This may be the oldest ‘butthole’ imprint on Earth Fossils show exceptionally rare evidence of a cloacal vent—the slit that most vertebrates use to excrete, have sex and lay egg—which could shed light on the evolution of the orifice

Paleontologists just found Earth’s oldest “butthole” impression. The 299-million-year-old imprint was planted by a lizardlike reptile cooling off in some mud.

Sometimes life as a science journalist takes you strange places.

#Paleontology #TraceFossils

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New at @sciam.bsky.social

Fossilized vomit reveals 290-million-year-old predator’s diet The regurgitated material from before the time of dinosaurs provides a rare window into the feeding habits of a prehistoric hunter.

"Two hundred and ninety million years ago, in a mountain valley within the central region of the supercontinent Pangaea, an apex predator snapped up at least three other animals and sometime later puked up the bones."

#Fossils #TraceFossils #Palaeontology

Ancient Bones Hid a Buzzing Secret Bones of now extinct species became a haven for bee babies thousands of years ago, scientists report in a first-of-its-kind discovery

"Thousands of years ago in what is now the Dominican Republic, there was a cave full of bones. And those bones were full of bees.

In a paleontological first, researchers have discovered that bees used the jawbones of now extinct mammals as burrows."

#Bees #Fossils #Bones #TraceFossils #Burrows

Super late #FossilFriday #CretaceousCrossroads exhibit! Now you don't see it, now you do! #ichnology, #tracefossils #paleontology 75 million year old crab tracks from the Two Medicine Formation!

🦴🦖Trace Fossils – Evidence of Life with No Bones
Join Professor Maurice Tucker, Visiting Professor in the Earth Sciences Dept #UniofBristol as he explores incredible fossils and the stories they tell.
🌟 Plus Late Exhibition Opening!
www.brlsi.org/whatso...
#TraceFossils

Fossilized fish trails reveal earliest steps out of water Possible lungfish tracks could push back animal migration onto land by 10 million years

Move over Tiktaalik, a new semi-terrestrial fish just dropped.

#Devonian #TraceFossils #Paleontology

New at @science.org 🏺🧪

A slab of dark grey rock, about 30 cm x 40 cm, bearing a roughly fan-shaped bundle of bifurcating, flattened tubular structures that stand in low relief. Each individual "tube" is about 1 cm in width and marks a sediment-filled tunnel excavated within the soft lime muds and silts on a shallow marine sea bed. The whole array is a the result of systematic "mining" of the sea floor sediment for organic detritus and is the work of a single small burrowing invertebrate animal whose precise identity is unknown.

#Tracefossils record interactions btwn ancient organisms & their surroundings, often in the form of tracks, trails & burrows in/on sediment, but the trace maker is seldom preserved. Phycodes is a complex feeding burrow system excavated in an #Ordovician (~450 MYA) seabed. #Ontario 🇨🇦 #FossilFriday

#FossilFriday #TraceFossils #Spurenfossilien fossile Fussspuren zeigen, wie T rex in eine Herde Hadrosaurier preschte

Clayton Lake State Park Dinosaur Tracksite, Clayton, NM In the northwest corner of New Mexico, not far from where the border meets Colorado, Texas, and Oklahoma, sits a state park full of interesting dinosaur tracks.  While relatively “off the bea…

You know that part of the dinosaur movies where they flee in terror from volcanoes and asteroids. Yeah, some of that seems to have occurred in #NewMexico (and #Arizona).

#paleontology #fossils #tracefossils #history #roadtrip #daytrip

World’s oldest ‘Homo sapiens’ footprint identified on South Africa’s Cape south coast This was an area in which early anatomically modern humans survived, evolved and thrived, before spreading out of Africa to other continents.

World’s oldest Homo sapiens footprint identified on South Africa’s Cape south coast
#AncientHumans #TraceFossils #science

theconversation.com/worlds-oldes...