Tiny Feathered Dinosaur Found

From News.Discovery.com:  Tiny Feathered Dinosaur Found

Reconstruction of Eosinopteryx brevipenna, a new theropod dinosaur with reduced plumage from the Middle/Late Jurassic of north-eastern China. 

 

Researchers have discovered a new species of feathered but flightless little dinosaur from the Jurassic period.
Remains of the tiny beast, dubbed Eosinopteryx brevipenna, found in northeastern China suggest it was slightly less than a foot long (30 centimeters) and had a short snout and a short tail. Based on the dinosaur's small wingspan and bone structure, researchers believe it would have been able to run around quite easily, but likely couldn't whip up enough of a wing-beat to fly. The dinosaur also sported toes that would have been suitable for walking along the ground, the researchers added.
This birdlike dinosaur's plumage was much more reduced compared with the feathers on some of its contemporaries, which suggests that feathering was already diversified by the Late Jurassic, adapted to different ecological niches and purposes, the researchers said. (The Jurassic period lasted from about 199.6 million to 145.5 million years ago.)
"This discovery sheds further doubt on the theory that the famous fossil Archaeopteryx — or 'first bird' as it is sometimes referred to — was pivotal in the evolution of modern birds," researcher Gareth Dyke, a senior lecturer in paleontology at the U.K.'s University of Southampton, said in a statement.
"Our findings suggest that the origin of flight was much more complex than previously thought."
Archaeopteryx was long thought by many to have been the earliest bird. Discovered in 1860 in Germany, it is sometimes referred to as Urvogel, the German word for "original bird" or "first bird." But recent findings suggest late-stage Jurassic Archaeopteryx was actually just a relative of the lineage that ultimately gave rise to birds.
The new research was detailed in the Jan. 22 issue of the journal Nature Communications.
 

 

Secret of the Dinosaur Sexes Locked in Bone

From the Smithsonian:  Secret of the Dinosaur Sexes Locked in Bone

When Chicago’s Field Museum purchased the Tyrannosaurus rex “Sue” in 1997, the famous and legally-troubled dinosaur was thought to be a female. The key clue was a missing bone.
Like other dinosaurs, T. rex had a row of spike-like bones called chevrons that ran from the base of the tail to almost the tip. Living alligators and crocodiles share this feature, and, decades ago, paleontologist Alfred Sherwood Romer suggested that researchers could distinguish between the skeletons of male and female crocodylians by looking at the placement of the first chevron in the series. In females, the chevron was thought to be shorter and displaced further back from the hips, leaving more room for eggs to pass through her body. Peter Larson, part of the team that excavated Sue but lost her in the prolonged legal battle that followed, extended the same argument to Sue. Since the tyrannosaur’s first chevron was situated further back than in other specimens, Larson proposed, the big T. rex was a female.
When the museum unpacked and reconstructed Sue, though, Sue’s sex came under suspicion. The “missing” chevron was found among the dinosaur’s assorted bones, undermining Larson’s contention. And, as it turned out, the entire comparison was flawed. In a 2005 study of crocodylian chevrons, Gregory Erickson, Kristopher Lappin, and Larson concluded that there is no sexual difference between the first chevrons of male and female crocodylians, nor any detectable dimorphism in tyrannosaurs. At best, the researchers concluded, the “usefulness of chevron anatomy for sexing dinosaurs is tenuous.”
We really don’t know whether Sue was a male or female. The entire episode was just one debate within the long-running attempts of paleontologists to investigate the basic, yet extremely frustrating question of how to properly identify dinosaur sexes. Skeletal differences alone are of almost no help. Every proposed case of sexual dimorphism in non-avian dinosaurs has either been undermined by later studies or is extremely questionable. Either non-avian dinosaurs didn’t show sexual dimorphism in their skeletons, or we have yet to properly detect the differences.
But there actually is a way to identify some female dinosaurs. Medullary bone gives them away. This specific bone tissue was deposited in the long bones of pregnant female dinosaurs, just as it is in living birds. Not all female dinosaurs were developing medullary bone when they died, but the gravid ones were.
Medullary bone can do more than help paleontologists pick out a few females, though. Paleontologists Andrew Lee and Sarah Werning paired the tissue with other histological clues to figure out that most dinosaurs started reproducing while they were still growing, long before they reached skeletal maturity. Dinosaurs lived fast and died young.
Such studies made me wonder if medullary bone could help paleontologists finally detect sexual dimorphism among non-avian dinosaurs. By picking a highly-ornamented species and searching for traces of medullary bone within those dinosaurs, researchers would be able to see whether the females all shared any distinctive anatomical structures or looked just like the males. The process wouldn’t identify all the females, but, if the attempt identified any at all, the investigation might help researchers determine whether there was any conspicuous features to distinguish the sexes.

A Confuciusornis with long tail feathers. Photo by Laikayiu, image from Wikipedia.

University of Cape Town histology expert Anusuya Chinsamy and colleagues have undertaken just such a study, published this week in Nature Communications. Instead of a non-avian dinosaur, though, the researchers picked Confuciusornis sanctus – an early bird preserved by the dozens in the 125 to 140 million year old rock of China.
The avian is a perfect candidate for such a study. Many of these birds are preserved with intact feathers, and their plumage comes in two forms. Some Confuciusornis are preserved with two elongated tail feathers, while others are not. Researchers have debated whether these ornaments are indicators of sexual dimorphism, species differences, individual variation, or simply different molt stages, but bone histology has finally solved the mystery.  The Confuciusornis with the long feathers were males, while females lacked the flashy adornments.
A particular Confuciusornis known as DNHM-D1874 yielded the crucial clue. Surrounded by feathers, this articulated skeleton lacked the long tail feathers seen on others. When Chinsamy and colleagues looked at the microstructure of specific bones, they found medullary tissue in the humerus (upper arm bone) and traces in the ulna (a lower arm bone), indicating that the bird had recently finished laying eggs when she perished.
The researchers also sampled the bones of three Confuciusornis preserved with long tail feathers. These specimens didn’t contain medullary bone. While it’s possible that these were females that were not laying eggs around the time of death, the presence of medullary bone in the non-ornamented form and its absence in the ornamented ones is consistent with the idea that the feathers underscore a real sex difference. And since relatively small Confuciusornis have been found with long tail feathers, Chinsamy and coauthors point out, these birds probably started reproducing relatively early in life.
Paleontologists can apply the same technique to non-avian dinosaurs. There are multiple specimens of dinosaurs such as Microraptor and Anchiornis that are preserved with feathers, and the fact that we can detect the color of dinosaur feathers has opened yet another avenue for comparison. Perhaps male and female dinosaurs sported different colors, much like many bird species today. Feathers aren’t a requirement for this kind of study, though – the same technique could conceivably be applied to other non-avian dinosaurs so long as they are known from large enough sample sizes. By breaking into bone, paleontologists may finally be able to discover the secrets of the dinosaur sexes.
References:
Chinsamy, A., Chiappe, L., Marugán-Lobón, J., Chunling, G., Fengjiao, Z. 2013. Gender identification of the Mesozoic bird Confuciusornis sanctus. Nature Communications. 4, 1381. doi:10.1038/ncomms2377
Erickson, G., Lappin, A., Larson, P. 2005. Androgynous rex – The utility of chevrons for determining the sex of crocodilians and non-avian dinosaurs. Zoology. 108, 4: 277-286
Lee, A., Werning, S. 2008. Sexual maturity in growing dinosaurs does not fit reptilian growth models. PNAS. 105, 2: 582-587
Padian, K., Horner, J. 2010. The evolution of “bizarre structures” in dinosaurs: biomechanics, social selection or species recognition? Journal of Zoology. 281, 1: 3-17

 

Digging for dinosaurs

From NewsLeader.com:  Digging for dinosaurs

STUARTS DRAFT — A group of intrepid young archaeologists and paleontologists uncovered a new species of dinosaur at a dig on an Augusta County farm.
Not really. But it was a bit of fun that the Webelos 1 den of Cub Scout Pack 349 indulged in Saturday during a mock archaeological dig organized for the boys to earn their geology badges.
Under a white tent, children and adults were abuzz. The kids, including some younger siblings of troop members, were on their knees and crouched around a 12-foot-by 5-foot perimeter of loosened earth. They scooped, sifted and brushed away dirt.
Andrew Howell, 10, could hardly contain his excitement as he brushed away dirt from a large, spiky fossil.
“It looks like the back of something,” he said. “Maybe a spine with spikes.”
“Wow, yours is big,” said Darrion Johnson, 9, from a few feet away.
“Yeah, it’s huge!” Andrew responded.
Webelos den mother Jaclyn Nahay tried to think of every possible detail to make the educational event as real and fun as possible.
Nahay held up an impressive looking, 2-foot-long model of a fossil that she made out of salt dough, paint and stain. She molded it to like the lower jaw bone of a dinosaur.
She got the idea for how to make the fossils when she came across a website that listed a recipe for making fake human bones.
Nahay adapted it to make the dinosaur fossils for the mock dig. She also made the boys fake passports that listed their scientific credentials, and the countries they have visited for past digs.
The kids made a rope grid to keep track of what they found in each section of the site. They measured, took pictures and recorded their findings in a journal.
“I’m positive these are dinosaur eggs,” said Zachary Furr, 9, as he brushed dirt away from a group of six oval fossils. “(The dinosaur) is like a million years old and had no babies. They didn’t hatch!”
Once uncovered and laid out, the bones will resemble a 10-foot, 7-inch long prehistoric animal, Nahay said.
“I thought it would be fun to make bones that were from different dinosaurs,” she said. “Then it could be a new species that they discovered and then they can name it.”

 

Stampede site may be dinosaur river crossing

From Radio Australia:  Stampede site may be dinosaur river crossing

Some of the fossilised dinosaur footprints at Lark Quarry in central Queensland. (Credit: ABC licensed) 

 

 

New research at a site in central-west Queensland suggests the area is not the world's only recorded dinosaur stampede - but a river crossing.

New research at a site in central-west Queensland suggests the area is not the world's only recorded dinosaur stampede - but a river crossing.

The Lark Quarry Conservation Park at Winton had been believed to be the site of a dinosaur stampede from about 95 million years ago.

But after a two-year study, University of Queensland PhD candidate Anthony Romilio says thousands of footprints at the site were not made all together, but over a period of a few days or weeks.

He believes the site is the bed of an ancient river which dinosaurs were able to wade across, leaving footprints in the soft mud.
"The dinosaurs seemed to be using this area as a highway in fact, and it didn't matter that it was covered in water," he said.

"Even very small dinosaurs ... the size of, say, chickens, were swimming, using the river current to assist their movements.

"The water there wasn't preventing them from going places."

Winton Mayor Butch Lenton says he hopes the new discovery will not affect tourism to the popular site.
He believes the river crossing claim will actually make the destination more interesting.

"There's tracks down there and there's always been views on how they were made," he said.

"But it will be interesting because the different points of view [about] how those tracks got there and how they happened, so it's all interesting."

Mr Romilio agrees his research does not make the western Queensland site any less significant.
He says it is a new interpretation of a track site that was excavated 30 years ago.

"It's quite an amazing site because you have thousands of dinosaur footprints, all or most of them heading in the one direction," he said.

"I guess the analogy is when you go walking on the beach and you see so many footprints of people on the beach, you think, 'Hey, did this occur all at one time ... or at different times?'"

 

The Million-Dollar Dinosaur Scandal

From Slate Magazine:  The Million-Dollar Dinosaur Scandal

Fossils are priceless. I mean that in both senses: They are invaluable clues about vanished lives, and their worth should never be measured in dollars. But Eric Prokopi made quite a bit of money dealing fossils and, as it turns out, brazenly smuggling them. He recently pled guilty to conspiracy, making false statements to customs officials, illegally importing fossils into the United States, and fraudulent transfer of dinosaur bones. He is set to be sentenced in April and faces up to 17 years in prison. Prokopi’s string of fossil offenses was finally exposed in the past few months because of a dinosaur that was almost sold for $1 million. His story is one of the most egregious cases of dinosaur rustling in recent years, and it shows just how corrupt and harmful to science the fossil market can be.

The ugly tale began when Texas-based Heritage Auctions put out a catalog for a May 20 event in New York City. The lots included an ankylosaur skull, a troodontid skeleton, and the hyped star of the sale, a “75 percent complete” Tarbosaurus bataar skeleton. This tyrannosaur, which roamed Mongolia about 70 million years ago, was comparable in size and ferocity to its famous cousin Tyrannosaurus rex. (The auction ads took advantage of a taxonomic disagreement among paleontologists and called the fossil Tyrannosaurus bataar, but I’m in the camp that believes these dinosaurs should be kept in distinct genera.)

It seemed the dinosaur was going to slip away into a private collection. For years, paleontologists have watched as significant specimens have gone from field sites to wealthy fossil enthusiasts. Some researchers have even had dinosaurs stolen right out from under them, finding their carefully-excavated quarries turned to shambles littered with cigarette butts, booze bottles, and broken bones.

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There are legitimate dealers who abide by laws on collecting, importing, and selling fossils, but you’ll always find questionable specimens from China, Brazil, Morocco, and other locations if you visit a fossil or mineral show. What’s on display is only the tip of the iceberg. The real action at places like the annual Tuscon Gem and Mineral Show is behind closed doors in private hotel rooms, where sellers save their fanciest—and most illicit—deals for customers they feel they can trust. Countries around the world have passed laws that make it difficult to sell dinosaurs and other fossils legally, but dealers keep finding new ways around the laws, and the black market thrives. Even dealers who keep their noses clean almost never contribute anything to science—they treat fossils as petrified postage stamps to be hoarded, traded, and sold off.

Whoever had collected the Tarbosaurus had stripped away almost everything of scientific importance about the animal: how the bones were scattered in the rock where they were found, what preparations were used to clean and reassemble the skeleton, what other fossils were in the same or nearby layers. But paleontologists were certain that the dinosaur came from the Cretaceous rock of Mongolia. This is the only place in the world where Tarbosaurus skeletons are found in great numbers, and the dinosaur’s off-white bones were the same color as other dinosaur remains found in the Gobi Desert.

There was no reasonable doubt that the Tarbosaurus had been stolen. China and Mongolia strictly regulate who is allowed to launch dinosaur expeditions and collect fossils and where those specimens must be reposited. There was no legal route by which the dinosaur could have ended up in a New York City auction. Days before it was set to be sold, paleontologists and the president of Mongolia objected to the auction. Paleontologist Mark Norell of the American Museum of Natural History, who has worked extensively in Mongolia, pointed out that the dinosaur must be an illicit specimen from the Gobi Desert. According to Mongolian heritage laws, any recovered bones must ultimately rest within an approved Mongolian institution. (The AMNH itself made an international faux pas when it auctioned off a Mongolian dinosaur egg in 1924.)

Heritage Auctions pooh-poohed the concerns and affirmed that the auction house trusted the dealer it was working with. Greg Rohan, president of Heritage Auctions, steadfastly defended the auction, whining that it was too close to the date of the auction to do anything about the complaints of the Mongolian government and concerned researchers. Lawyers working in concert with the Mongolian government entered the kerfuffle and demanded that the auction be halted until the provenance of the skeleton could be settled.

The auction went ahead as scheduled. In the middle of the bidding, a lawyer announced that he had on the phone a judge who had issued an order against the sale. Even this last-minute tactic didn’t stop the bidding. The final price of the Tarbosaurus was just over $1 million.

Fortunately, the unknown buyer couldn’t simply walk off with the dinosaur. Investigations continued, now with the begrudging assistance of Heritage Auctions, and Norell and other paleontologists confirmed that the tyrannosaur must have been uncovered in Mongolia. More than that, what was billed as a nearly complete individual animal turned out to be made of several different dinosaurs. (Surprise, surprise, the smuggler wasn’t honest about his wares. Many dinosaurs that appear at auction houses are not as complete or well-preserved as they might appear to the untrained eye.)

The investigation revealed that the origin of the bones had been obscured by shipping them from Great Britain to the United States labeled as assorted reptile fossils. By June 22, Prokopi was identified as the dealer, and the skeleton had been seized by the United States government. Though it is still bound by red tape, the dinosaur soon may be returned home to Mongolia.

Tarbosaurus Bataar.
Andreas Meyer/Hemera/Thinkstock.

Sadly, the other dinosaur fossils in the same auction were sold off without much attention. Still, inspired by the controversy, paleontologist Paul Barrett of the Natural History Museum in London halted the auction of a Tarbosaurus leg at Christie’s that was scheduled for about the same time. Barrett had noticed the leg in the window of the South Kensington auction house and contacted Christie’s, which informed the owner that the specimen was questionable. The lot was pulled from sale, and, Barrett says, is presumably still with its U.K. owner.

Such simple actions may help deter illegal and illicit fossil sales. “I'd say it's just a case of staying vigilant, helping auction houses know about the legality of the specimens they handle, and in some cases attempting to persuade owners of their responsibilities,” Barrett told me. Private owners may not even know where their prize came from, how it was collected, or whether any laws were broken in the process. Repatriation, however, is hard to enforce. Unless there’s some kind of illegal activity, such as a customs violation, Barrett said, where an illicit fossil ends up depends on the whim of the owners.

Prokopi wasn’t so lucky. His defense crumbled as it became clear through early court proceedings that he had tried to hide the dinosaur by lying about what kind of bones he had and claiming the fossils were found and collected legally in England. Customs violations were the smuggler’s undoing.

Following his guilty plea, details about Prokopi’s dealings have started to trickle out. The Tampa Bay Times characterized him as a passionate Indiana Jones who followed his dream. What the sympathetic reporter didn’t understand, though, was that Prokopi actively undermined legitimate paleontology. He fueled a black market that robs specimens from science and the public alike.

We can’t learn anything from a Tarbosaurus that stands in a millionaire’s mansion. And contrary to what you might expect, relatively abundant dinosaurs like Tarbosaurus are important exactly because so many have been found. By comparing multiple specimens, even cutting up fossil bones to get a look at the microstructure of bone or drilling geochemical samples from them, researchers can get a better idea of how dinosaurs grew up, how they varied as individuals, and other intricate details about dinosaur biology. Dinosaur bones are not just static objects to be left on the shelf. The more individuals of a species we have, the better we can reconstruct how they lived and accurately portray the evolution and biology of these animals, whether in museum displays or movies.

Dinosaurs that make their way to the auction block are often showpieces, sold without information. The geologic context of a dinosaur—which is destroyed by fossil thieves and smugglers—allows paleontologists to properly identify the age of the animal, and the position of the bones in death can illustrate how it died or what happened to the body after death. As paleontologist Jack Horner put it in his book Dinosaur Lives, “A dinosaur out of context is like a character without a story. Worse than that, the character suffers from amnesia.”

The international market for unusual fossil specimens damages science in other ways as well. Some sellers create forgeries and chimeras. The croc-snouted dinosaur Irritator got its name because a fossil dealer glued extraneous bones to the dinosaur’s skull to make it look more complete than it was. Paleontologists were able to catch that fake, but researchers can be fooled by fancy fossils with murky backstories, as in the case of a fossil cheetah skull described in a PNAS paper that was retracted last year. The skull was artificially enhanced, and the lack of locality data meant that no one could be sure where it fit in the big picture of cat evolution.

Even the venerable National Geographic gave undue attention to a faked fossil. (I should mention that I blog about paleontology for the magazine’s Phenomena website.) In the fall of 1999, the magazine heralded “Archaeoraptor” as a significant evolutionary stage in the evolution of birds from dinosaurs. The animal seemed to exhibit a mixture of traits from early birds and their dinosaur predecessors, fitting within the pattern of authentic feathered dinosaurs that were just beginning to be described in the peer-reviewed literature.

But the origins and identity of “Archaeoraptor” were shady from the start. The fossil had been purchased for $80,000 from a commercial dealer at the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show and was supposed to go to the tiny Dinosaur Museum in Blanding, Utah, run by artists Stephen and Sylvia Czerkas. They reached out to professional paleontologist Phil Currie, who contacted National Geographic to suggest a story. It quickly became clear that the fossil had been illegally exported from China. Even worse, further preparation of the slab and CT scans by fossil imaging expert Tim Rowe suggested that “Archaeoraptor” was a composite of at least two different fossils.

The Czerkases denied that their prize could be a fake, going so far as to submit manuscripts about the fossil to Nature and Science to legitimize the find, but the journals wouldn’t touch the hot fossil. National Geographic went ahead with its publication and press conference. Shortly after, paleontologist Xu Xing, an expert on feathered dinosaurs, confirmed that “Archaeoraptor” was pieced together from different animals, later identified as including the nonavian dinosaur Microraptor and the early bird Yanornis.

A few months later, after an internal investigation, National Geographic recanted and admitted that “Archaeoraptor” was a fraud. The magazine’s confession was admirable, but the hype around the controversial chimera gave ammunition to creationists and those who stubbornly insist that birds cannot be dinosaurs. Authentic, well-studied fossils have confirmed over and over again that birds are just one kind of dinosaur, but fundamentalists still trot out “Archaeoraptor” to insist that the scientific community cannot be trusted. Black market fossils can hurt science in an unfortunate array of ways.

No one benefits from the sale of fossils except the dealer. The bylaws of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology hold its members to a professional standard: “The barter, sale, or purchase of scientifically significant vertebrate fossils is not condoned, unless it brings them into or keeps them within a public trust.” Even then, many professional paleontologists feel unsettled by high-profile sales that inspire unethical collectors to obtain and sell off important fossils. The controversial, overhyped fossil primate fossil Darwinius—known to the public as “Ida” and presented at the time as The Link to our primate ancestry—was sold to the Natural History Museum in Oslo, Norway for a reported $750,000. Prehistoric primate expert Elwyn Simons and other paleontologists explained in Nature that “such objectionable pricing and publicity can only increase the difficulty of scientific collecting by encouraging the commercial exploitation of sites and the disappearance of fossils into private collections … We strongly believe the fossils should not have any commercial value.” 

I understand the urge to have a dinosaur to call your own. I’ve got one myself: a skull of the long-necked, stout Jurassic sauropod Apatosaurus. But mine is a cast, which I found at the estate sale of the late Utah paleontologist James Madsen, Jr. Such alternatives let dinosaur fans have a piece of prehistory without depriving science. Indeed, reconstruction exports like Robert Gaston create and sell beautiful, lightweight casts of scientifically accurate dinosaur skeletons that are easier to mount and less expensive than real fossils.* Museums rely on casts for their own displays, after all, and museum-quality reproductions should satisfy the need of anyone who loves dinosaurs and the science of paleontology.

When I initially objected to the Tarbosaurus auction back in May, many readers responded that museums should fend for themselves. This argument ignores the perilous state of many museums and fundamentally misunderstands how modern paleontology is done. What is happening to the home of the $8 million T. rex named Sue is a sad example of why museums can’t, and shouldn’t, pay through the nose for questionable dinosaurs.

Sue had a twisted backstory of her own, with commercial paleontologists from the Black Hills Institute, landowner Maurice Williams, and even the federal government disputing ownership. Ultimately, after drawn-out legal disputes, Williams was granted ownership of the dinosaur, and he put it up for auction before Sotheby’s auction house. With the help of deals made with Disney, McDonald’s, and other sources, Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History acquired the dinosaur. As the institution recently made clear, though, they’re no longer in any state to purchase fossils.

The Field Museum is so strapped for cash that administrators are threatening to scrap various branches of scientific research. They plan to save the museum by cutting its heart out—a museum is not really a museum without responsibly-kept collections and an active research program. Under such circumstances, even major research institutions like the Field can’t possibly compete with rich private buyers. More than that, trying to outbid wealthy buyers for improperly-collected specimens would be a stupid move for any self-respecting institution, especially since $1 million would allow a museum’s paleontology crew to spend several seasons finding and collecting new dinosaurs.

Even when private collectors act in good faith, looted dinosaurs can still cause headaches for researchers. In 2009, University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno and colleagues described Raptorex kriegsteini, which appeared to be a tiny prototype of the famous Tyrannosaurus rex body plan. They based the description on a skeleton purchased from a dealer by private collector Henry Kriegstein. When Kriegstein approached Sereno about identifying the fossil, Sereno realized that the new dinosaur species had been illegally collected and would have to be returned to China. Kriegstein agreed, and in exchange, Sereno named the dinosaur after Kriegstein’s parents. Through this arrangement, Raptorex was brought into the scientific literature and public trust, and was sent to a museum in Inner Mongolia, China.

The fate of Raptorex sounds like a happy ending, but a subsequent analysis of the same dinosaur highlighted how problematic commercially-collected specimens are. Museum of the Rockies paleontologist Denver Fowler and colleagues suspect that the skeleton of Raptorex is actually a juvenile Tarbosaurus. Anecdotal evidence and the scant amount of geologic information suggest that the dinosaur came from Mongolia rather than China. If we don’t know where fossils came from, how can we return fossils to their home countries, much less understand what the fossils mean?

Cases such as Prokopi’s, the illegal activities of commercial fossil hunter Nathan Murphy, and the legal tangles around “Tinker” the Tyrannosaurus underscore the shady nature of commercial collecting. And during a time when many museums are financially squeezed, the insistence of commercial collectors that they’d really like to sell specimens to research institutions where the fossils will be properly conserved and used to communicate science to the public—they really do claim this is their goal—is disingenuous. Rather than assisting science, commercial collectors are robbing everyone of specimens by making them accessible only to those with deep pockets.

Commercial collectors could do the right thing by working with professional paleontologists to responsibly excavate fossils for public institutions, with a small finder’s fee and rights to produce casts going to the commercial dealer. Of course, this would require private landowners and commercial collectors to stop seeing dollar signs made out of dinosaur bones. After the sale of Sue, Ida, and other high-profile fossils, researchers will continue to struggle against those who seek to turn petrifactions into profit.

Commercial collectors argue that, if they don’t act, many fossils may be destroyed due to erosion. And it’s true that there are not enough professional paleontologists to excavate every dinosaur that starts peeking out of the ground. But it would be better to let a Triceratops skull fall to pieces than have that specimen mangled by amateurs who ignore basic scientific data collection and then try to sell that skull to private buyers, hiding it away from researchers and fueling a market that makes significant specimens inaccessible. There is an opportunity cost to digging up one dinosaur and not another, but it’s better to lose a few in the process of rigorous science than to wind up with a jumble of dinosaurs of questionable provenance.

 

San Juan Capistrano panel wants dinosaur statue removed

From Los Angeles Times:  San Juan Capistrano panel wants dinosaur statue removed

The dinosaur replica at Zoomars Petting Zoo in San Juan Capistrano stands 13 feet tall. (Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times / December 4, 2012)

By Anh Do, Los Angeles Times

January 9, 2013, 7:35 p.m.

The San Juan Capistrano dinosaur is one step closer to extinction after city planning commissioners voted to evict the 40-foot long Apatosaurus statue from a petting zoo in the heart of the city's oldest neighborhood.
Commissioners said the dinosaur, which peeks onto historic Los Rios Street from the tiny zoo, does not reflect the history of San Juan, which would have been underwater when such animals roamed the Earth.
Carolyn Franks, owner of Zoomars Petting Zoo, said she plans to appeal the commission's 4-2 vote.
Franks bought the 13-foot-high statue for $12,000 in June, installing it without city permission. Since then, she and a donor have spent more than $30,000 on improvements to the statue and its setting, including leveling the ground where it was placed.
"We're a historical animal park," she said, noting that her zoo includes alpacas, goats, rabbits and a few zedonks — a cross between a zebra and a donkey. "The dinosaur is fiberglass. It's been so exciting for the kids — and what a great way to get kids started in history at the start of history."
Opponents cite the zoo's location on historic Los Rios Street, a narrow passageway dotted with buildings more than 200 years old. The road is one of the oldest in California.
Franks said she offered to screen off the statue — which is known by its fans as Juan the Capistrano Dinosaur — from pedestrians' view if the commission lets the dinosaur stay.
"She came in with good ideas, including screening with trees, and I thought we could find a way to preserve the statue," said Jeff Parkhurst, a city planning commissioner who said he took both of his daughters to the zoo when they were younger.
"I'm all for learning for kids, but our focus is on the history of San Juan — not the history of dinosaurs," said Robert Williams, who chairs the planning commission and believes the statue is out of place.
Franks has 15 days to appeal the vote. If the commission isn't swayed, she can appeal its decision to the City Council.
She said that when she returns to City Hall, she's considering bringing along some of the children, parents and teachers who support the dinosaur's continued residency on Los Rios.
"They wanted to wear dinosaur T-shirts because they love the statue," she said.

 

Posting resumes Thursday

I know I've been saying this periodically but this will be the last time I say it...I'm visiting relatives and although they have Wi fi I don't have a private room to work. I'll be home Thursaday and will get back into the swing of things then.

From I09:  Newly discovered mega-tooth could belong to one of the biggest dinosaurs ever

A tooth recently discovered in Argentina is an incredible 75 millimeters, or nearly 3 inches long. What's more, the tooth belonged to a member of the titanosaurs, a group of gigantic sauropods similar to brachiosaurus and apatosaurus. And it might just be the biggest of the bunch.
The tooth was discovered by Rodolfo García and his paleontological team at Argentina's National University of Río Negro. It's not even close to the biggest teeth ever discovered, but that's only because plant-eating titanosaurs didn't need chompers the size of their giant predator counterparts. The tooth is 32% longer than the length of any previously known titanosaur tooth, and it's twice the size of those belonging to most other sauropod taxa. The dinosaur that once owned this tooth might well be the biggest animal to ever walk the Earth, or at least very much in conversation for the title.
The problem is that it isn't really possible to extrapolate the size of an entire dinosaur from just a single tooth. We can make reasonable guesses about the size of the skull based on the size of the tooth, and the size of the skull can in turn help us guess the size of the entire dinosaur, but there's way too many leaps of logic involved here to say for certain how big the dinosaur that possessed this tooth really was.
Writing in Cretaceous Research, Dr. Garcia runs down the mysteries surrounding the tooth:

The unusual dimensions of the tooth described here, suggest different hypotheses about the specimen. The MML-Pv 1030 tooth could have belonged to a specimen with disproportionately large teeth, "a big-toothed titanosaur". However, it is also possible that this tooth belonged to an individual with an enormous skull, probably to a short-necked titanosaur or to a taxon of unusual dimensions for a titanosaur. Whatever the option mentioned above, this taxon has characteristics never previously recorded for the Upper Cretaceous (middle Campanian–lower Maastrichtian).
Another interesting aspect with regard to the studied specimen is its total absence of pits on its wear facet or enamel surface, a condition that differs from that of numerous titanosaurs. The absence of pits suggests a diet with scarce grit or an absence of hard vegetable material able to mark the teeth. On the other hand, the tooth scratches on the labial face suggest a feeding mechanism type where the collection of food was performed with the anteriormost teeth, cropping or, stripping of leaves from the branches but in an oblique way.

A photo of the tooth in comparison to other titanosaur teeth is available with the original paper.

Fla. man pleads guilty in NY in dinosaur dispute

From Salon:  Fla. man pleads guilty in NY in dinosaur dispute 

FILE - This photo released by the U.S. Attorney's office shows the fossil of a Tyrannosaurus bataar dinosaur at the center of a lawsuit demanding its return to Mongolia. Florida resident Eric Prokopi has pleaded guilty, Thursday, Dec. 27, 2012, at Federal Court in New York to smuggling this fossil and others into the United States. In return for his cooperation, prosecutors say they will recommend leniency. (AP Photo/U.S Attorney Office for the Southern District of New York, File)(Credit: AP)

NEW YORK (AP) — A Florida fossils dealer pleaded guilty to smuggling charges Thursday and agreed to give up a celebrated $1 million dinosaur skeleton seized by the U.S. government earlier this year for its eventual return to Mongolia.
Eric Prokopi, 38, said he would surrender the 70 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus bataar skeleton known as “Ty” and give up any claims to six other dinosaurs and various other bones in a cooperation deal that might win him leniency from charges that carry a potential prison sentence of up to 17 years.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Martin S. Bell read a list of the dinosaurs to Magistrate Judge Ronald L. Ellis, saying a second substantially complete Tyrannosaurus skeleton was found at Prokopi’s Gainesville, Fla., home, while a third was believed to be in Great Britain.
Bell said the government will also get to keep a Chinese flying dinosaur that Prokopi illegally imported; a skeleton of a Saurolophus, a duckbilled, plant eating dinosaur from the late Cretaceous period; and two Oviraptor skeletons, one found at Prokopi’s home and the other at another residential dwelling in Florida. The Oviraptors have parrot-like skulls.
“It’s among the larger dinosaur shopping lists you’ll see today,” Bell told the magistrate judge.
In a release, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said: “Fossils and ancient skeletal remains are part of the fabric of a country’s natural history and cultural heritage, and black marketers like Prokopi who illegally export and sell these wonders, steal a slice of that history. We are pleased that we can now begin the process of returning these prehistoric fossils to their countries of origin.”
The government accused Prokopi of smuggling bones into the country illegally from Mongolia before assembling them into a skeleton that was sold by Dallas-based Heritage Auctions for $1.05 million, a deal that was suspended pending the outcome of litigation. The government said the dinosaur skeleton was mislabeled as reptile bones from Great Britain.
Prokopi remains free on bail pending a sentencing scheduled for April 25. After his plea Thursday, he immediately went with prosecutors to their offices without commenting.
In a statement last spring, Prokopi defended his handling of the dinosaur, saying the value of the bones was labeled much lower than the eventual auction price because “it was loose, mostly broken bones and rocks with embedded bones. It was not what you see today, a virtually complete, mounted skeleton.”

Prokopi pleaded guilty to conspiracy for importing the Chinese flying dinosaur, entry by goods by means of false statements for importing Mongolian dinosaurs and one count of interstate and foreign transportation of goods converted and taken by fraud.
In describing his crimes, Prokopi said he wrote an email to a fossils dealer in China in 2010, instructing him to mislabel customs documents to make it appear that the bones of a Chinese flying dinosaur were worth less than they were.
He said that from 2010 to 2012, he arranged for shipments of fossils from Mongolia to be described in customs documents as if their country of origin were Great Britain.
The magistrate judge asked Prokopi if the country of origin on the documents was an important fact.
“Well, apparently,” Prokopi said, prompting a brief discussion between the prosecutor and Prokopi’s defense lawyer.
Afterward, Prokopi said the labeling of the relics was purposefully “vague and misleading so that they didn’t bring attention to the shipment.”
The magistrate judge asked him what would have happened if he had labeled them accurately.
“Probably nothing,” Prokopi said, pausing and then adding, “or it may not have been allowed to be imported.”