WASHINGTON STATE PALEONTOLOGY

North Cascades National Park, Washington State, USA

Over vast expanses of time, powerful tectonic forces have massaged the western edge of the continent, smashing together a seemingly endless number of islands to produce what we now know as North America and the Pacific Northwest.

Washington is home to a wide variety of fossils—from new species of fossil crabs to marine mollusks and the fossil palm fronds that symbolize the Chuckanut formation.

We also find fossil whales, bird trackways, fossil sockeye salmon, mammal footprints, mammoth bones & the trace fossil remains of ancient rhino. In the time expanse in which we live our very short human lives, the Earth's crust appears permanent.

A fixed outer shell – terra firma. Aside from the rare event of an earthquake or the eruption of Mount St. Helen’s in 1980, our world seems unchanging, the landscape constant. In fact, it has been on the move for billions of years and continues to shift each day. As the earth’s core began cooling, some 4.5 billion years ago, plates, small bits of continental crust, have become larger and smaller as they are swept up in or swept under their neighbouring plates. Large chunks of the ocean floor have been uplifted, shifted and now find themselves thousands of miles in the air, part of mountain chains far from the ocean today or carved by glacial ice into valleys and basins.

Two hundred million years ago, Washington was two large islands, bits of the continent on the move westward, eventually bumping up against the North American continent and calling it home. Even with their new fixed address, the shifting continues; the more extreme movement has subsided laterally and continues vertically. The upthrusting of plates continue to move our mountain ranges skyward, the path of least resistance.

Fossil Palm Front, Washington State

This dynamic movement has created the landscape we see today and helped form the fossil record that tells much of Washington’s relatively recent history – the past 50 million years. Chuckanut Drive is much younger than other parts of Washington.

The fossils found there lived and died some 40-55 million years ago, very close to where they are now, but in a much warmer, swampy setting. The exposures of the Chuckanut Formation were once part of a vast river delta; imagine, if you will, the bayou country of the Lower Mississippi.

The siltstones, sandstones, mudstones and conglomerates of this formation were laid down about 40-54 million years ago during the Eocene epoch, a time of luxuriant plant growth in the subtropical flood plain that covered much of the Pacific Northwest.

This ancient wetland provided ideal conditions to preserve the many trees, shrubs, and plants that thrived here. Plants are important in the fossil record because they are more abundant and can give us a lot of information about climate, temperature, the water cycle, and humidity of the region. The Chuckanut flora is made up predominantly of plants whose modern relatives live in tropical areas such as Mexico and Central America.

Shore Bird Trackway, Washington State

While less abundant, evidence of the animals that called this ancient swamp home are also found here. Rare bird, reptile, and mammal tracks have been immortalized in the outcrops of the Chuckanut Formation.

Tracks of a type of archaic mammal of the Orders Pantodonta or Dinocerata (blunt foot herbivores), footprints from a small shorebird, and tracks from an early equid or webbed bird track give evidence to the vertebrates that inhabited the swamps, lakes and riverways of the Pacific Northwest 50 million years ago.

Fossil mammals from Washington do get most of the press. The movement of these celebrity vertebrates captured in the soft mud on the banks of a river, one of the depositional environments favourable for track preservation.

The bone record is actually far less abundant than the plant record, except near shell middens, given the preserving qualities of calcium and an alkaline environment. While calcium-rich bones and teeth fossilize well, they often do not get laid down in a situation that makes this possible. Hence the terrestrial paleontological record of Washington State at sites like Chuckanut is primarily made up of plant material.

CLALLAM BAY MARINE FAUNA

Panopea abrupt (Conrad, 1894)

This lovely large fossil bivalve is Panopea abrupta (Conrad, 1849) an extinct species of marine mollusc in the family Hiatellidae, subclass Heterodonta.

This fossil specimen was collected from lower Miocene deposits in the Clallam Formation on the foreshore bordering the Strait of Juan de Fuca near Clallam Bay, Olympic Peninsula, northwestern Washington. The oldest recorded specimen of one of their modern relatives lived not too far from here in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. That lovely was an impressive 168 years old.

A geoduck sucks water containing plankton down through its long siphon, filters this for food and ejects its refuse out through a separate hole in the siphon. Adult geoducks have few natural predators, which may also contribute to their longevity.

In Alaska, sea otters and dogfish have proved capable of dislodging geoducks; starfish also attack and feed on the exposed geoduck siphon.

Clallam Bay is a sleepy little town on the northwestern edge of the Olympic Peninsula. It was founded back in the 1880s as a steamboat stop and later served as a Mill town. If you are planning to visit the fossil exposures, head to the edge of town where it meets the sea.

Once at the water's edge, head east along the shore until you can go no further. You'll find marine fossils in the sandstone on the shore and cliffs. Mind the tide as access to the fossil site is only possible at low or mid-tide. You'll have to swim for it if you time it poorly. Clallam Bay: 48°15′17″N 124°15′30″W.

Near this site, there are many additional fossil localities to explore. In Sequim Bay, you can find Pleistocene vertebrates as well as Miocene cetacean bones near Slip Point. Near the Twin Post Office, you can find Oligocene nautiloids and bivalves (2.5km west in the bluff); You can find crabs including, Branchioplax in the Eocene limestone concretions from Neah Bay.

References: Addicott, Warren. Molluscan paleontology of the lower Miocene Clallam Formation, northwestern Washington, Geological Survey Paper 976.

FOSSIL FAUNAS OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST

Vertipecten fucanus (Dall, 1898), Clallam Formation, WA

Some water-worn samples of the fossil bivalve Vertipecten fucanus from Lower Miocene deposits in the Clallam Formation.

These lovelies were collected on the foreshore near Clallam Bay, Olympic Peninsula, northwestern Washington on a lovely fossil field trip I did with my mother years ago.

Range zones of pectinid bivalves provide a principal means of age determination and correlation of shallow-water, inshore facies from California, through to Washington state and up to the head of the Gulf of Alaska.

Until Addicott's study from 1976, the area was considered middle Miocene. The new Lower Miocene designation can be credited in large part to the restricted stratigraphic range of Vertipecten fucanus (Dall, 1898) and the restricted and overlapping ranges of several other fossil mollusks collected from Alaska to California.

Neogene marine sediments of the West Coast of North America were deposited in a series of widely spaced basins that extended geographically from the western and northern Gulf of Alaska (60°N) to southern California (33°N). Rich molluscan faunas occur extensively throughout these deposits and form the basis for biostratigraphic schemes that are useful for correlating within and between individual basins.

Arturia angustata nautiloid, Clallam Formation, WA

Early biostratigraphic work was concerned with faunas from particular horizons and with the stratigraphic range of diverse taxa, such as Pecten and Turritella, without reference to other fossil groups.

Succeeding work increasingly dealt with the relationships of molluscan zones to benthic and, later, planktonic foraminiferal stages. In recent years the age limits of Neogene molluscan stages have become better documented by reference to planktonic microfossils from dated DSDP cores and onshore faunas. As our tools get better, our insight into these faunal groups and their correlation with their cousins to the south and over in the Pacific become clearer.

Neogene molluscan faunas from California, the Pacific Northwest states (Oregon and Washington), and southern Alaska have been treated separately due to differences in faunal composition and geographic isolation. As a result, a different biostratigraphic sequence has been described for each region.

Pacific Northwest stages have been formally named and defined. This naming structure is also used informally for Alaskan faunas. California Neogene stages were proposed early in this century, are in need of redescription, and their usage is informal. Precise correlations between the three regional sequences have not yet been achieved, due to the low number of co-occurring species and the general lack of planktonic microfossils in these largely shallow-water faunas. The objectives of ongoing research include the documentation of the faunas of California and Pacific Northwest stages; formal description of California stages; an improved correlation between regional stage sequences; refinement of age estimates for stage boundaries; and, the establishment of Neogene stages for Alaskan faunas.

QUALICUM BEACH

Qualicum Beach, a quaint community just 47 km or 30 minutes north of Nanaimo. Offering everything the year-round traveller could want.

Whether its the beach that draws you or the leisurely stroll through town, you have many options for your oceanside visit. Visit the local galleries, boutiques and cafes that make Qualicum feel like a European village or check out their famous garage sales for their many bargains.

The outdoor enthusiast will appreciate the long stretches of sandy beach, old-growth forests, nearby mountains with winter skiing and mild climate for year-round golf. A trip to Qualicum Beach is a bit like visiting a garden county in England, all hanging baskets and clipped lawns. There are many hidden treasures in the area.

You could take in the fresh air and hike the alpine trail leading to Mount Arrowsmith Lookout or follow gentle paths amongst the 850-year-old Douglas Firs at MacMillan Park’s Cathedral Grove.
There are fossils to be found... though not extracted from the park at Englishman River Falls or you could explore the Crystalline interior of the Horne Lake underground caves - an intriguing side trip just west of the town of Qualicum. Those in the know travel to these moist refuges to take in the quiet and walk in wonder and shadow with the help of one of the local guides.

No trip to Qualicum Beach is complete without a trip to the Qualicum Museum. Here you’ll see the life-time collection of Graham Beard, co-author of West Coast Fossils and Chair of the Vancouver Island Paleontological Museum Society. With his wife, Tina, a talented artist and fossil collector in her own right, he has been actively collecting fossils on Vancouver Island for over 30 years.

Getting there:

From the Departure Bay ferry terminal in Nanaimo, stay to your right and head up the hill and head north on the Island Hwy north. Take the Qualicum turn-off. The road heads straight through this picturesque little town, past quaint little coffee shops and continues to the seashore. To visit the Qualicum Museum, turn left onto Sunningdale just as you cross the railroad tracks. The museum is at the end of the street. They have a sweet interglacial walrus found in Qualicum and a nice selection of other local fossils.

MOAI OF EASTER ISLAND

Carved Volcanic Moai Statues of Easter Island

Rapa Nui or Easter Island is a volcanic island and special territory of Chile in the southeastern Pacific. The island sits atop the Rano Kau Ridge and is built from the remains of three extinct volcanoes. Most of the rock here is hawaiite, an olivine basalt intermixed with iron-rich basalts, mafic extrusive igneous rocks formed from the rapid cooling of iron-rich lava near the islands core.

It is one of the most isolated inhabited islands now famous for its rows of carved moai statues. These quiet sentinels were carved by the islands' first inhabitants.

Sometime around 1200 AD, people from Polynesia began to settle on the island. It looked much different back then. There were lovely forests on the island and those first settlers build a thriving community and culture. A series of unfortunate events devastated the island and the population. Rats, deforestation, the slave trade and finally disease took their toll. But those early settlers are not forgotten. For one of the world's most isolated islands, it is still visited today to visit their greatest legacies — 887 towering carved figures, moai, made from the islands' volcanic rock. They quarried and carved the rock then moved their sculptures to a platform on the water's edge where they are visited and revered to this day.

PACHYDISCUS SUCHIAENSIS

Pachydiscus suchiaensis

The late Cretaceous ammonite Pachydiscus suchiaensis found in concretion amongst the 72 million-year-old grey shales of the Northumberland Formation, Campanian to the lower Maastrichtian, part of the upper Cretaceous, from Collishaw Point (Boulder Point to the locals), northwest side of Hornby Island, southwestern British Columbia.

Hornby is a glorious place to collect. The island is beautiful in its own right and the fossils from here often keep some of their original shell or nacre which makes them quite fetching.

This fellow is found amongst gastropods, shark teeth, fossil crabs, baculites and other bivalve fossils.

Like most of the fossils found at this locality, the specimen was found in concretions rolled smooth by time and tide. The concretions you find on the beach are generally round or oval in shape and are made up of hard, compacted sedimentary rock. If you are lucky, when you split them you see a fossil hidden within. The main topographic feature on Hornby Island is an arcuate mountain consisting of the resistant cliff-forming Geoffrey formation.

Near Shingle Spit about half a mile from the coast is Mount. Geoffrey 920-foot peak; from there the mountain gradually drops in elevation to the southeast and to the north.  It consists of a structurally simple 700-foot conglomerate homocline striking N 20° W and dipping to the northeast at a shallow angle of about 6°. The apex of the arcuate mountain belt points to the southwest.

Behind the mountain and almost enclosed by it is the fertile, green Strachan Valley. On the large peninsula which extends in a southeast direction from the north of the island towards St. John’s Point, the Hornby Formation outcrops forming the cliffs on the east side of Tribune Bay. The highest of these is about 200 feet. The argillaceous Lambert and Spray formations form the subdued lowlands of the island.

The coast of Hornby is probably a rising shoreline, as indicated by the almost perpendicular cliffs along its periphery. A hundred (100) foot cliffs of Lambert shale extends from Shingle Spit to Phipps Point, while from the latter to Boulder Point, the cliffs are not as steep and are covered in many places by vegetation.

ALBERTONECTES OF THE WESTERN INTERIOR SEAWAY

Albertonectes vanderveldei

During the Cretaceous, the Western Interior Seaway split North America into two landmasses. Part of the seaway was the Bearpaw Sea, a warm, shallow body of water that covered 1.7 million square kilometres of the coastal plain about 74 million years ago.

The Bearpaw Formation is a geologic formation of Late Cretaceous (Campanian) age. It outcrops in the U.S. state of Montana, as well as the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, and was named for the Bear Paw Mountains in Montana. It includes a wide range of marine fossils, as well as the remains of a few dinosaurs. It is known for its fossil ammonites, some of which are mined in Alberta to produce the organic gemstone ammolite.

It was home to many marine reptiles, ammonites, fish, and other aquatic life. Elasmosaurs —long-necked plesiosaurs — were one group of marine reptiles that inhabited these ancient waters.

They were primarily fish eaters, and used their long necks to strike at fish, then trapped them in their interlocking teeth. A new genus and species of elasmosaur, Albertonectes vanderveldei, was uncovered in 2007 during ammonite shell mining.

Albertonectes has 76 neck vertebrae, the most of any animal known — compare this to giraffes that only have seven neck vertebrae. Albertonectes had a neck that was 6.5 metres long. Was it flexible and able to bend sharply and quickly? Or was it stiff, with a gentle arc that could cover a large area? Palaeontologists used computer modelling to study the neck’s flexibility. The neck broke into four segments when it collapsed on the seafloor.

This incredible specimen provides insight into what marine communities were like during the Cretaceous Period. The fossilized remains of other animals that lived alongside Albertonectes are found in the rocks formed at the bottom of the Bearpaw Sea. These included potential prey such as small fishes, ammonites, and crayfish. From recovered shark teeth, and tooth marks left on the bone, palaeontologists determined that the carcass of Albertonectes. was scavenged by one or more sharks.

More on this impressive find:
https://royaltyrrellmuseum.wpcomstaging.com/./albertonecte…/

Photo: Roland Tanglao from Vancouver, Canada - 5d-dinosaur-camp-day2-20120802-64.jpgUploaded by FunkMonk, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20902049

DESMATOCHELYS FROM THE PUNTLEDGE

A lovely fossil turtle, Desmatochelys cf. D. lowi (Williston, 1894) found by Richard Bolt in the shales of the Trent River Formation along the Puntledge River in the early 1990s. At the time, it was the first documented account of a Cretaceous marine vertebrate from the Pacific coast of Canada — a first which shows you how much we've learned about our Pacific coast in just the last few years.

Dr. Betsy Nicholls wrote up the paper and published in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences in 1992. She described the specimen from some post cranial elements and part of the mandible. Unfortunately, we were never able to recover the skull.

It was the Desmatchelys that inspired the 1999 BCPA Symposium conference logo held at UBC that year — a trilobite embedded within a turtle, celebrating recent significant contributions to Canadian palaeontology. It was also the inspiration for the sculpture you see here by Peter Odendag. I met Peter at the conference and was delighted to see his paleo inspired sculptures. Both his Desmatochelys and coelacanth now grace the displays at the Courtenay Museum on Vancouver Island.

While this was the first turtle find on Vancouver Island, the hunt for our fossilized reptilian friends goes back many years, but the hunt for Desmatochelys begins in the Bone Wars of the late 1800s. It was Samuel Wendell Williston who described the first specimen of Desmatochelys in the Kansas University Quarterly in 1895. Williston was a contemporary of C.H. Sternberg, Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh. As history tells it, from 1877 to around 1892, both Cope and Marsh used their wealth and influence to finance their own expeditions and to procure the services and dinosaur bones from lesser fossil hunters. Williston was one of Marsh's boys.

Desmatochelys cf. D. lowi, Upper Cretaceous Haslam Formation 

In 1876, Williston wrote a letter to Marsh reporting that Sternberg had, "got one or two large turtles that are good and some pretty good saurians," (Shor, 1971:77) along the Smoky Hill River, upper Chalk Logan County.

Williston's hunt for turtles continued and it was not long after that he would hold in his hand a new species on which he would both publish and name. The specimen had been found by a railroad worker near Fairbury, Nebraska. These were hard times and fossils were exchanged for hard currency then as they are today. The specimen was passed through the hands of one curiosity seeker after another until it eventually made its way to M. A. Low. The good Master Low was more a man of science than currency and he generously donated to the University of Kansas in 1893.

That generosity was rewarded. Had the specimen not be accessioned into the collections at Kansas University by Low, it might well have been sold to Marsh and published under the name Marshanii. Instead, Williston was given the fossil to study. He published and in discovering it was a new species, chose the scientific name for the specimen. Williston tipped his hat to Low and called the new species Desmatochelys Iowi when published his finding on a well-preserved fossil turtle (KUVP 1200) from the Upper Cretaceous Benton Formation of Fairbury, Nebraska, later that year. The find included the skull, lower jaw and portions of the carapace, plastron, limbs and limb girdles. Williston described it as a new genus and species of marine turtle, Desmatochelys Iowi, and placed it in a new family, Desmatochelyidae. Since its first discovery at least five new specimens of D. lowi have been described from Cretaceous deposits in South Dakota, Kansas, Arizona, Canada, and Mexico.

In 1960, the carapace, limbs and limb girdles of a second specimen (CNHM PR 385) were found in Cretaceous sediment deposits with pre-Cambrian granites in a quarry on the South Dakota-western Minnesota border (Zangerl and Sloan, 1960). They pushed back on Williston's assertion that his new species belonged in the newly described family Desmatochelyidae, instead of recognizing it to be a primitive cheloniid within the family Cheloniidae — a family of large marine turtles characterized by their flat "hard-shells" with their streamlined, wide, rounded shapes and paddle-like forelimb flippers.

References for further reading:

• Calloway, Jack; Nicholls, Elizabeth, eds. (1997). Ancient Marine Reptiles. Academic Press. p. 243. ISBN 9780080527215.
• Raselli, I. 2018. Comparative cranial morphology of the Late Cretaceous protostegid sea turtle Desmatochelys lowii. PeerJ 6:e5964 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.5964

SAUROPTERYGIAN REPTILES

Libonectes atlasense / Andy Chua Collection

A beautifully preserved mandible of Libonectes atlasense, an elasmosaurid plesiosaur from early Turonian, Upper Cretaceous,  deposits of the Akrabou Formation near Asfla Village, Goulmima, Errachidia Province in eastern central Morocco.

The collecting area is in the region of Drâa-Tafilalet. You may know Errachidia as Ksar Souk. It was renamed My Rachid, in honour of the Moroccan royal family. Libonectes is a genus of sauropterygian reptile belonging to the plesiosaurs. Specimens have been found in the Britton Formation of Texas and the Akrabou Formation of Morocco.

Sauropterygian reptiles were a diverse taxon of extinct aquatic reptiles that arose from terrestrial ancestors just after the Permian extinction event. They flourished during the Triassic then all but the plesiosaurs became extinct at the end of the Triassic — with the plesiosaurs dying out at the end of the Cretaceous.

The holotype of Libonectes atlasense is an almost complete skeleton from Upper Cretaceous (mid-Turonian) rocks of the Goulmima area in eastern Morocco. Sven Sachs from the Naturkunde-Museum Bielefeld and Benjamin P. Kear from Uppsala University co-authored a paper redescribing the elasmosaurid plesiosaurian Libonectes atlasense from the Upper Cretaceous of Morocco. They did an initial assessment of the specimen in 2005, proposing a generic referral based on stratigraphical contemporaneity with Libonectes morgani from the CenomanianeTuronian of Texas, U.S.A.

Relative differences in the profile of the premaxillary-maxillary tooth row, position of the external bony nasal opening, number of teeth and rostrad inclination of the mandibular symphysis, proportions of the axial neural arch, and number of cervical and pectoral vertebrae were used to distinguish between these species.

Libonectes Scale Drawing / Hyrotrioskjan

As part of an on-going comparative appraisal of elasmosaurid plesiosaurian osteo-anatomy, they re-examined the type and formally referred material of both L. atlasense and L. morgani in order to establish species validity, as well as compile a comparative atlas for use in future works.

Their work revealed that these reportedly distinct species-level fossils are in fact virtually indistinguishable in gross morphology.

Indeed, the only substantial difference occurs in relative prominence of the midline keel along the mandibular symphysis, which might be explained by intraspecific variation. Their observations permit an amendment to the published generic diagnosis of Libonectes with the confirmation of important states such as the likely presence of a pectoral bar, distocaudad expansion of the humerus, and an epipodial foramen.

And we see some entirely new features. Novel features include a prominent ‘prong-like’ ventral midline process on the coracoids and the development of a median pelvic bar that encloses a central fenestration. Their work shows that the composite remains of L. morgani thus constitute one of the most complete elasmosaurid skeletal hypodigms documented worldwide, and evidence a trans-Atlantic distribution for this apparently dispersive species during the early Late Cretaceous. The impressive mandible you see here is in the collection of Andy Chua.

Sachs, Sven and Kear, Benjamin. (2017). Redescription of the elasmosaurid plesiosaurian Libonectes atlasense from the Upper Cretaceous of Morocco. Cretaceous Research. 74. 205-222. 10.1016/j.cretres.2017.02.017.

Photo: Libonectes atlasense specimen, Andy Chua

Drawing By Hyrotrioskjan - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57716018

YORKSHIRE ICHTHYOSAUR TAIL

Ichthyosaur Tail Section. Photo: Liam Langley

A beautiful piece of ichthyosaur tail section found on the Yorkshire Coast in 2019 by the deeply awesome Liam Langley.

Ichthyosaurus are an extinct marine reptile first described from fossil fragments found in 1699 in Wales. Shortly thereafter, fossil vertebrae were published in 1708 from the Lower Jurassic and the first member of the order Ichthyosauria to be discovered.

Over time, we discovered a number of these fossil specimens and a picture of the overall look and size began to emerge. We found fossils that ranged from quite small, just a foot or two, to well over twenty-six metres in length and resembled both modern fish and dolphins. This specimen holds a well-deserved spot of honour on Liam's mantle. The detail is tremendous and just look at that masterful prep work.

ICHTHYOSAUR VERTEBRAE

DIGITS AND PHALANGES

While they resembled fish and dolphins, Ichthyosaurs were large marine reptiles belonging to the order known as Ichthyosauria or Ichthyopterygia.

In 2018, Benjamin Kear and his team delved into a new are of study through technology that allows us to look at ichthyosaur remains at the molecular level. Their findings suggest ichthyosaurs had skin and blubber quite similar to our modern dolphins.

While ichthyosaurs evolved from land-dwelling, lung-breathing reptiles, they returned to our ancient seas and evolved into the fish-shaped creatures we find in the fossil record today. Their limbs fully transformed into flippers, sometimes containing a very large number of digits and phalanges.

Their flippers tell us they were entirely aquatic as they were not well-designed for use on land. And it was their flippers that first gave us the clue that they gave birth to live young; a find later confirmed by fossil embryo and wee baby ichy finds. They thrived during much of the Mesozoic era; based on fossil evidence, they first appeared around 250 million years ago (Ma) and at least one species survived until about 90 million years ago into the Late Cretaceous.

During the early Triassic period, ichthyosaurs evolved from a group of unidentified land reptiles that returned to the sea. They were particularly abundant in the later Triassic and early Jurassic periods before being replaced as a premier aquatic predator by another marine reptilian group, the Plesiosauria, in the later Jurassic and Cretaceous.

In the Late Cretaceous, ichthyosaurs were hard hit by the Cenomanian-Turonian anoxic event. As the deepest benthos layers of the seas became anoxic, poisoned by hydrogen sulphide, deep water marine life died off. This caused a cascade that wreaked havoc all the way up the food chain. At the end of that chain were our mighty predaceous marine reptiles.

Bounty turned to scarcity and a race for survival began. The ichthyosaurs lost that race as the last lineage became extinct. It may have been their conservative evolution as a genus when faced with a need for adaptation to the world in which they found themselves and/or being outcompeted by early mosasaurs.

There are promising discoveries coming out of strata from the Cretaceous epeiric seas of Texas, USA from Nathan E. Van Vranken. His published paper from 2017, "An overview of ichthyosaurian remains from the Cretaceous of Texas, USA," looks at ichthyosaurian taxa from the mid-Cretaceous (Albian–Cenomanian) time interval in North America with an eye to ichthyosaurian distribution and demise.

Photo: This beautifully preserved Ichthyosaur paddle with its incredible detail is from Early Jurassic (183 Million Years) deposits in the Ohmden, Posidonia Shale Formation, Baden-Württemberg, east of the Rhine, southwestern Germany.

BLUE LIAS ICHTHYOSAUR

This well-preserved partial ichthyosaur was found in the Blue Lias shales by Lewis Winchester-Ellis in 2018. The vertebrae you see here are from the tail section of this marine reptile.

The find includes stomach contents which tell us a little about how this particular fellow liked to dine.

As with most of his brethren, he enjoyed fish and cephalopods. Lewis found fishbone and squid tentacle hooklets in his belly. Oh yes, these ancient cephies had grasping hooklets on their tentacles. I'm picturing them wiggling all ominously. The hooklets were the only hard parts of the animal preserved in this case as the softer parts of this ancient calamari were fully or partially digested before this ichthyosaur met his end.

Ichthyosaurus was an extinct marine reptile first described from fossil fragments found in 1699 in Wales. Shortly thereafter, fossil vertebrae were published in 1708 from the Lower Jurassic and the first member of the order Ichthyosauria to be discovered.

To give that a bit of historical significance, this was the age of James Stuart, Jacobite hopeful to the British throne. While scientific journals of the day were publishing the first vertebrae ichthyosaur finds, he was avoiding the French fleet in the Firth of Forth off Scotland. This wasn’t Bonnie Prince Charlie, this was his Dad. Yes, that far back.

The first complete skeleton was discovered in the early 19th century by Mary Anning and her brother Joseph along the Dorset Jurassic Coast. Joseph had mistakenly, but quite reasonably, taken the find for an ancient crocodile. Mary excavated the specimen a year later and it was this and others that she found that would supply the research base others would soon publish on.

Mary's find was described by a British surgeon, Sir Everard Home, an elected Fellow of the Royal Society, in 1814. The specimen is now on display at the Natural History Museum in London bearing the name Temnodontosaurus platyodon, or “cutting-tooth lizard.”

Ichthyosaurus communis

In 1821, William Conybeare and Henry De La Beche, a friend of Mary's, published a paper describing three new species of unknown marine reptiles based on the Anning's finds.

Rev. William Buckland would go on to describe two small ichthyosaurs from the Lias of Lyme Regis, Ichthyosaurus communis and Ichthyosaurus intermedius, in 1837.

Remarkable, you'll recall that he was a theologian, geologist, palaeontologist AND Dean of Westminster. It was Buckland who published the first full account of a dinosaur in 1824, coining the name, "Megalosaurus."

The Age of Dinosaurs and Era of the Mighty Marine Reptile had begun.

Ichthyosaurs have been collected in the Blue Lias near Lyme Regis and the Black Ven Marls. More recently, specimens have been collected from the higher succession near Seatown. Paddy Howe, Lyme Regis Museum geologist, found a rather nice Ichthyosaurus breviceps skull a few years back. A landslip in 2008 unveiled some ribs poking out of the Church cliffs and a bit of digging revealed the ninth fossil skull ever found of a breviceps, with teeth and paddles to boot.

Specimens have since been found in Europe in Belgium, England, Germany, Switzerland and in Indonesia. Many tremendously well-preserved specimens come from the limestone quarries in Holzmaden, southern Germany.

Ichthyosaurs ranged from quite small, just a foot or two, to well over twenty-six metres in length and resembled both modern fish and dolphins.

Dean Lomax and Sven Sachs, both active (and delightful) vertebrate paleontologists, have described a colossal beast, Shonisaurus sikanniensis from the Upper Triassic (Norian) Pardonet Formation of northeastern British Columbia, Canada, measuring 3-3.5 meters in length. The specimen is now on display in the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Alberta, Canada. It was this discovery that tipped the balance in the vote, making it British Columbia's Official Fossil. Ichthyosaurs have been found at other sites in British Columbia, on Vancouver Island and the Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii) but Shoni tipped the ballot.

The first specimens of Shonisaurus were found in the 1990s by Peter Langham at Doniford Bay on the Somerset coast of England.

Dr. Betsy Nicholls, Rolex Laureate Vertebrate Palaeontologist from the Royal Tyrrell Museum, excavated the type specimen of Shonisaurus sikanniensis over three field sessions in one of the most ambitious fossil excavations ever ventured. Her efforts from 1999 through 2001, both in the field and lobbying back at home, paid off. Betsy published on this new species in 2004, the culmination of her life’s work and her last paper as we lost her to cancer in autumn of that year.

Roy Chapman Andrews, AMNH 1928 Expedition to the Gobi Desert

Charmingly, Betsy had a mail correspondence with Roy Chapman Andrews, former director of the American Museum of Natural History, going back to the late 1950s as she explored her potential career in palaeontology. Do you recall the AMNH’s sexy paleo photos of expeditions to the Gobi Desert in southern Mongolia in China in the early 20th century? I've posted a picture here to jog your memory. Roy Chapman Andrews was the lead on that trip. The man was dead sexy. His photos are what fueled the flames of my own interest in paleo.

We've found at least 37 specimens of Shonisaurus in Triassic outcrops of the Luning Formation in the Shoshone Mountains of Nevada, USA. The finds go back to the 1920s. The specimens that may it to publication were collected by M. Wheat and C. L. Camp in the 1950s.  The aptly named Shonisaurus popularis became the Nevada State Fossil in 1984. Our Shoni got around. Isolated remains have been found in a section of sandstone in Belluno, in the Eastern Dolomites, Veneto region of northeastern Italy. The specimens were published by Vecchia et al. in 2002.

For a time, Shonisaurus was the largest ichthyosaurus known.

Move over, Shoni, as a new marine reptile find competes with the Green Anaconda (Eunectes murinus) and the Blue Whale (Balaenoptera musculus) for size at a whopping twenty-six (26) metres.

The find is the prize of fossil collector turned co-author, Paul de la Salle, who (you guessed it) found it in the lower part of the intertidal area that outcrops strata from the latest Triassic Westbury Mudstone Formation of Lilstock on the Somerset coast. He contacted Dean Lomax and Judy Massare who became co-authors on the paper.

The find and conclusions from their paper put "dinosaur" bones from the historic Westbury Mudstone Formation of Aust Cliff, Gloucestershire, UK site into full reinterpretation.

And remember that ichthyosaur the good Reverend Buckland described back in 1837, the Ichthyosaurus communis? Dean Lomax was the first to describe a wee baby. A wee baby ichthyosaur! Awe. I know, right? He and paleontologist Nigel Larkin published this adorable first in the journal of Historical Biology in 2017.

They had teamed up previously on another first back in 2014 when they completed the reconstruction of an entire large marine reptile skull and mandible in 3-D, then graciously making it available to fellow researchers and the public. The skull and braincase in question were from an Early Jurassic, and relatively rare, Protoichthyosaurus prostaxalis. The specimen had been unearthed in Warwickshire back in the 1950s. Unlike most ichthyosaur finds of this age, it was not compressed and allowed the team to look at a 3-D specimen through the lens of computerized tomography (CT) scanning.

Another superb 3-D ichthyosaur skull was found near Lyme Regis by fossil hunter-turned-entrepreneur-local David Sole and prepped by the late David Costain. I'm rather hoping it went into a museum collection as it would be wonderful to see the specimen studied, imaged, scanned and 3-D printed for all to share. Here's hoping.

Ichthyosaurus somersetensis Credit: Dean R Lomax

Lomax and Sven Sachs also published on an embryo from one of the largest ichthyosaurs known, a new species named Ichthyosaurus somersetensis.

Their paper in the ACTA Palaeontologica Polonica from 2017, describes the third embryo known for Ichthyosaurus and the first to be positively identified to species level. The specimen was collected from Lower Jurassic strata (lower Hettangian, Blue Lias Formation) of Doniford Bay, Somerset, UK and is housed in the collection of the Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum (Lower Saxony State Museum) in Hannover, Germany.

We've learned a lot about them in the time we've been studying them. We now have thousands of specimens, some whole, some as bits and pieces. Many specimens that have been collected are only just now being studied and the tools we are using to study them are getting better and better.

Link to Lomax Paper: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article…

Link to Nathan's Paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/…/10.1080/03115518.2018.1523462…

Nicholls Paper: E. L. Nicholls and M. Manabe. 2004. Giant ichthyosaurs of the Triassic - a new species of Shonisaurus from the Pardonet Formation (Norian: Late Triassic) of British Columbia. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 24(4):838-849 [M. Carrano/H. Street]

PLESIOSAURS OF THE YORKSHIRE COAST

These two lovely Plesiosaur vertebrae were found by Liam Langley on fossil field trips to the Yorkshire Coast on the east coast of England.

Plesiosaurus was a large, carnivorous air-breathing marine reptile with strong jaws and sharp teeth that moved through the water with four flippers. We'd originally thought that this might not be the most aerodynamic design but it was clearly effective as they used the extra set to create a wee vortex that aided in their propulsion. In terms of mechanical design, they have a little something in common with dragonflies.

We've recreated plesiosaur movements and discovered that they were able to optimize propulsion to make use of their own wake. As their front flippers paddled in big circular movements, the propelled water created little whirlpools under their bellies.

The back flippers would then paddle between these whirlpools pushing the plesiosaur forward to maximal effect. They were very successful hunters, outcompeting ichthyosaurs who thrived in the Triassic but were replaced in the Jurassic and Cretaceous by these new aquatic beasties. Our ancient seas teemed with these predatory marine reptiles with their long necks and barrel-shaped bodies. Plesiosaurs were smaller than their pliosaur cousins, weighing in at about 450 kg or 1,000 lbs and reaching about 4.5 metres or 15 feet in length. For a modern comparison, they were roughly twice as long as a standard horse or about as long as a good size hippo.

Plesiosaurs first appeared in the latest Triassic, during the Rhaetian. They thrived in the Jurassic and vanished at the end of the Cretaceous in time with the K-Pg extinction event along with a host of other species. They are one of the marine reptiles that we associate with the infamous Mary Anning, a paleo darling of the early 19th century who found her first fossil specimen in the winter of 1823. These two vertebrae grace the home of the talented Mr. Langley. Anning's plesiosaur can be viewed in London's Natural History Museum.

SHONISAURUS OF NEVADA

The beauties you see here are ichthyosaurs. The largest of their lineage is the genus Shonisaurus who ruled our ancient seas 217 million years ago.

At least 37 incomplete fossil specimens of the marine reptile have been found in hard limestone deposits of the Luning Formation, in far northwestern Nye County of Nevada. This formation dates to the late Carnian age of the late Triassic period when present-day Nevada and parts of the western United States were covered by an ancient ocean.

The first researcher to recognize the Nevada fossil specimens as ichthyosaurs was Siemon W. Muller of Stanford University. He had the work of Sir Richard Owen and others to build on. That being said, there are very few contenders for a species that boasts vertebrae over a foot wide and weighing in at almost 10 kg or 21 lbs. Muller contacted the University of California Museum of Paleontology at Berkeley. Surface collecting by locals continued at the site but no major excavation was planned.

Sir Richard Owen, the British biologist, comparative anatomist and paleontologist, coined the name ichthyopterygia, or "fish flippers," one hundred and fourteen years earlier, but that wee bit of scientific knowledge hadn't made its way west to the general population. The finds at Luning were still, "marine monsters."

Owen, too, was building on research going back to 1699, the very first recorded fossil fragments found of these beasties in Wales. Shortly thereafter, fossil vertebrae were published in 1708 from the Lower Jurassic.

The first complete skeleton was discovered in the early 19th century by Mary Anning and her brother Joseph along the Dorset Jurassic Coast. Mary's find was described by a British surgeon, Sir Everard Home, an elected Fellow of the Royal Society, in 1814. The specimen is now on display at the Natural History Museum in London bearing the name Temnodontosaurus platyodon, or “cutting-tooth lizard.”

In 1821, William Conybeare and Henry De La Beche, a friend of Mary's, published a paper describing three new species of unknown marine reptiles based on the Anning's finds. The Rev. William Buckland would go on to describe two small ichthyosaurs from the Lias of Lyme Regis, Ichthyosaurus communis and Ichthyosaurus intermedius. All of this early work was instrumental in aiding the researchers who would join the project at Luning.

Owen is considered to have been an outstanding naturalist with a remarkable gift for interpreting fossils. Contrary to common belief, advanced study does help with identifying fossils, but what is truly needed is a keen eye. The finds at Luning were blessed to be seen by an enthusiastic local with just that right kind of keen eye.

Almost a quarter of a century after Muller's initial reports, Dr. Charles L. Camp from UCMP received correspondence further detailing the finds from a lovely Mrs. Margaret Wheat of Fallon. She wrote to Camp in September of 1928 to say that she'd been giving the quarry section a bit of a sweep, as you do, and had uncovered a nice aligned section of vertebrae with her broom. The following year, Dr. Charles L. Camp went out to survey the finds and began working on the specimens, his first field season of many, in 1954.

Back in the 1950s, these large marine reptiles were rumoured to be "marine monsters," as the concept of an ichthyosaur was not well understood by the local townsfolk. Excitement soon hit West Union Canyon as the quarry began to reveal the sheer size of these mighty beasts. Four of the specimens were fully excavated. Most of the ichthyosaur bones were left in situ, partially because the work was tremendously difficult, and partially to allow others to see how the specimens were laid down over 200 million years ago.

Camp continued to work with Wheat at the site and brought on Sam Welles and a host of students to help with excavations. The team understood the need for protection at the site. They canvassed the Nevada Legislature to establish the Ichthyosaur Paleontological State Monument. You can see one of the Park Rangers above giving a tour within the lovely Fossil Hut building they built on the site to protect the fossils.

In 1957, the site was incorporated into the State Park System and Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park was born. The park Twenty years later, in 1977, the population of Nevada weighed in and the Legislature designated Shonisaurus popularis as the State Fossil of Nevada. Visitors are welcome to collect fossils from the exposures of the Upper Triassic (Early Norian, Kerri Zone) of the Luning Formation, West Union Canyon, just outside Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park.

Address: State route 844, Austin, NV 89310, United States. Area: 4.58 km². Open 24 hours;
Elevation: 6,975 ft (2,126 m); Tel: +1 775-964-2440; http://parks.nv.gov/parks/berlin-ichthyosaur

CENOMANIAN-TURONIAN IMPACT

Ichthyosaur and Plesiosaur by Edouard Riou, 1863

During the early Triassic period, ichthyosaurs evolved from a group of unidentified land reptiles that returned to the sea. They were particularly abundant in the later Triassic and early Jurassic periods before being replaced as a premier aquatic predator by another marine reptilian group, the Plesiosauria, in the later Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.

In the Late Cretaceous, ichthyosaurs were hard hit by the Cenomanian-Turonian anoxic event. As the deepest benthos layers of the seas became anoxic, poisoned by hydrogen sulphide, deep water marine life died off. This caused a cascade that wreaked havoc all the way up the food chain. At the end of that chain were our mighty predaceous marine reptiles.

Bounty turned to scarcity and a race for survival began. The ichthyosaurs lost that race as the last of their lineage became extinct. It may have been their conservative evolution as a genus when faced with a need for adaptation to the world in which they found themselves and/or being outcompeted by early mosasaurs.

CONFOUNDING CONFUCIUSORNIS

Confuciusornis was about the size of a modern pigeon, with a total length of 50 centimetres (1.6 feet) and a wingspan of up to 70 cm (2.3 ft). Its body weight has been estimated to have been as much as 1.5 kilograms (3.3 lb), or less than 0.2 kg (0.44 lb). Confuciusornis feducciai was about a third longer than average specimens of Confuciusornis sanctus.

Confuciusornis is an interesting species as it shows a mix of basal and derived traits. It was more advanced or derived than Archaeopteryx in possessing a short tail with a pygostyle — a bone formed from a series of short, fused tail vertebrae — and a bony sternum or breastbone, but more basal or "primitive" than modern birds in retaining large claws on the forelimbs, having a primitive skull with a closed eye-socket, and a relatively small breastbone.

At first, the number of basal characteristics was exaggerated: Hou assumed in 1995 that a long tail was present and mistook grooves in the jaw bones for small degenerated teeth. I suppose we see what we want to see and our expectations colour our vision.

Confuciusornis sanctus, Cincinnati Museum of Natural History and Science

The skull morphology of Confuciusornis has been difficult to determine. Many of the specimens are crushed and deformed but we can piece some of it together.

Their skulls were near triangular in side view, and the toothless beak was robust and pointed. The front of the jaws had deep neurovascular foramina and grooves, associated with the keratinous rhamphotheca — horn-covered beak.

The skull was rather robust, with deep jaws, especially the mandible. The tomial crest of the upper jaw — bony support for the jaw's cutting edge — was straight for its entire length. The premaxillae —front bones of the upper jaw — were fused together for most of the front half of the snout, but were separated at the tip by a V-shaped notch. The frontal processes that projected hindwards from the premaxillae were thin and extended above the orbits (eye openings) like in modern birds, but unlike Archaeopteryx and other primitive birds without pygostyles, where these processes end in front of the orbits. The maxilla (the second large bone of the upper jaw) and premaxilla articulated by an oblique suture, and the maxilla had an extensive palatal shelf. The nasal bone was smaller than in most birds and had a slender process that directed down towards the maxilla.

The orbit was large, round, and contained sclerotic plates — the bony support inside the eye. A crescent-shaped element that formed the front wall of the orbit may be an ethmoidolacrimal complex similar to that of pigeons, but the identity of these bones is unclear due to bad preservation, and the fact that this region is very variable in modern birds. The external nares, bony nostrils, were near triangular and positioned far from the tip of the snout. The borders of the nostrils were formed by the premaxillae above, the maxilla below, and the nasal wall at the back.

Birds: Living Dinosaurs

Few specimens preserve the sutures of the braincase, but one specimen shows that the frontoparietal suture crossed the skull just behind the postorbital process and the hindmost wall of the orbit.

This was similar to Archaeopteryx and Enaliornis, whereas it curves back and crosses the skull roof much farther behind in modern birds, making the frontal bone of Confuciusornis small compared to those of modern birds.

A prominent supraorbital flange formed the upper border of the orbit and continued as the postorbital process, which had prominent crests that projected outwards to the sides, forming an expansion of the orbit's rim.

The squamosal bone was fully incorporated into the braincase wall, making its exact borders impossible to determine, which is also true for adult modern birds.

Various interpretations have been proposed of the morphology and identity of the bones in the temporal region behind the orbits, but it may not be resolvable with the available fossils. Confuciusornis was considered the first known bird with an ancestral diapsid skull — with two temporal fenestrae on each side of the skull — in the late 1990s, but in 2018, Elzanowski and colleagues concluded that the configuration seen in the temporal region of confuciusornithids was autapomorphic — a unique trait that evolved secondarily rather than having been retained from a primitive condition — for their group.

Victoria Crowned Pidgeon, Goura victoria

The quadrate bone and the back end of the jugal bar were bound in a complex scaffolding that connected the squamosal bone with the lower end of the postorbital process. This scaffolding consisted of two bony bridges, the temporal bar and the orbitozygomatic junction, which gave the appearance of the temporal opening being divided similarly to diapsid skulls, though this structure is comparable to bridges over the temporary fossa in modern birds.

The mandible, lower jaw, is one of the best-preserved parts of the skull. It was robust, especially at the front third of its length. The tomial crest was straight for its entire length, and a notch indented the sharp tip of the mandible.

The mandible was spear-shaped when viewed from the side due to its lower margin slanting downwards and back from its tip for the front third of its length — the jaw was also deepest at a point one third from the tip.

The symphyseal part — where the two halves of the lower jaw connected — of the dentary was very robust. The lower margin formed an angle at the level of the front margin of the nasal foramen, which indicates how far back the rhamphotheca of the beak extended.

The dentary had three processes that extended backwards into other bones placed further back in the mandible. The articular bone at the back of the mandible was completely fused with the surangular and prearticular bones. The mandible extended hindwards beyond the cotyla — which connected with the condyle of the upper jaw — and this part was therefore similar to a retroarticular process as seen in other taxa. The surangular enclosed two mandibular fenestrae. The hindmost part of the surangular had a small foramen placed in the same position as similar openings in the mandibles of non-bird theropods and modern birds. The splenial bone was three-pronged — as in some modern birds, but unlike the simple splenial of Archaeopteryx — and its lower margin followed the lower margin of the mandible. There were large rostral mandibular fenestra and a small, rounded caudal fenestra behind it.

Though only two specimens preserve parts of the beak's keratinous covering, these show that there would have been differences between species not seen in the skeleton. The holotype of C. dui preserves the outline of an upwards curving beak which sharply tapers towards its tip, while a C. sanctus specimen has an upper margin that is almost straight and a tip that appears to be slightly hooked downwards.

Photo One: Zhiheng Li, Zhonghe Zhou, Julia A. Clarke - http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0198078, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78911418

Photo Two: James St. John, Ohio State University, Newark - https://www.flickr.com/photos/jsjgeology/15236217920/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36907383

BIRDS OF THE JEHOL BIOTA

In November 1993, Chinese paleontologists Hou Lianhai and Hu Yoaming, of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) in Beijing received a call from an excited local fossil collector.

He claimed to have quite a remarkable specimen on his hands. The team visited Zhang He at his home in Jinzhou, or Chinchow, a coastal prefecture-level city in central-west Liaoning province

Zhang showed them a spectacular fossil bird specimen he'd recently purchased at a local flea market. Very little was known about the specimen but it was clearly important and the team was hopeful more of this paleo goodness might turn up.

They didn't have that long to wait. A month after his visit to Zhang, Hou learned about a second specimen discovered by a local farmer, Yang Yushan. Things were looking up. Best of all, he learned that both specimens were likely from the same locality in Shangyuan, Beipiao. This was not a one-off discovery or an amazing but anonymous find. With two specimens to compare, the locality determined, the possibility of an interesting publication and career advancement would be a reality.

In 1995, the two specimens, as well as a third, were formally described as a new genus and species, Confuciusornis sanctus, by Hou and colleagues. The generic name combines the philosopher Confucius with a Greek ὄρνις, (ornis), "bird". The specific name means "holy one" in Latin and is a translation of Chinese 圣贤, shèngxián, "sage", again in reference to Confucius.

The first discovered specimen was designated the holotype (as you do) and catalogued under the specimen number IVPP V10918; it comprises a partial skeleton with skull and parts of the forelimb.

Of the other two skeletons, one (paratype, IVPP V10895) comprises a complete pelvis and hind limb, and the other (paratype, IVPP V10919–10925) a fragmentary hind limb together with six feather impressions attached to both sides of the tibia or shin bone.

All was well until those reading the journal articles realized that the two paratype specimens only comprise bones that were unknown from the holotype. An oversight, likely by design, but this lack of overlap between the specimens made their referral to the species speculative. The lack of overlap also gave a wide margin for error in the naming of additional, albeit hopeful, new species names — names that would later need to be amended. Luckily, the discovery of a veritable treasure trove of well-preserved specimens shortly after confirmed that the specimens indeed represented a single species.

Together with the early mammal Zhangheotherium, which was discovered about the same time, Confuciusornis was considered the most remarkable fossil discovery of the Jehol biota. If you're not in the paleo loop, the Jehol biota of northeastern China has unearthed some of the most important Mesozoic bird specimens worldwide over the past two decades.

It has also given us another fossil-rich Lagerstätte that includes a wonderful mix of advanced and ancient species. My speculation is that northeast Asia was isolated for part of the Jurassic by the Turgai Sea that separated Europe from Asia at that time. The fossils at Jehol are numerous and exceptionally well preserved. Think of the Cambrian goodies at Burgess or the Altmühltal Formation, Jurassic Konservat-Lagerstätte at Solnhofen. Quite remarkably, fully articulated skeletons, soft tissues, colour patterns, stomach contents, and twigs with leaves and flowers still attached, can be found within the Jehol biota.

A beautifully preserved Archaeopteryx

In the late 1990s, Confuciusornis was considered both the oldest beaked bird as well as the most primitive bird after Archaeopteryx. It was also considered to be only slightly younger than Archaeopteryx. 

Yixian Formation, the rock unit where most Confuciusornis specimens have been found, was thought to be of Late Jurassic (Tithonian) age at the time.

Although two bird genera, Sinornis and Cathayornis, had already described from the Jehol biota back in 1992, these were based on fragmentary remains and stem from the younger Jiufotang Formation. At the time, the Jiufotang was thought to be Early Cretaceous. Both formations have since been dated to the Lower Cretaceous — Barremian to Aptian — 131–120 million years ago.

In 1995, local farmers began digging for fossils near the village of Sihetun, Beipiao, in what would become one of the most productive localities of the Jehol biota. The then largely unknown site is truly world-class. Large-scale professional excavations at this single locality have been carried out by the IVPP from 1997 onwards. Not one, not two, but several hundred specimens of Confuciusornis have now been unearthed from here. Many additional sites producing fossils of the Jehol biota have been recognized since, distributed over a large region including Liaoning, Hebei, and Inner Mongolia.

Due to the great abundance, preservation, and commercial value of the fossils, excavations by local farmers produced an unusually high number of fossils. Although some of these fossils have been added to the collections of Chinese research institutions, more have been smuggled out of the country.

In 1999, it was estimated that the National Geological Museum of China in Beijing housed nearly a hundred (100) specimens of Confuciusornis, and in 2010, the Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature was reported to possess five hundred and thirty-six (536) specimens. While it is illegal to export them, the majority of specimens are still held privately and thus are not available for research. I see them on social media and occasionally they come up for sale on eBay.

At one time forty individuals were discovered on a surface of about 100 m2. This unusual bone bed was likely the result of an entire flock of birds being simultaneously killed by ash, heat or poisonous gas following the volcanic eruptions that caused the tuff stone in which the fossils were found to be deposited as lake sediments. An avian death bed is highly unusual. Very sad for our feathered friends but grateful for what has been revealed by this rare event.

Notes: Confuciusornis chuonzhous was named by Hou in 1997 based on specimen IVPP V10919, originally a paratype of Confuciusornis sanctus. The specific name refers to Chuanzhou, an ancient name for Beipiao. Confuciusornis chuonzhous is now generally considered synonymous with Confuciusornis sanctus.

Confuciusornis suniae, named by Hou in the same 1997 publication, was based on specimen IVPP V11308. The specific name honours Madam Sun, the wife of Shikuan Liang who donated the fossil to the IVPP. Confuciusornis suniae is now usually considered synonymous with Confuciusornis sanctus.

Reference: Zhou, Z; Hou, L. (1998). "Confuciusornis and the early evolution of birds". Vertebrata PalAsiatica. 36 (2): 136–146.

Zhou, Z. (2006). "Evolutionary radiation of the Jehol Biota: chronological and ecological perspectives". Geological Journal. 41 (3–4): 377–393. doi:10.1002/gj.1045.

CALAMOPLEURUS OF BRAZIL

This well-preserved fossil fish skull is from Calamopleurus (Agassiz, 1841), an extinct genus of bony fishes related to the heavily armoured ray-finned gars.

They are fossil relics, the sole surviving species of the order Amiiformes. Although bowfins are highly evolved, they are often referred to as primitive fishes and living fossils as they retain many of the morphologic characteristics of their ancestors.

This specimen was found in Lower Cretaceous outcrops of the Santana Formation in the Araripe Basin UNESCO Global Geopark. The Santana Formation of north-east Brazil contains one of the most important Mesozoic fossil Konservat Lagerstatten on Gondwana (Maisey, 1991; Martill, 1993, 1997, 2001; Kellner, 2002; Fara et al., 2005). The formation crops out on the flanks of the Chapada do Araripe in southern Ceara´, western Pernambuco and a small part of eastern Piaui in the north-eastern Brazilian Caatinga. It forms part of a heterogeneous assemblage of spectacularly fossiliferous rocks of Cretaceous age (Gardner, 1841; Brito, 1984; Maisey, 1991; Martill, 1993).

Two formations within the basin are well-known as Konservat Lagerstatten; the Nova Olinda Member of the Crato Formation lies a few tens of metres below the Santana Formation, and both have contributed considerably to our knowledge and understanding of Gondwanan Cretaceous palaeobiotas (Martill, 1988, 1993; Wenz and Brito, 1990; Maisey, 1991, 1993; and many references herein). Only the age of the Romualdo Member of the Santana Formation, a dominantly silty shale sequence that includes the highly fossiliferous carbonate concretion-bearing unit, is considered here.

Although the Santana Formation concretions have been famous for their enclosed fossils, especially fishes, for over 150 years, in more recent times they have become known for a diversity of dinosaur and pterosaur remains in an excellent state of preservation (Martill, 1998; Martill and Unwin, 1989; Kellner, 1996a,b; Frey et al., 2003a,b) comparable with, and sometimes exceeding, that of the Jurassic Solnhofen Limestone of Bavaria (Barthel et al., 1990), especially in their three-dimensionality. Photo and collection of David Murphy.

References: Martill, David M. The age of the Cretaceous Santana Formation fossil Konservat Lagerstatten of north-east Brazil: a historical review and an appraisal of the biochronostratigraphic utility of its palaeobiota, Cretaceous Research 28 (2007) 895-920.

THEROPODS OF A FEATHER

Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves, characterized by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweight skeleton.

These modern dinosaurs live worldwide and range in size from the 5 cm (2 in) bee hummingbird to the 2.75 m (9 ft) ostrich. There are about ten thousand living species, more than half of which are passerine, or "perching" birds.

Birds have wings whose development varies according to species; the only known groups without wings are the extinct moa and elephant birds.

Wings, which evolved from forelimbs, gave birds the ability to fly, although further evolution has led to the loss of flight in some birds, including ratites, penguins, and diverse endemic island species. The digestive and respiratory systems of birds are also uniquely adapted for flight. Some bird species of aquatic environments, particularly seabirds and some waterbirds, have further evolved for swimming.

Best of all, birds are feathered theropod dinosaurs, and constitute the only living dinosaurs. Based on fossil and biological evidence, most scientists accept that birds are a specialized subgroup of theropod dinosaurs, and more specifically, they are members of Maniraptora, a group of theropods which includes dromaeosaurs and oviraptorids, amongst others. As palaeontologists discover more theropods closely related to birds, the previously clear distinction between non-birds and birds has become a bit muddy.

Recent discoveries in the Liaoning Province of northeast China, which include many small theropod feathered dinosaurs — and some excellent fakes — contribute to this ambiguity. Still, other fossil specimens found here shed a light on the evolution of Aves. Confuciusornis sanctus, an Early Cretaceous bird from the Yixian and Jiufotang Formations of China is the oldest known bird to have a beak.

Like modern birds, Confuciusornis had a toothless beak, but close relatives of modern birds such as Hesperornis and Ichthyornis were toothed, telling us that the loss of teeth occurred convergently in Confuciusornis and living birds.

Confuciusornis sanctus, Cretaceous Bird from China, 125 mya

The consensus view in contemporary palaeontology is that the flying theropods, or avialans, are the closest relatives of the deinonychosaurs, which include dromaeosaurids and troodontids.

Together, these form a group called Paraves. Some basal members of this group, such as Microraptor, have features which may have enabled them to glide or fly. The most basal deinonychosaurs were wee little things. This evidence raises the possibility that the ancestor of all paravians may have been arboreal, have been able to glide, or both. Unlike Archaeopteryx and the non-avialan feathered dinosaurs, who primarily ate meat, tummy contents from recent avialan studies suggest that the first avialans were omnivores. Even more intriguing...

Avialae or "bird wings" are a clade of flying dinosaurs containing the only living dinosaurs, the birds. It is usually defined as all theropod dinosaurs more closely related to modern birds (Aves) than to deinonychosaurs, though alternative definitions are occasionally bantered back and forth.

Archaeopteryx lithographica, from the late Jurassic Period Solnhofen Formation of Germany, is the earliest known avialan which may have had the capability of powered flight. However, several older avialans are known from the Late Jurassic Tiaojishan Formation of China, dating to about 160 million years ago.

The Late Jurassic Archaeopteryx is well-known as one of the first transitional fossils to be found, and it provided support for the theory of evolution in the late 19th century. Archaeopteryx was the first fossil to clearly display both traditional reptilian characteristics — teeth, clawed fingers, and a long, lizard-like tail—as well as wings with flight feathers similar to those of modern birds. It is not considered a direct ancestor of birds, though it is possibly closely related to the true ancestor.

Unlikely yet true, the closest living relatives of birds are the crocodilians. Birds are descendants of the primitive avialans — whose members include Archaeopteryx — which first appeared about 160 million years ago in China.

DNA evidence tells us that modern birds — Neornithes — evolved in the Middle to Late Cretaceous, and diversified dramatically around the time of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 66 mya, which killed off the pterosaurs and all non-avian dinosaurs.

In birds, the brain, especially the telencephalon, is remarkably developed, both in relative volume and complexity. Unlike most early‐branching sauropsids, the adults of birds and other archosaurs have a well‐ossified neurocranium. In contrast to most of their reptilian relatives, but similar to what we see in mammals, bird brains fit closely to the endocranial cavity so that major external features are reflected in the endocasts. What you see on the inside is what you see on the outside.

This makes birds an excellent group for palaeoneurological investigations. The first observation of the brain in a long‐extinct bird was made in the first quarter of the 19th century. However, it was not until the 2000s and the application of modern imaging technologies that avian palaeoneurology really took off.

Understanding how the mode of life is reflected in the external morphology of the brains of birds is but one of several future directions in which avian palaeoneurological research may extend.

Although the number of fossil specimens suitable for palaeoneurological explorations is considerably smaller in birds than in mammals and will very likely remain so, the coming years will certainly witness a momentous strengthening of this rapidly growing field of research at the overlap between ornithology, palaeontology, evolutionary biology and the neurosciences.

Reference: Cau, Andrea; Brougham, Tom; Naish, Darren (2015). "The phylogenetic affinities of the bizarre Late Cretaceous Romanian theropod Balaur bondoc (Dinosauria, Maniraptora): Dromaeosaurid or flightless bird?". PeerJ. 3: e1032. doi:10.7717/peerj.1032. PMC 4476167. PMID 26157616.

Reference: Ivanov, M., Hrdlickova, S. & Gregorova, R. (2001) The Complete Encyclopedia of Fossils. Rebo Publishers, Netherlands. p. 312

Photo: By Tommy from Arad - Confuciusornis; FunkMonk, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24115307