The Paleontology Thread

[Endovelico]

How pterosaurs took off:

[Apollonius]

[Endovelico]

Apollonius,

I was afraid I was the only one interested in paleontology, but I'm glad to see that I have at least one partner...

[Tinker]

[Captain Murphy]

I was obsessed with paleontology when I was a kid and although everyone goes through that phase, it was much more intense and lasted longer for me. Has anyone participated in a dinosaur excavation? I was thinking about looking into it for next summer.

[Endovelico]

I recently became interested again in paleontology because of my readings in sociobiology. Instinctive behaviour in humans and its roots in pre-human ancestry are closely associated with evolution theory, and one can't be interested in evolution without looking into paleontology. But, obviously, I am no expert.

[Apollonius]

Always loved the subject of natural history, maybe as much as human history.


For my sixth birthday my parents gave me a book that I had nagged them about the whole previous year. This was originally serialized in Life Magazine:

WorldWeLiveIn-Life,Dec.8,1952.jpg (16.68 KiB) Viewed 3088 times

These days, there's always something exciting happening in paleontology and we should feel lucky to be living in an age when we can understand so much more than even what was possible sixty years ago.

[Torchwood]

A trilobite fossil from the Cambrian , 500 million years old, from the Burgess shales in Canada.

The Cambrian explosion is amazing, billions of years of single cell bacteria, then complex life in a bare 20 million years or so. Latest theory is that oxygen levels had just risen to the point where complex animals were viable : then both sex and predation appeared, which massively accelerated the rate of evolution.

[Apollonius]

[~]

[Hoosiernorm]

If you ever need some reading material you could start here

[Apollonius]

[noddy]

[noddy]

[Sennacherib]

[Sennacherib]

[Sennacherib]

[Colonel Sun]

Wonderful info. Thanks.

And memories.
Many years ago I went on a drive from Vancouver -> Banff -> Icefield Parkway -> Jasper -> Icefield Parkway -> Saskatchewan River Crossing -> detour to Drumheller [Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology] -> Calgary.

The Tyrrell exhibit was fascinating. Especially in that so many successful species that has dominated their niches for millions of years have become extinct.

[Sennacherib]

[Apollonius]

[Sennacherib]

[Sennacherib]