14 Oldest Fossil Discoveries

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• published: 07 Mar 2017
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From Dinosaurs Getting Older to Crocodile Embryo and a Mammoth in Mexico here are 14 Oldest Fossil Discoveries. Subscribe to Talltanic http://goo.gl/wgfvrr 7. Dinosaurs Getting Older Ancient bones discovered in Tanzania in the 1930’s were reexamined in 2012 and found to be around 240 million years old, making them the oldest known dinosaur fossils. Since the only bones found were from the animal's back and upper arm not a lot is known about the dinosaur, called a Nyasasaurus. Scientists estimate that the creature was between six and ten feet long including its tail. They also found a bony crest along its upper arm that is characteristic of all dinosaurs. Previously the oldest known dinosaur fossils were found in South America and belonged to a small carnivore that dated back to around 230 million years ago. 6. Crocodile Embryo Fossils of a distant ancestor of the crocodile were found recently in the shallow seas of South China. The odd looking creature is called a dinocephalosaurus and as you can see it had an unusually looooong neck. The 250 million-year-old creature and its fossil were fascinating enough, but researchers were shocked to find that the female had an embryo inside of her. Previously experts had assumed that the creature only laid eggs but, apparently, they were mistaken. The embryo rewrites human understanding of the evolution of reproductive systems. 5. Mammoth in Mexico Plumbers were digging into the ground near Mexico City in 2016 to install a drainage system when they uncovered the fossilized remains of an incredibly ancient mammoth. Bones were found scattered around the dig site that are believed to date back twelve to fourteen thousand years. The beast's skull measured just over three feet in length, and its tusks spanned ten feet. Examiners estimate that the Columbian mammoth weighed around ten tons and stood sixteen feet tall. While incredible the find is not the oldest or best preserved of the mammoth fossils. In 2013 a 39 thousand-year-old wooly mammoth was found frozen in Siberia. Clumps of the animals hair were still intact, and the specimen was the best preserved wooly mammoth ever recovered. The remains went on display in Tokyo for a couple of months. 4. Otavia Researchers from South Africa, Australia, and the UK reported that fossils unearthed in Namibia were from a sponge-like organism that dated back to around 760 million years ago, immediately extending the known time span of animals on the planet by seventeen percent. The fossilized creature, named Otavia antiqua, was found in rock formations that were deposited in shallow marine environments on an ancient continental shelf. 3. Trilobites from Another Time In the early evolution of life on this planet, tiny insect-like creatures known as trilobites ruled the seas of the world for hundreds of millions of years. Earlier this year scientists received remarkably well-preserved fossils of trilobites from a private collector and examined them. Despite being nearly five hundred million years old, the creatures were almost entirely preserved, and experts were able to examine their guts, legs, and gills. They found that the creatures had glands normally found in predators and a crop, or a pouch generally found in sediment feeders. 2. Human’s Oldest Relatives Experts discovered traces of what they believe is the oldest known ancestor of people, a tiny bag like sea creature dubbed a Saccorhytus. Researchers from China, Germany, and the UK identified the species in incredibly well-preserved fossils from China that look like nothing more than tiny black dots to the naked eye. Under the microscope, however, the 540 million-year-old samples have an incredible amount of detail. The creatures had absolutely no resemblance to human beings. They were only around a millimeter in size and likely spent the majority of their time between grains of sand in the seabed. 1. World’s Oldest Fossil Geologists in Greenland found evidence of ancient life in rocks that are between 3.9 and 3.7 billion years old, shattering the mark for the oldest fossil ever recorded. A team from Australia’s University of Wollongong found the rocks in 2012 and researched them for four years before publishing their findings in August 2016. The form of life found in the Isua rocks are stromatolites or layers of sediment formed by microbial communities in shallow water. Before this the oldest fossil ever discovered was 3.48 billion-year-old stromatolites from Western Australia. The rocks point to a much more rapid evolution of life on this planet than some experts had previously estimated.