Dinosaur News Thread!

[愛]

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

[Machias Banshee]

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]

Interesting find...

[XERO]

Originally Posted by TheCure

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]

Originally Posted by TheCure

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]

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

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

[JaffleMan]

Originally Posted by Raph's Girl

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]

Originally Posted by JaffleMan

like the country Niger.

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

[Sewer Bull]

Originally Posted by JaffleMan

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:

Originally Posted by Raph's Girl

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]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071203/...aur_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! )


What they believe Dakota looked like:


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

[Buslady]

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]

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

[Machias Banshee]

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

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

[Raph's Girl]

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]

Originally Posted by Machias Banshee

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

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

So T-Rex looked like Big Bird?

[Machias Banshee]

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

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]

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/n...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:



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/boo...s.dinosaur.htm

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

[Machias Banshee]

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....

[Raph's Girl]

Originally Posted by Machias Banshee

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. I need to visit the Paleontology museum in Vancouver, B.C. It's supposed to be like one of the biggest.

[Warhorse]

Originally Posted by Raph's Girl

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. 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.