This ancient shark fossil is exquisite But some researchers wonder if they ll be able to study it | Science sciencemag.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from sciencemag.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Aquilolamna milarcae will be exhibited in the Museo La Milarca in San Pedro Garza García, Mexico. The museum was originally planned to be opened in the summer of 2021, but because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the opening is now postponed to the end of 2021. Owing to this delay, the authors have updated their paper to indicate that until the opening of the Museo La Milarca, the fossil will be housed at the Museo del Desierto in Saltillo, Mexico, as of 1 May 2021, where it will be available to researchers for scientific purposes. In addition, they are updating their reproducibility checklist and supplementary materials with additional information about fossil documentation and availability.
Ideas, Inventions And Innovations
Newly Discovered Dinosaur Dressed to Impress
S cientists have found the most elaborately dressed-to-impress dinosaur ever described and say it sheds new light on how birds such as peacocks inherited their ability to show off.
The new species, Ubirajara jubatus, was chicken-sized with a mane of long fur down its back and stiff ribbons projecting out and back from its shoulders, features never before seen in the fossil record.
It is thought its flamboyant features were used to dazzle mates or intimidate foe.
Ubirajara jubatus is named after a Tupi Indian name for ‘lord of the spear’, in reference to the creature’s stiffened, elongate integumentary structures, and jubatus from the Latin meaning ‘maned’ or ‘crested’.
Life restoration of
Ubirajara jubatus. Image credit: Bob Nicholls, paleocreations.com.
The newly-discovered dinosaur species lived about 110 million years ago (Aptian stage of the Cretaceous period) in what is now Brazil.
Named
Ubirajara jubatus, the ancient animal was chicken-sized with a mane of long fur down its back.
It also had long, flat, stiff shoulder ribbons of keratin, each with a small sharp ridge running along the middle. Its arms were covered in fur-like filaments down to the hands.
“What is especially unusual about the beast is the presence of two very long, probably stiff ribbons on either side of its shoulders that were probably used for display, for mate attraction, inter-male rivalry or to frighten off foe,” said co-author Professor David Martill, a paleontologist in the School of the Environment, Geography and Geosciences at the University of Portsmouth.