Fossil

Close your eyes and think "fossil." What did you see -- images of prehistoric remains or hip clothing? If Fossil -- formerly just a watch and accessory company -- has its way, the latter will soon outshadow the former. The company has launched a modern clothing line described by spokeswoman Jennifer Pucci as "the love child" of two well-known labels. "Fossil has got all the basics of the Gap," she explains, "along with the punch that Diesel [clothing] gives you." That means the line has both button-down styles and funky fabrics like faux suede.

I enjoyed Mike Tidwell's article on phasing out carbon fuels in favor of renewable energy sources ("Forecast calls for pain,", Feb. 6). Taxing carbon is the best way to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Having lived and traveled in Germany, I know that the U.S. is way behind in green living and sustainability. In Germany renewable energy is booming. Many people commute via mass transit, trains offer the option to go anywhere in Europe, and bicycling is very popular. Organic stores are everywhere, and everything is recycled so people don't consume as much.

A wonderful Norman Rockwell illustration from the mid-1950s suggests just how strange abstract-impressionism once must have seemed. It depicts a perplexed gent standing in front of a painting covered with mad scrawls and doodles - obviously Rockwell's tongue-in-cheek caricature of a Jackson Pollock. Because the illustration appeared on the cover of the old Saturday Evening Post, there was no caption, nor need for one. It was a pure sight gag, and Rockwell could confidently assume the magazine's readers would put themselves in the place of his bewildered businessman, marveling at the incomprehensible turn taken by art's avant-garde.

Not long after President Barack Obama promised to fight climate change in his inaugural address, temperatures soared to 70 last week in Baltimore - in late January. Our weather continues to be unrecognizable. Last summer was the hottest ever recorded at Baltimore/Washington Thurgood Marshall International Airport. And across the 48 contiguous states, 2012 was the warmest on record by a huge margin. Globally, the heating trend - fueled mostly by the combustion of fossil fuels - proceeds apace.

In one of the most productive periods of dinosaur fossil-hunting in Maryland since the 1880s, large dinosaur bones are coming to light, as keen-eyed amateurs join scientists in searching for evidence that the prehistoric creatures once roamed the area.The latest major find occurred May 19 at a well-known fossil site ina clay quarry near Laurel. Greenbelt resident Arnold Norden spotted a huge, 6-foot-long thigh bone that had been partially exposed and damaged by grading equipment."It was incredibly exciting, just to know this bone was being seen for the first time in 110 million years," said Mr. Norden, an experienced fossil collector who works as an aquatic ecologist with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

LOS ANGELES -- Dan Davis hopes a giant pearl is inside a 12-pound oyster he found on a Southern California mountain, but scientists say the hiker's enthusiasm over his discovery has already produced a pearl of wisdom.In hope of finding a pearl, the 38-year-old salesman from suburban Northridge requested X-rays of his fossil at Holy Cross Medical Center in nearby Mission Hills.Hospital officials one-upped Mr. Davis by doing a CAT scan -- computerized axial tomography -- which a Los Angeles scientist said apparently was among the first times that such imaging had been used on a fossil millions of years old.Mr.

LOS ANGELES - He makes no bones about it: This tiger's legit, not illicit. That's the way David Herskowitz defends the saber-toothed tiger fossil, found in the La Brea Tar Pits area, that he is selling today for the owner. It's true, of course, that private collectors have been banned from the tar pits for more than half a century. It's also true that the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, which maintains the prehistoric fossil collection at the tar pits, has been troubled in the past by thefts.

Scientists in China have discovered that some of our earliest mammalian ancestors managed to rise above the mouse-like creatures that scurried beneath the dinosaurs in pursuit of bugs. Paleontologists from Nanjing University and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History say they have found the 165 million-year-old fossil remains of a 20-inch-long semi-aquatic carnivore that looks like a cross between a beaver and a river otter. The fossil preserved impressions of fur and a flat, partly scaled tail, as well as webbing between the hind toes.

A rare fossil of a plumed reptile 75 million years older than the earliest known bird is challenging the popular idea that dinosaurs and modern fowl are birds of a feather. The tiny primordial creature, which predates all but the most primitive dinosaurs, had feathers like a bird, according to new research made public today in the journal Science. That has some questioning a widely held theory that birds are descended from the same dinosaur family that gave rise to Tyrannosaurus rex, Velociraptors and other toothsome denizens of a vanished world.

WASHINGTON -- A team of scientists working in Argentin has found the closest thing yet to the granddaddy of all dinosaurs, an artful dodger that was about the size of a small dog and sprinted after prey on its hind legs.The creature, named Eoraptor by its discoverers, appeared only 1 or 2 million years after the first dinosaur evolved from a line of ancient reptiles."We're just a few steps away from the common ancestor" of all dinosaurs, Paul Sereno, a University of Chicago paleontologist, said at a news conference yesterday.

Taking a cue from what they're learning in class, some Johns Hopkins public health students are spearheading a climate-conscious drive to get the university to divest itself of fossil fuel holdings. Just before taking off for the holiday break, leaders of the Refuel Our Future campaign delivered to JHU President Ronald J. Daniels' office a petition with more than 800 signatures on it calling on the university to rid its $2.7 billion endowment of fossil energy stocks in an effort to ease the predicted environmental and health impacts of climate change.

In response to your letter to the editor on dinosaurs not being around 67 million years ago ("Bloody evidence undercuts dogmatic view of dinosaurs," Nov. 8): Yes, Dr. Mary Schweitzer's article in Dec. 6, 2010 Scientific American does talk about her finding preserved soft tissue in a fossil ... but it also says that fossil was 67 million years old. Elizabeth Reindollar Laurel

The article "Dinosaur hunters know where to look in Laurel" in the Oct. 25 issue of the Laurel Leader begins, "It's true: Dinosaurs once roamed in Laurel. Of course, that was about 110 million years ago. ... " I wonder if anyone was there to see what the reporter confidently asserts. Or do dinosaur fossils come with little tags attached saying: "Hi, I am 110 millions years old"? Actually, the idea that fossils are millions of years old originated about 200 years ago among people such as James Hutton and Charles Lyell, who didn't like the Biblical account of Noah's flood.

Benjamin H. Passey, assistant professor in the Johns Hopkins University's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences Nature of Research : Passey was part of an international team that analyzed the diet of Australopithecus sediba , a human-like primate that lived 2 million to 3 million years ago in what is now South Africa. Researchers used a laser to vaporize bits of fossilized tooth enamel from two individuals that had been recovered. Using mass spectrometry, they detected in the vapor the chemical fingerprints of the foods consumed.

Scientists working in Laurel's Dinosaur Park on Wednesday excavated the largest dinosaur fossil found in Maryland in five years. It's too early to say for sure what type of bone it was. "It's not a femur; maybe part of a femur head," said Smithsonian fossil preparator Steve Jabo, 50, who did most of the digging to free the fossil bone from the site's dense clay. The importance of the discovery won't be known until after the fossil is cleaned and studied at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, Jabo said.

As wind energy makes increasing headway in reducing America's dependence on fossil fuels and the harmful emissions associated with their use, the fossil fuel industry has launched an increasingly desperate misinformation campaign to muddy the waters about these indisputable benefits of clean energy. The latest attack comes in a Baltimore Sun op-ed by Mr. Charles Campbell, a retired senior vice president of the Gulf Oil Corporation ("Wind farms wrong answer to Md.'s greenhouse gas emissions," July 25)

Fossil hunters announced yesterday that they have found the oldest known tyrannosaur - an ancestor of the fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex that had a bizarre combination of features, including a large, fragile crest on its head that would have attracted mates but made it vulnerable in a fight. The diminutive dinosaur, which lived 160 million years ago, stood 3.6 feet tall and measured 9.8 feet long. That was a far cry from T. rex, which came along 90 million years later and stood about 15 feet high and 40 feet long, weighed roughly 6 tons and had a large mouth that bristled with 6-inch-long, sharp, serrated teeth.

Dinosaur eggs aren't exactly a dime a dozen yet. But scientists have been finding lots of them - some uncovered singly, some still neatly arranged in their nests, or even beneath the fossil remains of their nesting mothers. Yesterday, a team from Canada and Taiwan reported they have identified a pair of 7-inch dinosaur eggs still tucked inside the fossilized pelvis of an "oviraptorosaurian" dinosaur discovered in China. Although some fossil eggs have revealed traces of embryos inside, these have not. But the find, reported in the journal Science, is shedding fresh light on the reproductive anatomy and egg-laying habits of dinosaurs, and on the evolutionary links between ancient reptiles and modern birds.

The September 15 letter about the removal of fossils from Calvert Cliffs by Phyllis Bonfield and Marcia Seifert (Readers respond) provides a good opportunity to clarify how the Calvert Marine Museum goes about that work. Their concerns are varied and will be addressed in the order in which they appear in their entry. Their first concern was for our safety, which is a legitimate concern and one that we take great care to address. The cliff in the immediate area where this skull was removed is approximately 20 feet high.

It was interesting to read Frank Roylance's article of September 10 on the Calvert Marine Museum in Solomons excavating a recently discovered whale fossil from the Calvert Cliffs near Chesapeake Beach ("Calvert Cliffs fossil recovered, identified"). We have owned our home on the Calvert Cliffs since 2000. While we appreciate the contributions the museum makes to our community, we are very concerned with the way government officials allow the museum to handle fossil excavations. Our first concern is safety.