Carlisle, Sivestro and Donoghue 2021 report, “Recent molecular clock analyses have suggested that placental mammals originated in the mid- to late Cretaceous, before the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction. However, there are no unequivocal fossils of placental mammals from the Cretaceous … Continue reading
Klein and Lucas 2021 wrote:“Trackmaker: Brusatte et al. (2011) and Niedżwiedzki et al. (2013) attributed Prorotodactylus to dinosauromorph trackmakers similar to the trackmaker of Rotodactylus (Haubold, 1999). However, archosauromorph and even lepidosauromorph trackmakers cannot be excluded (see also discussion in … Continue reading
In this YouTube video from 2018 Dr. Donald Henderson starts his online slide video presentation by repeating the traditional fin-to-finger story (Fig. 1). Unfortunately that story was already out-of-date in 2018 due to taxon exclusion in comparison to and competition … Continue reading
Capobianco and Friedman 2020 document a long-snouted osteoglossid (primitive bony fish). From the Capobianco and Friedman abstract: “The fossil record of osteoglossid fishes (commonly known as bonytongues) includes several marine taxa found in early Paleogene deposits worldwide.” By contrast, the … Continue reading
Updated August 13, 2020 with a new blogpost two days later that shows where a mistake was made, how it was made, then corrected. The mistake (in Fig. 4) is retained in this post for this purpose. Spiekman et al. … Continue reading
The now famous tiny skull in amber, Oculudentavis, (Fig. 1; Xing et al. 2020) continues as a topic of conversation following its online publication in Nature and two previous PH posts here and here. Several workers have also thrown cold … Continue reading
Flugsaurier 2018 part 6 Since the purpose of the symposium is increase understanding of pterosaurs, I hope this small contribution helps. Cheng, Jiang, Wang and Kellner 2018 concluded: “The size of pelvic channel and the presence and absence of premaxillary crest … Continue reading
This is a YouTube video of a talk given by postgraduate David Ford recorded at The 65th Symposium on Vertebrate Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy, University of Birmingham. His incredibly detailed observations found diapsid traits AND varanopid traits, which was cause for … Continue reading
The science section of the online British news outlet, the Guardian, reported on the 12th (Haarlem) specimen of Archaeopteryx re-named Ostromia. You can read that story online here. From the Guardian article: “Of the Twelve Specimens Once Known as Archaeopteryx (SPOKA), only nine continue … Continue reading
This one snuck under my radar until Professor Thom Holtz mentioned it on the Dinosaur Mailing List. Writing about the Baron et al 2017 reply to Langer et al. we looked at earlier, Holtz wrote: “Novel discovery is Daemonosaurus as a basal … Continue reading
The Pterosaur Heresies 