Tasmanian beach yields familiar fossil

When Hobart couple Bob and Penny Tyson went fossil-hunting on a Tasmanian beach, they weren't expecting to find a rare 250-million-year-old specimen embedded in the rocks.

The remains were of a dicynodont, an early ancestor of modern-day mammals, and it was the first specimen to ever be discovered so far south.

Roughly the size of a cow, the plant-eating animal had two tusks and a horny beak.

Queensland Museum palaeontologist Andrew Rozefelds says they lived on every continent, including Antarctica. But until now, the only Australian specimen was found in Queensland almost 30 years ago.

The fossil is now being stored at the Tasmanian Museum.

Fossil hoard uncovered in WA

A treasure trove of fossils up to a million years old has been found in three caves under the Nullarbor.

Palaeontologists returned last month from their fifth expedition to Last Tree Cave, Flightstar and Leaena's Breath, on the WA side of the Nullarbor Plain, where about 100,000 bones were collected during the past two field trips.

Flinders University palaeontologist Gavin Prideaux said the caves, discovered in 2002, were littered with fossils.

"There were a lot of complete skeletons of megafauna species just sort of lying on the cave floors," he said.

One of the most impressive finds was an almost complete skeleton of a Thylacoleo carnifex, or marsupial lion - a prehistoric animal that was the size of a leopard, built like a bear and able to stand up like a kangaroo. It had huge claws and the most powerful bite of any known mammal.

WA Museum documentary director Clay Bryce, who has been involved in the project since its inception, described the caves as a treasure trove of extraordinary fossil material.

"From one skeleton we suddenly went to 11 Thylacoleo skeletons, tree kangaroos, koalas, Thylacines, giant wombats, untold numbers of birds, giant kangaroos, Procoptodons, smaller species of kangaroo, horned wallabies, the list goes on and on," he said.

Dr Prideaux said the caves had acted as an animal trap, catching animals that fell through the entrance and birds that could not find their way out.

On the most recent expedition researchers rescued two live birds that had become disoriented in the caves.

Dr Prideaux said at least eight confirmed new species had been found in the caves and that was likely to rise to 15 to 20 new species as more bones were analysed.

The research was part-funded by National Geographic.

Aussie microfossils re-write the history books

Tubular microfossils found in 3.4-billion-year-old sandstone from WA.

Are these the oldest fossils on earth?

A team of Australian and British scientists think so - and date the blobby 'microfossils' at 3.4 million years old!

The findings of David Wacey, Matt Kilburn, Martin Saunders, John Cliff and Martin Brasier have been published in the latest issue of Nature Geoscience magazine:

"Sulphur isotope data from early Archaean rocks suggest that microbes with metabolisms based on sulphur existed almost 3.5 billion years ago, leading to suggestions that the earliest microbial ecosystems were sulphur-based. However, morphological evidence for these sulphur-metabolizing bacteria has been elusive. Here we report the presence of microstructures from the 3.4-billion-year-old Strelley Pool Formation in Western Australia that are associated with micrometre-sized pyrite crystals."

The honor of having found the most ancient microfossil has been long been held by J. W. Schopf, a paleobiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1993, Dr. Schopf reported his discovery of fossils 3.465 billion years old in the Apex chert of the Warrawoona Group in Western Australia, about 20 miles from where the new fossils have been found.

Moa bones and ancient poo dazzles researchers

A combination of team work, community funding and a Waimate archeologist skilled in the field of skeletons and anatomy, has meant the town has a moa exhibition that has impressed some of New Zealand's moa research elite.

The Waimate Historical Museum exhibition which runs until November, received a visit from a group of top moa experts, including from Te Papa, who were on their way to a key moa site at St Bathans. Intending to stay only five minutes, instead they stayed 90.

The exhibition is special to Waimate because of the Kapua moa excavations of 1895. Kapua, at one end of the Waimate gorge, was the resting place of 800 moa skeletons.

The giant birds, naive about humans, were a good package of easy meat to a hunter. Big adults were hunted out first, cutting out the breeders. Younger ones followed, before they could breed. Moa eggs were also being eaten.

Interestingly, museums all over the world still have moa skeletons posed with their necks stretching straight up. Now knowing more about anatomy and bones, researchers know their necks curved horizontally, in line with their backs.

The exhibition features a bone from the Kapua dig which still has its hand-written metal tag attached. Other items come from museums further afield. The Canterbury Museum's contribution was halted, days before it was to be transported, by the February earthquake. Fortunately, Otago Museum was able to step in.

Interestingly, Wikipedia has the number of moa species at 11, but researchers now know that there were nine, adapted to different environments such as the swamp, the uplands, the forest or the coast and climates as differing as the West Coast from the East.

New (extinct) croc species discovered

Researchers discovered a new species of crocodile that lived about 100 million year ago in Thailand’s northeastern province of Nakhon Ratchasima, or Korat.

Nakhon Ratchasima Rajabhat University and Mahasarakham University announced at a press conference on Thursday the discovery of the new species of crocodile dubbed 'Khoratosuchus jintasakuli' after the nickname of the province Korat where the fossil was found. The last name comes from the surname of the director of the Northeastern Research Institute of Petrified Wood and Mineral Resources, Pratueng Jintasakul.

The fossil, kept at the Northeastern Research Institute of Petrified Wood and Mineral Resources in Nakhon Ratchasima, is a 191-millimetre-long skull dug up from an excavation site in Baan Saphan Hin near Nakhon Ratchasima’s provincial seat.

According to a study, the fossil is from the Cretaceous period Khok Kruat Formation of Thailand’s Northeast. The fourth ancient species of crocodile found in Thailand, it is estimated to be around 100 million years old.

Komsorn Lauprasert, a scientist at Mahasarakham University, said the size of the skull indicated that it was likely about a two to three year old specimen and its body was about two metres long. The characteristics of its teeth showed that it probably fed on fish.