Live Science: How Dinosaurs Got So Huge
Among dinosaurs, the biggest of the big is Argentinosaurus. This long-necked, puny-headed creature is a member of a group of giants called sauropods. This particular extinct creature measured as much as 140 feet (43 meters) long and weighed up to 90 tons (82 metric tons).
Beyond inspiring awe, a creature of these proportions inspires all sorts of questions: Why and how did these dinosaurs, which started out relatively small, become so big? How did they feed and maintain their large bodies? A new exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City explores the mysteries surrounding their enormity.
The exhibit is dominated by a model of Mamenchisaurus, a smaller relative to Argentinosaurus. The skin is peeled back on half of the model to allow a peek into the animal's physiology. On the left side of the abdomen, projected images show body processes, such as the path of fresh air into the lungs and a birdlike system of air-storage sacs.
Large sauropods needed more air and more food than smaller creatures. A young adult Mamenchisaurus, for example, needed to consume 100,000 calories a day to maintain itself. This nutrition came from leaves and other plant material they snipped and stripped before gulping their meal down.
The long neck — for Mamenchisaurus it was 30 feet (9 meters) — made their enormous body size workable, allowing them to the reach to feed themselves efficiently. Sauropods used their necks to reach food without moving their more lumbering bodies. And in turn, the long neck — itself very light — was possible because of the dinosaur's small head, with the largest of sauropod brains weighing only 4 ounces (113 grams) as compared with the 48-ounce (1.4 kilograms) human brain.
The sauropod habit of gulping down its dinner is also crucial, according to P. Martin Sander, a co-curator of the exhibit and professor of vertebrate paleontology at the University of Bonn.
"Chewing limits body size," Sander said, explaining that animals that rely on chewing, like many mammals, depend on big molars and muscles to grind up their food to make nutrients available. As an animal gets larger, it needs progressively more energy, and eventually this cumbersome system can't provide it with enough calories.
Sauropods, meanwhile, had teeth, but they did not chew. The earliest sauropods had spoon-shaped teeth that made for a powerful bite, and later, some evolved pencil-tip-shaped teeth that functioned like rakes, stripping away leaves and needles from trees.
Another factor has kept mammals from reaching sauropod size: reproduction. Sauropods could lay 150 eggs in a year, making them more capable of bouncing back from a given catastrophe than mammals, which invest much more in fewer offspring. This means sauropods could exist at a much lower density in a given area than mammals without being wiped out, according to Sander. Lower density living makes larger body size possible because each individual has access to more resources.
"It's pretty clear what the limiting factors are in body size, that's what we've learned from studying dinosaurs," he said.
Even sauropods did not reach the theoretical maximum for size for land animals, which has been estimated at 150 to 200 tons, Sander said.
Baby sauropods did not start out large. They emerged from eggs smaller than a soccer ball and grew at astonishing rates of up to 12 pounds (5.4 kg) per day, according to Michael Novacek, a senior vice president at the museum. This rapid growth rate implies a high rate of metabolism, and therefore, warm- bloodedness, for at least a period during the sauropods' life span, according to Novacek.
There is no question that sauropods were successful: They walked the Earth for 140 million years.
Exhibit Details:
The World's Largest Dinosaurs
April 16, 2011 through Jan. 2, 2012
American Museum of Natural History in New York City
http://www.amnh.org/
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Smithsonian Paleobiologist: Discover new species of Dinosaur, New Mexico dig
Washington DC Examiner: Smithsonian Paleobiologist: Discover new species of Dinosaur, New Mexico dig
Smithsonian Institution team of scientists has discovered a new species revealed in a fossilized dinosaur skull and neck vertebrae, an evolutionary link between two groups of dinosaurs. The new species, Daemonosaurus chauliodus, was discovered at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico. The team’s findings are published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Wednesday, April 13.
“Various features of the skull and neck in Daemonosaurus indicate that it was intermediate between the earliest known predatory dinosaurs from South America and more advanced theropod dinosaurs,” said Hans Sues, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and lead author of the team’s findings.
“One such feature is the presence of cavities on some of the neck vertebrae related to the structure of the respiratory system.”This new discovery shows that there is still much to be learned about the early evolution of dinosaurs. “The continued exploration of even well-studied regions like the American Southwest will still yield remarkable new fossil finds,” Sues said.
These early predatory dinosaurs evolutionary position was controversial due to a gap in fossil records between present and later theropod (beast-footed) dinosaurs. The Smithsonian team’s discovery of Daemonosaurus chauliodus filled this gap.
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Only the skull and neck of Daemonosaurus were found, the total length of the new species is unknown. The dinosaur’s skull is narrow and relatively deep, from the tip of its snout to the back of the skull and has proportionately large eye sockets.
The upper jaw has large, forward-slanted front teeth, and this feature helped to name the new species. The name Daemonosaurus (Greek for evil spirit) and “sauros” (meaning lizard or reptile), because it was found on the Ghost Ranch in a Southwestern state.
The species name chauliodus (Greek for “buck-toothed”) refers to this species’ big slanted front teeth, and dated on timeline in latest Triassic Period immediately before the Jurassic Period, therefore, dated 205 million years ago, Daemonosaurus (evil spirit lizard), and the most primitive theropod species existed before the 'evil spirit lizard'.
The discovery altered all previous beliefs of earliest dinosaurs vanishing millions of years earlier. The skull and neck vertebrae of Daemonosaurus revealed several features similar to those in later neo-theropods —the consequential group after the Daemonsaurus chauliodus on the evolutionary timeline; therefore, a missing link and a new species.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Desert Detours: World’s Biggest Dinosaurs
HiDesertStar: Desert Detours: World’s Biggest Dinosaurs
Story and photos by Cpl. M. C. Nerl
Combat Correspondent
Warning: If you have not seen Jurassic Park in a while, do not visit this place until you obtain a DVD copy of the film. I am not advertising for it, this place is just full of “awesome,” and will compel you to run out and rent or buy the movie.
With that said, this week’s edition of Desert Detours has taken us back in time, not only to my own childhood, but also to the olden days of taking a road trip across country with the family, not to mention the pre-historic era of the dinosaurs.
The World’s Biggest Dinosaurs are located in “scenic” Cabazon, Calif., and were featured in “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure.” This is what truly drew me to the attraction.
Mr. Rex, a 65-foot-tall Tyrannosaurus Rex, and Dinny, a 45-foot-tall Apatosaurus are the product of a former Knott’s Berry Farm sculptor, by the name of Claude Bell. The later addition of the robotic dinosaur exhibit only added to the place’s coolness.
Although Bell passed away, and ownership of the dinosaurs has changed hands, they are still bringing joy to people of all ages, and trust me - even at the ripe old age of 22, I enjoyed the hell out of them.
The exhibit has an awesome retro feel to it, and reeks of 1970s America and Jimmy Carter. The restaurant next door does too, but we will get to that later.
Throughout the entire course of exhibits, it was hard to miss certain religious connotations and facts contradicting evolution and some scientific theories - so, if you’re a serious evolutionist, be warned.
The robotic dinosaurs are awesome, and always on the move. In addition to that, the gift shop has stuff you totally know you wanted to have when you were 10 or 12 or 22.
The outside portion of the robotic exhibit is pretty neat too, even though the grand tour ends not going out, but “up” Mr. Rex, a dinosaur sculpture. Truth is, the stairway really leads up the side, but it makes for a good picture from certain angles.
The inside of Mr. Rex is quite fun. His walls are lined with cave paintings, fun interesting facts and smaller models of other dinosaurs. The view at the top is especially cool. It’s probably how it looked inside Godzilla’s mouth in that awful remake back in like, 2000, (seriously you know he would have crushed that cab in his mouth. There is NO WAY those people would have survived).
Dinny is open seven days a week, while Mr. Rex and the other exhibits are only open on weekends.
The military-friendly owners of the site were kind enough to offer a discounted price of $5 to access the super-cool, pre-historic world on weekends.
The 24-hour Wheel Inn Restaurant next door is a whole different monster - one delicious monster.
The Rex and Dino burgers come in multiple stacks of properly-cooked, delicious meat patties at a pretty good price, considering how much food you get.
Don’t worry though, unless you’re near or over your height and weight limit. If you are, you may have to go on a dino-sized run after eating all those calories and carbs.
Overall, if you don’t mind the underlying conflict between the theories of creation and evolution, the dinos area is a great roadside attraction to check out on your way to San Diego. It’s also a good afternoon pit stop on your way back to the Combat Center after a long weekend.
The World’s Largest Dinosaurs get 3 out of 5 palm trees. They’d probably get four if they sold beer.
Editor’s Note: “Desert Detours” is a weekly series exploring opportunities for Marines and sailors from a firsthand perspective. All material included therein is the opinion of the writer and does not imply an endorsement by the U.S. Marine Corps or the Department of Defense.
Giants Who Scarfed Down Fast-Food Feasts
The New York Times - Science: Giants Who Scarfed Down Fast-Food Feasts
Nothing in the dinosaur world was quite like the sauropods. They were huge, some unbelievably gigantic, the biggest animals ever to lumber across the land, consuming everything in sight. Their necks were much longer than a giraffe’s, their tails just about as long and their bodies like an elephant’s, only much more so.
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Wide-eyed first graders are not the only ones fascinated by sauropods, particularly those outsize friends Apatosaurus (formerly known as Brontosaurus), Brachiosaurus and Diplodocus. Scientists are redoubling their study of the unusual biology of these amazing plant-eaters. They are asking questions not unlike, in spirit, those of schoolchildren.
By what physiological strategy of heart, lungs and metabolism were the largest of sauropod species able to thrive over a span of 140 million years? How did they possibly get enough to eat to grow so hefty, to lengths of 15 to 150 feet and estimated weights of up to 70 tons? A mere elephant has to eat 18 hours a day to get its fill. Even in the Mesozoic era, there were only 24 hours in a day.
For more than seven years, a group of German and Swiss scientists has made a concerted effort to test the limits of body size in terrestrial vertebrates and, in the process, try to answer these and other questions related to the enigma of sauropod gigantism. Findings by many other scientists have been reviewed and analyzed, then tested with new experiments and more observations.
“We actually have been re-engineering a sauropod,” said P. Martin Sander, a paleontologist at the University of Bonn and leader of the research team. “We are looking for physical advantages it had over other large animals and assessing various hypotheses.”
One clear explanation has emerged: These were the ultimate fast-food gourmands. Reaching all around with their long necks, these giants gulped down enormous meals. With no molars in their relatively small heads, they were unequipped for serious chewing. They let the digestive juices of their capacious bodies break down their heaping intake while they just kept packing away more chow.
This was seemingly the only efficient way for sauropods to satisfy their appetites and to diversify into some 120 genera, beginning more than 200 million years ago. They eventually dominated the landscape for a long run through the Cretaceous, only to die out with all nonavian dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
The German-Swiss team of paleontologists, biologists and other scientists, financed by the German Research Foundation, has now weighed in with its comprehensive report “Biology of the Sauropod Dinosaurs,” a book published last month by Indiana University Press. Dr. Sander is one of the book’s editors and also guest curator of a major exhibition, “The World’s Largest Dinosaurs,” opening Saturday at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan and scheduled to run until Jan. 2, 2012.
A centerpiece of the show will be a life-size model of a 60-foot female Mamenchisaurus, whose fossilized bones were discovered in China. An early and not especially large sauropod, it lived 160 million years ago, laid eggs and possibly lived in a herd. It weighed 13 tons and ate 1,150 pounds of vegetation a day. The model focuses attention on the animal’s 30-foot neck and small skull and jaws to illustrate the remarkable biology and behavior of sauropods.
Early in their investigations, material scientists in the German-Swiss group proposed that sauropod bone had superior mechanical properties compared with large mammal bone, which would have given these dinosaurs stronger skeletons to support heftier bodies. The hypothesis was tossed aside after tests showed that sauropod and cow bone tissue had the same strength.
Then the investigators found no evidence that availability of food and the physical and chemical conditions in the Mesozoic era were sufficiently different to have accounted for sauropod gigantism. If anything, the environment then was probably less favorable for plant and animal life than it is today. So the researchers directed their efforts to a detailed examination of the biological makeup of these giants.
Dr. Sander noted in the book that the new study was one of the few dinosaur projects in which paleontologists were outnumbered by nonpaleontologists, mainly biologists. Mark A. Norell, a dinosaur paleontologist at the American Museum and principal curator of the exhibition, remarked, “This shows how biological our field has become.”
In a recent interview televised from his office in Bonn, Dr. Sander pointed to an illustration of the dinosaur’s anatomy. “What makes a sauropod a sauropod is its most conspicuous feature, its enormously long neck,” he said.
The animals had the longest necks for their body size of any dinosaur known. Dr. Sander and his colleagues think that two of the sauropod’s primitive inheritances probably account for this. One was the absence of mastication, and the other its egg-laying reproduction.
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A small head, of course, took a load off the sauropod neck, presumably allowing it to grow longer. Even so, the neck had to be bolstered with more vertebrae than mammals have. These bones are light for their large size, because they are hollowed out with many air pockets. Mammals, even the giraffe with a six-foot neck, are limited to no more than seven neck vertebrae; the Mamenchisaurus neck had 19.
The sauropod’s neck became what the hook-and-ladder is to a firefighter: a means of extended reach that could be critical. It gave these animals an ability to graze a much wider radius of ground vegetation without moving a step. Dr. Norell said that biomechanical studies indicated that the long necks may not have able to stretch higher to browse in trees, as giraffes do.
In any event, sauropods could outcompete other plant eaters and over time, as one scientist wrote, “enter the niche of giants.” And their consequent gigantism was perhaps their best defense against predators, intimidating even the neighborhood T. rex.
Sauropods took a long while evolving their body plan, which, in silhouette, became the ubiquitous logo of Sinclair oil back in the mid-20th century. But the retention of another of its primitive features, egg-laying, increases the number of offspring and thus improves the chances of long-term survival of a family of species — and time enough to innovate.
In a 2008 summary in the journal Science of the project’s preliminary findings, Dr. Sander and Marcus Clauss, a dinosaur specialist at the University of Zurich, wrote that sauropods gradually evolved what appeared to be a high growth rate, a birdlike respiratory system and a flexible metabolic rate.
One conclusion is that their very young grew rapidly: A human baby doubles in weight in about five months, a sauropod in only five days; and an adolescent sauropod put on 3,500 pounds a year. These are growth rates higher than in today’s reptiles. They enabled these dinosaurs to reach sexual maturity in their second decade of life and full size in their third.
Stopping at an exhibit being readied for the new museum show, Dr. Norell pointed to an illustration of how heart rates are related to an organism’s size. The heart of a mouse beats 700 times a minute; a human, 72; an elephant, 28; a sauropod, less than 10.
Dr. Sander cited the bird-lung model as an important innovation. If correct, he said in the interview, this and other evidence suggests that sauropods were warm-blooded to some extent. “If an elephant had birdlike lungs, it would grow even bigger,” he speculated.
The fact that dinosaurs’ distant relative the crocodile has a respiratory system somewhat like a bird’s suggested to scientists that it might also have been true of sauropods. All the air-sac cavities in their long neck and torso resemble those in birds. Also, it might explain how animals with such long windpipes managed to draw in and absorb sufficient oxygen.
In time, however, sauropods seemed to feast on their enormous size. Writing in the project’s book, Dr. Clauss said that these giants “might represent a rare example of herbivores that actually benefit from an increase in body size, in terms of a larger gut and a longer retention of food in that gut.”
The bigger they got, in other words, the greater their capacity to store vast food intake in digestive chambers. Galapagos tortoises, which eat and don’t chew, have stomach chambers that hold food for up to 11 days, giving microbes time to break it down and extract the nourishment.
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Get Science News From The New York Times » Dr. Clauss of Zurich and Jürgen Hummel of the University of Bonn conducted fermentation experiments mixing micro-organisms with contents of sheep stomachs and various plants, including horsetail plants, cycads, pine needles and ginkgo leaves known to have been growing when sauropods foraged. From this and other evidence, they estimate that the giants probably took two weeks to digest an all-day dinner.
Other scientists, who are not involved in the study, said the experiments and analysis by the German-Swiss group provide an impressive body of knowledge about how some dinosaurs grew so big and why sauropods, in evolutionary terms, were so successful over a span of 140 million years and a global range.
“I’m not sure they’ve hit the nail on the head, always,” Peter Dodson, a University of Pennsylvania paleontologist, said of Dr. Sander’s team. “But they have certainly a number of important insights.”
Dr. Dodson agreed with the researchers on the long neck’s critical place in sauropod biology and the growth rates of sauropod bones that appear to show the animals had metabolic rates closer to those of mammals than those of reptiles. But this does not necessarily mean, he said, that sauropods were fully warm-blooded.
In the team’s book, Dr. Clauss conceded that there was debate on the metabolic rates and a lack of consensus on the nature of the sauropod cardiovascular system. He noted that among many scientists a direct link between the sauropod respiratory system and gigantism “is not yet compelling.”
The research, Dr. Dodson added, raises the related question of why mammals have never approached in size the larger sauropods. Some extinct Asian rhinoceros species that reached weights of 15 tons were the closest mammals came. “They were to mammals what sauropods were to dinosaurs,” he said. “But it was not a successful body plan in their time, an idea that went nowhere.”
Paul Sereno, a dinosaur fossil hunter at the University of Chicago, said the new research “is very valuable,” but he doubted there was enough hard evidence to support the bird-lung hypothesis. Still, he said, the sauropod “is an incredible animal, one of the best land animals that’s been invented.”
Monday, April 11, 2011
Researchers find remains of herbivorous dinosaurs in Madhya Pradesh
The Hindu: Researchers find remains of herbivorous dinosaurs in Madhya Pradesh
Herbivorous dinosaurs, along with crocodiles, existed in the Narmada valley around eight crore years ago, according to researchers, who have found remains of these two animals near here.
“We have found the bones of herbivorous dinosaurs and the jaw of a crocodile during excavations at neighbouring Dhar district,” Vishal Verma, head of the researchers group Mangal Panchaytan Parishad, said.
A close look at the crocodile’s jaw indicates that it was 15 feet long, he said.
Mr. Verma said their organisation, which had been conducting research in the region for the last couple of years, has during excavation found dinosaur eggs and bones in the past.
Madhya Pradesh government already has plans to set up a dinosaur fossil park in Dhar district.
According to Mr. Verma, the Narmada valley in western Madhya Pradesh has been a witness to volcanic eruptions and other activities, which had brought tremendous changes in its environs.
Studies also suggest that the area was once an ocean, which disappeared later, he added.
Herbivorous dinosaurs, along with crocodiles, existed in the Narmada valley around eight crore years ago, according to researchers, who have found remains of these two animals near here.
“We have found the bones of herbivorous dinosaurs and the jaw of a crocodile during excavations at neighbouring Dhar district,” Vishal Verma, head of the researchers group Mangal Panchaytan Parishad, said.
A close look at the crocodile’s jaw indicates that it was 15 feet long, he said.
Mr. Verma said their organisation, which had been conducting research in the region for the last couple of years, has during excavation found dinosaur eggs and bones in the past.
Madhya Pradesh government already has plans to set up a dinosaur fossil park in Dhar district.
According to Mr. Verma, the Narmada valley in western Madhya Pradesh has been a witness to volcanic eruptions and other activities, which had brought tremendous changes in its environs.
Studies also suggest that the area was once an ocean, which disappeared later, he added.
Dinosaurs! An awe-inspiring look at the life of these gigantic creatures
NYDailyNews.com: Dinosaurs! An awe-inspiring look at the life of these gigantic creatures
The newest — and probably largest — New Yorker goes by the name of Mamenchisaurus,
and just as for many New Yorkers, moving to her new digs has been a battle.
Mamenchisaurus is the tractor-trailer-size star of "The World's Largest Dinosaurs," an exhibit opening at the American Museum of Natural History on Saturday.
The colossal creature, a female, took 100 people two years to create. She's an awesome example of long-necked, long-tailed sauropods.
But there's a reason for the show-stopping size.
"It's made in the way that those old invisible human models used to be," explains the exhibit's curator, Mark Norell. "One side of it appears as the way the animal would have looked in life. But on the other side, the skin is pulled back to reveal muscles, bones, organs and the mechanics of the inside of the animal and how it worked.
"We actually animate a lot of the internal organs by projecting on the outside of it, so that we can talk about the different layers of the anatomy and see things like the lungs work and heart beat and food passing through the animal," he adds. "So it's a very dynamic, lively sort of thing."
The hulking herbivore — that's right, sauropods got that big eating plants alone — is made out of polyurethane, synthetic material commonly used as a packing foam.
"We constructed it by sculpting a small version of it about 6 feet long," Norell says. "Then that was laser-scanned, and molds for the full-size model were then prototyped off of that."
The Mamenchisaurus stands 11 feet tall and stretches 60 feet long, but she isn't even half as big as some sauropods grew to be. That would be 150 feet long.
The latest technology is used to explain almost everything imaginable about the extinct creature — like how long it lived, how long it took to grow, how much food it ate, and how big its eggs and babies were.
"And not just those facts, but how we were able to figure this stuff out, is really the force behind the exhibit," says Norell. "It goes through the process of discovery and why we think we can calculate these numbers like the heart beating only a few times per minute."
A re-creation of another sauropod, the Argentinosaurus, will greet guests as they enter the exhibit. Or its neck and head — the size of a large garbage can — will, anyway.
"It will be peering at you through the forest," Norell reveals. "It's the largest [land] animal that we know of right now."
Not much is known about the Argen Museum exhibits, shows and walking tours are sprouting up around the boroughs this spring, and some are definitely more thrilling than others. From a BubbleMania show in Queens, to a display of daring designs by the late
Alexander McQueen, here are the most exciting of the bunch:
It's open this weekend through April 29 at the Coney Island Museum, 1208 Surf Ave., Brooklyn. Museum entrance costs just 99 cents, but the live acts will cost extra. For more info, visit spectacularium.org.tinosaurus. "The animal is so big that it's rather incompletely excavated," he adds. "It's about 150 feet long," the length of several school buses.
There are lots of interactive, hands-on aspects to the exhibit that let visitors do math experiments to figure things out about how these dinosaurs lived and even what color they might have been.
But there will also be actual sauropod fossils on display.
"We use them to illustrate certain points, like how their bones evolved to compensate for this great size," Norell explains. "We have quite a few real bones of things like a Barosaurus. We have a Diplodocus skull on display. They're not just for, 'Wow, this is a real fossil.' We use those to point to particular aspects of their anatomy and talk about some of the evolutionary and ecological attributes that these animals had."
While most exhibits have a hands-off policy, there will be some touch-me specimens. "Among those, we have the teeth of the Diplodocus, the teeth of the Camarasaurus and dinosaur egg shells which you can touch," says Norell.
The museum's permanent dinosaur exhibit, completed in 1996 and upgraded last year, is still its most-visited gallery. While the longstanding exhibit highlights the relationships among different dinosaurs, the new one focuses on the biology of a particular type.
"This is a very different kind of dinosaur show and one that allows you to really visualize these animals as living, breathing creatures," says Norell, "and not just as bones."
Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty
The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art has organized about 100 examples of Alexander McQueen's work (l). They cover everything from the British designer's postgraduate collection of 1992 to his final runway presentation, which took place after his death last year. Some of his signature designs on display will be his bumster trouser, kimono jacket and origami frock coat. Also on view are his pieces that reflect the exaggerated silhouettes of the 1860s, 1880s, 1890s and 1950s.
The exhibit runs May 4-July 31, and the cost is included with admission
to the Met (1000 Fifth Ave., at 82nd St.). Adults $20, seniors (65 and over) $15, students $10, kids under 12 accompanied by an adult are free.
BubbleMania: Science, Art & Comedy! with Casey Carle
Every kid likes bubbles. But even adults enjoy the sudsy fun of the BubbleMania show. It's led by Casey Carle (l.), who went to Ringling Bros. Clown College and has worked as a bubble consultant for companies like Cirque du Soleil and Discovery Channel. During the 30-minute show, he'll form fog bubbles, funky foam, helium bubbles, vortex bubbles and bubbles that burst into flames. Carle even uses a huge Hoberman sphere to create bubbles. After the show, kids and their families can head to the permanent Bubble Table at the New York Hall of Science to make their own.
BubbleMania runs April 16-24 at the Hall of Science (47-01 111th St., Queens). Showtimes are at 1 & 2 p.m.; additional performances April 22 at 3 p.m. and April 24 at noon. BubbleMania is $4, plus admission dinomight!
An awe-inspiring new exhibit sizes up the life of the gigantic creatures to the Hall (nysci.org), which is $11 for adults and $8 for kids.
The newest — and probably largest — New Yorker goes by the name of Mamenchisaurus,
and just as for many New Yorkers, moving to her new digs has been a battle.
Mamenchisaurus is the tractor-trailer-size star of "The World's Largest Dinosaurs," an exhibit opening at the American Museum of Natural History on Saturday.
The colossal creature, a female, took 100 people two years to create. She's an awesome example of long-necked, long-tailed sauropods.
But there's a reason for the show-stopping size.
"It's made in the way that those old invisible human models used to be," explains the exhibit's curator, Mark Norell. "One side of it appears as the way the animal would have looked in life. But on the other side, the skin is pulled back to reveal muscles, bones, organs and the mechanics of the inside of the animal and how it worked.
"We actually animate a lot of the internal organs by projecting on the outside of it, so that we can talk about the different layers of the anatomy and see things like the lungs work and heart beat and food passing through the animal," he adds. "So it's a very dynamic, lively sort of thing."
The hulking herbivore — that's right, sauropods got that big eating plants alone — is made out of polyurethane, synthetic material commonly used as a packing foam.
"We constructed it by sculpting a small version of it about 6 feet long," Norell says. "Then that was laser-scanned, and molds for the full-size model were then prototyped off of that."
The Mamenchisaurus stands 11 feet tall and stretches 60 feet long, but she isn't even half as big as some sauropods grew to be. That would be 150 feet long.
The latest technology is used to explain almost everything imaginable about the extinct creature — like how long it lived, how long it took to grow, how much food it ate, and how big its eggs and babies were.
"And not just those facts, but how we were able to figure this stuff out, is really the force behind the exhibit," says Norell. "It goes through the process of discovery and why we think we can calculate these numbers like the heart beating only a few times per minute."
A re-creation of another sauropod, the Argentinosaurus, will greet guests as they enter the exhibit. Or its neck and head — the size of a large garbage can — will, anyway.
"It will be peering at you through the forest," Norell reveals. "It's the largest [land] animal that we know of right now."
Not much is known about the Argen Museum exhibits, shows and walking tours are sprouting up around the boroughs this spring, and some are definitely more thrilling than others. From a BubbleMania show in Queens, to a display of daring designs by the late
Alexander McQueen, here are the most exciting of the bunch:
It's open this weekend through April 29 at the Coney Island Museum, 1208 Surf Ave., Brooklyn. Museum entrance costs just 99 cents, but the live acts will cost extra. For more info, visit spectacularium.org.tinosaurus. "The animal is so big that it's rather incompletely excavated," he adds. "It's about 150 feet long," the length of several school buses.
There are lots of interactive, hands-on aspects to the exhibit that let visitors do math experiments to figure things out about how these dinosaurs lived and even what color they might have been.
But there will also be actual sauropod fossils on display.
"We use them to illustrate certain points, like how their bones evolved to compensate for this great size," Norell explains. "We have quite a few real bones of things like a Barosaurus. We have a Diplodocus skull on display. They're not just for, 'Wow, this is a real fossil.' We use those to point to particular aspects of their anatomy and talk about some of the evolutionary and ecological attributes that these animals had."
While most exhibits have a hands-off policy, there will be some touch-me specimens. "Among those, we have the teeth of the Diplodocus, the teeth of the Camarasaurus and dinosaur egg shells which you can touch," says Norell.
The museum's permanent dinosaur exhibit, completed in 1996 and upgraded last year, is still its most-visited gallery. While the longstanding exhibit highlights the relationships among different dinosaurs, the new one focuses on the biology of a particular type.
"This is a very different kind of dinosaur show and one that allows you to really visualize these animals as living, breathing creatures," says Norell, "and not just as bones."
Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty
The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art has organized about 100 examples of Alexander McQueen's work (l). They cover everything from the British designer's postgraduate collection of 1992 to his final runway presentation, which took place after his death last year. Some of his signature designs on display will be his bumster trouser, kimono jacket and origami frock coat. Also on view are his pieces that reflect the exaggerated silhouettes of the 1860s, 1880s, 1890s and 1950s.
The exhibit runs May 4-July 31, and the cost is included with admission
to the Met (1000 Fifth Ave., at 82nd St.). Adults $20, seniors (65 and over) $15, students $10, kids under 12 accompanied by an adult are free.
BubbleMania: Science, Art & Comedy! with Casey Carle
Every kid likes bubbles. But even adults enjoy the sudsy fun of the BubbleMania show. It's led by Casey Carle (l.), who went to Ringling Bros. Clown College and has worked as a bubble consultant for companies like Cirque du Soleil and Discovery Channel. During the 30-minute show, he'll form fog bubbles, funky foam, helium bubbles, vortex bubbles and bubbles that burst into flames. Carle even uses a huge Hoberman sphere to create bubbles. After the show, kids and their families can head to the permanent Bubble Table at the New York Hall of Science to make their own.
BubbleMania runs April 16-24 at the Hall of Science (47-01 111th St., Queens). Showtimes are at 1 & 2 p.m.; additional performances April 22 at 3 p.m. and April 24 at noon. BubbleMania is $4, plus admission dinomight!
An awe-inspiring new exhibit sizes up the life of the gigantic creatures to the Hall (nysci.org), which is $11 for adults and $8 for kids.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
As Dinosaurs Waned and Mammals Rose, the Lowly Louse Kept Pace
The New York Times: As Dinosaurs Waned and Mammals Rose, the Lowly Louse Kept Pace
Biologists have found a new way to peer back 130 million years in time, illuminating the catastrophic period in which the dinosaurs perished and birds and mammals arose.
The new approach rests on reconstructing the family tree of lice. Vincent S. Smith, a louse taxonomist at the Natural History Museum in London, has found that the tree stretches so far back in time that the host of the first louse would have been a dinosaur, probably one of the theropod dinosaurs that were the ancestors of birds.
Dr. Smith and his colleagues reconstructed the louse family tree by analyzing DNA from present-day louse species that parasitize birds and mammals. Most lice are specialists, feeding on a single species to whose fur or feathers their claws are adapted. The adaptation is so precise that when a louse’s host species evolves into a new one, the louse will diversify into different species, too.
The human head louse, for instance, evolved from the chimpanzee louse when the ancestors of humans and chimps split apart some five million years ago. The human pubic louse, on the other hand, is related to the gorilla louse, from which it parted company some 13 million years ago. Species of human lice thus mirror the splits in the tree of ape and human evolution.
In the same way, species of lice on living animals and birds reflect the splits in animal and bird ancestry back to the time that lice first arose. Family trees based on DNA can be given precise dates at all their branch points if a few datable fossils of the right age are available. But this is difficult to do with lice, for which almost no fossils are known. Dr. Smith was fortunate that two fossil lice discovered in the last few years — one of them 44 million and the other 100 million years old — provided the necessary anchors for his tree.
The assembled family tree shows that lice started to radiate into new species well before the end of the Cretaceous period, Dr. Smith and his colleagues report in the current issue of Biology Letters. The finding implies that their hosts, both mammals and birds, had also begun to flourish and speciate before the reign of the dinosaurs was over.
The new tree bears on a longstanding dispute about the rise of birds and mammals. One school holds that both groups proliferated early in the Cretaceous period, which began 145 million years ago, and that many lineages survived the cataclysm that brought the Cretaceous and the dinosaurs to a sudden end: the strike of a large asteroid 65 million years ago. The opposing view is that mammals and birds did not become successful and radiate into many different species until after the demise of the dinosaurs.
Unfortunately, the new finding will probably not settle the issue of whether birds and mammals speciated before or after the asteroid hit. “I would put this down as an entry in the debate,” Dr. Smith said. “The louse phylogeny adds one more piece of data to this puzzle. It says lice are old, predate the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, and must have been living on something.”
The issue is contentious because the fossil record suggests that placental mammals did not expand, in terms of the number of different species, until after 65 million years ago. A plausible reason is that all the dinosaurs had been killed off, except the line that evolved into birds, and the placental mammals speciated into the ecological niches that had been left vacant.
But biologists reconstructing the mammalian tree of evolution from the DNA of living species have come to a different conclusion. Their molecular clock data suggest a much earlier speciation, perhaps prompted by the breakup of the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana around 120 million years ago. In this view, placental mammals evolved into distinct species before the asteroid hit of 65 million years ago, and many would have survived the mass die-out that polished off the dinosaurs.
Michael Novacek, an expert in mammalian paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, said the louse tree was very interesting and showed that lice were diversifying during the Cretaceous. But the fossil record of placental mammals is reliable and does not record a speciation until later. “The fossil record continues to show that the origin of modern placental mammals postdates or is at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary,” he said. “So the contradiction between the fossils and molecular clocks remains.”
In his view, the hosts on which lice were speciating during the Cretaceous could have been a different branch of the mammalian family tree, all of whose species are extinct.
Dr. Smith said Dr. Novacek was correct in saying that there were nonplacental mammals around in the Cretaceous on which lice would doubtless have fed. But these nonplacental mammals, which included several lineages of marsupials, all became extinct, taking their parasites with them. These lice would not show up in his tree, Dr. Smith said, unless they had been able to transfer to the placental mammalian species, and most lice do not regularly switch hosts.
Dr. Smith believes that lice infested birds before mammals, in part because lice are so common on birds. Every bird family but one has lice, and there is a species of bird, the great tinamou, that harbors 18 different species of lice, perhaps because it has many different kinds of feathers, each offering a special niche. Given the ancient root of the louse family tree, it is likely that the first louse infested the feathered dinosaurs that were the birds’ ancestors, he concludes.
Biologists have found a new way to peer back 130 million years in time, illuminating the catastrophic period in which the dinosaurs perished and birds and mammals arose.
The new approach rests on reconstructing the family tree of lice. Vincent S. Smith, a louse taxonomist at the Natural History Museum in London, has found that the tree stretches so far back in time that the host of the first louse would have been a dinosaur, probably one of the theropod dinosaurs that were the ancestors of birds.
Dr. Smith and his colleagues reconstructed the louse family tree by analyzing DNA from present-day louse species that parasitize birds and mammals. Most lice are specialists, feeding on a single species to whose fur or feathers their claws are adapted. The adaptation is so precise that when a louse’s host species evolves into a new one, the louse will diversify into different species, too.
The human head louse, for instance, evolved from the chimpanzee louse when the ancestors of humans and chimps split apart some five million years ago. The human pubic louse, on the other hand, is related to the gorilla louse, from which it parted company some 13 million years ago. Species of human lice thus mirror the splits in the tree of ape and human evolution.
In the same way, species of lice on living animals and birds reflect the splits in animal and bird ancestry back to the time that lice first arose. Family trees based on DNA can be given precise dates at all their branch points if a few datable fossils of the right age are available. But this is difficult to do with lice, for which almost no fossils are known. Dr. Smith was fortunate that two fossil lice discovered in the last few years — one of them 44 million and the other 100 million years old — provided the necessary anchors for his tree.
The assembled family tree shows that lice started to radiate into new species well before the end of the Cretaceous period, Dr. Smith and his colleagues report in the current issue of Biology Letters. The finding implies that their hosts, both mammals and birds, had also begun to flourish and speciate before the reign of the dinosaurs was over.
The new tree bears on a longstanding dispute about the rise of birds and mammals. One school holds that both groups proliferated early in the Cretaceous period, which began 145 million years ago, and that many lineages survived the cataclysm that brought the Cretaceous and the dinosaurs to a sudden end: the strike of a large asteroid 65 million years ago. The opposing view is that mammals and birds did not become successful and radiate into many different species until after the demise of the dinosaurs.
Unfortunately, the new finding will probably not settle the issue of whether birds and mammals speciated before or after the asteroid hit. “I would put this down as an entry in the debate,” Dr. Smith said. “The louse phylogeny adds one more piece of data to this puzzle. It says lice are old, predate the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, and must have been living on something.”
The issue is contentious because the fossil record suggests that placental mammals did not expand, in terms of the number of different species, until after 65 million years ago. A plausible reason is that all the dinosaurs had been killed off, except the line that evolved into birds, and the placental mammals speciated into the ecological niches that had been left vacant.
But biologists reconstructing the mammalian tree of evolution from the DNA of living species have come to a different conclusion. Their molecular clock data suggest a much earlier speciation, perhaps prompted by the breakup of the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana around 120 million years ago. In this view, placental mammals evolved into distinct species before the asteroid hit of 65 million years ago, and many would have survived the mass die-out that polished off the dinosaurs.
Michael Novacek, an expert in mammalian paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, said the louse tree was very interesting and showed that lice were diversifying during the Cretaceous. But the fossil record of placental mammals is reliable and does not record a speciation until later. “The fossil record continues to show that the origin of modern placental mammals postdates or is at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary,” he said. “So the contradiction between the fossils and molecular clocks remains.”
In his view, the hosts on which lice were speciating during the Cretaceous could have been a different branch of the mammalian family tree, all of whose species are extinct.
Dr. Smith said Dr. Novacek was correct in saying that there were nonplacental mammals around in the Cretaceous on which lice would doubtless have fed. But these nonplacental mammals, which included several lineages of marsupials, all became extinct, taking their parasites with them. These lice would not show up in his tree, Dr. Smith said, unless they had been able to transfer to the placental mammalian species, and most lice do not regularly switch hosts.
Dr. Smith believes that lice infested birds before mammals, in part because lice are so common on birds. Every bird family but one has lice, and there is a species of bird, the great tinamou, that harbors 18 different species of lice, perhaps because it has many different kinds of feathers, each offering a special niche. Given the ancient root of the louse family tree, it is likely that the first louse infested the feathered dinosaurs that were the birds’ ancestors, he concludes.
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