The remains of a previously unknown dinosaur species, dubbed Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis, has been excavated in Thailand, according to a study published in the journal Scientific Reports. Scientists estimate the long-necked herbivore weighed as much as nine adult Asian elephants and is the largest ever found in Southeast Asia.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8330341

The ancient cephalopod, Nanaimoteuthis haggarti, appears to have been an apex predator that rivaled mosasaurs to rule prehistoric seas.

Mesozoic seas were full of marine monsters. There were snaggle-toothed fish, shell-crushing sharks, and, of course, enormous mosasaurs.

Now, researchers have revealed another dangerous denizen of the ancient deep, one that wielded eight arms, grew to mythic proportions, and likely bit prey with a bone-breaking beak.

Enter the "Cretaceous kraken": Nanaimoteuthis haggarti.

Paleontologists recently examined a trove of fossilized beaks from octopuses that lived between 100 and 72 million years ago. Using the jaws, they estimated the size of the creatures. They found that N. haggarti stretched to about 60 feet long, longer than a city bus and surpassing the largest known giant squid by nearly 20 feet. That makes these ancient octopuses among the largest invertebrates to have ever lived.

The study, which was published Thursday in Science, also suggests that prehistoric vertebrate predators — such as sharks, plesiosaurs, and mosasaurs — may have met their match in these spineless cephalopods.

“It challenges the common view of an ‘age of vertebrates’ in marine ecosystems,” says Yasuhiro Iba, a paleontologist at Hokkaido University in Japan and an author of the new paper. He thinks these octopuses used their massive size, flexible arms, and powerful bites to achieve apex predator status in the ancient ocean.

A close inspection of 27 fossil jaws from finned octopuses challenge the longstanding belief that the apex oceanic predators of the Cretaceous were all vertebrates.

New rhynchosaur species described.

Link for actual paper: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article/13/4/260176/481336/A-new-hyperodapedontine-rhynchosaur-from-a?searchresult=1

The iguanodontian dinosaur, whose fossils were found on the Isle of Wight, was identified by Dr Jeremy Lockwood, a PhD student at the University of Portsmouth and the Natural History Museum.

Prior to Lockwood’s analysis, the fossils, which date back 125m years, were assumed to have belonged to one of the two known dinosaur species from the Isle of Wight.

The Polish Geological Institute-National Research Institute reports a Lower Devonian (419 to 393 million years ago) fossilized trackway in the Holy Cross Mountains, Poland, attributed to dipnoan fish. Their analysis finds what appears to be the earliest record of fish testing the land mobility skills of vertebrates, predating by about 10 million years the first evidence of fully terrestrial tetrapod locomotion.

The remains of animals dating back more than 10,000 years have been found in a cave in northern Norway providing the oldest example of an animal community living in the European Arctic region.

Forty-six types of mammals were found, as well as fish and birds.

The discovery, which includes polar bear, walrus, bowhead whale and Atlantic puffin, provides “a rare snapshot of a vanished Arctic world”, according to scientists.

Also found were the remains of collared lemmings which are now extinct in Europe and had not been found in Scandinavia before.

The team say the study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), will help show how wildlife has responded to dramatic climate shifts in the past as the animal community dates to a warmer period of the ice age.

An international team led by paleontologists Dr. Stephan Spiekman and Prof Dr. Rainer Schoch from the State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart, Germany, describes a previously unknown tree-dwelling reptile from the early Middle Triassic in a study published in the journal Nature.

The 247-million-year-old reptile "Mirasaura grauvogeli," whose name means "Grauvogel's Wonder Reptile," had a dorsal crest with previously unknown, structurally complex appendages growing from its skin with some similarities to feathers. The crest was probably used for display to other members of the same species.

The find shows that complex skin structures are not only found in birds and their closest relatives but may predate modern reptiles. This important discovery forces us to reconsider our understanding of reptile evolution.

Today, Apple TV+ announced "Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age," a sweeping new installment of the award-winning natural history series from executive producers Jon Favreau and Mike Gunton, produced by BBC Studios Natural History Unit ("Planet Earth"), and narrated by Golden Globe Award and Olivier Award winner Tom Hiddleston ("Earthsounds"), with an original score by Hans Zimmer, Anže Rozman and Kara Talve from Bleeding Fingers Music. The five-part docuseries, set to premiere globally on November 26, 2025, invites viewers into a dramatic new era of prehistoric life, millions of years after the extinction of the dinosaurs — an era shaped by ice, the intense fight to survive and the rise of a new cast of giants: the iconic megafauna.

A new analysis of an exquisitely preserved fossil that lived half a billion years ago suggests that arachnids—spiders and their close kin—evolved in the ocean, challenging the widely held belief that their diversification happened only after their common ancestor had conquered the land.

Spiders and scorpions have existed for some 400 million years, with little change. Along with closely related arthropods grouped together as arachnids, they have dominated Earth as the most successful group of arthropodan predators. Based on their fossil record, arachnids appeared to have lived and diversified exclusively on land.

The newly-discovered fossil dates back to the Norian age of the Late Triassic epoch, some 206 million years ago.

It belongs to a previously unknown member of Massopoda, a large group of sauropodomorph dinosaurs that lived during the Late Triassic to Late Cretaceous epochs.

“Among the Mesozoic terrestrial vertebrate groups, Sauropodomorpha represents one of the most successful dinosaurian clades, as it became one of the most abundant and dominant herbivore components of both the Late Triassic and the Jurassic continental paleoecosystems with an almost global distribution, spatially spanning from Antarctica to Greenland,” said Dr. Alessandro Lania from the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn and his colleagues from Switzerland.

Named Pulaosaurus qinglong, the newly-identified dinosaur species lived in what is now China during the Jurassic period, around 160 million years ago.

The ancient reptile was part of the so-called Yanliao Biota, a Middle-to-Late Jurassic-aged ecosystem that included dinosaurs, mammals, amphibians, insects and lizards, as well as plants.

“The Yanliao Biota is one of the most significant Mesozoic, terrestrial lagerstätte in China, with an age that ranges from 168 to 157 million years and is comprised of fossil assemblages from the Jiulongshan and the Tiaojishan Formations,” said senior author Dr. Xing Xu, a paleontologist with the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Yunnan University, and colleagues.

“In total, there have been 54 genera and 58 species of vertebrates reported from the Yanliao Biota, including nine species of non-avian dinosaurs.”

Niger is a dino wonderland because of two chance geologic events. The first unfolded 180 million years ago, during the early Jurassic, when the great landmass Gondwana began to break apart, forming a massive depression in the center of what is now the West African nation, then a verdant region teeming with life. For millions of years, the depression took in sediment and the skeletons of dinosaurs and other creatures.

The second event happened 20 million years ago, when a volcanic hot spot raised what’s known as the Aïr Massif on the edge of this depression, tilting the strata upward and returning to the surface the now fossilized skeletons. Driving across these rock layers today, heading from Agadez into the open desert, is a journey through deep time.