* Astronomy

UF study names new ancient crocodile relative from the land of Titanoboa

In a new study appearing Sept. 15 in the journal Palaeontology, University of Florida researchers describe a new 20-foot extinct species discovered in the same Colombian coal mine with Titanoboa, the world's largest snake. The findings help scientists better understand the diversity of animals that occupied the oldest known rainforest ecosystem, which had higher temperatures than today, and could be useful for understanding the impacts of a warmer climate in the future.
The 60-million-year-old freshwater relative to modern crocodiles is the first known land animal from the Paleocene New World tropics specialised for eating fish, meaning it competed with Titanoboa for food. But the giant snake could have consumed its competition, too, researchers say.
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Plant fossils give first real picture of earliest Neotropical rainforests
A team of researchers including a University of Florida palaeontologist has used a rich cache of plant fossils discovered in Colombia to provide the first reliable evidence of how Neotropical rainforests looked 58 million years ago.
Researchers from the Smithsonian Institution and UF, among others, found that many of the dominant plant families existing in today's Neotropical rainforests - including legumes, palms, avocado and banana - have maintained their ecological dominance despite major changes in South America's climate and geological structure.
The study, which appears this week in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examined more than 2,000 megafossil specimens, some nearly 10 feet long, from the Cerrejón Formation in northern Colombia. The fossils are from the Palaeocene epoch, which occurred in the 5- to 7-million-year period following the massive extinction event responsible for the demise of the dinosaurs.

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