Category: Research

The ancient ‘Kite Runner’

An ancient creature which carried its young like tiny, swirling kites is the latest discovery by researchers at the Museum, working with Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, Leicester University, and Imperial College London.

Found in a deposit of rocks known as the Herefordshire Lagerstätte, which preserves ancient remains with superb detail, the 430 million year old fossil shows that the marine animal carried its young in kite-like capsules tethered to the parent’s body, earning it the moniker “Kite Runner” after the 2003 novel by Khalid Hosseini.

The small creature has been officially named Aquilonifer spinosus, from “aquila”, meaning eagle or kite, and “fer” which means carry. It grew to just over a centimeter long, not including the tail spines, and there is only one known fossil of the animal.

Modern crustaceans employ a variety of strategies to protect their eggs and embryos from predators — attaching them to limbs, holding them under a carapace, or enclosing them within a special pouch until they are old enough to be released — but this example is unique. We know of nothing alive today which attaches the young by threads to its upper surface; perhaps this strategy was less successful and became extinct.

Aquilonifer spinosus lived on the seafloor during the Silurian period, with a variety of other animals including sponges, brachiopods, worms, snails and other mollusks, a sea spider, a horse-shoe crab, various shrimp-like creatures, and a sea-star.

The researchers were able to describe Aquilonifer spinosus in detail thanks to a virtual reconstruction. They reconstructed the animal and the attached juveniles by stacking digital images of fossil surfaces that were revealed by grinding away the fossil in exceptionally thin increments. You can see this animation here:

The Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, the Natural Environmental Research Council, the John Fell Oxford University Press Fund, and the Leverhulme Trust supported the research.

 

 

Plesiosaur puzzle

An exciting new resident arrived at the Museum recently, having lain in the Cambridgeshire earth for around 165 million years. Discovered in a quarry near Peterborough, the skeleton of a 5.5 metre plesiosaur has been donated to the Museum and is now awaiting reconstruction and further study in our labs.

Plesiosaurs were long-necked sea creatures that lived during the time of the dinosaurs, but died out 66 million years ago.

The fossilized remains of the marine reptile were discovered at a site owned by building product manufacturer Forterra, which has kindly allowed the material to be added to the Museum’s collections.

The creature was first spotted by Oxford Clay Working Group member Carl Harrington who noticed a tiny fragment of bone sticking out of the clay. Over the course of four days, Carl and eight others dug up more than 600 pieces of fossilised bone. Carl then spent over 400 hours cleaning and repairing the specimen.

I’d never seen so much bone in one spot in a quarry. As I was digging amongst the wet clay, the snout of a plesiosaur started to appear in front of me. It was one of those absolute ‘wow’ moments – I was the first human to come face to face with this reptile.

The plesiosaur had a 2.5 metre long neck, a barrel-shaped body, four flippers and a short tail. Its skull is still preserved inside a block of clay, and the painstaking task of removing it will now be undertaken here.

DrJames Neenan, one of our research fellows, and Professor John Hutchinson from the Royal Veterinary College have already CT-scanned the block to reveal the location of the bones inside. This will help in removing it from the clay.

Next week pupils from a visiting secondary school will get the chance to see the plesiosaur find for themselves and to ask our Earth Collections manager Dr Hilary Ketchum all about it. Hilary says:

We are so excited that the plesiosaur has come to the Museum where it will be used for research, education and display.

Hilary will now begin the task of reconstructing the plesiosaur from the remains you can see in the photos here – a combination of individual separate bones and those still contained in clay nodules. Ultimately, we hope to articulate and suspend the specimen for public display.

Part of the study will be to determine whether this is a known or new species of plesiosaur. Early indications suggest that it might be a species new to science, but more investigation is needed before we will know for sure.

Watch this space…