The effort to reconstruct LUCA

New research is suggesting that LUCA--the last universal common ancestor of life on Earth--may have been an extremophilic microbe. It's a fascinating effort to draw inferences about organisms that lived way, way, back in deep time.

New Ceratopsid!

Plos One* just published a description of a new ceratopsid, Spiclypeus shipporum (how many dang ceratopsid can there be?) based on a specimen named Judith (who had some really interesting pathology...). There's also a lovely new art-work by Michael Skrepnik, which you can see here.

*what makes a ceratopsid 'Boldly Audacious' is unclear to us here at Extinct, but we'd love to know why!

Atopodentatus: less flamingo, more hammer-head.

When you're inferring a critter's morphology and feeding strategies from a few incomplete finds, hypotheses can be pretty unstable. This is nicely illustrated in the dramatic shift Chun et al have just pushed in the mid-Triassic marine reptile Atopodentatus. Here's the article, and here's a nice summary in the guardian (with pictures!)

Drilling through the Chicxulub Crater

There's a new project to take core samples from the Chicxulub Crater, in Mexico. Interestingly, in addition to gaining new insights about the K-Pg mass extinction, the researchers are also hoping to learn something about the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.

Turner awarded thing.

Congratulations to our own Derek Turner, who has been awarded a Fulbright Visiting Research Chair at the University of Calgary (fast becoming *the place* for philosophy of paleontology?). Details here.

Hobbits older than first thought...

Homo floresiensis, the so-called 'hobbits', have been redated from around 12k to around 50k years ago. For those of us (Adrian) who just published articles based on the former date, that's a bit annoying. For everyone else, this possibly lines up the disappearance of H. floresiensis with the appearance of H. sapiens (which is suggestive...) and provides yet another reminder of how unstable dating can be... Here's the nature article, and here's a nice write-up in the guardian.

Ancient rhinoceros skull found; modern conception of "unicorn" lost

A Siberian research team just announced the discovery of a skull from the rhino species Elasmotherium sibiricum in 26000-year-old strata, suggesting that the species went extinct some 25000 years later than previously expected.

Some media outlets are reporting this as a discovery of a "Siberian unicorn." We at Extinct humbly suggest that journalists review some work that's already been done on the subject before resorting to such claims.

Frequent revisions of dinosaur names

Who knew that almost 50% of dinosaur names ultimately get dropped? And different scientists have better/worse track records when it comes to the validity of their dinosaur names. 

New T-rex paper: interesting study; journalism...?

So, a fascinating paper just came out in nature detailing a technique for identifying sex-specific characteristics in non-avian dinosaurs (specifically, Medullary Bone which is involved in egg shell development), and applying it to identify the sex of a T. rex specimen. This is great because (1) establishing sex from fossil is notoriously difficult; (2) it's a really nice example of using a combination of phylogenetic studies, molecular analysis, and other techniques to uncover tricky things about the past. That tissue is typically present around when birds are laying eggs. Still, why say they've discovered a pregnant t. rex? *sigh*

How to eat shellfish...

... if you're a bear-dog like critter from say 20 million years ago, you could converge on both sea-otters and saber-tooth cats - at least according to this new study. Because evolution knows what it's doing. Here's a wonderfully accessible explanation of it all.