The ancient Snowmass clock was measured in the untold lives of the creatures that roamed and roared in a place and period poorly recorded in the scientific record: The high reaches of Rocky Mountains during the Sangamonian interglacial, a time of very warm weather around the globe, 75,000 to 125,000 years ago.
Other well-known ice age fossil sites, by contrast, like the La Brea Tar Pits in California and Hot Springs, S.D., have been dated to between 10,000 and 40,000 before present, and no well-preserved site has ever been found, scientists said, at this altitude in North America.
Category Archives: Paleontology
Giant Timorese Rat
Carbon dating shows that the biggest rat that ever lived survived until around 1000 to 2000 years ago, along with most of the other Timorese rodents found during the excavation. Only one of the smaller species found is known to survive on Timor today.
The Origins Of Kangaroos
A study published Tuesday in the online journal PLoS Biology suggests that Australian marsupials — kangaroos, wallabies, Tasmanian devils and more — evolved from a common South American marsupial ancestor millions of years ago. The finding, by researchers at the University of Munster in Germany, indicates that the theory that marsupials originated in Australia is incorrect.
Gigantic Apes Coexisted With Early Humans
Scientists have known about Gigantopithecus blackii since the accidental discovery of some of its teeth on sale in a Hong Kong pharmacy about 80 years ago. While the idea of a giant ape piqued the interest of scientists – and bigfoot hunters – around the world, it was unclear how long ago this beast went extinct.
Now Jack Rink, a geochronologist at McMaster University in Ontario, has used a high-precision absolute-dating method to determine that this ape – the largest primate ever – roamed Southeast Asia for nearly a million years before the species died out 100,000 years ago during the Pleistocene period. By this time, humans had existed for a million years.
Origin Of Komodo Dragon Revealed
Scientists now find that the world’s largest living lizard species, the Komodo dragon, most likely evolved in Australia and dispersed westward to its current home in Indonesia.
Giant Prehistoric Elephant Discovered
Scientists in Indonesia claim they have unearthed the 200,000-year-old skeleton of a giant elephant that stood more than 13 feet (4 meters) tall.
Armadillo-like Crocodile Fossil Found In Brazil
An ancient fossil crocodile coated in armadillo-like body armor was unveiled yesterday at an environmental museum in Brazil. Dubbed Armadillosuchus arrudai, the newly described species of crocodile roamed the arid interior of Brazil about 90 million years ago, during the late Cretaceous period, scientists said.
Social Sabertooths Hunted In Packs
An abundance of sabertooth fossils in tar pits in present-day Los Angeles, California, suggests that the cats were pack scavengers, scientists say. Tar pits occur when underground asphalt leaks to the surface, causing a large puddle or lake of the sticky substance.
Paleontologists Strike Fossil Gold In Colombia
Last month, an international group of scientists revealed in the journal Nature that Jaramillo’s team had made a startling discovery — a species of snake larger than a school bus that ruled northern South America 60 million years ago. Evolving after the extinction of the dinosaurs, Titanoboa cerrejonensis — or titanic boa from Cerrejon — might have been the largest vertebrate living on land at that time, the Paleocene era.
Frog From Hell Fossil Found In Madagascar
The bad-tempered Beelzebufo, or “devil frog,” also poses a big mystery. Why do its closest relatives live half a world away in South America?