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Look! Someone discovered Darwinopterus!

The BBC is reporting the discovery of a 23 million year old pinniped called Puijila in the Canadian Arctic. It’s around the same age as Enaliarctos, previously the most primitive fossil pinniped discovered, itself an important transitional form.

Here’s an important question that articles like this never answer: how do we know it’s a pinniped?

I’ll let you know when I find out.

UPDATE: Not Exactly Rocket Science has a post with more information about Puijila, including a partial answer to my question above: We know it’s a seal because of the shape of its skull and teeth.

Also check out this section of the Canadian Museum of Nature’s website, dedicated to Puijila, and linked to by NERS.

Yup, some 95 million year old Cephalopod fossils have been discovered in Lebanon, and wouldn’t you know, they’ve got transitional features!  WHODATHUNKIT!

Wow, whale transitionals are starting to feel mundane.

Ladies and gentlemens, Maiacetus inuus.

Thanks to Geoff and Redd Foxx.

UPDATE: Here’s a little more detail.

UPDATE: Here’s a new image (click to enlarge):

On top is Dorudon, another primitive whale with obvious, tiny hind legs.  This is clearly an ocean going whale.  On the bottom is our beloved Maiacetus, with obvious, less tiny hind legs.  Clearly this animal can walk on land, at least a little bit. But compare the two skulls!  They are ridiculously similar! I expect people like Answers in Genesis to try to make believe that this is not really a whale, so, having pointed this out, let me say it in advance:  Suck it, creationists.

A few spiders have recently been described that lack certain features of modern spiders.  They have only partial tagmosis, which just gives me a joygasm; they seem to lack venom, though they do have fangs; they have spigots for producing silk, but lack spinnerets; and one even still has a primitive “tail”!

I want to try to make a point of posting a link to articles about new transitional forms as they are discovered, which happens surprisingly often.  I’ve done it once before, that I can remember*, and I missed an awesome one that was written about over the summer.  I created a special category called Transitional Forms so that there will be a handy list of recent discoveries that people can reference when dealing with creationists.

So, onto today’s link: Odontochelys, a 220 million year old turtle with a shell on bottom, but not on top. Amazingly cool!

* I found two more.

Here are some links so you can go learn yourself up.

Humans are getting less and less special as we learn more about the nature of life. Here’s an article that details six traits that were once thought to be uniquely human. One thing I think they could have added, though one could argue that this falls under morality, is altruism, like that found in vampire bats and (gasp!) E. coli(pdf).*

Also, no matter how hard certain Kentucky-based groups try to deny it, the transitional fossils keep rolling in. Here’s an amphibian that has salamander traits and frog traits. The predictive power of the Theory of Evolution!

*For more info on E. coli, check out Carl Zimmer’s new book, Microcosm, and listen to Carl’s interview on this week’s episode of The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe.

The Creationist coffin is running out of room for nails.

Before Ambulocetus, before Pakicetus, there was Indohyus.

This is very exciting news for me.  Hans Thewissen, who described Ambulocetus, has recently described a deer-like animal called Indohyus, an ancient relative of cetaceans.  Carl Zimmer wrote about it yesterday, and Pharyngula wrote about it today, and included pictures of the actual skull!  This is the best day of my life!

Just imagine, had it not been for this little animal, there would be no Beluga Calf Christmas song!