When thinking of palaeontology in Asia, most people think of Mongolia and China, but there is actually a significant palaeontology community in Japan. Japan has many fossils, starting in the Ordovician, and ranging from everything from bivalves and trilobites to dinosaurs and mammals. In this episode, we speak with Dr. Makoto Manabe, the Director of the Centre for Collections and Centre for Molecular Biodiversity Research at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo.…

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With advancements in computed tomography (CT) scanning comes an increased understanding of the internal structures preserved in extant and extinct animals, providing a non-destructive way of peering into the bones and revealing their secrets. Along with this month’s publication on extensive rostral neurovasculature in the carcharodontosaurian Neovenator, comes the CT scanning of the braincase of a distantly related theropod, Viavenator exxoni. What interested me in this paper on Viavenator, discovered last year in 84 million…

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Articles on dinosaur neurovasculature are like buses: you wait for most of the Phanerozoic for one to arrive and then two appear at once. Indeed, 2017 saw the publication of two articles relating to the purpose of cephalic neurovasculature in theropod dinosaurs, the subject being only briefly highlighted in a select few cases from disparate Mesozoic reptiles. Thanks to micro-focus computed tomography (μCT), our discovery of complex internal canals within the rostrum (snout) of Neovenator…

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Articles on dinosaur neurovasculature are like buses: you wait for most of the Phanerozoic for one to arrive and then two appear at once. Indeed, 2017 saw the publication of two articles relating to the purpose of cephalic neurovasculature in theropod dinosaurs, the subject being only briefly highlighted in a select few cases from disparate Mesozoic reptiles. Thanks to micro-focus computed tomography (μCT), our discovery of complex internal canals within the rostrum (snout) of Neovenator…

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A new species of Cyclotosaur, a giant salamander-like amphibian, has been described from the Late Triassic rocks of East Greenland. Cyclotosaurs are temnospondyl amphibians, known from other Late Triassic deposits in Germany, Poland and Svalbard, but this new specimen represents the North-westerly-most ever found. The new species, described in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, is named Cyclotosaurus naraserluki, after the Greenlandic word for amphibian/salamander, ‘naraserluk’, and is represented by a complete skull and three vertebrae.…

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The proboscideans are a group of animals that contains the elephant and mastodont families. Many of us will be well-aware of these groups, but what of some of the lesser-known proboscideans? One such family are the gomphotheres and in this episode we’re introduced to them by Dr Dimila Mothé, of the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. My first time in a paleontological collection, at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica of Minas Gerais, Brazil.…

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Hello and welcome to Progressive Palaeontology 2017 in Leicester! We are delighted to host this annual gathering of up and coming palaeontological minds from around the world, bringing together exciting new research that spans the wide breadth of our field. We hope that you will find this to be an engaging and stimulating scientific conference. Leicester, and the surrounding Leicestershire, has a rich palaeontological pedigree. Charnia masoni, discovered in Charnwood Forest in 1958, was the…

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