Five Bizarre Fossil Discoveries That Got Scientists Excited

From trilobites to tyrannosaurs , most fossils are of puppet with hard shells or bones . These materials do n’t easily biodegrade and sediment has time to work up up around them and turn them into a record of the creature that is still with us billion of years after it has go . Soft - bodied organisms like worm , on the other paw , decay quickly and their fossil record is unquestionably patchy .

In especial circumstances , however , their remains are uphold and sometimes in the most unusual places . With the correct detective skills , palaeontologists can expend such discoveries to open up up whole new windows on the history of life on Earth . A recent discovery get hold in 50 - million - year - old rocks from Antarctica has yielded a especially incredible illustration : fossilize worm sperm cell .

It ’s a great monitor that there are far stranger fossils out there than dinosaur off-white . Here are some of the most bizarre specimen ever notice .

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1. Ancient sperm

Thisremarkable findof fossilise spermatozoa from a clitellate or “ collared ” dirt ball represents the oldest animal sperm ever get a line , beating the previous record bearer – springtailsperm found in Baltic gold – by at least ten million years .

The sperm cell conservation was made potential because such dirt ball reproduce by releasing their eggs and spermatozoon into protective cocoons . In this case , a tough eggshell kept the cocoons inviolate until scientists discovered them in shallow maritime crushed rock on the Antarctic Peninsula . Even then , it required high - power microscopic analysis for the sperm cell to be spotted .

The sperm most resemble those of a leech - similar group of insect that bond themselves to crayfish , even though today these live only in the northern cerebral hemisphere . But the researchers think the proficiency could be applied to other cocoon fogy , and help us learn more about antecedently cryptic creatures .

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2. A well-endowed Silurian shrimp

If 50 - million - twelvemonth - sure-enough spermatozoa are surprising , what about a 425 - million - year - old phallus ? light upon in a ditch near the Anglo - Welsh border in the other 2000s , a tiny seed shrimp , or seed shrimp , proved to be quite clearly manlike . carry on in three - proportion with all its indulgent tissues fossilise , it was proportionately well - endowed . “ Old Todger ” was the newspaper headline in theThe Sun newspaper .

During the Silurian period ( 443 - 419 million class ago ) , the Welsh borderlands lay on the ledge of a tropical ocean . Marine animals were occasionally smothered , bury and petrify by the ash of remote volcanoes . The seed shrimp – and unnumbered other small fossils – can not be watch adequately using microscope , however , so their mineral tomb has to be gradually ground aside and the fogey recreated with 3D digital imagination .

3. Ancient reptile poo and puke

The notion that where there ’s dung there ’s brass is perhaps easily shown by coprolites : petrify dung that can be found in many paleontological store . Beyond the novelty , such specimens are “ tracing dodo ” of tremendous palaeoecological note value . This means they can tell scientists exactly what an nonextant beast was eating .

coprolite are really just one component of a deep broth , that of bromalites or “ stink rocks ” . The full term was coined in the former 1990s to cover all matter of excreta maintain in the rock music phonograph record , and in the last few years , bromalites have been pop up everywhere .

In Australia , they show that Cretaceous plesiosaurs werebottom feeders . In Poland theregurgitated dinners of racing shell - squelch fishhelp us work out out how life recovered from thebiggest mass extinction in Earth history . And in Jurassic shale from Peterborough and Whitby , pavements of calamari - like belemnites have been interpreted asichthyosaur vomit .

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4. Yorkshire rhinos

One very odd fossil discovery was made inKirkdale Cave , near Kirkbymoorside , North Yorkshire in 1821 . Workman quarrying for roadstone found a cliffside vacuous full of great brute bones . They were at first thought to be oxen , but a local natural scientist reckon that they were more exotic - looking , and the remains eventually made their way to Oxford University’sProfessor William Buckland .

A man who claim to have eaten his elbow room through the entire brute kingdom , Buckland was the most marvellous experimental scientist . He recognised that the bones were mainly of large herbivore , such as elephants and rhinos . They showed signs of having been gnaw , and fossilize faeces found on the cave floor resemble those of hyaenas . handily being in possession of one as a pet , Buckland proved Kirkdale Cave had been a hyaena den , and set up the scientific discipline of palaeoecology . Almost two hundred twelvemonth on , we do it that “ African ” megafauna roamed the Vale of Pickering about 125,000 years ago , in a warm stage between ice age .

5. A mystery monster

The fossils of Mazon Creek in Illinois , USA , were first encountered during coal mining in the 19th Century . But it was n’t until the fifties that the site became fossiliferously famous , thanks to Francis Tully ’s find of an exceptionally uncanny beast : a attractively preserved mild - bodied creature revealed in a naturally split mineral nodule .

Specimens turn out to be quite abundant but alone to Mazon Creek , and the beast was fall in the name of Tullimonstrum gregarium . It is now thestate fogey of Illinois . Trouble is , no - one sleep together what Mr Tully ’s Common Monster really is . A few inches long , it has a long neb with toothy tweezer at the end , two eyes on stalk , a segmented torso , and a finned tail . It was probably a predator , and the rocks it was found in suggest that it be in tropical , shallow seas .

Beyond that , after more than half a century , we ’re not much the wiser . It can not be satisfactorily united with any other invertebrate group , sustenance or extinct . Even with exceptional preservation , the fossil book always has the capacity to storm .

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