Dinosaur News Thread! [Archive] - The Technodrome Forums

Raph's Girl

10-03-2007, 07:54 PM

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071003/sc_nm/dinosaur_dc_1

Scientists have found in southern Utah a nicely preserved skull with jaws containing 800 teeth, scaly skin impressions and other fossil remains of a new species of duck-billed dinosaur from 75 million years ago.

The bipedal herbivorous dinosaur, named Gryposaurus monumentensis, was about 30 feet long and pigged out on plenty of plants.

"What you're looking at with Gryposaurus monumentensis is basically the Cretaceous version of a weed whacker," Terry Gates, a Utah Museum of Natural History and University of Utah paleontologist, told reporters.

This is the fourth recognized species of Gryposaurus. The first was found almost a century ago. Gates said this discovery sheds light on what was going on in this part of North America about 10 million years before the dinosaurs went extinct.

Gryposaurus (pronounced grip-oh-SAWR-us) means "hook-nosed lizard," so named because of the sizable hump on the nose on the beast's large, somewhat square head.

Gryposaurus was a hadrosaur, commonly known as a duck-billed dinosaur because the wide, flattened front part of its mouth looked a bit like a duck's bill. This species was one of the larger hadrosaurs, but far from the largest. It was, however, the biggest dinosaur known from its ecosystem.

"EXQUISITE SPECIMEN"

Duck-billed dinosaurs were important plant-eaters of that time, and this one lived alongside relatives of the fearsome meat-eater Tyrannosaurus rex, herbivorous horned dinosaurs related to Triceratops and a variety of other creatures.

The scientists raved about the quality of the remains of this new species of Gryposaurus.

"As far as hadrosaur skulls in North America, this is certainly one of the most exquisite specimens we know of," said Alan Titus, a paleontologist at the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument where the fossils were found.

This animal was on a river bed when it died, Gates said. Its mouth had about 800 teeth, helping it grind up a big buffet of plants. "You have yourself a really big eater. This guy could eat most any plant it wanted to," Gates said.

In addition to this skull, they found a second Gryposaurus with a partial skull and partial skeleton, but with the tail completely intact. Skin impressions -- only rarely fossilized -- showed the dinosaur was covered with gravelly looking scales, with some larger scales shaped a bit like a butterfly.

The environment in southern Utah was drastically different 75 million years ago than the arid place it is today. During the late Cretaceous, the last of the three periods in the age of dinosaurs, it was wet and lush, with lots of ponds, rivers and creeks. At the time, North America was split down the middle by a shallow sea.

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20071003/capt.52a9de79b25e4d839d5483a2408620e1.correction_n ew_dinosaur_ny137.jpg
http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/nm/20071004/2007_10_03t192055_450x299_us_dinosaur.jpg
Oooh.. I wonder if the bones will be put on display at the University of Utah's museum??? They have an AWESOME Dinosaur exhibit that I've been to several times. :D

Shredder

10-04-2007, 01:37 AM

Very cool news! It's very interesting when especially well-preserved fossils are discovered (like the skin impressions)- it gives us more of an idea of what dinosaurs were really like.

Drtooth

10-04-2007, 09:22 AM

New species of Dinosaur? I'm finally happy again! Nothing perks a fella up like learning of a new species of Dinosaur.

Swany

10-04-2007, 04:51 PM

The bit about the skin impresions really piqued my curiosity, I didnt know it had been confirmed dinosaurs were scaly.

At my primary school they stopped teaching you stuff like that when you were like 8. And dinosaurs were only brought up briefly in biology.

Buslady

10-04-2007, 11:38 PM

that sucks...back in high school my earth science teacher did a short bit on dinos...she let me do an xtra credit project creating my own dino...I used pics of bones of like 5 different species, traced them and somehow they fit together; i drew the animal's form around the skeleton, then an actual drawing and description. She loved it so much, she kept it and it turned into an assignment for future classes.

Raph's Girl

10-15-2007, 03:01 PM

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071015/sc_nm/dinosaur_patagonia_dc_3

Brazilian and Argentine paleontologists have discovered the largely complete fossil of a new species of giant dinosaur that roamed what is now northern Patagonia about 80 million years ago.

The herbivorous Futalognkosaurus dukei measured an estimated 105 feet to 112 feet from head to tail and was as high as a four-storey building. It is one of the three biggest dinosaurs yet found in the world.

"It's a new species, it's a new group," Argentine paleontologist Juan Porfiri told a news conference in Rio de Janeiro on Monday.

The find pointed to a new lineage of titanosaurs, with particularly bulky necks, he said.

"Its neck was very big in diameter, strong and huge."

Fossilized remains of an ecosystem from the same Late Cretaceous age, including well-preserved leaves and fish, were also found. The description was published in the latest issue of the annals of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences.

Futalognkosaurus dukei's name is derived from the indigenous Mapuche language meaning "giant chief of the lizards," and the name of U.S. power company Duke Energy Corp, which financed a large part of the excavation in Argentina.

The fossil was 70 percent preserved, which compares to about 10 percent for other giant dinosaur finds in the world.

"It's among the biggest dinosaur finds and the most complete for a giant dinosaur. We have all vertebrae between the first of the neck to the first of the tail, which may allow us to reevaluate other dinosaurs," said Alexander Kellner, a researcher with the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro.

'LOST WORLD'

The dinosaur is part of a series of finds in the area, where the first fossils were discovered in 2000.

"The accumulation of fish and leaf fossils, as well as other dinosaurs around the find, is just something fantastic. Leaves and dinosaurs together is a great rarity," he told Reuters. "It's like a whole lost world for us."

He was referring to "The Lost World" by Arthur Conan Doyle, a classic tale set in a remote part of South America where a scientific expedition finds dinosaurs still roaming an isolated plateau.

Some of the leaves made part of the diet of the titanosaur and other specimens found there. The researchers said the fossilized ecosystem pointed to a warm and humid climate in Patagonia, which had forests during the Late Cretaceous period. The area is steppe-like now and almost bare of vegetation.

Researchers believe the carcass of the giant dinosaur, which died of unknown causes, its flesh devoured by predators, was washed into a nearby slow-flowing river, where it created a barrier, accumulating bones and leaves in its structure for many years until all became fossilized.

A fossil of a carnivorous theropod Megaraptor found at the site contained a complete and articulated arm with very large sickle-shaped claws. Previously, similar fragmented bones were interpreted as a foot, researchers said.

The joint Argentine-Brazilian project also works in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, where Kellner said an important find has been made but would be revealed at a later date.

Desert-like areas in Argentina are good for preserving fossils, while they are more difficult to find in the wetter soil in Brazil.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071015/ap_on_sc/giant_dinosaur

The skeleton of what is believed to be a new dinosaur species — a 105-foot plant-eater that is among the largest dinosaurs ever found — has been uncovered in Argentina, scientists said Monday.

Scientists from Argentina and Brazil said the Patagonian dinosaur appears to represent a previously unknown species of Titanosaur because of the unique structure of its neck. They named it Futalognkosaurus dukei after the Mapuche Indian words for "giant" and "chief," and for Duke Energy Argentina, which helped fund the skeleton's excavation.

"This is one of the biggest in the world and one of the most complete of these giants that exist," said Jorge Calvo, director of paleontology center of National University of Comahue, Argentina, lead author of a study on the dinosaur published in the peer-reviewed Annals of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences.

Scientists said the giant herbivore walked the Earth some 88 million years ago, during the late Cretaceous period.

Since the first bones were found on the banks of Lake Barreales in the Argentine province of Neuquen in 2000, paleontologists have dug up the dinosaur's neck, back region, hips and the first vertebra of its tail.

"I'm pretty certain it's a new species," agreed Peter Mackovicky, associate curator for dinosaurs at Chicago's Field Museum, who was not involved with the discovery. "I've seen some of the remains of Futalognkosaurus and it is truly gigantic."

Calvo said the neck alone must have been 56 feet long, and by studying the vertebrae, they figured the tail probably measured 49 feet. The dinosaur reached over 43 feet tall, and the excavated spinal column alone weighed about 9 tons when excavated.

Patagonia also was home to the other two largest dinosaur skeletons found to date — Argentinosaurus, at around 115 feet long, and Puertasaurus reuili, 115 feet to 131 feet long.

Comparison between the three herbivores, however, is difficult because scientists have only found few vertebrae of Puertasaurus and while the skeleton of Futalognkosaurus (FOO-ta-long-koh-SOHR-us) is fairly complete, scientists have not uncovered any bones from its limbs.

North America's dinosaurs don't even compare, Mackovicky added in a phone interview. "Dinosaurs do get big here, but nothing near the proportions we see in South America."

The site where Futalognkosaurus was found has been a bonanza for paleontologists, yielding more than 1,000 specimens, including 240 fossil plants, 300 teeth and the remains of several other dinosaurs.

"As far as I know, there is no other place in the world where there is such a large and diverse quantity of fossils in such small area. That is truly unique," said Alexander Kellner, a researcher with the Brazilian National Museum and co-author of the dinosaur's scientific description.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Futalognkosaurus_BW.jpg

*gets crosseyed trying to pronounce the name*...Lizard Chief eh? According to Wikipedia (good lord there's already a Wikipedia article on it). It's also spelled Futalongkosaurus. That's easier to pronounce!

Shredder

10-16-2007, 01:20 AM

Another cool find, especially with how a lot of the environment was also fossilized. Plus, that dinosaur is pretty awesome looking. It'll be interesting to see what other fossils might be at that site. :)

Raph's Girl

11-15-2007, 07:39 PM

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071115/sc_nm/dinosaur_vacuum_dc_2

A strange-looking dinosaur with rows of tiny teeth crammed into the very front of its jaws and fragile air-filled bones may have been the "cow of the Mesozoic," and far more common than better-known dinosaurs, scientists said on Thursday.

Its shovel-shaped jaws and tightly packed teeth -- up to 10 rows of teeth -- allowed Nigersaurus taqueti to vacuum through ferns and other ground cover, a team led by Paul Sereno at the University of Chicago reported.

The researchers used a combination of computer modeling, X-rays and good old-fashioned digging to build a model of an elephant-sized animal that lived 110 million years ago in what is now the Sahara desert in Niger.

And they argue that their work calls into question some of the standard models of other related dinosaurs such as Diplodocus that show the creatures standing and browsing in the treetops.

Such creatures, known as diplodocids, more likely grazed, Sereno writes in his report, published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE at http://www.plosone.org/doi/pone.0001230.

Enough bone was found to show the orientation of the semicircular canals -- the organ of equilibrium. What they found astonished the researchers.

"In everyday life this animal had its nose pointed towards the ground," Sereno told a news conference at the National Geographic Society, which helped pay for his 10-year study of the 30-foot-long (10 meter) Nigersaurus.

What this says, argues Sereno, is that experts have long mistakenly believed that many herbivore dinosaurs behaved like living long-necked animals such as giraffes.

"I think we were blindsided and missed the cows of the Mesozoic," Sereno said.

FERN MOWER

"We know from its brain that its head was down and we know from the neck that it operated like a boom," he added. "This was some kind of a fern mower the likes of which we had never seen."

Fossilized pollen and other evidence show Africa was covered with ferns and other lush, low-growing plants. "Would there be some parallel of a cow in the Mesozoic or would it all go uneaten?" he asked.

"We think the neck was simply for reach. It could simply sit there and mow a large area."

The teeth were packed so tightly into rows that the top and bottom jaws acted like two single blades of a pair of shears.

The researchers sawed a few teeth open. "You can actually see the daily increments of dentin," Sereno said. Nigersaurus was losing its teeth every 30 to 35 days, faster than any dinosaur known.

But another tooth was always waiting behind the lost tooth.

Sereno believes Nigersaurus and similar grazers were once the most common dinosaurs, but their fossils have been too fragile to have survived to be discovered.

How does he know? Teeth. Similar teeth have been found in Europe, South America and in several parts of Africa.

The vertebrae are hollow and the skull is so delicate that only bits and pieces remain from most of the animals. "It doesn't take much to weather these away," the University of Chicago's Bob Masek, who prepared the bones, said in an interview.

"The skull is made light so the neck doesn't have to support a lot of weight," Masek said.

Cure

11-15-2007, 08:10 PM

One more "g" in the name and THEN this woulda been interesting.

愛

11-15-2007, 08:14 PM

I think I just found a new racist name to use. :|

Machias Banshee

11-15-2007, 08:18 PM

Well, the pronunciation is either Nye-gersaurus or Knee-jair-saurus. But I'm sure people'll pronounce it wrong anyways...

I always enjoy hearing about new species, but I never thought I'd see one that reminded me of a hoover vacuum... :|

Shredder

11-16-2007, 01:34 AM

Interesting find... :)

XERO

11-16-2007, 01:39 PM

One more "g" in the name and THEN this woulda been interesting.

Even better, replace the 'er' with the 'a' and then we'd have something there.

KROW

11-16-2007, 02:26 PM

One more "g" in the name and THEN this woulda been interesting.

Heh, yeah, at first I thought, "A what-a-saurus?!"

Raph's Girl

11-16-2007, 08:39 PM

It's pronounced Knee-Jur-saurus.

Here's a way cool National Geographic video on it. I love the National Geographic Society's youtube site. I could just watch the vids all day :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8lJKXn6MmQ

JaffleMan

11-17-2007, 03:52 AM

It's pronounced Knee-Jur-saurus.

For some reason I was thinking it was pronounced ny-jerr, like the country Niger.

English is a crazy language when you think about it since new words can be pronounced in a number of different ways if nobody was any the wiser.

Raph's Girl

11-17-2007, 08:49 AM

like the country Niger.

The country Niger, the river Niger, the country Nigeria... (the 2 countries are named after the river)...

Sewer Bull

11-17-2007, 09:12 AM

For some reason I was thinking it was pronounced ny-jerr, like the country Niger.

I think you hit the nail on the head, given this excerpt from the original opening post:

The researchers used a combination of computer modeling, X-rays and good old-fashioned digging to build a model of an elephant-sized animal that lived 110 million years ago in what is now the Sahara desert in Niger.

Raph's Girl

12-03-2007, 11:13 AM

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071203/sc_nm/dinosaur_mummy_dc_1

A partially mummified hadrosaur discovered by a teenager in North Dakota may be the most complete dinosaur ever found, with intact skin that shows evidence of stripes and perhaps soft tissue, researchers said on Monday.

Enough of the animal remains to show it ran quickly and was far more muscular than scientists believed such dinosaurs were.

"It's sort of King Tut meets T. Rex," paleontologist Phil Manning of the University of Manchester in Britain said in a telephone interview.

The creature is fossilized, with the skin and bone turned to stone. But unlike most dinosaur fossils, tissues are preserved as well.

This includes large expanses of the animal's skin, with clear remains of scales.

"This is not a skin impression. This is fossilized skin," Manning said. "When you run your hands over this dinosaur's skin, this is the closest you are going to get to touching a real dinosaur, ever."

The remains of the hadrosaur, dubbed Dakota, were found in 2000 by Tyler Lyson, then 17, on his uncle's ranch in North Dakota.

The hadrosaur, a plant-eating dinosaur that walked on two legs, lived 67 million years ago, during the late Cretaceous Period.

Lyson contacted Manning. The National Geographic Society, which helped pay for the expedition, will air a television program about the team's work on Sunday.

Manning had the team remove the monstrous specimen almost intact, with just the tail in a separate block.

It weighed close to 10,000 pounds (4,500 kilograms).

They persuaded the Boeing Company and NASA to use a huge computed tomography, or CT, scanner in Canoga Park, California, that is usually used to scan space shuttle parts.

LOOKING FOR THE HEAD

The dense fossil has taken months to scan, Manning said. "We will know in the next few days if the head is in there," he said.

The tail piece turned up some surprises. The animal's back end is 25 percent larger than previously thought.

Locomotor biologist Bill Sellers of the University of Manchester used a computer program to reconstruct how the hadrosaur would have moved and came up with a picture of an animal that walked not upright, but with its head low to the ground and forearms almost touching.

The strong muscles connecting its upper legs to its tail would have allowed it to run at speeds of up to 28 miles (45 km) an hour, well ahead of its predator, Tyrannosaurus rex.

Patterns in the scales resemble those associated with skin color changes in lizards. This provides the strongest evidence yet that the animal had stripes, Manning said.

The researchers are looking for preserved proteins. They have some results that have been offered to a scientific journal, Manning said.

"It's contentious. We say we are finding soft tissues where people previously have not looked," he said.

They also found a second fossil, one that Manning calls the "the hand of doom." The clawed foot belongs to a species of crocodile that may have been dining on Dakota soon after it died in a riverbed.

"It could have crawled up the back passage of the animal, went to get the guts and ended up stuck," Manning said.

Wowsers!!! According to a video feed I found there's enough evidence that there's gonna be a tv special on it. Plus 2 books (I know what I want for Christmas! ), one of which is out now.

Here's pictures of Dakota:
The Skin (OMG! Scales! )
http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/nm/20071203/2007_12_03t114116_450x338_us_dinosaur_mummy.jpg

What they believe Dakota looked like:
http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20071203/capt.5b2fe2815c1842cd902040331d2833cc.dinosaur_mum my_wx101.jpg

I wanna see that special and get the books!! U can see the video footage here:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071203/ap_on_sc/dinosaur_mummy

Buslady

12-03-2007, 04:43 PM

That's pretty cool. Just hope there's not so much info that it's tempting to try to clone the critter...we don't need JP.

I'd liek to see a mummified dino that is completely different from what any paleontologist thought it'd look like...this one's a tiny different with the bigger butt muscles, but thats it so far.

why do they wait so long to tell the public about new discoveries? 7 years ago!

Jester

12-03-2007, 05:01 PM

Does this do away with the view that dinos may have had feathers?

Machias Banshee

12-03-2007, 08:27 PM

I looooooove this stuff! This is great! I definitely want to find out more about this show coming up... :D

And the idea of feathers is more related to the theropods, raptors, coelosaurs, tyrannosaurs...

Raph's Girl

12-03-2007, 09:31 PM

Buslady: Paleontologists generally take 3 - 7 years to study their findings before they can come up with enough conclusive evidence they can release to the public. Sometimes tho it's also due to the fact that the remains were in storage and forgotten. Altho I think this time around they needed permission from the family who discovered it since it was found on THEIR land. The kid who found the remains is gonna definatly be profiting off it. They decided to come out with their findings now mostly due to the fact that they've made a tv special and several books (one of which comes out tomarrow).

Jester: No this does not do away with the feather theory as there have been fosilized evidence of feathers for some dinosaur species (like the raptors and archeopteryx) Dinos such as the Duck Billed variety don't appear to have had feathers, rather they had scales and tiger like stripes.

Machias: Im trying to find out more about the upcoming special. But there doesn't appear to be anything on it on National Geographic's YouTube site ATM about it.

Jester

12-03-2007, 09:37 PM

Machias Banshee

12-03-2007, 10:00 PM

Raph's Girl: Lemme know if anything pops up! :D

Jester: Well, you could pretty much say that... It'd scare the hell outta kids though. The juveniles were more feathered though...

http://dino.lm.com/images/display.php?id=2728 <--- feathered rex
http://dino.lm.com/images/display.php?id=236 <--- feathered raptor

Raph's Girl

12-03-2007, 10:28 PM

I found the info on nationalgeographic.com regarding the tv special.

It'll air THIS sunday Dec 9th at 9pm ET/10 PT on the National Geographic Channel. It's called Dino Autopsy.

Also I found an article from 2002 about another mumified duck billed Dino. This one's name is Leonardo and was found in Montana. A bit similar to Dakota except Leonardo's stomach had what he last ate still inside. Freaky.

It seems that when Leonardo was discovered he was the FOURTH mummified dino discovered. So this maked Dakota the 5th. But what's also interesting is that Leonardo and Dakota were BOTH discovered in the year 2000.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/10/1010_021010_dinomummy.html

And after doing further research I found info on the other mummified dinos:

1908: Edmontosaur (another duck billed dino) in Wyoming. Dubbed The Trachodon mummy
Here's some pics of it:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Edmontosaurusmummy.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8a/Edmontosaurusskin.jpg/393px-Edmontosaurusskin.jpg

1981: A juvinile scipionyx found in Italy and dubbed Skippy. He was on the front cover of Nature in 1998.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scipionyx_samniticus
In Skippy the intestines, the colon, the liver, some muscles, and the windpipe are intact.

1991: Santanaraptor (ancestor of the T-Rex) found in Brazil.

And apperantly some fosilized skin they think was a Hadrosaur was found in Utah.

I also found a book written in 2003 about Dinosaur mummies. At that point Leonardo was the most complete but now that honor goes to Dakota.
http://www.mummytombs.com/market/books/child/advpicturebooks/halls.dinosaur.htm

This website has info on some of the mummys:
http://www.mummytombs.com/mummylocator/animal/dinosaur.htm

Machias Banshee

12-03-2007, 10:32 PM

Raph's Girl

12-03-2007, 10:47 PM

I remember hearing about Leonardo... that was pretty amazing to hear of mummified dinosaurs. There was an actual scientist that was able to take the petrified flesh and dissolve the minerals out -- and had actual proteins again.

I swear, if I hadn't been so dirt poor, I would've gone into paleoentology....

Yea.. when I was younger I wanted to be a paleontologist. But alas no money (altho for $500 you can go on a dig in montana with some Paleontologists at some camp) and I gained an alergy to heat (I get major sick in temps higher than 80 degrees.)

But yet I've been to Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado, I often visit the dinosaur exhibit at the University of Utah, and I've been to a major big Paelontological museum in Frankfort, Germany. :D I need to visit the Paleontology museum in Vancouver, B.C. It's supposed to be like one of the biggest.

Warhorse

12-04-2007, 07:13 PM

Yea.. when I was younger I wanted to be a paleontologist. But alas no money (altho for $500 you can go on a dig in montana with some Paleontologists at some camp) and I gained an alergy to heat (I get major sick in temps higher than 80 degrees.)

But yet I've been to Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado, I often visit the dinosaur exhibit at the University of Utah, and I've been to a major big Paelontological museum in Frankfort, Germany. :D I need to visit the Paleontology museum in Vancouver, B.C. It's supposed to be like one of the biggest.

Wow, are you one of those kids that is alergic to sunlight? I saw a document on a couple of brothers who had to stay indoors during daylight, and that the house had to have soft light's throughout.

Raph's Girl

12-04-2007, 08:13 PM

Wow, are you one of those kids that is alergic to sunlight?

No. Not alergic to daylight. Im alergic to high temperatures. Generally anything higher than 80 degrees. Im fine in the summer as long as Im in a cool area and have a fan on me. But the heat can get to me really easily.

If I was rich I'd skip summer all together and go south for a couple months. :lol:

Anyways.. back to Dakota.

There was a report on Dakota tonight on ABC News w/ Charles Gibson. The report showed some of the documentary that's gonna be airing Sunday.

Also the kid who found Dakota will be on Good Morning America tomarrow (wednesday)!

They're really going all the way with this discovery.

Machias Banshee

12-04-2007, 09:22 PM

Well, with the combination of the increasing discoveries of dinosaur species, PLUS the insane pace of genetics, we're getting getting frighteningly close to a real life Jurassic Park situation.

We're cloning human parts on rats. Who knows how long it will be before we start making other things. Science has no conscience. They ask 'could we' when it ought to be 'should we?"... :ohwell:

Raph's Girl

12-05-2007, 10:40 AM

Saw the GMA interview with the British Paleontologist and the guy who found Dakota when he was 16 (he's now in his final year at Yale...).

The 2 books out in regards to Dakota are:

"Dinomummy" (about Dakota herself) and "Grave Secrets of Dinosaurs"

I know what I want for Christmas now!

Machias Banshee

12-05-2007, 08:34 PM

Absolutely! :D

I took a gander at the National Geographic website, and they have LOTs of sneak peeks and footage of the specimens they've discovered...

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/dinosaurs/dino-death-trap.html

I started looking at it last night. There's everything from video clips to profiles of the dinosaurs and proto-mammals... Really great stuff for anyone to check out.

Raph's Girl

12-06-2007, 12:32 AM

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071204/ap_on_sc/norway_prehistoric_reptiles

Remains of a bus-sized prehistoric "monster" reptile found on a remote Arctic island may be a new species never before recorded by science, researchers said Tuesday.

Initial excavation of a site on the Svalbard islands in August yielded the remains, teeth, skull fragments and vertebrae of a reptile estimated to measure nearly 40 feet long, said Joern Harald Hurum of the University of Oslo.

"It seems the monster is a new species," he told The Associated Press.

The reptile appears be the same species as another sea predator whose remains were found nearby on Svalbard last year. His team described those 150-million-year-old remains as belonging to a short-necked plesiosaur measuring more than 30 feet — "as long as a bus ... with teeth larger than cucumbers."

The short-necked plesiosaur was a voracious reptile often compared to the Tyrannosaurus rex of the oceans.

Mark Evans, a plesiosaur expert at the Leicester City Museums in Britain, said he not know enough about the Norwegian find to comment on it specifically. But he said new types of the sea reptiles are being found regularly.

"We are regularly seeing new species of plesiosaurs popping up — in a way because, in the past 10 or 15 years, there has been what we call a renaissance in plesiosaur research," Evans said by telephone.

Hurum said the team had only managed to excavate a 3-meter (yard) area of the find. The Norwegian-led team plans to present more detailed findings early next year, and return to Svalbard, 300 miles north of Norway's mainland, to excavate further next year.

The official website of the excavation. They seem to update with more info alot and you can contact the team (just not when they're on site). There's also numerous images of the site that show which bones are what.

http://www.nhm.uio.no/pliosaurus/english/index.html

Buslady

12-06-2007, 12:31 PM

for a moment I was okay what kind of bus size...would that be a 45' coach or a 22' mini-bird... :P hahah

they're really doing alot lately reporting new dinos...how many in the past year??

Raph's Girl

12-06-2007, 11:35 PM

Going to Amazon.com I looked up the 2 books and it seems Grave Secrets of Dinosaurs isn't out yet. But it comes out on my birthday (Jan 8th) so all's good. :D

But Dinomummy is out now (and on sale on Amazon.com! :D)

AquaParade

12-07-2007, 12:16 PM

It seems like in the last few years there have been plenty of dinosour related news. I'm pretty glad, dinosours are soooo exciting to me. Just to think that these big Monster like things ruled the earth before us...insane to say the least.

Raph's Girl

12-09-2007, 03:08 PM

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/10/17/tyrannosaurus-dinosaur-02.html

It's bad enough to misplace a finger, much less have it lost for 65 million years. But after decades of searching, paleontologists at Montana's Hell Creek have found the missing third finger of one of Tyrannosaurus rex's undersized "hands."

The finger suggests that T. rex had a powerful wrist and its hands were probably able to hold onto chunks of flesh while the monster's gnarly jaws did all the killing.

The newfound bone is a right metacarpal, equivalent to one of the long bones in the palm of a human hand, explains T. rex investigator Elizibeth Quinlan of Fort Peck Paleontology, Inc., in Fort Peck, Montana. She plans to present the discovery on Oct. 28 at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Denver.

"It's unquestionably the metacarpal," Quinlan told Discovery News. No previous T. rex remains have ever been found with a third metacarpal, despite the fact that the other bones suggested its presence. "There is a notch in the side of the second metacarpal that was just begging to have something fit into it."

The revised anatomy of the hand suggests there was a very strong tendon that attached to second metacarpal, giving the hand a pretty decent grip, she said. Still, the puny limbs were almost certainly not used by T. rex to grapple with prey or kill.

"We were thinking that T. rex did use its upper appendages not so much in hunting but in feeding," said Quinlan. That means ripping off pieces of flesh from corpses and clutching the stuff to keep it from other hungry predators. "We don't think their table manners were very good."

"I would strongly support (the hand) being used for carrying a piece of meat away," said paleontologist Scott Hartman, science director of the Wyoming Dinosaur Center in Thermopolis. "There is a reason that carrying meat away would be useful."

One reason is that the T. rex head is already so large and heavy that adding the weight of a large slab of meat between its teeth would make it unable to tip back and stand up, Hartman said. Holding meat with the arms, which are lower, avoids that overloaded teeter-totter effect.

Another possibility is that the hands were parenting tools. They would have made it possible for a T. rex to carry yummy slabs of dino flesh to its carnivorous babies, Hartman said.

That said, the new finger bone is not going to cause much change to reconstructions of T. rex, says Hartman. Throughout the evolution of meat-eating dinosaurs there was a trend towards fewer fingers, with the earliest having five fingers and the T. rex having two. This newfound nubbin of a third finger was already on its way out, and did not stick out much, he said.

"In another 10 million years they would have lost (the third finger) completely," said Hartman. Unfortunately for them, however, the age of dinosaurs ended before that could happen.

Three?! But but....er....all my T-rex figures are wrong now.....course they're probably now worth something with the 2 fingers. Hrm....They'd better make T-Rex toys that have 3....I mean yea I have a Godzilla doll that has 4....and an Allosaurus with 3...but darnit...now I need a more accurate T-Rex. :ohwell: *looks at her T-Rex toys....*

Sewer Bull

12-09-2007, 03:13 PM

Oh my God. Things will never be the same again.

Raph's Girl

12-09-2007, 03:23 PM

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/11/28/triceratops-dinosaur.html

Canadian paleontologists have unearthed the world's largest known horned dinosaur with the discovery of an early relative of Triceratops that measured around 30 feet in length, or the size of an enormous SUV.

The previous record-holder was Pentaceratops sternbergi, which hailed from what is now New Mexico.

The new dinosaur, Eotriceratops ("early Triceratops") xerinsularis, is the earliest known confirmed relative of the rhino-like Triceratops, which was slightly smaller in size, with the largest specimens measuring just over 29 feet in length.

"The skull of Eotriceratops alone was as big as a car," said David Eberth, who co-authored a paper on the find in a recent Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences.

Eberth, a senior scientist at Alberta's Royal Tyrrell Museum, collaborated with other Royal Tyrrell scientists and researchers from the Canadian Museum of Nature to unearth the horned beast, which lived 68 million years ago.

With much heaving and hauling, they excavated its bones at Horseshoe Canyon Formation in Dry Island Buffalo Jump Provincial Park in central Alberta.

Eberth told Discovery News that another paleontologist had spotted the skeleton in 1910, but he decided not to dig it up.

"At the site the skeleton looked like road kill," Eberth said. "Really, it looked like it had been run over by a Cretaceous Hummer."

After extensive analysis and bone assembly, the Canadian team now knows what the new dino looked like when it was alive.

Like Triceratops, it possessed two orbital bone horns that jutted out above its eyes. Each would have been 5 feet long. A smaller, pyramid-shaped, horn stuck out from its nose.

The beast also had what Eberth described as "a standard issue Triceratops frill" at the back of its head. The Triceratops frill, however, had little toothy spikes that poked out on top. These spikes were "more flattened and spindle-like" in Eotriceratops.

The new dino preceded its more famous relative by a million years. Until its discovery, not much was known about dinosaurs from Alberta and North America 69 to 67 million years ago, so it fills an important gap. Just a few million years later, all dinosaurs went extinct.

Before the find, scientists theorized that dinosaurs gradually became bigger over time. Now that theory is under question, since size changes -- probably induced by environmental and climactic conditions -- didn't always follow distinct patterns.

Eric Lund, a University of Utah paleontologist, thinks the new dino is "really cool."

Lund told Discovery News, "If this specimen is truly an early relative of Triceratops, it gives us insight into how this group of animals evolved over time."

He agreed that it "fills an information gap" between early and late chasmosaurines, an animal group that included both long and short frilled species. Members of this group typically were plant eaters that probably used their frills for mating and territorial displays.

Eotriceratops xerinsularis is now on display for human onlookers in the Royal Tyrrell Museum's new gallery, "Ceratopsians: the Horned Herbivores."

*starts planning a trip to Alberta NOW* :o

ThirdMarioBro

12-09-2007, 04:48 PM

Oh my God. Things will never be the same again.

LMAO!!!!!!!!

Peanut

12-09-2007, 04:52 PM

Were two threads about dinosaurs within the same hour really needed? Couldn't you just edit one so it was like "EXCITING DINOSAUR NEWS!" or something like that?

Ecto Jedi

12-09-2007, 06:46 PM

Aw come on, lay off the girl. Dinosaurs are cool.

Shredder

12-09-2007, 11:03 PM

Just so all the dino news doesn't get lost in the shuffle, and since I'm a huge dinosaur fan myself, I figured it would be easier for us to have one big thread dedicated to dinosaur discoveries and discussion.

Raph's Girl

12-10-2007, 03:45 AM

Thanks Shredder for making it all one thread.

Anybody see Dino Death Trap and Dino Autopsy on National Geographic last night??? Both were pretty good. Both also confused the heck out of the folks (the tv in the living room is the only one with access to NGC *lol*).

Anyways... National Geographic has a whole website devoted to Dino discoveries now (and of course they plugged it for all it was worth with a little add in the corner *lol* )

This website is cool in that it has a timeline of the Dino mummy discoveries, plus TONS of other stuff (like detailed listings of the newest dinos).

The mummy timeline doesn't show all the mummies. Mostly the Sternberg one from 100 years ago, Willo (discovered in 1993 with a fossilized heart), a Sinosauroptryx (discovered in 1994 with...feathers!), A Titanosaur nexting ground (1995), and of course Dakota (hmm...no love for Leonardo I guess).

Now Willo's heart has 4 chambers. Which means he was warm blooded and not cold blooded!

Now Dino Death Trap was cool cuz of all the new species mentioned. Including the earlieast known ancestor of the Ceratopsians (it walked on 2 legs!! ) called Yinlong (Hidden Dragon). There's also the earliest T-rex ancestor. A turkey sized thing called Guanlong (crowned Dragon). Yea all the dinos in Dino Death Trap are out of the Gobi Desert.

http://www.ngcdinos.com

I also found a Which Dino are you quiz on that site....Im apperantly an Edmontosaurus (a Hadrosaur/Duck Billed), Would have prefered Parasauralophus but ah well. I like Hadrosaurs
http://ngcblog.nationalgeographic.com/ngcblog/2007/11/which_dinosaur_are_you.html

Raph's Girl

01-05-2008, 09:12 AM

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080105/ap_on_sc/mummy_dinosaur

A mummified dinosaur discovered on the Hi-Line is heading to the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences, where it will be studied and displayed for more than a year.

The 77 million-year-old duckbill, complete with fossilized skin and organs, was discovered in the badlands north of Malta during the summer of 2000.

The brachylophosaurus, dubbed "Leonardo," is currently being housed in a former automotive shop in Malta called the Dinosaur Field Station. After its stint in Texas, the fossil will return to be the main attraction at the new dinosaur museum opening in Malta in June.

Malta dinosaur fans are disappointed that Leonardo will miss the museum's grand opening but say researchers can learn more about the well-preserved fossil in Houston.

Until now, scientists have been able to use X-ray technology only on Leonardo's tongue, beak and stomach — since much of the dinosaur is encapsulated by thick rock. The Houston museum has access to a NASA CT scan machine large enough to examine Leonardo's organs.

"It'll be hard for Leonardo to be gone," said Dixie Stordahl, field station manager. "A lot of people come to the field station just to see Leonardo. ... We feel it'll be a good thing in the long run."

Carolyn Schmoeckel, president of the Judith River Foundation, leaves for Houston on Monday to work out final contract details. The fundraising board wants to ensure that Leonardo returns by September 2009 and that the Great Plains Dinosaur Museum will have a replica to display for its June 6 grand opening.

Leonardo will travel to Texas in March via an air-sealed semi tractor-trailer with special hydraulic shocks and a specially made sarcophagus. The Houston museum has agreed to cover the transportation costs, which include $7,000 for the truck, Schmoeckel said.

The Discovery Channel is planning to film the process as part of a documentary on Leonardo and what high-tech research has revealed about how dinosaurs lived. The Judith River Foundation is working on a deal to show the film at the Malta museum opening.

Once Leonardo returns to Malta, the replica will begin a tour of the country.

"I think it's great," said foundation board member Jack Millar. "It'll give the Malta community and museum a lot of favorable publicity. It'll help bring people here when (Leonardo) returns."

Millar said the Great Plains Dinosaur Museum should be finished by April, giving organizers roughly a month to assemble the exhibits. The museum will display many of Murphy's Malta-area discoveries, including a family of stegosauruses.

A $500,000 allocation from the state Legislature paid for the first phase of the project. The county and area economic development groups are working to raise roughly $3 million in grants and donations to complete the next two phases.

A bit of an FYI. Malta in this case is not the small country but a town in Montana. Im a bit surprised they're only NOW doing all this stuff on Leonardo considering there's been a book on him out since 2003.. *blinks* :ohwell: I guess all the hype about Dakota braught back the interest on Leonardo.

Raph's Girl

01-16-2008, 10:29 AM

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080116/sc_nm/rodent_fossil_dc_2

Scientists in Uruguay have found the fossil remains of a 2,000 pound (1,000 kg) rodent that lived 2 million to 4 million years ago -- the largest rodent ever found.

The giant creature probably ate soft food such as fruit or tender plants, Andres Rinderknecht and Ernesto Blanco of the National Museum of Natural History in Montevideo reported on Wednesday.

"We report the discovery of an exceptionally well preserved fossil skull of a new species of rodent, by far the largest ever recorded," they wrote in a report in Britain's Proceedings of the Royal Society.

"Rodents are a very successful group of mammals living almost worldwide and with small body masses (generally less than 1 kg or 2.2 pounds)," they wrote.

"However, our work suggests that 4 million years ago in South America, rodents with 1,000 kg (2,200 pounds) of body mass (a 'mouse' larger than a bull) lived with terror birds, saber-toothed cats, ground sloths and giant armored mammals among others."

They have named the fossil Josephoartigasia monesi. They dug it out of rock along the Rio Plata and said they were amazed at its size.

But it had small teeth and weak jawbones.

"These features suggest that J. monesi had weak masticatory muscles for grinding food and probably did not have the abrasive diet typical of other (similar) rodents," they wrote.

"Palaeobiologically this could imply a diet composed of soft vegetation and perhaps fruit."

The largest living rodent is the carpincho or capybara found in parts of South America. They can grow to about 125 pounds (60 kg).

A rat that weighs as much as an elephant?! :o

This is a pic of the skull compared with that of a modern rodent.
http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20080116/capt.e86fe7ebe52e4c3faa16203f2ee927e1.britain_mons ter_mouse_lmd802.jpg

Warhorse

01-16-2008, 09:29 PM

Hmmm.

Rat Burgers anyone?;)

Raph's Girl

01-17-2008, 04:31 PM

Hmmm.

Rat Burgers anyone?;)

Rat Burger is a common food in Vietnam actually. *lol*

Raph's Girl

01-31-2008, 04:28 PM

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080131/sc_nm/brazil_crocodile_dc_1

Brazilian paleontologists said on Thursday they had found the fossil of a new species of prehistoric predator that represented a "missing link" to modern-day crocodiles.

The well-preserved fossil of Montealtosuchus arrudacamposi, a medium-sized lizard-like predator measuring about 5 1/2 feet (1.7 meters) from head to tail, dates back about 80 million years to the Late Cretaceous period.

"This is scientifically important because the specimen literally is the link between more primitive crocodiles that lived in the era of the dinosaurs 80-85 million years ago and modern species," said paleontologist Ismar de Souza Carvalho of Rio de Janeiro Federal University.

Montealtosuchus arrudacamposi, an agile terrestrial predator of the Peirosauridae family, had different habits from today's crocodiles but it was similar in form and structure despite having longer limbs, scientists said.

The fossil was found near the town of Monte Alto in Sao Paulo state and is named after the place and the local scientist who dug up the fossil in 2004 -- Arruda Campos.

The new species is one of a number of important finds by paleontologists in Brazil and Argentina over the past few years.

Somewhere in heaven Steve Irwin is smiling at this find.

Raph's Girl

02-12-2008, 06:05 PM

Yay!! New finds!!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080212/ap_on_sc/dinosaur_mexico

A Mexican paleontologist was cleaning up after lunch with a group of schoolchildren she'd been teaching to dig for bones in northeastern Mexico when she found the dinosaur bone. "I was basically collecting trash," Martha Carolina Aguillon Martinez recalled at a news conference Tuesday.

Twelve years later, after much digging, drilling and piecing together, it became clear that the helmet-crested, duck-billed dinosaur didn't belong to any previously identified species. This was new.

The composition of its skull — with a nose on top of its head and elongated nasal passages — meant its call was probably one of its most unique aspects, said Terry Gates, a Utah Museum of Natural History paleontologist who was part of a team of Mexican, American and Canadian experts involved with the excavation.

"They were like little trumpeters," he said. "This is totally odd and freakish."

Martinez, Gates and others talked about the find — which was published cat a news conference at the University of Utah on Tuesday.

Members of the species could likely have grown to 30 or 35 feet long, Gates said. The one recovered near Saltillo, the capital city of the Mexican state of Coahuila, was only about 25 feet because it died in adolescence, he said. That would have put the species, named Velafrons coahuilensis, around the same size as the Tyrannosaurus rex — though it probably wasn't as vicious, being a plant eater.

Scientists have dated the fossil to about 72 million years ago, when much of eastern Mexico was still underwater.

"Velafrons was probably a beach bum," Gates said.

That could have contributed to its relatively short 10-million-year lifespan as a species, said Utah's state paleontologist Jim Kirkland, another expert involved with the project. He said the species' tendency to live near areas where rivers met the sea could have made for a precarious situation. Their habitat would have been susceptible to large storms in the same way the Mississippi River Delta was when it succumbed to disastrous effects during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, he said.

The scientists talked about the dinosaur find — which was published in the Journal of Veterbrate Paleontology in December — at a news conference at the University of Utah on Tuesday.

Researchers said the discovery helps fill in holes in the existing picture of the hadrosaur family, which could include as many as 10 varieties of duck-billed dinosaurs across North America.

"Up in Canada, there is a dinosaur very similar to this," Gates said. He said that could suggest migration patterns over time.

Scott Sampson, research curator at the museum, said the discovery both answers existing questions and poses new ones.

"This has opened up a whole new window — but also a whole new mystery — into the world of dinosaurs, and we hope Mexico holds the answers," he said. "The reality is, we've just scratched the surface."

Sampson also said information about another new species from a nearby site — a relative of the triceratops — should be available this fall.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080212/ap_on_sc/petite_pterodactyl

As pterodactyls go it was small, toothless and had unexpectedly curved toes — yet scientists are welcoming their new find as another piece in the puzzle of ancient life.

"We have this really amazing creature, sparrow sized, which lived essentially in the trees, showing us a very new, very interesting side of the evolutionary history of those animals," said Alexander W. A. Kellner of the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

"We would never have thought of it," Kellner said in a telephone interview.

The find, by researchers led by Xiaolin Wang of the Chinese Academy of Science, is reported in this week's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Pterodactyls are best known from giant examples of the ancient flying reptiles, and most specimens have been uncovered in coastal areas.

Dubbed Nemicolopterus crypticus — hidden flying forest dweller — the new fossil was uncovered in the western part of China's Liaoning province, a region that was forested when it lived there about 120 million years ago.

"We just had one side of the story of pterosaur evolution, Kellner said. "This is now providing us with information about pterosaurs that were living deep inside the continent."

"It's a new species. It's showing us a new chapter of the evolutionary history of those animals," Kellner went on.

Speaking at a news conference in Rio on Monday, Kellner said the find "opens a brand new chapter in the history of the evolution of these flying vertebrates."

The curved toes, he said, indicate that the pterosaurs lived most of the time in trees.

"Because they were flying animals, their fossils are extremely rare. So, discoveries such as this are fundamental to understand the evolution of these winged vertebrates," he said.

It was the smallest of its group of flying pterosaurs, he said, and when first uncovered the researchers thought it was a baby.

The skull was not fully fused, meaning it was not yet an adult, but the ends of the bones were developed, so it was not a hatchling either.

"How much could it grow? We have no idea," he said. "But even if it would double its size it would still be the smallest of its particular group."

The researchers said the legs and feet of Nemicolopterus had attachments for muscles indicating that it could grasp limbs, and unlike most pterodactyls, it lacked teeth. They speculated it might have eaten insects.

Matthew Carrano, a paleontologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, said some smaller specimens have been found but those were clearly younger than this animal.

"It is interesting to see some clear arboreal adaptations in this species," said Carrano, who was not on the research team. "It confirms a suspicion we had, that pterosaurs were more diverse in their habitats than we knew from the record."

"Once again, the Liaoning region is bringing out all sorts of new things," Carrano said.

Raph's Girl

02-14-2008, 09:09 PM

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080215/ap_on_sc/dinosaur_discovery

Fossil hunters say they have discovered bones of two massive meat-eating dinosaurs in Africa. In the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno and co-author Stephen Brusatte named one Kryptops palaios, or "old hidden face," because of a horny covering over its face.

They named the other Eocarcharia dinops, or "fierce-eyed dawn shark," for its razor-sharp teeth and bony brow.

Both were about 25 feet long and stood 7 feet high at the hip. Kryptops had a short snout with teeth better for gnawing, leading the scientists to believe it was more of a scavenger.

Eocarcharia's brow was so pronounced that Sereno thinks it was used for head-butting rivals to win over potential mates.

"The only thing I can think of is they were smacking each other with it," Sereno said.

The creatures lived at a time when land bridges connected Africa to India and even Antarctica, which was then a temperate home to dinosaurs. But Africa later became isolated and its dinosaurs followed unique evolutionary paths scientists have just begun to uncover.

"This is an important slice in geological time, and we don't yet fully comprehend how dinosaurs on the southern continents were evolving then," said Peter Makovicky, curator of dinosaurs at the Field Museum, who was not part of the Chicago team.

Makovicky called the discoveries "an important data point toward a deeper understanding of what happened."

Sereno's group found the new species during a 2000 expedition to the Niger desert. They found bones from about a dozen new species, and stumbled across one of the richest archaeological sites that's been found in the region.

"We have not released even half of all that we found there," Sereno said.

Machias Banshee

02-14-2008, 09:29 PM

Dude, Africa's becoming a Hotbed for huge meateaters... :D *happy lil dino lover*

I know its not 'news', but I just HAD to mention the upcoming Discovery Special...

Dinosaurs: Return to Life?
On:The Discovery Channel
Premiering Sunday, February 17
at 9 PM EST

"Dinosaurs: Return to Life follows scientists who are using the latest technology and amazing advances in genetic research to revive the possibility of creating a living breathing dinosaur, but in a different way than we ever imagined."

I cannot WAIT to see this. Ever since I saw Jurassic Park, I always thought 'in time, this will happen'... from the Genome mapping to the genetically 'enhanced' foods, it was bound to happen that someone would Honestly try to do this kind of thing. I have my own thoughts about this kinda of situation, positive and negative, but I don't wanna kill this thread... ;)

Raph's Girl

02-14-2008, 10:06 PM

Dude, Africa's becoming a Hotbed for huge meateaters... :D *happy lil dino lover*

I know its not 'news', but I just HAD to mention the upcoming Discovery Special...

Dinosaurs: Return to Life?
On:The Discovery Channel
Premiering Sunday, February 17
at 9 PM EST

"Dinosaurs: Return to Life follows scientists who are using the latest technology and amazing advances in genetic research to revive the possibility of creating a living breathing dinosaur, but in a different way than we ever imagined."

Ah! I knew there was a special coming up but I didn't remember when. Gives me something to watch sunday other than the Daytona 500... Varoom!! :D

Machias Banshee

02-14-2008, 10:22 PM

Ah HA! Another Nascar fan! And here I thought I was the only one on here... :D

I'm hoping other people will watch and give their opinions on dinosaur/animal cloning... it's incredible to witness, but its so scary at the same time..

Shredder

02-14-2008, 11:43 PM

That special sounds very interesting- I'll definitely have to check it out. :)

Raph's Girl

03-20-2008, 02:53 PM

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080320/sc_nm/volcanoes_extinction_dc_1

Gas-belching volcanoes may be to blame for a series of mass extinctions over the last 545 million years, including that of the dinosaurs, new evidence suggested on Thursday.

A series of eruptions that formed the Deccan Traps in what is now India pumped huge amounts of sulfur into the atmosphere 65 million years ago, with likely devastating repercussions for the Earth's climate, scientists said.

Gigantic eruptions, forming so-called "flood basalts," are one of two leading explanations for a series of mass extinctions that have killed off species periodically throughout history.

The other theory involves asteroid impacts -- generally considered the prime suspect in the case of the extinction of dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

There have been doubts about the killing power of volcanoes because, until now, researchers have struggled to measure just how much toxic gas would have been released.

But after finding rare inclusions of glass in the Deccan rock, a British-based team has found vital preserved information about its original gas content.

Writing in the journal Science, they concluded that the massive of amounts of both sulfur and chlorine released would probably have had a "severe" environmental impact.

"It certainly bolsters the case, though it doesn't prove it," Stephen Self, formerly of Britain's Open University and now senior volcanologist with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said in an interview.

"There have been several major mass extinctions and most of those have, uncannily, occurred while one of these huge flood basalt provinces was being formed."

The volcanoes may have spewed 10 times as much sulfur into the atmosphere every year as humans have done recently by burning coal in power stations and through other industrial activities.

The result would have been widespread acid rain and aerosols of sulfuric acid in atmosphere, cooling the surface of the Earth and upsetting normal patterns of circulation.

Raph's Girl

03-24-2008, 10:15 PM

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080324/sc_nm/mexico_dinosaur_dc_1

Scientists have discovered a new species of plant-eating dinosaur in Mexico whose large neck frill and three giant horns helped it attract mates and fight predators on a jungly beach 72 million years ago.

Mexico's Coahuila desert -- now rocky and cactus-filled -- was once covered by ocean where dinosaurs of all kinds thrived along the coast and hid from a giant relative of the fierce predator Tyrannosaurus rex.

Paleontologists say they have found evidence of a new species here related to the Triceratops, known to have the largest head of any animal ever to have walked the earth.

The new species is slightly smaller at around 23 feet (7 meters) than most Triceratops, but its three-foot-long (0.9 meter) horns were just as big. Holes in its neck frill would also have set it apart.

The scientific name of the new dinosaur will not be revealed until the end of the year, said Scott Sampson, a curator from Utah Museum of Natural History who helped make the discovery with Mexican investigators.

It will be only the second dinosaur species named in Mexico after scientists in February announced a new duck-billed dinosaur from the same region called Velafrons coahuilensis, which cruised the ancient beaches in large herds.

Scientists say they expect to find evidence of dozens of other new dinosaur and plant species buried in Coahuila's rich sediment in coming years.

"This is just the beginning," said Martha Aguillon, a paleontologist at the local museum near the Rincon Colorado fossil beds in the northern state of Coahuila.

The new three-horned species likely used its massive horns to fight off meat-eating predators.

But scientists say the flamboyant head armor and neck frills were also an important part of courtship rituals, showing dominance with head-butting battles much like modern-day horned animals such as antelope.

"That whole section of the head was for sexual display, it was all ornamentation," said paleontologist Terry Gates, who works with Sampson at the University of Utah museum and is also one of the scientists behind the Velafrons discovery.

"The females liked it," he added, with a chuckle.

RISING SEA LEVELS

Vegetarian dinosaurs like the new three-horned species and the Velafrons, a much bigger 35 feet long, had only their size to protect them from vicious predators like a local cousin of the giant T-rex.

"The Tyrannosaur in Coahuila was a little smaller (than the T-rex) but still nothing you would want to run into in a dark alley," said Sampson. "It was more than 30 feet long and rather intimidating."

The dinosaur discoveries are helping open a window into life in the late Cretaceous Period on the southern tip of western North America.

The continent at the time was sliced in two by a big inland sea stretching from the Arctic Ocean to Mexico's Gulf. The lush, tropical environment provided a perfect habitat for a wide variety of wildlife.

"The land mass these animals lived on was less than one-fifth the size of present-day North America yet we have all of these different elephant-sized animals," said Samson.

Gates said what makes the area in Mexico unique is evidence of sea levels that rose and receded over a period of thousands of years, forcing animals to adapt to new types of environments or pushing some towards extinction.

He said clues from tens of millions of years ago can help scientists understand how nature could react to rising sea levels due to climate changes that are melting polar ice caps.

"We have very little knowledge of the response of land animals to sea level rise," said Gates. "That's exactly why I want to do this study."

I've probably said this before so I'll say it again... If ya ever visit Utah make sure to visit the University's museum...it's awesome. :D

http://www.livescience.com/animals/080324-new-plesiosaur.html

One of the oldest and most complete skeletons of a prehistoric aquatic reptile in North America has been uncovered, representing an entirely new group of these plesiosaurs, paleontologists say.

Plesiosaurs are not classified as dinosaurs, but these reptiles swam in the seas at the same time that dinosaurs roamed the land throughout the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods (about 205 million to 65 million years ago).

The new specimen is an 8.5-foot (2.6-meter)-long plesiosaur named Nichollsia borealis in memory of the late renowned paleontologist Elizabeth (Betsy) Nicholls. Nicholls was credited with transforming the understanding of prehistoric ocean life by describing the largest-ever marine reptile, a 76-foot (23-meter)-long ichthyosaur, discovered in northern British Columbia in 1999.

Plesiosaurs were a diverse group of aquatic carnivores that reached lengths of over 39 feet (12 meters). Nichollsia lived about 112 million years ago, and the specimen fills in a 40-million-year gap in the plesiosaur fossil record.

The fossil was discovered by machine operators in a Syncrude Canada Ltd. mine in the northeastern part of Alberta, Canada, in 1994. The description of the fossil was not published until now because fossils take a long time to prepare; the rock they were embeded in must be removed before they can be properly studied.

"Some fossils take years and years to get prepped," said researcher Patrick Druckenmiller, a former University of Calgary graduate student.

University of Calgary researchers studied and formally described the newly announced plesiosaur specimen in the current issue of the German research journal Palaeontographica Abteilung A.

"This is a great tribute because Betsy worked on many of the fossils recovered by Syncrude over the years, and this specimen is a direct result of the connection she had with the company for many years," said Nicholl's husband, Jim Nicholls, a retired University of Calgary professor. "We are very proud that her work will be remembered in the scientific record in this way."

The fossil was uncovered by one of Syncrude's 100-ton electric shovels about 197 feet (60 meters) below the surface of the ground. The skeleton was complete except for its left forelimb and shoulder blade, making it one of the most complete and best-preserved North American plesiosaurs from the Cretaceous Period.

"This specimen was preserved in sandstone and was not crushed as much as most specimens, which have typically been found in shale," Druckenmiller said. "Because of this I was able to have its three-dimensional skull CT-scanned so we can see the details of the insides of its braincase. This has helped us understand this animal in more detail than almost any other plesiosaur ever found."

The discovery of Nichollsia could improve scientists' understanding of the ancient seaway that once divided North America in two.

"This individual was a pioneer in the marine waters that would eventually become the Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway, which ran the length of North America during much of the Cretaceous and was home to one of the world's most diverse communities of marine reptiles," Druckenmiller, said. "It represents the oldest known forerunner of this amazing period in North American history."

Several fossils of other types of plesiosaur and a few ichthyosaurs were also found in the same rock bed, some also representing previously unknown species. These marine beasts would have swam in the same seaway as Nichollsia, Druckenmiller told LiveScience.

"They were probably seeing each other in the same ocean," he said.

The Nichollsia specimen is currently on display in the Discoveries Gallery at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta.

http://images.livescience.com/images/080321-plesio-fossil-02.jpg

Shredder

03-25-2008, 01:27 AM

Awesome find, especially with that plesiosaur fossil pic. Even if they're not technically dinosaurs, plesiosaurs were always a favorite of mine, even as a kid.

Raph's Girl

04-24-2008, 10:20 PM

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080424/sc_nm/dinosaurs_elephants_dc_1

Scraps of protein from the bones of a 68 million-year-old dinosaur and a mastodon carcass confirm their places in the family tree of life on Earth, researchers reported on Thursday.

The same team that established Tyrannosaurus rex is a distant relative of chickens filled in more gaps, showing that the dinosaur was far more closely related to living birds than to alligators.

And a 500,000-year-old mastodon is clearly a close relative of elephants, John Asara and colleagues at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston reported.

They said their analysis of the ancient preserved proteins can be used to fill in all sorts of gaps in the tree of evolution. But it also shows that classical methods, based on studying an animal's bones and other physical structures, are accurate.

"If you ... just use molecular data, you can come to the same conclusion," Asara said in a telephone interview.

Asara's team used collagen taken from a remarkable find -- the leg bone of a T. rex sealed in stone and broken when researchers had no other way of removing it.

Mary Schweitzer of North Carolina State University was able to get soft tissue and then protein out of the bone in 2005 -- something previously considered impossible. She also got protein out of the much younger mastodon bone.

Asara's team looked at the protein on a molecular level and designed a computer program to analyze it. A year ago, they established that the Tyrannosaurus was related to modern chickens and ostriches and that the mastodon was related to living mammals.

T. REX AND BIRDS

Now, reporting in the journal Science, they said they have established that the dinosaur is more similar to birds than to alligators or other reptiles such as anole lizards.

"Last year we just made a very loose connection based on (protein) sequence identification and we had no reptiles," Asara said. "And now with very high probability we can make the connection of T. rex to birds."

The mastodon "groups very nicely with elephants," he said. "We can get a very nice tree."

Some of the computer programs take days to run, Asara noted. But they will keep seeking fresh samples from paleontologists.

"You can't just grab things from museums," Asara said, because the protein in them will have degraded.

Last September, a researcher at Pennsylvania State University reported his team had pulled DNA from the hair shafts of Siberian woolly mammoths that were 50,000 years old.

Separately on Thursday, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley said they had used new rock dating methods to pinpoint the extinction of the dinosaurs more precisely than ever before.

Their improved argon-argon dating method places the Cretaceous-Tertiary, or K/T, boundary at 65.95 million years ago, give or take 40,000 years. Earlier estimates had put it at 65.5 million years ago, with a 300,000-year margin of error.

Raph's Girl

05-21-2008, 12:34 PM

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080521/sc_nm/dinosaur_yemen_dc_3

Scientists have discovered the tracks of a herd of 11 long-necked sauropods walking along a coastal mudflat in what is now the Republic of Yemen, the first discovery of dinosaur footprints on the Arabian peninsula.

Sauropods, the largest land animals in earth's history, walked on four stout legs and ate plants.

"The nice thing is we finally filled in a bit of a blank spot in the dinosaur map," said Anne Schulp, a palaeontologist at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, who worked on the study.

"Until 10 years not even bones were known from the Arabian peninsula and at last we have some dinosaur tracks."

The footprints dating from about 150 million years ago showed the sauropods traveling at the same speed along a river, likely in search of food, Schulp said in a telephone interview.

The creatures roamed the Earth from about 228 million years ago to 65 million years ago, the middle of the age of dinosaurs.

The well-preserved tracks, found about 50 miles north of Yemen's capital Sanaa, ranged from 43 centimeters to 70 centimeters and suggested strides of about 2.5 meters, Schulp added.

Paleontologists have so far unearthed only a few dinosaur fossils from the Arabian peninsula and possible fragments of a long-necked dinosaur from Yemen.

"The nice thing about tracks is you can tell what these guys were doing," Schulp said. "You can put some life into the fossils."

The researchers had first found evidence of a large ornithopod -- a two-legged, plant-eating dinosaur -- and then discovered the sauropods' tracks close by.

Schulp and his colleague Mohammed Al-Wosabi of the University of Yemen measured the shape and angle of the different digits in one of the prints to identify the bipedal dinosaur as an ornithopod.

They then used the size, shape and spacing of the other prints to determine body size, travel speed and other distinguishing features of the sauropod herd, they reported in the journal PLoS ONE on Wednesday.

"We really want to learn when did which dinosaurs live, where, and why was that," Schulp said. "How did the distribution change over time, why did one replace another and move from one place to another?"

The paper is available at:

http://www.plosone.org/doi/pone.0002243

Hannah

06-14-2008, 08:14 PM

Jurassic Park comes true: How scientists are bringing dinosaurs back to life with the help of the humble chicken

Deep inside the dusty university store room, three scientists struggle to lift a huge fossilised bone.

It is from the leg of a dinosaur.

For many years, this chunky specimen has languished cryptically on a shelf.
Interesting but useless — a forgotten relic of a lost age.

Now, with hammer and chisel poised, the academics from Montana State University in America gather round.

They are about to shatter this rare vestige of the past.

Why would they do such a thing?

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/06/13/article-1026340-0199DB1B00000578-842_468x286.jpg

Lost age: Scientists now believe it is possible to resurrect the dinosaur after the discovery of DNA relics in the wings and beaks of regular chickens

The answer is that they believe that this single fragment of a beast which stalked the earth untold millions of years ago could hold the key which will unlock the secrets of the dinosaurs.

Extraordinarily, they contend that it could lead to a real life Jurassic Park, where dinosaurs are once again unleashed on the world by scientists.
For just like in the hit Steven Spielberg movie, these men and women are intent on cracking the genetic code of the dinosaurs and opening the possibility of bringing them back to life.

Their remarkable quest will be revealed in a TV documentary, Dinosaurs: Return To Life, to be screened tomorrow.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/06/13/article-1026340-0199DB9C00000578-745_233x423.jpg

It poses the question: will scientists ever be able to resurrect the dinosaur?
According to Jack Horner, professor of palaeontology at Montana State University, the answer is an unequivocal yes.

He says: ‘Of course we can bring them back to life. Their ancestral DNA is still present.

'The science is there. I don’t think there are any barriers, other than the philosophical.’

So just how have these scientists arrived at the point where they believe they might unleash the mysteries of a prehistoric lost world?
In order to understand their journey, we have to travel back a little less time — to 1992.

This was when Raul Cano, professor of microbiology at California Polytechnic State University, made the first attempt to extract DNA from insects almost as old as the dinosaurs that had been embedded in amber, a sticky tree sap which hardens into transparent orange stone.

Speculation about this possibility inspired the Jurassic Park story, in which an amber-trapped mosquito which sucked dinosaur blood unleashes its victims’ genetic code, allowing an obsessed billionaire to clone the species — with terrifying consequences.

In his real-life laboratory, Cano cracked the amber open with freezing cold liquid nitrogen, obtaining a sample of the insect inside.

Amazingly, he soon had a DNA sample from a 40 million-year-old bee.

Soon afterwards, academics at the American Museum of Natural History recovered DNA from an ancient termite.

It seemed that dinosaur DNA could soon be within reach of modern-day scientists.

But these early experiments ended in failure.

The scientists could not replicate their results, leading to the suspicion that the tiny recovered fragments were actually contaminants, perhaps from the researchers’ hair or clothing.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/06/13/article-1026340-0199DBA900000578-162_468x468.jpg

The search for ancient DNA in amber was abandoned, and it seemed that the door to the past remained closed.

Since then however, researchers looking for prehistoric genetic fragments have managed to recover material from a 40,000-year-old mammoth, and from 45,000-year-old Neanderthal bones.

But still there were doubts that dinosaur DNA could have survived.
Then, in 2003, hopes were revived once again.

Horner, who acted as an advisor on the Jurassic Park films, made a remarkable discovery while his team were excavating a 68 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton in Montana.

The site was so remote, the skeleton had to be removed by helicopter — the operation led to a huge thighbone splitting in two.

Horner gave a piece of the bone to one of his students, palaeontologist Mary Schweitzer.

Examining it, she noticed a strange structure inside the hard outer case.

It resembled a pattern found only in the bones of pregnant birds.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/06/13/article-1026340-0199DBB800000578-587_468x304.jpg

Puzzled, she asked her research assistant, Jennifer Wittmeyer, to dissolve the outer mineral layer.

Six hours later, there was a knock on the door.

‘Jennifer ran into the room saying, “You’re not going to believe this,”’ recalls Schweitzer.

‘When she picked up a small piece, it stretched and moved all over the place.

'So we knew we had something pretty unusual.’

The magnitude of the discovery was immediately apparent to the Montana University team — the material appeared to be well preserved flesh from a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Horner says: ‘It’s unimaginable to find soft tissue. It was just assumed that everything had been fossilised.’

More extraordinary yet, was the next find in neighbouring parts of the dinosaur bone.

‘Out popped the blood vessels,’ says Schweitzer.

‘I said, “I don’t believe it, that’s not possible”. It was one of those goose bump moments.’

Horner and his team knew that blood vessels should not exist in fossilised bone.

Many scientists believed organic matter from a living thing could not survive more than 100,000 years — let alone 68 million years.

Next came the team’s attempt to salvage DNA from other bones kept in the university storerooms.

They put the samples they collected under a powerful microscope.

Magnified 4,000 times, tiny structures unlikely to be mineralised fossil material were apparent.

They seemed to be the microscopic cells that built dinosaur bones — called osteocytes.

So far, so good.

READ THE REST AT THE ACTUAL F*CKING WEBSITE, CHARACTER LIMIT OVERLOAD

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1026340/Jurassic-Park-comes-true-scientists-brink-bringing-dinosaurs-life-thanks-discovery-DNA-relics-humble-chicken.html