From ABC27 (Pennsylvania): Distinctive dino bones discovered
Dr. Robert Sullivan, the curator paleontologist at the state museum, has parts of a huge dinosaur - the alamasorous.
He discovered them with his then -research assistant Denver Fowler (now a doctorial student at Montana State University) while on an expedition on some federal wilderness lands in New Mexico from 2003-2006.
"You walk these badlands and you look for these tell-tale signs of bones emerging from the rock... and then when you see some of the bone coming through [you] start digging around it," Sullivan said.
The bones discussed in Dr. Sullivan's latest research published earlier this month were parts of two vertebrae and a femur. They belong to an alamosaurus about 69 million years old.
But it wasn't easy finding them. One bone was still encased in rock, and no cars are allowed on the federal wilderness land.
"It took a while to clean it up because we were trying to make sure that we didn't destroy the external service...but because it is so weathered and poorish it's very difficult to deal with," Sullivan said.
Its size was the major breakthrough - larger than some of the largest sauropod bones found in South America.
The findings will help researchers better understand dinosaurs.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Colorado: By Nature Gallery moves to new space in Beaver Creek
From Vail Daily: By Nature Gallery moves to new space in Beaver Creek
BEAVER CREEK, Colorado — Over 150 million years ago, dinosaurs like the Stegosaurus stenops, the state dinosaur of Colorado, roamed the state along with many other of their now-extinct relatives. While they're not roaming anymore, some are still lingering above the Beaver Creek ice rink in their new home at By Nature Gallery, having been moved into a new, and much roomier location. If you look up to the feature window in the new store, you will see fossils and dinosaurs looking down at you, including a 12-foot-tall giant sloth skeleton and a Tyrannosaurus bataar skull that came all the way from Mongolia.
But this isn't just about dinosaurs. By Nature Gallery features petrified wood slabs, fossil fish from the Green River Formation in Wyoming, butterflies and bugs, mineral specimens, and jewelry. There are museum-quality fossils for serious collectors as well as a wide selection of special offerings for serious nature lovers.
Having grown the business over the last eight years in Beaver Creek Village, By Nature Gallery eventually outgrew the original spot, and needed to spread out. The new store is located up the flight of stairs from the ice rink area of the village, and across from the Children's Ski School in Gerald R. Ford Hall.
By Nature Gallery is owned by Rick and Frances Rolater and their partners, Jim and Kim Godwin. Rick started the original Discovery Store in the early '90s, which was a retail store featuring everything from nature. These stores were eventually sold to the Discovery Channel and formed the basis for their entire retail operation. When Rick and Frances moved to the mountains and the Vail Valley in 2003, they opened a much smaller version specializing in things from nature that little and “big” kids really enjoyed. Since the beginning, they have continued to offer the very best fossils available, as well as other fun and inspiring things to incorporate into our lives.
Their tag line is “At Home With Nature” because, according to Rick Rolater, “We want people to know that they can actually own some of the pieces that fascinate them so much as children and adults. I've never met someone who isn't intrigued by our natural heritage. These things are reminders of the incredible history of our Earth, and our place in it, and we can live with and be inspired by them every day. Children are our most enthusiastic customers, and we have a special place set aside for them, where touching is not only allowed, but encouraged!"
Their store hours are from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day except for Sunday, when they close at 6 p.m. Go take a look, right up the stairs toward the mountain from the Beaver Creek ice rink.
BEAVER CREEK, Colorado — Over 150 million years ago, dinosaurs like the Stegosaurus stenops, the state dinosaur of Colorado, roamed the state along with many other of their now-extinct relatives. While they're not roaming anymore, some are still lingering above the Beaver Creek ice rink in their new home at By Nature Gallery, having been moved into a new, and much roomier location. If you look up to the feature window in the new store, you will see fossils and dinosaurs looking down at you, including a 12-foot-tall giant sloth skeleton and a Tyrannosaurus bataar skull that came all the way from Mongolia.
But this isn't just about dinosaurs. By Nature Gallery features petrified wood slabs, fossil fish from the Green River Formation in Wyoming, butterflies and bugs, mineral specimens, and jewelry. There are museum-quality fossils for serious collectors as well as a wide selection of special offerings for serious nature lovers.
Having grown the business over the last eight years in Beaver Creek Village, By Nature Gallery eventually outgrew the original spot, and needed to spread out. The new store is located up the flight of stairs from the ice rink area of the village, and across from the Children's Ski School in Gerald R. Ford Hall.
By Nature Gallery is owned by Rick and Frances Rolater and their partners, Jim and Kim Godwin. Rick started the original Discovery Store in the early '90s, which was a retail store featuring everything from nature. These stores were eventually sold to the Discovery Channel and formed the basis for their entire retail operation. When Rick and Frances moved to the mountains and the Vail Valley in 2003, they opened a much smaller version specializing in things from nature that little and “big” kids really enjoyed. Since the beginning, they have continued to offer the very best fossils available, as well as other fun and inspiring things to incorporate into our lives.
Their tag line is “At Home With Nature” because, according to Rick Rolater, “We want people to know that they can actually own some of the pieces that fascinate them so much as children and adults. I've never met someone who isn't intrigued by our natural heritage. These things are reminders of the incredible history of our Earth, and our place in it, and we can live with and be inspired by them every day. Children are our most enthusiastic customers, and we have a special place set aside for them, where touching is not only allowed, but encouraged!"
Their store hours are from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day except for Sunday, when they close at 6 p.m. Go take a look, right up the stairs toward the mountain from the Beaver Creek ice rink.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
A Mysterious Thumb
From Smithsonian.com, Dinosaur Tracking Blog: A Mysterious Thumb
There is much we still don’t know about dinosaurs. In fact, some aspects of dinosaurs have puzzled paleontologists for well over a century. Among the most frustrating is why the great herbivore Iguanodon had prominent thumb spikes. Despite all the possibly explanations provided for this appendage, none are especially satisfying.
The peculiar false thumb of Iguanodon was originally thought to set into the dinosaur’s nose. When Gideon Mantell first described the animal in 1825, the various bits and pieces of the dinosaur were thought to represent the remains of an enormous, iguana-like reptile. As a result, it seemed reasonable that a conical, bony spike corresponded to the same structure on the snouts of rhinoceros iguanas. This placement made sense within the prevailing view that creatures like Iguanodon were lizards writ large, but the idea was tossed when a series of more complete Iguanodon were found in a Belgian coal mine in 1878. The “horn” actually belonged on a mitten-like hand, opposite a prehensile finger.
But why should Iguanodon have a hand spike? The most popular idea is that the dinosaur used the appendage for defense—an illustration by John Sibbick in The Book of Dinosaurs shows and Iguanodon stabbing its spike into the neck of an attacking allosaurid. The restoration looks more than a little ridiculous. In order to get within poking range, the defending Iguanodon would have to place itself right in front of its assailant, perfectly within the range of the slicing dental cutlery of the carnivore. Such maneuvers would require the attacker to hold still while being prodded. One popular-audience book suggested that the spike might house a venom gland, but there is no evidence for this and, furthermore, the Iguanodon would still have to get within biting range of the attacking theropod to use the weapon.
There are a few other speculative hypotheses. Maybe Iguanodon used the spikes in combat with one another. Or perhaps, as David Norman briefly suggested in his section on basal iguanodontia in the second edition of The Dinosauria, the spike was used for “breaking into seeds and fruits.” These are not unreasonable notions, but there is also no positive evidence to suggest that they are correct, either. The Iguanodon thumb spike is a strange specialization that must have originated for a reason. The question is whether we can test any of these ideas.
Though my own suggestion is not any better than those I have been disappointed by, I wonder if the Iguanodon spike is a Mesozoic equivalent of another false thumb seen among animals today—the enlarged wrist bones of red and giant pandas. Perhaps the Iguanodon thumb spike was an adaptation for stripping foliage from tree branches. The dinosaur could have grasped the branch with the prehensile finger, or flexed the main fingers of the palm around a bough, and run the spike down the branch to remove the greens without having to chew through the less-nutritious twigs. But this hypothesis has problems, too. The false thumbs of pandas flex so that they help the mammals grip bamboo, whereas the Iguanodon spike was rigid. And why would an Iguanodon preferentially select greener browse, especially when supplied with a formidable battery or self-replacing teeth? Furthermore, this idea is difficult to test—a preserved thumb spike wouldn’t show wear from use the same way a fossil tooth would. The Iguanodon spike was surrounded by a tough, keratinous sheath, so the actual wear wouldn’t be seen on the bone itself. A functional model of an Iguanodon hand could help investigate this idea, but even then, direct evidence would be lacking.
Perhaps there isn’t a good modern analog for the Iguanodon spikes. The bones look like they could be used for any number of things, from defense to feeding, but frustratingly, there isn’t any unambiguous indication of what they were used for or why they evolved. Perhaps, to solve this mystery, we need to go beyond the obvious and try to think like a dinosaur.
There is much we still don’t know about dinosaurs. In fact, some aspects of dinosaurs have puzzled paleontologists for well over a century. Among the most frustrating is why the great herbivore Iguanodon had prominent thumb spikes. Despite all the possibly explanations provided for this appendage, none are especially satisfying.
The peculiar false thumb of Iguanodon was originally thought to set into the dinosaur’s nose. When Gideon Mantell first described the animal in 1825, the various bits and pieces of the dinosaur were thought to represent the remains of an enormous, iguana-like reptile. As a result, it seemed reasonable that a conical, bony spike corresponded to the same structure on the snouts of rhinoceros iguanas. This placement made sense within the prevailing view that creatures like Iguanodon were lizards writ large, but the idea was tossed when a series of more complete Iguanodon were found in a Belgian coal mine in 1878. The “horn” actually belonged on a mitten-like hand, opposite a prehensile finger.
But why should Iguanodon have a hand spike? The most popular idea is that the dinosaur used the appendage for defense—an illustration by John Sibbick in The Book of Dinosaurs shows and Iguanodon stabbing its spike into the neck of an attacking allosaurid. The restoration looks more than a little ridiculous. In order to get within poking range, the defending Iguanodon would have to place itself right in front of its assailant, perfectly within the range of the slicing dental cutlery of the carnivore. Such maneuvers would require the attacker to hold still while being prodded. One popular-audience book suggested that the spike might house a venom gland, but there is no evidence for this and, furthermore, the Iguanodon would still have to get within biting range of the attacking theropod to use the weapon.
There are a few other speculative hypotheses. Maybe Iguanodon used the spikes in combat with one another. Or perhaps, as David Norman briefly suggested in his section on basal iguanodontia in the second edition of The Dinosauria, the spike was used for “breaking into seeds and fruits.” These are not unreasonable notions, but there is also no positive evidence to suggest that they are correct, either. The Iguanodon thumb spike is a strange specialization that must have originated for a reason. The question is whether we can test any of these ideas.
Though my own suggestion is not any better than those I have been disappointed by, I wonder if the Iguanodon spike is a Mesozoic equivalent of another false thumb seen among animals today—the enlarged wrist bones of red and giant pandas. Perhaps the Iguanodon thumb spike was an adaptation for stripping foliage from tree branches. The dinosaur could have grasped the branch with the prehensile finger, or flexed the main fingers of the palm around a bough, and run the spike down the branch to remove the greens without having to chew through the less-nutritious twigs. But this hypothesis has problems, too. The false thumbs of pandas flex so that they help the mammals grip bamboo, whereas the Iguanodon spike was rigid. And why would an Iguanodon preferentially select greener browse, especially when supplied with a formidable battery or self-replacing teeth? Furthermore, this idea is difficult to test—a preserved thumb spike wouldn’t show wear from use the same way a fossil tooth would. The Iguanodon spike was surrounded by a tough, keratinous sheath, so the actual wear wouldn’t be seen on the bone itself. A functional model of an Iguanodon hand could help investigate this idea, but even then, direct evidence would be lacking.
Perhaps there isn’t a good modern analog for the Iguanodon spikes. The bones look like they could be used for any number of things, from defense to feeding, but frustratingly, there isn’t any unambiguous indication of what they were used for or why they evolved. Perhaps, to solve this mystery, we need to go beyond the obvious and try to think like a dinosaur.
Prof seeks prehistoric environments in fossils
From CTV.TV: Prof seeks prehistoric environments in fossils
REGINA — A University of Regina physics professor is using modern technology to examine some really old bones -- and it all started with his child's fascination with dinosaurs.
Prof. Mauricio Barbi is using a synchrotron to take a deeper look inside fossils. The machine can look for traces of the original elements that were in the animal while it was alive.
"If I can measure not only the chemistry, but the concentration of elements in bones, different bones, and I can associate that to the environment, maybe I'm going to be able to tell about ... the impact of environment on those animals," Barbi said recently in an interview with The Canadian Press.
"Maybe I can look at how those concentrations of elements in the bone changed along the time.
"With the synchrotron we can look at these details hopefully and can understand our past, what happened in the past, because those things can happen again."
A synchrotron is a source of brilliant light that lets scientists study the microstructure and chemical properties of materials. The device at the Canadian Light Source centre at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon is one of the most powerful in the world. According to the centre's website, the machine can produce synchrotron light that is a million times brighter than sunlight.
It would make sense for a man with a background in high energy physics to use a synchrotron. But why use it to study dinosaur bones?
"That was, let's put it this way, an accident. The reason for that was my daughter. She loves paleontology. She loves dinosaurs," Barbi said as he proudly held up a drawing by Laura, 6, of bright green dinosaurs.
Camping trips to Dinosaur Provincial Park in southeastern Alberta and visits to the T. rex Discovery Centre in the community of Eastend, Sask., rekindled Barbi's own childhood love of the extinct creatures. His initial idea was to volunteer to dust off fossils.
But the head of paleontology for the Royal Saskatchewan Museum, Tim Tokaryk, wrote back suggesting they work together instead.
That's when Barbi started thinking about using the synchrotron.
"The synchrotron has some advantages over the electron microscope because...the data that we collect is much cleaner than with an electron microscope," explained Barbi.
"And we can scan a sample...in just one run using some specific synchrotron beams."
The machine can also help scientists look at the interaction between bones and the surrounding environment and how outside minerals ended up in the bone.
Barbi said it's also a lot less invasive because there's minimal alteration to the sample than with other techniques. That's in part because the fossils don't have to be cleaned. In fact, he wants them dirty.
"With the synchrotron we can actually look at those things with different eyes, without being so destructive."
Some of the fossils he'll be looking at are from "Scotty," a Tyrannosaurus rex found in Saskatchewan in 1991. Scotty is one of the most complete T-rex skeletons ever found and one of the biggest, said museum director Harold Bryant, who is also a paleontologist.
Bryant said he didn't immediately think of using the synchrotron to examine the beast.
"But one thing you learn in this business is never to assume and that one of the really neat things about research is there's always that opportunity ... to take you in directions that you never imagined," he said.
"It's often bringing new methods and new techniques to the study of materials that you've had around for a long time and it's just a new way to look at those items, in this case fossils."
Bryant said the work could increase the knowledge of Scotty, in particular, and fossils in general.
Barbi said the research is one of the first of its kind in the world. Only five papers have been published on the topic since 2009, although the synchrotron has been used to look at bones for at least 10 years, maybe more.
"It was more about imaging, having nice pictures, beautiful pictures that tell a lot," said Barbi.
"But not about chemistry, about the constitution of those bones, and ... about an association between those elements in the bone and the environment.
"If I can prove that, that's going to be a big step forward."
REGINA — A University of Regina physics professor is using modern technology to examine some really old bones -- and it all started with his child's fascination with dinosaurs.
Prof. Mauricio Barbi is using a synchrotron to take a deeper look inside fossils. The machine can look for traces of the original elements that were in the animal while it was alive.
"If I can measure not only the chemistry, but the concentration of elements in bones, different bones, and I can associate that to the environment, maybe I'm going to be able to tell about ... the impact of environment on those animals," Barbi said recently in an interview with The Canadian Press.
"Maybe I can look at how those concentrations of elements in the bone changed along the time.
"With the synchrotron we can look at these details hopefully and can understand our past, what happened in the past, because those things can happen again."
A synchrotron is a source of brilliant light that lets scientists study the microstructure and chemical properties of materials. The device at the Canadian Light Source centre at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon is one of the most powerful in the world. According to the centre's website, the machine can produce synchrotron light that is a million times brighter than sunlight.
It would make sense for a man with a background in high energy physics to use a synchrotron. But why use it to study dinosaur bones?
"That was, let's put it this way, an accident. The reason for that was my daughter. She loves paleontology. She loves dinosaurs," Barbi said as he proudly held up a drawing by Laura, 6, of bright green dinosaurs.
Camping trips to Dinosaur Provincial Park in southeastern Alberta and visits to the T. rex Discovery Centre in the community of Eastend, Sask., rekindled Barbi's own childhood love of the extinct creatures. His initial idea was to volunteer to dust off fossils.
But the head of paleontology for the Royal Saskatchewan Museum, Tim Tokaryk, wrote back suggesting they work together instead.
That's when Barbi started thinking about using the synchrotron.
"The synchrotron has some advantages over the electron microscope because...the data that we collect is much cleaner than with an electron microscope," explained Barbi.
"And we can scan a sample...in just one run using some specific synchrotron beams."
The machine can also help scientists look at the interaction between bones and the surrounding environment and how outside minerals ended up in the bone.
Barbi said it's also a lot less invasive because there's minimal alteration to the sample than with other techniques. That's in part because the fossils don't have to be cleaned. In fact, he wants them dirty.
"With the synchrotron we can actually look at those things with different eyes, without being so destructive."
Some of the fossils he'll be looking at are from "Scotty," a Tyrannosaurus rex found in Saskatchewan in 1991. Scotty is one of the most complete T-rex skeletons ever found and one of the biggest, said museum director Harold Bryant, who is also a paleontologist.
Bryant said he didn't immediately think of using the synchrotron to examine the beast.
"But one thing you learn in this business is never to assume and that one of the really neat things about research is there's always that opportunity ... to take you in directions that you never imagined," he said.
"It's often bringing new methods and new techniques to the study of materials that you've had around for a long time and it's just a new way to look at those items, in this case fossils."
Bryant said the work could increase the knowledge of Scotty, in particular, and fossils in general.
Barbi said the research is one of the first of its kind in the world. Only five papers have been published on the topic since 2009, although the synchrotron has been used to look at bones for at least 10 years, maybe more.
"It was more about imaging, having nice pictures, beautiful pictures that tell a lot," said Barbi.
"But not about chemistry, about the constitution of those bones, and ... about an association between those elements in the bone and the environment.
"If I can prove that, that's going to be a big step forward."
Monday, December 26, 2011
Dinosaurs (1915)
DINOSAURS:
WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE AMERICAN MUSEUM COLLECTIONS
BY
W. D. MATTHEW
CURATOR OF VERTEBRATE PALÆONTOLOGY
NEW YORK
AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
1915
... 'Dragons of the prime
That tare each other in their slime'
PREFACE.
This volume is in large part a reprint of various popular descriptions and notices in the American Museum Journal and elsewhere by Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn, Mr. Barnum Brown, and the writer. There has been a considerable demand for these articles which are now mostly out of print. In reprinting it seemed best to combine and supplement them so as to make a consecutive and intelligible account of the Dinosaur collections in the Museum. The original notices are quoted verbatim; for the remainder of the text the present writer is responsible. Professor S.W. Williston of Chicago University has kindly contributed a chapter—all too brief—describing the first discoveries of dinosaurs in the Western formations that have since yielded so large a harvest.
W. D. M.
Chapter I.
THE AGE OF REPTILES.
Its Antiquity, Duration and Significance in Geologic History.
Palæontology deals with the History of Life. Its time is measured in geologic epochs and periods, in millions of years instead of centuries. Man, by this measure, is but a creature of yesterday—his "forty centuries of civilization" (The records of Egypt and Chaldaea extend back at least sixty centuries.) but a passing episode. It is by no means easy for us to adjust our perspective to the immensely long spaces of time involved in geological evolution. We are apt to think of all these extinct animals merely as prehistoric—to imagine them all living at the same time and contending with our cave-dwelling ancestors for the mastery of the earth.
In order to understand the place of the Dinosaurs in world-history, we must first get some idea of the length of geologic periods and the immense space of time separating one extinct fauna from another.
The Age of Man. Prehistoric time, as it is commonly understood, is the time when barbaric and savage tribes of men inhabited the world but before civilization began, and earlier than the written records on which history is based. This corresponds roughly to the Pleistocene epoch of geology; it is included along with the much shorter time during which civilization has existed, in the latest and shortest of the geological periods, the Quaternary. It was the age of the mammoth and the mastodon, the megatherium and Irish deer and of other quadrupeds large and small which are now extinct; but most of its animals were the same species as now exist. It was marked by the great episode of the Ice Age, when considerable parts of the earth's surface were buried under immense accumulations of ice, remnants of which are still with us in the icy covering of Greenland and Antarctica.
The Age of Mammals. Before this period was a very much longer one—at least thirty times as long—during which modern quadrupeds were slowly evolving from small and primitive ancestors into their present variety of form and size. This is the Tertiary Period or Age of Mammals. Through this long period we can trace step by step the successive stages through which the ancestors of horses, camels, elephants, rhinoceroses, etc., were gradually converted into their present form in adaptation to their various habits and environment. And with them were slowly evolved various kinds of quadrupeds whose descendants do not now exist, the Titanotheres, Elotheres, Oreodonts, etc., extinct races which have not survived to our time. Man, as such, had not yet come into existence, nor are we able to trace any direct and complete line of ancestry among the fossil species known to us; but his collateral ancestors were represented by the fossil species of monkeys and lemurs of the Tertiary period.
Fig. 1.—The Later Ages of Geologic Time.
The Age of Reptiles. Preceding the Age of Mammals lies a long vista of geologic periods of which the later ones are marked by the dominance of Reptiles, and are grouped together as the Age of Reptiles or Mesozoic Era. This was the reign of the Dinosaurs, and in it we are introduced to a world of life so different from that of today that we might well imagine ourselves upon another planet.
None of the ordinary quadrupeds with which we are familiar then existed, nor any related to nor resembling them. But in their place were reptiles large and small, carnivorous and herbivorous, walking, swimming and even flying.
Crocodiles, Turtles and Sea Reptiles. The Crocodiles and Turtles of the swamps were not so very different from their modern descendants; there were also sea-crocodiles, sea-turtles, huge marine lizards (Mosasaurs) with flippers instead of feet; and another group of great marine reptiles (Plesiosaurs) somewhat like sea-turtles but with long neck and toothed jaws and without any carapace. These various kinds of sea-reptiles took the place of the great sea mammals of modern times (which were evolved during the Age of Mammals); of whales and dolphins, seals and walruses, and manatees.
Pterodactyls. The flying Reptiles or Pterosaurians, partly took the place of birds, and most of them were of small size. Strange bat-winged creatures, the wing membrane stretched on the enormously elongated fourth finger, they are of all extinct reptiles the least understood, the most difficult to reconstruct and visualize as they were in life.
Dinosaurs. The land reptiles were chiefly Dinosaurs, a group which flourished throughout the Age of Reptiles and became extinct at its close. "Dinosaur" is a general term which covers as wide a variety in size and appearance as "Quadruped" among modern animals. And the Dinosaurs in the Age of Reptiles occupied about the same place in nature as the larger quadrupeds do today. They have been called the Giant Reptiles, for those we know most about were gigantic in size, but there were also numerous smaller kinds, the smallest no larger than a cat. All of them had short, compact bodies, long tails, and long legs for a reptile, and instead of crawling, they walked or ran, sometimes upon all fours, more generally upon the hind limbs, like ostriches, the long tail balancing the weight of the body. Some modern lizards run this way on occasion, especially if they are in a hurry. But the bodies of lizards are too long and their limbs too small and slender for this to be the usual mode of progress, as it seems to have been among the Dinosaurs.
ANIMALS OF THE AGE OF REPTILES.
LAND REPTILES.
DINOSAURS corresponding to the larger quadrupeds or land mammals of today.
CROCODILES, LIZARDS AND TURTLES still surviving.
SEA REPTILES.
PLESIOSAURS
ICHTHYOSAURS
MOSASAURS corresponding to whales, dolphins, seals, etc., or sea-mammals of today.
FLYING REPTILES OR PTEROSAURS.
BIRDS WITH TEETH (scarce and little known).
PRIMITIVE MAMMALS of minute size (scarce and little known).
FISHES and INVERTEBRATES many of them of extinct races, all more or less different from modern kinds.
Fishes, large and small, were common in the seas and rivers of the Age of Reptiles but all of them were more or less different from modern kinds, and many belonged to ancient races now rare or extinct.
The lower animals or Invertebrates were also different from those of today, although some would not be very noticeably so at first glance. Among molluscs, the Ammonites, related to the modern Pearly Nautilus, are an example of a race very numerous and varied during all the periods of the Reptilian Era, but disappearing at its close, leaving only a few collateral descendants in the squids, cuttlefish and nautili of the modern seas. The Brachiopods were another group of molluscs, or rather molluscoids for they were not true molluscs, less abundant even then than in previous ages and now surviving only in a few rare and little known types such as the lamp-shell (Terebratulina).
Insects. The Insect life of the earlier part of the Age of Reptiles was notable for the absence of all the higher groups and orders, especially those adapted to feed on flowers. There were no butterflies or moths, no bees or wasps or ants although there were plenty of dragonflies, cockroaches, bugs and beetles. But in the latter part of this era, all these higher orders appeared along with the flowering plants and trees.
Plants. The vegetation in the early part of the era was very different both from the gloomy forests of the more ancient Coal Era and from that which prevails today. Cycads, ferns and fern-like plants, coniferous trees, especially related to the modern Araucaria or Norfolk Island Pine, Ginkgos still surviving in China, and huge equisetae or horsetail rushes, still surviving in South American swamps and with dwarfed relatives throughout the world, were the dominant plant types of that era. The flowering plants and deciduous trees had not appeared. But in the latter half of the era these appeared in ever increasing multitudes, displacing the lower types and relegating them to a subordinate position. Unlike the more rapidly changing higher animals these ancient Mesozoic groups of plants have not wholly disappeared, but still survive, mostly in tropical and southern regions or as a scanty remnant in contrast with their once varied and dominant role.
There is every reason to believe that upon the appearance of these higher plants whose flower and fruit afforded a more concentrated and nourishing food, depended largely the evolution of the higher animal life both vertebrate and insect, of the Cenozoic or modern era.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Museum of the Rockies Museum Ball auction items added
From KBZK.com: Museum of the Rockies Museum Ball auction items added
The Museum of the Rockies has just announced three new live auction items that will be auctioned off at this year's Museum Ball. There will be a dinosaur dig with Jack Horner, a behind-the-scenes tour of Sports Illustrated in New York City, and a private dinner with MSU Football Head Coach, Rob Ash and legendary football player and coach, Sonny Holland.
The Museum will host its twenty-second annual Museum Ball on Saturday, February 11, 2012 from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. This year, the event theme is "Winter Wonderland," and the honorary chairs are Dean and Penny Hatten. Co-chairing the event are Lauren Cummings and Julianne Williams. Major sponsorship this year is by IMERYS Talc.
In addition to the live and silent auctions, the Museum will continue its tradition of raising money for the Opening Doors for Schoolchildren fund, which provides free Museum admission and bus transportation stipends for organized school groups from public, private, tribal and home schools across the state. Since 2005, the Museum has raised nearly $250,000 and has welcomed 50,000 schoolchildren as a result of the generosity of those who have donated to this fund.
To help raise money for the Opening Doors for Montana Schoolchildren fund, raffle tickets are on sale again this year for an "Overnight at the Museum." Raffle tickets are now available for purchase online or by calling 406.994.7460, and the cost is $10 per ticket or $25 for three tickets. The winner will be announced at the Ball. The raffle prize includes:
• A sleepover in one of the permanent exhibit halls at the Museum of the Rockies
• Accommodations at the Museum for up to 15 children ages 7-12 years old
• Accommodations at the Museum for up to 10 adult chaperones
• Dinosaur exhibit viewing, planetarium showing, laser show, or movie screening of Night at the Museum!
• Dinner and breakfast at the Museum
All proceeds from this raffle will go to the Opening Doors for Schoolchildren fund.
Museum Ball tickets are on sale now. They are $150 for members, $175 for non-members (included in the price is a one-year Museum membership). Sponsorship opportunities are also available. For more information and to purchase tickets visit our website, call 406-994-1998 or email events@montana.edu.
About the Museum of the Rockies (MOR)
The Museum of the Rockies is both a college-level division of Montana State University and an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit institution. Accredited by the American Association of Museums, MOR is one of just 776 museums to hold this distinction from the more than 17,500 museums nationwide. The Museum is also a Smithsonian Institution affiliate and a federal repository for fossils.
MOR Mission
The Museum of the Rockies inspires visitors to explore the rich natural and cultural history of America's Northern Rocky Mountains. In partnership with Montana State University, the Museum reaches diverse communities with engaging exhibits, educational programs, and original research that advance public understanding of the collections.
For more information and to purchase tickets visit www.museumoftherockies.org or call 406-994-1998.
The Museum of the Rockies has just announced three new live auction items that will be auctioned off at this year's Museum Ball. There will be a dinosaur dig with Jack Horner, a behind-the-scenes tour of Sports Illustrated in New York City, and a private dinner with MSU Football Head Coach, Rob Ash and legendary football player and coach, Sonny Holland.
The Museum will host its twenty-second annual Museum Ball on Saturday, February 11, 2012 from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. This year, the event theme is "Winter Wonderland," and the honorary chairs are Dean and Penny Hatten. Co-chairing the event are Lauren Cummings and Julianne Williams. Major sponsorship this year is by IMERYS Talc.
In addition to the live and silent auctions, the Museum will continue its tradition of raising money for the Opening Doors for Schoolchildren fund, which provides free Museum admission and bus transportation stipends for organized school groups from public, private, tribal and home schools across the state. Since 2005, the Museum has raised nearly $250,000 and has welcomed 50,000 schoolchildren as a result of the generosity of those who have donated to this fund.
To help raise money for the Opening Doors for Montana Schoolchildren fund, raffle tickets are on sale again this year for an "Overnight at the Museum." Raffle tickets are now available for purchase online or by calling 406.994.7460, and the cost is $10 per ticket or $25 for three tickets. The winner will be announced at the Ball. The raffle prize includes:
• A sleepover in one of the permanent exhibit halls at the Museum of the Rockies
• Accommodations at the Museum for up to 15 children ages 7-12 years old
• Accommodations at the Museum for up to 10 adult chaperones
• Dinosaur exhibit viewing, planetarium showing, laser show, or movie screening of Night at the Museum!
• Dinner and breakfast at the Museum
All proceeds from this raffle will go to the Opening Doors for Schoolchildren fund.
Museum Ball tickets are on sale now. They are $150 for members, $175 for non-members (included in the price is a one-year Museum membership). Sponsorship opportunities are also available. For more information and to purchase tickets visit our website, call 406-994-1998 or email events@montana.edu.
About the Museum of the Rockies (MOR)
The Museum of the Rockies is both a college-level division of Montana State University and an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit institution. Accredited by the American Association of Museums, MOR is one of just 776 museums to hold this distinction from the more than 17,500 museums nationwide. The Museum is also a Smithsonian Institution affiliate and a federal repository for fossils.
MOR Mission
The Museum of the Rockies inspires visitors to explore the rich natural and cultural history of America's Northern Rocky Mountains. In partnership with Montana State University, the Museum reaches diverse communities with engaging exhibits, educational programs, and original research that advance public understanding of the collections.
For more information and to purchase tickets visit www.museumoftherockies.org or call 406-994-1998.
Friday, December 23, 2011
Huxley’s Apocryphal Dinosaur Dinner
From Smithsonian.com, Dinosaur Tracking Blog: Huxley’s Apocryphal Dinosaur Dinner
Winter is the season for dinosaur dinners. Both Thanksgiving and Christmas traditionally feature avian dinosaurs as the main gustatory event, and according to paleontological legend, it was this custom that inspired one 19th century naturalist to realize the connection between roasted birds and Jurassic dinosaurs.
Mark Norell, Lowell Dingus and Eugene Gaffney recounted the story in their book Discovering Dinosaurs. “One Christmas Day,” they wrote, “[Thomas Henry] Huxley was carving a turkey for his annual feast. As he dissected the drumstick he was struck by an unmistakable similarity between his Christmas dinner and the fossils of the theropod Megalosaurus back in his office.” From that day on, the story goes, Huxley was convinced that there was a deep genetic connection between dinosaurs and birds. I heard to same story from my Paleontology 101 professor at Rutgers University. It is a charming bit of lore. And it’s also wrong.
I don’t know where the story about Huxley and the Christmas turkey came from. It is one of those stories that seems simply to exist in the academic ether. (Even the Discovering Dinosaurs authors voiced their uncertainty about the tale in their book.) Fortunately for us, though, Huxley’s many scientific papers trace the development of his thoughts about birds and dinosaurs.
Huxley began associating reptiles—including dinosaurs—with birds on the basis of their anatomy in the early 1860s. Both groups appeared to be different variations of a common skeletal blueprint. But Huxley wasn’t thinking about this in evolutionary terms yet. He was primarily interested in the commonalities of structure and did not immediately start drawing evolutionary implications from the anatomical correspondences he recorded. That changed in 1866, when Huxley read the German naturalist Ernst Haeckel’s book Generelle Morphologie, an influential volume that connected organisms in a tangled “tree of life.” In regard to birds and reptiles, at least, Huxley realized that he had already established the basic outline of an evolutionary transition from a dinosaur-like creature—something resembling Compsognathus—to flightless birds and culminating in flying birds.
Huxley did not suggest that birds were the direct descendants of dinosaurs. So much geologic time was unaccounted for, and so few dinosaurs were known, that Huxley could not point to any known fossil creature as the forerunner of birds. Instead he made his argument on anatomical grounds and removed the issue of time. Dinosaurs were proxies for what the actual bird ancestor would have been like, and flightless birds (such as the ostrich and emu) stood in for what Huxley thought was the most archaic bird type. (We now know that Huxley got this backwards—the earliest birds could fly, and flightless birds represent a secondary loss of that ability.) As Huxley went about collecting evidence for his case, though, he also gave dinosaurs an overhaul. They were not the bloated, plodding, rhinoceros-like creatures that Richard Owen had envisioned. Dinosaurs were more bird-like than anyone had imagined.
In October of 1867, Huxley met with John Philips, an English geologist and a curator of Oxford’s museum. As Huxley related in his 1870 paper “Further Evidence of the Affinity Between the Dinosaurian Reptiles and Birds,” Philips wanted to discuss details of marine reptiles called ichthyosaurs in his museum’s collection, but as he and Huxley made their way over toward the displays they stopped to look at the bones of the carnivorous dinosaur Megalosaurus. Then Huxley spotted something peculiar:
As Prof. Phillips directed my attention to one after the other of the precious relics, my eye was suddenly caught by what I had never before seen, namely, the complete pectoral arch of the great reptile, consisting of a scapula and a coracoid ankylosed together. Here was a tangle at once unravelled. The coracoid was totally different from the bone described by Cuvier, and by all subsequent anatomists, under that name. What then was the latter bone? Clearly, if it did not belong to the shoulder-girdle it must form a part of the pelvis; and, in the pelvis, the ilium at once suggested itself as the only possible homologue. Comparison with skeletons of reptiles and of birds, close at hand, showed it to be not only an ilium, but an ilium which, though peculiar in its form and proportions, was eminently ornithic in its chief peculiarities.
Earlier naturalists had made a mistake. They had misidentified the shoulder girdle, and one part of what was thought to be part of the shoulder was actually part of the hip. Another strange piece, previously thought to be a clavicle, also turned out to belong to the pelvis. This rearrangement immediately gave the dinosaur a more bird-like character. It wasn’t only the small, gracile forms such as Compsognathus that shared skeletal features with birds. Philips himself had been pondering the bird-like characteristics of Megalosaurus even before Huxley arrived, and Huxley’s visit confirmed what Philips had previously suspected. The resulting, updated conception of Megalosaurus was closer to the animal as we know it today—a theropod dinosaur with a short forelimbs, long legs, a long tail for balance and a deep head filled with sharp, recurved teeth.
Huxley’s Christmas revelation is apocryphal. Rather than being instantly struck by the idea that birds and dinosaurs were closely related, Huxley carefully built up an argument over many years that birds evolved from something dinosaur-like. As far as I know, his only sudden realization regarding Megalosaurus involved the rearrangement of bones in Philips’ care at Oxford. And I think this brings up a crucial point often missed or glossed over in accounts of Huxley’s work. Through his efforts to untangle bird origins, Huxley was pivotal in revising the image of dinosaurs into active, bird-like animals. New fossil finds, as well as a new anatomical framework, changed dinosaurs from ugly beasts into graceful, unique creatures during the 1870s, thanks at least in part to Huxley’s efforts. (Too bad that succeeding generations of paleontologists would unravel this vision by casting dinosaurs as dumb, cold-blooded reptiles.) Even if Huxley didn’t say birds are dinosaurs, he certainly made dinosaurs more bird-like.
For more information on Huxley’s thoughts on dinosaurs and birds, please see my paper “Thomas Henry Huxley and the Reptile to Bird Transition” and chapter 5 of my book Written in Stone.
References:
Huxley, T.H. 1870. Further Evidence of the Affinity Between the Dinosaurian Reptiles and Birds. The Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. xxvi. 12-31
Norell, M., Dingus, L., Gaffney, E. 2000. Discovering Dinosaurs: Expanded and Updated. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 11
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
The Second International Workshop on the Biology of Sauropod Dinosaurs (part I)
Scientific American: The Second International Workshop on the Biology of Sauropod Dinosaurs (part 1)
Darren Naish
Darren Naish
Sauropod dinosaurs are – in my somewhat biased opinion – among the most fascinating tetrapods that ever evolved. Exceeding all other terrestrial animals by an order of magnitude and famous for their extreme and often ridiculous necks, they were also remarkable in possessing an often elaborate degree of skeletal pneumatisation. Remember that sauropods were incredibly successful and were a persistent and obvious group of animals over a huge span of time. Sauropods pose a huge number of questions concerning behaviour, physiology, soft-tissue anatomy, reproduction, ecology and so on. Naturally, many of the questions we’d like to have answered just can’t be, given the limitations of the fossil record.
But in recent years a large number of diverse scientists have worked together in an concerted effort to better understand sauropod biology and determine the causes of their gigantism.
This research consortium, titled Research Unit 533 ‘Biology of the Sauropod Dinosaurs: the Evolution of Gigantism’ and funded by the German Research Foundation, is truly multidisciplinary, involving botanists, physiologists, biomechanists and other experts on living organisms – not just palaeontologists. A large number of technical papers have been produced by this research group, as has a very handsome multi-authored volume (Klein et al. 2011) [cover shown here]. Note that the group’s most influential publication – the major review of sauropod biology and evolution that is Sander et al. (2011) – is open-access and available free to all.
Palaeontologists near-universally agree on several aspects of sauropod biology. Sauropods were herbivores; they didn’t masticate their food or use gastroliths but almost certainly relied on rapid cropping and swallowing and hindgut fermentation; they possessed heterogenous, ‘bird-like’ lungs and a bird-like pneumatic system; and they laid clutches of hard-shelled eggs. There are some other ideas that are not exactly universally agreed on, but look increasingly well supported. One is that sauropods grew quickly (on par with precocial birds) and reached sexual maturity in their second decade. In modern animals, high growth rates like those seen in sauropods are only present in endothermic mammals and birds, and recent reviews of sauropod biology argue that – like mammals and birds – sauropods were most likely tachymetabolic endotherms (Sander & Clauss 2008, Sander et al. 2011). Another mostly accepted idea is that sauropods did not practise post-hatching parental care and that juvenile mortality was high.
One aim of the sauropod research group has been to determine how sauropods were able to grow so large. Clearly, no single factor led to gigantism in sauropods: numerous features were added piecemeal to produce the ultimate recipe for gigantism. These include a long neck, lack of reliance on mastication, avian-style lung, and production of numerous small young (Rauhut et al. 2011, Sander et al. 2011). The presence of the dinosaur bauplan contributed in some way to sauropod gigantism, since traits common to all dinosaurs (like parasagittal gaits and high growth rates) obviously allowed members of all dinosaurian lineages to evolve large body size with comparative ease.
Flow chart depicting evolutionary events that, combined, led to sauropod gigantism. From Sander et al. (2011).
With both our evolving understanding of sauropods, and the significant progress of the sauropod research group as required background knowledge, we now turn to the fact that the group recently hosted the second of its international workshops. Held at the University of Bonn, Germany, the meeting featured over 40 presentations on sauropods, given by researchers from all over the world. I wasn’t able to make the previous meeting (held in 2008), but am very pleased to report that I attended, and spoke at, this second one.
So – - three entire days devoted specifically to sauropod biology, physiology, reproduction, biomechanics and so on. As I said above, we can’t presently answer questions about such things as sauropod swallowing mechanics, pigmentation patterns, vocal abilities or mating postures, but – by the end of the meeting – we had certainly discussed, speculated about, and commented on, the majority of such issues.
Because the meeting was billed as a workshop – not just as a conference or seminar – discussion sessions followed each and every talk. This worked really well and it was typically all too easy to use up the 20 or so minutes of discussion allotted to each talk. In the text that follows, I haven’t discussed or even mentioned all the talks, but (as per usual) have mostly covered the ones that I found the most interesting, most enjoyable, or most memorable.
Reconstruction of a Massospondylus hatchling, from Reisz et al. (2005).
During the very first talk of the meeting, Robert Reisz discussed the large amount of new information he and his colleagues now have on the ontogeny and nesting behaviour of Massospondylus (note: not a sauropod, but a close relative of Sauropoda within the more inclusive clade Sauropodomorpha. A ‘prosauropod’). Much of this is unpublished so I won’t share it, but we’ve known for a while that juvenile Massospondylus are toothless, quadrupedal little animals, very different from the toothed, bipedal adults (Reisz et al. 2005). Does the association of those tiny babies with adults imply parental care? And what were the babies eating – were they provisioned by their parents or were they just eating something completely different?
Even at this very early stage of the conference, comments and questions were arising about neck posture, in particular because Robert said that Massospondylus most likely had a horizontal neck posture (a conclusion he reached following direct articulation of the fossil neck vertebrae). However, when you plug cervical vertebrae together in living animals, you never get the normal alert posture. I seem to remember a 2009 paper that took the trouble to point this out… we’ll be coming back to this issue later.
Photo of Tyrannosaurus by Scott Robert Anselmo, from wikipedia.
There followed a number of talks on sauropod growth rates, thermophysiology, digestion and feeding strategies. Chris Carbone spoke about his work on the ecology of Tyrannosaurus: a peculiar topic for a sauropod conference perhaps, but one with implications for several Mesozoic environments and foodwebs (Chris comes from a background in modelling energetic constraints in terrestrial predators and other animals: see Carbone et al. (1999)). You might think that the whole silly idea of the ‘scavenger rex’ is either dead or a non-issue, but it seems not to be so: one member of the audience implied strongly in the discussion section after the talk that T. rex’s morphology is inconsistent with hunting and only consistent with obligate scavenging. Err, what? The bottom line of Carbone et al. (2011) is that a hypothetical Maastrichtian habitat, realistically scattered with the carcasses of contemporaneous herbivores, would not provide enough available prey mass for a foraging T. rex, given physiological constraints. As I said to Chris after his talk, even this model is a best-case scenario, since there’s no one place in western North America where all the species listed in the analysis actually lived together. Sure, T. rex occurs from New Mexico all the way north to Saskatchewan, but Alamosaurus and various of the other dinosaurs included in the study don’t.
Reconstruction of Mamenchisaurus youngi by Steveoc 86, from wikipedia.
Two talks focused on the incredible Chinese mamenchisaurids, famous for their ridiculous necks (consisting of 16-17 vertebrae and, in cases, being four times as long as the body). In recent years a large number of new mamenchisaurid taxa have been named, and even the genus Mamenchisaurus itself now contains eight species. While these Mamenchisaurus species are superficially similar, it’s generally agreed that they likely aren’t close relatives. So it wasn’t really a surprise when a new cladistic analysis presented by Toru Sekiya scattered Mamenchisaurus to the four winds, though this was preliminary (one Mamenchisaurus species was recovered in a very counter-intuitive/startling position). It’s not as appreciated as it should be that some mamenchisaurids were truly enormous – there are mass estimates for some of the species that exceed 70 tons.
Europasaurus holgeri; photo by Ghedoghedo. It's perhaps not obvious from the photo how small this animal is (for a sauropod): about 6 m long.
José Carbadillo discussed the growth changes that occur in the vertebrae of the dwarf European titanosauriform Europasaurus [adjacent photo by Ghedoghedo]. For those who don’t know, this was an island-endemic dwarf sauropod, at most 6 m long and less than 1.5 m tall at the shoulder. The Europasaurus situation has become more complicated now that some animals reach skeletal maturity at much smaller body size than others – this seems to show that there are actually two europasaur taxa in the assemblage, both of which are dwarfs. Also on axial morphology, Francisco Gascó discussed the vertebral anatomy of the Spanish sauropods Losillasaurus and Turiasaurus, both of which seem to be part of the recently recognised non-neosauropod clade Turiasauria. You probably know that Francisco (aka Paco) blogs at El Pakozoico.
Francisco Gascó's opening slide, showing his excellent reconstructions of the Spanish turiasaurian sauropods Turiasaurus and Losillasaurus.
Three talks used computer modelling techniques (primarily finite element techniques) to analyse sauropod (and Plateosaurus) skull or pelvic structure. Phil Manning discussed synchrotron-based imaging work done on the skin of the famous Auca Mahuevo titanosaur embryo. I’ll hold off on saying anything further about this work, since the results are (understandably) embargoed.
Day two included sessions on the constraints of gigantism, feeding and digestion, and on reproduction and life history. Andreas Christian discussed something dear to my heart – the allometry of intraspecific fighting behaviour in animals and what it might mean for sauropods. Small animals can roll around and literally throw each other into the air [fighting cats from here], but this doesn’t work for big ones. They have to rely on body-barging or pushing. If sauropods did fight, it’s likely that this is what they did. Andreas has been a strong proponent of elevated neck postures in sauropods (his papers include useful work on neck posture and neck anatomy in ostriches, camels and other living animals) and his talks always include numerous amusing cartoons about the Necks Wars (an area we’ll return to in part II).
Digital reconstruction of a race-walking plateosaur, by Heinrich Mallison.
Heinrich Mallison discussed his new ideas about limb kinematics in long-tailed dinosaurs. Heinrich argues that we need to think anew about the importance of femoral retraction and protraction in dinosaurs and what it might mean for locomotion. Basically, he argues for speed-walking/race-walking dinosaurs where it’s the heavily muscled thigh and tail that provides the main power during fast movement, with the ankle being less important than traditionally thought. It all sounds pretty compelling but we know that some biomechanists who specialise on dinosaurs see problems with the idea. You can read all the details on Heinrich’s blog (dinosaurpalaeo), starting here. Heinrich also discussed possible resting postures for sauropods.
"Are fast-moving elephants really running?". Yes, it seems.
Bill Sellers also looked at the locomotor capabilities of sauropods, discussing evolutionary robotics and the construction of computer-generated models derived from laser scanning of mounted skeletons. John Hutchinson reviewed recent work on biomechanics in elephants, dinosaurs and other animals to see how animals cope with the challenges of gigantism. Various preconceptions and assumptions are false and unreliable (such as that limb joints are always ‘more columnar’ in big animals than smaller ones). New work on elephant foot dynamics and the stresses transmitted through limb bone shafts paint an increasingly complex picture as goes the biomechanics and abilities of giant quadrupeds [adjacent running elephant image from RVC page here; used with permission]. And John was also interested in testing that age-old question of how big a land animal can become. His answer? Hmm, vaguer than you might like (unless you’re a big fan of Godzilla).
A session on food uptake and digestion included several talks by botanists working on the diversity and growth physiology of Mesozoic plants. Controversies over the composition of the Mesozoic atmospheric mean that radically different models need to be explored (some workers argue for high oxygen levels, others for much lower ones). Jennifer McElwain spoke about her fascinating work on plant-atmosphere interactions. Specially constructed greenhouses allow plants to be grown in simulated ‘prehistoric’ atmospheres.
Carole Gee discussed the plant foods available to sauropods and the nutritional values of those plants (see Gee 2011). Among the many plants available to sauropods, Araucaria species are particularly interesting in that they release a large amount of energy when retained for a long period in the hindgut. They are also particularly good at regenerating broken branches and tree-tops.
Baby diplodocids foraging on ferns, from Walking With Dinosaurs. (c) BBC.
Equisetum is also of special interest in the context of sauropod biology given that it was widespread across the Mesozoic world and is also energy-rich. Indeed, juvenile geese can fuel their growth demands on an Equisetum diet. I mentioned earlier that we think that sauropods grew at rates comparable to those of precocial birds. For some time now, those of us particularly interested in sauropod biology have regarded the apparently rapid growth of sauropods as a bit of an enigma. Surely, we mused, low-quality vegetation (ferns and the like) just can’t provide enough energy to fuel this sort of thing? So, we wondered, is it plausible that sauropods were somehow provisioned by their parents? Were babies provided with some sort of secretion produced by the mother, or did they feed from regurgitated, pre-digested plant slop or something? Such ideas are not ridiculous, since parental provisioning of babies is hardly unique to mammals: members of several bird groups produce ‘milk’ for their young, and there are frogs and caecilians that feed their young with special skin, eggs, or cloacal secretions. Yum. Regardless, it seems that these speculations (note: unpublished and technically off-the-record) are now unwarranted. Baby sauropods could apparently fuel their growth just fine on a diet of Mesozoic plants. And, yes, of course there is always the possibility that juveniles were omnivorous, snacking on insects and such on occasion.
L to r: Mike Taylor, Darren Naish, Vanessa Graff and Matt Wedel at Bonn. Also, the largest saurischian skull we could find.
On that note, time to call it quits. The remainder of my thoughts to appear in part II. You can read further thoughts on the meeting here at SV-POW! and note also that both Heinrich Mallison and John Hutchinson tweeted continually throughout the meeting under #SauroBonn. For previous Tet Zoo articles on sauropod biology and behaviour see…
* The hands of sauropods: horseshoes, spiky columns, stumps and banana shapes
* Junk in the trunk: why sauropod dinosaurs did not possess trunks
* Sauropod dinosaurs held their necks in high, raised postures
* Getting scansoriopterygids, terrestrial-stalking azhdarchids, sauropod pneumaticity and the word palaeontography into a kid’s book
* Necks for sex? No thank you, we’re sauropod dinosaurs
* The sauropod viviparity meme
Refs – -
Carbone, C., Mace, G. M., Roberts, S. C. & Macdonald, D. W. 1999. Energetic constraints on the diet of terrestrial carnivores. Nature 402, 286-288.
Carbone C, Turvey ST, & Bielby J (2011). Intra-guild competition and its implications for one of the biggest terrestrial predators, Tyrannosaurus rex. Proceedings. Biological sciences / The Royal Society, 278 (1718), 2682-90 PMID: 21270037
Gee, C. T. 2011. Dietary options for the sauropod dinosaurs from an integrated botanical and paleobotanical perspective. In Klein, N., Remes, K., Gee, C. T. & Sander, P. M. (eds). Biology of Sauropod Dinosaurs: Understanding the Life of Giants. Indiana University Press (Bloomington & Indianapolis), pp. 34-56.
Klein, N., Remes, K., Gee, C. T. & Sander, P. M. 2011. Biology of Sauropod Dinosaurs: Understanding the Life of Giants. Indiana University Press (Bloomington & Indianapolis).
Rauhut, O. W. M., Fechner, R., Remes, K. & Reis, K. 2011. How to get big in the Mesozoic: the evolution of the sauropodomorph body plan. In Klein, N., Remes, K., Gee, C. T. & Sander, P. M. (eds). Biology of Sauropod Dinosaurs: Understanding the Life of Giants. Indiana University Press (Bloomington & Indianapolis), pp. 119-149.
Reisz, R. R., Scott, D., Sues, H.-D., Evans, D. C. & Raath, M. A. 2005. Embryos of an Early Jurassic prosauropod dinosaur and their evolutionary significance. Science 309, 761-764.
Sander, P. M., Christian, A., Clauss, M., Fechner, R., Gee, C. T., Griebeler, E.-M., Gunga, H.-C., Hummel, J., Heinrich, M., Perry, S. F., Preuschoft, H., Rauhut, O. W. M., Remes, K., Tütken, T., Wings, O. & Witzel, U. 2011. Biology of the sauropod dinosaurs: the evolution of gigantism. Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society 86, 117-155.
- . & Clauss, M. 2008. Sauropod gigantism. Science 322, 200-201.
Darren NaishAbout the Author: Darren Naish is a science writer, technical editor and palaeozoologist (affiliated with the University of Southampton, UK). He mostly works on Cretaceous dinosaurs and pterosaurs but has an avid interest in all things tetrapod. He has been blogging at Tetrapod Zoology since 2006.
Monday, December 19, 2011
Titanosaur bone found in Antarctica
From Google News: Titanosaur bone found in Antarctica
Long before the arrival of penguins, giant plant-eating dinosaurs roamed Antarctica.
Scientists discovered a fossil tail bone belonging to a titanosaur, a family that included the largest land animals ever to walk the Earth.
Titanosaurs were sauropods, four-legged herbivorous dinosaurs with long necks and tails.
Sauropods included some 150 species whose remains have been found around the world, but never in Antarctica until now.
The new specimen was discovered on James Ross Island by an Argentinian-led team and it consists of section of vertebrae almost 20cm long believed to have come from the middle third of the dinosaur's tail.
Scientists identified it as belonging to a "lithostrotian titanosaur" from the Late Cretaceous period around 70 million years ago.
The discovery is reported in the German journal Naturwissenschaften - The Science of Nature.
Authors Dr Ignacio Alejandro Cerda, from the Conicet research institute in Argentina, and colleagues wrote: "Our finding indicates that advanced titanosaurs achieved a global distribution at least by the Late Cretaceous."
Titanosaurs included the mighty Argentinosaurus, which may have reached 100ft in length.
However, the discovery of a single vertebrae fossil yielded too little information to allow speculation about the dinosaur's species.
Long before the arrival of penguins, giant plant-eating dinosaurs roamed Antarctica.
Scientists discovered a fossil tail bone belonging to a titanosaur, a family that included the largest land animals ever to walk the Earth.
Titanosaurs were sauropods, four-legged herbivorous dinosaurs with long necks and tails.
Sauropods included some 150 species whose remains have been found around the world, but never in Antarctica until now.
The new specimen was discovered on James Ross Island by an Argentinian-led team and it consists of section of vertebrae almost 20cm long believed to have come from the middle third of the dinosaur's tail.
Scientists identified it as belonging to a "lithostrotian titanosaur" from the Late Cretaceous period around 70 million years ago.
The discovery is reported in the German journal Naturwissenschaften - The Science of Nature.
Authors Dr Ignacio Alejandro Cerda, from the Conicet research institute in Argentina, and colleagues wrote: "Our finding indicates that advanced titanosaurs achieved a global distribution at least by the Late Cretaceous."
Titanosaurs included the mighty Argentinosaurus, which may have reached 100ft in length.
However, the discovery of a single vertebrae fossil yielded too little information to allow speculation about the dinosaur's species.
Saturday, December 17, 2011
New Evidence Says Three Dinosaurs Are Actually One
From RedOrbit: New Evidence Says Three Dinosaurs Are Actually One
Researchers report that they have found further evidence that genera of the Triceratops actually represent different individuals that all belong to the Triceratops genus.
The three genera, Triceratops, Torosaurus, and Nedoceratops, were thought at one time or another thought to be distinct.
However, the work by John Scanella of Montana State University and colleagues shows that these dinosaurs are actually the result of maturity. They focused on a single skull that has been the subject of controversy during their study.
Some believe the skull to be a Triceratops, while others say it is a different genus.
The researchers new analysis provides evidence that this specimen is in fact a Triceratops, and that both Torosaurus and Nedoceratops both fall into the same genus.
The authors said that these factors result in specimens with some features that are considerably different, but are nonetheless all Triceratops.
They believe that the size and shape of the dinosaur’s skull and head ornaments changed as it matured.
In the new study, the researchers suggests that the Triceratops is the younger version of the dinosaur, while the Nedoceratops is in an intermediate stage. The Torosaurus would be the “elderly” version of the group of dinosaur.
The main difference that sets these dinosaur skulls apart is a set of large holes in the crown of Torosaurus.
These holes are smaller in Nedoceratops, and in Triceratops some thought they seem to be absent. However, examination by Scanella showed evidence of the beginnings of these holes in some Triceratops.
Another difference between the dinosaurs is that the Torosaurus have extra spikes around the edges of its crown.
The researchers believe these extra spikes are the result of the bony protrusions on a Triceratop’s skull splitting later on in life as the animal matured.
The research was published in the December 14th edition of the journal PLoS ONE.
Researchers report that they have found further evidence that genera of the Triceratops actually represent different individuals that all belong to the Triceratops genus.
The three genera, Triceratops, Torosaurus, and Nedoceratops, were thought at one time or another thought to be distinct.
However, the work by John Scanella of Montana State University and colleagues shows that these dinosaurs are actually the result of maturity. They focused on a single skull that has been the subject of controversy during their study.
Some believe the skull to be a Triceratops, while others say it is a different genus.
The researchers new analysis provides evidence that this specimen is in fact a Triceratops, and that both Torosaurus and Nedoceratops both fall into the same genus.
The authors said that these factors result in specimens with some features that are considerably different, but are nonetheless all Triceratops.
They believe that the size and shape of the dinosaur’s skull and head ornaments changed as it matured.
In the new study, the researchers suggests that the Triceratops is the younger version of the dinosaur, while the Nedoceratops is in an intermediate stage. The Torosaurus would be the “elderly” version of the group of dinosaur.
The main difference that sets these dinosaur skulls apart is a set of large holes in the crown of Torosaurus.
These holes are smaller in Nedoceratops, and in Triceratops some thought they seem to be absent. However, examination by Scanella showed evidence of the beginnings of these holes in some Triceratops.
Another difference between the dinosaurs is that the Torosaurus have extra spikes around the edges of its crown.
The researchers believe these extra spikes are the result of the bony protrusions on a Triceratop’s skull splitting later on in life as the animal matured.
The research was published in the December 14th edition of the journal PLoS ONE.
Friday, December 16, 2011
Dinosaurs with killer claws yield new theory about flight Read more: http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/montana/dinosaurs-with-killer
From the Billings Gazette: Dinosaurs with killer claws yield new theory about flight
BOZEMAN -- New research from Montana State University's Museum of the Rockies has revealed how dinosaurs like Velociraptor and Deinonychus used their famous killer claws, leading to a new hypothesis on the evolution of flight in birds.
In a paper published Dec. 14 in PLoS ONE, MSU researchers Denver W. Fowler, Elizabeth A. Freedman, John B. Scannella and Robert E. Kambic, who is now at Brown University in Rhode Island, describe how comparing modern birds of prey helped develop a new behavior model for sickle-clawed carnivorous dinosaurs, such as the Velociraptor.
"This study is a real game-changer," said lead author Fowler. "It completely overhauls our perception of these little predatory dinosaurs, changing the way we think about their ecology and evolution."
The study focuses on dromaeosaurids; a group of small predatory dinosaurs that include the famous Velociraptor and its larger relative, Deinonychus. Dromaeosaurids are closely related to birds and are most famous for possessing an enlarged sickle-claw on the second digit, or inside toe, of the foot. Previous researchers suggested that this claw was used to slash at prey or help to climb up their hides, but the new study suggests a different behavior.
"Modern hawks and eagles possess a similar enlarged claw on their digit 2's, something that hadn't been noted before we published on it back in 2009," Fowler said. "We showed that the enlarged D-2 claws are used as anchors, latching into the prey, preventing their escape. We interpret the sickle claw of dromaeosaurids as having evolved to do the same thing: latching in and holding on."
As in modern birds of prey, precise use of the claw is related to relative prey size.
"This strategy is only really needed for prey that are about the same size as the predator -- large enough that they might struggle and escape from the feet," Fowler said.
"Smaller prey are just squeezed to death, but, with large prey, all the predator can do is hold on and stop it from escaping, then basically just eat it alive. Dromaeosaurs lack any obvious adaptations for dispatching their victims, so, just like hawks and eagles, they probably ate their prey alive, too."
Other features of the feet of bird of prey gave clues to the functional anatomy of their ancient relatives. Toe proportions of dromaeosaurids seemed more suited for grasping than running, and the metatarsus bones between the ankles and the toes are more adapted for strength than speed.
"Unlike humans, most dinosaurs and birds only walk on their toes, so the metatarsus forms part of the leg itself," Fowler said. "A long metatarsus lets you take bigger strides to run faster; but, in dromaeosaurids, the metatarsus is very short, which is odd."
Fowler thinks that this indicates that Velociraptor and its kin were adapted for a strategy other than simply running after prey.
"When we look at modern birds of prey, a relatively short metatarsus is one feature that gives the bird additional strength in its feet," Fowler said. "Velociraptor and Deinonychus also have a very short, stout metatarsus, suggesting that they had great strength but wouldn't have been very fast runners."
The ecological implications become especially interesting when dromaeosaurids are contrasted with their closest relatives -- a very similar group of small carnivorous dinosaurs called troodontids, Fowler said.
"Troodontids and dromaeosaurids started out looking very similar, but, over about 60 million years, they evolved in opposite directions, adapting to different niches," Fowler said.
"Dromaeosaurids evolved towards stronger, slower feet; suggesting a stealthy ambush predatory strategy, adapted for relatively large prey. By contrast, troodontids evolved a longer metatarsus for speed and a more precise, but weaker grip, suggesting they were swift but probably took relatively smaller prey."
The study also has implications for birds, the next-closest relatives of troodontids and dromaeosaurids. An important step in the origin of modern birds was the evolution of the perching foot.
"A grasping foot is present in the closest relatives of birds, but also in the earliest birds like Archaeopteryx," Fowler said. "We suggest that this originally evolved for predation, but would also have been available for use in perching. This is what we call ‘exaptation': a structure evolved originally for one purpose that can later be appropriated for a different use."
The new study proposes that a similar mechanism may be responsible for the evolution of flight.
"When a modern hawk has latched its enlarged claws into its prey, it can no longer use the feet for stabilization and positioning," Fowler said. "Instead, the predator flaps its wings so that the prey stays underneath its feet, where it can be pinned down by the predator's bodyweight."
The researchers suggest that this "stability flapping" uses less energy than flight, making it an intermediate flapping behavior that may be key to understanding how flight evolved.
"The predator's flapping just maintains its position and does not need to be as powerful or vigorous as full flight would require. Get on top, stay on top; it's not trying to fly away," Fowler said.
"We see fully formed wings in exquisitely preserved dromaeosaurid fossils, and, from biomechanical studies, we can show that they were also able to perform a rudimentary flapping stroke. Most researchers think that they weren't powerful enough to fly. We propose that the less-demanding stability flapping would be a viable use for such a wing, and this behavior would be consistent with the unusual adaptations of the feet."
Another group of researchers has proposed that understanding flapping behaviors is key to understanding the evolution of flight, a view with which Fowler agrees.
"If we look at modern birds, we see flapping being used for all sorts of behaviors outside of flight. In our paper, we are formally proposing the ‘flapping first' model, where flapping evolved for other behaviors first and was only later exapted for flight by birds.
The researchers think their new ideas will open new lines of investigation into dinosaur paleobiology and the evolution of novel anatomical structures.
"As with other research conducted at the Jack Horner paleo lab, we're looking at old paleontological questions with a fresh perspective, taking a different angle," Fowler said.
"Just as you have to get beyond the idea that feet are used just for walking, so we are coming to realize that many unusual structures in modern animals originally evolved for quite different purposes. Revealing the selection pathways that mold and produce these structures helps us to better understand the major evolutionary transitions that shaped life on this planet.
BOZEMAN -- New research from Montana State University's Museum of the Rockies has revealed how dinosaurs like Velociraptor and Deinonychus used their famous killer claws, leading to a new hypothesis on the evolution of flight in birds.
In a paper published Dec. 14 in PLoS ONE, MSU researchers Denver W. Fowler, Elizabeth A. Freedman, John B. Scannella and Robert E. Kambic, who is now at Brown University in Rhode Island, describe how comparing modern birds of prey helped develop a new behavior model for sickle-clawed carnivorous dinosaurs, such as the Velociraptor.
"This study is a real game-changer," said lead author Fowler. "It completely overhauls our perception of these little predatory dinosaurs, changing the way we think about their ecology and evolution."
The study focuses on dromaeosaurids; a group of small predatory dinosaurs that include the famous Velociraptor and its larger relative, Deinonychus. Dromaeosaurids are closely related to birds and are most famous for possessing an enlarged sickle-claw on the second digit, or inside toe, of the foot. Previous researchers suggested that this claw was used to slash at prey or help to climb up their hides, but the new study suggests a different behavior.
"Modern hawks and eagles possess a similar enlarged claw on their digit 2's, something that hadn't been noted before we published on it back in 2009," Fowler said. "We showed that the enlarged D-2 claws are used as anchors, latching into the prey, preventing their escape. We interpret the sickle claw of dromaeosaurids as having evolved to do the same thing: latching in and holding on."
As in modern birds of prey, precise use of the claw is related to relative prey size.
"This strategy is only really needed for prey that are about the same size as the predator -- large enough that they might struggle and escape from the feet," Fowler said.
"Smaller prey are just squeezed to death, but, with large prey, all the predator can do is hold on and stop it from escaping, then basically just eat it alive. Dromaeosaurs lack any obvious adaptations for dispatching their victims, so, just like hawks and eagles, they probably ate their prey alive, too."
Other features of the feet of bird of prey gave clues to the functional anatomy of their ancient relatives. Toe proportions of dromaeosaurids seemed more suited for grasping than running, and the metatarsus bones between the ankles and the toes are more adapted for strength than speed.
"Unlike humans, most dinosaurs and birds only walk on their toes, so the metatarsus forms part of the leg itself," Fowler said. "A long metatarsus lets you take bigger strides to run faster; but, in dromaeosaurids, the metatarsus is very short, which is odd."
Fowler thinks that this indicates that Velociraptor and its kin were adapted for a strategy other than simply running after prey.
"When we look at modern birds of prey, a relatively short metatarsus is one feature that gives the bird additional strength in its feet," Fowler said. "Velociraptor and Deinonychus also have a very short, stout metatarsus, suggesting that they had great strength but wouldn't have been very fast runners."
The ecological implications become especially interesting when dromaeosaurids are contrasted with their closest relatives -- a very similar group of small carnivorous dinosaurs called troodontids, Fowler said.
"Troodontids and dromaeosaurids started out looking very similar, but, over about 60 million years, they evolved in opposite directions, adapting to different niches," Fowler said.
"Dromaeosaurids evolved towards stronger, slower feet; suggesting a stealthy ambush predatory strategy, adapted for relatively large prey. By contrast, troodontids evolved a longer metatarsus for speed and a more precise, but weaker grip, suggesting they were swift but probably took relatively smaller prey."
The study also has implications for birds, the next-closest relatives of troodontids and dromaeosaurids. An important step in the origin of modern birds was the evolution of the perching foot.
"A grasping foot is present in the closest relatives of birds, but also in the earliest birds like Archaeopteryx," Fowler said. "We suggest that this originally evolved for predation, but would also have been available for use in perching. This is what we call ‘exaptation': a structure evolved originally for one purpose that can later be appropriated for a different use."
The new study proposes that a similar mechanism may be responsible for the evolution of flight.
"When a modern hawk has latched its enlarged claws into its prey, it can no longer use the feet for stabilization and positioning," Fowler said. "Instead, the predator flaps its wings so that the prey stays underneath its feet, where it can be pinned down by the predator's bodyweight."
The researchers suggest that this "stability flapping" uses less energy than flight, making it an intermediate flapping behavior that may be key to understanding how flight evolved.
"The predator's flapping just maintains its position and does not need to be as powerful or vigorous as full flight would require. Get on top, stay on top; it's not trying to fly away," Fowler said.
"We see fully formed wings in exquisitely preserved dromaeosaurid fossils, and, from biomechanical studies, we can show that they were also able to perform a rudimentary flapping stroke. Most researchers think that they weren't powerful enough to fly. We propose that the less-demanding stability flapping would be a viable use for such a wing, and this behavior would be consistent with the unusual adaptations of the feet."
Another group of researchers has proposed that understanding flapping behaviors is key to understanding the evolution of flight, a view with which Fowler agrees.
"If we look at modern birds, we see flapping being used for all sorts of behaviors outside of flight. In our paper, we are formally proposing the ‘flapping first' model, where flapping evolved for other behaviors first and was only later exapted for flight by birds.
The researchers think their new ideas will open new lines of investigation into dinosaur paleobiology and the evolution of novel anatomical structures.
"As with other research conducted at the Jack Horner paleo lab, we're looking at old paleontological questions with a fresh perspective, taking a different angle," Fowler said.
"Just as you have to get beyond the idea that feet are used just for walking, so we are coming to realize that many unusual structures in modern animals originally evolved for quite different purposes. Revealing the selection pathways that mold and produce these structures helps us to better understand the major evolutionary transitions that shaped life on this planet.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
The biggest dinosaur yet?
From All Voices: The biggest dinosaur yet?
Those colossal lizards that lived millions of years ago have always been of infinite interest to armchair enthusiasts and paleontologists alike. But nearly everyone knows the names of some dinosaurs; most are able to name the T-Rex and if they were paying attention during “Jurassic park”, Velociraptors then. Even those with the faintest idea know that dinosaurs were big, car-big, house-big, and even building-big.
Of course, when it comes to size, bipedal or just two legs wouldn’t cut it. Sure, the T-Rex was almost 15 foot tall, but its height pales in comparison to the sauropods, the largest dinosaurs to have roamed prehistoric earth. This group of dinosaurs was massive; the Brachiosaurus for example, measured 26 meters and weighed almost 30 metric tons, and the largest known sauropod, the Argentinosaurus, weighed in at a phenomenal 70 tons. But a recent discovery in America may just unseat the Argentinosaurus.
In a joint discovery by the Museum of Rockies in Montana State and the State Museum of Pennsylvania, the paleontologist teams discovered fragments, two vertebrae and a femur to be exact, of the Alamosaurus sanjuanensis.
The fossil remains were discovered in New Mexico, where it is believed the Alamosaurus roamed around 69 million years ago. The dinosaur was discovered back around the 1920s and its size was considered to be around 60 feet, weighing 30 tons. But on the new dig, the paleontologists were surprised to discover that the Alamosaurus remains were much larger than expected, hinting at an even greater size. It was believed that the Alamosaurus adult, to whom the bones belonged, was still growing, possibly indicating that the known measurements of the dinosaur were transitory.
Dr. W. Fowler of Montana State University explained the find as, “This (the find) told us that Alamosaurus got even bigger, but we didn't imagine that it could get quite this big. Over the past 20 years, Argentinean and Brazilian palaeontologists have been unearthing bigger and bigger dinosaurs, putting the rest of the world in the shade,” adding, “Our findings show that Alamosaurus was originally described based on immature material and this is a problem as characteristics that define a species are typically only fully gained at adult size. This means that we might be misinterpreting the relationships of Alamosaurus and possibly other sauropod dinosaurs too.”
Finding complete fossil remains of the sauropods has been rare and most of those have unearthed only bits and pieces. This has stymied work on this group of the dinosaurs, something that has affected the Alamosaurus’ standing. But Dr. Fowler is confident that more remains can be found, helping paint a more complete picture of the dinosaur, especially because the Naashoibito region of New Mexico, where the bones were found, are known to have revealed many Alamosaurus remains in the past.
Those colossal lizards that lived millions of years ago have always been of infinite interest to armchair enthusiasts and paleontologists alike. But nearly everyone knows the names of some dinosaurs; most are able to name the T-Rex and if they were paying attention during “Jurassic park”, Velociraptors then. Even those with the faintest idea know that dinosaurs were big, car-big, house-big, and even building-big.
Of course, when it comes to size, bipedal or just two legs wouldn’t cut it. Sure, the T-Rex was almost 15 foot tall, but its height pales in comparison to the sauropods, the largest dinosaurs to have roamed prehistoric earth. This group of dinosaurs was massive; the Brachiosaurus for example, measured 26 meters and weighed almost 30 metric tons, and the largest known sauropod, the Argentinosaurus, weighed in at a phenomenal 70 tons. But a recent discovery in America may just unseat the Argentinosaurus.
In a joint discovery by the Museum of Rockies in Montana State and the State Museum of Pennsylvania, the paleontologist teams discovered fragments, two vertebrae and a femur to be exact, of the Alamosaurus sanjuanensis.
The fossil remains were discovered in New Mexico, where it is believed the Alamosaurus roamed around 69 million years ago. The dinosaur was discovered back around the 1920s and its size was considered to be around 60 feet, weighing 30 tons. But on the new dig, the paleontologists were surprised to discover that the Alamosaurus remains were much larger than expected, hinting at an even greater size. It was believed that the Alamosaurus adult, to whom the bones belonged, was still growing, possibly indicating that the known measurements of the dinosaur were transitory.
Dr. W. Fowler of Montana State University explained the find as, “This (the find) told us that Alamosaurus got even bigger, but we didn't imagine that it could get quite this big. Over the past 20 years, Argentinean and Brazilian palaeontologists have been unearthing bigger and bigger dinosaurs, putting the rest of the world in the shade,” adding, “Our findings show that Alamosaurus was originally described based on immature material and this is a problem as characteristics that define a species are typically only fully gained at adult size. This means that we might be misinterpreting the relationships of Alamosaurus and possibly other sauropod dinosaurs too.”
Finding complete fossil remains of the sauropods has been rare and most of those have unearthed only bits and pieces. This has stymied work on this group of the dinosaurs, something that has affected the Alamosaurus’ standing. But Dr. Fowler is confident that more remains can be found, helping paint a more complete picture of the dinosaur, especially because the Naashoibito region of New Mexico, where the bones were found, are known to have revealed many Alamosaurus remains in the past.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Smithsonian’s scan man in high demand
From Washington Post: Smithsonian’s scan man in high demand
By Brian Vastag, Published: December 12
Oh, the things Bruno Frohlich can scan.
Ancient whale skulls. Smashed human ones. Stradivarius violins. Violas. Cellos. Guitars. Stringed instruments from Mongolia. Apollo spacesuits. Eagle feathers. Mummified birds from Egypt oddly missing their heads. Dinosaur leg bones, fossilized. Thigh bones, hip bones, arms bones, teeth. An infant’s iron casket dug up in the District. Live turtles. Dead crocodiles. Mummy after mummy from Egypt. And one from Peru.
The Smithsonian Institution owns 137 million things. Over the past 15 years, Frohlich, it seems, has scanned them all.
Okay, not quite. But if he had enough time, he would.
“This is my hobby,” Frohlich says of his job.
In 1996, Siemens Corp. donated a used medical CT scanner to the National Museum of Natural History. Understanding the machine’s potential to reveal ancient secrets, Frohlich took charge of it.
“In the old days, 20 years ago, we would do an autopsy, cut the body open,” Frohlich says of studying mummies. No need for such destructive science now. Just scan an object, and a three-dimensional image of its innards appears.
Frohlich said few other museums own full-size CT machines. And now the Smithsonian owns two. A faster, higher-resolution scanner arrived in September, again a used model (again donated by Siemens) that retails for about $250,000. It’s a gleaming white five-foot-tall vertical doughnut with a sliding table attached, squeezed into Frohlich’s third-floor laboratory.
In a hospital, the scanner’s penetrating X-rays might spot a tumor. At the museum, they reveal that what appears to be a small mummy of a sacred kitten is, in fact, hollow — a 2,500-year-old Egyptian con job.
“You never know what you’ll find,” says the 60-something Danish native, perhaps a little impishly.
A small rectangular box hangs above the lab door. It reads “X-RAYS” and flashes red when the scanner is on. People walk in anyway, interrupting. This annoys Frohlich. There’s so much to scan.
Frohlich enjoys the solitude of it. “I’m not a give-me-attention kind of guy,” he says as he briskly leads a visitor past a mob of tourists in the museum’s entrance hall. “I’m more of a leave-me-alone type.”
Sometimes this happens: A colleague wheels up to the lab a behemoth chunk of dinosaur skeleton. It is mineralized bone — a fossil — so it is hard. X-rays scatter off such items, bouncing all over the joint and possibly exposing the unwary to tiny doses of radiation. So when confronted with hard targets, Frohlich waits until everyone in the vast museum has left.
In the 2 a.m. quiet, he scans.
“My workdays keep going; they are 24 hours,” he says. “I love it.”
Scanmaster of the Smithsonian is Frohlich’s second job at the museum. He arrived in 1978 as a forensic anthropologist, a career that still carries him around the world. In the Aleutian Islands of Alaska and the deserts of Mongolia, he helps solve ancient murder mysteries. When he’s not traveling, he spends half his time in Vermont, where he aids the state police there and in Connecticut in solving more-recent homicides.
At the museum, though, it’s all about the scans. As Frohlich works, he sits behind a leaded-glass window with a view of the CT machine. A dosimeter stays clipped to his shirt pocket, measuring his radiation exposure.
The CT machine whirs in a wash of white noise. On the screen of the control station, a three-dimensional image appears, a high-resolution peek inside rock, or metal, or wood, or tissue. It’s technology; may as well be magic.
Coming back to life
One recent morning, the museum showed off its new scanner. Three reporters, a TV camera and four high school interns clad in red polo shirts crowd around the scanner table. It’s warm. Sweat appears on Frohlich’s brow. As he expounds on the machine’s value to science, he talks a little too fast, excitedly.
As he does so, a 700-year-old Peruvian rests on the scanning table. She is on her side with her legs crossed, one knee sticking up. She is tiny. She has seen better days. Her bones are bony. She is missing a lot of teeth and some of her skin. Ragged cloth strips still wrap her head. Decades ago in the Andes, she was found in a cold, dry cave, good for preservation. She’s a natural mummy.
Scans revealed that the woman was in her 40s when she died, her organs still intact. She may have been a sacrifice, Frohlich says. Other scientists can now read the images and learn more about the woman’s health, search for hints as to what diseases she may have had, whether she had any broken bones. They can piece together her story.
As Frohlich talks, a phalanx of Siemens executives and the museum’s director, Cristian Samper, wait in the hallway. They are on a schedule. Someone tells Frohlich to wrap it up.
“They expect me to describe 20 years of work in 20 minutes,” he scoffs.
He keeps talking, faster.
He pulls a human skull from a shelf behind him. Yes, there are human skulls on his shelves, in cardboard boxes numbered 39, 233, 787. The Smithsonian flies Frohlich to Mongolia frequently to collaborate with the Mongolian Academy of Sciences. And so, here is a skull he brought back.
Frohlich turns it over, points to a triangular hole gaping in the rounded back of the skull. Something like a baseball bat could have done it. A real good thwack. Who killed this centuries-old Mongolian, and why?
“We’re not out there just to pick up mummies and skeletons,” Frohlich says later of his expeditions. “We’re there to learn about the people. We make them come alive.”
Scanning helps. It can show, for instance, whether bone healed after a trauma, indicating survival. The hole-in-the-head guy, he did not survive the whack. His face is smashed, too. “Someone made sure he was dead,” Frohlich says.
The sounds of music
Frohlich enjoys the forensics, unraveling these mysteries. Even more, he loves scanning.
After the first machine arrived, Frohlich sent word to staff at the Smithsonian’s 19 museums and galleries: Bring me your scannables. And so they did.
Some Air and Space Museum curators carried over a spacesuit once worn by a moon-walking astronaut. The scans revealed weak spots in the suit’s latex and neoprene, guiding conservation efforts.
By Brian Vastag, Published: December 12
Oh, the things Bruno Frohlich can scan.
Ancient whale skulls. Smashed human ones. Stradivarius violins. Violas. Cellos. Guitars. Stringed instruments from Mongolia. Apollo spacesuits. Eagle feathers. Mummified birds from Egypt oddly missing their heads. Dinosaur leg bones, fossilized. Thigh bones, hip bones, arms bones, teeth. An infant’s iron casket dug up in the District. Live turtles. Dead crocodiles. Mummy after mummy from Egypt. And one from Peru.
The Smithsonian Institution owns 137 million things. Over the past 15 years, Frohlich, it seems, has scanned them all.
Okay, not quite. But if he had enough time, he would.
“This is my hobby,” Frohlich says of his job.
In 1996, Siemens Corp. donated a used medical CT scanner to the National Museum of Natural History. Understanding the machine’s potential to reveal ancient secrets, Frohlich took charge of it.
“In the old days, 20 years ago, we would do an autopsy, cut the body open,” Frohlich says of studying mummies. No need for such destructive science now. Just scan an object, and a three-dimensional image of its innards appears.
Frohlich said few other museums own full-size CT machines. And now the Smithsonian owns two. A faster, higher-resolution scanner arrived in September, again a used model (again donated by Siemens) that retails for about $250,000. It’s a gleaming white five-foot-tall vertical doughnut with a sliding table attached, squeezed into Frohlich’s third-floor laboratory.
In a hospital, the scanner’s penetrating X-rays might spot a tumor. At the museum, they reveal that what appears to be a small mummy of a sacred kitten is, in fact, hollow — a 2,500-year-old Egyptian con job.
“You never know what you’ll find,” says the 60-something Danish native, perhaps a little impishly.
A small rectangular box hangs above the lab door. It reads “X-RAYS” and flashes red when the scanner is on. People walk in anyway, interrupting. This annoys Frohlich. There’s so much to scan.
Frohlich enjoys the solitude of it. “I’m not a give-me-attention kind of guy,” he says as he briskly leads a visitor past a mob of tourists in the museum’s entrance hall. “I’m more of a leave-me-alone type.”
Sometimes this happens: A colleague wheels up to the lab a behemoth chunk of dinosaur skeleton. It is mineralized bone — a fossil — so it is hard. X-rays scatter off such items, bouncing all over the joint and possibly exposing the unwary to tiny doses of radiation. So when confronted with hard targets, Frohlich waits until everyone in the vast museum has left.
In the 2 a.m. quiet, he scans.
“My workdays keep going; they are 24 hours,” he says. “I love it.”
Scanmaster of the Smithsonian is Frohlich’s second job at the museum. He arrived in 1978 as a forensic anthropologist, a career that still carries him around the world. In the Aleutian Islands of Alaska and the deserts of Mongolia, he helps solve ancient murder mysteries. When he’s not traveling, he spends half his time in Vermont, where he aids the state police there and in Connecticut in solving more-recent homicides.
At the museum, though, it’s all about the scans. As Frohlich works, he sits behind a leaded-glass window with a view of the CT machine. A dosimeter stays clipped to his shirt pocket, measuring his radiation exposure.
The CT machine whirs in a wash of white noise. On the screen of the control station, a three-dimensional image appears, a high-resolution peek inside rock, or metal, or wood, or tissue. It’s technology; may as well be magic.
Coming back to life
One recent morning, the museum showed off its new scanner. Three reporters, a TV camera and four high school interns clad in red polo shirts crowd around the scanner table. It’s warm. Sweat appears on Frohlich’s brow. As he expounds on the machine’s value to science, he talks a little too fast, excitedly.
As he does so, a 700-year-old Peruvian rests on the scanning table. She is on her side with her legs crossed, one knee sticking up. She is tiny. She has seen better days. Her bones are bony. She is missing a lot of teeth and some of her skin. Ragged cloth strips still wrap her head. Decades ago in the Andes, she was found in a cold, dry cave, good for preservation. She’s a natural mummy.
Scans revealed that the woman was in her 40s when she died, her organs still intact. She may have been a sacrifice, Frohlich says. Other scientists can now read the images and learn more about the woman’s health, search for hints as to what diseases she may have had, whether she had any broken bones. They can piece together her story.
As Frohlich talks, a phalanx of Siemens executives and the museum’s director, Cristian Samper, wait in the hallway. They are on a schedule. Someone tells Frohlich to wrap it up.
“They expect me to describe 20 years of work in 20 minutes,” he scoffs.
He keeps talking, faster.
He pulls a human skull from a shelf behind him. Yes, there are human skulls on his shelves, in cardboard boxes numbered 39, 233, 787. The Smithsonian flies Frohlich to Mongolia frequently to collaborate with the Mongolian Academy of Sciences. And so, here is a skull he brought back.
Frohlich turns it over, points to a triangular hole gaping in the rounded back of the skull. Something like a baseball bat could have done it. A real good thwack. Who killed this centuries-old Mongolian, and why?
“We’re not out there just to pick up mummies and skeletons,” Frohlich says later of his expeditions. “We’re there to learn about the people. We make them come alive.”
Scanning helps. It can show, for instance, whether bone healed after a trauma, indicating survival. The hole-in-the-head guy, he did not survive the whack. His face is smashed, too. “Someone made sure he was dead,” Frohlich says.
The sounds of music
Frohlich enjoys the forensics, unraveling these mysteries. Even more, he loves scanning.
After the first machine arrived, Frohlich sent word to staff at the Smithsonian’s 19 museums and galleries: Bring me your scannables. And so they did.
Some Air and Space Museum curators carried over a spacesuit once worn by a moon-walking astronaut. The scans revealed weak spots in the suit’s latex and neoprene, guiding conservation efforts.
Monday, December 5, 2011
UK: Brace yourself for a spot of fossil hunting
From The Independent: Brace yourself for a spot of fossil hunting
As any budding palaeontologist knows, a bucket and spade are handy for more than just building sandcastles on the Isle of Wight.
They are useful for rooting around in the sand along the base of the cliffs at Yaverland, where every rock you pick up seems to contain a fossil. When I visited, the autumnal gales had kicked in, hurling spray and waves at the battered cliffs, loosening the soil and releasing more fossils for hardy amateur collectors.
I'd dropped down to Yaverland beach, north of Sandown, as part of a walk that takes in the rich wildlife and history of a strangely enigmatic easterly point of the island. Starting in Brading, south of Ryde, I was immediately struck by how diligently the island waymarks its paths. Almost all footpath signs come with a number as well as the destination. And so, I dutifully took footpath number SS44 through the Brading Marshes nature reserve.
The landscape is being restored and already teal and widgeon are among the ducks returning, while the rarer snipe – twitchy, mottled brown, long bill – may flutter around in the ditches, and flocks of lapwing should by now have arrived for the winter. The area feels like an island within an island, which until a few hundred years ago was the case, when the Isle of Bembridge was separated from the main island by a tidal channel that now forms the course of the River Yar.
After collecting several modest fossils – 65 million-year-old oyster shells, according to Alex, a passionately knowledgeable guide at the nearby Dinosaur Isle museum – I clambered up the heathland that runs above the beach. Cattle graze randomly here and vigorous clumps of gorse still in flower had colonised the narrow, fractured valleys that lead down to the sea. Out on the Channel, tankers were queuing up to dock at south-coast ports, while windsurfers scuttled along the water in a stiffening breeze.
The top of the climb is marked by Culver Down and the Yarborough Monument, which you could argue form something of an imposition, because on either side there are superb views in all directions – south back towards the hills above Shanklin, the fetching rolling hills of the hinterland, and northwards to Bembridge and Ryde.
I made for the coast path and Bembridge, with useful information boards filling me in on the age and character of the sandstone and chalk cliffs I walked upon. Many of the fossils are freshwater, and date back to a time when the Isle of Wight was closer to modern-day North Africa. Just out to sea, was Bembridge ledge, at low tide its exposed skerries and rock pools resembling a reef. Elsewhere, the sea has taken sizeable chunks out of the cliffs. The coastline around Bembridge – the pebbles make for a rather painstaking plod on the beach – is attractive, too, with woodland groves, now bare of their leaves, acting as a scaffold through which to view the sea.
Beyond Bembridge, striking out into the interior of the island, the landscape changes yet again in the form of Brading Marshes, a silent, open expanse of land that has a touch of a magic about it. Above the marshes stands a lonely 17th-century windmill, the last remaining windmill on the island, but the land then tumbles away to become spirit-level flat, with paths threading through reedbeds and clumps of woodland thick with old oak, ash and hazel and home to buzzards, yellowhammers, red squirrels and the embattled green woodpecker. Gazing down on this enchanting landscape is the chalk edifice of Bembridge Down and the Victorian era Palmerston fort.
Arriving back in Brading, I had time to visit the truly excellent remains of the Roman villa – one of the best, when it comes to interpretation, in the UK. The Romans, I learnt, favoured the east of the island for its more sheltered climate, fertile lands and easy access to the continent. I was particularly struck by a map of the Roman perspective from Wight – the east, and the Isle of Bembridge, are positioned north, and the direction and flow of trade to London, France, the Low Countries and, via the Rhine, to the heartland of Germany – and then Italy – was obvious.
Whether it is fossils, Romans, wildlife or, indeed, the prevailing 1970s bucket-and-spade charm that draws you here, the Isle of Wight is a walking destination for all seasons.
Compact Facts
How to get there
Mark Rowe travelled to the Isle of Wight with Wightlink Green Getaways (0871 376 0013; wightlink.co.uk/ greengetaways), which offers three-night weekend breaks at Niton Barns in the village of Niton from £121 per person, including return Wightlink ferry crossings from Portsmouth or Lymington. Wightlink publishes a free walking brochure, Wight Safaris (wightlink.co.uk/wightsafaris).
Further information
Brading Roman Villa (01983 406223; bradingromanvilla.org.uk)
Dinosaur Isle (01983 404344; dinosaurisle.com)
Directions
OS Map: OL29.
Distance: 9 miles.
Time: Four hours.
Start at Brading railway station. Head for the B3395 (Bembridge Road). Take footpath on right (SS44) across fields and turn left to follow the path in front of houses and down to B3395. Turn right and then left on to beach before walking up the grassy slopes to Culver Down and the Yarborough Monument. Follow coast-path signs – including diversion behind Foreland Fields – to Bembridge and take the beach route around the town. At Bembridge Point take footpath BB33 to Dulcie Avenue and turn right along unpaved road to the T-junction. Turn left, then right up Bembridge high street. At the bend, take the footpath ahead to Bembridge Windmill and follow waymarkers to Brading via Centurion's Copse. Cross railway back to train station.
As any budding palaeontologist knows, a bucket and spade are handy for more than just building sandcastles on the Isle of Wight.
They are useful for rooting around in the sand along the base of the cliffs at Yaverland, where every rock you pick up seems to contain a fossil. When I visited, the autumnal gales had kicked in, hurling spray and waves at the battered cliffs, loosening the soil and releasing more fossils for hardy amateur collectors.
I'd dropped down to Yaverland beach, north of Sandown, as part of a walk that takes in the rich wildlife and history of a strangely enigmatic easterly point of the island. Starting in Brading, south of Ryde, I was immediately struck by how diligently the island waymarks its paths. Almost all footpath signs come with a number as well as the destination. And so, I dutifully took footpath number SS44 through the Brading Marshes nature reserve.
The landscape is being restored and already teal and widgeon are among the ducks returning, while the rarer snipe – twitchy, mottled brown, long bill – may flutter around in the ditches, and flocks of lapwing should by now have arrived for the winter. The area feels like an island within an island, which until a few hundred years ago was the case, when the Isle of Bembridge was separated from the main island by a tidal channel that now forms the course of the River Yar.
After collecting several modest fossils – 65 million-year-old oyster shells, according to Alex, a passionately knowledgeable guide at the nearby Dinosaur Isle museum – I clambered up the heathland that runs above the beach. Cattle graze randomly here and vigorous clumps of gorse still in flower had colonised the narrow, fractured valleys that lead down to the sea. Out on the Channel, tankers were queuing up to dock at south-coast ports, while windsurfers scuttled along the water in a stiffening breeze.
The top of the climb is marked by Culver Down and the Yarborough Monument, which you could argue form something of an imposition, because on either side there are superb views in all directions – south back towards the hills above Shanklin, the fetching rolling hills of the hinterland, and northwards to Bembridge and Ryde.
I made for the coast path and Bembridge, with useful information boards filling me in on the age and character of the sandstone and chalk cliffs I walked upon. Many of the fossils are freshwater, and date back to a time when the Isle of Wight was closer to modern-day North Africa. Just out to sea, was Bembridge ledge, at low tide its exposed skerries and rock pools resembling a reef. Elsewhere, the sea has taken sizeable chunks out of the cliffs. The coastline around Bembridge – the pebbles make for a rather painstaking plod on the beach – is attractive, too, with woodland groves, now bare of their leaves, acting as a scaffold through which to view the sea.
Beyond Bembridge, striking out into the interior of the island, the landscape changes yet again in the form of Brading Marshes, a silent, open expanse of land that has a touch of a magic about it. Above the marshes stands a lonely 17th-century windmill, the last remaining windmill on the island, but the land then tumbles away to become spirit-level flat, with paths threading through reedbeds and clumps of woodland thick with old oak, ash and hazel and home to buzzards, yellowhammers, red squirrels and the embattled green woodpecker. Gazing down on this enchanting landscape is the chalk edifice of Bembridge Down and the Victorian era Palmerston fort.
Arriving back in Brading, I had time to visit the truly excellent remains of the Roman villa – one of the best, when it comes to interpretation, in the UK. The Romans, I learnt, favoured the east of the island for its more sheltered climate, fertile lands and easy access to the continent. I was particularly struck by a map of the Roman perspective from Wight – the east, and the Isle of Bembridge, are positioned north, and the direction and flow of trade to London, France, the Low Countries and, via the Rhine, to the heartland of Germany – and then Italy – was obvious.
Whether it is fossils, Romans, wildlife or, indeed, the prevailing 1970s bucket-and-spade charm that draws you here, the Isle of Wight is a walking destination for all seasons.
Compact Facts
How to get there
Mark Rowe travelled to the Isle of Wight with Wightlink Green Getaways (0871 376 0013; wightlink.co.uk/ greengetaways), which offers three-night weekend breaks at Niton Barns in the village of Niton from £121 per person, including return Wightlink ferry crossings from Portsmouth or Lymington. Wightlink publishes a free walking brochure, Wight Safaris (wightlink.co.uk/wightsafaris).
Further information
Brading Roman Villa (01983 406223; bradingromanvilla.org.uk)
Dinosaur Isle (01983 404344; dinosaurisle.com)
Directions
OS Map: OL29.
Distance: 9 miles.
Time: Four hours.
Start at Brading railway station. Head for the B3395 (Bembridge Road). Take footpath on right (SS44) across fields and turn left to follow the path in front of houses and down to B3395. Turn right and then left on to beach before walking up the grassy slopes to Culver Down and the Yarborough Monument. Follow coast-path signs – including diversion behind Foreland Fields – to Bembridge and take the beach route around the town. At Bembridge Point take footpath BB33 to Dulcie Avenue and turn right along unpaved road to the T-junction. Turn left, then right up Bembridge high street. At the bend, take the footpath ahead to Bembridge Windmill and follow waymarkers to Brading via Centurion's Copse. Cross railway back to train station.
New dinosaur species found
From the Halifax Herald: New dinosaur species found
REGINA — A 66-million-year-old partial skeleton discovered in Saskatchewan has been confirmed as a new species of plant-eating dinosaur.
The new species has been named Thescelosaurus assiniboiensis after theAssiniboia district where it was found.
"It is small, but there are features in the cranium, the back end of the skull, and a few features in the pelvis that are quite distinct amongst all other known species of Thescelosaurus," said Tim Tokaryk, head of palaeontology for the Royal Saskatchewan Museum Monday.
"So based on those central features, that’s what made it a new species."
Tokaryk said the dinosaur is about the size of a white-tailed deer.
"That’s pretty small for a dinosaur in general. I mean T. Rex, which this thing would have had to avoid, was quite large.
"We know there were small dinosaurs around at that time because we found fragments, we find teeth and such like that. But to find a partial skeleton of one individual, that makes it interesting and also makes it more useful to be able to identify it as a new species or a species in general."
The specimen was collected from the Frenchman River Valley near Eastend in 1968 but was only identified recently when Caleb Brown, a master’s student from the University of Calgary, studied the bones for his thesis.
REGINA — A 66-million-year-old partial skeleton discovered in Saskatchewan has been confirmed as a new species of plant-eating dinosaur.
The new species has been named Thescelosaurus assiniboiensis after theAssiniboia district where it was found.
"It is small, but there are features in the cranium, the back end of the skull, and a few features in the pelvis that are quite distinct amongst all other known species of Thescelosaurus," said Tim Tokaryk, head of palaeontology for the Royal Saskatchewan Museum Monday.
"So based on those central features, that’s what made it a new species."
Tokaryk said the dinosaur is about the size of a white-tailed deer.
"That’s pretty small for a dinosaur in general. I mean T. Rex, which this thing would have had to avoid, was quite large.
"We know there were small dinosaurs around at that time because we found fragments, we find teeth and such like that. But to find a partial skeleton of one individual, that makes it interesting and also makes it more useful to be able to identify it as a new species or a species in general."
The specimen was collected from the Frenchman River Valley near Eastend in 1968 but was only identified recently when Caleb Brown, a master’s student from the University of Calgary, studied the bones for his thesis.
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Dinosaur fossils in Singapore: Get ready for Twinky & friends
Prof Leo Tan with Apollo, and with Mr Joe Gentry as well. Twinky the baby stands in the background. The dinosaur fossils are being prepared in the Fossilogic lab, in Utah, the United States. They could come to Singapore as early as next year, two years before their new home, the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum, is slated to open. -- ST PHOTOS: TAN DAWN WEI
From the Singpore Times: Dinosaur fossils in Singapore: Get ready for Twinky & friends
Singapore's heftiest immigrants are moving here as early as next year - two years before their new home will even be ready.
The team behind the Republic's new natural history museum hopes to have two of the family of three dinosaurs here first, as soon as their 'citizenship' papers are settled.
Between now and then, the new Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum needs to sort out the legal papers, collect the money pledged by donors and authenticate the bones.
The last involves a 'health check' by palaeontologists to verify they are no fake fossils. To be sure, the dinosaur fossils will also have to go through CT scans and carbon dating.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Mastodon bones found in Daytona Beach
From 13News: Mastodon bones found in Daytona Beach
DAYTONA BEACH --
The digging will continue in a residential area where archaeologists are making a pre-historic discovery.
Workers digging a hole for a retention pond in Daytona Beach earlier this week found what appeared to be pieces of a mastodon.
Archaeologists say they believe it belongs to an American mastodon, an elephant-like animal which lived in Florida thousands of years ago.
On Wednesday archaeologists found part of a mastodon's rib. On Thursday, however, they uncovered two tusks -- about five and a half feet long each.
Part of the jaw, skull, leg and vertebrae were also found.
The dig is bringing out curious locals, excited to see what is being unearthed underneath Daytona Beach. For one boy, it will be quite a story to share with his classmates Monday.
"I'm gonna tell them that right up the street from my house they found dinosaur bones," Jeremy Gilbraide said.
The president of the Museum of Arts and Sciences in Daytona Beach says it will be a while before they can carbon date the remains found, but they could be as many as 100,000 years old.
But they want to eventually exhibit their find next to remains of a prehistoric sloth found just a few miles away from the Mastodon
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Buffalo, NY: Science museum goes prehistoric, revealing ‘BIG’ new residents
From Buffalo News.com: Science museum goes prehistoric, revealing ‘BIG’ new residents
For weeks, the Buffalo Science Museum tantalized its members and fans with clues about an exciting surprise to be revealed Thanksgiving weekend.
“Something BIG is coming,” the museum’s website teased, urging people to send in guesses as to what that big something was through Facebook and Twitter.
At least 600 people were waiting Saturday morning outside the East Side museum’s door to find out.
They were not disappointed.
The museum unveiled two new “residents,” as museum president Mark Mortenson likes to call them: towering life-size casts of a 12-foot-tall mastodon and a 26- foot-long Albertosaurus.
“I love dinosaurs!” declared Arianna Pocobello, 10, of North Tonawanda, as she gazed up at the bones of the Albertosaurus, a relative of the Tyrannosaurus that walked the planet 70 million years ago.
Arianna, who was accompanied by her grandmother Suzanne Pocobello, acknowledged she wasn’t too surprised by the museum’s secret.
“We kind of figured it out,” the grandmother said.
But they, and seemingly everyone else, seemed thrilled to be a part of the welcoming celebration.
Sam Leaderstorf, 7, of the Town of Tonawanda, came with his little brother Max, 6, and friend Bryan Crispin, 7. Bryan had never visited the museum before.
“I didn’t really know what would be here,” he said.
The boys enjoyed “looking at bones,” Sam said, and were excited by all the paleontological activities that were available Saturday, including making fossils out of play-dough.
The dinosaur and the ancient mammal will be permanently displayed in Hamlin Hall on the second floor of the Buffalo Science Museum.
They will be the first of a series of new exhibits planned for the museum, said Mortenson, president and CEO of the museum.
“This is the trigger of a major transformation at the Buffalo Science Museum,” he said.
Over the next four to five years, he said, the museum plans to open a new exhibit area. The next to open will be a hands-on health sciences studio in March, and then an earth sciences studio in October.
“We’re going to essentially transform the entire museum,” he said.
The former dinosaur exhibit at the museum will be dismantled, but the pieces from the collection will be used in other areas, Mortenson said.
The giant casts of bones were funded in part by a donation from Lise Buyer, a Buffalo native who runs an IPO advisory firm in Silicon Valley. Her late father, Bob Buyer, was a reporter at The Buffalo News and she attended Nichols School, where she now serves as a trustee.
Buyer named the mastodon Seymour after a beloved childhood pet dog.
But the Albertosaurus so far is unnamed, and the museum is sponsoring a naming contest. Name suggestions can be submitted through the museum’s Facebook page or through forms available at the museum. The names must be submitted by Dec. 19. Buyer will choose the top 10 names, and the community will vote on the winner, which will be announced Jan. 19.
For weeks, the Buffalo Science Museum tantalized its members and fans with clues about an exciting surprise to be revealed Thanksgiving weekend.
“Something BIG is coming,” the museum’s website teased, urging people to send in guesses as to what that big something was through Facebook and Twitter.
At least 600 people were waiting Saturday morning outside the East Side museum’s door to find out.
They were not disappointed.
The museum unveiled two new “residents,” as museum president Mark Mortenson likes to call them: towering life-size casts of a 12-foot-tall mastodon and a 26- foot-long Albertosaurus.
“I love dinosaurs!” declared Arianna Pocobello, 10, of North Tonawanda, as she gazed up at the bones of the Albertosaurus, a relative of the Tyrannosaurus that walked the planet 70 million years ago.
Arianna, who was accompanied by her grandmother Suzanne Pocobello, acknowledged she wasn’t too surprised by the museum’s secret.
“We kind of figured it out,” the grandmother said.
But they, and seemingly everyone else, seemed thrilled to be a part of the welcoming celebration.
Sam Leaderstorf, 7, of the Town of Tonawanda, came with his little brother Max, 6, and friend Bryan Crispin, 7. Bryan had never visited the museum before.
“I didn’t really know what would be here,” he said.
The boys enjoyed “looking at bones,” Sam said, and were excited by all the paleontological activities that were available Saturday, including making fossils out of play-dough.
The dinosaur and the ancient mammal will be permanently displayed in Hamlin Hall on the second floor of the Buffalo Science Museum.
They will be the first of a series of new exhibits planned for the museum, said Mortenson, president and CEO of the museum.
“This is the trigger of a major transformation at the Buffalo Science Museum,” he said.
Over the next four to five years, he said, the museum plans to open a new exhibit area. The next to open will be a hands-on health sciences studio in March, and then an earth sciences studio in October.
“We’re going to essentially transform the entire museum,” he said.
The former dinosaur exhibit at the museum will be dismantled, but the pieces from the collection will be used in other areas, Mortenson said.
The giant casts of bones were funded in part by a donation from Lise Buyer, a Buffalo native who runs an IPO advisory firm in Silicon Valley. Her late father, Bob Buyer, was a reporter at The Buffalo News and she attended Nichols School, where she now serves as a trustee.
Buyer named the mastodon Seymour after a beloved childhood pet dog.
But the Albertosaurus so far is unnamed, and the museum is sponsoring a naming contest. Name suggestions can be submitted through the museum’s Facebook page or through forms available at the museum. The names must be submitted by Dec. 19. Buyer will choose the top 10 names, and the community will vote on the winner, which will be announced Jan. 19.
NY: Dino dreams spark kids' imaginations
From RecordOnline, Wayne's World Blog: Wayne's World: Dino dreams spark kids' imaginations
By Wayne Hall
Published: 2:00 AM - 11/27/11
Here's a 200-million-year-old-user's-guide warning for overexposure to dinosaur Christmas presents.
Too much dino dreaming can turn you into a paleontologist – the people who study dinosaurs.
“That's what happened to me,” says Richard Kissel, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Ithaca-based Museum of the Earth.
He's not fooling.
Listen to Brianna Cockshuttle, 10, of Sullivan County:“I want to be a paleontologist,” says this 4-H Club kid whose rabbits, chickens, turkeys and hermit crab got her animal love stoked. “The first time I watched a movie about this I thought this is awesome and I came to love it.”
And so could anyone, now that there's even more reason to get excited about dinosaurs.
Turns out they're as local around here as the neighborhood diner.
“There's no reason to believe they weren't here,” says Kissel.
Which isn't something a lot of people know.
Dinosaurs so big they could peer into your second-story bedroom shook the ground right here in Orange and Ulster counties and maybe even Sullivan.
We're talking a big bruiser, something like the T-Rex in Jurassic Park, located just down the road in Pennsylvania. And maybe in our region, too.
“We had our fair share of top predators,” says Kissel.
“No reason they wouldn't have been there,” says Robert Ross, a vertebrate paleontologist with the Museum of the Earth.
And the New York State Museum's curator of vertebrate paleontology, Robert S. Feranec, points out there's always something new about dinosaurs.
Right next door in Rockland County, footprints were found of a meat-eating small dinosaur hunting in packs – called the wolves of their day.
Gigantic bones of a huge duck-billed plant-eating dinosaur with 2,000 teeth were found in the gray slime of a marl pit in nearby New Jersey.
And found along the Hudson and Connecticut rivers were primitive crocodilian teeth, bones of meat-eating toothed flying reptiles, and intriguing bits and pieces still under study.
In fact, this ancient world is endlessly fascinating – new stuff's always getting found like a 230-million-year-old petit dinosaur found in Argentina.
So it's not a surprise that kids love dinosaurs because they're “so cool, so unusual and different,” says Balmville Elementary School third-grade teacher Kris Campbell-Defoe, whose student, Stephen Justino, 8, just chose a new dinosaur favorite – one that flew – over his old choice – one that walked. “I just love Jurassic Park,' Stephen says .
So popular are these reptilians that the Museum of the Hudson Highlands' “dino pit,” where the great beasts' feet are measured, comes alive in the imagination, says museum educator Carl Heitmuller. Even for him. If he was a dinosaur, Heitmuller says, he'd be one of the plant-eaters “with a club on its tail and armor on its body” to fend off the carnivores like T-Rex.
In other words, dinosaurs tell us about life before we existed and ask us to use our imaginations. Amazing.
Check out dinosaurs
- You can see the world of dinosaurs at the New York State Museum's Ancient Life exhibit at 222 Madison Ave., Albany, 518 474-5877;
- The Museum of the Earth, 1259 Trumansburg Road, Ithaca, 607-273-6623;
- The American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West, New York, 212-769-5100.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Australia: Dinosaurs on show in Apollo Bay
From Weekly Times Now (Melbourne, Victoria): Dinosaurs on show in Apollo Bay
THE dinosaurs of the Otways are back.
An exhibition created by some of the world's leading palaeontologists, and comprising more than 300 individual and cast fossils, including full skeletons discovered in the Great Southern Continent of Gondwana, opens in Apollo Bay this week.
Gondwana was made up from what are now known as Australia, South America, Antarctica, Africa and India.
"Wildlife of Gondwana" will focus on the dinosaurs of the Otways, some from more than 3.8 billion years ago.
The dinosaurs found in Apollo Bay are from the Cretaceous period, 106 million years ago.
Fossils of these fascinating creatures were blasted from rocks on the Otway coast between 1984 and 1994, and some are still being discovered.
The first "trackway" of footprints was found recently and scientists don't know what else may be in the area.
One of the original palaeontologists, Professor Pat Vickers-Rich of Monash University, put the final touches on the exhibition on Monday. Prof Vickers-Rich and her husband, Tom Rich, a fellow paleontologist and senior curator at Museum Victoria, started digging around Apollo Bay in the 1990s.
The original discovery of the first bone at Dinosaur Cove was made by Tom, along with Tim Flannery and Mike Archer, in 1981.
"It's special because this is the first time the exhibition has come to a regional venue," Prof Vickers-Rich said. "It's fitting because what was found here has really impacted on the world view of how tough dinosaurs could be."
* The exhibition, at 313 Barham River Rd, will run until April 15.
THE dinosaurs of the Otways are back.
An exhibition created by some of the world's leading palaeontologists, and comprising more than 300 individual and cast fossils, including full skeletons discovered in the Great Southern Continent of Gondwana, opens in Apollo Bay this week.
Gondwana was made up from what are now known as Australia, South America, Antarctica, Africa and India.
"Wildlife of Gondwana" will focus on the dinosaurs of the Otways, some from more than 3.8 billion years ago.
The dinosaurs found in Apollo Bay are from the Cretaceous period, 106 million years ago.
Fossils of these fascinating creatures were blasted from rocks on the Otway coast between 1984 and 1994, and some are still being discovered.
The first "trackway" of footprints was found recently and scientists don't know what else may be in the area.
One of the original palaeontologists, Professor Pat Vickers-Rich of Monash University, put the final touches on the exhibition on Monday. Prof Vickers-Rich and her husband, Tom Rich, a fellow paleontologist and senior curator at Museum Victoria, started digging around Apollo Bay in the 1990s.
The original discovery of the first bone at Dinosaur Cove was made by Tom, along with Tim Flannery and Mike Archer, in 1981.
"It's special because this is the first time the exhibition has come to a regional venue," Prof Vickers-Rich said. "It's fitting because what was found here has really impacted on the world view of how tough dinosaurs could be."
* The exhibition, at 313 Barham River Rd, will run until April 15.
NZ: Preserve dinosaur discovery - scientist
From Nelson Mail, New Zealand: Preserve dinosaur discovery - scientist
The need to preserve the Golden Bay area where dinosaur footprints were discovered will be highlighted in a public talk tomorrow as part of a Geosciences conference.
About 330 earth scientists will be in Nelson next week for the week-long 2011 Geosciences conference.
The event is the annual showcase of geological and geophysical research being undertaken in New Zealand. As well as presentations, it includes a wide range of field trips to areas of geological interest in the Nelson region.
Among the themes speakers will address will be the Christchurch earthquake sequence, the Alpine Fault, the latest research on New Zealand's volcanoes, understanding the plate boundary beneath New Zealand, petroleum basin research, the role of the Southern Ocean and Antarctica in driving global climate, and the influences of tectonism, climate and ocean processes on New Zealand's coast.
A major conference session will be devoted to the role of geoscience in studying the earthquakes and rebuilding Christchurch.
As part of the conference GNS Science sedimentologist Greg Browne will give a public talk about his discovery of dinosaur footprints at Whanganui Inlet which was announced two years ago.
The discovery marks the first time dinosaur footprints have been recognised in New Zealand, and is the first evidence of dinosaurs in the South Island.
The footprints, estimated to be 70 million years old, occur at six locations in northwest Nelson and are as much as 60cm in diameter.
Dr Browne found the footprints while examining rock and sediment formations.
They are likely to have been formed by sauropods – large plant-eating dinosaurs with long necks and tails, and pillar-like legs.
Most of the footprints were formed on exposed tidal flats, but at one location there is evidence that the animals may have been swimming or wading when they produced the structures.
"What makes these footprints special is their unique preservation in an environment where they could easily have been destroyed by waves, tides or wind," Dr Browne said.
Dr Browne said his talk would illustrate the variety and nature of the footprints and the need to preserve the area where they were found.
He would also comment on the possibility that such structures might exist in other parts of New Zealand.
The illustrated talk will be held in the Maitai Room at the Rutherford Hotel at 7.30pm tomorrow.
The need to preserve the Golden Bay area where dinosaur footprints were discovered will be highlighted in a public talk tomorrow as part of a Geosciences conference.
About 330 earth scientists will be in Nelson next week for the week-long 2011 Geosciences conference.
The event is the annual showcase of geological and geophysical research being undertaken in New Zealand. As well as presentations, it includes a wide range of field trips to areas of geological interest in the Nelson region.
Among the themes speakers will address will be the Christchurch earthquake sequence, the Alpine Fault, the latest research on New Zealand's volcanoes, understanding the plate boundary beneath New Zealand, petroleum basin research, the role of the Southern Ocean and Antarctica in driving global climate, and the influences of tectonism, climate and ocean processes on New Zealand's coast.
A major conference session will be devoted to the role of geoscience in studying the earthquakes and rebuilding Christchurch.
As part of the conference GNS Science sedimentologist Greg Browne will give a public talk about his discovery of dinosaur footprints at Whanganui Inlet which was announced two years ago.
The discovery marks the first time dinosaur footprints have been recognised in New Zealand, and is the first evidence of dinosaurs in the South Island.
The footprints, estimated to be 70 million years old, occur at six locations in northwest Nelson and are as much as 60cm in diameter.
Dr Browne found the footprints while examining rock and sediment formations.
They are likely to have been formed by sauropods – large plant-eating dinosaurs with long necks and tails, and pillar-like legs.
Most of the footprints were formed on exposed tidal flats, but at one location there is evidence that the animals may have been swimming or wading when they produced the structures.
"What makes these footprints special is their unique preservation in an environment where they could easily have been destroyed by waves, tides or wind," Dr Browne said.
Dr Browne said his talk would illustrate the variety and nature of the footprints and the need to preserve the area where they were found.
He would also comment on the possibility that such structures might exist in other parts of New Zealand.
The illustrated talk will be held in the Maitai Room at the Rutherford Hotel at 7.30pm tomorrow.
Monday, November 21, 2011
Australia: Funding plea to make dinosaur site safe
From ABCNet: Funding plea to make dinosaur site safe
A western Queensland council says it does not have the capacity to fix a building over world-renowned dinosaur site, Lark Quarry near Winton, and it will need state or federal support.
Lark Quarry is known as the only recorded dinosaur stampede on Earth, with thousands of dinosaur footprints dating back about 95 million years.
Winton Mayor Ed Warren says the site has been closed because of concerns about a building constructed over the footprints.
He says safety needs to be guaranteed for the thousands of people who visit.
"It is somewhere in the vicinity of 12 or 13,000 [visitors] per year," he said.
"We believe those numbers will grow, hence we should be doing something about this building now and the infrastructure that is there, rather than leave it until some actual event happens and the wall falls in.
"That could be this national monument lost forever."
He says it is too early to say when the conservation park will reopen.
"These are the sorts of things we need to discuss with [the] State Government in particular, form a partnership with them and probably move onto the Federal Government," he said.
"Because this is a national icon and we don't have the capacity to carry forward what needs to happen to that building.
"The soil and the rock that's there is very fragile and it needs to be preserved."
A western Queensland council says it does not have the capacity to fix a building over world-renowned dinosaur site, Lark Quarry near Winton, and it will need state or federal support.
Lark Quarry is known as the only recorded dinosaur stampede on Earth, with thousands of dinosaur footprints dating back about 95 million years.
Winton Mayor Ed Warren says the site has been closed because of concerns about a building constructed over the footprints.
He says safety needs to be guaranteed for the thousands of people who visit.
"It is somewhere in the vicinity of 12 or 13,000 [visitors] per year," he said.
"We believe those numbers will grow, hence we should be doing something about this building now and the infrastructure that is there, rather than leave it until some actual event happens and the wall falls in.
"That could be this national monument lost forever."
He says it is too early to say when the conservation park will reopen.
"These are the sorts of things we need to discuss with [the] State Government in particular, form a partnership with them and probably move onto the Federal Government," he said.
"Because this is a national icon and we don't have the capacity to carry forward what needs to happen to that building.
"The soil and the rock that's there is very fragile and it needs to be preserved."
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