Paleontology News of the Week

Here we bring you paleontology related papers published within the past week or so; we will include a link to the published paper along with a small summary. This isn't a complete record of everything published recently, this is just a list of papers we think you might enjoy (heavy emphasis on vertebrate paleontology).

 

Burmese amber with ammonite inclusion; reconstructed with microtomography.

An ammonite was found in mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber earlier this year; the paper shown here reports on the marine organisms mixed with terrestrial organisms inside the amber. T he ammonite is also used to find the age of the amber, an example of dating using fossils present inside the amber. (Yu et al. 2019)

 

Early Miocene freshwater goby fish

Freshwater gobies are important fossils of the Miocene paleolakes of central and southeastern Europe, here a rich assemblage from Miocene lake deposits of Klinci in the Valjevo freshwater lake of the Valjevo-Mionica Basin of Serbia is reviewed.

 (Bradić-milinović et al. 2019)

 

Dilophosaurus wetherilli holotype specimen (UCMP 37302)

In this paper the forelimbs of Dilophosaurus wetherilli, a dinosaur made famous by Jurassic Park, are studied to test functional hypotheses of forelimb use. The influence of paleopathology and soft tissues is discussed and the distal carpal block of Dilophosaurus is described for the first time. (Senter and sullivan 2019)

 

The newly described Fostoria dhimbangunmal; preserved entirely in opal.

A new iguanodontian from the mid-Cretaceous of Lightning Ridge, New South Wales, Australia is described here. The holotype and referred specimens are preserved entirely in opal coming out of a bone bed excavated from an underground opal mine. (Bell et al. 2019) 

We hope you enjoyed these recently published papers and we will bring you the latest next week!