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99-Million-Year-Old Amphibian With Slingshot-style Tongue Found

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-A2f8nohPy0Y/X8O5yZaM1aI/AAAAAAAASq4/Oyou0ZScf2g1s2BAbcU2gtmQhwgmjlL-ACLcBGAsYHQ/s1280/fossil-in-amber-dinosaurs%2B%25281%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="360" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-A2f8nohPy0Y/X8O5yZaM1aI/AAAAAAAASq4/Oyou0ZScf2g1s2BAbcU2gtmQhwgmjlL-ACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h360/fossil-in-amber-dinosaurs%2B%25281%2529.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The skull encased in amber. Image credits Florida Museum / Edward Stanley. </td></tr></tbody></table> Fossils of bizarre, armored amphibians known as albanerpetontids provide the oldest evidence of a slingshot-style tongue, a new Science study shows. Despite having lizardlike claws, scales and tails, albanerpetontids -- mercifully called "albies" for short -- were amphibians, not reptiles. Their lineage was distinct from today's frogs, salamanders and caecilians and dates back at least 165 million years, dying out only about 2 million years ago. Now, a set of 99-million-year-old fossils redefines these tiny animals as sit-and-wait predators that snatched prey with a projectile firing of their tongue -- and not underground burrowers, as once thought. The fossils, one previously misidentified as an early chameleon, are the first albies discovered in modern-day Myanmar and the only known examples in amber. They also represent a new genus and species: Yaksha perettii, named after treasure-guarding spirits known as yakshas in Hindu literature and Adolf Peretti, the discoverer of two of the fossils. "This discovery adds a super-cool piece to the puzzle of this obscure group of weird little animals," said study co-author Edward Stanley, director of the Florida Museum of Natural History's Digital Discovery and Dissemination Laboratory. "Knowing they had this ballistic tongue gives us a whole new understanding of this entire lineage." <h4 style="text-align: left;">A fortunate mistake</h4>The discovery began with a bumble. In 2016, Stanley and Juan Diego Daza, lead author of the Science study and assistant professor of biological sciences at Sam Houston State University, published a paper presenting a dozen rare amber fossil lizards -- or so they thought. One juvenile specimen possessed a hodgepodge of bewildering characteristics, including a specialized tongue bone. After much debate and consultation with colleagues, the scientists finally labelled it an ancient chameleon, about 99 million years old, an estimate based on radiometric dating of crystals at the site where the fossil was found. When she read the study, Susan Evans, professor of vertebrate morphology and paleontology at University College London and an albie expert, instantly recognized the puzzling specimen. It was no chameleon. She emailed Daza. "I remember that as one of the worst days of my life," he said. But the paper also attracted the attention of an unexpected collaborator: Peretti, a gemologist who contacted Daza about another collection of amber fossil lizards from the same region of Myanmar. <div style="margin: 0px auto; width: 100%;">
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</div> Per Daza's recommendation, Peretti sent the collection to the University of Texas at Austin for CT scanning, a way of clarifying what lies inside. As Daza began cleaning up the scans, one fossil in particular caught his eye -- the complete skull of an adult albie. Most fossil albies are crushed flat or a jumble of bones in disarray. In 1995, Evans published the first description of a complete specimen, excavated in Spain, but "it was very much roadkill," she said. Even amber fossils suffer degradation, and soft tissues can mineralize, becoming difficult to work with. This specimen, however, was not only three-dimensional, "it was in mint condition," Stanley said. "Everything was where it was supposed to be. There was even some soft tissue," including the tongue pad and parts of the jaw muscles and eyelids. It was also the adult counterpart to the juvenile albie that had been mistaken for a chameleon. When Daza sent the scan to Evans, she was dazzled by its rich detail. "All my Christmases have come at once!" she wrote back. <h4 style="text-align: left;">'Weird and wonderful'</h4>Once classified as salamanders, albies' stippled, reinforced skulls led many scientists to hypothesize they were diggers. No one imagined them as having chameleonlike lifestyles, Stanley said. But, he added, "if you're going to misidentify an albie as any kind of lizard, a chameleon is absolutely what you would land on." Even though one is an amphibian and the other a reptile, they share several features, including claws, scales, massive eye sockets and -- we now know -- a projectile feeding mechanism. The chameleon tongue is one of the fastest muscles in the animal kingdom and can rocket from 0 to 60 mph in a hundredth of a second in some species. It gets its speed from a specialized accelerator muscle that stores energy by contracting and then launching the elastic tongue with a recoil effect. If the earliest albies also had ballistic tongues, the feature is much older than the first chameleons, which may have appeared 120 million years ago. Fossil evidence indicates albies are at least 165 million years old, though Evans said their lineage must be much more ancient, originating more than 250 million years ago. While armed with a rapid-fire tongue, Y. perettii was tiny: Based on the fossil skull, Daza estimates the adult was about 2 inches long, not including the tail. The juvenile was a quarter that size. "We envision this as a stocky little thing scampering in the leaf litter, well hidden, but occasionally coming out for a fly, throwing out its tongue and grabbing it," Evans said. The revelation that albies had projectile tongues helps explain some of their "weird and wonderful" features, such as unusual jaw and neck joints and large, forward-looking eyes, a common characteristic of predators, she said. They may also have breathed through their skin, as salamanders do. Even though the specimens are remarkably preserved, Stanley said CT scanning was essential to the analysis, revealing fine-scale features obscured in the cloudy amber. "They only come to life with CT scanning," he said. "Digital technology is really key with this amber material." Digitization also enabled the researchers, scattered around the world and hunkered down during COVID-19 quarantines, to collaboratively analyze and describe the specimens -- and then make the same material digitally available to others. <h4 style="text-align: left;">How are albanerpetontids related to other amphibians?</h4>Despite the level of preservation and completeness of the Y. perettii specimens, albies' exact place in the amphibian family tree remains a mystery. The researchers coded the specimens' physical characteristics and ran them through four models of amphibian relationships with no clear results. The animals' unusual combination of features is likely to blame, Evans said. "In theory, albies could give us a clue as to what the ancestors of modern amphibians looked like," she said. "Unfortunately, they're so specialized and so weird in their own way that they're not helping us all that much." But Y. perettii does put albies on a new part of the map. Northwest Myanmar was likely an island 99 million years ago and possibly a remnant from Gondwana, the ancient southern continental landmass. With two exceptions in Morocco, all other fossil albies have been found in North America, Europe and East Asia, which formerly formed a northern continental landmass. Daza said Y. perettii may have rafted to the island from mainland Asia or could represent a new southern record for the group. <h4 style="text-align: left;">We just missed them</h4>With such a wide distribution, why did albies vanish into extinction while frogs, salamanders and caecilians still exist today? We don't know. Albies almost survived to the present, fading out about 2 million years ago, possibly late enough to have crossed paths with our earliest hominid relatives, Evans said. "We only just missed them. I keep hoping they're still alive somewhere." The above story is based on <a href="https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/earliest-rapid-fire-tongue-found-in-amphibians/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Materials</a> provided by <a href="https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Florida Museum of Natural History</a>. Original written by Natalie van Hoose

99-Million-Year-Old Amphibian With Slingshot-style Tongue Found

The skull encased in amber. Image credits Florida Museum / Edward Stanley. Fossils of bizarre, armored amphibians known as albanerpetontids ...

Newly Discovered Volcanic Mineral Could Lead To More Efficient Batteries

Geochemistry, Researches 6:06 PM

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-C9YTnXz7Gac/X75x4hvFV8I/AAAAAAAASqY/x9l0mwjVlwUJ_F1yekIXODJ1VfCZPH-2QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1200/Newly%2BDiscovered%2BVolcanic%2BMineral%2BCould%2BLead%2BTo%2BMore%2BEfficient%2BBatteries%2B%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1200" height="426" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-C9YTnXz7Gac/X75x4hvFV8I/AAAAAAAASqY/x9l0mwjVlwUJ_F1yekIXODJ1VfCZPH-2QCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h426/Newly%2BDiscovered%2BVolcanic%2BMineral%2BCould%2BLead%2BTo%2BMore%2BEfficient%2BBatteries%2B%25281%2529.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Petrovite, a new mineral described from Tolbachik Volcano in Siberia, could lead to the development of more efficient batteries. SPBU </td></tr></tbody></table>  Volcanoes rank among the most destructive and awe-inspiring phenomena on the planet. But these fiery fissures do much more than just destroy. They also create. The research team headed by Stanislav Filatov, Professor at the Department of Crystallography at St Petersburg University, has discovered a new mineral species in Kamchatka – petrovite. The scientists named the find in honour of Tomas Petrov, an outstanding crystallographer and Professor at St Petersburg University. He together with his students Arkady Glikin and Sergei Moshkin, was the first in the world to create a technology for growing jewellery malachite. For more than 40 years, Stanislav Filatov, Professor at St Petersburg University, together with colleagues from other research institutions in Russia, has been studying the mineralogy of scoria cones and lava flows of fumaroles in Kamchatka. They were formed after two major eruptions of Tolbachik Volcano – in 1975-1976 and 2012-2013. This territory is unique in its mineralogical diversity. In recent years, researchers have discovered dozens of new minerals here, many of which are one-of-a-kind in the world. <div style="width:100%;margin: 0px auto">
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</div> The recent find by the scientists from St Petersburg University, petrovite, <span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: justify; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Na<sub style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; bottom: -0.25em; font-size: 10.5px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 0; position: relative; text-align: justify; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">10<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: justify; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">CaCu<sub style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; bottom: -0.25em; font-size: 10.5px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 0; position: relative; text-align: justify; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">2<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: justify; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">(SO<sub style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; bottom: -0.25em; font-size: 10.5px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 0; position: relative; text-align: justify; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">4<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: justify; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">)<sub style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; bottom: -0.25em; font-size: 10.5px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 0; position: relative; text-align: justify; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">8, occurs as blue globular aggregates of tabular crystals with gaseous inclusions. ‘The copper atom in the crystal structure of petrovite has an unusual and very rare coordination of seven oxygen atoms. Such coordination is characteristic of only a couple of compounds, as well as of saranchinaite, which was discovered by our colleagues from St Petersburg University – the research team of Professor Oleg Siidra,’ said the project manager, Professor Stanislav Filatov. The mineral consists of oxygen atoms, sodium sulphur and copper, which form a porous framework. The voids are connected to each other by channels through which relatively small sodium atoms can move. The scientists have therefore established that the structural type of petrovite is promising for ionic conductivity and can be used as a cathode material for sodium ion batteries. ‘At present, the biggest problem for this use is the small amount of a transition metal – copper – in the crystal structure of the mineral. It might be solved by synthesising a compound with the same structure as petrovite in the laboratory,’ said Stanislav Filatov. The study was conducted by a team of scientists from various research institutions from all over Russia. Mineralogical diagnostic assessment was carried out by Lidiya Vergasova, a senior research associate at the Institute of Volcanology and Seismology of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. She is a great expert in the mineralogy of volcanic exhalations in Russia. Andrey Shablinskii, an associate of the Grebenshchikov Institute of Silicate Chemistry and a St Petersburg University graduate, studied the crystal structure of the new mineral type. He described it together with Sergey Krivovichev, Professor at St Petersburg University, Head of the Kola Science Centre, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Additionally, Andrey Shablinskii carried out an X-ray phase analysis and, together with Stanislav Filatov, head of the research team, Professor at St Petersburg University, identified the optical constants of the mineral. The chemical composition of the mineral was determined by Svetlana Moskaleva, a research associate at the Institute of Volcanology and Seismology of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Despite the fact that most of the recent discoveries of mineralogists and crystallographers of St Petersburg University are associated with the Kamchatka Peninsula, scientists discover many new minerals in the most unusual places. Among the finds in 2008–2017 there are samples from polar Yakutia, the Kola Peninsula (Kovdor deposit), Israel (the Negev Desert), Greece, Tanzania, South Africa, Jordan and many others. More information about these discoveries can be found at the virtual exhibition of the Mineralogical Museum of St Petersburg University on the IZI.Travel platform.   The above story is based on <a href="https://english.spbu.ru/news/4037-st-petersburg-university-scientists-discover-a-new-mineral-that-looks-promising-for-producing-batteries" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">materials </a>provided by <a href="https://english.spbu.ru/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Saint Petersburg State University.</a>

Newly Discovered Volcanic Mineral Could Lead To More Efficient Batteries

Petrovite, a new mineral described from Tolbachik Volcano in Siberia, could lead to the development of more efficient batteries. SPBU Vol...

Researchers Discover 'Missing' Piece of Hawaii's Formation

Earth History, Hawaii, Tectonic 6:25 PM

Researchers Discover 'Missing' Piece of Hawaii's Formation

The journey of Hawaii's pancake from its creation at the mantle plume to where it slipped under the Pacific plate and sunk deep into t...

The Helicoprion Was A Shark With A Buzzsaw In Its Mouth

extinction, Fossils 5:07 PM

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RL5bdWVIHoE/X7vAe0H_MDI/AAAAAAAASp4/ZivuChCauzcXDHumF4HC71K3ihKbSAi7wCLcBGAsYHQ/s1202/helicoprion-reconstruction.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="724" data-original-width="1202" height="386" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RL5bdWVIHoE/X7vAe0H_MDI/AAAAAAAASp4/ZivuChCauzcXDHumF4HC71K3ihKbSAi7wCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h386/helicoprion-reconstruction.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Helicoprion. Photo: James St. John / Flickr / CC BY 2.0 </td></tr></tbody></table> Terrorizing the seas nearly 300 million years ago, the Helicoprion was a bizarre species of shark that sported one of the craziest sets of teeth in natural history. This unusual feature has been the subject of widespread debate in the scientific community for a century, and it’s easy to see why. The only fossils that have been found of this animal contain sets of spiraled teeth, and scientists are still trying to figure out just how they would have possibly fit into the shark’s mouth. Of all the vexing fossil mysteries that have confounded paleontologists, few have been as persistent as that of Helicoprion – the name given to petrified whorls of elongate teeth that look like 270 million year old renditions on the theme of buzzsaw. What sort of animal did this Paleozoic remnant belong to, and where did the circular blade actually fit on the animal? Today, Idaho State University paleontologist Leif Tapanila and coauthors announce the answer to a conundrum that has puzzled paleontologists for over a century. Russian geologist Alexander Petrovich Karpinsky coined the name Helicoprion in 1899. Even though the coiled fossils superficially resembled the shelled ammonites and nautilus paleontologists often found in the marine fossil record, Karpinsky realized that the petrifications were actually part of a shark-like fish. But there was no obvious indication of where such an unusual feeding apparatus might fit. Karpinsky’s best guess was that Helicoprion bore the toothy spiral on its nose, like a permanently-tensed party favor studded with a fearsomely pointed dentition. Other paleontologists disagreed. While the American paleontologist Charles Rochester Eastman unabashedly praised the depth of scope of Karpinsky’s monograph – “not one in one hundred essays on paleontological subjects receives anything like the elaborate care and finish” that Karpinsky gave “the remarkable ichthyodorulites” called Helicoprion – the researcher brushed aside his colleague’s spiral-snouted restoration. “Few will be prepared to admit, however, that this highly fanciful sketch can be taken seriously, and, therefore, the least said about it the better,” Eastman wrote. Instead, the American paleoichthyologist pointed out that the “teeth” might actually be spines that jutted from elsewhere on the prehistoric shark’s body. (Karpinksy soon considered another alternative placement, too, with the whorl hanging off the putative shark’s tail.) Lacking a well-preserved Helicoprion with a whorl in place, though, the prehistoric enigma remained open to anyone who wanted to approach the problem. <div style="margin: 0px auto; width: 100%;">
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</div> Paleontologists and ichthyologists weren’t shy about proffering new ideas on the nature of Helicoprion. Over a century of speculation produced visions of sharks with whorls hanging off their snouts, lower jaws, dorsal fins, caudal fins, and even embedded deep in their throats. (Click on the image above, by Ray Troll, for a look at the gallery of hypotheses.) Even after paleontologists generally agreed that the teeth belonged at the tip of a long lower jaw, artists and scientists still played with what leeway they had. Was the fearsome spiral fully enclosed in the jaw, or did it hang down awkwardly in an external coil? The true anatomy of Helicoprion was frustratingly difficult to pin down. When I wrote about Helicoprion in 2011, I highlighted the end-of-the-jaw placement for the tooth whorl as the most likely arrangement. But artist and major Helicoprion fan Ray Troll quickly got in touch with me to say that the classic image probably wasn’t correct, after all. New research was set to give Helicoprion a major makeover. That study has just been published today in Biology Letters, and focuses on a specimen found decades ago. In 1966, paleontologist Svend Erik Bendix-Almgreen described a Helicoprion fossil that had been found 16 years earlier in the Waterloo Phosphate mine near Montpelier, Idaho. This specimen was special. Not only did it display a lovely tooth whorl – which Bendix-Almgreen suggested fit at the end of an elongate lower jaw – but the fossil also contained bits of cartilage from the upper jaw and skull. Despite the extra material, though, Bendix-Almgreen thought that the specimen had been disarticulated and crushed so extensively that properly reassembling Helicoprion was impossible. The jaws sat in the Idaho Museum of Natural History for decades, one of thirty jaws in the institution’s collections, until student Jesse Pruitt started asking curator Leif Tapanila about the strange Permian fish. “He started poking around and asking questions about Helicoprion jaws,” Tapanila says, about “why the jaws were this way and not that.” In particular, Tapanila recalls, Pruitt wanted to know whether the coiled tooth row was a real feature of a living animal or something that happened after death – an artifact of death rather than a representation of life. Tapanila and Pruitt concluded that the Helicoprion whorls really did have their buzzsaw shape in life, but they didn’t stop there. Along with their colleagues and input from Ray Troll, the researchers launched a new, detailed investigation into the museum’s Helicoprion stores. The fossil Bendix-Almgreen described, in particular, seemed to have the potential to yield new clues through CT scans that could visualize the internal secrets of the specimen. The scans, taken at the University of Texas High-Resolution X-ray CT Facility in Austin, “came out brilliant” Tapanila says. Not only was the fossil in better shape than expected, but the specimen elucidated two critical facets of the animal – that Helicoprion didn’t have an elongated jaw, and that it wasn’t really a shark. Contrary to the popular long-jaw restorations, the tooth whorl of Helicoprion totally filled the lower jaw. The jaw joint sat right behind the weapon, and the spiral dentition was buttressed by jaw cartilage on either side. And, even stranger, Helicoprion didn’t have any upper teeth to speak of. The spiral of continually-added teeth was the creature’s entire dental armament. Scraps of Helicoprion skull indicate that the fish wasn’t really a shark, either. Of course, as Tapanila points out, the word “shark” doesn’t have the simple definition we might expect. “‘Shark’ doesn’t have biological meaning anymore,” Tapanila told me, confiding “If I talk to a fish expert, and I say ‘shark,’ they get very angry.” Ichthyologists are rapidly rearranging the fish family tree and the definitions for different groups. All the same, the skull cartilage of Helicoprion included a very specific double connection that is characteristic of a group of cartilaginous fish called Euchondrocephali – commonly known as ratfish and chimeras. Helicoprion was not a buzzsaw predecessor to great white or tiger sharks. The fish belonged to the lineage one branch over, near the evolutionary split where the ancestors of living sharks and ratfish parted ways. (And this pulls other weird prehistoric fish with fearsome teeth – such as the scissor-jawed Edestus – away from the shark line and into the ratfish line.) In general form, Tapanila and Troll expect, Helicoprion was an archaic member of the wider ratfish group that looked quite shark-like. And these predators reached impressive sizes. Tapanila estimates that a large Helicoprion would have been about 20 to 25 feet long.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MEm_VYlZZio/X7vBnxjRZRI/AAAAAAAASqA/w4X0SgVPIv0k7y2vjSHluH1zmRR_7ltiwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1200/Helicoprion_tooth_whorl%2B%25281%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1166" data-original-width="1200" height="622" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MEm_VYlZZio/X7vBnxjRZRI/AAAAAAAASqA/w4X0SgVPIv0k7y2vjSHluH1zmRR_7ltiwCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h622/Helicoprion_tooth_whorl%2B%25281%2529.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Helicoprion sp. - fossil shark tooth whorl from the Permian of Idaho, USA. photo by: James St. John </td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> </div> After over 100 years, the mystery of the Helicoprion jaw is solved. That doesn’t make the prehistoric fish any less enigmatic. With only a single blade of teeth, how did Helicoprion actually catch and consume prey? Tapanila and other researchers are only just starting to investigate this question. Based on the new restoration, Tapanila suggests that “The analogy to a circular saw is almost perfect.” Not only was the tooth whorl shaped like a saw, but, Tapanila points out, “as the jaw closed [the tooth whorl] rotated the teeth backwards in a rotational saw motion.” Such a strategy would have worked well on squid and other soft-bodied cephalopods of the 270 million year old seas. But even with this realization, we are still left with the question of how such a strange arrangement – singular in the history of life on Earth – evolved in the first place. Tapanila and colleagues are keeping after the enigmas surrounding the fish through studying Helicoprion fossils found in Idaho and elsewhere, including a lower jaw that’s even bigger than the one used in the new Biology Letters study. “You know the line from JAWS, ‘You’re going to need a bigger boat’? Well, I need a bigger CT machine,” Tapanila says. “I have the world’s largest Helicoprion specimen in the world sitting in my museum, and I see evidence for jaws.” The two-foot-wide jaw is too big for a conventional CT scanner, though. “It’s got all the features we hope,” Tapanila says, “but it’s massive, so I need to bring it to [a facility in] Pasadena.” That giant jaw will yield additional clues, and raise new questions. Tapanila suspects that the larger jaw belonged to a different species of Helicoprion than the one he and his team previously scanned, and the features of the bigger jaw might provide new information about how these buzzsaw fish differed across species and body sizes. There are still many secrets to draw out from the jaws of Helicoprion. Yet, even with the remaining mysteries, to see the new vision come out of the rock is a dream come true for Ray Troll. “It’s been a twenty year quest for me,” he says, which all started “when I first saw a whorl and became obsessed by it.” “I’ve drawn the animal so many hundreds of times. Literally hundreds.” And not only is Troll “thrilled” to see the new research, but the new identity of Helicoprion is a bit of a personal victory. Troll heads the wonderfully geeky band Ray Troll and the Ratfish Wranglers. For so long, it seemed that the object of his endless fascination was a shark, but now, Troll says, “It’s really cool to have [Helicoprion] circle back around” to the ratfish side of the family tree. “My two obsessions have all converged,” Troll enthuses, in a spectacular ratfish relative that has for so long challenged scientists to chase after its circuitous spiral trail.

The Helicoprion Was A Shark With A Buzzsaw In Its Mouth

Helicoprion. Photo: James St. John / Flickr / CC BY 2.0 Terrorizing the seas nearly 300 million years ago, the Helicoprion was a bizarre s...

Man Becomes Overnight Millionaire After Meteorite Crashes Through His Roof

Meteorite, News 5:57 PM

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-t_OIPGnh6-A/X7aHZhdjB-I/AAAAAAAASpk/ED8fsPuxIIYuH6MXsPK6fPE65NoPSCuFQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1228/Man%2BBecomes%2BOvernight%2BMillionaire%2BAfter%2BMeteorite%2BCrashes%2BThrough%2BHis%2BRoof.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="689" data-original-width="1228" height="360" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-t_OIPGnh6-A/X7aHZhdjB-I/AAAAAAAASpk/ED8fsPuxIIYuH6MXsPK6fPE65NoPSCuFQCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h360/Man%2BBecomes%2BOvernight%2BMillionaire%2BAfter%2BMeteorite%2BCrashes%2BThrough%2BHis%2BRoof.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> The space rock, which weighed around 2.1kg, turned out to be worth around US $1.85 million. An Indonesian coffin maker became an instant millionaire when a meteorite worth US $1.85 million crashed through the roof of his house. Josua Hutagalung, 33, was working on a coffin next to his house when the space rock smashed through the veranda at the edge of his living room in Kolang, North Sumatra. The single stone, weighing 2.1kg, left a large hole in the tin roof and ended up buried 15cm deep in the soil beside the house. Metoerites are priced by gram with the cheapest pure-rock varieties fetching  $0.50 to $5.00 per gram., and those with rare extra-terrestrial metals selling for up to $1,000 per gram. Josua, who managed to dig the rock out, said the meteorite was still warm and partially broken when he touched it. It is estimated to be 4.5 billion years old and is classified as CM1/2 carbonaceous Chondrite, an extremely rare variety - worth around $1.85million, or $857 per gram. <div style="margin: 0px auto; width: 100%;">
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</div> 'When I lifted it, the stone was still warm and I brought it into the house,' he told Kompas.       He added: 'The sound was so loud that parts of the house were shaking too. And after I searched, I saw that the tin roof of the house had broken. 'I strongly suspect that this rock is indeed an object from the sky that many people call a meteorite. Because it is impossible someone deliberately threw it or dropped it from above.'   Local residents in the area had heard large booming sounds which shook their houses. Dozens have visited Josua's house to see the rare object. 'Many people have come, out of curiosity, and want to see the stone,' he said. The meteorite, which is estimated to be 4.5 billion years old, is worth around £1.4 million. Josua was given the equivalent to 30 years' salary for the space rock, according to The Sun. The father of three said he would use some of the money to build a church in his community. 'I have also always wanted a daughter, and I hope this is a sign that I will be lucky enough now to have one,' he told The Sun.    US meteorite expert Jared Collins, who secured part of the main mass, said: 'My phone lit up with crazy offers for me to jump on a plane and buy the meteorite. 'It was in the middle of the Covid crisis and frankly it was a toss-up between buying the rock for myself or working with scientists and collectors in the US. 'I carried as much money as I could muster and went to find Josua, who turned out to be a canny negotiator.' Collins shipped the meteorite to the US, where it was bought by Jay Piatek, a doctor and meteorite collector from Indianapolis, according to the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Texas, US.    The meteorite is classified as CM1/2 carbonaceous Chondrite, an extremely rare variety, the Institute recorded.         Three further fragments of the meteorite were found in nearby areas when it crashed in August - one was discovered in a paddy field less than 3km from Josua's home. The meteorite, which has been officially named as Kolang, is estimated to have a total weight of 2.5kg, according to the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Texas, US.    The interior of the meteor is dark grey and black, with small light-coloured speckles.    'It was a rock meteorite,' The Head of the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (Lapan), Thomas Djamaluddin, told Kumparan. He said it was a rare phenomenon for the meteorite to fall in a residential area. He added: 'The amount of waste rock from the formation of the solar system is very large in space. Most of the meteorites fall in locations far from settlements, such as oceans, forests, or deserts.' In August, as many as 200 fragments of a 4.6 billion-year-old meteorite fell in Santa Filomena, northeastern Brazil.

Man Becomes Overnight Millionaire After Meteorite Crashes Through His Roof

The space rock, which weighed around 2.1kg, turned out to be worth around US $1.85 million. An Indonesian coffin maker became an instant m...

Ancient Fragment of The Pacific Ocean Found Buried 400 Miles Below China

Earth History, Tectonic 6:17 PM

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ruXqhUAuuac/X7U6bllcIqI/AAAAAAAASpY/09voMWwDXgwr04NKTjUzBZyIh7Mq5nOFACLcBGAsYHQ/s1512/Ancient%2BFragment%2Bof%2BThe%2BPacific%2BOcean%2BFound%2BBuried%2B400%2BMiles%2BBelow%2BChina.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1010" data-original-width="1512" height="428" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ruXqhUAuuac/X7U6bllcIqI/AAAAAAAASpY/09voMWwDXgwr04NKTjUzBZyIh7Mq5nOFACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h428/Ancient%2BFragment%2Bof%2BThe%2BPacific%2BOcean%2BFound%2BBuried%2B400%2BMiles%2BBelow%2BChina.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Illustration of a process where holes in the subducting Pacific plate would allow heat to escape, driving volcanic activity in the Changbaishan region at the border of China and North Korea, even as the plate continues to sink into the mantle. (Image courtesy of F. Niu/Rice University) </td></tr></tbody></table>  In a study that gives new meaning to the term “rock bottom,” seismic researchers have discovered the underside of a rocky slab of Earth’s surface layer, or lithosphere, that has been pulled more than 400 miles beneath northeastern China by the process of tectonic subduction. The study, published by a team of Chinese and U.S. researchers in Nature Geoscience, offers new evidence about what happens to water-rich oceanic tectonic plates as they are drawn through Earth’s mantle beneath continents. Rice University seismologist Fenglin Niu, a co-corresponding author, said the study provides the first high-resolution seismic images of the top and bottom boundaries of a rocky, or lithospheric, tectonic plate within a key region known as the mantle transition zone, which starts about 254 miles (410 kilometers) below Earth’s surface and extends to about 410 miles (660 kilometers). “A lot of studies suggest that the slab actually deforms a lot in the mantle transition zone, that it becomes soft, so it’s easily deformed,” Niu said. How much the slab deforms or retains its shape is important for explaining whether and how it mixes with the mantle and what kind of cooling effect it has. Earth’s mantle convects like heat in an oven. Heat from Earth’s core rises through the mantle at the center of oceans, where tectonic plates form. From there, heat flows through the mantle, cooling as it moves toward continents, where it drops back toward the core to collect more heat, rise and complete the convective circle. Previous studies have probed the boundaries of subducting slabs in the mantle, but few have looked deeper than 125 miles (200 kilometers) and none with the resolution of the current study, which used more than 67,000 measurements collected from 313 regional seismic stations in northeastern China. That work, which was done in collaboration with the China Earthquake Administration, was led by co-corresponding author Qi-Fu Chen from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The research probes fundamental questions about the processes that shaped Earth’s surface over billions of years. Mantle convection drives the movements of Earth’s tectonic plates, rigid interlocked pieces of Earth’s surface that are in constant motion as they float atop the asthenosphere, the topmost mantle layer and the most fluid part of the inner planet. Where tectonic plates meet, they jostle and grind together, releasing seismic energy. In extreme cases, this can cause destructive earthquakes and tsunamis, but most seismic motion is too faint for humans to feel without instruments. Using seismometers, scientists can measure the magnitude and location of seismic disturbances. And because seismic waves speed up in some kinds of rock and slow in others, scientists can use them to create images of Earth’s interior, in much the same way a doctor might use ultrasound to image what’s inside a patient. Niu, a professor of Earth, environmental and planetary sciences at Rice, has been at the forefront of seismic imaging for more than two decades. When he did his Ph.D. training in Japan more than 20 years ago, researchers were using dense networks of seismic stations to gather some of the first detailed images of the submerged slab boundaries of the Pacific plate, the same plate that was imaged in study published this week. <div style="width:100%;margin: 0px auto">
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</div> “Japan is located about where the Pacific plate reaches around 100-kilometer depths,” Niu said. “There is a lot of water in this slab, and it produces a lot of partial melt. That produces arc volcanoes that helped create Japan. But, we are still debating whether this water is totally released in that depth. There is increasing evidence that a portion of the water stays inside the plate to go much, much deeper.” Northeastern China offers one of the best vantage points to investigate whether this is true. The region is about 1,000 kilometers from the Japan trench where the Pacific plate begins its plunge back into the planet’s interior. In 2009, with funding from the National Science Foundation and others, Niu and scientists from the University of Texas at Austin, the China Earthquake Administration, the Earthquake Research Institute of Tokyo University and the Research Center for Prediction of Earthquakes and Volcanic Eruptions at Japan’s Tohoku University began installing broadband seismometers in the region. “We put 140 stations there, and of course the more stations the better for resolution,” Niu said. “The Chinese Academy of Sciences put additional stations so they can get a finer, more detailed image.” In the new study, data from the stations revealed both the upper and lower boundaries of the Pacific plate, dipping down at a 25-degree angle within the mantle transition zone. The placement within this zone is important for the study of mantle convection because the transition zone lies below the asthenosphere, at depths where increased pressure causes specific mantle minerals to undergo dramatic phase changes. These phases of the minerals behave very differently in seismic profiles, just as liquid water and solid ice behave very different even though they are made of identical molecules. Because phase changes in the mantle transition zone happen at specific pressures and temperatures, geoscientists can use them like a thermometer to measure the temperature in the mantle. Niu said the fact that both the top and bottom of the slab are visible is evidence that the slab hasn’t completely mixed with the surrounding mantle. He said heat signatures of partially melted portions of the mantle beneath the slab also provide indirect evidence that the slab transported some of its water into the transition zone. “The problem is explaining how these hot materials can be dropped into the deeper part of the mantle,” Niu said. “It’s still a question. Because they are hot, they are buoyant.” That buoyancy should act like a life preserver, pushing upward on the underside of the sinking slab. Niu said the answer to this question could be that holes have appeared in the deforming slab, allowing the hot melt to rise while the slab sinks. “If you have a hole, the melt will come out,” he said. “That’s why we think the slab can go deeper.” Holes could also explain the appearance of volcanos like the Changbaishan on the border between China and North Korea. “It’s 1,000 kilometers away from the plate boundary,” Niu said. “We don’t really understand the mechanism of this kind of volcano. But melt rising from holes in the slab could be a possible explanation.”  The above story is based on <a href="https://news.rice.edu/2020/11/16/former-piece-of-pacific-ocean-floor-imaged-deep-beneath-china-2/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">materials </a>provided by <a href="https://www.rice.edu/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Rice University.</a>

Ancient Fragment of The Pacific Ocean Found Buried 400 Miles Below China

Illustration of a process where holes in the subducting Pacific plate would allow heat to escape, driving volcanic activity in the Changbais...

Ancient Zircon Minerals From Mars Reveal the Elusive Internal Structure of the Red Planet

Mars, Meteorite 5:24 PM

Ancient Zircon Minerals From Mars Reveal the Elusive Internal Structure of the Red Planet

Figure 1: The NWA 7533 zircon-rich meteorite containing fragments of the ancient crust of Mars. Credit: University of Copenhagen Analysis ...

'Fireball' Meteorite That Crashed in Michigan Holds Extraterrestrial Organic Compounds

Earth History, Meteorite 6:06 PM

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TiRt_2EmhMw/X7KTf4_bxvI/AAAAAAAASos/bpBe-LsTwlwm3FYIUUM6Qk6f3p_WNGi7QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1206/%2527Fireball%2527%2BMeteorite%2BThat%2BCrashed%2Bin%2BMichigan%2BHolds%2BExtraterrestrial%2BOrganic%2BCompounds%2B%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="844" data-original-width="1206" height="448" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TiRt_2EmhMw/X7KTf4_bxvI/AAAAAAAASos/bpBe-LsTwlwm3FYIUUM6Qk6f3p_WNGi7QCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h448/%2527Fireball%2527%2BMeteorite%2BThat%2BCrashed%2Bin%2BMichigan%2BHolds%2BExtraterrestrial%2BOrganic%2BCompounds%2B%25281%2529.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The meteorite fragment that fell on Strawberry Lake includes pristine organic compounds. </td></tr></tbody></table>  A 12-million-year-old meteorite that fell to Earth in January 2018 is covered in more than 2,600 organic compounds, according to new research. Meteorites such as this one likely acted as messengers early in Earth's history, delivering the building blocks of life, the researchers said. A fireball meteor was seen streaking across the sky over the Midwest and Ontario on the evening of January 16, 2018. Weather data helped scientists quickly track where the pieces of the meteor fell to Earth so they could collect them before the samples from space were contaminated too much by Earth. "Weather radar is meant to detect hail and rain," said lead study author Philipp Heck, curator at the Field Museum in Chicago and associate professor at the University of Chicago, in a statement. "These pieces of meteorite fell into that size range, and so weather radar helped show the position and velocity of the meteorite. That meant that we were able to find it very quickly." Elements on Earth, including liquid water, can change the chemical makeup of a meteorite before it's even collected. But the Hamburg meteorite -- collected less than two days after it fell to Earth -- is a prime example of a largely unaltered meteorite.Meteorite hunter Robert Ward found the first piece of the meteorite sitting on the frozen surface of Strawberry Lake, which is near Hamburg, Michigan. Ward and private collector Terry Boudreaux donated the meteorite to the Field Museum so it could be studied. <div style="width:100%;margin: 0px auto">
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</div> "This meteorite is special because it fell onto a frozen lake and was recovered quickly. It was very pristine. We could see the minerals weren't much altered and later found that it contained a rich inventory of extraterrestrial organic compounds," Heck said. "These kinds of organic compounds were likely delivered to the early Earth by meteorites and might have contributed to the ingredients of life." "When the meteorite arrived at the Field, I spent the entire weekend analyzing it, because I was so excited to find out what kind of meteorite it was and what was in it," said Jennika Greer, study coauthor and a doctoral student at the Field and the University of Chicago, in a statement. "With every meteorite that falls, there's a chance that there's something completely new and totally unexpected." Here's what they learned. <h4 style="text-align: left;">Souvenir from space</h4>The Hamburg meteorite is largely pristine because it was collected so quickly after falling to Earth. This means the meteorite didn't sit still long enough to become weathered, for its metals to begin rusting, for water to seep in through cracks and contaminate it or for its minerals (like olivine) to be altered. This quick recovery of the meteorite makes it "remarkable," Heck told CNN in an email. And the buzz around the meteorite led it to be well studied and analyzed by researchers at 24 different institutions. Scientists believe the Hamburg meteorite was ejected from its parent asteroid about 12 million years ago, traveling through space until it landed on Earth. An analysis of the meteorite revealed that the rock had been exposed to cosmic rays while zipping through space for 12 million years. The meteorite came from an asteroid that formed 4.5 billion years ago, only about 20 million years after the formation of our solar system, Heck said. The 2,600 different organic compounds that cover the Hamburg meteorite were formed in its parent asteroid. It's what is known as an H4 chondrite, a type of meteorite that isn't known to be rich in organics. "This meteorite shows a high diversity of organics, in that if somebody was interested in studying organics, this is not normally the type of meteorite that they would ask to look at," Greer said. "But because there was so much excitement surrounding it, everybody wanted to apply their own technique to it, so we have an unusually comprehensive set of data for a single meteorite." Typically, carbonaceous chondrites are a thousand times richer in organics than H4 chondrites, Heck said. Near-Earth asteroid Bennu, which was recently sampled by NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission, is rich in carbon. "The fact that this ordinary chondrite meteorite was rich in organics provides support of the hypothesis that meteorites played an important role in delivering organic compounds to early Earth," Heck said. "Meteorites fell to our planet throughout Earth's history also before life formed and possibly delivered some of the building blocks for life onto Earth." The organic matter in the meteorite was originally once heated to up to 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit while it was still part of its parent asteroid. This actually reduced the diversity of the organic compounds in the meteorite from millions to a couple thousand. But Heck was still stunned by how many organic compounds were still in the meteorite despite the heat-induced changes it experienced. The researchers found hydrocarbons, as well as compounds containing sulfur and nitrogen. "Much more work needs to be done to better understand the individual chemical pathways of the different compounds and the different processes that the organic matter went through," Heck said. The Hamburg meteorite can be compared with other samples collected in the future -- including the pristine samples being returned from asteroids by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Hayabusa2 mission and NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission. The first sample from the asteroid Ryugu will be delivered to Earth by Hayabusa2 in December, while the sample from Bennu will return in 2023. "But we also keep looking out for new meteorite falls," Heck said. "Every meteorite that falls to Earth is worth studying, as it may provide a unique perspective onto the solar system and may shed new light on its history and our origins."  The findings were published online in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science.

'Fireball' Meteorite That Crashed in Michigan Holds Extraterrestrial Organic Compounds

The meteorite fragment that fell on Strawberry Lake includes pristine organic compounds. A 12-million-year-old meteorite that fell to Eart...

Large Volcanic Eruption Caused the Largest Mass Extinction

extinction, volcano 5:38 PM

Large Volcanic Eruption Caused the Largest Mass Extinction

The researchers found coronene-mercury enrichments in sedimentary rocks deposited in southern China and Italy 252 million years ago. Paired ...