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Dinosaur News Thread!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070920/...athered_raptor

Quote:

WASHINGTON - Velociraptor, the terrifying predator made famous in the movie "Jurassic Park," appears to have had feathers in real life.

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A close study of a velociraptor forearm found in Mongolia shows the presence of quill knobs, bumps on the bone where the feathers anchor, researchers report in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

Dinosaurs are believed to be ancestors to modern birds. Evidence of feathered dinosaurs has been found in recent years, and now velociraptor can be added to that list.

"Finding quill knobs on velociraptor ... means that it definitely had feathers. This is something we'd long suspected, but no one had been able to prove," Alan Turner, lead author on the study and a graduate student of paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History and at Columbia University in New York, said in a statement.

The velociraptor the researchers studied was about three feet tall and weighed about 30 pounds. The size of these animals was exaggerated in the movie.

It had short forelimbs, compared to a modern bird, the researchers said, indicating it would not have been able to fly, even though it had feathers.

The feathers may have been useful for display, to shield nests, for temperature control or to help it maneuver while running, they said.

Amazing news for Dinosaur fans. This latest reseach strenghtens the link between birds and repitles.

I would have posted this earlier but eh...the paleontologist in me is going "Yea and?". They've been saying for years that they had feathers....what's so different now?

Quote:

The velociraptor the researchers studied was about three feet tall and weighed about 30 pounds

3 foot tall?? That's more or less Utahraptor sized. Velociraptors weren't that tall...they were the size of chickens. :ohwell:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Raph's Girl (Post 558758)

I would have posted this earlier but eh...the paleontologist in me is going "Yea and?". They've been saying for years that they had feathers....what's so different now?

3 foot tall?? That's more or less Utahraptor sized. Velociraptors weren't that tall...they were the size of chickens. :ohwell:

They have been saying this for years....is this as far as they have gotten? Now they have gotten to the point where they are reiterating things they have already come up with?

oh an..I thought the Velociraptor was 6 feet tall....I know it's not the best place for info...but isn't that what the Jurassic Park predators were?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Storm Wolf (Post 558774)

oh an..I thought the Velociraptor was 6 feet tall....I know it's not the best place for info...but isn't that what the Jurassic Park predators were?

True, but the Jurassic Park raptors weren't exactly based on Velociraptors, just on their bigger close cousins Deinonychuses.

"Jurassic Park" is in fact very lax when it comes to many biological and paleontological issues and shouldn't be trusted that much.

The fact that many dinosaurs had feathers is nothing new. However, the implication here is not that velociraptor has feathers, but that it had feathers significant enough to have to be anchored to the bone. So these feathers were probably fairly large, possibly decorative in a way similar to a peacock's tail feathers.

Interesting news, even though like others have said, some dinosaurs having feathers has been heavily speculated before.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Raph's Girl (Post 558758)

Actually, Velociraptors were about 3 ft. tall, according to most of the sources I've seen. Utahraptors were about the size of the raptors featured in Jurassic Park- around 6 feet tall.

Heh, as a kid I shut out all speculation of dinosaurs having feathers because I thought they looked cooler without. Oh well, better start getting used to it.

As for size... I'm pretty sure Velociraptor was about 3 feet tall. It's been in all the dinosaur books I ever read. Utahraptor was more like 6 feet. I remember Compsognathus being chicken-sized.

Sheldon, one of my fave web comics, has this to say about the Velociraptor having feathers: :lol:

http://www.sheldoncomics.com/strips/sd070924.gif

Hahaha! That was pretty much it! :tlol:

http://www.dinosauria.com/gallery/ch...lociraptor.jpg

This is Velociraptor. Deinonychus is also similar with feathers and all that, just a little bigger. They're nothing like in JP.

Except for with some seriously hardcore feathers... enough to leave those quill knobs on bone!

New Duck Billed Dinosaur Species!

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

Quote:

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/2...saur_ny137.jpg
http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/nm/2...s_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

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.

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

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.

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.

New Titanasaur Dinosaur species discovered

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071015/...patagonia_dc_3

Quote:

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/...giant_dinosaur

Quote:

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/wikipedi...osaurus_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!

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. :)

Nigersaurus most common dinosaur

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071115/...ur_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.

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