Friday Headlines: January 29, 2016

Friday Headlines, January 22, 2016

THE LATEST IN THE GEOSCIENCES

Today’s round-up:

A Mammoth Find Under a Stadium

Bone Cells and Blood Vessels from 48 Million Year Old Fossils

10,000-year-old mammoth bones found during construction at OSU football stadium

While working on an expansion of the Reser Stadium in Corvallis, Oregon, workers uncovered a femur from a approximately 10,000 year old mammoth, along with bones and bits from fossil camels and bison.

Unless there is evidence of human remains or activity in such a site, there are no laws regulating how such finds should be handled. However, as this has happened on a university campus, researchers plan to make use of the find in teaching and research.

Microscopical and elemental FESEM and Phenom ProX-SEM-EDS analysis of osteocyte- and blood vessel-like microstructures obtained from fossil vertebrates of the Eocene Messel Pit, Germany

Translated: Expensive scientific equipment makes it possible to look at bone cells and blood vessels from 48 million year old fossils from Germany.

This study is interesting and important for several reasons.

1. It’s open access, so anyone can read it. This is an exciting new trend in the sciences. The link is to that original technical manuscript.
2. Scientists have been able to isolate and study microscopic soft tissues (the parts of animals that usually rot away) from animals that died nearly 50 MILLION years ago. While it might not seem like much, to be able to study these tiny fossils can give us new insights into how the organisms lived and how they might be related to other animals.