Fossil Friday Roundup: June 24, 2016

Featured image: Pablo Puerta, the head of Egidio Feruglio Paleontology Museum’s technical laboratory in Trelew, Argentina, lies alongside a sauropod dinosaur femur. (AP Photo/Museo Paletontologico Egidio Feruglio, Jose Maria Farfaglia)

Papers (all Open Access):

• A Re-Description of ‘Mycterosaurus’ smithae, an Early Permian Eothyridid, and Its Impact on the Phylogeny of Pelycosaurian-Grade Synapsids (PLOS ONE)
• First records of Canis dirus and Smilodon fatalis from the late Pleistocene Tule Springs local fauna, upper Las Vegas Wash, Nevada (PeerJ)
• The hidden teeth of sloths: evolutionary vestiges and the development of a simplified dentition (Scientific Reports)
• The systematics of the Mongolepidida (Chondrichthyes) and the Ordovician origins of the clade (PeerJ)
• Oligocene Termite Nests with In Situ Fungus Gardens from the Rukwa Rift Basin, Tanzania, Support a Paleogene African Origin for Insect Agriculture (PLOS ONE)
• An Unexpected Early Rhabdodontid from Europe (Lower Cretaceous of Salas de los Infantes, Burgos Province, Spain) and a Re-Examination of Basal Iguanodontian Relationships (PLOS ONE)

 News:

• 150 million-year-old dinosaur footprints found in Rajasthan (Link)
• Ancient DNA shows perfect storm felled Ice Age giants (Link)
• Early mammals evolved night vision to escape the dinosaurs (Link)
• The Egidio Feruglio Paleontology Museum, in Trelew, Argentina is making room for a new dinosaur skeleton (Link)
• Level up with some coding skills! The Paleontological Association has provided an R tutorial for paleontologists (Link)
• Sperm whale fossils up to 12 million years old unearthed at Irvine landfill (Link)

Around the Blogosphere:

• What Killed the Dinosaurs in Utah’s Giant Jurassic Death Pit? (Link)
• Did Dinosaur Dads Take Care Of Their Kids? (Link)
• Shelled krakens of the Mesozoic deep (Link)
• Why isn’t India doing more to protect it’s fossil record? (Link)
• Rena Maguire discusses Sivatherium, an extinct giraffe from India and Africa, on Twilight Beasts (Link)
• Happy (belated) birthday to George Gaylord Simpson, from March of the Fossil Penguins (Link)
• The top six dinosaur myths and how we busted them (Link)

Do you have some news, a blog, or something just plain cool you want to share with the PLOS Paleo Community? Email it to us at paleocommunity@plos.org or tweet it to us at @PLOSPaleo.