fbpx

Grant Award: Conservation Assessment of 165 Texas Dragonflies Focusing on the 24 Most Imperiled

        John Abbott, Kevin Kocot and Kendra Abbott were awarded a $500k State Wildlife Grant from Texas Parks and Wildlife to study Texas dragonflies over the next four years. Freshwater habitats in Texas are critically important to the rich biodiversity of the state, but many of these habitats and the organisms living within them are under threat. For one of the most popular and ecologically important groups of aquatic insects, dragonflies (Odonata: Anisoptera), we will provide state […]

Read More from Grant Award: Conservation Assessment of 165 Texas Dragonflies Focusing on the 24 Most Imperiled

Feeding Traces on a Pteranodon (Reptilia: Pterosauria) Bone from the Late Cretaceous (Campanian) Mooreville Chalk in Alabama, USA

Pterosaur remains are exceptionally rare in the Late Cretaceous marine chalks of Alabama and the few specimens found are typically very fragmentary. We report the occurrence of a metacarpal of Pteranodon cf. longiceps from the Mooreville Chalk (Campanian, 83 million years old) of Dallas County, Alabama.

Read More from Feeding Traces on a Pteranodon (Reptilia: Pterosauria) Bone from the Late Cretaceous (Campanian) Mooreville Chalk in Alabama, USA

Development of polymorphic microsatellite markers for a rare dragonfly, Cordulegaster sarracenia (Odonata: Cordulegastridae), with notes on population structure and genetic diversity

Kendra K. Abbott, John C. Abbott, Jeffrey D. Lozier, Rochelle R Beasley & Stacey L. Lance (2018) Development of polymorphic microsatellite markers for a rare dragonfly, Cordulegaster sarracenia (Odonata: Cordulegastridae), with notes on population structure and genetic diversity, International Journal of Odonatology, DOI: 10.1080/13887890.2018.1498398 We isolated and characterized a total of 13 microsatellite loci from Cordulegaster sarracenia (Odonata: Cordulegastridae). Loci were screened in 24 individuals from Louisiana and Texas. Within C. sarracenia, the number of alleles per locus ranged from 0 to 5, and […]

Read More from Development of polymorphic microsatellite markers for a rare dragonfly, Cordulegaster sarracenia (Odonata: Cordulegastridae), with notes on population structure and genetic diversity

MothFest 2018

This year’s MothFest was a huge success! The attendance more than tripled from last year, and there were more activities and things to see. To read more about the event, as well as see pictures, you can read the article written by the Tuscaloosa News here!

Read More from MothFest 2018

“Sweetie” the Mosasaur Makes Her Debut Appearance

  In February of 2018, paleontologists Dr. Takehito Ikejiri and Dr. Lynn Harrell delved into UA’s Natural History Collection to retrieve “Sweetie”, a Mosasaurus maximus fossil specimen. As explained in a Youtube video by Kendra Abbott, ecologist and nature lover, Dr. Ikejiri and Dr. Harrell were removing Sweetie from the collection to lay out her bones so they could be properly measured and put together. Kendra tells the viewers that Sweetie could be one of the most complete Mosasaurus maximus specimens, and likely […]

Read More from “Sweetie” the Mosasaur Makes Her Debut Appearance

Stolen Moundville Archaeological Park Pottery

  In 1980, 264 pottery vessels were stolen during a break-in at the Erskine Ramsay Archaeological Repository at Moundville Archaeological Park and have been missing ever since. An investigation by local police, the F.B.I., and publications in the Journal of Field Archaeology could not help bring the missing artifacts back. Now that the internet and social media is widely available, the word can be spread yet again on a wider scale about the theft of the highest-grade pottery vessels in […]

Read More from Stolen Moundville Archaeological Park Pottery

Complete Ichthyornis skull illuminates mosaic assembly of the avian head

D.J. Field, M. Hanson, D. Burnham, L.E. Wilson, K. Super, D. Ehret, J. Ebersole & B.-A.S. Bhullar, published in Nature, volume 357, 3May2018. The skull of living birds is greatly modified from the condition found in their dinosaurian antecedents. Bird skulls have an enlarged, toothless premaxillary beak and an intricate kinetic system that includes a mobile palate and jaw suspensorium. The expanded avian neurocranium protects an enlarged brain and is flanked by reduced jaw adductor muscles. However, the order of […]

Read More from Complete Ichthyornis skull illuminates mosaic assembly of the avian head

A new species of Peritresius Leidy, 1856 (Testudines: Pan-Cheloniidae) from the Late Cretaceous (Campanian) of Alabama, USA, and the occurrence of the genus within the Mississippi Embayment of North America

A.D. Gentry, J.F. Parham, D.J. Ehret & J.A. Ebersole, published in PLOS ONE 13(4): e0195651 Late Cretaceous members of Peritresius belong to a diverse clade of marine adapted turtles currently thought to be some of the earliest representatives of the lineage leading to modern hard-shelled sea turtles (Pan-Cheloniidae). Prior studies have suggested that Peritresius was monospecific, with a distribution restricted to Maastrichtian deposits in North America. However, new Peritresius specimens identified from Alabama and Mississippi, USA, show that the genus […]

Read More from A new species of Peritresius Leidy, 1856 (Testudines: Pan-Cheloniidae) from the Late Cretaceous (Campanian) of Alabama, USA, and the occurrence of the genus within the Mississippi Embayment of North America

A new cochliodont anterior tooth plate from the Mississippian of Alabama (USA) having implications for the origin of tooth plates from tooth files

W. Itano & L.L. Lambert, published in Zoological Letters 4(12) Paleozoic holocephalian tooth plates are rarely found articulated in their original positions. When they are found isolated, it is difficult to associate the small, anterior tooth plates with the larger, more posterior ones. Tooth plates are presumed to have evolved from fusion of tooth files. However, there is little fossil evidence for this hypothesis. We report a tooth plate having nearly perfect bilateral symmetry from the Mississippian (Chesterian Stage) Bangor […]

Read More from A new cochliodont anterior tooth plate from the Mississippian of Alabama (USA) having implications for the origin of tooth plates from tooth files

A new species of Cretalamna sensu stricto (Lamniformes, Otodontidae) from the Late Cretaceous (Santonian-Campanian) of Alabama, USA

J.A. Ebersole & D.J. Ehret, published in PeerJ 6:e4229. Decades of collecting from exposures of the Upper Cretaceous Tombigbee Sand Member of the Eutaw Formation and Mooreville Chalk in Alabama, USA has produced large numbers of isolated Cretalamna (sensu stricto) teeth. Many of these teeth had formerly been assigned to the extinct Late Cretaceous shark Cretalamna appendiculata (Agassiz, 1843), a taxon that is now considered largely restricted to the Turonian of Europe. Recent studies have shed light on the diversity of Late Cretaceous Cretalamna (s.s.) taxa, […]

Read More from A new species of Cretalamna sensu stricto (Lamniformes, Otodontidae) from the Late Cretaceous (Santonian-Campanian) of Alabama, USA