From the 20-foot-long jawbones of the filter-feeding blue whale to the short, but bone-crushing, jaws of the hyena and the delicate chin bones of a human, the pair of lower jawbones characteristic of mammals have evolved with amazing variation. But at first glance, having a single bone on each side of the head — which creates a stiff lower jaw, or mandible — doesn’t appear to give mammals an advantage over other vertebrates, which have at least two and as many as 11 bones comprising each side … [Read more...] about A jaw-dropping conundrum: Why do mammals have a stiff lower jaw?

Frankfurt, Germany is a museum town. Along the south side of the aptly named Main River are museums of Renaissance art, iconography, sculpture, design, and film. Each of the old waterfront mansions is home to treasures that spill out through their gardens and into the street, where today’s working artists sell pieces of equal beauty in the public market. It seems required that every footbridge across the river has a café and an accordion player at either end. North of the river is modern art, … [Read more...] about Life cycles: bringing new questions to old collections

Curator and Assistant Professor Jack Tseng is co-author on a Vertebrata Palasiatica article describing a new genus and species of a small-bodied hyena from the Miocene of Gansu Province, China.  The unique features identified in 12-14 million year fossil skulls shed new light on the ancestral history of modern termite-eating hyenas. Read more in Berkeley News. … [Read more...] about Was this hyena a distant ancestor of today’s termite-eating aardwolf?

Alligator lizards of the genus Abronia are currently found in montane cloud forests and seasonally dry forests of Mexico and Central America. These physically striking and colorful lizards are popular among both scientists and the public and are increasingly recognized as conservation flagship taxa. A recent study by MVZ postdoctoral fellow and UCMP affiliate Simon Scarpetta and coauthor David Ledesma describes the first fossil and only recognized extinct species of Abronia. The fossil was … [Read more...] about First fossil of iconic alligator lizard is way out of range!

A recent paper by Curator and Professor Emeritus Kevin Padian in the journal Acta Palaeontologia Polonica, promotes a new hypothesis for T. rex’s short arm length. Follow his integrative approach to the often-asked question on T. rex arms that considers social organization, feeding behavior, and ecological factors as outlined in an article in Berkeley News. … [Read more...] about T. rex’s short arms may have lowered risk of bites during feeding frenzies

Kevin Padian, Curator Emeritus, co-edited a new Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Memoir on the Late Cretaceous pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus. The eight articles in the Memoir shed new light on bones collected from Big Bend National Park in the 1970’s by Douglas Lawson who would later obtain his PhD at Berkeley. The SVP Memoir is highlighted in Berkeley News. Data and interpretations from scientists and illustrations from artists provide fascinating information on pterosaur anatomy, movement, and … [Read more...] about New Memoir on Quetzalcoatlus from Kevin Padian, Professor Emeritus