Dinosaur with horns previous to the Triceratops discovered

From Pravda:  Dinosaur with horns previous to the Triceratops discovered

Xenoceratops foremostensis lived 80 million years ago in Canada, and is the oldest dinosaur of its kind to be found in the country. The size of a large bull, the "alien horned face", its name translated, was in fact a vegetarian, but weighing two tonnes, two thousand kilograms...

Scientists in Alberta have identified a new type of horned dinosaur that resembled those of Triceratops, but lived 15 million years earlier.

Called Xenoceratops foremostensis, it was a vegetarian of two tons, which appeared 80 million years ago, becoming known for being the oldest dinosaur with large horns found in Canada.

"This creature was the size of a large bull, with two large horns on his forehead, above the eyes, and a large shield on the back of the skull," said Michael Ryan, head of vertebrate paleontology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and one of the authors of a study that describes the species in the journal The Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences."

Xenoceratops (Xeno + ceratops) means "alien horned-face," referring to the strange pattern of horns on its head and the scarcity of horned dinosaur fossils from this part of the fossil record. It also honors the Village of Foremost, located close to where the dinosaur was discovered. Xenoceratops had a parrot-like beak with two long brow horns above its eyes, much like a turtle.  A large frill protruded from the back of its skull featuring two huge spikes.

"Starting 80 million years ago, the large-bodied horned dinosaurs in North America underwent an evolutionary explosion," said lead author Dr. Michael Ryan,  "Xenoceratops shows us that even the geologically oldest ceratopsids had massive spikes on their head shields and that their cranial ornamentation would only become more elaborate as new species evolved."

Xenoceratops fossils were first collected in 1958, but remained unidentified at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa. Ryan and a co-author David Evans of the Royal Ontario Museum and the University of Toronto are working on a major effort, Project Southern Alberta Dinosaur, which identified about 10 new dinosaurs, including Xenoceratops.

Most known dinosaurs of Alberta were found further north in Dinosaur Provincial Park and Drumheller. The dinosaurs of the south, such as Xenoceratops, lived at least 15 million years before the Northern, Ryan said.

"We're trying to find a sufficient number of new dinosaurs to the south to help us understand what drove them to extinction," he added.



Translated from the Portuguese 

 

Spring Hill pink dinosaur turns 50

From Hernado Today:  Spring Hill pink dinosaur turns 50

SPRING HILL --Most Hernando County residents take it for granted. Motorists see it in their peripheral vision while driving along Commercial Way but never take a second look.

However, the pink dinosaur remains a popular roadside oddity for those people visiting the area or just passing through.

For those not familiar with the history of this ever-present statue, it’s celebrating its 50th birthday.

Back in 1962, a man by the name of Jacob Foxbower owned a roadside tourist attraction called Foxbower’s Wildlife Museum. Inside one could find a multitude of specimens of animal bones, weird-shaped eggs, skeletal remains of all sorts of critters, bottled amphibians and even a genetically deformed squirrel with two heads. It was sort of like a miniature version of Ripley’s Believe It or Not of the animal world.

The story goes that he and his brother built the dinosaur to attract motorists to his roadside attraction. According to the lady at the reference desk at the West Hernando Branch Library the dinosaur stands 22 feet tall, and is 58 feet long. It was built to look like a Brontosaurus, but if you look at pictures of these prehistoric creatures, the pink dinosaur seems to have been fashioned wearing a Stegosaurus vest (the ridges on top of his back).

Though paleontologists revised the name from Brontosaurus to Apatosaurus, in the case of the pink dinosaur, it really doesn’t matter. The statue did what it was supposed to do for a couple of decades, which was to bring in curious visitors to the museum.

At The Barber Shop located behind the pink dinosaur many people passing by have made U-turns to stop in, not for a haircut, but to inquire about the dinosaur.

Tim Reed, a barber there for three years, said he has fielded many questions about the giant statue.

Mostly, they usually ask about what it represents, he said.

Reed launches into a brief explanation while snipping away at a customer’s hair, telling them it was once a wildlife museum and there was a taxidermy shop next to that.

From inside the barber shop, chair No. 1 has the best view of the landmark. Although the view is shrouded with Spanish moss from the trees, the pink color sticks out from the natural greens of the grass and trees set against the blue sky.

While the windows are partially tinted, Reed said he can see people stop their cars, get out and take pictures.

Jani Wagner, of Hudson, was waiting for her father Rudolph Boggs, of Spring Hill, to get a trim. She was born two years after the dinosaur was built but remembers it when she was a little girl.

Commercial Way was just a dirt road called U.S. 19.

“There was nothing out here,” she said, which made the dinosaur even more noticeable.

Over the years the dinosaur weathered all sorts of elements, but it took a big hit in 2000 when vandals struck. Marked with graffiti and a couple of holes in its tail, the dinosaur was feeling the effects of modern day society. However, a good Samaritan came and repainted the concrete creature.

The new paint brought with it a new name. Somehow the dinosaur was now being called the Pepto Bismol pink dinosaur.

All over the World Wide Web you could search pink dinosaur and numerous page would come up citing the peculiar landmark among other roadside attractions. Spring Hill was on the map for those seeking the strange and odd.

According to one posting on RoadsideAmerica

.com, the Hernando County Historical Society has deemed the statue a “historical site” never to be removed.

 

Dinosaur 'Birds' Glided Rather Than Flew Like Modern Birds, Fossil Analysis Suggests

From HuffPost:  Dinosaur 'Birds' Glided Rather Than Flew Like Modern Birds, Fossil Analysis Suggests 

Some of the first birdlike creatures to emerge during the age of the dinosaurs probably couldn't get their heavy wings to take them off the ground, and they likely opted for gliding over flying, new research shows.
Modern flying birds have a single primary layer of easily separated long feathers covered with short ones — a design that helps them overcome drag when taking flight. A new analysis of the fossils of two of their ancestors shows that the arrangement of feathers for primitive birds was quite different.
The birdlike dinosaurs Anchiornis huxley and Archaeopteryx lithographica had dense overlapping layers of wing feathers that were likely difficult to separate, the researchers found. Instead of lifting off from the ground, these creatures probably climbed trees and used their wings to glide from a height, the scientists said.
What's more, differences in the wing feathers of Archaeopteryx and Anchiornis appear to represent early evolutionary experiments in wing design, according to the researchers. For example, Archaeopteryx had multiple layers of long feathers, while Anchiornis had an abundance of simple feathers that overlapped like a penguin's, said study researcher Nicholas R. Longrich, a postdoctoral fellow at Yale.
Longrich's colleague Jakob Vinther, a former Yale doctoral student, now with the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, said the fossil analyses add to an intricate picture of how feathers and modern birds evolved.
"We now seem to see that feathers evolved initially for insulation," Vinther explained in a statement. "More complex vaned or pinnate feathers evolved for display. These display feathers turned out to be excellent membranes that could have been utilized for aerial locomotion, which only very late in bird evolution became what we consider flapping flight."
The research was detailed today (Nov. 21) online in the journal Current Biology.

 

Maybe those dinosaurs weren't as big as we thought .

From NBC NEws:  Maybe those dinosaurs weren't as big as we thought .

The fact that bones have curves has now thrown a curveball into calculations of dinosaur weight, researchers say.

New estimates suggest dinosaurs may have been lighter than once thought, scientists explain.
With the rare exceptions of fossilized scraps of skin, feathers, bristles and other relatively soft tissues, all that remains of most extinct creatures are their skeletons. One way that investigators seek to learn more about these lost animals is to deduce their weight from their bones.
Traditionally, researchers would calculate estimates of dinosaur mass using a leg measurement such as the circumference of leg bones, understanding the relationship between body mass and this circumference in modern animals, "and scaling this up to the size of a dinosaur," said researcher Charlotte Brassey, a biomechanist at the University of Manchester in England.


For the sake of simplicity, these calculations often model leg bones as columnar beams. However, "as soon as we introduce irregularities into their shape — the lumps, bumps and curves that are typical of animal bones — then they no longer behave like columns," Brassey told LiveScience.

Dinosaur crash tests To overcome any errors that simplifying these curved organic structures might introduce, the scientists developed complex 3-D models of leg bones from eight modern animal species — the giraffe; the white-tailed eagle; the American flamingo; the European hedgehog; the common murre, a large bird; the rock hyrax, a guinea piglike animal; the Senegal bush baby, a type of monkey; and the European polecat, a weasel-like animal.
When the researchers digitally crash-tested the bones by virtually loading stress on the ends of the bones, they found "the smallest change in the position or direction of loading induced significant amounts of bending," Brassey said.

 

 

By simplifying leg bones down to basic columns, previous studies could have underestimated the stresses experienced in animal limbs by up to 142 percent.
"We've always known that reducing bones down to simple beams was a huge simplification," Brassey said, but it was only after she created the models and compressed them "that I realized how infeasible it was."
True dinosaur mass This raises concerns that past equations regarding fossil species, including dinosaurs, could have overestimated the maximum body weight their legs were capable of supporting.

Bill Sellers

 

Computer "skin and bones" model of Brachiosaurus. In analysis of computer models of modern mammals, they are about 20 percent smaller than the animals in real life.

"Unfortunately, it's not as simple as saying, 'These equations underestimate stress by 20 percent.' Instead, it depends on the underlying shape of the bone," Brassey said. "A whole-body approach to mass prediction in dinosaurs might be preferable."
When the researchers carried out such a whole-body approach to mass prediction with Giraffatitan, the giant dinosaur previously called Brachiosaurus, they came up with a body mass of 25 tons (23 metric tons), "which is quite a bit lower than some previous predictions," Brassey said. Previous mass estimates for Giraffatitan ranged from 31 to 86 tons (28 to 78 metric tons.)
"Other scientists will argue that finite element analysis remains too computationally expensive and time-consuming," Brassey said. "We appreciate this, and have also introduced improvements to the beam equations in our study for those who do not wish to use finite element analysis." (Finite element analysis is a method of breaking down a problem into many small elements that can be solved in relation to one another using complex equations.)
The findings pose another intriguing question: Why are bones curved in the first place?
"We've found that it massively increases stress levels when loading the bones in compression, which would be disadvantageous, yet most bones still have some degree of curvature, so evolution hasn't acted to get rid of this curvature," Brassey said.
There have been plenty of suggestions as to why the curvature is there — for instance, to pack muscles around the bones. "But we still haven't really come up with the solution yet," Brassey said.
The scientists detailed their findings online Wednesday in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

 

Birds Descended from Gliding Dinosaurs

From Discovery News:  Birds Descended from Gliding Dinosaurs

Evidence is mounting that modern birds descended from gliding, feathered non-avian dinosaurs.
Two dinosaurs could be candidates for the bottom of the bird family tree, and each helps to reveal how feathers first evolved.
"The oldest known feathered dinosaurs would be Anchiornis (155 million years ago) and Epidexipteryx (between 152 million and 168 million years ago)," Yale University paleontologist Nicholas Longrich told Discovery News. "Feathers seem to have appeared initially for insulation. Basically they start out as down, and later are used to make wings."
NEWS: Modern Birds Are Really Baby Dinosaurs
For a study published in the latest Current Biology, Longrich and colleagues Jakob Vinther and Anthony Russell examined fossils of Anchiornis huxley and of Archaeopteryx lithographica, a Jurassic species that could be the world's oldest known bird.

"Where dinosaurs end and birds begin is a bit arbitrary," Longrich explained. "There's no clear cutoff that separates one from the other. That's the nature of evolution; things gradually change from one thing into another."
The scientists found that the wing feathers of Archaeopteryx and Anchiornis were similar, but not identical. The variations between the two appear to represent early experiments in the evolution of the wing.
Archaeopteryx had multiple layers of long flight feathers. In contrast, the dinosaur Anchiornis had an abundance of simple, strip-like feathers that overlap, somewhat similar to the feathers on penguins.
BLOG: Dinosaur Found With Bird In Its Gut
The design and arrangement of Anchiornis and Archaeopteryx wing feathers probably hindered liftoff. Multiple overlapping layers of long wing feathers would have complicated feather separation, minimizing the bird's ability to overcome drag on the upstroke. By contrast, the wings of modern flying birds typically have a single primary layer of easily separated long feathers overlain by short feathers.
"Modern birds have the ability to separate their wing feathers sort of like a Venetian blind," Longrich said. "This allows them to raise the wing rapidly, and seems to be critical to flapping flight at low speeds."
"The feather arrangement in Archaeopteryx and Anchiornis wouldn't let them do this," he added, "so it may have made takeoff from the ground and flapping at low speeds more difficult."
Gliding, however, must have been a lifesaver back in the dinosaur day, when huge terrestrial carnivores were stomping around.
"Gliding is a fast way to move from tree-to-tree. Instead of climbing down one tree and running up the next, you just glide quickly from one to the other," Longrich explained.
"I would imagine that the dinosaurian ancestors of birds were living in the trees," he noted, "probably to find food-like insects, lizards and mammals, and to avoid becoming food for other dinosaurs."
NEWS: Oldest Bird Was Actually a Dinosaur
Longrich and his colleagues believe that the wing feather arrangement seen in modern birds may have evolved within a period spanning a few tens of millions of years and then remained largely unchanged for the past 130 million years.
In terms of this short versus long timescale, Longrich compared it to the evolution of human-constructed aircraft, which started with some years of experimentation before settling into a basic design that's just been fine-tuned during more recent years.
"Birds hit on a workable design about 130 million years ago, and it's been difficult to improve upon it," he said.
Birds benefitted from both this and their small size 65 million years ago, when the larger non-avian dinosaurs bit the dust.
Xu Xing, one of the world's leading paleontologists, is a professor at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He told Discovery News that the determination about ancient versus modern feathers and wings "is definitively a significant discovery."
The study "has greatly improved our understanding of wing evolution," Xu continued. "(The authors) demonstrate that there are unusual wings near the dinosaur-bird transition, though more data is needed to confirm the claim that it is directly related to the origins of avian flight."

 

What’s the Secret of Hadrosaur Skin?

From Smithsonian Dinosaur Tracking Blog:  What’s the Secret of Hadrosaur Skin?

This famous Edmontosaurus skeleton was found with intricate traces of skin over much of its body. Image in Osborn, 1916, from Wikipedia.

Last week, I wrote about attempts by paleontologist Phil Bell and colleagues to extract biological secrets from fossilized traces of dinosaur skin. Among the questions the study might help answer is why so many hadrosaurs are found with remnants of their soft tissue intact. Specimens from almost every dinosaur subgroup have been found with some kind of soft tissue preservation, yet, out of all these, the shovel-beaked hadrosaurs of the Late Cretaceous are found with skin impressions and casts most often. Why?
Yale University graduate student Matt Davis has taken a stab at the mystery in an in-press Acta Paleontologica Polonica paper. Previously researchers have proposed that the abundance of hadrosaur skin remnants is attributable to large hadrosaur populations (the more hadrosaurs there were, the more likely their skin might be preserved), the habits of the dinosaurs (perhaps they lived in environments where fine-resolution fossilization was more likely) or some internal factor that made their skin more resilient after burial. to examine these ideas, Davis compiled a database of dinosaur skin traces to see if there was any pattern consistent with these ideas.
According to Davis, the large collection of hadrosaur skin fossils isn’t attributable to their population sizes or to death in a particular kind of environment. The horned ceratopsid dinosaurs–namely Triceratops–were even more numerous on the latest Cretaceous landscape, yet we don’t have as many skin fossils from them. And hadrosaur skin impressions have been found in several different kinds of rock, meaning that the intricate fossilization occurred in multiple types of settings and not just sandy river channels. While Davis doesn’t speculate about what made hadrosaurs so different, he proposes that their skin might have been thicker or otherwise more resistant than that of other dinosaurs. A sturdy hide might have offered the dinosaurs protection from injury in life and survived into the fossil record after death.
Still, I have to wonder if there was something about the behavior or ecology of hadrosaurs that drew them to environments where there was a greater chance of rapid burial (regardless of whether the sediment was sandy, silty or muddy). And the trouble with ceratopsids is that they have historically been head-hunted. Is it possible that we’ve missed a number of ceratopsid skin traces because paleontologists have often collected skulls rather than whole skeletons? The few ceratopsid skin fossils found so far indicate that they, too, had thick hides ornamented with large, scale-like structures. Were such tough-looking dinosaur hides really weaker than they appear, or is something else at play? Hadrosaurs may very well have had extra-sturdy skin, but the trick is testing whether that characteristic really accounts for the many hadrosaur skin patches resting in museum collections.
Reference:
Davis, M. 2012. Census of dinosaur skin reveals lithology may not be the most important factor in increased preservation of hadrosaurid skin. Acta Paleontologica Polonica http://dx.doi.org/10.4202/app.2012.0077
Osborn, H. 1916. Integument of the iguanodon dinosaur Trachodon. Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History. 1, 2: 33-54
Sternberg, C.M. 1925. Integument of Chasmosaurus belli. The Canadian Field Naturalist. XXXIX, 5: 108-110

 

Scotland: Council threatens dinosaur extinction

From Newscastle Herald:  Council threatens dinosaur extinction

Mining magnate Clive Palmer bragged about his life size replica dinosaur being an attraction at the prestigious PGA Championships Golf event on the same day a Sunshine Coast councillor voiced concerns about the billionaire's "tacky" plans.
Mr Palmer has previously announced plans to build 150 robotic dinosaurs at his Palmer Coolum Resort and has already erected a life size T-Rex he has nicknamed "Jeff", widely interpreted as a dig at Deputy Premier Jeff Seeney though Mr Palmer denies it.
The resort plays host to the Australian PGA Championship from December 13 and more than 36,000 spectators are expected at the grounds.
Sunshine Coast councillor Russell Green said the plans for 150 dinosaurs were tacky and Mr Palmer was in danger of turning the prestigious resort into a "version of Looney Tunes".
‘‘It wasn’t so much that I wasn’t pleased, it is just ridiculous,’’ he said.
Cr Green said he did not know if he would oppose the erection of 149 more dinosaurs as ‘‘you can’t pre-judge an application’’ but if Mr Palmer pushed forward with the plans the resort would become a theme park.
‘‘What I’m saying is the golf course at the resort has been widely recognised as one of the top Australian and International courses and it is the home to the Australian PGA,’’ he said.
‘‘Do we really need to a Tyrannosaurus-Rex bounding between the 10th and the 18th fairway turning it into Wally World?
‘‘...Having these structures scattered around the place, in my opinion, detracts from the natural beauty of what is a magnificent course."
Mr Palmer would not directly respond to Cr Green's comments but issued a statement today saying the tournament leads the way when it comes to putting the sunshine state in the tourism shop window of the world.
“The PGA Championship is an event that brings the whole world to Queensland to watch the tournament live or on television,” he said.
“The massive global television audience makes it a very important driver for Queensland tourism and Queensland businesses should support it.
"It is a marquee event that makes a highly significant contribution to the region's economy.
“At Palmer Coolum Resort we have the premier golf course in Queensland and we are delighted to show the rest of the world what a fantastic tourism location we have.
“Of course we now have 'Jeff', our huge T-Rex, as an added attraction and I'm sure he will enjoy the attention from both golfers and spectators.”
More than 415 million homes in 40 countries from Asia, the Americas and Europe receive the broadcast of the Australian PGA Championships.
Already confirmed for the 2012 championship are the likes of defending champion Greg Chalmers, 2011 British Open winner Darren Clarke, 2006 US Open winner Geoff Ogilvy, six-time US PGA Tour winner Rory Sabbatini and Marc Leishman, who is the only Australian to win on the PGA Tour this year.
The 156-man field will include about 30 of Australia's top 50 professional players who will all be vying for a share of the $1.25 million in prize money.
When previously asked if Mr Palmer had named the dinosaur Jeff after Mr Seeney, Mr Palmer denied it with a sly dig at the deputy premier.
"It wouldn't be him," he said.
"He's (Jeff the dinosaur) a nice guy. He's full of love and friendship and warm fuzzy feelings when you see him."

 

BBC launches first original YouTube channel (complete with a show dedicated to cute baby animals)

From daily Mail Online:  BBC launches first original YouTube channel (complete with a show dedicated to cute baby animals)

BBC Worldwide, the corporation's commercial arm, has launched its first YouTube channel consisting of entirely original content.
Called Earth Unplugged, it was created by the global natural history unit BBC Earth, and the corporation says it will become 'a destination site for wildlife and nature', offering a range of new films created for a digital audience by BBC Earth Productions.
The channel is BBC Worldwide's first original-content service on YouTube, and is expected to be the first of many.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2233991/BBC-launches-original-YouTube-channel--dedicated-cute-baby-animals.html#ixzz2CWeWbYPX
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

BBC Worldwide, the corporation's commercial arm, has launched its first YouTube channel consisting of entirely original content.
Called Earth Unplugged, it was created by the global natural history unit BBC Earth, and the corporation says it will become 'a destination site for wildlife and nature', offering a range of new films created for a digital audience by BBC Earth Productions.
The channel is BBC Worldwide's first original-content service on YouTube, and is expected to be the first of many.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2233991/BBC-launches-original-YouTube-channel--dedicated-cute-baby-animals.html#ixzz2CWeWbYPX
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

BBC Worldwide, the corporation's commercial arm, has launched its first YouTube channel consisting of entirely original content.
Called Earth Unplugged, it was created by the global natural history unit BBC Earth, and the corporation says it will become 'a destination site for wildlife and nature', offering a range of new films created for a digital audience by BBC Earth Productions.
The channel is BBC Worldwide's first original-content service on YouTube, and is expected to be the first of many.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2233991/BBC-launches-original-YouTube-channel--dedicated-cute-baby-animals.html#ixzz2CWeWbYPX
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Earth Productions.

The channel is BBC Worldwide's first original-content service on YouTube, and is expected to be the first of many.

With Earth Unplugged we're seeking to connect a new audience with the world around them,' Amanda Hill, the managing director for BBC Earth at BBC Worldwide, said.

'YouTube offers a fantastic opportunity to reach people and grab their attention with innovative nature content that will captivate and inspire.'

The BBC has previously kept most of its programming inside its iPlayer software, while other broadcasters such as Channel 4 have put full shows (with adverts) both on YouTube and their own on demand services.

Shows available include Amazing Animal Babies, which the corporation says 'is a must for anyone needing a weekly uplift' and features 'stunning films of cute baby animals revealing the extraordinary stories these infants have to tell.'

There  is also a news show called Earth Juice, and special version of Walking with dinosaurs and 'Most Dangerous.'

YouTube.com/EarthUnplugged is currently showing videos for seven new natural history shows:

•     Earth Juice is a weekly news show discussing the latest discoveries in the natural world.
•     Meet My Planet features interviews with people with a passion for nature, including explorers, naturalists, filmmakers, artists and musicians.
•     Deadliest... is a YouTube exclusive spinoff of the BBC's Deadly 60, featuring the 'ultimate showdowns from the planet's deadliest animals'.
•     Walking with Dinosaurs brings exclusive dinosaur videos for Earth Unplugged, including the new sketchosaurus.
•     Earth Files takes nature stories and gives them a digital makeover with graphics and music.
•     Zoo La La travels the world to explore extraordinary animal behaviour. It also features the Bugface insect show.
•     Amazing Animal Babies features the stories of cute baby animals.

BBC Worldwide, the corporation's commercial arm, has launched its first YouTube channel consisting of entirely original content.
Called Earth Unplugged, it was created by the global natural history unit BBC Earth, and the corporation says it will become 'a destination site for wildlife and nature', offering a range of new films created for a digital audience by BBC Earth Productions.
The channel is BBC Worldwide's first original-content service on YouTube, and is expected to be the first of many.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2233991/BBC-launches-original-YouTube-channel--dedicated-cute-baby-animals.html#ixzz2CWeWbYPX
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

BBC Worldwide, the corporation's commercial arm, has launched its first YouTube channel consisting of entirely original content.
Called Earth Unplugged, it was created by the global natural history unit BBC Earth, and the corporation says it will become 'a destination site for wildlife and nature', offering a range of new films created for a digital audience by BBC Earth Productions.
The channel is BBC Worldwide's first original-content service on YouTube, and is expected to be the first of many.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2233991/BBC-launches-original-YouTube-channel--dedicated-cute-baby-animals.html#ixzz2CWeWbYPX
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

BBC Worldwide, the corporation's commercial arm, has launched its first YouTube channel consisting of entirely original content.
Called Earth Unplugged, it was created by the global natural history unit BBC Earth, and the corporation says it will become 'a destination site for wildlife and nature', offering a range of new films created for a digital audience by BBC Earth Productions.
The channel is BBC Worldwide's first original-content service on YouTube, and is expected to be the first of many.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2233991/BBC-launches-original-YouTube-channel--dedicated-cute-baby-animals.html#ixzz2CWeWbYPX
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

 

BBC Worldwide, the corporation's commercial arm, has launched its first YouTube channel consisting of entirely original content.
Called Earth Unplugged, it was created by the global natural history unit BBC Earth, and the corporation says it will become 'a destination site for wildlife and nature', offering a range of new films created for a digital audience by BBC Earth Productions.
The channel is BBC Worldwide's first original-content service on YouTube, and is expected to be the first of many.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2233991/BBC-launches-original-YouTube-channel--dedicated-cute-baby-animals.html#ixzz2CWeWbYPX
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Surfers Make Prehistoric Find in Santa Cruz

From 4NBC:  Surfers Make Prehistoric Find in Santa Cruz

Chris Elmenhurst / Surf The Spot Photography

This photo makes the fossil look as big as a dinosaur, but it is actually about 8-10 feet. 

Surfers normally make news when the "surf's up," but this week in Santa Cruz the news was made when surfers noticed something strange when the surf was down, as in a very low tide.

Santa Cruz surfers discovered a small prehistoric skeleton Wednesday morning during a lower-than-usual low tide at the base of a cliff at Pleasure Point.

Experts say the bones were the vertebrae of a small whale that had been fossilized. It's not uncommon to find fossils along the coast, but this creature is upright and appears to be well preserved.

Gary Griggs, director of University of California Santa Cruz's Institute of Marine Sciences, told KSBW in Salinas that the skeleton was most likely an extinct Pliocene-era whale. 

 

The Pliocene era was roughly 3 to 5 million years ago.

The bones were found just below the home of Jack O'Neill. O'Neill is known around the world for making wetsuits.

The surfers who made the discovery Wednesday were headed to a break water named "Jack's."

O'Neil is among the scores of people who checked out bones that date back to when dinosaurs ruled the world.

He says he never noticed it before even though he has looked down at that part of the beach every day for the past 40 years. "It's a new one," O'Neill told the Santa Cruz Sentinel.

Because of its location in the water, the bones are not likely to be excavated.

More of the creature is expected to be revealed over time, but experts are asking people to leave the bones as they lie.

The next lower than normal tide is not until mid-December. That is the next time the fossil is expected to give a good showing.

 

Feathered dinosaurs couldn’t fly ... oh my

From The Washington Post, Kid Post:  Feathered dinosaurs couldn’t fly ... oh my

 

Dinosaurs with feathers probably didn’t use them to fly over the prehistoric world, researchers now believe.
Canadian scientists reported last month that ostrich-like dinosaurs used their feathers to protect their young or to attract other dinosaurs.

In searching through 75-million-year-old rocks in western Canada, researchers found evidence of feathers on one young and two adult fossils. The ostrich-like dinosaurs are called ornithomimids (that’s pronounced or-nith-o-mim-ids).

For a long time, researchers thought ornithomimids were hairless birds that ran quickly across the land. (If you’ve seen the movie “Jurassic Park,” you’ve seen ornithomimids). But the discovery of the feathers has changed scientists’ thinking.

“The discovery, the first to establish the existence of feathers in ornithomimids, suggests that all ostrich-like dinosaurs had feathers,” according to a statement from the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Canada.
The dinosaurs probably had soft, down-like feathers throughout their lives. As they aged, more bird-like feathers probably developed on their arms, which would look like wings to us.

But the dinosaurs would have been too large to fly, so the feathers might have been used to attract a mate or to protect eggs during hatching.

The fossils were discovered in sandstone and were the first feathered dinosaurs found in North America, according to the museum. Previously, feathered dinosaur skeletons have been recovered almost exclusively in China and Germany.

 

E is for Eotriceratops

From Smithsonian Dinosaur Tracking:  E is for Eotriceratops

Triceratops is among the most cherished of dinosaurs. Even that might be a bit of an understatement. Fossil fans threw a conniption when they mistakenly believed that paleontologists were taking the classic “three-horned face” away, after all. But where did the charismatic chasmosaurine come from? Triceratops didn’t simply spring from the earth fully formed–the ceratopsid was the descendant of a long tail of evolutionary forerunners. And in 2007, paleontologist Xiao-chun Wu and collaborators described a 68-million-year-old dinosaur that might represent what one of the close ancestors of Triceratops was like–Eotriceratops.
In 2001, while on an expedition to search the Horseshoe Canyon Formation around the Dry Island Buffalo Jump Provincial Park in Alberta, Canada, Glen Guthrie discovered the partial skeleton of a huge ceratopsid dinosaur. This was the first identifiable dinosaur skeleton found in the top quarter of the formation, and, as Wu and coauthors later argued, the bones represented a new species. They called the animal Eotriceratops xerinsularis.
Paleontological devotees know that “eo” translates to “dawn.” The tiny mammal Eohippus was the “dawn horse” (which Victorian anatomist Thomas Henry Huxley famously characterized for the steed of a tiny “Eohomo“), and there are plenty of dawn dinosaurs such as Eoraptor, Eodromaeus, Eobrontosaurus and Eolambia. The prefix is a kind of honorific, used to indicate the hypothesized beginning of a major lineage or significant change. In the case of Eotriceratops, Wu and colleagues found that the dinosaur was the oldest known member of the evolutionary ceratopsid club containing Triceratops, Torosaurus and Nedoceratops (which, depending on who you ask, may or may not be the same dinosaur).
The individual Guthrie found had fallen apart between death and burial. Aside from some vertebrae, ribs and ossified tendons, the scattered specimen was primarily represented by a dis-articulated skull. When reconstructed, though, the head of Eotriceratops stretched almost ten feet long–about a foot longer than the largest-known Triceratops skull. And while different in some characteristics, Eotriceratops had the same three-horned look of its later relatives Triceratops and Torosaurus.
This isn’t to say that Eotriceratops was directly ancestral to Triceratops, Torosaurus, Nedoceratops or whatever combination of the three paleontologists ultimately settle on. Eotriceratops could be the closest relative of Triceratops to the exclusion of Torosaurus, which would support the idea that those later dinosaurs were separate genera.  Then again, Wu and coauthors pointed out that Eotriceratops might be the most basal member of the subgroup, which would make sense given that it was older than the other three genera. In either case, Eotriceratops can give us a rough idea of the Triceratops and Torosaurus prototype, but we lack the resolution to know if Eotriceratops was ancestral to any later dinosaur. Eotriceratops undoubtedly had some significance in the evolution of the last three-horned dinosaurs, but we need many more fossils to know this little-known dinosaur’s role in the story. Every dinosaur paleontologists find comes with a handful of answers and a myriad of new mysteries.

 

Xenoceratops foremostensis

From Cleveland Business: Cleveland firm may aid Dallas transit agency's naming rights effort 

This and that
Around the horn: Michael Ryan, head of vertebrate paleontology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, is among the scientists in Alberta who have identified a new type of horned dinosaur that looked like Triceratops but lived 15 million years earlier.

The New York Times reports that the dinosaur, called Xenoceratops foremostensis, “was a two-ton vegetarian that flourished 80 million years ago, making it the oldest known large-bodied horned dinosaur to be found in Canada.”

Dr. Ryan, author of a study in The Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences that describes the species, tells The Times, “This guy was the size of a large bull, with two big brow horns over its eyes and a big shield off the back of its skull. And it had a beak at the front of the mouth, very much like a turtle.”

Fossils of Xenoceratops were first collected in 1958, but were left unidentified at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa. Dr. Ryan and a co-author, David Evans of the Royal Ontario Museum and the University of Toronto, “are working on a larger effort, the Southern Alberta Dinosaur Project, that has identified about 10 new dinosaurs, including Xenoceratops,” the newspaper reports.

Tecumseh, MI: Suspect sought in statue assault

or, why you should take photos of any interesting sculpture or other thing that you see. There's always one or more jerks out there who just love to destroy beautiful things.

From LenConnect: Suspect sought in statue assault


TECUMSEH -- A Toledo man is being sought for allegedly damaging one of the sculptures on display in downtown Tecumseh Friday.
Witnesses said the suspect, whose license plate and description matched a 42-year-old Toledo man, stopped his car near the dinosaur sculpture entitled “Deinonychus,” at the corner of East Chicago Boulevard and Ottawa Street, got out and began hitting the piece with a hammer. After several minutes, he got in his car and drove away. The incident occurred at 6:10 p.m.
 The sculpture, created by Joe Krajkiewcz of Grandville is valued at $1,800. No dollar estimate has been placed on the damage and area law enforcement agencies have been alerted to watch for the suspect.

Tracking Dinosaurs With Ray Stanford

From Smithsonian Tracking Dinosaur blog Tracking Dinosaurs With Ray Stanford: 

East coast dinosaurs are few and far between. Unlike the exposed formations in the western badlands, much of the dinosaur-bearing strata in the eastern states are hidden beneath forests, lawns and parking lots. But you can still find signs of dinosaurs if you know where to look.

Amateur ichnologist Ray Stanford has a knack for finding dinosaur tracks and traces in the Baltimore, Maryland and Washington, D.C. area. Among his recent finds are an impression of a baby ankylosaur–on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History–and a track made by an adult of a similar dinosaur on the grounds of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. As our paleontology curator Matthew Carrano says in the video above, Stanford’s talent for tracking dinosaurs has helped fill out our understanding of east coast dinosaurs in deposits where bones are scarce.

Researchers uncover dinosaur proteins

From Technician Online: Researchers uncover dinosaur proteins

Mary Schweitzer, a professor of marine, earth and atmospheric sciences, was working with the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences attempting to determine the sex of their dinosaur bone specimen when they accidentally discovered preserved dinosaur bone cells.
“In order to study how the bone is laid out ... you have to remove the bone mineral. And so we put it in a mild acid,” Schweitzer said.
However, when the researchers added the acid, disaster struck.
 “We weren’t intending to dissolve the whole thing, but the reaction was faster than we planned,” Schweitzer said.
Luckily, this story ended with a surprise discovery instead of with the destruction of a 67 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus Rex bone. After the acid reacted with the bone, the researchers were left with soft tissue-- something that is unheard of when working with fossils.
“[The samples] were stretchy, and they were flexible. We were really, really, really surprised,” Schweitzer said.
The researchers repeated the experiment, starting with modern bones they purchased from the grocery store and working their way backward through the fossil record.
“When we were finally convinced that this was real, not only did we know we had a female dinosaur -- we had soft tissue,” Schweitzer said.
Inside the tissue Schweitzer discovered were preserved ancient osteocytes — cells that produce the protein of the bone.
These osteocytes were definitely dead, but their shapes and the shapes of the proteins inside them were still preserved well enough that the researchers could react them with antibodies from other organisms. They used antibodies from ostriches, as ostriches are hypothesized to be some of the closest living relatives to dinosaurs.
If the antibodies attempted to bind to sites on the osteocytes, the researchers could tell which proteins the cells most likely contained and produced.
“We apply the antibodies and if they don’t find anything there that they recognize, they just wash away. But if they do find the piece that they are designed to recognize, they stick, and we can measure that,” Schweitzer said.
They’ve completed the experiment with several different antibodies, choosing ones that would react to modern day osteocytes and then testing them against the ancient ones to find matches.
One of the first proteins they looked for inside the osteocytes was one called actin, which acts like a skeletal structure inside the cell.
“The actin is arranged in the [ostrich] cell in a thread-like pattern, and our antibodies bind in a similar pattern,” Schweitzer said, supporting the hypothesis that dinosaurs and ostriches are closely related.
The researchers also used an antibody called OB7.3, which binds to a protein involved in bone mineralization.
“The specificity [of OB7.3] is incredibly intense -- it only binds to bird osteocytes. It doesn’t bind to any other cell or osteocytes from any other type of organism,” Schweitzer said.
But OB7.3 did bind to the dinosaur osteocytes in the same way that it bonded to a modern ostrich osteocyte.
“What we’ve shown is that based upon the chemistry … those antibodies recognize spots that are consistent with [the dinosaur specimen] being a close relative of birds,” Schweitzer said.
However, the researchers have been receiving criticism; other members of the scientific community do not believe that proteins could have been preserved so long.
“People tell me that they don’t believe my data – they can’t tell me what’s wrong with it, but they don’t think it’s possible for cells to subsist this long,” Schweitzer said.
This means that a large part of the experiments have just been to build credibility for and improve the new methodology, which according to Schweitzer could be applied to numerous other investigations. While the technology is not advanced enough to synthesize the actual proteins or DNA from a single preserved cell yet, that is the goal.
“It is possible to sequence proteins and DNA from a single cell if you’re not talking about one that’s 80 million years old,” Schweitzer said. “If we can get sequences, we can say a lot not only about the relationship between dinosaurs and other animals, but also we can ask questions like ‘How fast did certain proteins evolve?’”
Improved technology would allow scientists to take a much closer look at molecular evolution — studying the process, potential environmental factors that might cause it, and the rate at which it takes place.
“Once we get over the hump of ‘Can we do this?’ there are about a million questions we can ask,” Schweitzer said.

 

Broome dinosaur footprints detail substrate deformation unique on earth

From Science Network Western Australia:  Broome dinosaur footprints detail substrate deformation unique on earth 

“For that reason it is not known whether similar patterns of substrate deformation might occur at sauropod track-sites elsewhere in the world.”—Dr Thulborn. Image: Lin Padgham TWO recent papers by palaeontologists working north of Broome highlight a new approach to the study of dinosaur footprints.
A previous, more taxonomic, approach to dinosaur ichnology focused on the collection and study of “museum grade” footprints which were used to identify dinosaur species and some of the individual dinosaur’s physiological characteristics, such as size and mass.
Studies of the Broome dinosaur track way by palaeontologists McCrea, Lockley et al (2011), and Thulborn (2012), point to an emerging trend, the study of dinosaur interactions.
“Even poorly preserved prints can be useful for census purposes and for analysing foot/sediment interactions,” says Indiana-Purdue University palaeontologist Prof James O. Farlow in his peer-review of the McCrea paper.
The Broome trackway was once an early Cretaceous shoreline, frequented by at least 15 dinosaur species that regularly walked in the moist intertidal sands and estuarine mud.
When conditions were right these solidified into sandstone, preserving footprints for posterity along much of the Dampier Peninsula’s west coast.
The sandstone would then often be covered by further layers of sand on which dinosaurs, in turn, would leave more tracks.
As a result the Broome sandstone often comprises several layers of sediment, each containing underprints or “ghost prints”.
“The patterns of deformation created by sauropods traversing thinly-stratified lagoonal deposits of the Broome Sandstone are unprecedented in their extent and structural complexity,” Dr Thulborn says in his paper.
“The stacks of transmitted reliefs … beneath individual footfalls are nested into a hierarchy of deeper and more inclusive basins and troughs which eventually attain the size of minor tectonic features.
“Ultimately the sauropod trackmakers deformed the substrate to such an extent that they remodelled the topography of the landscape they inhabited.
“Such patterns of substrate deformation are revealed by investigating fragmentary and eroded footprints, not by the conventional search for pristine footprints on intact bedding planes.
“For that reason it is not known whether similar patterns of substrate deformation might occur at sauropod track-sites elsewhere in the world.”
Queensland University palaeontologist Dr Steve Salisbury says the Broome sandstone is about 200 kilometres long and contains Australia’s most important dinosaur track way, the next most important being at Lark Quarry in Queensland.
The latter is about the size of a tennis court with tracks of only two or three dinosaur species preserved.
Dr Salisbury has written a new paper on the Broome Sandstone dinosaur trackway which is currently subject to peer review.

 

Australia: Confusion over gas plant dinosaur footprints

From TheWest.Australia.com:  Confusion over gas plant dinosaur footprints

Confusion reigns over the fate of dinosaur footprints believed to be in the path of the proposed gas plant at James Price Point, with ministers unable to agree on whether they would be affected.
Last week, Environment Minister Bill Marmion told ABC Kimberley that some footprints at the site would "absolutely have to go" and he wasn’t sure if they could be moved or protected.
But Premier Colin Barnett then told ABC’s Q and A this week that the proposed plant had been moved 900m to the south to avoid dinosaur footprints and they wouldn’t be affected.
"They stretch for 200km along that coastline … the beachfront, if you like, of this plant, is 1km and it actually will be built around so it won’t even impact on those," he said.
University of Queensland palaeontologist Steve Salisbury said that statement was "incredibly misleading".
"The LNG processing facility will be set back off the coast, but the only way the gas can be processed is by bringing it onshore via pipelines that must cut across the Heritage-listed intertidal zone containing the dinosaur footprints," he said.
"The only way that the gas, once liquefied, can be exported is via a massive marine port, which will result in the destruction of 1.5-2km of the Heritage-listed intertidal zone."
Scientific studies by international palaeontologists in 2011 found the dinosaur tracksite extended south from James Price Point for about 750m into the proposed precinct as well as around it.
The scientists, who spent 11 days surveying 58 sites, stressed they had not had enough time for a thorough evaluation.
In response, the Environmental Protection Authority recommended avoiding development in the northern 900 metres of the precinct.
It also recommended a fossil heritage survey and management plan to avoid, salvage or adequately record any fossils found before they were disturbed.
Mr Marmion said that during appeals, information provided suggested the tracksites could extend along the entire coastline and that port construction could cause considerable damage to tracks.
In upholding the EPA’s findings, Dr Roy Green suggested more measures to protect and preserve tracksites outside and to the north of the precinct. No tracksites were found in the area earmarked for a port, Mr Marmion said.
However, he acknowledged some tracksites may only be discovered during port construction and the proponent would be “required to avoid them if possible” if that was the case.
“If avoidance is not possible, then they must be salvaged or appropriately and adequately recorded before they are disturbed - (which) may include the removal of fossils,” he said.
The length of coastline affected could not be determined until detailed designs were finished, he said.
Dr Salisbury said the only real difference now was that the northernmost jetty had been realigned slightly to avoid crossing an area with lots of dinosaur tracks.
He said the EPA had acknowledged that construction of the port, shipping channel, breakwaters, jetties and other marine infrastructure would affect coastal processes and lead to sedimentary change, affecting beaches up to 3km north of the harbour (including the area that is meant to be protected) and potentially as far as 7km south.
Both areas contained highly significant tracksites, Dr Salisbury said, but there appeared to be no recommendations to counteract the effects.
Removing any prints from the nationally heritage listed site would also greatly diminish the heritage value of the entire area, he said.
“It is not just footprints that are preserved, but rather an entire Early Cretaceous landscape that is literally frozen in time,” he said.
Environs Kimberley director Martin Pritchard said the State had clearly washed its hands of the issue.
“If the West Australian government and Woodside will allow our national heritage to be destroyed then the only line of defence is obviously the Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke,” he said.

 

Canadian dinosaur hunter honoured for years of achievement

More articles on Philip Currie

From CTV News:  Canadian dinosaur hunter honoured for years of achievement

They roamed the earth millions of years ago, but Canada’s most-famed dinosaur hunter says now is the time to be studying the fascinating creatures.
Palaeontologist Philip Currie says it’s the golden age of dinosaur research with more scientists, more funding and more interest than ever before.
“When I started my career, there were two jobs in all of Canada, and both were occupied by pretty young people,” Currie, now 63, told CTVNews.ca on Wednesday.
The same was true globally. Currie said when starting out in the field in the 1970s, there were about a dozen people hunting for dinosaur fossils worldwide. Today, there are about 125.
He points to the 1993 release of Jurassic Park as a boon for the field of palaeontology, and says interest in dinosaurs continues to grow. “Young kids influenced and inspired by Jurassic Park are now grown up, graduated from university and there are more researchers than ever before.”
And on Wednesday, Currie will be recognized for his research with a lifetime achievement award from the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.
His career includes so many dinosaur finds that funding is currently underway to support the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum, which is anticipated to open in July 2013 in northwestern Alberta. Currie also helped found the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller, Alta.
Throughout a career marked with numerous accomplishments, Currie said the discovery of dinosaur embryos during an Alberta dig in 1987 remains his most exciting find.
“At some point, I picked up a lower jaw, looked at it and saw all the teeth in there and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” he recalled. “So much so that I dropped it on the ground, rubbed my eyes and picked it up again.”
In receiving the award Wednesday, Currie’s studies on the group behaviour of dinosaurs and their migration patterns will also be recognized.
Currie said similarities in fossils discovered in mass dinosaur graves in Alberta and Mongolia got him thinking about the creatures’ migration patterns.
“We know that dinosaurs lived up in the Arctic and, while things didn’t freeze as much then, it certainly got cold in the winter,” said Currie, adding that the lack of sunlight would have killed off vegetation, forcing dinosaurs to look for food elsewhere.
“At the time, dinosaurs would move in big groups south,” he explained. “Because North America and Asia were connected at the time, if they moved to the west, they’d end up in Asia; and if they moved to the east, they’d end up in North America.”
Based in Alberta, Currie said Canada is home to the world’s best dinosaur site – Dinosaur Provincial Park, located 50 kilometres outside of Calgary.
Currie said five per cent of the world’s known dinosaurs were found in the park, and researches continue discover new fossils and species on the expansive land.
“With a history of 150 million years and worldwide in distribution, it really is very remarkable,” Currie said of the rich dinosaur site.
He said another five per cent of known dinosaur species are located in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert.
“That’s 10 per cent of the world’s known dinosaurs in two sites,” said the University of Alberta professor. “That tells you that we don’t know an awful lot about the history dinosaur and we’re really in our infancy in trying to figure out their evolutionary history.”

Lifetime achievement award for Canadian dinosaur expert

From Ottawa Citizen:  Lifetime achievement award for Canadian dinosaur expert

OTTAWA — Phil Currie knew from age 12 that he was going to be a dinosaur hunter, and he never looked back, even though there were only two such jobs in Canada and both were taken.
He’s 63 now, about to be honoured for a lifetime of achievement that includes so many dinosaur finds, Alberta had to build the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology to hold them.
But a lifetime achievement award (coming Wednesday evening from the Royal Canadian Geographical Society) doesn’t mean his career is finished. Too many dinosaurs remain to be found.
“We in fact have so few dinosaurs in relation to what must have existed,” said Currie.
There are about 1,000 known species, he said this week via telephone from Alberta before flying to Ottawa. “Sounds like a lot on the face of it, but then you’ve got 4,000 living species of mammals (today), 10,000 species of living birds ... 6,000 species of living ‘herps,’ or reptiles and amphibians. And that’s all at one time.”
Dinosaurs came and went for 150 million years. The 1,000 known today, he suggests, may represent only one per cent of all that lived.
Where are the rest?
Some lived and died in areas not suited to preserving fossils, such as sandy soil. Many are likely in Africa, where political unrest has slowed exploration but where there are “some spectacular dinosaur sites.” He also likes Antarctica as a potential site.
And he’s happy to go anywhere.
“The thing is that it’s such a thrill to find a dinosaur fossil, and you just never know what’s going to come next.
“You always go into the field with sort of a preconceived idea of what you want to find or could find or should find, but the reality is there are so many other things to find that you keep your eyes open. And you end up going in a different direction than you thought.”
That new direction may even be better than what he has planned. “The feathered dinosaurs are an example of that. Until they were found, nobody looked for them.”
Currie is known for examining links between dinosaurs and birds, such as dinosaur migration patterns and herding behaviour.
But he says the public is still surprised to hear about the bird-dinosaur link, and the feathered evidence.
“Every time a newspaper article or something comes out (on that topic) we still get people coming to us sand saying, ‘Wow, you’re kidding!’”
Currie is scheduled to receive the award from Dan Aykroyd and his wife Donna Dixon Aykroyd, both actors and friends of Currie, at a dinner Wednesday at the Museum of Civilization. Carleton University professor Fraser Taylor will also receive the 3M Award for Environmental Innovation for his application of cartography to the understanding of environmental issues.