http://harvardscience.harvard.edu/stories/person/1199 Stories and external links referencing a person (RSS) en http://harvardscience.harvard.edu/environments/articles/oldest-mammal-found <!--paging_filter--><p>When dinosaurs ruled the world, scampering around their feet were platoons of diminutive insect-eating animals, part reptile, part something new. When the giant reptiles and many other animals were wiped out some 65 million years ago, the shrewlike newcomers prospered. They began evolving into different types of mammals and eventually gave rise to everything from field mice to elephants, whales, and humans. Now, the discovery of the skull of an animal the size of a paper clip pushes back the origin of mammals, including humans, to 195 million years ago. Found in China, the tiny skull shows evidence that the first mammals evolved from reptiles 45 million years earlier than widely believed.</p> <p><a href="http://harvardscience.harvard.edu/environments/articles/oldest-mammal-found">read more</a></p> Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:10:59 -0400 70652986 2922 at http://harvardscience.harvard.edu http://harvardscience.harvard.edu/animal-vegetable-mineral/articles/charles-schaff-brings-knack-finding-fossils-field-and-harvard <!--paging_filter--><p>Charles Schaff 's official job description isn't "fossil hunter." He is a curatorial associate at the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Schaff, however, makes regular trips to look for fossils in places as far-flung as Africa, South America and Greenland. Though the trips provide high points of excitement, most of Schaff's time is spent watching over Harvard's fossil collection. As curatorial associate, Schaff keeps track of Harvard's fossils, cataloging and storing them in drawers inside rows of gray cabinets that fill four large rooms at the Museum. Schaff describes the collection as a sort of fossil library and says the specimens are not just used by Harvard professors, undergraduates, and graduate students, but by scientists all over the world.</p> Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:11:21 -0400 70652986 2931 at http://harvardscience.harvard.edu