Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that answer the question.
Query: Where were the first mososaur fossils discovered?
Mosasaurs (from Latin Mosa meaning the 'Meuse river', and Greek σαύρος sauros meaning 'lizard') are an extinct group of large marine reptiles containing 38 genera in total. Their first fossil remains were discovered in a limestone quarry at Maastricht on the Meuse in 1764. Mosasaurs probably evolved from an extinct group of aquatic lizards[1] known as aigialosaurs in the Early Cretaceous. During the last 20 million years of the Cretaceous period (Turonian-Maastrichtian ages), with the extinction of the ichthyosaurs and pliosaurs, mosasaurs became the dominant marine predators. They became extinct as a result of the K-Pg event at the end of the Cretaceous period, about 66 million years ago.
The Cuche Formation contains unique Placoderm fish fossils, first noted by Mojica and Villarroel in 1984. Across the section, also plant fossils and bivalves are found. In this part of the sequence the first fish fossils were discovered. The top section provided brachiopods (genus "Lingula") and other at that moment undetermined fossil fragments.
Early significant discoveries in the state include Cretaceous reptile fossils discovered in the 1850s by state geologist Ebenezar Emmons. During the Civil War, Confederate coal miners uncovered many Triassic fossils. In approximately, 1869, the state's first known dinosaur fossils were discovered.
In October 2014, the fossil remains of an early hominin were discovered at the site. A mandible and six teeth were discovered. The hominin fossils belonged to at least three distinct individuals. The hominin fossils were dated to around 700,000 BP, making the Mata Menge fossils the oldest hominin fossils yet discovered on the island of Flores. The fossils at Mata Menge are likely to belong to hominins that resulted from the effects of insular dwarfism working on "Homo erectus".
In 1966, Phillip Tobias began his excavations of Sterkfontein which are still continuing and are the longest continuously running fossil excavations in the world. In 1991, Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand discovered the first hominid specimens from the Gladysvale site, making this the first new early hominid site to be discovered in South Africa in 48 years. In 1994, Andre Keyser discovered fossil hominids at the site of Drimolen. In 1997, Kevin Kuykendall and Colin Menter of the University of the Witwatersrand found two fossil hominid teeth at the site of Gondolin. Also in 1997, the near-complete "Australopithecus" skeleton of "Little Foot", dating to around 3.3 million years ago (although more recent dating suggest it is closer to 2.5 million years ago), was discovered by Ron Clarke. In 2001, Steve Churchill of Duke University and Lee Berger found early modern human remains at Plovers Lake. Also in 2001, the first hominid fossils and stone tools were discovered "in-situ" at Coopers. In 2008, Lee Berger discovered the partial remains of two hominids ("Australopithecus sediba") in the Malapa Fossil Site that lived between 1.78 and 1.95 million years ago.
During the upper Triassic period, about 210 million years ago, the region around Frick was a dry lowland with flat hills and small depressions. During the rainy season, the depressions filled with water and dinosaurs congregated around the ponds. When they died, their bodies were covered by the mud in the ponds and fossilized, creating rich fossil beds in Frick. The first Plateosaurus fossils were discovered in 1961 and further excavations during the following decades have discovered numerous fossils. In 2006, the only Coelophysoidea (a small flesh-eating dinosaur species) fossil in Switzerland, was found by an amateur paleontologist in Frick.
Though early discoveries of "Pterygotus" were confined to England and North America, fossil finds throughout the 20th century would help establish that "Pterygotus" as a genus achieved a nearly cosmopolitan distribution. The first eurypterid to be discovered in Australia was "Pterygotus australis", whose fossils were found in the Ludlow age Melbourne Group of the Dargile Formation. The fossils referred to "P. australis", consisting of four fragments making up about half of a segment that were discovered during the process of excavations beneath Melbourne during the construction of new drainage works for the city in 1899. The fragmentary fossils closely resemble fossils of "Erettopterus bilobus" (classified as a species of "Pterygotus" at the time), which might make their assignment to "Pterygotus" questionable.
Marmarth is the location of numerous dinosaur fossil findings, including the Dakota fossil. The Marmarth Historical Society and the Marmarth Research Foundation offer summer courses on archeological areas where triceratops and hadrosaurs have been excavated, including courses on fossil preparation, field techniques, dinosaur fossil preservation, and more. Dakota, a fossilized "Edmontosaurus", a type of duckbill dinosaur, was discovered near Marmarth in 1999 by Tyler Lyson. The fossil is unique in that soft tissue, skin, and muscle were fossilized as well as bone.
In 1842, looking for coal, Gesner travelled to Quebec, where he discovered the first of the great fossil deposits of the future Miguasha National Park. However, little notice was taken of his report until the fossils were rediscovered in 1879.
Banffia is a genus of animals described from Middle Cambrian fossils. The genus commemorates Banff, Alberta, near where the first fossil specimens were discovered. Its placement in higher taxa is controversial.
The first documented fossils to be recovered from the Bridger Formation were discovered on 11 August 1849 by Captain Howard Stansbury, who documented the discovery of fossilized shells and wood in his expedition report while scouting out the region for the United States Army Corps of Topographical Engineers. In the early-1860s, trapper Jack Robinson claimed to have discovered a number of sites along the base of the Uinta Mountains where grizzly bears had been turned to stone. When these claims were called into question by judge William A. Carter, Robinson brought Carter a bag filled with the fossils. One of the specimens recovered by Robinson was a well-preserved skull which resembled that of a grizzly bear. Judger Carter invited Louis Agassiz to observe the local strata, but Agassiz declined as the journey would have involved riding horseback to the site, a mode of transportation Agassiz abhorred. Carter's son-in-law, Dr. J. Van A. Carter, would go on to send a number of fossils to palaeontologist Joseph Leidy at the University of Pennsylvania in 1869. These fossils included the first Bridgerian fossil taxa, "Omomys carteri"; and the skull discovered by Robinson, which was described as "Palaeosyops paludosus". Another researcher responsible for sending off specimens was Dr. Joseph K. Corson, a close friend of Leidy's who hosted him and his family on two three to Fort Bridger in 1872, 1873, and 1879.
Cerro de los Batallones ("Hill of the Battalions") is a hill at Torrejón de Velasco, Madrid, Spain where a number of fossil sites from the Upper Miocene (MN10) have been found. Nine sites have been discovered with predominately vertebrate fossils, invertebrates and plants being less represented. The first deposits were discovered accidentally in July 1991.
Cephalopod egg fossils are the fossilized remains of eggs laid by cephalopods. The fossil record of cephalopod eggs is scant since their soft, gelatinous eggs decompose quickly and have little chance to fossilize. Eggs laid by ammonoids are the best known and only a few putative examples of these have been discovered. The best preserved of these were discovered in the Jurassic Kimmeridge Clay of England. Currently no belemnoid egg fossils have ever been discovered although this may be because scientists have not properly searched for them rather than an actual absence from the fossil record.
It was CPR train track workers in Field who discovered the fossils of the Burgess Shale locality. Commonly called by the workers ‘the stone bugs’, the very first fossils were discovered on Mt. Stephen. In 1909, Charles D. Walcott discovered the Walcott Quarry on the slope of Mt. Field.
Ancient people living near Fossil, Oregon collected fossils as far back as 11,000 years ago and kept them at a dwelling that has since been uncovered by archeologists. Some of the fossils kept there were pierced to be made into jewelry. Five slabs of rock bearing leaf impressions were found neatly stacked in the corner of the site. These and other fossils discovered by Native Americans may have contributed to the development of local myths and lore. Historian Adrienne Mayor cites as an example the Klamath Tribes of the Modoc, who attributed local fossils to water monsters killed by the mythological figure Coyote.
Oregon's first paleontologist was Thomas Condon. Condon began collecting in 1861, when a company of soldiers that arrived in Fort Dalles, where Condon served as the Congregational church pastor. The soldiers brought fossil bones and teeth, including a well-preserved rhinoceros jaw, from the John Day fossil beds. When soldiers were dispatched the following year to Harney Valley, near the fossil beds, Condon went along with them and prospected for fossils. He went fossil collecting again in 1863 and discovered rich fossil deposits north of Picture Gorge in the John Day River valley.
The first fossils of "Pseudobornia" were collected by Johan Gunnar Andersson on Bear Island in the 1890s. Hans-Joachim Schweitzer, a paleobotanist, was the first to interpret the fossils as belonging to a large tree, based on additional fossils discovered in Alaska in the 1960s.The probable relationships within Equisetopsida are shown in the cladogram below. The position where "Ibyka" would be has been added.
Afontova Gora II is the site where the human fossil remains were found. The site was first excavated in 1912-1914 by V.I. Gromov. In 1924, G.P. Sosnovsky, N.K. Auerbach, and V.I. Gromov discovered the first human fossils at the site. The remains of mammoth, Arctic fox, Arctic hare, reindeer, bison, and horse were discovered at the site.
The discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible in 1907 shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The oldest complete hunting weapons ever found anywhere in the world were discovered in a coal mine in Schoningen, Germany in 1995 where three 380,000-year-old wooden javelins 6–7.5 feet (1.8–2.3 meter) long were unearthed. The Neander valley in Germany was the location where the first ever non-modern human fossil was discovered and recognised in 1856; the new species of human was named Neanderthal man. The Neanderthal 1 fossils are now known to be 40,000 years old. At a similar age, evidence of modern humans has been found in caves in the Swabian Jura near Ulm. The finds include 42,000-year-old bird bone and mammoth ivory flutes which are the oldest musical instruments ever found, the 40,000-year-old Ice Age Löwenmensch figurine which is the oldest uncontested figurative art ever discovered, and the 35,000-year-old Venus of Hohle Fels which is the oldest uncontested human figurative art ever discovered.
Fossil eggs are very common in the Tiantai basin, and were first discovered there in the 1950s. Due to better infrastructure, in the 2000s numerous new types of fossil eggs have been discovered in Tiantai. "Paraelongatoolithus" was first discovered and named in 2010 by the Chinese paleontologists Wang Qiang, Wang Xiaolin, Zhao Zikui, and Jiang Yan'gen.
Early discoveries of indricotheres were made through various colonial links to Asia. The first known indricothere fossils were collected from Balochistan (in modern-day Pakistan) in 1846 by a soldier named Vickary, but these fragments were unidentifiable at the time. The first fossils now recognised as "Paraceratherium" were discovered by the British geologist Guy Ellcock Pilgrim in Balochistan in 1907–1908. His material consisted of an upper jaw, lower teeth, and the back of a jaw. The fossils were collected in the Chitarwata Formation of Dera Bugti, where Pilgrim had previously been exploring. In 1908, he used the fossils as basis for a new species of the extinct rhinoceros genus "Aceratherium"; "A. bugtiense". "Aceratherium" was by then a wastebasket taxon; it included several unrelated species of hornless rhinoceros, many of which have since been moved to other genera. Fossil incisors that Pilgrim had previously assigned to the unrelated genus "Bugtitherium" were later shown to belong to the new species.
Puncture marks made by teeth on several "Eutrephoceras" fossils (such as "E. campbelli", of the Trent River Formation in Vancouver) are cited as evidence of mososaur predation on this genus.
The type species of "Whatcheeria", "W. deltae", was named in 1995. "Whatcheeria" is named after What Cheer, Iowa, the hometown of the man who discovered the first skeletons of the animal. The species is named after Delta, Iowa, the location where the fossils were uncovered. Hundreds of tetrapod fossils were found in the locality, and the majority of these specimens are thought to belong to "Whatcheeria". Fish and plant fossils have also been found in the same deposits. Several other tetrapods, including temnospondyls and embolomeres, are known from the Delta locality.
Ichthyosaur fossils of the species "Shonisaurus popularis" were first discovered in the area in 1928. Excavations were conducted through the 1960s, and the remains of approximately 40 ichthyosaurs were found. Until 2004, these remains included the largest ichthyosaurs ever discovered. Several specimens were left where they were found, and can be viewed by the public. These specimens are protected from the elements by a large barn. The fossils are about a 10-minute drive from the Berlin ghost town. The ichthyosaur fossils were designated a National Natural Landmark in 1973.
The first fossil specimens attributed to Pliopithecoidea were discovered by Édouard Lartet in Sansan, France in 1837. These fossils were later referenced by Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville in 1839, who named the type species "Pliopithecus antiquus". A second species, "Pliopithecus platyodon", was discovered in Switzerland by Biedermann in 1863. Following this, a small number of other pliopithecoid species were described from fossil collections found in France, Germany, and Poland.
"Cricodon" was first discovered in the Tanzanian Manda Beds of South Africa. Broili & Schröder (1936) were the first to describe the discovered teeth yet were not able to provide a name for the specimen at the time as there were only 5 cynodont teeth, which Crompton (1955) later named "Cricodon" as more fossil discoveries were found and a more complete skeleton could be created. The South African Karoo Beds have yielded a plethora of Permian and Triassic amphibians and reptiles which cover 200,000 square miles. Fossil evidence of "Cricodon" was also discovered in the Karoo Beds, in the Cynognathus Assemblage Zone of South Africa. A proposition for the Cynognathus Assemblage Zone has been proposed, subdividing the assemblage zone into three distinct subzones (Subzone A, Subzone B, and Subzone C) based primarily on the spatial and temporal ranges of key temnospondyl index taxa. Additionally, the Cynognathus Assemblage Zone encompasses the boundary between the late Early and early Middle Triassic period. "Cricodon" was discovered in the youngest of the three subzones, Subzone C. However, a region corresponding to Subzone B was where upper postcanines, resembling the patterns of "Cricodon", were also discovered.