68-Million-Year-Old Egg

In 2011, Chilean researchers unearthed something on Seymour Island near Antarctica that resembled a deflated football. It was leathery and wrinkled, was about 11 by 8 inches in size, and not knowing what it was, they nicknamed it “The Thing.”

Now, after years of analysis, scientists say it is a soft-shelled egg from 68 million years ago. The creature that laid it was a large sea lizard (mosasaur) and the egg is known as Antarcticoolithus bradyi. The discovery stunned paleontologists because it was the largest soft-shelled egg ever found, and the second-largest egg of any known species.

This egg had a thin, flexible shell that resembles modern snake eggs. It is from an animal as large as a large dinosaur, but it’s not a dinosaur egg. It reveals information about ancient marine reptile reproduction.

The likely mother was a giant mosasaur, and skeletal remains of a Kaikaifilu hervei was found near the egg. Scientists estimated her size to be at least 23 feet long, excluding the tail. Mosasaurs were apex predators and related to today’s monitor lizards.

The site held more than one deflated egg. Fossilized remains of juvenile and adult mosasaurs and plesiosaurs suggest the area functioned as a prehistoric nursery, painting a vivid picture of ancient parenting.

Recent discoveries of soft-shelled eggs of Protoceratops and Mussaurus dinosaurs reveal that flexible shells were more common than believed. One scientist said that hard shells weren’t ancestral; they evolved independently. The race to understand prehistoric reproduction has begun.

Did mosasaurs lay eggs in the ocean, and they hatched almost immediately, like modern sea snakes? Or did they deposit eggs on beaches? The mosasaur’s massive size and weight implies beach nesting was unlikely.

Antarctica’s harsh conditions make it remarkable that such a delicate egg fossilized at all. That it did suggests ideal sediment and climate for fossilizing soft tissue, which usually degrade rapidly. Antarctica is becoming increasingly important because it may hold countless fossils that can reveal secrets about ancient life.

Further Antarctic expeditions are being planned as scientists hope to see how widespread this reproductive behavior was among marine reptiles. Did plesiosaurs use similar strategies? How many other eggs are waiting under the ice?

The mystery of “The Thing” has rewritten scientific understanding of marine reptile reproduction and challenged assumptions that had been held for generations.

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/scientists-found-a-giant-68-million-year-old-egg-and-the-thing-inside-could-rewrite-prehistoric-life/ss-AA1T7Smh?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=6950143722104be99bc51f41a022ee18&ei=47#image=10

Dinosaur Fossil Found in Antarctica

A massive dinosaur fossil was found under Antarctic’s ice. It’s been there for about 190 million years. Long before ice covered the southernmost continent, a massive plant-eating dinosaur lumbered across the land. It’s remains have been officially identified a new species: Glacialisaurus hammeri.

It’s not a recent discovery. The bones were unearthed in the early 1990s high on Mount Kirkpatrick, not far from the Beardmore Glacier. Because of the extreme environment, the fossils were chiseled and sawed out over multiple seasons. This was an exhausting and dangerous process. Then the bones sat unclassified until 2 researchers gave it a name and a place on the dinosaur family tree.

When the bones were discovered, they weren’t lying around. Located over 13,000 feet in elevation, they had to be removed from dense rock using jackhammers and rock saws. And what they pulled from the tock was not a complete skeleton; it was mostly just parts of a leg, foot, and ankle. But these fragments had unique features that set this dinosaur apart.

The Glacialisaurus hammeri was a sauropodomorph, which is a broad group that would later produce such giants as Apatosaurus and Diplodocus. It measured 20 to 25 feet long and weighed between 4 and 6 tons. It was large, but not quite the size of its later relatives.

Sauropodomorphs are interesting because they sit between early two-legged plant-eaters and enormous quadrupeds, which came later. According to analysis, when these dinosaurs lived, they were evolving rapidly and spreading all over the place.

Although not fully preserved, its tail may have been a defensive weapon. Some relatives are believed to have cracked their tails like whips, generating loud booms. That detail hasn’t been confirmed for Glacialisaurus.

The site had more than one discovery. Nearby, they uncovered remains of a theropod called Cryolophosaurus ellioti, bones from a possible sauropod, and a pterosaur wing bone. They even found a tooth from a tritulodont, which is a strange (and extinct) mammal-like reptile that is not easy to classify.

This suggests that Jurassic Antarctica wasn’t a barren wasteland. It might have been cold, maybe seasonal, but it supported a range of species. The presence of both primitive and advanced dinosaurs in the same area implies that evolutionary stages overlapped.

Glacialisaurus and its neighbors show how widely early dinosaurs were spread, even in places unexpected.

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/a-190-million-year-old-dinosaur-fossil-was-found-under-antarctic-ice-and-it-s-absolutely-massive/ar-AA1SJ6S7?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=69499fae85184c6cab53548ad5035203&ei=32

Ancient Humans in Antarctica

For decades, Antarctica was thought to be untouched by ancient humans. It was too cold, too remote, and too unforgiving. But a recent discovery shattered that misconception.

Along the Antarctic Peninsula, researchers have uncovered bone fragments embedded in permafrost. They have been dated to nearly 6,000 years ago, which is before any known human presence. This suggests that ancient seafaring cultures may have ventured farther south than imagined. The remains have been carbon dated, their DNA analyzed, and archaeologically mapped.

The DNA analysis closely matched the lineage of Indigenous populations from southern Chile and Argentina. These groups were known for advanced maritime travel and seasonal movement across the Drake Passage, which is the body of water between the southern tip of South America and Antarctica.

Conventional reasoning said the early seafaring civilizations stayed within warm, resource-rich regions. But this evidence suggests ancient explorers mastered polar navigation long before compasses or maps existed. They must have understood ocean currents, seasonal weather, and animal migrations. Since these remains were found alongside marine mammal bones, they may have followed their food supply.

Found scatter near the remains were stone blades, carved bone tools, and traces of pigments. The suggest planned travel and possibly ritual practices. The tools are similar to those used by early South American coastal tribes for seal processing and navigation. It’s likely this journey wasn’t a fluke or a storm-driven drift, but a deliberate venture.

About 6,000 years ago, sea ice along the Antarctic Peninsula had retreated farther than today, which could have allowed ancient navigators to reach new hunting grounds. The Antarctic environment was less hostile, with milder summer and exposed coastlines. Such windows of opportunity might explain how humans reached Antarctica so long ago.

Finding humans so far south means migration wasn’t limited by temperature or geography but was driven by adaptability.

Radar imaging and satellite mapping have noted irregular formations beneath coastal ice layers, which may be more archaeological sites. Researchers are targeting zones once exposed during early Holocene warm periods. Each new site could rewrite another fragment of human history.

For centuries, legends in South America spoke of southern lands rich with seals and icy seas. These tales were dismissed—until now. Those stories may have been ancestral memories of real journeys.

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/the-oldest-human-remains-in-antarctica-just-changed-what-scientists-thought-they-knew/ss-AA1OTxa5?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=6906581e6d084590bb311d75d21e1da4&ei=71#image=10

Everybody’s Heard of Gondwana

Gondwana existed from about 550 million years ago until 180 million years ago. It is one of the most well known super-continents, in the sense that more people have at least heard of it, rather than individual cratons like Avalonia or Baltica.

If I’m reading the information correctly, Gondwana existed both before and after Pangaea. Before Pangaea, it came into being when several cratons stuck together, beginning about 800 million years ago with the formation of the East African Orogeny, which involved the collision of India and Madagascar with East Africa. Between 600 to 530 million years ago, this group added South America, Australia and Antarctica, in that order. Thus Gondwana was born.

Eventually, it merged with Laurasia and became Pangaea, sometime around 335 million years ago. But it wasn’t an easy relationship, you might say. Pieces of what had formerly been Gondwana kept breaking off, drifting north to join the former Laurasia section, such as bits of China and Indo-China. The western edge of Pangaea was beginning to break up while the eastern edge was trying to collect itself together.

Meanwhile, the formation of Pangaea and its mountains greatly impacted sea levels and global climate, producing glaciers and continent-wide sedimentation.

But what about Gondwana? About 175 million years ago, it had had enough and broke away. But it didn’t come out of it unscathed. Besides the bits that had already drifted to ‘the other side’, Florida, southern Georgia and Alabama stayed attached to North America.

Once it separated from its partner, Gondwana just kept falling apart. About 132 million years ago, Antarctica, Australia, India and Madagascar broke off and then broke up, going their separate ways. South America slowly broke away from Africa, starting in the south and going north, but the exact timing is uncertain. It could have started as early as 190 million years, and finally finished around 85 million years ago.

So, if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll realize that most of the cratons that formed Gondwana now inhabit the southern hemisphere. Its remnants account for about 2/3 of today’s continental area, including Africa, Antarctica, Arabia, Australia, Indian Subcontinent and South America.

If I were a paleo-geologist, I might have made more sense out of the wiki articles I consulted on this subject. The writer of these articles - particularly the one on Gondwana - seemed to think that anybody who was looking up this subject must be a student, for he/she/it kept using names and terms that I - as a lay person - did not know, leading to much confusion on my part. It seemed far more detailed than I felt I could fit into a blog, anyway, so I skipped lightly through most of it, looking for the important details without bogging down the blog.

Paleo-geology was going to be an elective of mine in college, but I didn’t get that far. Hmm, anybody got a good used textbook on the subject?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gondwana

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangaea

Super Continent 2

As I stated before, Earth has experienced a number of super-continents, which is when all or most of the land masses are in the same place. Pannotia was one of those super-continents. It was fairly short lived, forming about 650 million years ago, and starting to break up 560 million years ago.

In this particular case, most of the land is south of the equator, centered around the south pole. There were a few ‘islands’ stretching towards the equator. Pannotia also included several seas trapped between batches of land, and one long skinny bay that looks like it might actually reach the south pole, according to the drawings.

Only South America and Africa - and possibly Australia - are recognizable land masses in the drawings. All the other continents are apparently unformed, bits and pieces scattered across the drawings. For instance, Siberia and Baltica have not yet joined with a lot more pieces of land to form Eurasia. Laurentia - which apparently will eventually become most of Canada - is a long piece of land located along (the current west coast of) South America. Most of the pieces of land on the drawings have no names attached to them at all.

I know we’re talking millions of years here, but how fast have these land masses been accumulating and then dissolving? And in between coming together, they just seem to zip all over the place, meeting up with other bits of land in new and different patterns.

Kind of makes me think of a kaleidoscope, where all the different pieces of colored crystals form new and intriguing patterns with every slight twist of the barrel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pannotia

Super Continents 1

In geology, a supercontinent is when all or most of the Earth’s continental blocks form a single landmass. But earth scientists may use a different definition; ‘a clustering of nearly all continents’, which leaves room for interpretation.

The land masses have conjoined and separated several times. The most recent mass that joined them all is called Pangaea. This conjoining began about 335 million years ago, and began to break up about 175 million years ago.

Pangaea looked more or less like a crescent or the letter ‘c’. The Eurasian continent sat at the top, with the area now forming southeast asia stretching south and east. To the southwest lay North America, and along the NA ‘east coast’ lay the west coast of the big hump of Africa, which was pushed clockwise a bit off its southern tip. The bump of Brazil of South America lay snuggled against North America and Africa. India and Antarctica rested along the southeast of Africa, from the ‘Red Sea’ area south. Australia nestled against India and Antarctica.

I used the words ‘lay’, ‘snuggled’ and ‘nestled’, but the drawing I looked at indicated all sorts of irregular-shaped bits and pieces scattered between all these known continents. I didn’t see anything that resembled the Arabian Peninsula, so I can’t say where that particular piece was hiding at the time of Pangaea.

Pangaea stretched from the south pole to within spitting distance of the north pole. It was a solid body of land that would not have allowed any ocean currents to go around the globe horizontally.

Pangaea began to break up about 175 million years ago. Once India broke away from its neighbors, it raced toward Eurasia at 6 inches a year. Is it any surprise that when they slammed together, they formed mountains like the Himalayas? India (as well as Australia) is still moving northeast at 2-3 inches per year. In a few million years, Australia could scoop up bits and pieces of Indonesia and then head for the northern Pacific. Will it?

I don’t know. Isn’t there a trench somewhere along Indonesia? Seems like a deep ditch would slow Australia down or something. Something else for me to look up and think about.

By the way, this is the first of probably several blogs on super-continents. How long they take me and how often other subjects insinuate themselves into the lineup of blogs remains to be seen. Thems the chances you take when you decide to read my blog.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercontinent

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangaea

What is This World Coming to? 5

Okay, I did find something to say on this subject, from a totally unexpected source. I was watching an episode on Nova the other night. Our local channel has 2 episodes on Wednesdays, and we usually watch the first, but not the second, because that’s getting too late for my husband, who is an early bird. That night, I heard that the 2nd episode was on Neanderthals, and human evolution has always been an interest of mine, so I stayed up to watch it.

As a whole, the episode explored a lot of different information about the humans known as Neanderthals, but my interest picked up during their talk about the small colony of Neanderthals who lived in caves currently located at the base of the Rock of Gibraltar.

One question this episode was asking is, “Did Modern Humans have any part in eliminating the Neanderthals?” They didn’t have an answer to that question, in the end. Not a simple one, anyway.

Neanderthals lived in the Middle East, Western Asia and Europe for as much as 700,000 years. During all of that time, the world was in an ice age, but the Neanderthals were built for it, and apparently did not find that a hardship.

About 100,000 years ago (maybe as early as 125,000 years ago), modern humans started to populate these same areas. The cold probably made them wear more clothes than the Neanderthals. And maybe there were instances of violence between the 2 sub-species.

However, the scientists said, it was unlikely the modern humans had traveled all the way around the Mediterranean Sea and got to the Rock of Gibraltar before that particular group of Neanderthals died out. What the scientists discovered in those caves showed that the Neanderthals living there not only hunted and gathered, they ate a variety of sea life as well, from seals to clams. Today, the mouths of those caves are practically at the sea line, but during the brunt of the ice age, the water line would have been about 59 feet (18 meters) lower.

Neanderthals lived in small groups. Scientists estimate their entire population may have been about 100,000, scattered in small groups across a quarter of the world. (How big is the town you live in?) And as they studied this particular group, they realized that it died out during a long and severe drought that hit the area.

My thought? Neanderthals were suited for cold. Not so much for heat. They had a short, stocky build that would help them retain body heat. But when the world heats up, that doesn’t do you much good.

If the world were going through the gradual changes of leaving the ice age, the flora and fauna would no doubt evolve in order to survive. But the current rapid pace of warming that we are in doesn’t leave us time for that. Those who currently live in the tropics might manage by migrating north or south to the temperate zones. Those in the temperate zones might find some comfort in the polar regions, although there’s not a lot of land for them to settle on. Once Antarctica thaws, that land would be available. Would it be fertile? Who knows?

It won’t be a matter of the fit being able to survive. Those who can accept what’s happening and deal with it will have a chance to survive.

And I’m back to looking for potential food for that migrating population.

What is This World Coming to? 3

So, what else is the Beaufort Gyre (which, you’ll remember, is north of Alaska) doing to The World As We Know It?

Well, it’s messing up the Arctic jet stream. Being from the midwest US, I’ve heard plenty of winter weather forecasts talking about the Arctic jet stream dipping below the Canadian border and bringing truly frigid blasts to the North American plains. Since I still have friends and family living in that region, I pay attention to the winter weather that happens there. Last year was particularly brutal, with that jet stream going much further south than I remember it doing in the past. It wasn’t just the northern states like the Dakotas, Michigan and maybe Nebraska hunkering down against Arctic-type temperatures, they were reaching into Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana...

How can that possibly mean the climate is warming? Let me remind you that climate and weather are not the same thing. Weather happens on a much smaller scale than climate. As for that Arctic jet stream coming south before returning north, that air gets (relatively) warmed up. Coming so far south, it gets a lot warmer than it normally does, so when it does go north again, it transfers the warmth it gathered to the area it goes; the arctic. More melting.

Earth’s polar ice caps serve a purpose; sunlight is reflected from their white surface, so they act as a ‘cooling’ agent for the entire globe. The more this ice melts and reveals darker-colored water and land, the less cooling is available for the entire planet. Get it? The more snow and ice melts, the more likely more snow and ice will melt. Until there is no more snow and ice to help keep Earth’s temperature moderated.

The really scary part is what happens to the land when all that snow and ice melts. If Greenland’s ice cap melts, the sea level would rise by 20 feet (6.1 m). At its current rate of melt, the Arctic Ocean could be completely ice free by 2040. That’s only 22 years! If all the ice of Antarctica melted, the seas would rise by 200 ft (61 m).

With a sea level rise of only 6 feet (1.8 m), most large cities would be flooded. So, where do you live? I currently live in the center of the Florida peninsula, which would still be here after 6 feet of sea level rise... but loooooong gone by the time all the ice melts. Maybe I should start cleaning out stuff I won’t be needing in my old age, so that it’ll be easier to move north, once that becomes necessary.

By then, New Orleans would be a bay reaching almost as far north as the Missouri boot. The Netherlands would be entirely below sea level, but much of it is now. Hope they have plans for building new, much taller dykes. Australia will be a doughnut, with land surrounding an inland sea. The Amazon rainforest will become the Amazon Sea, and Buenos Aires in Argentina will mean a huge bay. Those are the easy things to notice on the map.

At one time, I found an interactive map showing what parts of the world would be underwater, and the results would change depending on how much you chose to raise the sea level. It didn’t seem too alarming, but I think it only allowed you to raise the sea level by 9 meters.

Alas, I neglected to bookmark that page. When I went looking for it to link to this blog, I found lots and lots of pages with ‘interactive global sea level rise maps’. That means more and more scientists (and others) have been looking at this scenario seriously, and taking the possible sea level rise much higher. Much more ice than that covering Greenland has been and is and will melt, so 9 meters could just be a drop in the bucket.

Water isn’t the only thing that will change. Next time, I’ll examine something else from my research about climate change.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/9/5/1792312/-Warm-ocean-water-has-penetrated-deep-into-the-Arctic-interior-portending-year-round-loss-of-sea-ice

http://www.softschools.com/facts/environmental_science/polar_ice_caps_facts/2894/

What is This World Coming to 2?

Okay, we were talking about the sea and what climate change is doing to it. My examples last time were in Europe and the US, in the northern temperate zones. Now I want to consider all that ice and water in the extreme north and south, around the poles.

If you’ve been paying attention, you might remember news of huge chunks of Antarctic ice breaking away. I’m talking chunks bigger than some states. Antarctica is receiving warmer weather than it’s seen in millennia, or maybe even millions of years. Some coasts that certain types of penguin have called ‘home’ for countless generations are becoming inhospitable for them. They already live at the bottom of the world, where are they supposed to go from there?

The Arctic Ocean is not doing any better. There is no land under all that ice at the north pole, just water. You might think, ‘That’s okay, because it takes a lot of energy to warm water up.’ Yes, it does. And yet, that water under that thick sheet of ice has warmed up.*

If you look at a map or globe, you’ll see a bunch of islands above Canada. During Europe’s Age of Exploration, several well-provisioned ships made attempts to find a ‘Northwest Passage’ during the summers, trying to find a way to get around the Americas to do trade with the Orient. I don’t remember hearing of any of those excursions ever making it through, nor of any making it home again. At that time, I understand, whatever open channels of water that could be found among all those islands were unreliable and tended to close up and freeze a ship in place, even in summer. The last few years, so much of that ice has melted during the summer, that some cruise lines have offered cruises from one coast to the other, via the Canadian passage.

Something has happened to the Beaufort Gyre. That is a 60-mile-diameter pool of cold freshwater and sea ice located north of Alaska. It used to spin clockwise for 5-7 years, then slow down and start spinning in the opposite direction. This change in direction was caused by periodic cyclones that moved from the Northern Atlantic Ocean into the Arctic Ocean. But the North Atlantic has been warming up even faster than other parts of the world, and has failed to get the Beaufort Gyre to change direction in a dozen years or more.

So it’s just been sitting there, spinning and getting larger. And although it contains ‘cold’ water, that’s a matter of relativity. This spinning water contains twice as much heat now as it did 30 years ago. But it’s not sitting on top, like you’d think it would. It extends so deep, it is creeping under the Arctic ice sheet, which I understand can be a mile or more thick. Once it starts melting that ice sheet from below, well, how long before that ice sheet starts to break apart into gigantic icebergs, like the Antarctic ice has already started doing?

And what happens when all that ice breaks up and melts? Right, it raises sea level, which we discussed last time.

I had never heard of the Beaufort Gyre until a couple days ago, but I’m not done with it. From what I’ve been reading, whether it continues its current spin or starts going the other way, somebody’s in for a nasty time. Maybe it will come up next time.

* https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/9/5/1792312/-Warm-ocean-water-has-penetrated-deep-into-the-Arctic-interior-portending-year-round-loss-of-sea-ice

Cold and Salty

When you and I think of someplace nice to live, we probably aren’t thinking “really cold and super salty”. And yet, there are organisms that do.

After 18 months of gathering cold salty water from remote lakes located in Antarctica - including during the extreme winter - scientists discovered... microbes! One location was Deep Lake, whose water is so salty, it remains unfrozen down to -20°.

At least one strain of microbes contained plasmids, which are small molecules of DNA which can replicate independently in a host cell and often contain useful genes. A plasmid can also grab a piece of DNA from the host cell and incorporate it in itself. They’re certainly complicated, for being so tiny.

Viruses have a protective protein coat that helps them invade unsuspecting cells. Once inside, the virus forces the cell to replicate virus DNA and package it into protein shells, which are pushed out of the ‘nest’ to find their own host cell and repeat the process. Most viruses damage the host cell.

One particular plasmid - called pR1SE - is so much like a virus, the scientists weren’t sure how to classify it. Before this Antarctica discovery, plasmids were known to move from cell to cell when 2 cells were touching, or they wandered around as a piece of naked DNA. However, pR1SE must have thought it too cold in Antarctica to wander around naked, so it had developed a coating of proteins that could attach to a cell wall. Once attached, the protein coat would produce buds (called vesicles), and those buds broke off, taking bits of plasmid DNA to do the same with other cells of the same species.

Virus? Plasmid? This pR1SE version seemed to be something in between. In fact, having discovered this mechanism, scientists are wondering if possibly viruses are ‘more advanced’ versions of plasmids.

Another microbe found in those hypersaline lakes is a ‘cannibal virus’, or virophage, the 3rd virophage ever discovered. This type of virus only infects cells that are already infected with a ‘regular’ virus. As the regular virus uses the cell’s mechanisms to reproduce copies of itself, the virophage inserts its genome into the virus, thus getting the virus to reproduce virophage DNA. The number of copies of the regular virus is greatly reduced, so damage is reduced.

There’s plenty of tiny life in them there super-cold, super-frigid lakes, from things that hardly seem like life (regular plasmids), to something slightly more advanced (pR1SE), through another advancement (viruses) and right to something (virophage) that can try to limit the damage done by the prior version (viruses). Who could have guessed that life in Antarctica would be so complicated?

So, let’s take a lesson from this. Life is complicated. If you are creating a new planet or even just a new continent, try to make the life cycle complicated. I have problems with a planet of sand that produces butterflies and giant worms, and that’s all. If the giant worms only have butterflies to eat, how do they get so big? And what do the butterflies eat?

https://phys.org/news/2017-08-antarctic-salt-loving-microbes-insights-evolution.html

http://www.sciencealert.com/cannibal-viruses-in-antarctica

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2144518-antarctic-mystery-microbe-could-tell-us-where-viruses-came-from/