Sick With Paleo-Fever

“To find something like that, it could spark this youngster into a whole career,” explained Dr. Sumrall. And that’s what exactly Ryleigh wants to do in her life. Ryleigh is so inspired by her discovery that she wants to pursue a career in this field and wants to inspire other kids of her age who spends most of their time playing video games instead of exploring life outside. We hope she achieves great heights and her future is as long as this fossil’s age.

What Is A Trilobite?

Trilobite comes from a group of insects and spiders. They first appeared on the face of Earth during the Cambrian Period i.e., 520-million-years-ago and disappeared at the end of Permian Period i.e., 250 million years ago. You can relate it to today’s modern horseshoe crab.
Dr. Sumrall shared, he gets a request from several people who ask him to take a look at the fossil they have found and it turns out that ninety-five percent of the time it is not even a fossil. Ryleigh’s discovery was a special case and he wishes her luck.

There are a few other amazing discoveries that shocked the world and helped the scientists to understand Earth even better. Take a look at them.

Some Other Amazing Discovery

Every day paleontologists all around the globe discover some amazing fossils of extinct dinosaurs that surprisingly once lived on this planet Earth. Just like today, where we separate animals who eat other animals to who don’t, we had dinosaurs too who ate other dinosaurs and some lived only by grass and other green stuff. But why we are telling you all of this, you know the deal from the movie Jurassic Park, right? Let’s move forward with the discoveries.

Megalosaurus (1676)

In the year 1676, in England, the remains of Megalosaurus were found by the professor from Oxford University. What’s interesting is that he couldn’t accept the fact that something this big ever lived on earth and he declared it as a skeleton of a human giant. Wait? What? Yeah, you read it right. Don’t forget it was the 17th century when they found this and it was hard for people to believe in many things they didn’t understand.
It took 150 years, and in the year 1824, William Buckland came to the rescue who gave the proper explanation and in 1844 Megalosaurus was given the tag of a dinosaur by the very famous paleontologist of that time Richard Owen.

Mosasaurus (1764)

In between of the late 17th century and 18th century, in central and western Europe some strange looking bones were found along the rivers and lakes. What made this discovery so popular was that it was the first fossil that was found which belonged to an extinct animal. It was naturalist Georges Cuvier who discovered it and because of this discovery scientists excepted that before them there were some species who lived, and died, millions of years before human stepped on the planet.

Iguanodon (1820)

Back in 1820, naturalist Gideon Mantell discovered some bones that belonged to the dinosaur Iguanodon. However, many naturalists like Georges Cuvier and William Buckland didn’t believe in the discovery as they both thought these bones are of a fish or rhinoceros. They weren’t ready to believe some ancient reptiles existed on Earth and refuted the discovery made by Mantell. Later, Richard Owen gave a detailed view on Iguanodon and they identified this dinosaur. Iguanodon became the second dinosaur after Megalosaurus who was given an official genus identification.