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Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Dinosaur replicas finally find place for reinstallation

From The Nation (Pakistan): Dinosaur replicas finally find place for reinstallation
ISLAMABAD - The Capital Development Authority has at last found a fenced wet ground alongside the bank of Rawal Dam to dump worth Rs 25 million replicas of different-sized dinosaurs, those were supposed to be reinstalled at Ankara Park.

Dozens of fibreglass models of dinosaurs are left abandoned by the Authority on left side of the entrance of Rawal Dam, where they owing to extensive humidity in atmosphere and wet ground are deteriorating at a fast pace. While the heads of two directorates of the authority including Project Management Office (PMO) and Parks Directorate are vigorously attempting to disassociate their respective directorates from the ownership of these expensive replicas of dinosaurs.

It was back in year 2008 when CDA’s PMO directorate has purchased these models to install them in Lake View Park. But for some reasons it was decided to install them in Ankara Park on Club Road.

“The fibreglass models were installed but were removed from the Ankara Park after 10 days of their installation owing to the damage incurred by the models at the hands of visitors,” said an official. Since then CDA remained fail to find out a suitable site to reinstall them. While the original purchaser, that is the PMO directorate, has shifted the responsibility in this regard to Parks directorate.

The models were first dumped at Ankara Park in open air but owing to media criticism now the city managers have found a relatively less-visited site to place them. During the course of last four years several sites were suggested by the concerned quarters to CDA’s high-ups including Kachnar Park of I-8 or Japanese Park or another public park in I-9. But since than city managers remained flop to materialise any of such suggestion.

A concerned official wishing not to be named, for curbs the recently appointed chairman Farkhand Iqbal has imposed on officials of the authority regarding interaction with the media, said two days back a meeting of officials of PMO, Parks Directorate and contractor firm of the project have had a meeting in CDA’s main official complex.

The issue they thoroughly discussed there was about the development of Ankara Park, where issue of reinstallation of replicas of dinosaurs also came under discussion. He said at first the issue was to fix the ownership of these models.

“During the course of meeting it was decided that CDA’s Park Directorate would be responsible for the look after of these replicas. It was also decided that contractor who was given the contract of purchase of these replicas would install the models at Ankara Park and later the maintenance would be the responsibility of Park Directorate,” he added.

He further informed that installation of dinosaurs’ replicas was the part of PC-I of the development of Ankara Park. “Over the period of time CDA remained fail to select any other suitable place to install them but the Ankara Park, as the installation in mentioned in its PC-I.”

To save the replicas from damage at the hands of visitors it was decided in the meeting that models would be erected after their complete fencing. He said minutes of the meetings regarding models installation at Ankara Park had been sent to all concerned directorates. “In the light of minutes of the meeting the replicas would be reinstalled with a period of 15 days,” he assured.

Monday, February 27, 2012

Cats and Dinosaurs


From FlayRah: Cats and Dinosaurs
Okay, so you’ve got a pet dinosaur. Raising one from an egg can be a real pain, er, adventure! Not the very least for your other household pets! That’s the idea behind Kitty & Dino, a new children’s hardcover book written and illustrated by Sara Richard. From the publisher’s press release on Amazon: “When a little boy brings home a dinosaur egg, the cat of the house isn’t too keen on the tiny creature that pops out. But after a few weeks of showing the new baby the ropes, a bond forms between kitty and dino that transcends species.” It’s available for order now, and coming from Yen Press in April.

Dinosaur Unearthed

A life-size Acrocanthosaurus is transported from the Henry B. Gonzalez Covention Center to the Witte Museum on February 24, 2012



From My San Antonio: Dinosaur Unearthed

Friday, February 24, 2012

Wisconsin: Dinotopia exhibit prepares to welcome artist

From WAOW 9: Dinotopia exhibit prepares to welcome artist
WAUSAU (WAOW)—A combination of realistic landscapes, familiar architectural elements and a collection of dinosaurs interacting with humans has made for an intriguing art display according to Amy Beck of the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum.

"They're intricately detailed, they're really so vivid, you can really imagine yourself in this world" Beck told Newsline 9.

The Woodson Art Museum, 700 North 12th Street, Wausau, Wis., is displaying "Dinotopia: The Fantastical Art of James Gurney" now through April 7th.

Gurney is the creator, author and artist behind the imaginative Dinotopia franchise. The concept of a hidden island nation of dinosaurs and humans living side-by-side has spawned children's books, a television mini-series and a nationally touring art display.

The Woodson Art Museum is preparing to host Gurney from Thurs. March 1st through Sat., March 3rd. As the Woodson's featured Artist in Residence, Gurney will have several public speaking appearances.

On Thurs. March 1st from 5:30 to 6:30 pm Gurney will be speaking at "Dinotopia: Behind the Scenes." Here he will discuss how he dreamed up the idea of Dinotopia and how he created the paintings on display in the museum.

Gurney uses realistic landscapes to backdrop his dinosaur and human points of focus.

"It's really a chance to learn about how you can take reality and move it, with your imagination, to a whole new realm" Beck said.

Community members are also welcome to attend the "Gurney Gallery Walk" on Sat., March 3rd from 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm. This allows members of the community to meet the artist as he provides an informal tour of the exhibit displaying his creations.

The Woodson Art Museum is open Tues. through Fri. from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm, weekends from noon to 5:00 pm, and until 7:30 pm the first Thurs. of every month. Admission is free.

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Dinosaur Bones Brought Back to Life With 3-D Printing

From ABC News: Science: Dinosaur Bones Brought Back to Life With 3-D Printing
For all the digging of dinosaur fossils, all the magnificent reconstructions in museums and all the research that has been devoted to them, the great beasts remain mostly a mystery to us, and paleontologist Kenneth Lacovara of Drexel University in Philadelphia says our ways of studying them have not changed much in 150 years.

Lacovara says he aims to change that. In his lab, he and James Tangorra, a mechanical engineer at Drexel, have been scanning dinosaur bones with lasers, hoping to apply the new technology of 3-D printing to these ancient specimens.

Three-dimensional printing, if you’ve never seen it, has nothing to do with images on paper. Instead, it involves the creation of an almost perfect model, made of layers of resin, of the scanned object. Lacovara and Tangorra have been working, for starters, on the humerus, or front leg bone, of a Cretaceous dinosaur called Paralititan stromeri, a giant four-legged plant-eating dinosaur found in what is now Egypt in 2000.

They are telling the computer to make a one-tenth-scale model of the fossil, to which they can attach artificial muscles and tendons. The original humerus (remember that since it’s a fossil it’s made of stone, not bone) weighs 800 lbs. The resin model weighs less than an ounce.

“In any science, the fewer assumptions you can make about your subject, the better,” said Lacovara. In so much of paleontology, scientists have said, even the best conclusions about how dinosaurs lived and moved is based on guesswork — intelligent guesswork based on the shapes of the bones, but still something to be minimized.

For generations, to cite one famous example, scientists thought T. rex stood upright on its hind legs, dragging its tail behind it. Only in recent decades did they begin to think it may have balanced its tail in the air — and found the bones fit together much more neatly if it did.

In four or five months, Lacovara said he and and Tangorra hope to have a working model of Paralititan’s front leg, articulated the way that makes the most sense when the resin models of the different bones are put together. In a year or two, they could perhaps have a complete skeleton, with which they could better figure out how it walked, ate and lived more than 65 million years ago.

“The next step is to robotocize these 3-D prints,” said Lacovara. “We can study how the limbs moved with very few assumptions. We let the bones tell us their limits of movement — instead of us telling them what we think they should do.”

Working with the models would be better than computer simulations of the dinosaur’s motion, he said: “When you make a computer model, it’s only as good as the assumptions you put in. When you have physical models, they’re as good as the laws of the natural universe.”

And one other thing: Three-dimensional printing is still fairly expensive, but as with many new technologies its cost is dropping quickly. So if scientists drop or break their model, all is not lost — they’ll just tell their computer to print them a replacement.

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Scotland: CHURCH Holding Dinosaur Sunday

This event is over, but I thought it was interesting.

From Inverclyde Now: CHURCH Holding Dinosaur Sunday
IT’S going to be Dinosaur Sunday again at Greenock West United Reformed Church as the congregation hold their second faith and science event.

Ministers the Rev David Coleman and the Rev Zam Walker say the events at the church in George Square set people free to consider the mutual benefit of faith and the insights of science, in particular evolution and palaeontology.

At 11am tomorrow (19 February) they will bring the subjects together with Biblical preaching.

At 6.30pm one of Scotland's leading palaeontologists, Dr Neil Clark of the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow will speak.

There will be a display of fossils at both events.

Zam said: “We had a very good response last year to what is both an enjoyable and encouraging event. Our message is that honest science supports and affirms as well as challenges our encounter with the world as people of Christian faith. As Albert Einstein said: ‘Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.’ We are part of an international movement, the Clergy Letter Project, which aims to raise the level of conversations between people of science and faith.”

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

PA: Dinosaur exhibit at the Franklin brings lesser known, greater-sized giants to Philly

From The Mercury: Dinosaur exhibit at the Franklin brings lesser known, greater-sized giants to Philly
Gigantic. Monumental. Humungous.

# It would take a thesaurus of adjectives to describe the size – let alone the impact – of the creatures that make up the spectacular “Giant Mysterious Dinosaurs” exhibit at Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute. (through April 15)
# So if you head over there with a small child, prepare him or her in advance about what to expect. On our own recent adult visit, a small child just ahead of us bolted at the first sight of these creatures and couldn’t be coaxed back in.
# But for those who know a bit more about the scale of human-sized-to-gigantic creature, this is one of the most effective and impressive displays of the dinosaurs evacuated from remote regions in Argentina and the Gobi Desert of Inner Mongolia.
#
“What makes this exhibition different,” explains Don Lessem, the leading collector of dinosaur artifacts in the world and our Delaware Valley neighbor in Media, “is that these specimens are largely unknown to audiences here.”
# “This show also is the first exhibit based closely on some revolutionary new international research that examines how one group of animals – long-necked plant-eating dinosaurs – got to grow 10 times larger than any other animals on earth, before or since.”

# As Lessem, who has excavated and recreated dinosaurs from Argentina and Mongolia, earning the name “Dino Don,” further explains:

# “The exhibit was an outgrowth of my following this research on gigantic growth in Europe for five years. I’ve slowly accumulated a very large collection of dinosaur skeletons and robots which tell this story, against the backdrop of dinosaur evolution through time. Since it will only fit in the largest of science museums, I was very fortunate that the Franklin Institute was interested in being the debut venue.”

# Lessem, who was an advisor to the producers of “Jurassic Park,” has written more than 50 books for children about dinosaurs, and is Dinosaur Editor of Highlights Magazine.

# Highlights of the exhibit are meeting Mapusaurus, anointed the new king of the meat-eating dinosaurs and an impressive dude for sure; Mamenchisaurus, the pea-headed animal and the one with the longest neck; and Giganotosaurus from Patagonia, who lives up to his name because of his size – fully 10 percent larger than the infamous T-Rex.

# “Dinosaur fossil bones and skeletons, casts of fossils and full-size robotic dinosaurs highlight the power and strength of these giants of giants, and the remarkable ways they evolved,” notes Dennis Wint, president of the Franklin Institute, who once went on a dinosaur dig himself in Alberta, Canada.

# Ironically, much of dinosaur exploration and discovery has occurred over the last two decades, according to Lessem, who began his own career as a journalist and used a fellowship he won while at the Boston Globe to research dinosaur lore. He’s never looked back.

# It’s truly a remarkable experience to roam among these remarkable specimens, including the five-foot high backbone of the 100-ton Argentinosaurus. There’s also a chance for some interactive experience. The Dinosaur Cart allows for some handling of some casts of dinosaur skulls and also skulls and casts of reptiles and birds.
# The Franklin has arranged for the premiere of “Flying Monsters on its Tuttleman Theater’s IMAX screen. The film takes audiences to a prehistoric world in the most convincing, spectacular way – a perfect companion piece to the exhibition in the same building.

# “What I hope visitors will take away from this exhibition is a sense of awe,” said Lessem. “And it’s hard to imagine their not doing so.”

# He continued, “I don’t much care if they remember the information, but I’d love it if they kept or grew their interest in learning about life’s history as they can always discover the facts and theories for themselves.”

# And then, with a wry sense of humor, Lessem added, “What I DON’T want them to take away are the dinosaurs. But they’re are pretty heavy and ornery, so I’m not nervous.”
# This final advice: as with all exhibitions that deserve some time, visitors are advised to wear comfortable shoes.

# Kids who are ready for the size and scale of these creatures may not be tall themselves, but they may be inclined to want to stay long enough to go through the exhibit several times.

# Plan to spend at least 90 minutes – or, more likely, two hours.
# It’s definitely worth it to study creatures who reportedly dominated the Earth for 163 million years.

# Individual daytime tickets for Giant Mysterious Dinosaurs, which include general admission to the Franklin Institute, are $25 for adults. And $18.50 for children. Tickets ate timed and dated from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday through Thursday. (last entry is at 3;30 p.m. and through 8:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, with last entry at 7 p.m. Evening ticket prices: $10 for adult; $6 for children, but does not include museum admission.

# Advance purchase is strongly recommended.

From depths of the Charles, an endangered species surfaces

A sturgeon is not actually a dinosaur, but this is an interesting article.
From Boston.com: From depths of the Charles, an endangered species surfaces
As Rick Bellitti walked along the Charles River Locks this month, he spotted a looming figure in the water below. Probably a piece of driftwood, he figured. Until he saw it swimming slowly toward him.

“He was right there on the surface,’’ Bellitti, a 36-year-old accountant, recalled recently. “A prehistoric, floating dinosaur. Covered in armor.’’

Turns out, Bellitti had happened upon an Atlantic sturgeon, an ancient, endangered species that had not been spotted around the Charles River for as long as anyone could remember.

Bellitti had no idea what the strange creature was, but was certain he had never seen anything like it, so he took pictures with his phone. Once specialists got a look at the sharp-snouted fish, a 3-foot-long juvenile, they were immediately convinced.

“No doubt about the identification,’’ said Tom French, an assistant director at the state’s fisheries and wildlife division. “It’s clear.’’

The confirmed sighting delighted aquatic specialists, who said sturgeon, famed for their caviar and predating dinosaurs, are fighting for their survival.

“The fact that one has been spotted in our area is certainly good news,’’ said Julie Wood, watershed scientist at the Charles River Watershed Association. Wood said no one she has spoken to had ever heard of a sturgeon spotted near the Charles.

The week before the sighting, the federal government listed Atlantic sturgeon as endangered in five areas along the Atlantic, and as threatened in the Gulf of Maine.

“There’s no resident population in the Charles,’’ said Matt Ayer, an aquatic biologist with the state’s marine fisheries division. “I would guess it’s been quite a while since one was officially sighted.’’

Juvenile sturgeon travel extensively and feed in freshwater habitats before moving out to sea as they mature.

In Colonial times, sturgeon were abundant, but overfishing and limited access to freshwater spawning areas reduced their numbers over time. Pollution of the Charles peaked in the last century, according to the watershed association, but decades of effort have turned it into one of the nation’s cleanest urban rivers.

However, it is unclear why the sturgeon has reappeared. For more than a decade, in hopes of boosting the population of Atlantic sturgeon, it has been illegal for fishermen to catch or keep the fish.

Enormous fish that can weigh more than 800 pounds, sturgeon are sometimes spotted in the Merrimack River north of Boston, where they startle fishermen with sudden leaps and thunderous landings.

“When they hit the water, it sounds like a piano dropped,’’ Ayer said.

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Why Do Dinosaur Skeletons Look So Weird?

Science Daily: Why Do Dinosaur Skeletons Look So Weird?
ScienceDaily (Feb. 16, 2012) — Many fossilized dinosaurs have been found in a twisted posture. Scientists have long interpreted this as a sign of death spasms. Two researchers from Basel and Mainz now come to the conclusion that this bizarre deformations occurred only during the decomposition of dead dinosaurs.

More or less complete and articulated skeletons of dinosaurs with a long neck and tail often exhibit a body posture in which the head and neck are recurved over the back of the animal. This posture, also known from Archaeopteryx, has been fascinating paleontologists for more than 150 years. It was called "bicycle pose" when talking with a wink, or "opisthotonic posture" in a more oppressive way of speaking.

The latter alludes to an accessory symptom of tetanus, well known in human and veterinarian medicine. Usually, an "opisthotonic posture" like that is the result of vitamin deficiency, poisoning or damage to the cerebellum.

Basically, the cerebellum is a brain region that controls fine muscle movement, which includes the body's antigravity muscles that keep the head and tail upright. If the cerebellum ceases to function, the antigravity muscles will clench at full force, tipping the head and tail back, and contracting the limbs.

A syndrome like that as a petrified expression of death throes was discussed for the first time about 100 years ago for some vertebrate fossils, but the acceptance of this interpretation declined during the following decades. In 2007, this "opisthotonus hypothesis" was newly posted by a veterinarian and a palaeontologist. This study, generously planned, received much attention in the public and the scientific community.

Now, five years later, two scientists from Switzerland and Germany have re-evaluated the revitalized "opisthotonus hypothesis" and examined one of its icons, the famous bipedal dinosaur Compsognathus longipes from the "Solnhofen Archipelago" (Germany). It is widely acknowledged that this 150-millions-years-old land-living dinosaur was embedded in a watery grave of a tropical lagoon.

"In our opinion, the most critical point in the newly discussed scenario of the preservation of an opisthotonic posture in a fossil is the requirement that terrestrial vertebrates must have been embedded immediately after death without substantial transport. But consigning a carcass from land to sea and the following need of sinking through the water column for only a few decimetres or meters is nothing else" says sedimentologist Achim Reisdorf from University of Basel's Institute of Geology and Paleontology.

Biomechanics in Watery Graves Convinced that the back arching was generated, not by death throes, but by postmortem alterations of a decaying carcass, the researchers made experiments with plucked chicken necks and thoraxes, immersed in water. Submersed in water, the necks spontaneously arched backwards for more than 90°. Ongoing decay for some months even increased the degree of the pose. Thorough preparation and dissection combined with testing revealed that a special ligament connecting the vertebrae at their upper side was responsible for the recurved necks in the chickens. This ligament, the so-called Ligamentum elasticum, is pre-stressed in living chickens, but also in dead ones.

"Veterinarians may often have to do with sick and dying animals, where they see the opisthotonic posture in many cases. Vertebrate palaeontologists, however, who want to infer the environment in which the animals perished and finally were embedded have to elucidate postmortem processes and biomechanical constraints too" says palaeontologist Michael Wuttke from the Section of Earth History in the General Department for the Conservation of Cultural History Rhineland Palatinate in Mainz (Germany).

"A strong Ligamentum elasticum was essential for all long necked dinosaurs with a long tail. The preloaded ligament helped them saving energy in their terrestrial mode of life. Following their death, at which they were immersed in water, the stored energy along the vertebra was strong enough to arch back the spine, increasingly so as more and more muscles and other soft parts were decaying" conclude the researchers. "It is a special highlight that, in the Compsognathus specimen, these gradual steps of recurvature can be substantiated, too. Therefore, biomechanics is ruling the postmortem weird posture of a carcass in a watery grave, not death throes."

Friday, February 17, 2012

Dinosaur Exhibit Reveals New Insights Into Life And Death Of Ancient Reptiles

From the Huffington Post: Dinosaur Exhibit Reveals New Insights Into Life And Death Of Ancient Reptiles
Cara Santa Maria: I'm here at the Museum of Natural History of Los Angeles County, and I'm about to speak with Dr. Luis Chiappe, the curator of their recently built dino hall.

This is a new dinosaur exhibit here at the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History. What makes this one so different than other exhibits? Because you know, I go to a lot of dinosaur exhibits.

Luis Chiappe: Right. It focuses on the nature of science, on the how do we know what we know?

CSM: I love that!

LC: This is not a chronological exhibit. This is not--

CSM: So we're not walking through time here?

LC: No, we're not putting the animals in dioramas or anything like that. It's really using dinosaurs as a vehicle for understanding the nature of science, and that's what we've done here. But this is a really cool specimen. I wanted to show it to you.

CSM: What is it?

LC: Well, it's a plesiosaur. It's a kind of marine reptile. What's very interesting of this animal is that it's a pregnant mother that died with it's baby inside her belly.

CSM: So it's not inside of an egg?

LC: It's not an egg. No actually, this is the only evidence we have that plesiosaurs, these animals, gave birth to live young.

CSM: I mean, this is a really impressive specimen. How rare is something like this?

LC: It's one-of-a-kind. I mean, there's no other specimen like this. It's the only one in the world.

CSM: What am I seeing here?

LC: You're seeing the baby right there. If you look at--

CSM: Here?

LC: Yeah.

CSM: All the tiny bones--

LC: Yeah, all those tiny little bones between the flippers. That's part of the baby. And we know that it was inside the body of the mother. It was born with a huge size, about 40% of the size of the mother.

CSM: Wow. We wouldn't want to see that in humans, would we? (laughs)

LC: I guess not. (laughs)

CSM: So we know that this is a marine reptile, which is separate from dinosaurs. How do we define what is a dinosaur?

LC: Well it's defined on the structure of the hind limbs and the hip. The hip socket was hollow. The hind limbs were placed beneath the body in a vertical position. So that's really some of the defining features.

CSM: Sure. I know that there's some exhibits here that really discuss the similarities between dinosaurs and birds.

LC: Yes we do.

CSM: Would you like to show me those?

LC: Absolutely. And you know, when you look at them what you really need to think about is that birds also have dinosaur hips. Let me show you.

CSM: Great. So I remember learning in school that there was a mass extinction event: a giant asteroid hit earth and wiped out all the dinosaurs at once.

LC: Yeah, and there was one. But the point that we want to make here in this exhibit is that dinosaurs lived and died at different times.

CSM: So they didn't all die together, because they weren't all alive together.

LC: Exactly. You take two examples, Triceratops and Stegosaurus, two iconic dinosaurs. They lived 85 million years apart. They never got to meet each other.

CSM: Really?

LC: And we live 65 million years from Triceratops. So in time terms, we're closer to Triceratops than Triceratops was to Stegosaurus.

CSM: Right...that's why we're standing here in this section of the hall with pictures of birds everywhere, no?

LC: Exactly. And some dinosaurs.

CSM: And some dinosaurs. This is a dinosaur.

LC: This is a dinosaur. It's called Struthiomimus.

CSM: But those are birds.

LC: An ostrich and a swan. And when the extinction took place 65 million years ago, Struthiomimus didn't make it, and these guys--or the predecessors of these guys--did make it.

CSM: I see. And so their predecessors were birds or dinosaurs?

LC: They were birds, but birds had evolved long before from the dinosaurs.

CSM: Do we know how long ago that divergence took place?

LC: More than 150 million years ago.

CSM: And is that when my, my tattoo here of Archaeopteryx, is that when he lived?

LC: Archaeopteryx lived 150 million years--and is the earliest and the most primitive and oldest known bird.

CSM: But really a lot of these creatures were very, very bird-like.

LC: People should be thinking of birds as living dinosaurs, you know. You want to see a dinosaur, certainly you can come here to see great dinosaurs in this exhibit--

CSM: And I think a lot of people don't realize that they can go "dinosaur watching" just outside. Thanks so much for showing me around your beautiful exhibit, Dr. Chiappe.

LC: My pleasure.

To learn more about Dr. Chiappe and the new dinosaur hall at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, visit www.nhm.org.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Dinosaurs are Roaring at The Children's Museum of Memphis

MarketWatch: Dinosaurs are Roaring at The Children's Museum of Memphis
MEMPHIS, Tenn., Feb 13, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Long before the Mid-South was populated by cows and cotton fields, dinosaurs roamed the land. A new traveling exhibit at The Children's Museum of Memphis allows children and adults to explore dinosaur habitats to better understand how these mysterious animals lived and use inquiry skills to examine what they left behind. Dinosaurs: Land of Fire and Ice(TM), opening, February 11, transports families back to the Cretaceous Period (145 -- 65 million years ago), the time when dinosaurs last lived on earth.

Children go face-to-face with the prehistoric world and meet dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes. The exhibit, created for children ages 3 -- 10, features two distinct environments and a variety of activities. A Field Research Station allows children to step into the role of paleontologist by uncovering fossils with brushes and creating drawings of the dinosaur environment using fossil rubbings and tracings.

The steamy "Land of Fire" connects visitors with prehistoric home of the Triceratops and T-Rex. No coats are needed for a trip across the "Land of Ice" where visitors meet two dinosaurs, a Troodon and Edmontosaurus, who made their homes in the cold climate of Alaska. Activities include: climbing rocky steps, breezing down an icy slide, and hoping across stepping stones in an icy river.

Dinosaurs: Land of Fire and Ice utilizes new research about climates in which dinosaurs were able to survive and thrive. The discovery of numerous species of dinosaurs in the arctic is causing scientists to reconsider old theories about dinosaurs only living in tropical climates. This exhibit is the first child-centered exhibit in the country dedicated to expanding the understanding on dinosaur habitat and range. It runs through May 13, 2012.

Dinosaurs: Land of Fire and Ice was created by Minnesota Children's Museum and is sponsored locally by Kronos Energy Solutions.

The Children's Museum of Memphis creates memorable learning experiences through the joy of play in hands-on exhibits and programs. Location: The John and Katherine Dobbs Family Center, 2525 Central Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee. Hours: open 7 days a week 9am-5pm. Admission: $12 ages 1-100. Information: 901-458-2678. Website: CMOM.COM.

SOURCE: The Children's Museum of Memphis

Dinosaurs looking for a new home

From the Herald Sun: Dinosaurs looking for a new home
FEDERAL MP Darren Cheeseman wants the stories of Otway Ranges dinosaurs enshrined in a multi million-dollar museum on the Great Ocean Road in Victoria.

Otway Dinosaurs' Wildlife of Gondwana has occupied a temporary home 3km north-west of Apollo Bay but is in the process of mapping its future after acclaimed international tours, the Geelong Advertiser reports.

New site options include a 28 ha parcel of land close to the Great Ocean Road and Dinosaur Cove, where finds of dinosaur remains have revealed previously untold stories of life in the former Gondwana land.

"Dinosaur Cove is the right place to put it, where the fossils were first found," Mr Cheeseman said.

"It could be done sensitively, it could be done in a way with accommodation on site, tucked away in gum trees as it were.

"It would very much add to the rich tapestry of tourist attractions down there."

Deb Moore and Greg Denney are co-owners of the 300-exhibit museum, backed by Monash Science Centre, and will meet Mr Cheeseman for talks this week.

Mr Cheeseman estimated a new museum near the cove might cost tens of millions of dollars.

"You wouldn't do it cheaply, and you wouldn't want to do it cheaply," he said.

Ms Moore said plans were only beginning to come together but the focus would be clear.

"This stands for scientific and environmental integrity," Ms Moore said.

"We don't want some sort of dinosaur theme park and the Great Ocean Road turning into Queensland.

"We have to maintain the science."

Entire new breeds of dinosaurs have been identified from fossil finds at Dinosaur Cove, near Johanna, since the 1980s, including the leaellynasaura, which adapted to Gondwana's polar conditions.

Ms Moore said the existing exhibit occupied 500sqm in "what is really a big farm shed".

"Staying where we are is not an option, it's not ideal a little bit out of Apollo Bay and we're not even on a direct route off the Great Ocean Road," she said.

The exhibit is scheduled to be shipped to Moscow in April.

Friday, February 10, 2012

JCBs may push Dhar's dinosaur relics to extinction

From the Times of India: JCBs may push Dhar's dinosaur relics to extinction
INDORE: Whatever might have wiped out the dinosaurs of Dhar, their priceless fossils are now under threat of going to dust under the JCBs and pickaxes, while the state government is doing scarcely anything about it.

The latest threat is a huge cement factory being proposed near Manawar, which, palaeontologists and environmentalists say, is the biggest challenge to the fossils that had survived over millions of years.

Prof Tapas Gangopadhaya, a senior Palaeontologist who has been working on the Narmada Valley fossils for about a decade now, points out that the fossils in the upper Lameta belt of the valley are well known globally. Beneath the Lameta belt is the swathe of limestone used in cement plants. "Limestone cannot be taken out without damaging the Lameta belt, so it is imperative to regulate mining in the area. Otherwise we will soon lose our pre-historic treasure," asserts Gandopadhaya, adding that a lot of fossils have already been destroyed in Jirabad by mining, and this may be repeated in Dhar too, if nothing is done immediately.

Prof Gangopadhyaya also suggested that mining companies be instructed to go for inclined mining in order to take out the fossils undamaged. All fossils recovered should be deposited with a museum or a relevant institution, he urged.

Former director of the Geographical Survey of India (Palaeontology division), Arun Sonakia told TOI that the area where fossils are found should be demarcated and segregated as fossil zone and a committee should look into granting of mining permissions in these areas. "Permission for mining should only be given after surveying the ground situation. The consent should be conditional, including that the mining company would be held responsible for any damage caused to fossils," Sonakia said.

Palaeontologist Vishal Verma said that the planned cement factory is already moving to acquire some 100 acres of land near Manawar, which is known to be one of the richest dinosaur fossil sites in the world. "The company has actually asked for 1000 acres, and the process of acquiring the initial 100 acres has already begun. We fear that limestone mining in the area will be catastrophic for the fossil wealth" he asserted.

Highlighting the damage already being caused to the fossils from mining, Ajay Jaiswal, who has done extensive research on them, observed that severe damage has already been done to fossils in Narshingpur, Jabalpur and Hosangabad, which are considered as prime fossil areas.. "A lot of stone chips factories are operating in those areas and the mining contractors are not bothered at all about the importance of those fossils. They take out and crush the fossils routinely, while sand contractors destroy fossils with their JCB machines almost every day," he said.

Jaiswal says he has been seeing fossils along with the surrounding maroon and yellow soil being scooped and used even for such things as filling trenches and making the first layer for roads. If indiscriminate mining is not stopped, the same picture will be repeated in Dhar too, where a large volume of dinosaurs eggs have been found over the past five years'', he warned.

Ashok Sahani, senior scientist at the Centre for Advanced Studies in Geology, and an international authority on fossils, said mining being a commercial deal, the mining companies cannot be expected to understand the value of dinosaur fossils. It is for the administration and the authorities concerned to frame rules and regulations for mining in fossil areas. "The experience of Rahioli in Kheda district of Gujarat has been horrific. Even after establisihing a fossil park there, mining over the period of time caused huge damage to the fossils. The fossils of Dhar are also under threat and need to be protected," he stressed.

Vishal Verma said the overriding concern was how to preserve the fossils. "We wrote to the cement to company through district administration asking that they should at least fence off five acres on their site and develop a fossil conservation centre there. All the fossils dug out from the site should be preserved there. If that is not possible, they could also develop a fossil conservation centre at the nearby Borlai village and preserve fossils there, its ownership handed to the nearest government school," Verma said.

Capturing Dinosaurs and Whales, Without Seeing Them

From the New York Times: Capturing Dinosaurs and Whales, Without Seeing Them
At the American Museum of Natural History on Tuesday, Hashim Kirkland lowered his camera a bit to see the ancient brown spine of a dinosaur through the murky glass catwalk below him. He clicked and then raised the camera again to capture the massive hip of an Apatosaurus, a long-necked plant eater.

“I’ve been fascinated by dinosaurs since I was a kid,” Mr. Kirkland said. “They’re so amazing and so big.”

But unlike most of the people in the hall clicking their shutters and gawking at the prehistoric beasts, Mr. Kirkland could not see the hulking skeletons clearly because he’s legally blind.

He was part of a group of nine blind photographers who visited the museum on a photography class field trip, offered through Visions, an organization based in Manhattan that provides services for the visually impaired. For many of the photographers, the class was an exciting new way to participate in the world and produce a creative product.

“I just love taking pictures and hearing people’s feedback, hearing their reactions to the photos,” Mr. Kirkland, 29, said. “But I’m also my own worst critic, so I’m never satisfied with what I do.”

The class tends to create intricate staged photographs and not the point-and-shoot type of photography common in places like the Museum of Natural History; it’s challenging for instructors to explain exhibits in a meaningful way to their students.

The group that visited the museum included some photographers who are legally blind but still have some vision and others who cannot see anything at all. Some were born blind, and others became visually impaired later in life.

“It’s nearly impossible to explain vision to someone who’s never seen,” said Mark Andres, who runs a photography class at Visions.“There’s no language to explain things like light direction.”

To sidestep these challenges, Mr. Andres said that the students staged their photos in class, usually based on memories from their childhood, while still creating vibrant images. In class, one student, Victorine Floyd-Fludd, recalled a childhood memory in which she rode a flimsy raft in the ocean that then flipped over. One of her classmates sat atop a table while everyone else waved a blue tarp and looped blue light to create the illusion of a dynamic sea.

Once the image is produced, instructors will describe it to the photographer, and if they don’t like what they hear, they’ll reshoot the scene.

“They’re not capturing reality,” said Betsy Fabricant, a senior administrator at Visions. “They’re capturing a feeling in someone’s mind.”

When they can, the photographers use aural cues to line up their shots. Before the tour, Mr. Andres showed Evelyn Larson how to put a camera to her forehead and point her head in the direction of something she’s interested in.

“And when you feel that you’re ready, just press the button,” he said.

But this method can be challenging in museums, where the subjects are encased in glass and mute, giving the photographers few, if any, cues as to their makeup.

The group’s movement through the museum was slow and deliberate as each person helped the others experience the exhibits. Those with better sight helped guide those who could not see. Others would grasp the arms of instructors who used physical cues to describe the dioramas.

In the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life, Mr. Andres walked with three students, their arms hooked in his, around the looming replica of a blue whale overhead.

“The whale is swimming right above us,” he said. “We’re walking up the belly of the whale. We’re at its flippers. We’re at its tail and it’s way up in the sky, now.”

“What does it look like?” Dale Layne asked.

Mr. Andres took both of his hands and guided them through the air in two converging arcs.

Then Mr. Layne understood. “Oh, like wings.”

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Judging a Dinosaur By its Cover

From Smithsonian: Judging a Dinosaur By its Cover
We love to bring dinosaurs back to life. From museum displays and academic papers to big-budget movies, we have an obsession with putting flesh on old bones. How much anatomical conjecture and artistic license is required to do so varies from dinosaur to dinosaur.

Some dinosaurs are known from a paltry collection of fragments and require a considerable among of reconstruction and restoration on the basis of better-known specimens of related species. Other dinosaurs are known from complete skeletons and require less osteological wrangling, but they still present the challenge of filling in the soft tissue anatomy that the skeleton supported in life. Every now and then, though, paleontologists discover skin impressions associated with the bones of dinosaurs. These rare fossils can give us a better idea of what the outside of some dinosaurs looked like.

Skin impressions are found most often with hadrosaurs. These herbivores, such as Edmontosaurus and the crested Corythosaurus, were plentiful and seemed to dwell in habitats where deceased dinosaurs could be buried rapidly by sediment, a key to the preservation of soft-tissue anatomy. In the roughly 68-million-year-old strata of Canada and Mongolia, for example, skeletons of two different species of the hadrosaur Saurolophus have been found associated with skin impressions. But these fossils can do more than help use restore the outer appearance. According to a new paper by University of Alberta paleontologist Phil Bell, subtle differences in Saurolophus skin traces can help paleontologists distinguish one species of dinosaur from on another on the basis of soft tissue anatomy alone.

In 1912, professional dinosaur hunter Barnum Brown named the hadrosaur Saurolophus osborni from skeletons found in Alberta’s Horseshoe Canyon Formation. Although not mentioned at the time, three skeletons of this species were associated with skin impressions from various parts of the body, including the jaw, hips, foot and tail. Forty years later, from skeletons found in a huge bonebed called the “Dragon’s Tomb” in Mongolia’s Nemegt Formation, paleontologist Anatoly Konstantinovich Rozhdestvensky named a second species, Saurolophus angustirostris. Numerous skin impressions were found with skeletons of this species, too. The fact that two Saurolophus species had been found with intact skin impressions provided Bell with a unique opportunity to compare the outer anatomy of two closely related dinosaurs.

Both Saurolophus species had pebbly skin. Like other hadrosaurs, the skin of these dinosaurs was primarily composed of non-overlapping scales or tubercles of varying shape. In detail, though, Bell ascertained that the skin of the two species differed enough that one species can be readily distinguished from the other.

Along the base of the tail, the North American species (S. osborni) had mosaic-like clusters of scales, while the species from Mongolia (S. angustirostris) seemed to have vertical bands of specialized scales interspersed with larger, rounded scales Bell terms “feature scales.” This pattern in S. angustirostris remained consistent in young and old individuals—evidence that this was a real pattern peculiar to this species and not just a matter of variation among individuals.

Frustratingly, the skin impressions from the North American species cover less of the body and come from fewer specimens than those from the Dragon’s Tomb. That limits the possible comparisons between the species. Still, based on the consistent differences between the Saurolophus species in the skin at the base of the tail, it appears that paleontologists might be able to use soft-tissue anatomy to identify and diagnose particular dinosaur species. This could be especially useful for the study of hadrosaurs. These dinosaurs are notoriously difficult to tell apart on the basis of their post-cranial skeleton, but Bell’s study hints that skin impressions might show prominent differences. Judging a dinosaur by its cover might not be such a bad idea.

References:

Bell, P. (2012). Standardized Terminology and Potential Taxonomic Utility for Hadrosaurid Skin Impressions: A Case Study for Saurolophus from Canada and Mongolia PLoS ONE, 7 (2) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0031295

iObserver Dinosaurs Roar to Life on the iPad with Stephen Fry

The source article has lots of photos. But the info is enough to decide to buy the ap.

From the Mac Observer: Dinosaurs Roar to Life on the iPad with Stephen Fry
Inside the World of Dinosaurs is a massive and glorious app for the iPad. It’s far from perfect, and at the price of US$14.95 it is pricey, but M5859 Studios has done a terrific job of creating a compelling and engaging overview of 60 dinosaurs and the world in which they lived. I would consider it a showpiece app for the iPad that really takes advantage of the graphic capabilities and the potential of dynamic audio of the iPad — espcially with some good earphones.

The dinosaurs are rendered in beautiful 3D, and many objects can be horizontally rotated 360º. A great number of graphics can be stretched to full screen and horizontally rotated, though you don’t get the expected stretch animation. Instead the screen re-draws to show the enlarged graphic. Tapping on a button brings you back to where you were.

When you start, you are presented with a clear instruction screen. This is a great idea since there are so many ways to use the app, many of which can get confusing. Most of what you need to know can be found on this screen:

The Instruction screen

You are shown how to enable narration, which is also printed, and how to rotate and enlarge graphics. Take note of the tabs on the bottom left and right of the screen. Tapping on the right tab will take you through the entire program starting with articles and going through the 60 dinosaurs and 22 pages of dinosaur hunters. The easiest way to get acquainted with the program is to turn on narration and enable auto-page turning. This allows you to listen to Stephen Fry’s wonderful voice reading the narration written by Alicia Barnes.

While doing this you can twirl objects around on a horizontal axis only, or stretch smaller pictures to full screen and rotate many of them. But herein lies a problem. If you enlarge a graphic and don’t return it to its normal size before the narration is done, everything stops. To continue, you need to tap on an X, return the screen to its original size, re-enable narration and auto page turning, and wait until the page you just heard is re-read to continue on in your journey.

An enlarged screen

There are two other problems in using this linear approach that I hope will be fixed in a later version. Firstly there is no way to stop, so if you want to see the whole show, you need to devote five hours of viewing time since there is no way to pause and save your place outside of leaving the program and coming back while it’s still in memory. I did find a way around it, but it’s not obvious. If you click on the index, and you’re involved in the articles you’ll see a listing of articles in the order they are presented. You can leave the app and when returning go to the index, find where you were, re-enable auto page turning and narration and continue, but there must be a better way.

Another problem in this linear approach is that if you tap on one of the highlighted white links, you’ll be taken to the proper page, but there is no apparent way of gettiing back to where you were before you tapped.

The Timeline

The Timeline is a different way of navigating the program and comes in quite handy once you’ve gone through the 22 articles that provide context and background. Starting at the Triassic period, which was 250 to 200 million years ago, scroll horizontally to see where each of the 60 dinosaurs falls in both period and millions of years ago. Tap on one and you’ll be brought to the animated page of that dinosaur. Navigating this way is easy. Just tap on Timeline again and you’ll find it easy to get around.

Search by Period

Another way of getting around is by tapping on buttons for periods: Triassic, Jurassic or Cretaceous. This brings up the screen shown above with a verticle picture of each beast that lived in the chosen period. Again getting back to where you were is easy by use of the period buttons.

Search by Article

This will take you individually through the 22 articles that start the linear tour. Each gives you background that will give the dinosaurs context. They are in the same order as the linear tour.

Rotating and Enlarging Objects

Most everything can be rotated and enlarged to full screen size but some of the smaller graphics like the ones shown above, when enlarged and rotated are a bit blurry. They were apparently rendered in the small size as shown on the screen of six objects, so when one is blown up to full screen, the clarity of the graphic suffers.

Dinosaur Hunters

Along with the beasts are stories about 15 famous dinosaur hunters. Tap on a picture and you’ll get the story. The attention to detail is so great that the frames housing the portraits are indicative of frames used during the lifetimes of hunters they surround. This is just one indication of how much attention to detail was put into this extensive app. The rendering of the dinosaurs, the profuse animation and the number of things that you can rotate is nearly mind boggling. Definitely demonstration quality. The app is quite large weighing in at 891 MB.

Stephen Fry’s narration is wonderful. A better choice could not have been made. He brings a sense of immediacy and excitement to sometimes dry text. And tapping on the name of any dinosaur causes Mr. Fry to pronounce the name slowly and clearly. The only problem I found with the narration is that sometimes, when not in a linear mode, the vocal track takes a second to buffer and sometimes the first few words of the narration do not get spoken, at least that is the case on my first generation iPad. Perhaps this would not happen with a quicker processor.

I do grouse, but I really do like this app. The information is solid, the artwork is steller, the animation and interaction is wonderful and the voice of Mr. Fry is thing of beauty.

If they just fixed the navigation problems and the flow of the program it would be perfect. I’m hoping they do just that.

Monday, February 6, 2012

Despite fundraising success, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department still digging out of deep budget hole

From Texas Star-Telegram: Despite fundraising success, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department still digging out of deep budget hole
The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has pulled in $1.14 million in donations to help its drought-ravaged and fire-singed parks system overcome a $4.6 million budget shortfall.

But contributions from nearly 2,000 park lovers aren't likely to fix the cash-strapped system's mounting money problems, the agency's chief conceded last week, nearly two months after the department made an unprecedented plea for public assistance.

"Time will tell, but my personal opinion is that I don't think we are going to be able to get out of this situation we're in with $5 at a time," Executive Director Carter Smith said.

"We have a lot of ground to make up. In addition to this $4.6 million campaign to keep state parks open, we've incurred probably at a minimum $10 million in damages from wildfires. I don't know where we are going to find those funds," he said, noting that recent rains exacerbated the fiscal drain by washing out roads at Bastrop State Park, where a September wildfire denuded 96 percent of the forest landscape.

"It remains to be seen if we can meet the totality of this challenge. We're going to be facing some tough decisions," said Smith, adding that park closures and more staff layoffs will be among the hard choices if the drought persists.

"We've had a couple of very large, catalytic gifts. We're ecstatic at the generosity of the gifts at all levels; they are deeply appreciated," he said. "This speaks to the fact that Texans care about the future of their state parks.

"That being said, this is not the kind of campaign you can sustain year after year. We're going to have to figure out other alternatives," Smith said.

"Right now it looks like we are pushing a rock uphill."

The heat effect

The $4.6 million parks predicament was brought on by a convergence of fiscal factors.

First, the Legislature reduced park funding by $23.3 million for 2012-13, forcing the closure of two regional offices and the loss of 76 full-time positions.

Lawmakers also authorized an ambitious budget strategy that included the parks department raising an additional $3 million in park fees and $1.6 million annually from an optional vehicle registration donation program that didn't take effect until Jan. 1.

But in the meantime, park fees plunged due to a record Texas drought that dried up lakes and streams, causing a nearly 30 percent decline in freshwater fishing licenses.

Worse yet, the state's hottest summer ever kept campers and hikers at home. During August, visitation was down more than 50 percent at Guadalupe River and Dinosaur Valley state parks, where picturesque streams are the major attractions.

Visitor fees generate about half of the $69 million operating budget for the state parks

During its first month, the motor vehicle registration option generated nearly $80,000, but that's far short of the $133,000 per month needed to raise $1.6 million.

Last week, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission approved adding boat registrations to the check-off program.

Big-ticket donations

Two large contributions got the fundraising off to a solid start.

In January, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation donated $500,000, said Dick Davis, executive director of the group that has raised more than $70 million for the agency since 1991, including $35 million in the last six years.

The foundation normally raises money for the department's capital projects such as land acquisition, he said.

"We have the discretion if we have money available to do more than that. The board decided that since we are doing fairly well these days, we would give the $500,000 contribution to jump-start that effort," he said

The foundation recently started a direct mail effort and is sending donation proposals to individuals and corporations.

"The parks campaign has become our No. 1 focus. There was no precedent; we had no idea we would pass $1 million as quick as we did. We are not getting huge amounts on average, but we are getting hundreds of contributions. And we think there will probably be a lot of repeat customers. In coming weeks we probably will hear from some funding sources that will contribute larger amounts," he said.

The Lufkin-based T.L.L. Temple Foundation, established in 1962 in honor of lumberman Thomas Lewis Latane Temple, the founder of Temple Industries, donated $250,000.

Most of the foundation's grants are centered in East Texas, but it does statewide grants "when we think it's appropriate," said Buddy Temple, chairman of the foundation's board of trustees.

Temple Industries once owned more than 1 million acres of Texas timberland, he said.

"Our family has always been interested in parks; we've been aligned with parks and wildlife department forever," said Temple, who said underfunding parks is a short-sighted policy.

"I'm pretty disgusted with the Legislature and state leadership. They are taking us down the road to a Third World country," he said.

Mild winter weather boosted park numbers in January, but Smith said he's closely watching long-term forecasts.

"We're awfully concerned about predications of the resurgence of La Niña drought conditions and how long that will persist into the summer," he said.

New Mexico's Natural History Musuem

The New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science (1801 Mountain NW) and its offsite educational facility, the Sandia Mountain Natural History Center (60 Columbine, Cedar Crest), are free - to state residents - on the first Sunday of every month.

The brand-new Dinosaur Century exhibition at the Natural History Museum chronicles 100 years of fossil discovery in New Mexico, or stop by the Sandia Mountain center for a 10 a.m. lecture on dinosaurs that lived in the Land of Enchantment. Visit nmnaturalhistory.org for more information.

Friday, February 3, 2012

Why Dinosaurs Were So Huge

From Discovery.com: Why Dinosaurs Were So Huge
What allowed dinosaurs to get so big? A few factors were at play, including bird-like lungs, egg-laying and less need to chew.

THE GIST
* Some dinosaurs may have grown to huge sizes because of their efficient bird-like lungs and egg-laying.
* Not all dinosaurs became bigger as they evolved, however.
* Humans will likely never evolve to become gigantic due to our warm-blooded bodies that could overheat at much larger sizes.

How did some dinosaurs reach such soaring heights -- up to 100 feet high in some cases? Efficient lungs and respiration, along with egg laying, might have given dinos a growth edge when compared to other animals, suggests new research.

The study also negates a popular theory that animals tended to become bigger over the course of their evolution.

While some dinosaurs grew ever larger over subsequent generations, not all did.

"We look at the early history of archosaurs, including some early dinosaurs," said Roger Benson who co-authored the study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. "We can see that some lineages obtained gigantic body sizes, but others remained small and a few showed evolutionary size reductions."

"Although mammal-like reptiles are small, and dinosaurs in general are big, by the end of our study period, this did not occur to be directed by evolutionary trends. Instead, large-bodied mammal-like reptiles became preferentially extinct, and archosaurs radiated to fill a wide range of body sizes, including giant."

Benson, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Cambridge, explained that "pterosaurs, the flying reptiles, are a good example of a lineage that remained small during our study interval. There were also many small herbivores, like the dinosaur Heterodontosaurus, and small predators like the dinosaur Coelophysis."

Benson and colleagues Roland Sookias and Richard Butler analyzed more than 400 species spanning the Late Permian to Middle Jurassic periods. The animals' pattern of growth during 100 million years supports a theory called "passive diffusion." This just means that various evolutionary lineages did a bunch of different things, from growing larger to growing smaller.

The findings counter a theory known as "Cope's rule," which claims that some groups, such as dinosaurs, tended to always evolve bigger bodies over time.

There is no question, however, that many dinosaurs were mega huge, at least when compared to today's land animals.

"Several aspects of dinosaurian biology may have allowed them to obtain larger maximum sizes than any other land animals," Benson said.

"For example, in many dinosaurs, parts of the skeleton contained air, and we think they had an efficient bird-like lung. These features helped them to support their weight on land more easily, and made their respiration and heat exchange more effective than in mammals."

Benson adds that since larger animals can lay more eggs and reproduce more quickly, there may have been a reproductive advantage to being big.

Brian McNab, a professor of zoology at the University of Florida, has also studied dinosaur growth trends. He thinks the biggest dinos ate often and moved little.

"The large herbivorous dinosaurs undoubtedly spent much of their day feeding," McNab told Discovery News. "One should notice that the heads of dinosaurs related to the size of the bodies were very small, which means that the dinosaurs spent little time chewing the food, so most processing occurred in the gut, therefore the process of eating was probably inexpensive."

"This is very different from the behavior of most herbivorous mammals, which have large heads that house many teeth and spend much time chewing," McNab explained.

Benson thinks it's unlikely that any land animals today, including humans, could ever evolve to become as large as the biggest dinosaurs were.

"Mammals, including humans, are warm-blooded and generate a lot of heat internally," he explained. "This becomes a problem at large body sizes as there is a danger of overheating. It's possible that many extinct archosaurs, including dinosaurs, were intermediate between cold-blooded and warm-blooded physiologies."

"If so, then temperature physiology would not have imposed limits on their body size," he added. "But it would certainly limit that of giant humans."

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Oldest fossilized dinosaur eggs ever found

From Examiner: Oldest fossilized dinosaur eggs ever found
Research made public in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on January 23, 2012, details the discovery of dinosaur eggs, embryos, nests, and reproductive behavior never before known and never as old

The fossils detail 190 million year old nesting sites of the prosauropod dinosaur Massospondylus in sedimentary rocks from the Early Jurassic Period in the Golden Gate Highlands National Park in South Africa

Most impressive are the multiple imprints of "baby dinosaur" foot prints at several of the sites.

Ten nests of varying size and at varying depths (depth usually is indicative of increasing age) were discovered that contained as many as 34 eggs in clustered clutches.

The placement of the nests and the placement of the eggs as well as the small footprints indicate dinosaurs (at least Massospondylus) displayed behaviors known to be associated with dinosaurs remains that are much less recent (younger).

The Massospondylus mothers returned to the same nest and same nesting area repeatedly. Females from the same herd or family laid their eggs in the same area. The eggs found were neatly and closely arranged indicating the mother caused that arrangement.

This is the oldest known discovery that indicates these behaviors in Massospondylus.

Robert Reisz, a paleontologist from the University of Toronto (Mississauga), David Evans of the Royal Ontario Museum, Drs. Hans-Dieter Sues (Smithsonian Institute, USA), Eric Roberts (James Cook University, Australia), and Adam Yates (University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa)are responsible for the discovery and analysis.

"An exhibition currently on display at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) until May 2012, Dinosaurs Eggs and Babies: Remarkable Fossils from South Africa features the oldest fossilized dinosaur eggs with embryos ever found, as well as other impressive discoveries."