A team of paleontologists, evolutionists and geoscientists affiliated with several entities in Germany has extracted Ice Age woolly rhino DNA from fossilized excrement samples (coprolites) found in a cave in Germany. Their study is reported in the journal Biology Letters.

Prior research has suggested that there were two species of Ice Age woolly rhinos—one lived in Eurasia (the Siberian woolly rhinoceros), the other Europe (the European woolly rhinoceros). Prior research has also shown that the Eurasian variety survived until approximately 14,000 years ago—it is not known how long ago the European variety disappeared.

In this new study, the research team sought to learn more about the history of the European woolly rhinoceros. To that end, they searched for and found coprolite samples left behind by ancient hyenas—animals that were known to attack and feast on a wide variety of large animals, including the woolly rhino. The samples were found in two caves in layers of soil dated back to the Middle Paleolithic; one at Bockstein-Loch, the other Hohlenstein-Stadel. Both are located in the Lone Valley.

About 66 million years ago, a city-size asteroid slammed into what is now the Yucatán Peninsula, ushering in a long period of darkness that snuffed out the nonavian dinosaurs. Researchers have long debated exactly what aspect of this event, known as the Chicxulub impact, caused the rapid change in climate. Was it sulfur particles from vaporized sedimentary rocks? Soot from subsequent global wildfires? Or dust from the very bedrock of the Yucatán?

Now, new research argues that dust was the deadliest aspect of the impact. While soot and sulfur contributed to global darkness and an impact winter that halted photosynthesis for nearly two years, fine dust from the granite pulverized in the impact remained aloft in the atmosphere for up to 15 years. The asteroid impact led to a spiral of extinctions that killed 75% of all species on the planet.

source of the report

https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.230387

A scientist from the University of Leicester has discovered a new type of fossil that reveals life in the oceans half a billion years ago. The tiny organisms, detailed in a new study in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, resemble modern-day algae and might also give scientists an insight into the climate changes that affected our oceans.

The fossils are microscopic and look like spiny balls connected together. The study's author Dr. Tom Harvey, from the University of Leicester School of Geography, Geology and the Environment, said, "When I first saw them, I had no idea what they were. I wondered if they could be animal eggs, or some new type of organism. There's nothing quite like them, living or extinct."

But as further specimens came to light, Dr. Harvey identified similarities with modern green algae that live floating in the plankton of ponds and lakes.