More than 2,000 researchers have signed an open letter requesting the repatriation of a dinosaur fossil to Brazil. Some say the case highlights a pattern of scientific colonialism in paleontology.
He had rather secretly always been a devout Protestant Christian and he too had some doubts about the causal adequacy and sufficiency of neo-Darwinism.
Institutions in the global north hoard fossils from Brazil, study says science.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from science.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Pythons Slithered Through Europe Before Coiling Around the World
The oldest known fossils of the predatory snakes were found at a German site, changing the snake family tree.
A fossil of a python found in Germany, coated in ammonium chloride to enhance visibility of structures.Credit.Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung
By Katherine Kornei
Dec. 20, 2020
From 20-foot anacondas to species that can comfortably fit on a quarter, snakes slither across much of the world today. That’s in part because they’re remarkably good at adapting to new environments for instance, the Burmese python, native to Southeast Asia, is thriving in Florida’s Everglades National Park. Now, researchers have analyzed four fossilized python skeletons unearthed in Germany part of a region that’s currently free of the scaly creatures and rewritten the snake family trees.
The completely preserved fossils were just under a metre long.
Today the snakes could grow up to six metres in length and are found throughout Africa, southern and southeast Asia, and Australia.
Krister Smith from the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum found the snakes, with his colleague Hussam Zaher of the University in São Paulo.
The head and body of the Messel python are almost completely preserved.(Hessian State Museum Darmstadt)
Mr Smith said the finding was significant because it indicates pythons actually evolved in Europe. The geographic origin of pythons is still not clear, he said.