The end-Permian mass extinction, which occurred around 250 million years ago in the pre-dinosaur era, is believed to have wiped out nearly all the world’s species. But scientists have been puzzled by the perplexingly long period – five million years – it took for new species to start appearing after the end-Permian event. Now, an […]
Neatly arranged fossilized vertebrae from a number of bus-sized ichthyosaurs could actually be a self portrait composed by a verylarge prehistoric octopus predator previously unknown to science, according to paleontologist Mark McMenamin, from Mount Holyoke College. McMenamin’s proposed rejig of the Triassic food chain places the air-breathing, snaggle-toothed ichthyosaur beneath what he says was an […]
