ICP News
A new article published in Journal of Human Evolution led by researchers from the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont (ICP), the Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social (IPHES-CERCA), and the Universitat Rovira i Virgili describes six 2,5 million-years-old fossil macaque teeth from the site of Guefaït (northeast…
An international team including researchers from the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont (ICP) describes a new type of footprints for science in the Alta Val Maira (western Alps, Italy). The tracks were made by a large reptile that lived in this area about 250 million years ago, when the…
A PNAS study led by the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont (ICP) analyzed the kinship between two Miocene great apes (Hispanopithecus and Rudapithecus) based on the morphology of their inner ear semicircular canals. This anatomical structure has revealed to be very informative in reconstructing phylogenetic relationships between fossil primate…
Changes in the diet of the ruminant Micromeryx, an extinct musk deer that inhabited the same areas as hominoids and pliopithecoids during the Miocene, reveal that these extinct primates lived in different habitats in Catalonia as a result of their different food preferences and locomotion behaviors. Changes in vegetation due…
A new Nature study reveals that lagerpetids —an ancient group of small reptiles that lived about 237-210 million years ago— are more closely related to pterosaurs (flying reptiles) than any other known group in the animal kingdom. The recent discovery of lagerpetid skull, mandible and forelimb remains from America and…
Earliest example of a rapid-fire tongue found in rare extinct amphibians preserved in amber
05 Nov 2020
646 times
A new Science study shows that albanerpetontids, a group of rare extinct amphibians that lived more than 100 million years ago, were sit-and-wait hunters that snatched preys with a projectile firing of their tongue. A set of fossils from modern-day Myanmar preserved in amber represent the new species Yaksha perettii…
The rodents of the Miocene of the Vallés-Penedés, subject of Silvia Jovells doctoral thesis
27 Oct 2020
122 times
Silvia Jovells-Vaqué, researcher at the Paleoecology and Biochronology Research Group of the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont (ICP), defended today her doctoral thesis on the Miocene rodents from the Vallès-Penedès basin. Her work, which has been directed by Isaac Casanovas-Vilar (ICP), has analyzed more than 1000 fossil remains of…
A new study led by Borja Holgado, research collaborator at the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont (ICP), brings a new focus on the understanding of anhanguerids, a lineage of large toothed pterosaurs characterized by blade-like crests at the tip of their snouts. The research has been published in Acta…
A stolen fossil leads to the description of a new crocodile species in the Pyrenees
17 Sep 2020
679 times
A study led by Albert G. Sellés, researcher at the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont (ICP), describes the new species Ogresuchus furatus from fossil remains found in Coll de Nargó (Catalonia, Spain). It was a quite small crocodile that could have fed on dinosaur hatchlings. The fossil was stolen…
Thesis defenses in times of pandemic: Joan Femenias and his PhD work on the Eocene primate Agerinia
09 Sep 2020
113 times
Joan Femenias, researcher at the Paleoprimatology and Paleoanthropology Group of the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont (ICP), defended his doctoral PhD thesis on this small 50-million-years-old primate of about. The analyzed fossil remains were obtained from the ICP collections as well as from prospecting and sampling campaigns in the…
