At https://phys.org/news/2021-05-mammoths-sick-rex-fossils-side.html … a fossilisation of two fighting mammoths is the story line. The fossil is described in a new book, 'Locked in Time: animal behaviour unearthed in 50 extraordinay fossils' published by Columbia University Press:May, 2021 – see https://cup.columbia.edu/book/locked-in-time/9780231197281 … one for the coffee table. The 50 fossils are unusual – animals in the act of doing something, like dinosaurs sitting on their eggs just like birds do, or flies preserved in the act of mating, or T Rex infested with parasites. Each fossil tells a story, we are told. Prehistoric life brought to our attention. The highlight is two mammoths locked in combat – on display in a museum in Nebraska. Dean Lennox has also written two other books – 'Dinosaurs of the British Isles' [204] and 'Prehistoric Pets' [2020].
At https://phys.org/news/2021-05-fossilized-tracks-earliest-evidence-mammal… … fossilised animal tracks on the seashore – in Wyoming. The Hana Formation in south central Wyoming is now a long distance from the ocean but 58 million years ago it was on the seashore – of the Inland Seaway. The footprints of a hippo type mammal have been found – but note the date. A few million years after the K/T event – and the footprints were found in sediments. Hence, a connection with the actual asteroid strike cannot be ruled out. Was the Inland Waterway, with its many fossils, really a long lived ocean running across the middle of North America or was it the cause of the loss of life of all those animals, caught in a huge wave with an origin in the impact that struck the Yucatan. The timeline relies on uniformitarian dating of the sediments. The idea an asteroid could strike earth and not create massive sedimentation is hard to reconcile – or volcanic outpourings in the Deccan Traps. Until recently the only mammals that were thought to have lived in the dinosaur age were small rodents and such like creatures. A year or so ago we had a badger sized creature found in sediments just after the impact – and now it is thought we have a hippo like creature 6 or 7 million years later [dated as noted by the sediments laid down]. Why don't hippos paddle in the oceans nowadays. They are a riverine creature, spending a lot of time in water and coming out at night to browse the river banks. All that was found was footprints. The rest of the story has been made up. They are described as hippo like by reason they were found in sandstone on what is thought to have been the seashore. Funnily enough, sandstone is a feature of the geology post K/T in Britain also, dated to the Paleogene [hence the new nomenclature K/Pg]. The sarsen stones of Stonehenge are derived from the sandstone layer that occurs above the chalk from one side of southern England to the other, also dating to the Paleogene. Similar animal tracks, but not neceaarily the same kind of creatures, have been found in Canada and Norway. We are told that in the Paleocene Wyoming was in the tropics – which is interesting as Britain in the dinosaur age was at the latitude of Florida. Where then did the equator run? Was it across the globe, as now, or was the globe different and the equator situated where N to S exists in the modern world? Where did all the water come from that lashed across continental N America? The Atlantic was said to be in a formative state – slowly evolving.