More than 247 million years ago, as life recovered from Earth's greatest mass extinction, a small mammal relative called Microgomphodon oligocynus was already mastering the art of digging! Using high-resolution CT scans of exceptionally preserved fossils from South Africa, researchers have uncovered new details of its anatomy and...
Musango matusadonaensis is a new species of sauropodomorph dinosaur from the Upper Triassic Pebbly Arkose Formation of Zimbabwe. Phylogenetic analysis identifies it as a non-massospondylid massopodan. Osteohistological analysis indicates that its growth rate had begun to slow by the time of death, suggesting it was a late subadult that would...
By using state-of-the-art CT and synchrotron X-ray imaging to peer inside 200-million-year-old fossils without damaging them, we solved a long-standing evolutionary mystery. Our results show that the enigmatic species Erythrochampsa longipes is not a distinct animal after all, but belongs to the already known genus Protosuchus, resolving decades of...
The end-Permian mass extinction, which occurred about 252 million years ago, was the largest and most devastating mass extinction in Earth's history. Scientists have long wondered how surviving animals adapted to such an extreme global crisis. Using powerful Synchrotron X-rays and CT scanning, we reconstructed the brains of ancient mammal relatives...
My colleagues and I recently used synchrotron X-ray micro CT to examine Early Triassic archosauromorphs from South Africa and found a surprising diversity of growth strategies ranging from slow to rapid rates of growth. Based on the osteohistology we were able to distinguish 9 distinct archosauromorph taxa. Our results suggest that fast growth is...
Research by Julien Benoit, Jennifer Botha (University of the Witwatersrand) and Vincent Fernandez (European Synchrotron Radiation Facility) just pulished in PLoS ONE on an egg containing a 250-million-year-old embryo of the therapsid Lystrosaurus presents the first-ever egg discovered from a mammal ancestor, finally answering a...
My student, Lutendo Mukwevho, and I recently attended the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting in Birmingham, UK, where we presented some of our latest research. Lutendo shared exciting new work on large theropods from South Africa, while I presented on growth strategies in sauropodomorphs across the end-Triassic extinction. It was wonderful...
A fossil discovered on the Isle of Skye, Scotland has revealed a new species and family of Jurassic reptile linked to the origins of lizards and snakes. The bone histology of this strange animal indicates that this species grew incredibly slowly. Breugnathair elgolensis, recently published in Nature, has snake-like features of the teeth and jaws,...
My student Enele Twala and I have just returned from a trip to Grenoble, France to work at the ESRF. Enele is studying basal amniote bone histology, focusing on squamates. Roger Benson and Zoe Kulik from the American Museum of Natural History joined us to work on a project on bone tissue patterns in basal amniotes including some very rare...
Every second year we have the International Symposium on Palaeohistology. This year it was in Brisbane, Australia. I presented ongoing research on the growth patterns of sauropodomorph dinosaurs. Sauropodomorph dinosaurs, the largest land animals to ever exist, evolved from small bipedal ancestors in the Carnian stage to multi-tonne giants by the...