By Mike|2024-01-19T07:27:28+00:00March 19th, 2020|General Teaching|Comments Off on Everything Dinosaur Continues to Offer Vital Support to Schools
Everything Dinosaur Supports Schools and Home Educators
At Everything Dinosaur, the interests of our customers, our people and our communities are at the centre of everything we do and this is particularly important during these challenging times. Our hearts go out to those affected globally by the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. We want to let you know that you remain our top priority and we are doing all we can to assist schools, universities, nurseries and home educators.
In the light of the recent announcement with regards to school closures, the UK-based mail order company has released the following statement:
Everything Dinosaur Helping to Support Education and Home Schooling
Everything Dinosaur team members working hard to support the educational sector and home schooling at this difficult time (coronavirus outbreak 2020). Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur.
Furthermore, our dedicated staff handle dozens of email enquiries every day, providing advice, free prehistoric animal fact sheets and other resources.
In China, there is a saying “may you live in interesting times”. These are certainly “interesting times”. The company is doing all it can to help support schools, other academic bodies and home educators. We are currently operating as normal and will update you regularly with any changes. We are all working together to help limit the disruption to our customers and to still provide our excellent award-winning service.
Everything Dinosaur is working extremely hard to help support schools, colleges, universities, nurseries, other academic bodies and home educators. We continue to provide free of charge, a wide range of fossil and dinosaur themed teaching resources and learning materials.
Fish Fossil Helps to Demonstrate How Fins Turned into Hands
A team of international scientists including researchers from Flinders University in Adelaide (South Australia) and the Université du Québec à Rimouski (Canada), have scanned the fossilised remains of an ancient fish with tetrapod tendencies to reveal evidence of how the limbs of fish evolved into the terrestrial appendages of land animals.
Elpistostege watsoni
The fossilised remains date from the Late Devonian and are approximately 380 million years old. The fossil is a specimen of Elpistostege (E. watsoni), the discovery of a much more complete skeleton of this strange animal gave the researchers the opportunity to analyse the body plan of this predator in much greater detail than previously.
A Near Complete Specimen of Elpistostege watsoni with Accompanying Line Drawing
The near complete Elpistostege specimen with line drawing showing the outline of the skeleton and a life reconstruction. The research was conducted on a fossil specimen that had been discovered in 2010.
Picture credit: South Australia Leads/Flinders University
Strategic Professor in Palaeontology (Finders University), Professor John Long, announced the discovery of the near complete fossil specimen in the journal “Nature”. Commenting on the significance of the fossil find, he stated that the specimen “reveals extraordinary new information about the evolution of the vertebrate hand.”
High Energy X-Rays to Assess Fin Structure
The research team bombarded the fossil specimen with high energy X-rays to reveal the presence of limb and wrist bones hidden in the fins. Evidence of finger-like bones could also be made out.
The Professor added:
“This is the first time that we have unequivocally discovered fingers locked in a fin with fin-rays in any known fish. The articulating digits in the fin are like the finger bones found in the hands of most animals. This finding pushes back the origin of digits in vertebrates to the fish level and tells us that the patterning for the vertebrate hand was first developed deep in evolution, just before fishes left the water.”
A Life Reconstruction of the Late Devonian Elpistostege
A life reconstruction of Elpistostege.
Picture credit: Miguasha National Park/Johanne Kerr and François Miville-Deschênes
Studying the “Limb Bones” of a Fish
The high resolution scans revealed the presence of a humerus (upper arm bone), the radius and ulna (the two bones from the forearm), carpal bones from the wrist and the presence of bones that resembled digits. The fossil specimen measures 1.57 metres in length. It comes from exposures of the Escuminac Formation located in the Canadian province of Quebec.
The strata represent a brackish water, estuarine environment and palaeontologists have long speculated that such a habitat may have been one of the driving forces behind the evolution of limbs capable of terrestrial locomotion in certain types of ancient fish. The teeth in the broad jaw suggest that Elpistostege was an apex hypercarnivore, but whether it fed on other fish or ventured out onto land to grab insects and arthropods on the shore (as indicated by the position of the eyes at the top of the head suggesting an ambush predator), remains unknown.
Co-author of the scientific paper Richard Cloutier (Université du Québec à Rimouski), commented that over the last ten years or so, fossils representing the fish-to-tetrapod transition had helped palaeontologists to gain a better understanding about this important stage in vertebrate evolution.
He added:
“The origin of digits relates to developing the capability for the fish to support its weight in shallow water and for short trips out on land. The increased number of small bones in the fin allows more planes of flexibility to spread out the weight through the fin.”
A Primitive Tetrapod
In previous studies, Dr Cloutier had postulated that Elpistostege might represent the most primitive tetrapod known to science, an accolade currently held by the closely related Tiktaalik, fossils of which come from northern Canada (Ellesmere Island).
Australian Professor John Long has dedicated much of his academic career to studying Devonian fish and the early stages of the evolution of the modern tetrapod body plan.
