Very Important Information about Environment, Family And Relationships And More

With the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin this week, people around the world are celebrating his role as the father of evolutionary theory. Events and press releases are geared, in part, to combat false claims made by some who would discredit the theory.

One frequently cited “hole” in the theory: Creationists claim there are no transitional fossils, aka missing links. Biologists and paleontologists, among others, know this claim is false.

As key evidence for evolution and species’ gradual change over time, transitional creatures should resemble intermediate species, having skeletal and other body features in common with two distinct groups of animals, such as reptiles and mammals, or fish and amphibians.

These animals sound wild, but the fossil record - which is far from complete - is full of them nonetheless, as documented by Occidental College geologist Donald Prothero in his book “Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters” (Columbia University Press, 2007). Prothero discussed those fossils last month at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, along with transitional fossils that were announced since the book was published, including the “fishibian” and the “frogamander.”

At least hundreds, possibly thousands, of transitional fossils have been found so far by researchers. The exact count is unclear because some lineages of organisms are continuously evolving.

Here is a short list of transitional fossils documented by Prothero and that add to the mountain of evidence for Charles Darwin’s theory. A lot of us relate most to fossils of life closely related to humans, so the list focuses on mammals and other vertebrates, including dinosaurs.

Mammals, including us

• It is now clear that the evolutionary tree for early and modern humans looks more like a bush than the line represented in cartoons. All the hominid fossils found to date form a complex nexus of specimens, Prothero says, but Sahelanthropus tchadensis, found in 2001 and 2002, threw everyone for a loop because it walked upright 7 million years ago on two feet but is quite chimp-like in its skull size, teeth, brow ridges and face. It could be a common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees, but many paleoanthropologists will remain unsure until more fossils are found. Previously, the earliest ancestor of our Homo genus found in the fossil record dated back 6 million years.
• -Most fossil giraffes have short necks and today’s have long necks, but anatomist Nikos Solounias of the New York Institute of Technology’s New York College of Osteopathic Medicine is preparing a description of a giraffe fossil, Bohlinia, with a neck that is intermediate in length.
• Manatees, also called sea cows, are marine mammals that have flippers and a down-turned snout for grazing in warm shallow waters. In 2001, scientists discovered the fossil of a “walking manatee,” Pezosiren portelli, which had feet rather than flippers and walked on land during the Eocene epoch (54.8 million years ago to 33.7 million years ago) in what is now Jamaica. Along with skull features like manatees (such as horizontal tooth replacement, like a conveyor belt), it also had heavy ribs for ballast, showing that it also had an aquatic lifestyle, like hippos.
• Scientists know that mastodons, mammoths and elephants all share a common ancestor, but it gets hard to tell apart some of the earliest members of this group, called proboscideans, going back to fossils from the Oligocene epoch (33.7 million years ago to 23.8 million years ago). The primitive members of this group can be traced back to what Prothero calls “the ultimate transitional fossil,” Moeritherium, from the late Eocene of Egypt. It looked more like a small hippo than an elephant and probably lacked a long trunk, but it had short upper and lower tusks, the teeth of a primitive mastodon and ear features found only in other proboscideans.
• The Dimetrodon was a big predatory reptile with a tail and a large sail or fin-back. It is often mistaken for a dinosaur, but it’s actually part of our mammalian lineage and more closely related to mammals than reptiles, which is seen in its specialized teeth for stabbing meat and skull features that only mammals and their ancestors had. It probably moved around like a lizard and had a jawbone made of multiple bones, like a reptile.

Dinosaurs and birds

• The classic fossil of Archaeopteryx, sometimes called the first bird, has a wishbone (fully fused clavicle) which is only found in modern birds and some dinosaurs. But it also shows impressions from feathers on its body, as seen on many of the theropod dinosaurs from which it evolved. Its body, capable of flight or gliding, also had many of dinosaur features - teeth (no birds alive today have teeth), a long bony tail (tails on modern birds are entirely feathers, not bony), long hind legs and toes, and a specialized hand with long bony fingers (unlike modern bird wings in which the fingers are fused into a single element), Prothero said.
• Sinornis was a bird that also has long bony fingers and teeth, like those seen in dinosaurs and not seen in modern birds.
• Yinlong is a small bipedal dinosaur which shares features with two groups of dinosaurs known to many kids - ceratopsians, the beaked dinosaurs like Triceratops, and pachycephalosaurs, known for having a thick dome of bone in their skulls protecting their brains. Yinlong has the thick rostral bone that is otherwise unique to ceratopsians dinosaurs, and the thick skull roof found in the pachycephalosaurs.
• Anchisaurus is a primitive sauropod dinosaur that has a lot of lizard-like features. It was only 8 feet long (the classic sauropods later on could be more than 100-feet long), had a short neck (sauropods are known for their long necks, while lizards are not), and delicate limbs and feet, unlike dinosaurs. Its spine was like that of a sauropod. The early sauropods were bipedal, while the latter were stood on all fours. Anchisaurus was probably capable of both stances, Prothero wrote.

Fish, frogs, turtles

• Tiktaalik, aka the fishibian or the fishapod, is a large scaled fish that shows a perfect transition between fins and feet, aquatic and land animals. It had fish-like scales, as well as fish-like fin rays and jaw and mouth elements, but it had a shortened skull roof and mobile neck to catch prey, an ear that could hear in both land and water, and a wrist joint that is like those seen in land animals.
• Last year, scientists announced the discovery of Gerobatrachus hottorni, aka the frogamander. Technically, it’s a toothed amphibian, but it shows the common origins of frogs and salamanders, scientists say, with a wide skull and large ear drum (like frogs) and two fused ankle bones as seen in salamanders.
• A creature on the way to becoming a turtle, Odontochelys semistestacea, swam around in China’s coastal waters 200 million years ago. It had a belly shell but its back was basically bare of armor. Odontochelys had an elongated, pointed snout. Most modern turtles have short snouts. In addition, the roof of its mouth, along with the upper and lower jaws, was equipped with teeth, which the researchers said is a primitive feature for turtles whose mugs are now tipped with beaks but contain no teeth.

Rain-battered residents in northeastern Australia were on alert Wednesday for snakes in their bathrooms and crocodiles in the road following repeated storms that have sent local wildlife in search of dry land or a safe haven.

More than half of Queensland state was declared a disaster area Tuesday because of the rains that started in late December and are expected to continue.

In Queensland’s hardest-hit town of Ingham, David Harkin was preparing Wednesday to evacuate after watching floods wash through his two-level home. He said he’s seen several snakes around his home since the latest storm hit Sunday.

“That’s why I keep the broom here (at the front door) to chase the snakes away,” he told reporters. Some 2,900 homes have been damaged in Ingham and hundreds of people evacuated to a temporary shelter.

In the coastal city of Townsville, floods were blamed for washing a freshwater crocodile into the street — where it got run over.

The 5.25-foot-long (1.6-meter-long) crocodile survived and was being treated for an injured eye and several broken teeth, the Townsville Bulletin newspaper reported Wednesday.

Wildlife Carers volunteer Lana Allcroft said the service had been overwhelmed with injured and displaced animals since the floods began.

“A lady rang up this morning and said she had a snake in her bathroom. I said, ‘Well, I’ve got a crocodile in mine,’” Allcroft told the newspaper. “We’ve had wallabies, curlews, snakes and flying foxes, and that’s just this morning.” A curlew is a kind of bird.

After weeks of storms that have submerged parts of Queensland, the area was battered again Sunday when a tropical storm landed. More rain is forecast this week, including a possible cyclone.

The Queensland Environmental Protection Agency has warned residents to watch out for wildlife on roads and in their yards.

“Crocodiles might move about looking for a quiet place to wait for floodwaters to recede and snakes may swim into peoples’ properties,” Environmental Protection Agency project officer Brian Wright said after the late January floods.

Deputy Premier Paul Lucas, who visited Ingham on Wednesday, said he didn’t believe the ground could cope with more rain.

“It’s like pouring water over a wet towel,” Lucas said.

Ingham had received 14.41 inches (366 millimeters) of rain in 24 hours Wednesday morning, on top of more than 15.75 inches (400 millimeters) dumped in the previous days.

The state government said Tuesday that the storms had caused an estimated 109 million Australian dollars ($69.5 million) in damage since late December and that more than 56 percent of the state — 376,755 square miles (975,794 square kilometers) — is eligible for disaster relief. About 17 rivers are flooded and dams are overflowing.

Some coastal areas are completely cut off by flooding and authorities fear the stagnant water could worsen an outbreak of dengue fever.

Common antidepressants suspected of raising suicide risk among children reduce the risk for adults, Italian scientists reported on Monday.

The findings that the drugs cut suicide risk by more than 40 percent among adults and over 50 percent for elderly people should reassure doctors, the researchers said.

But the study confirmed the drugs seriously raise the suicide risk for children, Corrado Barbui of the University of Verona and colleagues reported in the Canadian Medical Journal.

“Data from observational studies should reassure doctors that prescribing (the drugs) to patients with major depression is safe,” they wrote.

“However, children and adolescents should be followed very closely because of the possibility of increased of risk suicidal thoughts and suicide.”

Depression is the leading cause of suicide, which is the third-biggest killer of children and young adults between the ages of 10 and 24.

The researchers focused on selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). SSRIs like GlaxoSmithKline’s Paxil or paroxetine and Eli Lilly and Co’s Prozac or fluoxetine, both of which are now available generically, are the most commonly prescribed class of antidepressant.

U.S. and European regulators sent out a series of public health warnings on use of antidepressants beginning in 2003 after clinical trials showed the drugs increased the risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors in children and teens.

A 2007 analysis by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found SSRIs significantly increased suicide risk for adolescents, offered protection for the elderly but were neutral for adults.

Barbui and his team’s review of eight large studies which included more than 200,000 patients found the same for the young and old but differed when it came to adults, showing significant protection.

“Our risk estimates were very similar to those obtained by the FDA only for the elderly and adolescent groups,” they wrote.

A team of astronauts aboard the International Space Station is pulling for the Pittsburgh Steelers in this weekend’s Super Bowl showdown against the Arizona Cardinals.

Leading the space Steelers charge is station skipper Michael Fincke, a native of Pittsburgh, Pa., who beamed a video message of support to his team during the NFL playoffs earlier this month.

“The entire crew’s rooting for a good Super Bowl this year and of course we want the Steelers to win, but you know it’s more than that,” Fincke told the Pittsburgh radio station KDKA this week. “It’s great that our team has made it to the Super Bowl yet again.”

Fincke and his crewmates, NASA astronaut Sandra Magnus and Russian cosmonaut Yury Lonchakov, plan to tune in late Sunday night, since they follow Greenwich Mean Time as they orbit the Earth from 220 miles (354 km) up. They’ll be about five hours ahead of the game’s 6:00 p.m. EST (2300 GMT) start time.

“We’re actually going to be up late at night watching the Super Bowl like many other people that are around the world,” Fincke said. “Yury, he’s from Russia and he still doesn’t quite get American football, but I think he’s still a Steelers fan deep down inside.”

There’s little doubt that Fincke’s faith in the Steelers’ Super Bowl bid is strong. After all, he packed a Steelers cap and Terrible Towel in his luggage when he launched to the space station last October.

“I’m really glad to have the opportunity to bring up not just the Terrible Towel, but also one for my daughter…a Terrible Toddler Towel,” said Fincke, who is married to wife Renita and has two young daughters - Tarali and Surya - and a son, Chandra.

While Steelers captain “Big” Ben Roethlisberger or strong safety Troy Polamalu might make good astronauts, Fincke favored team coach Mike Tomlin as being at the top of his list.

“He actually understands how to get the whole team together, and that’s what we do here aboard the International Space Station,” said Fincke. “Practically, any of the Steelers could make it up here.”

Fincke was born in Pittsburgh and grew up in nearby Emsworth, Pa. A veteran NASA spaceflyer, he is currently commanding the station’s Expedition 18 crew and is due to return to Earth in early April. He last flew to the space station as an Expedition 9 flight engineer in 2004.

“When I fly up here, Pittsburgh is with me,” Fincke said. “There really is no place like home, and there’s something really special about the great, big Pittsburgh.”

Congressional auditors say that NASA’s in-house financial watchdog is doing little to unearth waste and abuse at the space agency.

The Government Accountability Office compared NASA’s inspector general to 27 other federal agencies and found it next to last, according to a report obtained by The Associated Press. NASA’s financial watchdog saved taxpayers only 36 cents for every dollar their department spent, the new report says. The average for federal inspectors general was $9.49.

The GAO determined that NASA’s inspector general didn’t plan enough financial audits and didn’t seem independent enough from the space agency. In a written response to the report, the NASA inspector general said the GAO misrepresented the NASA audits and called the report flawed.

Inspectors general are independent watchdogs assigned to major government agencies and appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. They are supposed to look for fraud, waste and abuse and make recommendations on how to save money. The Government Accountability Office is the auditing arm that investigates agencies at the request of Congress.

NASA’s inspector general spends an overwhelming amount of effort on investigations that aren’t aimed at saving money, the report found. Yet NASA is an agency with a history of cost overruns — last month the agency said a major Mars mission was going to cost $400 million more than budget — and the NASA chief acknowledged his office had a problem with calculating cost.

NASA’s inspector general, Robert “Moose” Cobb, “has generally not focused on audits with recommendations for improving the economy and efficiency of NASA’s programs … with potential monetary savings,” the 77-page report found.

Out of more than a 150 investigations in 2006 and 2007, only one NASA inspector general audit made recommendations for taxpayers’ money, according to the report.

For example, the inspector general reported that spaceflight operations — running the space shuttle and space station in a multibillion dollar program — has financial challenges. Yet, the GAO report noted that at no time in 2006 or 2007 did the inspector general come up with a single recommendation on how to save taxpayers money in that program.

Renee Juhans, spokeswoman for the NASA inspector general office, said she could not comment until she has seen the final report.

Congressional leaders from both parties called for the ouster of Cobb.

“This report confirms that the inspector general at NASA isn’t doing the job for either NASA or the taxpayers,” Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee said in an e-mail statement. “With the evidence that’s piled up about the shortcomings of this watchdog operation, and given the size of NASA’s operation at $20 billion, it looks like new leadership is needed in the office of the inspector general.”

House Science Committee Chairman Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., said in an e-mail: “NASA spends billions of dollars with private contractors and how much money Cobb left on the table due to his failures to manage his office is hard to imagine. The country can’t afford Mr. Cobb.”

Two years ago, the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency issued a report saying that Cobb abused his authority and didn’t appear independent enough from the agency he was investigating. One case involved whether to make public the theft of a ring from the remains of the space shuttle Columbia. Congressional leaders, who said Cobb was too subservient to the NASA administrator, had called for his resignation, which went unheeded.

President George W. Bush on Tuesday will create three new marine monuments in the Pacific Ocean to protect the deepest place on Earth, some of the last pristine corals and sanctuaries for vanishing marine species.

The three monuments — in the Mariana Islands in the western Pacific, the Rose Atoll off American Samoa and remote islands in the central Pacific — cover 195,280 square miles, the largest protected area of ocean.

Conservationists and the White House declared a new era for protection of unique and endangered places in the ocean, opportunities of scientific discovery and an important effort to protect some of the last places where the ocean still looks like the abundant world of centuries or even thousands of years past.

The Marianas Marine National Monument will protect the Mariana Trench, the deepest place on Earth — deeper than Mount Everest is high and explored for the first time only in 1960. The three monuments also protect corals and the ecosystems that include large migratory, resting and feeding sea birds, and endangered animals such as sea turtles.

“To me and the president and first lady, one of the things that really affected us in learning from the scientists is these locations are truly among the last pristine areas in marine environments on Earth,” White House Council on Environmental Quality chairman James Connaughton told reporters Monday. “This is a huge day for marine conservation.”

“The president has given the world a Texas -sized gift,” said Diane Regas , manager of the ocean program at the Environmental Defense Fund .

Joshua S. Reichert of the Pew Environment Group said it had taken more than a century to start to protect unique places in the ocean in the way that America has protected its treasured places as natural parks on land.

In 2006, Bush also protected 139,793 square miles in the Papahanaumokuakea Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument . In all, Bush has protected more of the oceans than anyone else in the world, Reichert said.

The Marianas Marine National Monument will include the Mariana Trench and a string of volcanoes and thermal vents that create a harsh but thriving ecosystem. The area is also home to 300 species of stony corals and some of the highest fish abundance and diversity in the Mariana Islands, Connaughton said.

The Pacific Remote Islands National Monument will include coral reefs surrounding Kingman Reef , Palmyra Atoll, Howland, Baker and Jarvis islands and Johnston Atoll and Wake Island , home to nesting sea birds and migratory shore birds, corals with hundreds of fish species and endangered turtles.

Rose Atoll Marine National Monument , a remote area off American Samoa , is a “tiny but spectacular” coral reef area also known for rare birds, including petrels, and reef sharks and parrot fish. Humpback and pilot whales and porpoises are frequently found there as well, Connaughton said.

Commercial fishing and recreational fishing will be forbidden within 50 miles of the islands. Connaughton said scientists gave strong support for going well beyond the three-mile zone, but “much less foundation for going beyond 50.”

Recreational fishing permits will be considered on a limited basis.

The Mariana Trench area will protect the deep ocean, but not the fish in the waters above the rim of the underwater canyon.

The protection also means no mining for deep-sea minerals. Studies showed that minerals are not likely in the conservation areas, Connaughton said.

The agreements will protect research and indigenous practices. The military will continue to operate in the monuments.

Scientists say the world’s oceans are under assault from overfishing, fertilizer runoff that leaves dead zones, and both warming and acidification as a result of carbon dioxide releases from fossil fuel burning.

Connaughton said there’s a bipartisan consensus in favor of better ocean conservation. The bigger agenda will include efforts to end overfishing by 2010, restore money for ocean research and re-examine energy and minerals development and navigation so that conservation isn’t thwarted.

Jean-Michel Cousteau, president of the Ocean Futures Society and son of famed sea explorer Jacques Cousteau, said in a commentary in The Modesto Bee in October, which also was sent to the White House to support the idea of new monuments, that while 72 percent of the Earth is covered by water, “much of its vitality today is threatened.”

“Ninety percent of the world’s large predatory fish are now gone, while pollution and habitat destruction have touched virtually every major body of water,” he wrote. “But we are at the frontier of a clear understanding of how to stop the damage as we restore and protect these vital areas and resources, and we have before us the opportunity to protect a truly unique marine ecosystem.”

Staff at Belgrade Zoo showed off two white lion cubs to the public on Sunday, the first of their rare species to be born here.

The cubs’ mother was also white lioness, Masa, while their father is a regular-color lion, said zoo manager Vuk Bojovic while briefly showing them to visitors. White lions are not a separate species nor are they albino.

The genetically rare cubs, unique to the Timbavati area of South Africa, were born on Tuesday.

White lions are extremely rare in the wild because although they are considered divine by local people, they are also highly prized by hunters. A 2004 study counted only 30 of them in the African wild.

In a bid to preserve their population, they have been bred selectively for generations in zoos across the world.

Archaeologists have found the remains of a Roman temple in a town in Nottinghamshire, UK, a discovery that experts say could re-write the history books.

According to a report in the website nottingham.co.uk, a wall dating back as far as 43AD, made from large smooth-faced sandstone blocks, has been unearthed at the former Minster School site in Southwell in Nottinghamshire.

Twenty meters long by 2.5 meters tall, it is part of an emerging complex of buildings, including a Roman bathing monument known as a nymphaeum.

The site also contains what is believed to be a large villa.

“This is a monumental discovery. I have never seen Roman archaeology looking like that in Notts,” said Ursilla Spence, senior archaeological officer for Notts County Council. “It is starting to re-write our understanding of Notts in the Roman period,” she added.

“You don’t expect to see a wall of this masonry. It looks as if it could be a pagan Roman temple. Not only are they using these huge blocks, but they were using smooth faces. It is very much a grand building,” Spence explained.

“We certainly were not expecting anything like this. We had nothing to say it was there. To us, it is new and very exciting,” she added.

It is only the second Roman pagan temple to be discovered in Notts, the other was found in 1963 near to the site where the East Midlands Parkway Station is being built.

The Southwell find is significant because there is no evidence of a Roman settlement in the town.

According to Bryn Walters, director and secretary of the Association for Roman Archeology, “This could change the way the history of Southwell is looked at. It is interesting that there might be something else and has not been found yet.”

“If there is a temple, there is going to be something else not far away,” he added.

Walters said that the discovery of the temple could mean that what was thought to be a villa, previously discovered at the site, might be a lavish resting place for pilgrims.

“There may well be something of great importance there. It is potentially a very, very interesting site indeed. Potentially, Southwell is hiding a lot of information,” he said.

“We think it’s a whole complex. We have got most of the elements. I am expecting another structure to turn up this week,” said Spence.

As NASA selects a landing site for its next Mars mission called the ‘Mars Science Laboratory’, four intriguing places on the Red Planet have made it to the final round.

The sites, alphabetically, are: Eberswalde, where an ancient river deposited a delta in a possible lake; Gale, with a mountain of stacked layers including clays and sulfates; Holden, a crater containing alluvial fans, flood deposits, possible lake beds and clay-rich deposits; and Mawrth, which shows exposed layers containing at least two types of clay.

“All four of these sites would be great places to use our roving laboratory to study the processes and history of early Martian environments and whether any of these environments were capable of supporting microbial life and its preservation as biosignatures,” said John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.

The agency had a wider range of possible landing sites to choose from than for any previous mission, thanks to the Mars Science Laboratory’s advanced technologies, and the highly capable orbiters helping this mission identify scientifically compelling places to explore.

The mission’s capabilities for landing more precisely than ever before and for generating electricity without reliance on sunshine have made landing sites eligible that would not have been acceptable for past Mars missions.

During the past two years, multiple observations of dozens of candidate sites by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have augmented data from earlier orbiters for evaluating sites’ scientific attractions and engineering risks.

JPL is assembling and testing the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft for launch in fall 2009.

Paring the landing-site list to four finalists allows the team to focus further on evaluating the sites and planning the navigation.

The mission plan calls for the rover to spend a full Mars year (23 months) examining the environment with a diverse payload of tools.

After evaluating additional Mars orbiter observations of the four sites, NASA will hold a fourth science workshop about the candidates in the spring and plans to choose a final site next summer.

Three previous landing-site science workshops for Mars Science Laboratory, in 2006, 2007 and two months ago, drew participation of more than 100 Mars scientists and presentations about more than 30 sites.

The four sites rated highest by participants in the latest workshop were the same ones chosen by mission leaders after a subsequent round of safety evaluations and analysis of terrain for rover driving.

Prehistoric fossils of snails found in gray Alaskan limestone are adding to the evidence about the Alaska-Eurasia connection.

According to a report in National Geographic News, geologist David Rohr found the tiny, prehistoric seashells lodged in gray Alaskan limestone.

These 18 Paleozoic-era snails, half of them new to science, did live on reefs some 420 million years ago, when jawless fishes spread throughout the seas and the ancestors of spiders and centipedes began creeping about on land.

Many of the snails resemble no other fossils from North America’s landmass. Instead, they’re linked to creatures whose fossils have been discovered as far away as Eastern Europe and Russia’s Ural Mountains.

These new finds are adding to a growing body of evidence about Alaska’s diverse and far-flung geological roots.

Modern Alaska is a geological puzzle, a mosaic of fragments from other parts of the world. Geologists suspect the state contains only a small triangle of original North America, located along its east-central boundary with Canada.

Fossils suggest that the rest of Alaska was formed from a patchwork of small land chunks, known as terranes, that collected against North America like flotsam during the Mesozoic and early Cenozoic eras, between 251 million and 60 million years ago.

Paleontologists began noting weirdly similar fossils in Alaska and Eurasia as far back as 1907, and they’ve been working ever since to trace their links and decipher their origins.

According to Rohr, the spreading prehistoric seafloor carried his snails’ limestone grave to the southeast panhandle of Alaska on a 100,000-square-kilometer chunk of land called the Alexander terrane.

With support from the National Geographic Society’s Committee for Research and Exploration, Rohr and his colleague Robert Blodgett have found striking similarities between the Alaskan fossil shells and shells from Europe and Russia that date back to the same time, the Paleozoic era’s Silurian period, between 417 million and 443 million years ago.

“We were impressed because some of these fossils seemed to match species in Europe,” Rohr said.

One of the fossils, a smooth, loosely spiraled shell, exactly matches specimens of Beraunia bohemica collected in the Czech Republic; and a tightly swirled cone matches Medfracaulus turriformis shells found in the eastern Urals.

Neither had been found before in North America.

These snails lived in a warm, shallow sea near Siberia during a period when coral reefs first formed.

Rohr speculates that they didn’t move around much, but when necessary, could propel themselves along the seafloor or reef surfaces by lifting their shells with their muscular foot and then falling forward.