User:Abyssal/Prehistory of North America

{ {{Portal maintenance status|date

Portal topics: Activities; Culture; Geography; Health; History; Mathematics; Nature; People; Philosophy; Religion; Society; Technology; Random portal

The Prehistory of North America Portal

Introduction

Read more...

Show new selections below (purge)

edit

Selected article on prehistoric North America

Artist's reconstruction of Waptia fieldensis. — Artist's reconstruction of *Waptia fieldensis*.

The small shelly fauna or small shelly fossils, abbreviated to SSF, are mineralized fossils, many only a few millimetres long, with a nearly continuous record from the latest stages of the Ediacaran to the end of the Early Cambrian period. They are very diverse, and there is no formal definition of "small shelly fauna" or "small shelly fossils". Almost all are from earlier rocks than more familiar fossils such as trilobites. Since most SSFs were preserved by being covered quickly with phosphate and this method of preservation is mainly limited to the Late Ediacaran and Early Cambrian periods, the animals that made them may actually have arisen earlier and persisted after this time span.

The bulk of the fossils are fragments or disarticulated remains of larger organisms, including sponges, molluscs, slug-like halkieriids, brachiopods, echinoderms, and onychophoran-like organisms that may have been close to the ancestors of arthropods. Although the small size and often fragmentary nature of SSFs makes it difficult to identify and classify them, they provide very important evidence for how the main groups of marine invertebrates evolved, and particularly for the pace and pattern of evolution in the Cambrian explosion. Besides including the earliest known representatives of some modern phyla, they have the great advantage of presenting a nearly continuous record of Early Cambrian organisms whose bodies include hard parts. (see more...)

More articles...

Need help?

Do you have a question about Abyssal/Prehistory of North America that you can't find the answer to?

Consider asking it at the Wikipedia reference desk.

edit

Selected article on the prehistory of North America in science, culture and economics

Edward Drinker Cope (left) and Othniel Charles Marsh (right).

The Bone Wars is the name given to a period of intense fossil speculation and discovery during the Gilded Age of American history, marked by a heated rivalry between Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh. The two paleontologists used underhanded methods to out-compete the other in the field, resorting to bribery, theft, and destruction of bones. The scientists also attacked each other in scientific publications, attempting to ruin the other's credibility and cut off his funding.

Originally colleagues who were civil to each other, Cope and Marsh became bitter enemies after several personal slights between them. Their pursuit of bones led them west to rich bone beds in Colorado, Nebraska, and Wyoming. From 1877 to 1892, both paleontologists used their wealth and influence to finance their own expeditions and to procure services and fossils from dinosaur hunters. By the end of the Bone Wars, both men exhausted their funds in fueling their intense rivalry.

Cope and Marsh were financially and socially ruined by their efforts to disgrace each other, but their contributions to science and the field of paleontology were massive; the scientists left behind tons of unopened boxes of fossils on their deaths. The feud between the two men led to over 142 new species of dinosaurs being discovered and described. Several historical books and fictional adaptations have also been published about this period of intense paleontological activity. (see more...)

More articles...

edit

Did you know?

... that the extinct witch-hazel Langeria is named for American philosopher Susanne Langer?
... that the extinct Miocene hickory Carya washingtonensis is known from over 50 nuts found as a rodent cache within a petrified stump?
... that the 60 million years old Carmelo Formation (pictured) is made out of thousands of layers of volcanic pebbles, sandstone and mudstone with fossils?
... that the Late Eocene marine Hoko River Formation is noted for producing crab, gastropod, cephalopod, and wood fossils?
... that an early nineteenth-century Native American man refused to ascend Spanish Hill because he feared a spirit that "made holes through Indians' bodies"?

... that Okmulgee State Park (pictured) in Oklahoma is one of only a few places in the world where the fossil coral Gymnophyllum wardi is found?
... that the extinct mantidfly Dicromantispa electromexicana was described from a solitary male insect?
...that the earliest fossil reef formations that show high biodiversity, containing the earliest corals, form the mid-Ordovician Chazy Formation, reaching from Tennessee to Labrador?
... that the Sterling Hill Mining Museum (pictured) and the nearby Franklin Mine together have over 345 minerals, including 90 that fluoresce and 35 that are found nowhere else?
... that Aquilops ("eagle face") is the most ancient definite neoceratopsian discovered in North America?

More DYKs...

edit

Selected image

A mounted skeleton of a Late Cretaceous mosasaurid species belonging to the genus Plioplatecarpus, probably P. ictericus. In life the animal would have been about 5.5 m in length. The mounted skeleton is actually a composite of two individuals collected from the Niobrara Formation, of Kansas, USA and is exhibited in the Museum für Naturkunde in Karlsruhe, Germany.
Photo credit: H. Zell