Dinosaurs come to life as Houston museum unveils new paleontology hall

From Xinhua: Dinosaurs come to life as Houston museum unveils new paleontology hall

HOUSTON, June 2 (Xinhua) -- Dinosaurs and other mysterious prehistoric beasts came to life Saturday as the Houston Museum of Natural Science opened its new world-class paleontology hall to the public in the fourth largest U.S. city.

The length of a football field, the hall is one of the most dynamic paleo halls in the world, and boasts one of the top three dinosaur exhibits in the United States, the museum said.

Houston Mayor Annise Parker joined a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the opening of the hall, as hundreds of eager students and local visitors swarmed the hall for the palaeontological wonder.

About 500 pieces are on display at the hall, said David Temple, associate curator of paleontology at the museum.

The innovative hall is packed with prehistoric beasts, and doesn't have the same stagnant displays of ancient skeletons standing in a row that many visitors are accustomed to seeing.

Rather, the predators and prey in the new paleontology hall will be in action - chasing, eating and escaping as they struggle for life.

Visitors will see more than 60 new, major mounts, featuring more than 30 dinosaurs as well as large mammals - all "in action" poses.

There is the museum's skeleton of a real bone T. rex featuring the best preserved and most complete hands and feet of any T. rex ever found, as well as patches of original skin - the likes of which have never before been seen.

Touchable specimens, including real and fossilized dinosaur skin, allow people to pet a dinosaur

Also on display is a nesting site for a Quetzalcoatlus family, ancient pterosaurs with 30-foot wingspans, bigger than a modern jet fighter.

A 12-foot wide, reconstructed jaw of a Megalodon, a marine monster that was the largest shark that ever lived, is poised in the act of ambushing a swimming, extinct elephant.

With the opening of the dinosaur hall, "we hope a lot of kids will get excited about science, about nature, about chemistry, about art, about biology, about geology, about all different things," said Temple.

Profile: Dr Scott Hocknull

From Queensland Museum website: Dr Scott Hocknull
Scott's career path is a story of childhood dreams come true-his passion for studying dinosaurs and palaeontology as a boy was realised when he was appointed as a curator of Geosciences at the Queensland Museum at the age of just 22 years. This made him the youngest curator of any Australian museum, and his achievements earned him the 2002 Young Australian of the Year Award.

Scott developed a passion for dinosaurs when he was a child. He officially began his professional career in palaeontology in 1994, at the age of 16, when he published his first scientific paper on a new species of fossil freshwater bivalve. Through his early work he discovered and scientifically described and published numerous new genera and species of extinct prehistoric animal. He became at that time Australia's youngest scientific author! Since then, he has worked on a range of extinct animals from freshwater mollusks and marine worms to extinct giant frogs and gigantic dinosaurs.

Scott volunteered at the Queensland Museum for 10 years during his school holidays and whilst attending university, focusing for a full 12 months in 1995 on his own research before beginning university studies at the University of Queensland (UQ). During these voluntary years Scott collected numerous new fossil sites for the museum, some of which are hailed as the most significant of their type in Australian palaeontological history.

He graduated from UQ in 2000 with first class honours in the areas of Geology and Zoology.

The 2002 Young Australian of the Year Award came in recognition of Scott's outstanding work. A particularly fruitful year for Scott, in 2002 he was also awarded the Young Australian of the Year for Queensland, Queensland Career Achiever, Queensland Science and Technology Achiever, and National Career Achiever!

These awards have given him the opportunity to travel across Australia where he inspires young people, motivates young managers and promotes his science as a youth ambassador for events such as National Youth Week, National Science Week, Australia Day and Palaeoweek.

In 2009 Scott completed his Doctorate focusing on the evolution of Australia and Papua New Guinea's fauna, flora and climate over the last 15 million years.

His current research encompass the study of climatic, environmental and faunal change in Australia over the past 110 million years with the aim of aiding in the conservation management of Australia's living species. “The past is the key to understanding our present, and predicting our future” is a phrase Scott works by as part of his lifetime goals in Australian palaeontology.

Amongst numerous field-based research programs associated with universities and community groups across the country, Scott is the lead researcher on Australian dinosaur discoveries near the townships of Winton and Eromanga. In 2009 he and his colleagues from the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum discovered and named three new species of dinosaur, including Australia’s most complete theropod (carnivorous dinosaur) skeleton, scientifically named Australovenator wintonensis. Along with these discoveries, Scott works closely with the Outback Gondwana Foundation, based in Eromanga, surrounding the discovery of 'Cooper' Australia's Largest dinosaur.

Scott knows there are lifetimes worth of work for future palaeontologists studying in Australia and his goal is to make palaeontology a more accessible and better funded science. As Scott has proven, you can start practicing science at a very young age.

Projects
Outback giants
Amazing new discoveries in outback Queensland herald a new age for Australian dinosaur hunters, a so-called dinosaur 'rush'. Australia's dinosaur fossil record is poorly known and is considered by overseas palaeontologists to be devoid of new discoveries.

India: Dinosaurs Live! opening hours extended

From the Sun Daily: Dinosaurs Live! opening hours extended

DUE TO the overwhelming response to the on-going Dinosaurs-Live! Exhibition taking place at National Science Centre (Pusat Sains Negara), the Centre wishes to inform members of the public that it has it will extend its operation hours during the school holidays and on every weekend.

The National Science Centre will now be opened daily, including during this school holidays, from 9am to 7pm so that more people are able to visit the exhibition which was opened to the public on May 1.

Dinosaurs Live! is one of the biggest interactive dinosaur shows held in the country, featuring about 30 life-sized animatronic dinosaurs each detailed from expert researched notes in regards to species, period of existence and other exciting facts.

These include a terrifyingly life-like 5 metre tall and 13 metres length animatronic T-Rex, and the Stegosaurus, Triceratops, Velociraptors and many others.

The exhibition, which ends July 31, provides a truly realistic experience of being transported back in time to when dinosaurs roam the earth.

Visitors will be able to learn scientific facts and see these extinct creatures in real life through professionally crafted exhibits animated using mechatronics, bringing realistic movements and sounds to the extent of body, tongue and eye movement.

Not just an ordinary exhibition; this is a fun yet educational show for both adults and kids will also feature related activities and shows such as dinosaur riding, fossil finding, augmented reality, 3D video shows and dinosaur duels.

Entry fees are RM15 for adults, and RM12 for students and children aged 7 to 12 years.

Austraia: Dinosaur museum loses funding bid

From ABC: Dinosaur museum loses funding bid

The Quilpie Mayor says he is disappointed a multi-million dollar dinosaur museum in south-west Queensland has missed out on federal funding.

The Regional Australia Minister, Simon Crean, has named eight Queensland projects to get funding under round two of the Regional Development Australia fund, including projects for the Mackay, Central Highlands, Toowoomba and Ipswich councils.

Quilpie Mayor Stuart McKenzie says council asked for $1 million to showcase the nation's biggest dinosaur fossils but remote regions are finding it extremely difficult to win funding under the program.

"Last time, the first round, not one project got [funded] from across the range," he said.

"Well this time they've got to the top of the range - Toowoomba and Emerald is over the range, they are two fairly major population centres.

"So it is a slight improvement but look if you are in true regional Queensland, I don't know, I think it is an uphill battle."

Mr Crean says the successful projects will create an estimated 180 jobs during construction and more than 400 after.

The Moreton Bay Regional Council will get almost $8 million for its planned 'Corso' community facilities at North Lakes.

Funding has also been promised to rebuild seawalls in the Torres Strait, the Emerald Airport apron extension and the Mackay Regional Events Centre.

Mr Crean says they have been selected because they have demonstrated clear long-term benefits and will boost regional economic development.

"A significant commitment to Queensland. Close to $35 million of the 200 from Commonwealth money but interestingly it has leveraged almost four times that amount from other partners. It shows the real benefit of partnership," he said.

In Skull Analysis, Charting the Path From T. Rex to Falcon

From New York Times: In Skull Analysis, Charting the Path From T. Rex to Falcon
It is well accepted that birds evolved from dinosaurs, but the extent of the transformation still inspires wonder and awe. And new research.

One part of that transformation has just been traced in detail, showing that one of the things that happened in bird evolution was that their skulls pulled a Peter Pan and stopped growing up.

Some subtle genetic change slowed or stopped the development of the skull as a bird embryo grew in the shell and after hatching. The body kept on growing and changing proportions, but the skull changed only in size. It did not change in shape.

As a result, the skulls of birds look like those of baby dinosaurs. This kind of change is at the heart of the current understanding of how evolution proceeds, and although scientists are familiar with it from work on salamanders, fruit flies and other creatures, this new research shows how it occurred in two kinds of animals the public loves — dinosaurs and birds — bringing a complicated scientific idea home to the bird feeder and the museum exhibit hall.

The change from dinosaur to bird is one of those grand evolutionary shifts. The smart, quick theropod dinosaurs that gave rise to birds may have had feathers, but they did not fly and they certainly didn’t resemble birds today. Just think of a pigeon’s acrobatics. Or the legendary dive of the peregrine falcon, which can spot that pigeon from 3,000 feet and drop to earth in a 200-mile-an-hour swoop to strike it.

That’s a long way from running on land, a change in speed and agility requiring not only wings and flight feathers but sharp senses and sophisticated brains for long-distance vision and high-speed action. Sure enough, birds’ skulls have room for relatively huge eyes and for a brain that has expanded in the part devoted to the visual sense. And they are the same shape as the skulls of juvenile dinosaurs, not those of adults.

That similarity is what prompted the research by a group of investigators including Bhart-Anjan S. Bhullar, a graduate student at Harvard; Arkhat Abzhanov, Mr. Bhullar’s adviser; and Mark Norell at the American Museum of Natural History. They trained their attention on the evolution of skull shape in dinosaurs and birds, with the working hypothesis that as birds evolved, their growth patterns changed so they kept a juvenile skull shape their whole life.

“A number of us have speculated on this,” Dr. Norell said, referring to the idea that adult birds resembled young dinosaurs in some ways. “It’s a common thing to argue it, but it’s a difficult thing to show.”

To test the idea, the group used CT scan information on all the known fossils of theropod dinosaurs that show skull growth, as well as skulls of birds and crocodilians. They identified 45 points called landmarks on the skulls, and used a computer analysis to see how the areas defined by those points changed both during an individual life and over evolutionary time.

The analysis showed that in dinosaurs like Coelophysis and in crocodilians, the shape of the skulls changed significantly during an individual animal’s growth. The juveniles had short faces, and large brains and eyes. The adults had a longer snout and less room, relative to skull size, for eyes and brain. In primitive birds, however, there was very little change in skull shape during growth, so the skull retained its juvenile form. The modern birds continued the trend. The research was published online in the journal Nature on Sunday.

David B. Weishampel, a paleontologist at Johns Hopkins who was not part of the study, said it was thorough and convincing, “a nice piece of work.”

Dr. Abzhanov said the skull evolution was apparently a result of a change in the relative pace of two processes, body growth and sexual maturation. Crocodilians and dinosaurs, he said, may reach sexual maturity in 7 to 10 years. But modern birds become sexually mature 15 to 20 times as fast, and their body growth stops when their skulls are still like those of juvenile dinosaurs — and when they are ready, some of them, to drop from the sky at 200 miles an hour.

Investigation launched into origins of disputed dinosaur skeleton

From FoxDFW: Investigation launched into origins of disputed dinosaur skeleton

NEW YORK -- The Mongolian government and a Texas-based auction house are embroiled in an ownership fight over a fearsome dinosaur fossil, but the two parties said Wednesday they are cooperating in an investigation that seeks to settle the dispute.

Heritage Auctions sold the near-complete Tyrannosaurus skeleton for $1.05 million last week in New York City.

But before the eight-foot-tall, 24-foot-long beast could get to its new owner, the Mongolian government stepped in and laid claim to the remains.

A temporary restraining order filed in the name of the Mongolian President Tsakhia Elbegdorj sought to prevent Heritage Auctions from selling the Tyrannosaurus bataar, a cousin of T. rex that roamed Asia 70 million years ago.

Elbegdorj contends that the specimen likely came from Mongolia, where fossils are considered national property and are illegal to export. His government is sending a delegation of Mongolian and international experts to New York next week to evaluate the dinosaur bones.

The goal of the inspection -- at which the skeleton's consignor and a Heritage Auctions representative will be present -- is to verify whether or not the specimen was dug up from Mongolian soil, the president's Texas-based attorney, Robert Painter, told NewsCore in an email.

"Of course, if the T. bataar is verified to be from Mongolia, our goal is to repatriate it as soon as possible," he said.

In that case, Mongolia will try to reach an "amicable settlement" with the auction house and the unidentified consignor, Painter said. But if the parties cannot hammer out an agreement, the court case will continue.

Heritage Auctions has maintained that the skeleton was legally obtained.

"At this point we don't know for certain when or from where the dinosaur was first exported, what the applicable laws were and are, or whether the court case will be settled or adjudicated," Jim Halperin, co-chairman of Heritage Auctions, told NewsCore through a spokesman.

"Fortunately the goal of Heritage Auctions, of our consignor and of the President of Mongolia would seem to be the same: a fair and just resolution based upon cooperation and shared knowledge of as many of the facts as possible," he added.

Painter said Heritage Auctions told him the specimen, which is believed to be from the Gobi desert, has no documented provenance before 2005, when it was purchased in Japan. Since then, he said, it was purchased by a collector in England and then exported to the US, where it was prepared to be sold at auction.

For now, the dinosaur bones are resting in crates at a secure facility in the New York area.

Birds Evolved From Dinosaurs By Remaining ‘Juveniles’

From PlanetSave: Birds Evolved From Dinosaurs By Remaining ‘Juveniles’
New evidence is suggesting that the emergence of birds was from a drastic change in how dinosaurs developed. Rather than spending years to reach sexual maturity, they drastically shortened their development, essentially remaining juvenile dinosaurs their whole lifespan.

Some species of birds take as little as 12 weeks to reach maturity, as opposed to the very long development of some species of dinosaurs.

“What is interesting about this research is the way it illustrates evolution as a developmental phenomenon,” said Arkhat Abzhanov, associate professor at Harvard and study co-author. “By changing the developmental biology in early species, nature has produced the modern bird — an entirely new creature — and one that, with approximately 10,000 species, is today the most successful group of land vertebrates on the planet.”

There are some clear differences between birds and dinosaurs; birds have shorter snouts, less/no teeth, and they have proportionally larger eyes and brains. But those differences are all from the sexual characteristics of grown dinosaurs — the skulls of juvenile dinosaurs and birds are virtually identical.

“No one had told the big story of the evolution of the bird head before,” said Bhart-Anjan Bhullar, a Harvard PhD student and first author of the study. “There had been a number of smaller studies that focused on particular points of the anatomy, but no one had looked at the entire picture. What’s interesting is that when you do that, you see the origins of the features that make the bird head special lie deep in the history of the evolution of Archosaurs, a group of animals that were the dominant, meat-eating animals for millions of years.”

To perform the study, the researchers used CT scanners; scanning dozens of skulls from birds, theropods (the dinosaurs most closely related to birds), and from other early dinosaur species.

By keeping track of the different “landmarks” on the skull, such as the orbits, cranial cavity, and other bones; the researchers were able to track how the skull changed over millions of years.

“We examined skulls from the entire lineage that gave rise to modern birds,” Abzhanov said. “We looked back approximately 250 million years, to the Archosaurs, the group which gave rise to crocodiles and alligators as well as modern birds. Our goal was to look at these skulls to see how they changed, and try to understand what actually happened during the evolution of the bird skull.”

What the researchers found is that while early dinosaurs undergo large morphological changes in their skull as they mature, the skulls of of adult and juvenile birds are nearly the same.

The process of a species changing to reach sexual maturity earlier is called progenesis. Different from their dinosaur ancestors, birds reach sexual maturity rapidly, as quickly as in 12 weeks.

The researchers of this study comment that this highlights the diversity of different evolutionary strategies that species use.

“That you can have such dramatic success simply by changing the relative timing of events in a creature’s development is remarkable,” he said. “We now understand the relationship between birds and dinosaurs that much better, and we can say that, when we look at birds, we are actually looking at juvenile dinosaurs.”

“It shows that there’s so much for evolution to act upon,” Bhullar agreed. “When we think of an organism, especially a complex organism, we often think of it as a static entity, but to really study something you have to look at its whole existence, and understand that one portion of its life can be parceled out and made into the entire lifespan of a new, and in this case, radically successful organism.”