Financing the Skeleton Crew - Carboniferous Bones Need a Home

Teeth and Fangs ( other   posts )  These Bones Need A Home   1000 Fossil Freaks Care - Become A Fossil Freak One of the rarest prizes discovered at Blue Beach, Nova Scotia Canada is this innocent-looking elongate bone. Along with the slab it was attached to, this is a portion of the lower jaw of a Basal Carboniferous tetrapod. It was the first tetrapod jaw ever found at Blue Beach. It was collected in 1999, loaned to colleagues in 2003 and still remains unreported.  For fifteen years this important find has been been buried in obscurity by scientists who haven't got around to describing all the fossils they have. We too are guilty of the same, because h ere at our small museum thousands of fossils have accumulated and there's over a hundred years worth of research awaits. Tetrapod jaw fragment (about 1.5 cm long) with 3 marginal teeth spaced at regular intervals, a narrow dorsal shelf, and a conspicuously striated surface where the dentar...

THESE BONES NEED A HOME BECOME A FUNDING CHAMPION Click Here to Learn More Preserving a Beast Rhizodonts were enigmatic ‘lobe-finned’ fish that grew up to 8 meters in length and weighed in at several tons. They were large ambush predators whose behaviour and feeding strategy was much the same as that of today’s crocodiles. These huge fish could crawl on their powerful front fins, gulping air into primitive lungs and even, presumably, would chase its prey onshore. This remarkable feat doesn’t seem so surprising when one looks at the skeletons of their fins. Rhizodonts possessed  arm bones . Rhizodont cleithrum (left) and clavicle (above) Rhizodonts have recently been resolved as 'basal members of the Tetrapodomorpha’ which means  changing towards four-leggedness . They were part of the evolutionary history of vertebrates when land-animals separated from their fish-ancestors.  From fins into limbs – they’re the start of the movement....