest Kenya.

Mead, an undergraduate student at Yale University at the time, made a career at the Smithsonian Institution, from which he recently retired. Over the years, the Kenya whale fossil went missing in storage. Jacobs, who was at one time head of the Division of Paleontology for the National Museums of Kenya, spent 30 years trying to locate the fossil. His effort paid off in 2011, when he rediscovered it at Harvard University and returned it to the National Museums of Kenya.

The fossil is only a small portion of the whale, which Mead originally estimated was 7 meters long during its life. Mead unearthed the beak portion of the skull, 2.6 feet long and 1.8 feet wide, specifically the maxillae and premaxillae, the bones that form the upper jaw and palate.

The researchers reported their findings in “A 17-My-old whale constrains onset of uplift and climate change in east Africa” online at the PNAS web site.

Modern cases of stranded whales have been recorded in the Thames River in London, swimming up a gradient of 2 meters over 70 kilometers; the Columbia River in Washington state, a gradient of 6 meters over 161 kilometers; the Sacramento River in California, a gradient of 4 meters over 133 kilometers; and the Amazon River in Brazil, a gradient of 1 meter over 1,000 kilometers.

Besides Jacobs, other authors from SMU are Andrew Lin, Michael J. Polcyn, Dale A. Winkler and Matthew Clemens.

From other institutions, authors are Henry Wichura and Manfred R. Strecker, University of Potsdam, and Fredrick K. Manthi, National Museums of Kenya.

Funding for the research came from SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man and the SMU Engaged Learning program. — Margaret Allen

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Tags Andrew Lin, Dale A. Winkler, Dedman College, Featurette, Louis L. Jacobs, Matthew Clemens, Michael J. Polcyn, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences

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International Business Times: Angola — Ancient Mystery Mammal Tracks Found in Angolan Diamond Mine

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date November 5, 2014

Tracks of an unknown mammal dating to the Early Cretaceous are discovered along with tracks of a crocodile and a dinosaur

The creature was about the size of a raccoon, researchers said. (Photo: Marco Marzola)

The research of an international team co-led by SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs is receiving worldwide coverage for discovery of the first dinosaur tracks discovered in Angola, including those of a mysterious mammal from 118 million years ago.

Reporter Hannah Osborne wrote about the discovery Nov. 5 for The International Business Times in the article “Angola: Huge Mystery Mammal Tracks from Early Cretaceous Period Discovered in Catoca Diamond Mine.”

The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology announced the discovery in a press release Nov. 5, “African diamond mine reveals dinosaur and large mammal tracks.”

The discovery was made by a Octávio Mateus, a member of Projecto PaleoAngola.

Jacobs, a professor of earth sciences at SMU, is a former president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. His research focus is the interrelationships of biotic and abiotic events through time.

His fieldwork is currently focused through Projecto PaleoAngola on the iconic, puzzle-like fit of Africa and South America, as viewed through the rocks and fossils of coastal Angola.

SMU paleontologist Michael J. Polcyn is also a member of the Projecto PaleoAngola team.

The PaleoAngola researchers have described Angola as a “museum in the ground” for the abundance of fossils there.

A professor in Dedman College’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Jacobs joined SMU’s faculty in 1983.

In the laboratory, Jacobs’ research utilizes advanced imaging and stable isotope techniques to investigate paleoenvironmental, biogeographic and phylogenetic issues of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras.

Polcyn is director of the Visualization Laboratory in SMU’s Department of Earth Sciences and an SMU research associate.

A world-recognized expert on the extinct marine reptile named Mosasaur, Polcyn’s research interests include the early evolution of Mosasauroidea and adaptations in secondarily aquatic tetrapods. Polcyn’s research also includes application of technology to problems in paleontology.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Hannah Osborne
International Business Times
The tracks of a huge mysterious mammal dating to the Early Cretaceous period have been discovered in the world’s fourth-biggest diamond mine in Africa.

Dating to 118 million years ago, researchers discovered the tracks of a crocodile, a dinosaur and a large unknown mammal inside the Catoca Diamond Mine in Angola.

Over 70 tracks were uncovered by researcher from the PaleoAngola Project, a programme that researches vertebrate palaeontology in Angola.

The dinosaur tracks – the first to be found in the African nation – were from a sauropod and were discovered with a preserved skin impression. The crocodile, a crocodilomorph trackmaker, was from a group that includes all modern species.

However, the most important find was that of the large mammal. Researchers believe it was about the size of a raccoon – huge compared to all other mammals at the time, which were mostly no larger than a rat.

Marco Marzola, one of the study authors, told IBTimes UK there is no way of telling to what species the mystery mammal belongs as you cannot identify animals by their tracks – “the most you can say is that the track resembles the anatomy of that animal,” he explained.

“We cannot narrow down to a species but we can say they do belong to – they were made by an exceptionally large mammal – that we can say for sure.”

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Richest marine reptile fossil bed along Africa’s South Atlantic coast is dated at 71.5 mya

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date May 14, 2014

A new study uses carbon isotope dating to determine the first precise age for this bed, and ties the western coast of Africa to 30 million years of global geologic records

Paleontologists at Southern Methodist University have measured the carbon isotopes in marine fossils to precisely date for the first time 30 million years of sediments along Africa’s South Atlantic shoreline.

The researchers matched the pattern of ratios of carbon-13 and carbon-12 isotopes in marine fossils from Africa’s South Atlantic shoreline to known patterns of carbon ratios in fossils found elsewhere in the world. From that they determined the age of the coastal sediments at a fossil locality near the southern Angolan village of Bentiaba, said paleontologist Christopher Strganac, lead author on the study.

The analysis focused on a sequence of shoreline sediments totaling 140 meters thick. Their age spans a timeline of nearly 30 million years, from 95 million years ago to 68 million years ago. That period was about 40 million years after Africa and South America split, allowing the South Atlantic Ocean to slowly emerge.

Chemostratigraphy and magnetostratigraphy of Bentiaba section. (Credit: Strganac)

The analysis revealed that the richest marine reptile fossil bed on Africa’s South Atlantic dated to 71.5 million years ago, he said. This new date at the Bentiaba locality is more than 2 million years older than the estimated date of about 69 million years previously assigned to those marine beds by earlier researchers.

Africa’s South Atlantic coast is remarkable in plate tectonics as the place where part of the prehistoric supercontinent Gondwana split 130 million years ago into what we now call Africa and South America.

“The precise age for these rocks allows better understanding of the ancient life and environments at Bentiaba by placing them accurately within the history of the ancient South Atlantic,” said Strganac, a doctoral student in SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences. “It’s a benchmark now from the Southern Hemisphere with which we can better understand ancient life at that time.”

The precise dating was made possible by new scientific dating techniques. The age of the rocks hadn’t previously been assessed because Africa’s South Atlantic shore — noted for its puzzle-like fit with South America — has few localities with well-exposed rocks of this age. Also, it has been essentially unexplored by scientific expeditions since the 1960s largely because war and unrest prevented exploration in the previous century.

The new measurements stem from the work of Projecto PaleoAngola, an international team of scientists who in recent years have explored Angola and discovered an abundance of fossils. Their discoveries include the bones of dinosaurs, whales, mosasaurs and other ancient life from what is the richest marine reptile fossil bed along the South Atlantic coast.

Strganac and his co-authors report their findings in the Journal of African Earth Sciences. The article, “Carbon isotope stratigraphy, magnetostratigraphy, and 40Ar/39AR age of the Cretaceous South Atlantic coast, Namibe Basin, Angola,” is available online through open access at http://bit.ly/1v4r8xi.

“This improvement in understanding the ages of the rocks along the shore is a great first step in trying to understand the climatic and evolutionary events that accompanied the growth of this ocean,” said vertebrate paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, also a co-author on the study and co-leader of Projecto PaleoAngola. Jacobs describes Angola as “an untapped frontier” for fossil hunters.

Aids in new knowledge of climate, temperature and vegetation
Scientists have recognized since the 1960s that ancient supercontinents split apart and their remnants drifted to the current positions of today’s continents over the course of millions of years. One of the results was the creation of vast new oceans. Little is known of the vertebrate life that lived during that time along the eastern and western margins of the emerging South Atlantic Ocean.

Fossils being discovered now by Projecto PaleoAngola hold the key to understanding the South Atlantic Ocean’s ancient past. Analysis of the fossils sheds light on the paleoenvironment, including changes in climate, temperature, vegetation and ecology.

The geologic time period covered by the 30-million-year sequence represents the Late Cretaceous. Studies have shown it was a period of dramatic change in climate, beginning with one of the warmest periods on Earth, then starting to transition to cooler climates, Strganac said.

Determining carbon ratios allowed comparison with global geologic events
To discover the age of the sediments, Strganac tested 55 fossil shells of ancient oysters and clams from 40 different rock layers on the coast. Testing determined the ratio of stable carbon isotopes, carbon-13 and carbon-12, in each shell. Because these isotopes do not decay with time, the relative abundance of each relates to the ocean when the shells formed. These isotope ratios can be compiled as a sequence with the rock layers, producing a pattern of carbon isotope change in the ancient oceans through millions of years. To accurately date the rocks, Strganac matched the pattern in isotope ratios in the shell record at Angola with the pattern known from ancient geologic events that occurred elsewhere in the world.

Specifically, the red rift-valley layers at Bentiaba were deposited as Africa and South America began to split. Also observed in the layers are a reversal in the Earth’s magnetic polarity at 71.4 million to 71.64 million years to delimit the age of marine fossils; rocks deposited in the South Atlantic Ocean 93.9 million years ago during an oceanic anoxic event; and rocks south of Bentiaba that bracket the mass extinction of dinosaurs at 66 million years.

Besides comparing the stable carbon isotopes, other measuring techniques included: magnetostratigraphy, which measures the ancient polarity of the Earth’s magnetic field when various sedimentary layers were deposited; and argon-argon radiometric dating of a volcanic basalt layer at the site, which measures the radioactive decay of potassium to argon and dates the cooling of the volcanic lava to 85 million years ago.

“Adding a new ocean to the globe, in this case the South Atlantic, has many long-lasting effects,” said SMU’s Jacobs. “One obvious example is the formation of energy resources found along the coasts of Brazil and Angola.”

The research was funded in part by the National Geographic Society and the Petroleum Research Fund of the American Chemical Society. — Margaret Allen

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Bloomberg: Ancient Angola Crocodile Ate Fish as Oil Fields Formed

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date August 12, 2013

Angola%20006a.jpg The research of an international paleontological team working in Angola and co-led by SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs has been covered by Bloomberg news service.

Fossils in the rock outcrops of the coast of Angola in Africa are a “museum in the ground,” says SMU vertebrate paleontologist Jacobs. Reporters Colin McClelland and Manuel Soque with Bloomberg interviewed Jacobs for Ancient Angola Crocodile Ate Fish as Oil Fields Formed. Business Week also published the story “Ancient Angola Crocodile Feasted on Fish as Oil Fields Formed.”

“Angola is the final frontier for palaeontology,” Jacobs has told reporters about the PaleoAngola project. “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.”

SMU paleontologist Michael J. Polcyn is also a member of the Projecto PaleoAngola team.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Colin McClelland
and Manuel Soque
Bloomberg
Scientists have found a new type of crocodile that trundled across Angola millions of years ago while the crude oil that it now pumps as Africa’s second-largest producer was forming.

PaleoAngola, a team of fossil-hunters from the U.S., Portugal, Angola and the Netherlands, found the reptile’s 30 million-year-old remains this year on a beach within sight of oil rigs drilling into the same rocks offshore Cabinda province north of the Congo River.

“The croc is certainly new to the age in which it was found,” Louis Jacobs, geology and paleontology professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said in an e-mailed response to queries yesterday. “It would have been the size of a large modern croc, but two-thirds of the head would have been a narrow snout adapted for fish eating.”

Some of the 1.78 million barrels-a-day Angola pumped in July was formed around the same time as the crocodile fossil, after Africa and South America broke apart through plate tectonics. Oil explorers such as ConocoPhillips (COP) and BP Plc (BP/) are betting on the industry’s Atlantic mirror theory which says there may be huge deposits of oil deep beneath the sea off West Africa, similar to those across the ocean in Brazil.

Resembles Gharial
The crocodile, which is yet to be named, may be related to a fossil found in the province almost 100 years ago and a more recent find in Kenya, Jacobs said. The beast was probably coastal and isn’t directly related to modern African crocodiles, he said. It resembled a gharial, but wasn’t one, he said. Gharials are a type of crocodile found in Asia.

The team also found a well-preserved skull of a 70 million-year-old mosasaur, sometimes called a marine monster, north of Luanda, the capital, and another in southern Namibe province with three smaller ones in its stomach.
“Quite a last meal,” Jacobs said.

Other finds this year include a tooth from an arsinoitherium, a rhino-like animal with two large horns forming a V off its nose that is known from digs in Egypt, and skulls of 18 million-year-old relatives of the pygmy right whale, which swims off Angola’s southern coast today, Jacobs said. They’re the continent’s only fossils of the oldest filter-feeding whales known from Africa, he said. One skull has two fish fossils in its blow hole.

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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.

Tags Dedman College, Louis L. Jacobs, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences

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Dallas Morning News: Fort Worth coelacanth fossil is missing link among world’s oldest animal lineages

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date February 5, 2013

The coelacanth research of SMU paleontology doctoral student John Graf was covered by Dallas Morning News journalist Marc Ramirez.

Graf identified a new species of coelacanth from fossil fish bones discovered in Texas. Ramirez described the discovery and identification in a Feb. 1 article, “Fort Worth coelacanth fossil proves to be a missing link in one of the world’s oldest animal lineages.”

Graf discusses the fossil in this video: “100 million-year-old coelacanth discovered in Texas is new fish species from Cretaceous.”

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Marc Ramirez
Dallas Morning News
Never mind that it took more than 20 years to give the celebrity critter its due, because out here in Dino Land, things tend to move s-l-o-w-l-y.

And let’s be honest — when you’ve been waiting a million centuries to be identified, what’s another couple of decades, really?

Last year, Reidus hilli officially earned its stripes as a new species of coelacanth, quite the feat for a fish whose path to reality began as a Fort Worth fossil the size of a Girl Scout cookie.

For those who spend their time rebuilding prehistory’s narrative, the find was — as earth science professor Louis Jacobs of Southern Methodist University puts it — “tremendously fascinating.”

“Every place in the world is unique, so every place is a single piece of a puzzle that fits into the whole story of the world,” Jacobs said.

“Our piece is here. This coelacanth provides a piece of our puzzle that we didn’t have before of what life was like and what was here.”

The area known as the Albian Duck Creek Formation stretches over southwest Tarrant County, a one-time marine environment rich in Cretaceous-era fossils between 90 million and 100 million years old, any present company excluded.

Before it was largely developed, a plucky amateur geologist could regularly turn up evidence of ancient sea life, especially after rains that would free clay earth from its moorings.

Around 1990, Fort Worth design artist Robert Reid and a fossil-hunting friend were trolling the soggy wash, seeing what they could find. Typically that would be bits of turtle, shark vertebrae or ammonites, spiral-shelled cephalopods that once filled the seas.
The piece of rock that caught Reid’s eye was small, barely a couple of inches in length.

“I could tell it was some kind of bone material,” he said. “I didn’t know it was fish.”

He could just as easily have left it behind. Instead, he packed it into a Baggie, took it home and washed it off.

And thus the fragment eventually ended up in Reid’s geology cabinet, a millennia-old fossil stored in a cushioned box alongside dozens of other millennia-old fossils stored in cushioned boxes.

And there it would sit for years.

Long assumed extinct
The coelacanth is so old that for a long time people figured it was dead.

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The Daily Campus: SMU contributes fossils to Perot Museum of Nature and Science

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date January 21, 2013

The Daily Campus reporter Charlie Scott covered SMU’s contributions to the new Perot Museum of Nature and Science near downtown Dallas. Many fossils from SMU’s Shuler Museum of Paleontology are on loan to the new Perot Museum, including those of animals from an ancient sea that once covered Dallas.

The fossils represent a slice of SMU’s scientific collaboration with the Perot Museum and its predecessor, the Dallas Museum of Natural History.

Items from SMU’s scientists include a 35-foot skeletal cast of the African dinosaur Malawisaurus standing sentry in the spacious glass lobby of the Perot, which opened Dec. 1.

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EXCERPT:

By Charlie Scott
The Daily Campus
The land is arid. Its inhabitants undergo crippling heat, little rain and countless droughts.

Texas suffers from a shortage of water, but that hasn’t always been the case.

Visitors to the new Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Uptown now have an opportunity to see fossils of animals from a prehistoric time when an ancient sea covered the Big D.

The fossil display, which is made possible by an ongoing collaborative effort between SMU and the Perot Museum, contain “some spectacular pieces that tell some very interesting stories,” according to Anthony Fiorillo, Curator of Earth Sciences at the Perot.

Many of the fossils on display date from a geological period called the Cretaceous, which lasted from 146 million years ago to 66 million years ago.

Some of these are plant fossils that were discovered at a ranch southwest of Fort Worth in Hood County.

Some other fossils on loan from that period, include sea turtles and mosasaurs, which are ancient aquatic lizards that eventually evolved flippers and long bodies for life at sea.
In 2006 a then 5-year-old Preston Smith was on a family outing along the North Sulpher River in Ladonia Texas when she stumbled upon what appeared to be the remnants of a turtle. But this was no ordinary find.

When Diana Vineyard, director of administration and research associate at SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, got her hands on the specimen as graduate student, she worked to determine the creature had died 80 millions years ago.

She also found that it wasn’t only 1 turtle Smith happened across.

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UPI: Study finds Jurassic ecosystems like today’s

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date January 10, 2013

News wire UPI covered the research of SMU paleontologist Timothy S. Myers for the news site.

Myers’ latest study found Jurassic ecosystems were similar to modern: Animals flourish among lush plants. The study set out to discover whether that same relationship held true 150 million years ago during the Late Jurassic when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

“The assumption has been that ancient ecosystems worked just like our modern ecosystems,” said Myers. “We wanted to see if this was, in fact, the case.”

Myers is research curator for SMU’s Shuler Museum of Paleontology in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences of Dedman College.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

UPI
The Earth’s ecosystems in the Jurassic period were similar to modern ones with animals flourishing, taking advantage of lush plant growth, U.S. researchers say.

In modern ecosystems animal populations do well in regions where the climate and landscape produce lush vegetation, and scientists at Southern Methodist University wanted to find out if the same relationship held true 150 million years ago during the Late Jurassic when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

“The assumption has been that ancient ecosystems worked just like our modern ecosystems,” paleontologist Timothy S. Myers said in an SMU release Tuesday. “We wanted to see if this was, in fact, the case.”

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Tags Dedman College, Louis L. Jacobs, Neil Tabor, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Shuler Museum of Paleontology, Timothy S. Myers

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Red Orbit: Climate And Biota Have Been Ecologically Connected For Millions Of Years

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date January 10, 2013

Science writer Rayshell Clapper for redOrbit.com covered the research of SMU paleontologist Timothy S. Myers for the news site’s science section.

“The assumption has been that ancient ecosystems worked just like our modern ecosystems,” said Myers. “We wanted to see if this was, in fact, the case.”

Myers is research curator for SMU’s Shuler Museum of Paleontology in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences of Dedman College.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Rayshell Clapper
redOrbit.com
According to Southern Methodist University paleontologists Timothy S. Myers, Louis L. Jacobs, and SMU sedimentary geologist Neil J. Tabor, the modern relationship between animals and vegetation is similar to millions of years ago.

In their study, the SMU scientists used fossil soils from the Late Jurassic age gathered from locations where animal fossils were previously found to determine the levels of carbon isotopes. The team used fossils gathered from North America, Europe, and Africa. The main problem with the study, though, is that few places in the world are well-sampled enough for terrestrial fossils, so Myers and his team discovered a new and creative use of an already existing method and already existing geological data.

To gather his results, Myers used a traditional method to estimate carbon dioxide in the ancient atmosphere, only he applied it to estimate the amount of carbon dioxide in ancient soils. To do this, the team took measurements from the nodules of calcite that take on the isotopic signature of the carbon dioxide gas around them. This comes from two sources: the atmosphere and the plants decaying in the soil.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide has a more positive isotope while the decaying plants have more negative isotopes. Therefore, more carbon dioxide from plants means a lusher, wetter environment, which is exactly what their research found.

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Study finds Jurassic ecosystems were similar to modern: Animals flourish among lush plants

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date January 7, 2013

CO₂ levels in fossil soils from the Late Jurassic confirm that climate, vegetation and animal richness varied across the planet 150 million years ago, suggesting future human changes to global climate will heavily impact plant and animal life.

In modern ecosystems, it’s widely known that animals flourish in regions where the climate and landscape produce lush vegetation.

A new study set out to discover whether that same relationship held true 150 million years ago during the Late Jurassic when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

“The assumption has been that ancient ecosystems worked just like our modern ecosystems,” said paleontologist and lead author Timothy S. Myers, Southern Methodist University, Dallas. “We wanted to see if this was, in fact, the case.”

To test the theory, Myers analyzed fossil soils from the Late Jurassic by measuring the ratios of carbon isotopes. His analysis indicated that the Jurassic soils contained high levels of CO₂ from vegetation.

Nodules of ancient soil are fairly common in present day rock, forming as a result of seasonally dry conditions. They harden into mineralized clods, making them easy to spot and sample as they weather out of ancient soil profiles. (Image: Myers)

From that, Myers was able to infer the presence of lush plant life in certain regions during the Jurassic. The soils came from locales where scientists previously have gathered animal fossils — North America, Europe and Africa. Combining the data with the known fossil sampling allowed Myers to confirm that the modern relationship between animals and vegetation held true even millions of years ago.

“Our analysis represents the first time that anyone has tried to apply ecological modeling to this relationship in the fossil record,” Myers said.

Reidus hilli, John Graf, SMU, coelacanth, Dipluridae,

Relatively few places in the world are well-sampled for terrestrial fossils, so Myers’ discovery of a new use for an already existing method represents a useful tool, he said. The new use allows scientists to tap the geochemical data of soils from anywhere in the world and from other geologic time periods to infer the relative abundance of plants and animals, particularly for areas where fossils are lacking.

“This not only provides a more complete picture of the ancient landscape and climate in which ancient animals lived,” Myers said. “It also illustrates that climate and biota have been ecologically connected for many millions of years and that future human-caused changes to global climate will have profound impacts on plant and animal life around the world.”

Myers and his co-researchers reported the findings in Paleobiology, “Estimating Soil pCO₂ Using Paleosol Carbonates: Implications for the Relationship Between Primary Productivity and Faunal Richness in Ancient Terrestrial Ecosystems.”

Co-authors were SMU sedimentary geochemist Neil J. Tabor and paleontologists Louis L. Jacobs, SMU, and Octávio Mateus, New University of Lisbon, Portugal.

“Devising new and creative methods to understand how Earth and life have functioned together in the past is the foundation for predicting the future of life on our planet,” said Jacobs, a vertebrate paleontologist and professor in SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences. “It is the only approach that provides a long enough perspective of what is possible.”

New method applied to old hypothesis confirms regional variability
Typically researchers count the number of animal species discovered in a region to determine how many different types of animals once lived there. Scientists call that a measure of faunal richness.

Myers took a different approach. Using a traditional method typically used to estimate carbon dioxide in the ancient atmosphere, Myers instead applied it to estimate the amount of CO₂ in ancient soils.

Measurements were taken from nodules of calcite that form in soil as a result of wet and dry seasons. These nodules take on the isotopic signature of the CO₂ gas around them, which is a mixture derived from two sources: the atmosphere, which leaves a more positive isotopic signature, and plants decaying in the soil, which leave a more negative isotopic signature.

A higher volume of CO₂ from plants indicates a lusher, wetter environment.

“There’s a lot more litter fall in an environment with a lot of plants, and that produces a lot of organic material in the soil, creating CO₂. So we see more soil-produced CO₂, displacing the atmospheric CO₂. These are established relationships,” Myers said.

“Our method can be used to infer relative levels of richness for areas where soils have been preserved, but where fossils are lacking because conditions were unsuitable for their preservation,” he said.

The research demonstrates creative use of existing geological data, said co-author Tabor, an expert in ancient soil in SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.

“Vertebrate paleontologists have been accumulating information about vertebrate fossils in the Jurassic for well over 100 years. In addition, geochemists have been systematically sampling the composition of ancient soils for several decades,” Tabor said. “In these respects, the data that are the foundation of this study are not extraordinary. What is remarkable, though, is combining the paleontology and geochemistry data to answer large-scale questions that extend beyond the data points — specifically, to answer questions about ancient ecosystems.”

Data from Morrison Formation, Central Africa and Portugal
Myers tested Upper Jurassic soil nodules collected from the Morrison Formation in the western United States. The formation extends from Montana to New Mexico and has been the source of many dinosaur fossil discoveries.

He also analyzed Upper Jurassic soil nodules from Portugal, another location well-sampled for dinosaur fossils. The region’s paleoclimate was broadly similar to that of the Morrison Formation.

In addition, Myers tested a small Upper Jurassic core sample from Central Africa, where there’s no evidence of any major terrestrial life. Unique minerals in the rocks indicate that the region had an arid environment during the Late Jurassic.

Based on their hypothesis, the researchers expected to see regional variations in plant productivity — the amount of new growth produced in an area over time, which is an indirect measure of the amount of plant life in an environment. Forests, savannas and deserts all have different amounts of plant productivity, although those specific ecosystems can’t be identified on the basis of plant productivity alone.

The researchers expected to see higher plant productivity for Portugal than for the Morrison Formation, with the lowest productivity in Central Africa.

“Essentially that’s what we found,” Myers said. “We understand it’s tenuous and not a trend, but few places in the world are well-sampled. However, it’s still a useful tool for places where all we have are the soil nodules, without well-preserved fauna.”

Soil nodules are fairly common, Myers said. They form as a result of seasonally dry conditions and may be preserved in all but the wettest environments. Since they harden into mineralized clods, they are easy to spot and sample as they weather out of ancient soil profiles.

CO₂ in ancient calcite nodules offers key to ancient climate
From the analysis scientists can draw a more complete picture of the ancient landscape and climate in which prehistoric animals lived.

“The Jurassic is thought of as very warm, very wet, with lots of dinosaurs,” said Myers, research curator for SMU’s Shuler Museum of Paleontology. “But we see from our analysis that there was regional variability during the Late Jurassic in the climate and in the abundance of animals across the planet.”

The Late Jurassic extended from 160 million years ago to 145 million years ago. — Margaret Allen

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Tags Dedman College, Louis L. Jacobs, Neil Tabor, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Shuler Museum of Paleontology, Timothy S. Myers

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TexasEscapes.com: The Bone Wars

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date December 21, 2012

Texas author, journalist and historian Clay Coppedge, who writes for the weekly newspaper Country World News, covered the research of SMU vertebrate paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs and the infamous Bone Wars of the late 1800s.

See an SMU video and press release about the research, “Texas frontier scientists who uncovered state’s fossil history had role in epic Bone Wars.”

The Bone Wars was a flurry of fossil speculation across the American West that escalated into a high-profile national feud. Drawn into the spectacle were two scientists from the Lone Star State, geologist Robert T. Hill, now acclaimed as the Father of Texas Geology, and naturalist Jacob Boll, who made many of the state’s earliest fossil discoveries.

The Coppedge article, “Bone Wars,” was published in a November issue of Country World News, and was published in December online at TexasEscapes.com.

Hill and Boll had supporting roles in the Bone Wars through their work for one of the feud’s antagonists, Edward Drinker Cope, according to Jacobs’ new study.

A professor in Dedman College‘s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Jacobs joined SMU’s faculty in 1983.

Currently his field projects include work in Mongolia and Angola. His book, “Lone Star Dinosaurs” (1999, Texas A&M University Press) was the basis of an exhibit at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History that traveled the state. He consulted on the new exhibit, Mysteries of the Texas Dinosaurs, which opened in 2009.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Clay Coppedge
Texas Escapes
It’s been pointed out that there were two great revolutions in American life in the 19th Century. One was the Civil War. The other was a scientific revolution. Just as the firing on Fort Sumter was the shot that got the Civil War going, Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, published in “Origin of Species” in 1859 created a similar upheaval in the scientific world.

At the same time, scientists, naturalists and other observant types were finding the bones of creatures that roamed the earth millions of years ago that were unlike anything the world had seen or imagined. Some of these creatures were truly gargantuan with neck bones alone measuring three feet across. Even the land where people lived had changed dramatically over the eons; in some cases it hadn’t even been land at all – it was a sea. This was a hard thing for people of the time to grasp.

Europeans never had much luck finding dinosaur bones. Too lush. Too wet. The American West was neither of those things. Striding into that vast and arid land, two scientists led the search for dinosaur bones and new species to name. Their respective and separate searches developed into an intense rivalry between the two bone hunters – Edward Drinker Cope of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia and Othenial Charles Marsh with the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale.

Read the full story.

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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, www.smu.edu.

Tags Dedman College, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, Louis L. Jacobs, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences

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EARTH: Long-Lost Letters Shed New Light on 19th-Century Bone Wars

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date December 18, 2012

Science journalist David B. Williams, who writes for Earth magazine, covered the research of SMU vertebrate paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs and the infamous Bone Wars of the late 1800s.

See an SMU video and press release about the research, “Texas frontier scientists who uncovered state’s fossil history had role in epic Bone Wars.”

The article, “Long-Lost Letters Shed New Light on 19th-Century Bone Wars,” was published in the January 2013 issue of Earth.

Hill and Boll had supporting roles in the Bone Wars through their work for one of the feud’s antagonists, Edward Drinker Cope, according to Jacobs’ new study.

A professor in Dedman College‘s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Jacobs joined SMU’s faculty in 1983.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By David B. Williams
Earth
In the decades following the Civil War, America became the center of the fossil world through discoveries by paleontologists Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope, one-time friends turned bitter enemies. Out of their nasty, well-financed battle to dominate the world of paleontology came legendary dinosaur finds such as skeletons of Brontosaurus (now known as Apatosaurus), Stegosaurus, Triceratops, and Allosaurus. The finds weren’t just a bone or two of each dinosaur, as had been the case in the early years of dinosaur discoveries in England; rather, these were nearly complete skeletons that for the first time shed light on the incredible diversity of dinosaurs.

The so-called Bone Wars entailed this lifelong race between Marsh and Cope to discover the most new fossils, during which both paleontologists risked their scientific integrity as well as their financial well-being. The field skirmishes between Cope and Marsh mostly occurred in Colorado and Wyoming (and mostly among their hired help), but one of the lesser-known side squabbles took place in Texas. New evidence from recently discovered letters from Cope to field collector Robert T. Hill reveals more about the nature of the conflict and its contributors.

Read the full story.

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Tags Dedman College, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, John Lewis, Louis L. Jacobs, Pia Vogel, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences

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SMU contributes fossils, expertise to new Perot Museum in ongoing scientific collaboration

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date December 3, 2012

From dinosaurs to sea turtles, and from technical assistance to advisory roles, SMU faculty and students, the SMU Shuler Museum, and the SMU Innovation Gymnasium have teamed with the nation’s new premier museum of nature and science in Dallas

Toxochelys, Perot Museum, SMU Shuler Museum of Paleontology

Fossils on loan by SMU to the new Perot Museum of Nature and Science include those of animals from an ancient sea that once covered Dallas.

The fossils represent a slice of SMU’s scientific collaboration with the Perot Museum and its predecessor, the Dallas Museum of Natural History.

Items from SMU’s scientists include a 35-foot skeletal cast of the African dinosaur Malawisaurus standing sentry in the spacious glass lobby of the Perot, which opened Dec. 1 near downtown Dallas.

“The new museum building itself is an icon, but it’s also a statement by the city about taking the advances of science to the public,” said vertebrate paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, an SMU Earth Sciences professor, who serves on the Perot Museum’s Advisory Board and Collections Committee.

Jacobs, who was ad interim director of the Dallas Museum of Natural History in 1999, led the team that discovered Malawisaurus in Africa. He provided the cast to the museum.

A 35-foot skeletal cast of the African dinosaur Malawisaurus, discovered by a team led by SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, is on display at the Perot Museum. (Image: Rich Tate, Alford Media)

“Here at SMU we train students and create new knowledge. The museum’s mission is to take the stories of science out to the general public so they can be used,” said Jacobs. “Anthony Fiorillo, Perot Museum Curator of Earth Sciences, is a world-class scientist with whom we work. We have a junction between the mission, training and knowledge we have here, infused into and enhanced by what the museum does. That’s why the museum is important to SMU and that’s why SMU is important to the museum.”

Fossils on loan are from the collection of the Shuler Museum of Paleontology in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences. SMU scientists provided technical expertise for exhibits and serve on the Perot Museum’s advisory committees.

Also on exhibit from SMU is a miniature unmanned autonomous helicopter designed for fighting fires that was built by SMU engineering students.

Herbivorous dinosaur is exhibited with ancient Texas plant fossils
Shuler Museum fossils can be viewed in the T. Boone Pickens Life Then and Now Hall. They include an unnamed 113 million-year-old herbivorous dinosaur discovered in 1985 at Proctor Lake southwest of Stephenville, Texas.

For perspective on that exhibit’s paleoenvironment in Texas at the time, SMU paleobotanist Bonnie F. Jacobs provided fossil wood, fossil cones, fossil leaves and images of microscopic pollen grains from the Shuler Museum. The fossils provided information used to create a model of an extinct tree to accompany the exhibit.

Fossil cones and leaves discovered in Hood County are from an extinct ancient tree, says SMU paleobotanist Bonnie F. Jacobs. (Image: SMU)

Plant fossils inform scientists of the ecological setting in which dinosaurs lived and died, said Bonnie Jacobs, an SMU associate professor in the Huffington Department. Her collaboration with the Perot’s Fiorillo, who also is an adjunct research professor of paleoecology in the SMU Earth sciences department, includes fossil plants from Alaska.

“Understanding past climate and climate change will help us understand what may happen in the future,” she said. Bonnie Jacobs is featured in a Perot Museum Career Inspirations video that is part of the permanent exhibit and also advised on the text of some exhibits.

“The world of the past is a test case for global climate models, which are computer driven,” she said. “If we can reconstruct climates of the ancient Earth accurately, then we can create better models of what may happen in the future.”

Understanding paleoclimate through fossil soils is the expertise of Neil Tabor, an SMU associate professor in the Earth Sciences Department whose Perot Museum video discusses ancient soils, environments and the biggest extinction event in Earth’s history.

Fossils date from period when D/FW was covered by ancient sea
The plant fossils are from the geologic period called the Cretaceous, from 146 million years ago to 66 million years ago. They were discovered at the prolific Jones Ranch fossil beds southwest of Fort Worth in Hood County.

At that time, the Jones Ranch — famous as the discovery site of Paluxysaurus jonesi, the state dinosaur of Texas — was not far inland from the muddy coastal shore of a vast shallow sea that a dozen years later would divide North America.

Giant fossil sea turtles were discovered in northeast Texas in 2006 by a 5-year-old girl, Preston Smith. SMU paleontologist Diana Vineyard identified the giant turtles as Toxochelys. (Image: SMU)

Other SMU fossils on loan also date from that period. They include sea turtles, as well as mosasaurs, which were ancient sea lizards that evolved flippers and streamlined bodies for life in the sea.

Stunning examples of fossil sea turtles were discovered in 2006 by a 5 year-old girl, Preston Smith, during a family outing along the North Sulphur River near Ladonia in northeast Texas. The turtles were stacked one on top of the other as if caught in sudden death 80 million years ago.

Diana Vineyard, director of administration and research associate at SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, identified the turtles as Toxochelys while an SMU graduate student.

Also on loan from the Shuler Museum, and also identified by Vineyard, are 110-million-year-old sea turtles from the Early Cretaceous of Texas, discovered near Granbury. They represent early specimens in the transition of turtles from land and shallow marine animals to fully developed sea turtles, Vineyard said.

Exhibit includes mosasaur named for the city of Dallas

A Perot Museum exhibit includes a giant fossil sea turtle discovered in northeast Texas in 2006 by a 5-year-old girl. SMU paleontologist Diana Vineyard identified the giant turtles as Toxochelys. (Image: SMU)

Michael Polcyn, director of SMU’s Digital Earth Sciences Laboratory, put his expertise to work providing technical assistance for the museum’s Ocean Dallas marine reptile exhibit.

An expert in mosasaurs, Polcyn created digital reconstructions of Dallasaurus, named for the city of Dallas, and physically reconstructed the skeletons of Dallasaurus and another mosasaur, Tethysaurus, for the exhibit.

“The Ocean Dallas exhibit was a great opportunity to showcase the extraordinary story that the rocks in the Dallas area tell us about life in the deep past,” said Polcyn, whose mosasaur fieldwork extends from the United States to Angola.

“It was a great experience working with the museum’s creative and technical professionals on this project,” Polcyn said, “but it should be mentioned that many of the fossils in the exhibit were found by interested citizens walking the local creeks and rivers in search of these beasts, and it is they who deserve tremendous credit for bringing these finds to the public.”

Polcyn, who also is featured in a Perot Museum Career Inspirations video, created a skull reconstruction of the Perot Museum’s duck-billed dinosaur Protohadros, named by former SMU doctoral student Jason Head.

Other SMU fossils include dino footprint, croc egg and giant ammonite

The ammonite Parapuzosia, more than 3 feet in diameter and discovered in Dallas County, is on loan from SMU’s Shuler Museum to the Perot Museum.

SMU vertebrate paleontologist Dale A. Winkler, SMU research professor and director of the Shuler Museum, said other fossils on loan include:

a rare 110 million-year-old crocodile egg discovered with specimens of the crocodile Pachycheilosuchus trinquei west of Glen Rose. Pachycheilosuchus trinquei was named by Jack Rogers, a former SMU student. Rogers also found and identified the egg.
an ammonite, Parapuzosia, more than 3 feet in diameter and discovered in Dallas County.

In 2006, two SMU doctoral students assisted with excavation of the new species of dinosaur named for the museum’s namesakes, Margot and Ross Perot.

The dinosaur, Pachyrhinosaurus perotorum, was discovered by the Perot Museum’s Fiorillo and prepared by Perot Museum researcher Ronald Tykoski.

Using portable 3D laser technology, SMU scientists preserved electronically a rare 110 million-year-old fossilized dinosaur footprint from ichnospecies Eubrontes glenrosensis. The model is on display in the Perot Museum. (Image: SMU)

SMU doctoral student Christopher Strganac and former SMU doctoral student Thomas L. Adams helped dig Pachyrhinosaurus perotorum in Alaska. The only skeletal mount of its kind in the world, the 69 million-year-old skull is on display in the Life Then and Now Hall of the Perot Museum.

Also on view in the museum is a 3D cast of a dinosaur footprint that Adams and Strganac created from the laser scan of a 110 million-year-old fossilized dinosaur footprint, from ichnospecies Eubrontes glenrosensis, that was previously excavated and built into the wall of a bandstand at a Texas courthouse in the 1930s.

Another former SMU doctoral student highlighted among the exhibits is Yoshitsugu Kobayashi, who describes in a video the mentoring he received from the Perot’s Fiorillo while the two worked together in Alaska’s Denali National Park.

SMU’s Shuler Museum is named for Ellis W. Shuler, founder of the University’s geology department. Shuler was a driving force behind the precursor to the Perot Museum, the Dallas Museum of Natural History, established in 1936, said geologist James E. Brooks, SMU professor emeritus and SMU Provost emeritus. Brooks served on the Dallas Museum of Natural History’s board of directors from the 1980s until 2005.

Perot Museum presents a strong scientific face of Dallas
“Any first-rate city needs a strong public scientific face with which it’s identified,” Brooks said. “The Perot Museum is going to be that organization.”

Brooks was instrumental in the negotiations with Egypt that enabled the Dallas Museum of Natural History to bring Ramses the Great, its first major exhibit, to Dallas in 1989.

“Museums, in addition to educating children and the general public, also have the responsibility to generate new knowledge, because that makes the city a more intellectually vibrant place,” he said.

Brooks and Louis Jacobs serve on the Perot Museum’s Collections Committee, which serves in an advisory role to Perot Earth Sciences Curator Fiorillo. He and other SMU faculty and staff collaborate on field expeditions to Alaska and Mongolia.

SMU’s Innovation Gymasium contributes to Perot exhibit

Pegasus, an unmanned autonomous helicopter that can fight fires, was designed and built by Lyle Engineering students under Innovation Gymnasium Director Nathan Huntoon. (Image: SMU)

SMU’s Innovation Gymnasium is featured in an exhibit in the Texas Instruments Engineering and Innovation Hall at the Perot Museum, said Nathan R. Huntoon, director of the Innovation Gymnasium at the SMU Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering.

Central to the Engineering and Innovation Hall exhibit is an unmanned autonomous helicopter that can fight fires, built by SMU engineering students.

The Innovation Gym enables SMU students to hone their engineering and creative skills by working on real world, design challenges. Companies, researchers and non-profits all provide real challenges for the students to develop innovative solutions, often under intense time and financial pressure.

The firefighting helicopter featured in the new museum was the first such project.

Accompanying the helicopter is a video demonstration of the helicopter fighting simulated fires, as well as a touch-screen application with interviews of Huntoon and SMU students discussing engineering and innovation.

Huntoon has been a member of the Technology Committee and the Engineering and Innovation Committee for the Perot Museum.

James Quick, a professor of Earth sciences, as well as SMU’s associate vice president for research and dean of graduate studies, applauded the establishment of the Perot Museum, the result of decades of work by many people.

“Every great urban center should have an outstanding museum of nature and science to stimulate the imaginations of people of all ages and attract them to science,” Quick said. “The contribution the Perot Museum will make to North Texas cannot be overstated.” — Margaret Allen

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Tags Anthony Fiorillo, Bonnie F. Jacobs, Christopher Strganac, Dale A. Winkler, Diana Vineyard, Ellis W. Shuler, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, James E. Brooks, Louis L. Jacobs, Michael J. Polcyn, Neil Tabor, Perot Museum of Nature and Science, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Shuler Museum of Paleontology, Thomas L. Adams

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SMU Professor Louis Jacobs honored with prestigious award from Texas science teachers

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date October 31, 2012

Science Teachers Association of Texas to present Jacobs with 2012 Skoog Cup for promoting quality science education

LJacobs_SkoogAwardCup — SMU’s Louis L. Jacobs, left, receives the Skoog Award Nov. 9 from Dr. Gerald Skoog and Science Teacher’s Association of Texas Past President Ross Ann Hill on behalf of the science teachers of Texas who recognized him for his significant contributions to K-12 science education. (Photo: Diana Vineyard)

Whether hunting dinosaur bones, examining the science of evolution or mentoring students, SMU Earth Sciences Professor Louis L. Jacobs earns high marks from Texas K-12 science teachers.

The 7,200-member Science Teachers Association of Texas, STAT, is honoring Jacobs for his significant contributions to advance quality science education.

A world-recognized vertebrate paleontologist, Jacobs has been selected to receive the prestigious 2012 Skoog Cup.

Jacobs is a professor in SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences in Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences and is president of SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man.

Recipients are chosen for a sustained record of leadership in science education, advocacy for quality K-12 science education for all students, contributions to professional science organizations, and development of effective programs for pre-service and in-service teachers of science.

STAT presents the Skoog Cup annually to a deserving faculty or staff member at a Texas college or university.

Jacobs was nominated by Texas science teachers, including leaders of the Texas Earth Science Teachers Association, TESTA, which is a subgroup of STAT.

“Dr. Jacobs has been a stalwart supporter of TESTA and Earth science education,” said Alexia Hueske Bieniek, president of TESTA. “He has been our strongest link between Earth science in the classroom and Earth science in the research world. If TESTA needs a speaker, a field-based workshop or field trip, we can rely on Dr. Jacobs to be there no matter where ‘there’ might be.”

Jacobs began working with TESTA in 1997 when he partnered with the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History to launch the Lone Star Dinosaur Field Institute for Teachers. The teachers recovered a dinosaur from the hard sandstone of central Texas, then turned the experience into classroom activities. The massive dinosaur was later named Paluxysaurus jonesi, and the full skeletal mount is on display at the museum.

“Dr. Jacobs is truly committed to helping teachers and their students embrace the importance of scientific thinking and the value of field work in the Earth, life and environmental sciences,” said Linda Knight, past president of TESTA, past president of the National Earth Science Teachers Association and past president of STAT.

Jacobs dedicated to sharing knowledge and talents as leading scientist
Jacobs has consistently given his time, talents and knowledge to TESTA over the years, said Kathryn A. Barclay, TESTA Board of Directors.

“Dr. Jacobs models and exemplifies the collaboration between the K-12 science education community and the post-secondary University science level that is necessary to advance scientific knowledge and opportunities in Texas for our students,” Barclay said. “His dedication to sharing his knowledge and talents as a leading scientist in the field of vertebrate paleontology makes him our ‘Indiana Jones’ to Texas’ teachers and students.”

In addition to the Skoog Cup, the association also recognized Outstanding Science Teacher of the Year and Administrator of the Year.

“The honored educators and administrators embody the devotion to their calling that all our members share,” said Chuck Hempstead, executive director of the association, acknowledging Jacobs and the others. “As Texas public education continues to face the specter of budget cuts and outdated textbooks, we can take pride in these honorees’ dedication to tomorrow’s scientific leaders.”

Jacobs and the other award winners will be honored during the association’s annual Conference for the Advancement of Science Teaching, Nov. 8-10 in Corpus Christi. The Skoog Cup is named for the first award recipient, Dr. Gerald Skoog, professor emeritus, College of Education, Texas Tech University.

Science education and respect for learning benefit all
Jacobs, who has taught at SMU since 1983, recognizes his subject as a gateway to introduce science and math. “Paleontology is CSI investigation of very cold cases using the most up-to-date technology in a multidisciplinary approach.”

“The measure of good science is that it can be understood,” Jacobs said. “That dictum applies at all levels — from researchers to K-12 — among those who create new knowledge, those who deliver it and those who receive it. Everyone everywhere deserves to understand science for their own good and that of others. That is the importance of science education.”

Jacobs’ scientific passion is evolution, which he describes as “the unifying concept that links disparate facts about life into a coherent whole. It is the basis for understanding the interrelationships of life and planet Earth. More than that, life makes every topic more interesting, such as exploration of space and the search for life beyond the bounds of Earth.”

“The evolution of life on Earth ultimately leads to us and to all other species living here and now,” Jacobs said. “Our understanding of the relationships between Earth and the life it bears is fundamentally important to our future. Think of the Earth as performing experiments in climate change, and the fossil record explaining their effects on life. Now fast forward climate change to the future and see what we can expect.”

Breadth of teaching and research marks a lifetime of service
A mentor to students, Jacobs has conducted extensive field research worldwide. He has provided specimens to the new Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas. That includes the skeleton of Malawisaurus on display in the lobby, which he and his colleagues named and provided to the museum.

Jacobs’ field research is now focused on Angola in southwestern Africa. He co-leads Projecto PaleoAngola, a collaborative international scientific research program to understand the effect of the opening of the South Atlantic Ocean on ancient life.

As president of SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, Jacobs has launched a project with students and faculty for the Dedman College Institute for Interdisciplinary Research and Teaching to identify and evaluate four sites in Texas for potential designation as National Natural Landmarks of the National Park Service.

STAT was founded in 1957. It is a non-profit organization of elementary, middle and high school teachers, college educators and supervisors of science.

Tags Dedman College, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, Louis L. Jacobs, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences

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National Geographic: New Coelacanth Species Discovered in Texas

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date October 26, 2012

A new species of hundred-million-year-old coelacanth has been found, according to a new analysis of bone fragments.

The coelacanth research of SMU paleontology doctoral student John Graf has been covered by science journalist Ker Than for National Geographic’s Daily News web site. Graf identified a new species of coelacanth from fossil fish bones discovered in Texas.

Watch a video about the fossil, “100 million-year-old coelacanth discovered in Texas is new fish species from Cretaceous.”

Graf identified the fish from a 100 million-year-old skull fossil. He named the new species Reidus hilli. Graf said the new coelacanth is the first found in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Discovered in the Duck Creek Formation, the fossil dates to the Cretaceous, making it the youngest coelacanth discovered in Texas.

Read the full article.

EXCERPT:

By Ker Than
National Geographic News
One of the world’s oldest types of fish, coelacanths (pronounced SEE-la-kanths) are primitive, slow-moving fish that had been thought extinct until an individual was found off Africa in 1938. There are now over 40 known coelacanth species. The two that live today are called living fossils because they have remained virtually unchanged for 320 million years.

The newfound coelacanth has been dubbed Reidus hilli in honor of its discoverer Robert Reid, an artist who found the fish’s fossilized skull near his home in Forth Worth, Texas, in the late 1980s.

Reid donated the skull to nearby Southern Methodist University, where scientists quickly identified it based on unique bones, called gular plates, on the underside of its jaw.

“Almost from the get-go, we knew it was a coelacanth,” said study leader John Graf, a paleontologist at the university.

However, it wasn’t until Graf recently studied the skull bones in detail that he determined they had belonged to a previously unknown species of the ancient fish group.

Read the full article.

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Tags Dedman College, John F. Graf, Louis L. Jacobs, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Shuler Museum of Paleontology

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Sci-News.com: New Coelacanth from Early Cretaceous Discovered in Texas

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date October 26, 2012

A professional paleontologist has identified a new species of coelacanth from 100 million-year-old fossil remains found in the fossil-rich Duck Creek Formation, Texas.

The coelacanth research of SMU paleontology doctoral student John Graf has been covered by the Sci-News.com web site. Graf identified a new species of coelacanth from fossil fish bones discovered in Texas.

Watch a video about the new fossil, “100 million-year-old coelacanth discovered in Texas is new fish species from Cretaceous.”

Read the full article.

EXCERPT:

Sci-News.com
“Coelacanth fossils have been found on every continent except Antarctica. Few have been found in Texas,” said John Graf of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, author of a paper reporting the discovery in the Historical Biology: An International Journal of Paleobiology. “These animals have one of the longest lineages of any vertebrates that we know.”

“The specimen is the first coelacanth in Texas from the Cretaceous,” Graf said. “The Cretaceous geologic period extended from 146 million years ago to 66 million years ago.”

The paleontologist named the new species Reidus hilli for Robert T. Hill, a geologist with the US Geological Survey who led surveys of Texas during the 1800s. Hill described much of the geology of Texas, including the Duck Creek Formation. Hill is acclaimed as the “Father of Texas Geology.”

R. hilli is now the youngest coelacanth identified in Texas, previously the youngest was a 200 million-year-old coelacanth from the Triassic.

The specimen came from the Duck Creek Formation, which is a layer-cake band of limestone and shale about 40 feet thick. “The fossil was found in marine sediments,” Graf said. “It is one of many marine fossils found in the North Texas area, which 100 million years ago was covered by the Western Interior Seaway that divided North America from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean.”

Read the full article.

Follow SMU Research on Twitter, @smuresearch.

Tags Dedman College, John F. Graf, Louis L. Jacobs, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Shuler Museum of Paleontology

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UPI: Bones of ‘living fossil’ found in Texas

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date October 25, 2012

The coelacanth research of SMU paleontology doctoral student John Graf has been covered by the UPI wire service. Graf identified a new species of coelacanth from fossil fish bones discovered in Texas.

Watch a video about the new fossil, “100 million-year-old coelacanth discovered in Texas is new fish species from Cretaceous.”

Read the full article.

EXCERPT:

UPI
A 100-million-year-old coelacanth fossil discovered in Texas is that of a new species of the fish often called a “living fossil,” paleontologists say.

The coelacanth has one of the longest lineages — 400 million years — of any animal, and they were thought to have gone extinct 70 million years ago until live specimens were caught off the coast of Africa in 1938. Today, they can be found swimming in the depths of the Indian Ocean.

The coelacanth is often called a “living fossil” because it has not evolved significantly since reaching its current form about 400 million years ago.

Southern Methodist University paleontology graduate student John F. Graf discovered the Texas fossil, the first found in the state that has been dated to the Cretaceous period extending from 146 million years ago to 66 million years ago.

The new species, found in ancient marine sediments in North Texas and dubbed Reidus hilli, is now the youngest coelacanth fossil identified in the Lone Star State, he said.

Previously the youngest was a 200-million-year-old coelacanth from the Triassic.

Read the full article.

Follow SMU Research on Twitter, @smuresearch.

Tags Dedman College, John F. Graf, Louis L. Jacobs, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Shuler Museum of Paleontology

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VOA: New 100-Million-Year-Old Fish Discovered in Texas

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date October 25, 2012

4AB14138-2CD6-428C-930A-7DA9482D0D8F_w640_r1_s_cx0_cy1_cw0 — National Museum of Kenya researchers with a coelacanth cuaght by fishermen in Malindi, November 2001. (Image courtesy VOA)

The coelacanth research of SMU paleontology doctoral student John Graf has been covered by Voice of America. Graf identified a new species of coelacanth from fossil fish bones discovered in Texas.

Watch a video about the new fossil, “100 million-year-old coelacanth discovered in Texas is new fish species from Cretaceous.”

Book a live interview

John Graf, SMU, coelacanth, Reidus hilli

To book a live or taped interview with John Graf in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu.

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EXCERPT:

Voice of America
A paleontologist in Texas has identified a new species of coelacanth, an ancient fish most closely related to land-dwelling vertebrates, including humans. John Graf of Southern Methodist University says the pieces of the tiny fossil skull found recently near Fort Worth are 100 million years old, and represent a new family of this remarkably enduring fish.

Coelacanths have been around for 400 million years — one of the longest lineages in the animal kingdom — and their fossils have been found on every continent except Antarctica. Scientists thought they went extinct 70 million years ago, until fishermen off the African coast caught live specimens in 1938.

Modern coelacanths can grow to three meters. The newly identified species was probably no longer than 40 centimeters.

Read the full article.

Follow SMU Research on Twitter, @smuresearch.

For more SMU research see www.smuresearch.com.

Tags Dedman College, John F. Graf, Louis L. Jacobs, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Shuler Museum of Paleontology

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100 million-year-old coelacanth discovered in Texas is new fish species from Cretaceous

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date October 23, 2012

Species is now the youngest coelacanth from Texas; fish jaw and cranial material indicate a new family — Dipluridae — that was evolutionary transition between two previously known families

A new species of coelacanth fish has been discovered in Texas.

Pieces of tiny fossil skull found in Fort Worth have been identified as 100 million-year-old coelacanth bones, according to paleontologist John F. Graf, Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

The coelacanth has one of the longest lineages — 400 million years — of any animal. It is the fish most closely related to vertebrates, including humans.

The SMU specimen is the first coelacanth in Texas from the Cretaceous, said Graf, who identified the fossil. The Cretaceous geologic period extended from 146 million years ago to 66 million years ago.

Graf named the new coelacanth species Reidus hilli.

Coelacanths have been found on nearly every continent
Reidus hilli is now the youngest coelacanth identified in the Lone Star State.

Previously the youngest was a 200 million-year-old coelacanth from the Triassic. Reidus hilli is the first coelacanth ever identified from the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Coelacanth fossils have been found on every continent except Antarctica. Few have been found in Texas, Graf said.

The coelacanth fish has eluded extinction for 400 million years. Scientists estimate the coelacanth reached its maximum diversity during the Triassic.

The coelacanth was thought to have gone extinct about 70 million years ago. That changed, however, when the fish rose to fame in 1938 after live specimens were caught off the coast of Africa. Today coelacanths can be found swimming in the depths of the Indian Ocean.

Chart courtesy of the British Geological Survey.

Closest living fish to all vertebrates alive on land
“These animals have one of the longest lineages of any vertebrates that we know,” Graf said.

The SMU specimen demonstrates there was greater diversity among coelacanths during the Cretaceous than previously known.

“What makes the coelacanth interesting is that they are literally the closest living fish to all the vertebrates that are living on land,” he said. “They share the most recent common ancestor with all of terrestrial vertebrates.”

Coelacanths have boney support in their fins, which is the predecessor to true limbs.

“Boney support in the fins allows a marine vertebrate to lift itself upright off the sea floor,” Graf said, “which would eventually lead to animals being able to come up on land.”

Texas coelacanth, Reidus hilli, represents a new species and a new family
Graf identified Reidus hilli from a partial skull, including gular plates, which are bones that line the underside of the jaw.

“Coelacanths are not the only fish that have gular plates, but they are one of the few that do,” Graf said. “In fact, the lenticular shape of these gular plates is unique to coelacanths. That was the first indicator that we had a fossil coelacanth.”

Reidus hilli was an adult fish of average size for the time in which it lived, said Graf. While modern coelacanths can grow as large as 3 meters, Reidus hilli was probably no longer than 40 centimeters. Its tiny skull is 45 millimeters long by 26 millimeters wide, or about 1.75 inches long by 1 inch wide.

Reidus hilli’s total body size is typical of the new family of coelacanths, Dipluridae, which Graf describes and names. He chose the name for the least primitive coelacanth in the family, Diplurus, which lived during the Triassic.

“Reidus hilli helped me tie a group of coelacanths together into what I identify as a new family of coelacanths,” he said. “This family represents a transition between the two large groups of youngest living coelacanths from the fossil record, Mawsoniidae and Latimeriidae.”

Diplurid coelacanths are typically smaller than the two families with which they are most closely associated, Mawsoniidae and Latimeriidae. Mawsoniidae and Latimeriidae both have late Cretaceous members reaching large body sizes, ranging from 1 meter to 3 meters in total body length, Graf said.

Reidus hilli provides clues to missing coelacanth history
Reidus hilli is named, in part, for the amateur collector who discovered the fish, Robert R. Reid.

A Fort Worth resident, Reid has collected fossils for decades. He found the fossil specimen while walking some land that had been prepared for construction of new homes. Reid noticed the fossil lying loose on the ground in a washed out gully created by run-off.

Following Graf’s analysis, Reid was surprised to learn he’d collected a coelacanth — and a new species.

“When I found it, I could tell it was a bone but I didn’t think it was anything special,” said Reid, recalling the discovery. “I certainly didn’t think it was a coelacanth.”

At the time, SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs recommended to Reid that he donate the fossil and have it scientifically identified. Reid gave the fossil to SMU’s Shuler Museum of Paleontology in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.

“It is astounding what can be learned from the discoveries that people like Rob Reid make in their own backyards,” said Jacobs, an SMU professor of earth sciences and president of SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man. “The discovery of living coelacanths in the Indian Ocean after being presumed extinct for 70 million years highlights one of the great mysteries of ocean life. Where were they all that time? The new fossil from Texas is a step toward understanding this fascinating history.”

Reidus hilli is the latest of many fossils Reid has discovered. Others also have been named for him.

Reidus hilli discovered in Duck Creek Formation of North Texas
Reidus hilli came from the fossil-rich Duck Creek Formation, which is a layer-cake band of limestone and shale about 40 feet thick.

The fossil was found in marine sediments, Graf said. It is one of many marine fossils found in the North Texas area, which 100 million years ago was covered by the Western Interior Seaway that divided North America from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean.

“That is unique to younger coelacanths,” Graf said. “The oldest coelacanths were usually found in freshwater deposits and it wasn’t until the Cretaceous that we start seeing this transition into a more marine environment.”

Fossil also named for Robert T. Hill, “Father of Texas Geology”
Graf also named the fossil for Robert T. Hill, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey who led surveys of Texas during the 1800s. Hill described much of the geology of Texas, including the Duck Creek Formation. Hill is acclaimed as the “Father of Texas Geology.”

Identification of Reidus hilli brings the number of coelacanth species worldwide to 81, including two that are alive today. Sources report that 229 living coelacanths have been caught since 1938.

Graf reported his findings in “A new Early Cretaceous coelacanth from Texas,” published in Historical Biology: An International Journal of Paleobiology. Graf is a paleontology graduate student in SMU’s Huffington Department of Earth Sciences. — Margaret Allen

Follow SMU Research on Twitter, @smuresearch.

For more SMU research see www.smuresearch.com.

Tags Dedman College, John F. Graf, Louis L. Jacobs, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Shuler Museum of Paleontology

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Discover blog “80 beats”: Newly Unearthed Papers From Fossil Hunters Include An Ode to Bones

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date October 5, 2012

The science magazine Discover has covered the research of SMU vertebrate paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs and the infamous Bone Wars of the late 1800s.

In a post on Discover’s “80 beats” blog, the magazine reprinted the translation of a poem written by frontier naturalist and fossil hunter Jacob Boll.

Jacobs came across the poem at the American Museum of Natural History on a label on the back of Eryops specimen No. AMNH 4183.

SMU biology professor Pia Vogel translated the poem. Vogel and Jacobs worked with SMU English professor John M. Lewis to retain the essence of the poem in English.

The Bone Wars was a flurry of fossil speculation across the American West that escalated into a high-profile national feud. Drawn into the spectacle were two scientists from the Lone Star State, geologist Robert T. Hill, now acclaimed as the Father of Texas Geology, and Boll, who made many of the state’s earliest fossil discoveries.

Hill and Boll had supporting roles in the Bone Wars through their work for one of the feud’s antagonists, Edward Drinker Cope, according to Jacobs’ new study.

A professor in Dedman College‘s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Jacobs joined SMU’s faculty in 1983.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

Discover
This poem in praise of the Permian amphibian Eryops was scrawled on the back of a label now in the American Museum of Natural History by Jacob Boll, a Swiss-German fossil hunter involved in a tumultuous 19th-century paleontology feud.

Graduate students and post-docs do a lot of important work in science these days, in the names of their more eminent supervisors, and there was a similar set-up in the early days of American paleontology. Many of the fossils named by and attributed to E.D. Cope and O.C. Marsh, archenemies and the era’s most prominent paleontologists, were collected in the field by hired hunters like Boll and his contemporary Robert T. Hill, who both worked for Cope.

Paleontologists sifting through papers in the library of Southern Methodist University recently came across letters between Hill and Cope and, while examining specimens at AMNH, happened on Boll’s little poem.

Read the full story.

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Tags Dedman College, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, John Lewis, Louis L. Jacobs, Pia Vogel, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, SMU Department of Biological Sciences, SMU Department of English

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Wired: Bone Wars — The Texas Connection

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date October 5, 2012

Science journalist Brian Switek, who blogs for Wired magazine, covered the research of SMU vertebrate paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs and the infamous Bone Wars of the late 1800s.

Hill and Boll had supporting roles in the Bone Wars through their work for one of the feud’s antagonists, Edward Drinker Cope, according to Jacobs’ new study.

See an SMU video and press release about the research, “Texas frontier scientists who uncovered state’s fossil history had role in epic Bone Wars.”

A professor in Dedman College‘s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Jacobs joined SMU’s faculty in 1983.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Brian Switek
Wired
No episode in the history of American paleontology has been as discussed, and celebrated, as the Bone Wars of the late 19th century. This contentious scientific showdown, played out during the days of the Wild West, set the foundation for fossil studies in North America, and introduced naturalists and the public alike to magnificent creatures such as Diplodocus, Uintatherium, and Dimetrodon (to pick just three of dozens).

The main figures during this controversial episode were friends-turned-rivals E.D. Cope and O.C. Marsh. Both were experienced in the field, but, especially as they cemented their credentials as America’s leading paleontologists, both men increasingly relied on field assistants and a network of scientific connections to keep fossils flowing to their east coast labs.

Read the full story.

Tags Dedman, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, John Lewis, Louis L. Jacobs, Pia Vogel, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences

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Frontburner: Texas’ Bone Wars Studied by SMU Professor

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date September 10, 2012

Jason Heid, an editor with D Magazine’s popular Frontburner blog, covered the research of SMU vertebrate paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs and the infamous Bone Wars of the late 1800s.

The Bone Wars refers to a flurry of fossil speculation across the American West that escalated into a high-profile national feud. Drawn into the spectacle were two scientists from the Lone Star State, geologist Robert T. Hill, now acclaimed as the Father of Texas Geology, and naturalist Jacob Boll, who made many of the state’s earliest fossil discoveries.

Hill and Boll had supporting roles in the Bone Wars through their work for one of the feud’s antagonists, Edward Drinker Cope, according to Jacobs’ new study.

A professor in Dedman College‘s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Jacobs joined SMU’s faculty in 1983.

Jacobs co-leads Projecto PaleoAngola, a collaborative international scientific research program focused on the ancient life of Angola.

Besides the discovery of the first dinosaur of Angola, the team has uncovered mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, turtles and other Cretaceous marine animals, but the aim is also to create a strong and lasting institutional and scientific collaboration that has a multiplier effect in Angolan academia.

Jacobs is featured by National Geographic on its Explorers web site, which acknowledges the work of the world’s scientists whose research is made possible in part through funding from National Geographic.

Read the full blog entry.

EXCERPT:

By Jason Heid
Frontburner
SMU paleontologist Louis Jacobs has been studying the role of two Texas fossil collectors in the 19th century Bone Wars, which played out across the American frontier as rivals competed fiercely to uncover new fossils (and thus discover new extinct species.) In doing so he found a poem written by one of the men, Dallas naturalist Jacob Boll, whose Swiss family was among those that founded the utopian La Reunion colony here.

During a break in his field labors, Boll’s fascination with ancient bones prompted him to write in his native German an ode to fossils. Jacobs found the poem in the American Museum of Natural History on a label on the back of Eryops specimen No. AMNH 4183.

SMU biology professor Pia Vogel translated the poem. Vogel and Jacobs worked with SMU English professor John M. Lewis to retain the essence of the poem in English.

Read the full blog entry.

Tags Dedman College, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, John Lewis, Louis L. Jacobs, Pia Vogel, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, SMU Department of Biological Sciences, SMU Department of English

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Texas frontier scientists who uncovered state’s fossil history had role in epic Bone Wars

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date September 5, 2012

Follow @smuresearch

Treasure trove of archived letters discovered at SMU; Permian hunter’s German ode to a fossil is translated into English

In the late 1800s, a flurry of fossil speculation across the American West escalated into a high-profile national feud called the Bone Wars.

Drawn into the spectacle were two scientists from the Lone Star State, geologist Robert T. Hill, now acclaimed as the Father of Texas Geology, and naturalist Jacob Boll, who made many of the state’s earliest fossil discoveries.

Hill and Boll had supporting roles in the Bone Wars through their work for one of the feud’s antagonists, Edward Drinker Cope, according to a new study by vertebrate paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

The study by Jacobs expands knowledge about Cope’s work with Hill and Boll.

It also unveils new details about the Bone Wars in Texas that Jacobs deciphered from 13 letters written by Cope to Hill. Jacobs discovered the letters in an archive of Hill’s papers at SMU’s DeGolyer Library. The letters span seven years, from 1887 to 1894.

Hill, who worked for the U.S. Geological Survey, not only provided Cope with fossils of interest but also shared geological information about fossil locales.

Boll, who was a paid collector for Cope — as was the practice at the time — supplied the well-known paleontologist with many fossils from Texas. More than 30 of the taxa ultimately named by Cope were fossils collected by Boll.

“Fossils collected by Boll and studied by Cope have become some of the most significant icons in paleontology,” said Jacobs, an SMU professor of earth sciences and president of SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man.

Robert T. Hill USGS survey party — The survey party of USGS geologist Robert T. Hill explored Texas during the 1800s to report on the geology and resources to open the West to agriculture. (Credit: USGS)

Jacobs’ study, “Jacob Boll, Robert T. Hill, and the Early History of Vertebrate Paleontology in Texas,” is published in the journal Historical Biology as part of the conference volume of the 12th International Symposium on Early Vertebrates/Lower Vertebrates.

Rush to find fossils explodes during opening of the American West
Jacobs describes the late 1800s as a period of intense fossil collecting. The Bone Wars were financed and driven by Cope and his archenemy, Othniel Charles Marsh. The two were giants of paleontology whose public feud brought the discovery of dinosaur fossils to the forefront of the American psyche.

Cope, from Philadelphia, and Marsh, from Yale University, began their scientific quests as a friendly endeavor to discover fossils. They each prospected the American frontier and also hired collectors to supply them with specimens. Cope and Marsh identified and named hundreds of discoveries, publishing their results in scientific journals.

Over the course of nearly three decades, however, their competition evolved into a costly, self-destructive, vicious all-out war to see who could outdo the other. Despite their aggressive and sometimes unethical tactics to outwit one another and steal each other’s hired collectors, Cope and Marsh made major contributions to the field of paleontology, Jacobs said.

Hill first to identify and map the Cretaceous geology in North Texas
Born in 1858, Hill was a teenager when he left Tennessee as an orphan and arrived on the Texas frontier in 1874, says Jacobs’ study. Hill settled in Comanche, southwest of Fort Worth, where he went to work for his brother’s newspaper, the Chief. After earning a Bachelor of Science in geology from Cornell, Hill was hired as a field geologist for the USGS.

Hill is noted for being the first to identify and map the distinct rock formations in North Texas that correspond to the Earth’s Cretaceous geologic period from 146 million years ago to 65 million years ago, Jacobs said. For much of the Cretaceous, a shallow sea cut North America in half from the Arctic to the Gulf of Mexico. Dinosaurs roamed the coastal shoreline and huge reptiles swam the waters, an environment that preserved plants and animals as fossils for posterity millions of years later.

Through his reading of the letters, Jacobs found that Cope disagreed with the way Hill named the Cretaceous rock units, and told him so. Cope counseled Hill: “You mustn’t mind criticism. We all get it and get used to it; but it isn’t comfortable at first.”

In subsequent letters, said Jacobs, it’s apparent Hill had changed his approach, for which Cope offered him high praise: “I wish to say definitely that your discovery of the lower Cretaceous series in this country is the most important addition to our geology that has been heard for a long time.”

Hill contributed one of 1,000 species of backboned animals named by Cope
Jacobs’ research found that numerous letters reveal that Cope was persistent in trying to buy a Cretaceous fish fossil that Hill had collected. In various letters, Cope expresses a desire to view the fossil, each time stating his request in a different way. Hill ultimately sold Cope the fossil for $15. Cope named the specimen Macrepistius arenatus. It is housed at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

Hill’s fish specimen was one of 1,000 species of backboned animals, from fish to dinosaurs, that Cope described and named in his lifetime.

Also evident in the correspondence is a glimpse into the battle intrigue between Cope and Marsh, Jacobs said. In one letter, Cope angles to learn from Hill details about a new director of the USGS, to judge whether “our ? friend O.C.M.” would have an advantage.

Cope wrote to Hill, “Possibly you can find out how the land lies?”

Cope’s other Texas connection was through Jacob Boll
Boll was a much larger supplier to Cope and ultimately made significant contributions to the field of paleontology. Boll “is mentioned, usually in passing, in virtually every history of the subject,” according to Jacobs.

Born in 1828 in Switzerland, Boll was the first to discover vertebrate fossils in the Permian red beds along the drainages of the Wichita and Red rivers and their tributaries.

“The discoveries opened up an entirely new chapter in vertebrate evolution some 280 million years old,” Jacobs said. “Boll’s finds include some of the oldest close relatives of mammals whose evolution eventually led to humans.”

Boll belonged to one of the Swiss families that founded the mid-19th century utopian society La Reunion in Dallas, Jacobs said. Boll made Dallas his home sometime after 1874. He died in the field in the Permian red beds in 1880 from a snake bite.

At least one scholar has asserted that Cope — to keep the identity of his collectors secret from Marsh — never credited Boll for the Texan’s many fossil discoveries. Jacobs, however, found evidence that in 1878 Cope, in fact, did acknowledge Boll’s contribution, at least for the big-headed, semi-acquatic amphibian Eryops. Cope wrote that the fossil was “found … by my friend Jacob Boll.”

Boll’s fossil fascination erupted into a poem for Eryops
During a break in his field labors, Boll’s fascination with ancient bones prompted him to write in his native German an ode to fossils. Jacobs came across the poem in the American Museum of Natural History on a label on the back of Eryops specimen No. AMNH 4183.

SMU biology professor Pia Vogel translated the poem. Vogel and Jacobs worked with SMU English professor John M. Lewis to retain the essence of the poem in English.

“Now you will with some few others
Trek to the professor’s seat.
Awakened through his careful thought,
Be reassembled from your fragments,
To tell to others yet to come
From the sculpting of your teeth
How you lived and disappeared,
Name you he will, and what he found.”

While Hill and Boll were linked by their relationship to Cope, it isn’t known whether the two of them ever met, according to Jacobs.

”Hill and Boll both made major contributions to frontier science at an important time in American history,” Jacobs said. “They may have been nearly forgotten, but their lives have influenced much that came later.” — Margaret Allen

Tags Dedman College, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, John Lewis, Louis L. Jacobs, Pia Vogel, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, SMU Department of Biological Sciences, SMU Department of English

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National Geographic: Louis Jacobs, vertebrate paleontologist

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date January 25, 2012

National Geographic has launched its new Explorers web site, which includes SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs.

The Explorers site acknowledges the work of the world’s scientists whose research is made possible in part through funding from National Geographic.

In a video description of the site, National Geographic explains: “In 1888 a club was formed, with a mission to explore. Today that spirit lives on in a new generation of National Geographic explorers. Innovative thinkers who redefine exploration. Living the mission and making the world a better place.”

A professor in Dedman College‘s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Jacobs joined SMU’s faculty in 1983.

Jacobs co-leads Projecto PaleoAngola, a collaborative international scientific research program focused on the ancient life of Angola.

Read the National Geographics’ Q&A with Jacobs.

EXCERPT:

What did you want to be when you were growing up?
I always wanted to be a scientist. I did not care what kind because I liked it all. Looking back, although neither of my parents was a scientist, I think they guided me when I was young and I never got off the track. I am very grateful for that.

How did you get started in your field of work?
I always liked the out-of-doors and I liked everything about animals. As a kid, we had a retired geologist as a neighbor who taught me about fossils and showed me how to tie a diamond hitch on a pack mule using a sawhorse. As an undergraduate, I was most interested in the physiology of invertebrates, such as deep-sea vent worms, which were just being discovered at the time. When I went to graduate school, I decided that the most important subject for me is evolution, the unifying concept that links disparate facts about life into a coherent whole. I studied paleontology because fossils link Earth and life, and you can hold them in your hand. I still get a thrill every time I do. I was guided in paleontology by Everett Lindsay, George Gaylord Simpson, and Edwin Harris Colbert.

What inspires you to dedicate your life to vertebrate paleontology?
There is no more all-encompassing science than paleontology because no other subject melds life and Earth in such multifaceted and grand ways. Almost every technique used to study life today, and almost every technique used to study Earth, has an application in paleontology. It is ever refreshing and always interesting because the evolution of life on Earth ultimately leads to us and to all other species living here and now. Thus, our understanding of the relationships between Earth and the life it bears is fundamentally important to our future.

What’s a normal day like for you?
Every day is a collection of new challenges.

Do you have a hero?
Every person who does the best that can be done with honor and dignity is my hero.

What has been your favorite experience in the field? The most challenging?
My favorite experience is usually the one I am having at the time. Most recently it was standing in southern Angola, my feet set on the crystalline rocks of the African continent, looking west over the fault that marked the edge of the rift valley that widened during the past 100 million years to become today’s South Atlantic Ocean. It is like being part of the most obvious icon in earth sciences, the breaking of the puzzle-like fit of South America and Africa. We, Projecto PaleoAngola, are the first paleontologists to look at the coast of Angola with “plate-tectonic eyes,” to collect beautiful fossil vertebrates in abundance, and to investigate the history of life along the shores of this growing ocean.

Read the National Geographics’ Q&A with Jacobs.

Tags Bonnie F. Jacobs, Dedman College, Louis L. Jacobs, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, video

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Dallas Morning News: Prehistoric crocodile thought to have originated in Europe may be a native Texan

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date July 20, 2011

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.

The story, “‘Prehistoric crocodile thought to have originated in Europe may be a native Texan,” published in the Tuesday, July 20 edition of the Dallas Morning News.

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.

Full story available to Dallas Morning News subscribers.

EXCERPT:

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.

Full story available to Dallas Morning News subscribers.

Tags Dale A. Winkler, Dedman College, Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Institute for the Study of Earth & Man, Louis L. Jacobs, Michael J. Polcyn, Thomas L. Adams

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Daily Mail: Meet the 25 ft prehistoric Texas crocodile who lived 100 million years ago

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date July 19, 2011

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.

The story, “‘Its fossil looked like a loaf of bread from Subway’: Meet the 25ft prehistoric Texas crocodile who lived 100 MILLION years ago,” published in the Sunday, July 17 edition of the Daily Mail.

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.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

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.’

Read the full story.

Tags Dale A. Winkler, Dedman College, Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Institute for the Study of Earth & Man, Louis L. Jacobs, Michael J. Polcyn, Thomas L. Adams

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New Texas Native: 96-million-year-old crocodile Terminonaris makes its first appearance in Texas, switches origins

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date July 13, 2011

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.

“Now we know Terminonaris most likely originated here in Texas and dispersed northward,” said Adams, a doctoral candidate in SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences at SMU.

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.

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“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.'”

Co-authors on the article were SMU paleontologists Michael J. Polcyn, Dale A. Winkler and Louis L. Jacobs, and also paleontologist Octavio Mateus, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal.

The research was funded by Southern Methodist University???s Institute for the Study of Earth & Man. — Margaret Allen

Tags Dale A. Winkler, Dedman College, Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Institute for the Study of Earth & Man, Louis L. Jacobs, Michael J. Polcyn, Thomas L. Adams

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Youtube: Trailer of Projecto PaleoAngola documentary

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date June 8, 2011

SMU paleontologists Louis L. Jacobs and Michael J. Polcyn appear in a new documentary about Projecto PaleoAngola, a collaborative international scientific research program focused on the ancient life of Angola.

“The results of our fieldwork in the Cretaceous of Angola have been extraordinarily spectacular,” says Jacobs.

Besides the discovery of the first dinosaur of Angola the team has uncovered mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, turtles and other Cretaceous marine animals, but the aim is also to create a strong and lasting institutional and scientific collaboration that has a multiplier effect in Angolan academia.

A trailer of the upcoming documentary is available on YouTube. The film was written, directed, and produced by Kalunga Lima of LS films, based in Luanda Angola, and edited by Helena Alves. Lima interviewed Jacobs and Polcyn, who are both members of the Projecto PaleoAngola team.

Book a live interview

To book a live or taped interview with Louis Jacobs or Mike Polcyn in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call News and Communications at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu. (Photo: Octavio Mateus)

Earth magazine: “Mapping Dino Footprints in 3-D”

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date May 2, 2011

Earth%2C%20TAdams%2C%203D%2C%20May%202011.jpg

The May 2011 issue of Earth Magazine reports on the research of SMU paleontologists in the SMU Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.

In a project led by SMU paleontologist Thomas L. Adams, the scientists used portable laser scanning technology to capture field data of a huge 110 million-year-old Texas dinosaur track and then create to scale an exact 3D facsimile.

They have shared their protocol and findings with the public — as well as their downloadable 145-megabyte model — in the online scientific journal Palaeontologia Electronica.

The model duplicates an actual dinosaur footprint fossil that is slowly being destroyed by weathering because it’s on permanent outdoor display, says Adams. The researchers describe in the paper how they created the digital model and discuss the implications for digital archiving and preservation.

Scientists increasingly are using computed tomography and 3D laser scanners to produce high-quality 3D digital models, say Adams and his colleagues, including to capture high-resolution images from remote field sites. SMU’s full-resolution, three-dimensional digital model of the 24-by-16-inch Texas footprint is one of the first to archive an at-risk fossil, they say. Click here to see a large image of the Earth magazine cover.

EXCERPT:

Sam Lemonick
for Earth Magazine

Dinosaurs are now leaving their footprints on computers — in 3-D. Having 3-D scans of dinosaur footprints in a computer database could be the surest form of preservation of these delicate fossils, researchers say.

Dinosaur tracks found outdoors can’t always be excavated and moved indoors for preservation and study. That includes a theropod dinosaur footprint that is embedded in a bandstand made of limestone and fossil wood in Glen Rose, Texas — a town just southeast of Dinosaur Valley State Park. So a team led by Thomas Adams of Southern Methodist University in Texas decided to create a 3-D model of the print.

They used a high-resolution laser scanner the size of a small briefcase to map the shape of the footprint with beams of laser light from multiple angles. The laser scanner produces what is known as a point cloud, with each point representing a part of the object. The point cloud is then “smoothed” by software to produce a continuous surface.

Tags Christopher Strganac, Dedman College, Ellis W. Shuler, Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Louis L. Jacobs, Michael J. Polcyn, Thomas L. Adams

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Associated Press: Projecto PaleoAngola discovers Angola’s first dinosaur

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date March 23, 2011

The research of an international team co-led by SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs is receiving worldwide coverage for discovery of the first fossil of a dinosaur from Angola. A paper published in the “Annals of the Brazilian Academy of Science” described the long-necked, plant-eating sauropod based on a fossilized forelimb with unique skeletal characteristics that indicates it’s from a previously unknown dinosaur.

An Associated Press story covering discovery of the 90-million-year-old fossil has been published and aired by numerous media outlets, including The New York Times, Newsday, NPR, Forbes, The Daily Mail, and the Hamburger Abendblatt,

SMU paleontologist Michael J. Polcyn is also a member of the Projecto PaleoAngola team.

The PaleoAngola researchers have described Angola as a “museum in the ground” for the abundance of fossils there.

A professor in Dedman College’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Jacobs joined SMU’s faculty in 1983.

Besides Angola, Jacobs also does field work in Mongolia. His book, “Lone Star Dinosaurs” (1999, Texas A&M University Press) was the basis of an exhibit at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History that traveled the state. He consulted on the new exhibit, Mysteries of the Texas Dinosaurs, which opened in 2009.

Polcyn is director of the Visualization Laboratory in SMU’s Department of Earth Sciences and an SMU adjunct research associate.

A world-recognized expert on the extinct marine reptile named Mosasaur, his research interests include the early evolution of Mosasauroidea and adaptations in secondarily aquatic tetrapods. Polcyn’s research also includes application of technology to problems in paleontology.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By The Associated Press
Scientists say they have discovered the first fossil of a dinosaur in Angola, and that it’s a new creature, heralding a research renaissance in a country slowly emerging from decades of war.

A paper published Wednesday in the Annals of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences describes a long-necked, plant-eating sauropod, among the largest creatures ever to have walked the earth. The international team that found and identified the fossilized forelimb bone say it is from a previously unknown dinosaur, citing unique skeletal characteristics.

The fossil was found along with fish and shark teeth in what would have been a sea bed 90 million years ago, leading its discoverers to believe the dinosaur might have been washed into the sea and torn apart by ancient sharks.

The new dinosaur has been dubbed Angolatitan adamastor — Angolatitan means “Angolan giant” and the adamastor is a sea giant from Portuguese sailing myths.

Matthew F. Bonnan, a sauropod expert at Western Illinois University, was not involved with the Angolan research. But after reading the report, he said he expected their claim to have found a new dinosaur to hold up.

“I think they’ve been very careful,” he said, adding the find could add to knowledge about how sauropods adapted to different environments.

Bonnan also said it was “really cool” to see such research coming out of Angola.

“The neat thing about dinosaur paleontology is that it’s becoming more global,” he said, saying that was giving scientists a global perspective on the evolution of dinosaurs.

“The more people and places that we involve in science, the better off we all are,” Bonnan said.

Read the full story.

Tags Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Louis L. Jacobs, Michael J. Polcyn

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WFAA: North Texan finds dinosaurs in our backyards

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date March 22, 2011

WFAA-TV reporter Jonathan Betz has covered the flying reptile research of SMU paleontologist Timothy S. Myers and the rare discovery of the bones by amateur fossil hunter Gary Byrd. The story, North Texan finds dinosaurs in our backyards, aired March 17.

Myers identified fossilized bones discovered in Texas from a flying reptile that died 89 million years ago. The bones may be the world’s earliest occurrence of the prehistoric creature known as Pteranodon, Myers says.

Pteranodon was a type of pterosaur that lived about the same time as some dinosaurs, about 100 million to 65 million years ago. The only reptiles to dominate the ancient skies, pterosaurs had broad leathery wings and slim torsos.

The specimen identified by Myers had a wing span between 12 and 13 feet, or 3.6 to 4 meters. It was discovered in a rock unit that dates to early in the Late Cretaceous.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Jonathan Betz
WFAA
Look up and you’ll see Gary Byrd on a roof. That’s where his work is.

But it’s what’s underground that fascinates him.

Every free moment, the contractor roams North Texas digging in the dirt.

“When I was a kid, we’d run up and down creeks and look for stuff, and wonder what it was,” he said. “I just kept doing it, kept finding more interesting things.”

For most of his life, the 55-year-old has scoured construction sites and creek beds for dinosaur bones.

Often, he finds just dirt and rocks. But on occasion, Byrd has unearthed some truly extraordinary finds.

His treasures are enough to fill cabinets at Southern Methodist University.

“This specimen is 89 million years old,” he boasted, displaying the rare remains of a pterosaur, an ancient flying reptile that until now, had not been thought to live in Texas.
Byrd plucked the fossilized bones out of a half-built Plano subdivision.

“Finding a fossil of this magnitude is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of find,” said SMU researcher Timothy Myers. “A lot of paleontologists would probably go their entire careers without finding something this significant.”

And that’s not all. Byrd has even discovered a new dinosaur species, a large duck-billed herbivore called Protohadros byrdi — yes, named after Bird himself, who found the remains near a highway.

“That really got me going,” he confessed.

Read the full story.

Tags Dale A. Winkler, Dedman College, Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Louis L. Jacobs, Timothy S. Myers

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Discovery News: Mystery Pterosaur in Texas Takes Flight

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date March 2, 2011

Science journalist Tim Wall has covered the flying reptile research of SMU’s Timothy S. Myers on his popular Discovery News Online blog. Wall’s March 2 entry aptly warns “Don’t mess with Texas Pterosaurs!”

The specimen identified by Myers had a wing span between 12 and 13 feet, or 3.6 to 4 meters. It was discovered in a rock unit that dates to early in the Late Cretaceous.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Tim Wall
Discovery News Online
Don’t mess with Texas Pterosaurs! They are the oldest yet found in North America. One recently found specimen may even be the oldest Pteranodon in the world.

The mystery flying reptile a type of pterosaur, took a final plunge 89 million years ago into the waters of the inland sea that once covered the central United States. It sank to the bottom, fossilized, and lay there until amateur fossil hunter Gary Byrd found the ancient aviator’s bones. They were uncovered during the excavation of a culvert in a new subdivision north of Dallas.

Pterosaur Windsurfed Across Surface of Prehistoric Seas
“I found a couple parts of a fish, and then when I saw these my initial thought was that they weren’t fish,” Byrd, a roofing contractor by day, said in a Southern Methodist University press release. “I kind of knew it was something different — a birdlike thing. It’s very rare you find those thin, long bones.”

Byrd already has a species of duckbill dinosaur, Protohadros byrdi, named after him in 1994. He donated the fossils to Southern Methodist University’s Shuler Museum of Paleontology.

At the museum, Timothy Myers identified the bones as belonging to the left wing of a pterosaur, most likely a Pteranodon.

New Dino-Eating Pterosaur Evolved in Unusual Way
“If it wasn’t crushed so badly, it would be possible to determine if it really is Pteranodon,” Myers said in a SMU press release. “These bones are easily flattened. They are hollow inside, because they have to be lightweight to allow a pterosaur to fly. So they compress like a pancake as they’re embedded in layers of rock.”

Read the full story.

Tags Dale A. Winkler, Dedman College, Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Louis L. Jacobs, Timothy S. Myers

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Flying Texas reptile: World’s oldest Pteranodon? First specimen of its kind discovered as far south as Texas

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date February 28, 2011

Unique specimen is first of its kind discovered as far south as Texas, where it flew over a vast ancient sea

Fossilized bones discovered in Texas from a flying reptile that died 89 million years ago may be the earliest occurrence of the prehistoric creature known as Pteranodon.

Previously, Pteranodon bones have been found in Kansas, South Dakota and Wyoming in the Niobrara and Pierre geological formations. This likely Pteranodon specimen is the first of its kind found in Texas, according to paleontologist Timothy S. Myers at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, who identified the reptile. The specimen was discovered north of Dallas by an amateur fossil hunter who found various bones belonging to the left wing.

Adult pterosaur, toothless variety with about a 12-foot wing span
The specimen identified by Myers is an adult pterosaur of the toothless variety and while larger than most birds, wasn’t among the largest pterosaurs, Myers said, noting it had a wing span between 12 and 13 feet, or 3.6 to 4 meters. It was discovered in the Austin Group, a prominent rock unit in Texas that was deposited around 89 million years ago, early in the geological time period called the Late Cretaceous.

Pterosaurs, many of which survived on fish, lived at a time when a massive ancient sea cut across the central United States. The Western Interior Seaway was a shallow body of water that split North America in half from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico.

More than a thousand Pteranodon fossils have been unearthed from the middle part of the seaway.

No definitive Pteranodon specimens have emerged from the southern part that is now Texas.

The SMU specimen, if it is Pteranodon, would be the first discovered so far south in the Western Interior Seaway, said Myers, a postdoctoral researcher in SMU’s Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.

Myers reported and described the specimen in “Earliest Occurrence of the Pteranodontidae (Archosauria: Pterosauria) in North America; New Material from the Austin Group of Texas” in the Journal of Paleontology.

Left wing suggests Pteranodon; cause of death a mystery
Key to identifying the SMU fossils as Pteranodon is a humerus of 5.7 inches, or 14.5 centimeters. The humerus is the uppermost bone in the wing and attaches to the torso. The humerus of the SMU specimen, while complete, did suffer some damage during fossilization when it became compressed and distorted through millions of years of compaction.

“If it wasn’t crushed so badly, it would be possible to determine if it really is Pteranodon,” Myers said. “These bones are easily flattened. They are hollow inside, because they have to be lightweight to allow a pterosaur to fly. So they compress like a pancake as they’re embedded in layers of rock.”

While it’s difficult to narrow the humerus definitively to a specific genus and species, some features clearly identify the specimen as part of the Pteranodontidae family, most likely the genus Pteranodon. It exhibits, for example, the prominent warped deltopectoral crest that is characteristic of members of the Pteranodontidae family, called pteranodontids, he said.

Discovered along with the humerus were parts of the elongated fourth finger that in pterosaurs forms the wing. The SMU specimen’s metacarpal — at 20 centimeters — is incomplete, missing an estimated 37 percent of its length.

The fossils do not solve the mystery of the reptile’s cause of death, Myers said. But it appears the animal probably died in flight over the sea and then fell into the water. Its carcass probably floated for some time, so that when the flesh decomposed the bones separated at the joints, known as “disarticulation,” before they settled to the sea floor and were buried.

“We know it was disarticulated when it was buried because the bones weren’t preserved in correct anatomical position,” Myers said. “Abrupt truncation of the broken end of one of the bones and infilling of the break with sediment also indicates that the breakage and disarticulation took place prior to burial.”

May be oldest Pteranodon in world
If the specimen represents Pteranodon, Myers said, it would be the oldest one in North America by 1 million to 2 million years, and the second oldest pteranodontid in the world.

Pterosaurs were alive from the Late Triassic — more than 200 million years ago — to the Late Cretaceous, evolving from small-bodied creatures to some of the largest animals to ever inhabit the skies, Myers said. An older pteranodontid specimen, belonging to the genus Ornithostoma, previously was identified in England.

“Any pterosaur material is fairly rare to find unless you have exceptional preservation conditions. They are frail, fragile bones, and they require rapid burial to be well preserved,” Myers said. “The SMU specimen was deposited relatively far offshore in deep water, perhaps 50 to 80 feet deep. It’s fairly exceptional because of the number of elements. Typically you’ll only find one piece, or one part of a piece in the local rock.”

During the Early Cretaceous, many types of pterosaurs lived around the world, Myers said. The earliest ones had thin, razor-sharp teeth. In the transition from Early to Late Cretaceous, the toothed variety disappear from the fossil record and toothless forms, like the SMU specimen, become more common, he said.

Dallas area specimens illustrate pterosaur evolution
North Texas is fortunate to have had both the toothed and toothless kinds discovered in the area, illustrating the evolutionary transition, noted Myers.

Besides the toothless specimen just identified by Myers, an older toothed pterosaur, Aetodactylus halli, previously was discovered in the Dallas area. Aetodactylus, also identified by Myers, lived 95 million years ago.

“This new specimen adds a lot more information about pterosaurs in North America,” Myers said. “It helps constrain the timing of the transition from toothed to toothless because there’s only a few million years separating this specimen and Aetodactylus.”

Amateur fossil collector Gary Byrd of Rockwall, Texas, discovered the new SMU pterosaur fossils about 10 years ago.

A roofing contractor who keeps an eye out for fossils, Byrd made the find after stopping to look at two freshly excavated culverts while driving through a new subdivision in Collin County. Using a hammer and pick he dug out the bones and brought them to SMU paleontologists Louis Jacobs and Dale Winkler. Jacobs and Winkler indicated the fossils were likely a pterosaur. Byrd donated the fossils to SMU’s Shuler Museum of Paleontology.

“I found a couple parts of a fish, and then when I saw these my initial thought was that they weren’t fish,” Byrd recalled. “I kind of knew it was something different — a birdlike thing. It’s very rare you find those thin, long bones.”

This isn’t the first time Byrd has hit it lucky finding fossils. In 1994 he discovered dinosaur bones that he donated to SMU’s Shuler Museum. The specimen was identified as a rare primitive duck-billed dinosaur and named Protohadros byrdi after Byrd. — Margaret Allen

Tags Dale A. Winkler, Dedman College, Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Louis L. Jacobs, Timothy S. Myers

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3D digital download of giant Glen Rose dinosaur track is roadmap for saving at-risk natural history resources

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date February 7, 2011

Paleontologists propose the new term “digitype” for full-resolution three-dimensional digital models that preserve and archive endangered fossils

Portable laser scanning technology allows researchers to tote their latest fossil discovery from the field to the lab in the form of lightweight digital data stored on a laptop. But sharing that data as a 3D model with others requires standard formats that are currently lacking, say paleontologists at Southern Methodist University.

The SMU researchers used portable laser scanning technology to capture field data of a huge 110 million-year-old Texas dinosaur track and then create to scale an exact 3D facsimile. They share their protocol and findings with the public — as well as their downloadable 145-megabyte model — in the online scientific journal Palaeontologia Electronica.

The model duplicates an actual dinosaur footprint fossil that is slowly being destroyed by weathering because it’s on permanent outdoor display, says SMU paleontologist Thomas L. Adams, lead author of the scientific article. The researchers describe in the paper how they created the digital model and discuss the implications for digital archiving and preservation. Click here for the download link.

“This paper demonstrates the feasibility of using portable 3D laser scanners to capture field data and create high-resolution, interactive 3D models of at-risk natural history resources,” write the authors.

“3D digitizing technology provides a high-fidelity, low-cost means of producing facsimiles that can be used in a variety of ways,” they say, adding that the data can be stored in online museums for distribution to researchers, educators and the public.

SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs is one of the coauthors on the article.

“The protocol for distance scanning presented in this paper is a roadmap for establishing a virtual museum of fossil specimens from inaccessible corners across the globe,” Jacobs said.

Paleontologists propose the term “digitype” for digital models
Scientists increasingly are using computed tomography and 3D laser scanners to produce high-quality 3D digital models, say Adams and his colleagues, including to capture high-resolution images from remote field sites.

SMU’s full-resolution, three-dimensional digital model of the 24-by-16-inch Texas footprint is one of the first to archive an at-risk fossil, they say.

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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.

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The SMU paleontologists propose the term “digitype” for such facsimiles, writing in their article “High Resolution Three-Dimensional Laser-scanning of the type specimen of Eubrontes (?) Glenrosensis Shuler, 1935, from the Comanchean (Lower Cretaeous) of Texas: Implications for digital archiving and preservation.”

Laser scanning is superior to other methods commonly used to create a model because the procedure is noninvasive and doesn’t harm the original fossil, the authors say. Traditional molding and casting procedures, such as rubber or silicon molds, can damage specimens.

But the paleontologists call for development of standard formats to help ensure data accessibility.

“Currently there is no single 3D format that is universally portable and accepted by all software manufacturers and researchers,” the authors write.

Digitype is baseline for measuring future deterioration
SMU’s digital model archives a fossil that is significant within the scientific world as a type specimen — one in which the original fossil description is used to identify future specimens. The fossil also has cultural importance in Texas. The track is a favorite from well-known fossil-rich Dinosaur Valley State Park, where the iconic footprint draws tourists.

The footprint was left by a large three-toed, bipedal, meat-eating dinosaur, most likely the theropod Acrocanthosaurus. The dinosaur probably left the footprint as it walked the shoreline of an ancient shallow sea that once immersed Texas, Adams said. The track was described and named in 1935 as Eubrontes (?) glenrosensis. Tracks are named separately from the dinosaur thought to have made them, he explained.

“Since we can’t say with absolute certainty they were made by a specific dinosaur, footprints are considered unique fossils and given their own scientific name,” said Adams, a doctoral candidate in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences at SMU.

The fossilized footprint, preserved in limestone, was dug up in the 1930s from the bed of the Paluxy River in north central Texas about an hour’s drive southwest of Dallas. In 1933 it was put on prominent permanent display in Glen Rose, Texas, embedded in the stone base of a community bandstand on the courthouse square.

The footprint already shows visible damage from erosion, and eventually it will be destroyed by gravity and exposure to the elements, Adams said. The 3D model provides a baseline from which to measure future deterioration, he said.

In comparing the 3D model to an original 1930s photograph made of the footprint, the researchers discovered that some surface areas have fractured and fallen away. By comparing the 3D model with a synthetically altered version, the researchers were able to calculate volume change, which in turn enables reconstruction of lost volume for restoration purposes.

Model comprises 52 scans totaling 2 gigabytes
Adams and his research colleagues took a portable scanner to the bandstand site to capture the 3D images. They employed a NextEngine HD Desktop 3D scanner and ScanStudio HD PRO software running on a standard Windows XP 32 laptop. The scanner and laptop were powered from outlets on the bandstand. The researchers used a tent to control lighting and maximize laser contrast.

Because of the footprint’s size — about 2 feet by 1.4 feet (64 centimeters by 43 centimeters) — multiple overlapping images were required to capture the full footprint.

Raw scans were imported into Rapidform XOR2 Redesign to align and merge them into a single 3D model. The final 3D model was derived from 52 overlapping scans totaling 2 gigabytes, the authors said.

The full-resolution 3D digital model comprises more than 1 million poly-faces and more than 500,000 vertices with a resolution of 1.2 millimeters. It is stored in Wavefront format. In that format the model is about 145 megabytes. The model is free for downloading from a link on Palaeontologia Electronica‘s web site.

3D digital footprint also available as a QuickTime virtual object
A smaller facsimile is also available from the journal as a QuickTime Virtual Reality object. In that format, users can slide their mouse pointer over the 3D footprint image to drag it to a desired viewing angle, and zoom and pan. Click here for the link to the QuickTime video.

Besides the 3D model, included with the Palaeontologia Electronica article is a link to a pdf of the original 1935 scientific article in which SMU geology professor Ellis W. Shuler described and identified the dinosaur that made the track.

Shuler’s article, no longer in print, is “Dinosaur Track Mounted in the Band Stand at Glen Rose, Texas,” published in Field & Laboratory. The clay molds and plaster casts Shuler made of the bandstand track are now lost, Adams said.

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Alisa Winkler is an SMU adjunct faculty member and research assistant professor of paleontology in the SMU Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.

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“There’s no relationship between dinosaurs and armadillos, which are mammals, but it is interesting that something that looked like an armadillo was here in Texas 100 million years before highways.” — Jacobs

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