* Astronomy

Trace fossils are not body fossils; they are simply tracks and traces of organisms preserved in the rock record. Human footprints in sand or mud, if lithified and preserved, are trace fossils. Most of my research is about the sedimentological characteristics and processes/mechanics of deposition, but the traces are there. In some cases, trace fossils are extremely useful for palaeoenvironmental reconstruction or other palaeoecological considerations.

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It is enough to give people with arachnophobia a large dose of the heebie-jeebies. Scientists have discovered the fossilised claw of a sea scorpion that suggests the giant scorpions, spiders and crabs that once crawled around the world were even bigger than previously thought.
Found in a German quarry, the claw is 46cm (18ins) long, suggesting the sea scorpion was 2.5m (8ft) long - almost two feet longer that it was previously thought the aquatic creatures grew to. Because land-based scorpions and spiders are believed to have descended from the sea scorpion, scientist believe the discovery means that they also may have been even bigger than had been believed.

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Cashew nut fossils have been identified in 47-million year old lake sediment in Germany, revealing that the cashew genus Anacardium was once distributed in Europe, remote from its modern native distribution in Central and South America. It was previously proposed that Anacardium and its African sister genus, Fegimanra, diverged from their common ancestor when the landmasses of Africa and South America separated. However, groundbreaking new data in the October issue of the International Journal of Plant Sciences indicate that Europe may be an important biogeographic link between Africa and the New World.

The occurrence of cashews in both Europe and tropical America suggests that they were distributed in both North America and Europe during the Tertiary and spread across the North Atlantic landbridge that linked North America and Europe by way of Greenland before the rifting and divergence of these landmasses. They apparently became extinct in northern latitudes with climatic cooling near the end of the Tertiary and Quaternary but were able to survive at more southerly latitudes - Steven R. Manchester (University of Florida), Volker Wilde (Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg, Sektion Palaeobotanik, Frankfurt am Main, Germany), and Margaret E. Collinson (Royal Holloway University of London, UK).

The cashew family (Anacardiaceae) includes trees, shrubs, and climbers prominent in tropical, subtropical, and warm temperate climates around the world. A key feature is an enlarged hypocarp, or fleshy enlargement of the fruit stalk, which is a specialised structure known only in the cashew family.
The researchers examined possible fossil remains found in the Messel oil shales, near Darmstadt, Germany, which are dated to about 47 million years before the present and reveal the presence of a conspicuously thickened stalk. In four out of five specimens, this hypocarp was still firmly attached to the nut, indicating that the two were dispersed as a unit. According to the researchers, the size and shape of the hypocarp like a teardrop and two or three times longer than it is wide support its assignation to the Anacardium genus, common to South America, rather than the African Fegimanra genus, though the fossils have features common to both.

The occurrence of Anacardium in the early Middle Eocene of Germany suggests . . . that the two genera diverged after dispersal between Europe and Africa.  Presumably, Anacardium traversed the North American landbridge during the Early or Middle Eocene, at a time of maximal climatic warmth, when higher latitudes were habitable by frost-sensitive plants.

The astoundingly close similarity between the fossil and modern day Anacardium also indicates little evolutionary change to the cashew since the mid-Eocene period: Although cashews have been cultivated for human consumption for centuries, it is clear that they were in existence millions of years before humans. The cashew had already evolved more than 45 million years ago, apparently in association with biotic dispersers.

Source : University of Chicago Press Journals

A fossil in Canada believed to be 565 million years old has been named after the Indian geologist, Professor Shiva Balak Misra, who found it.
The fossil, reported to be the oldest record of multicellular life on earth, will be called Fractofusus Misrai.
The area where the fossil was discovered, Mistaken Point, has since been declared a protected area.

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