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Field notes

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The NY Times' "Notes from the field" feature is following paleobotanist Bonnie Jacobs, working a fossil field locality in the Mush Valley of Ethiopia:

None of us has ever experienced a site like this. Not only are the shales full of leaf fossils, but we have now also found beautiful and important fossil bones, including the tooth of a small mammal and the scapula of an artiodactyl. (This is an order of hoofed animals that are also known as even-toed ungulates — picture a mammal that walks on its tippy-toes, like a gazelle.)

These discoveries mean there is great potential for finding other mammals here, including primates. This site will fill a gap in the record of African vertebrate evolution — there are no others of this age known.

The fossils are 22 million years old, which would be a wonderful time to have primates represented. I hope they find some!


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