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    Omanyano ovanhu koikundaneki yomalungula kashili paveta, Commisiner Sakaria takunghilile Veronika Haulenga

fossils

6 Results / Page 1 of 1

Background
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World

Africa is full of bats, but their fossils are scarce – why these rare records matter

      By Mariëtte Pretorius, University of the Witwatersrand   Africa is home to more than 20% of the world’s bat population. There are over 200 species to be found on the continent. South Africa is particularly diverse, with 72 bat species. I am a zoologist who has studied bats for many years. Recently, while doing some reading about South Africa’s fossils, I started wondering about bat fossils. Given […]

todayApril 18, 2024 20

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Environment

Fossil beetles found in a Botswana diamond mine help us to reconstruct the distant past

    By Sandiso Mnguni, University of the Witwatersrand   When most people think of fossils they probably picture bones. But there’s much more to the global fossil record: plants, shells, minerals and insects. The study of fossil insects is called palaeoentomology. Palaeoentomologists like myself seek out and study fossil insects that were trapped in mud which later became rock sediments, and those found in amber (tree resin). Very few deposits […]

todayApril 11, 2024 14

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Africa

Duckbill dinosaur discovery in Morocco – expert unpacks the mystery of how they got there

    By Nicholas R. Longrich, University of Bath   Why are fossils of duckbill dinosaurs, a North American family, found in North Africa? Dinosaurs couldn’t just walk there. Sixty-six million years ago, when duckbills suddenly appear in Africa’s fossil record, the world’s land masses formed a series of islands. A seaway divided eastern and western North America; Europe was an archipelago. South America, India, Australia and Madagascar were all island […]

todayMarch 22, 2024 26

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Africa

Morocco dinosaur discovery gives clues on why they went extinct

    By Nicholas R. Longrich, University of Bath   66 million years ago, the last dinosaurs vanished from Earth. We’re still trying to understand why. New fossils of abelisaurs – distant relatives of the tyrannosaurs – from north Africa suggest that African dinosaurs remained diverse up to the very end. And that suggests their demise came suddenly, with the impact of a giant asteroid. The causes of the mass […]

todayFebruary 13, 2024 12

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Africa

Africans discovered dinosaur fossils long before the term ‘palaeontology’ existed

  By Julien Benoit, University of the Witwatersrand; Cameron Penn-Clarke, University of the Witwatersrand, and Charles Helm, Nelson Mandela University Credit for discovering the first dinosaur bones usually goes to British gentlemen for their finds between the 17th and 19th centuries in England. Robert Plot, an English natural history scholar, was the first of these to describe a dinosaur bone, in his 1676 book The Natural History of Oxfordshire. Over […]

todayJanuary 8, 2024 17

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Africa

African dinosaurs and the sixth mass extinction

“It’s really important that we realise we need to take better care of the planet, otherwise we’ll also go the way of the dinosaur,” said Anusuya Chinsamy-Turan, palaeobiologist and professor at the University of Cape Town. She was speaking at GroundUp’s final Science for the People seminar for the year, hosted at Bertha House in Cape Town on Friday 1 December. Chinsamy-Turan has a species of Sabre-toothed cat named after her. The topic of […]

todayDecember 5, 2023 8

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