From Business7.co.uk: World of Golf in £500k dinosaur expansion
World of Golf Glasgow has invested £500,000 in an adventure golf course with moving dinosaurs.
The business has created 16 new jobs as a result of the project.
The 18-hole course - called Jurassic Parrr and aimed at children between five and 12 - features a number of animatronic dinosaurs and has a storyline featuring a time travelling adventurer.
More than a mile of steel rods and around 400 tonnes of concrete were used in the creation of the attraction.
Yvonne Park, general manager, said: "We believe Jurassic Parrr is an exciting adventure and test for children and families.
"The life-size dinosaurs have been created by the team behind the BBCs Walking With Dinosaurs series, so they are extremely realistic.
"The longest is the baby Brachiosauros, which is 15 metres long but the star of the show is the T-Rex.
"We all know how much children are fascinated by dinosaurs so this interest combined with a sporting adventure is, we hope, going to be a big hit."
The venue, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary, had more than 120,000 visitors last year and 10 million balls were hit at its floodlit driving range.
Friday, October 14, 2011
Oklahoma: Baby dinosaur arrives in rare exhibit at Sam Noble Museum
(The Apatosaurus is more popularly known as the Brontosaurus!!!!)
From OuDaily.com: Baby dinosaur arrives in rare exhibit at Sam Noble Museum
Bigger isn’t always better at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History.
The museum is welcoming the smallest Apatosaurus in the world to the exhibit “The Clash of the Titans,” which also already features the largest Apatosaurus in the world, according to a press release.
Museum director Michael Mares said in a press release that the exhibit is one-of-a-kind because the museum will be one of two museums in the world with a baby Apatosaurus on display.
The fossils of the young Apatosaurus, formerly known as a Brontosaurus, were found in Oklahoma, Mares said.
The fossils were collected by a Works Progress Administration team, led in 1930s by J. Willis Stovall, the Sam Noble Museum’s first director. The bones remained untouched in museum drawers for nearly 50 years, museum spokeswoman Jen Tregarthen said.
A donation from the Whitten-Newman Foundation allowed the museum to finally piece together the baby dinosaur, according to the press release.
“It’s going to bring a whole new dynamic to ‘The Clash of the Titans,’” Tregarthen said. “Director Mares always wanted a baby Apatosaurus on display.”
And Tregarthen said the addition does more than just provide further history.
“I think it adds a whole new emotional element to the exhibit,” Tregarthen said.
Members and invited guests may attend the unveiling at 5:30 p.m. Friday by Richard Cifelli, associate curator of vertebrate paleontology.
The free exhibit will be open to the public with free admission from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday.
“The Clash of the Titans” is a permanent exhibit in the museum, so visitors can expect to see the dinosaur duo for many years to come.
The Most Well-Preserved Dinosaur Skeleton Ever Found in Europe
From the Io9: The Most Well-Preserved Dinosaur Skeleton Ever Found in Europe
Researchers say this specimen is about as close to perfect as fossils come. Unveiled yesterday by scientists from the Bavarian paleontological and ecological collections (BSPF) in Munich, Germany, the unnamed dinosaur is believed to be 98% complete, and even includes bits of preserved skin.
The specimen is thought to belong to a suborder of dinosaurs known as theropods, which includes such iconic dinosaurs as T. Rex. Theropod specimens are among the rarest on earth — so to find one in such excellent condition has experts understandably excited.
"The best-preserved Tyrannosaurus we have are about 80 percent preserved," explained BSPG conservator Oliver Rauhut, comparing the two theropods. "And that is already terrific."
Measurements of the fossil's skull, body proportions and bone surface have led Rauhut and his team of paleontologists to conclude that the dinosaur was no more than a year old when it died, which only adds to the excitement surrounding the discovery (the remains of young dinosaurs are also a rare find).
Full sizeAccording to Darren Naish, a paleontologist at the University of Southampton, the as-yet-unnamed dinosaur appears to have a longer tail and proportionally shorter legs than other, similar theropods, but whether this is simply due to the dinosaur's age or its being an entirely new species remains to be seen.
Naish says that if the specimen's bones are as well preserved as they appear to be in the photos you see here, it could provide valuable insight into the evolutionary history of theropod species, and shed light on questions pertaining to prehistoric species diversity.
"There have been recent suggestions that some juvenile dinosaurs were so anatomically different to adults that they occupied different ecological niches," says Naish. "Dinosaur species diversity seems to have been lower than might be expected, and one reason for this could be that individuals of a single species occupied multiple different niches over their lifetimes."
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Where dinosaurs once roamed
From China Daily.com: Where dinosaurs once roamed
Five-year-old Zhang Zihao is a big dinosaur fan. The kindergartner owns dinosaur books, miniature dinosaur models, and in the past year and a half has already dragged his mother four times to the Bird Fossils National Geopark in their home city of Chaoyang.
"His favorite exhibits are the life-size dinosaur models," Zhang's mother Zhu Yan says.
A three-story, first-rate fossil museum in a third-tier Chinese city is quite remarkable. But more so is the ground underneath it.
Chaoyang's Sihetun village, an hour by car from the city center, yielded one of mankind's most significant fossil finds - the sinosauropteryx, the first feathered dinosaur ever unearthed, which lived during the late Jurassic Period, 160-145 million years ago.
Its discovery was further proof that birds evolved from dinosaurs, and at the same time put into question the legitimacy of the long-established "earliest bird", the archaeopteryx.
"A lot of the uniquely avian features that archaeopteryx has have turned out to be not so unique after all," Lawrence Witmer, a paleontologist at Ohio University, wrote in the July 27 issue of the scientific journal Nature. "Perhaps the time has come to finally accept that archaeopteryx was just another small, feathered, bird-like theropod fluttering around in the Jurassic."
The Bird Fossils Geopark stands beside another excavation site, in Shangheshou village, a 15-minute drive from downtown. Steps lead to the bottom of the pit, 4.5 meters below ground, where visitors can see through protective glass the fish, birds and plants that thrived here 100 million years ago. The pit also shows the layers of volcanic lava that obliterated these creatures.
The 2,300-square-meter geopark museum, opened in 2007, is a wonderful showcase of the prehistoric world. Its collection includes dinosaur skeletons, fossil trees, a cross-section of a lake showing 128 types of fish, the fossil of a prehistoric turtle whose tail is as long as its body, water lizards, insects and shells.
Naturally, the museum's most prized exhibit is the sinosauropteryx, reproductions of which are displayed on the second floor, beside fossils of other feathered dinosaurs unearthed in Chaoyang, in western Liaoning province. (The original fossils are kept in Beijing and Nanjing.) There's also the achaefructaceae, another local find, which the geopark is hailing as the world's "first flower".
One exhibit not to miss are two psittacosaurus, or parrot-mouthed dinosaurs, caught in the act of love.
"They met, fell in love, then the volcano erupted," Song Shuang, a museum tour guide, says. "How often do you see something like this?"
The discovery of paleontological gems in Chaoyang has spawned a vibrant, local fossil industry.
Downtown, between the North and South pagodas, where relics of the Sakyamuni Buddha and his teacher were discovered at the turn of the century, is Murong Street, more popularly known as Fossil Street.
The 800-meter-long street is lined with shops offering "second-class" fossils, merchandise mimicking some of the museum's contents. For 5 yuan (78 US cents), you can take home a framed, mirror-image pair of tiny fossil fish embedded in slate, or a carving made from fossil tree for 78,000 yuan ($12,244).
The fossils, say shopkeepers, are supplied by local prospectors - it was a farmer who unearthed the first sinosauropteryx fossil in August 1996, while digging to plant trees. Obviously, the locals have learned that there's more than one type of gem buried under their feet.
Five-year-old Zhang Zihao is a big dinosaur fan. The kindergartner owns dinosaur books, miniature dinosaur models, and in the past year and a half has already dragged his mother four times to the Bird Fossils National Geopark in their home city of Chaoyang.
"His favorite exhibits are the life-size dinosaur models," Zhang's mother Zhu Yan says.
A three-story, first-rate fossil museum in a third-tier Chinese city is quite remarkable. But more so is the ground underneath it.
Chaoyang's Sihetun village, an hour by car from the city center, yielded one of mankind's most significant fossil finds - the sinosauropteryx, the first feathered dinosaur ever unearthed, which lived during the late Jurassic Period, 160-145 million years ago.
Its discovery was further proof that birds evolved from dinosaurs, and at the same time put into question the legitimacy of the long-established "earliest bird", the archaeopteryx.
"A lot of the uniquely avian features that archaeopteryx has have turned out to be not so unique after all," Lawrence Witmer, a paleontologist at Ohio University, wrote in the July 27 issue of the scientific journal Nature. "Perhaps the time has come to finally accept that archaeopteryx was just another small, feathered, bird-like theropod fluttering around in the Jurassic."
The Bird Fossils Geopark stands beside another excavation site, in Shangheshou village, a 15-minute drive from downtown. Steps lead to the bottom of the pit, 4.5 meters below ground, where visitors can see through protective glass the fish, birds and plants that thrived here 100 million years ago. The pit also shows the layers of volcanic lava that obliterated these creatures.
The 2,300-square-meter geopark museum, opened in 2007, is a wonderful showcase of the prehistoric world. Its collection includes dinosaur skeletons, fossil trees, a cross-section of a lake showing 128 types of fish, the fossil of a prehistoric turtle whose tail is as long as its body, water lizards, insects and shells.
Naturally, the museum's most prized exhibit is the sinosauropteryx, reproductions of which are displayed on the second floor, beside fossils of other feathered dinosaurs unearthed in Chaoyang, in western Liaoning province. (The original fossils are kept in Beijing and Nanjing.) There's also the achaefructaceae, another local find, which the geopark is hailing as the world's "first flower".
One exhibit not to miss are two psittacosaurus, or parrot-mouthed dinosaurs, caught in the act of love.
"They met, fell in love, then the volcano erupted," Song Shuang, a museum tour guide, says. "How often do you see something like this?"
The discovery of paleontological gems in Chaoyang has spawned a vibrant, local fossil industry.
Downtown, between the North and South pagodas, where relics of the Sakyamuni Buddha and his teacher were discovered at the turn of the century, is Murong Street, more popularly known as Fossil Street.
The 800-meter-long street is lined with shops offering "second-class" fossils, merchandise mimicking some of the museum's contents. For 5 yuan (78 US cents), you can take home a framed, mirror-image pair of tiny fossil fish embedded in slate, or a carving made from fossil tree for 78,000 yuan ($12,244).
The fossils, say shopkeepers, are supplied by local prospectors - it was a farmer who unearthed the first sinosauropteryx fossil in August 1996, while digging to plant trees. Obviously, the locals have learned that there's more than one type of gem buried under their feet.
T. Rex bigger than thought, and very hungry
Reuters: T. Rex bigger than thought, and very hungry
(Reuters) - Tyrannosaurus rex grew faster and weighed more than previously thought, suggesting the fearsome predator would have been a ravenous teenager, researchers said on Wednesday.
Using three-dimensional laser scans and computer modeling, British and U.S. scientists "weighed" five T. rex specimens, including the Chicago Field Museum's "Sue," the largest and most complete T. rex skeleton known.
They concluded that Sue, who roamed the Great Plains of North America 67 million years ago, would have tipped the scales at more than 9 tons, or some 30 percent more than expected.
Intriguingly, the smallest and youngest specimen weighed less than thought, shedding new light on the animals' biology and indicating that T. rex grew more than twice as fast between 10 and 15 years of age as suggested in a study five years ago.
"At their fastest, in their teenage years, they were putting on 11 pounds or 5 kilograms a day," John Hutchinson of the Royal Veterinary College in London told Reuters.
"Just think how much meat that is. That's a hell of a lot of cheeseburgers ... it's a whole lot of duck-billed dinosaurs they needed to be chowing down on."
Hadrosaurs or duck-billed dinosaurs were common plant-eaters that lived alongside T. rex, making them an obvious meal for the giant meat-eaters.
A huge appetite means T. rex would have needed extensive territory and they were probably relatively rare. Their rapid teenage growth spurt also suggests they must have had a high metabolic rate, fuelling the idea they were warm-blooded.
A large body mass would have come at the expense of agility and the lower-leg muscles of T. rex were not as proportionately large as those of modern birds, indicating a top speed of about 10-25 miles per hour. "It's not super-fast but they were no slouches," Hutchinson said.
The latest research, published online in the journal PLoS ONE, adds to the body of evidence that has made T. rex among the most intensively studied of all dinosaurs.
The researchers, led by Hutchinson and Peter Makovicky of the Field Museum, used scans of skeletons to build digital models and then added flesh using the structure of soft tissues in birds and crocodiles as a guide.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Rocks Suggest Antarctica, North America Were Once Attached
From Our Amazing Planet: Rocks Suggest Antarctica, North America Were Once Attached
Remote Antarctic rocks hold strong new evidence that parts of Antarctica and North America were connected more than a billion years ago, researchers say.
The suspected link between the two widely separated continents helps paint a picture of what the planet was like when complex multicellular life was emerging.
An international team of scientists found that the combination of lead isotopes in rocks peeking out of the Antarctic ice is the same as in rocks from a rift that cuts across the United States.
Staci Loewy, a geochemist at California State University, Bakersfield, who has studied the rift, said: "I can go to the Franklin Mountains in West Texas and stand next to what was once part of Coats Land in Antarctica. That's so amazing."
Supercontinents
Geologists have known for decades that Earth's continents move around as part of the tectonic plates that join together like puzzle pieces to make up the planet's crust. Comparing features on one continent, such as mountain ranges, coastlines and fossils, to those on another can show they were once attached.
At various times in Earth's history, the continents have been stuck together in huge lumps of land called supercontinents.
The supercontinent Pangaea formed about 250 million years ago, but scientists think ancestral North America and East Antarctica were joined in a much earlier supercontinent called Rodinia. The new find supports that idea.
"To me, this is some of the most compelling pieces of evidence that there was a connection between part of Antarctica and North America," said study team member Ian Dalziel, a tectonicist at the University of Texas at Austin.
Failed separation
The North American Mid-Continent Rift System extends from the Great Lakes to Texas. The rift, which is 1.1 billion years old, apparently represents a failed tectonic attempt to split the ancestral North American continent of Laurentia.
Past research of the rift found that volcanic rocks of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan are the same age as rocks barely peeking through the ice in Coats Land, a remote part of Antarctica south of the Atlantic Ocean basin. Moreover, they have similar chemical and geologic properties.
"There are only three little outcrops of rock on this block of Antarctica, and one is completely inaccessible if you value your life, because of the icefall there," Dalziel told OurAmazingPlanet. "It's very remote." The rapidly flowing ice there is prone to cracking into perilous crevasses.
Snowball Earth and complex life
The new findings help suggest the Coats Land block was linked with the part of Laurentia near West Texas 1.1 billion years ago. About 100 million years later, this block apparently crashed into the ancient southern African continent of Kalahari along Antarctica's Maud mountain belt, which represents a continuation of the Grenville mountain belt of eastern and southern North America.
At about the time Antarctica was linked with North America and colliding with Kalahari, Earth was experiencing a number of other monumental changes. The Pacific Ocean basin was just about to open, the planet may have been covered with glaciers ― a time now referred to as "Snowball Earth" ― and complex multicellular life was appearing for the first time.
"We're trying to get a firm hand on what was happening when all these exciting things like Snowball Earth and multicellular life were going on. This is gradually helping to build that picture," Dalziel said.
The scientists detailed their findings online Aug. 5 in the journal Geology.
Remote Antarctic rocks hold strong new evidence that parts of Antarctica and North America were connected more than a billion years ago, researchers say.
The suspected link between the two widely separated continents helps paint a picture of what the planet was like when complex multicellular life was emerging.
An international team of scientists found that the combination of lead isotopes in rocks peeking out of the Antarctic ice is the same as in rocks from a rift that cuts across the United States.
Staci Loewy, a geochemist at California State University, Bakersfield, who has studied the rift, said: "I can go to the Franklin Mountains in West Texas and stand next to what was once part of Coats Land in Antarctica. That's so amazing."
Supercontinents
Geologists have known for decades that Earth's continents move around as part of the tectonic plates that join together like puzzle pieces to make up the planet's crust. Comparing features on one continent, such as mountain ranges, coastlines and fossils, to those on another can show they were once attached.
At various times in Earth's history, the continents have been stuck together in huge lumps of land called supercontinents.
The supercontinent Pangaea formed about 250 million years ago, but scientists think ancestral North America and East Antarctica were joined in a much earlier supercontinent called Rodinia. The new find supports that idea.
"To me, this is some of the most compelling pieces of evidence that there was a connection between part of Antarctica and North America," said study team member Ian Dalziel, a tectonicist at the University of Texas at Austin.
Failed separation
The North American Mid-Continent Rift System extends from the Great Lakes to Texas. The rift, which is 1.1 billion years old, apparently represents a failed tectonic attempt to split the ancestral North American continent of Laurentia.
Past research of the rift found that volcanic rocks of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan are the same age as rocks barely peeking through the ice in Coats Land, a remote part of Antarctica south of the Atlantic Ocean basin. Moreover, they have similar chemical and geologic properties.
"There are only three little outcrops of rock on this block of Antarctica, and one is completely inaccessible if you value your life, because of the icefall there," Dalziel told OurAmazingPlanet. "It's very remote." The rapidly flowing ice there is prone to cracking into perilous crevasses.
Snowball Earth and complex life
The new findings help suggest the Coats Land block was linked with the part of Laurentia near West Texas 1.1 billion years ago. About 100 million years later, this block apparently crashed into the ancient southern African continent of Kalahari along Antarctica's Maud mountain belt, which represents a continuation of the Grenville mountain belt of eastern and southern North America.
At about the time Antarctica was linked with North America and colliding with Kalahari, Earth was experiencing a number of other monumental changes. The Pacific Ocean basin was just about to open, the planet may have been covered with glaciers ― a time now referred to as "Snowball Earth" ― and complex multicellular life was appearing for the first time.
"We're trying to get a firm hand on what was happening when all these exciting things like Snowball Earth and multicellular life were going on. This is gradually helping to build that picture," Dalziel said.
The scientists detailed their findings online Aug. 5 in the journal Geology.
Alaskan Crater: Where Dinosaurs Once Roamed
Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve derives its name from a 6-mile (10-kilometer) caldera that sits midway down the Alaskan Peninsula. Geographers first noticed the circular feature on the landscape, and a 1922 geologic expedition confirmed the origin of the depression. Several decades later, paleontologists made another find at Aniakchak: Dinosaurs once lived in the area, and they left behind some of their fossilized tracks.
Aniakchak is one of 232 American parks with a stash of fossils. The National Park Service provides information on these natural relics as part of its celebration of National Fossil Day (October 12) and of Earth Science Week.
The Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus on the Landsat 7 satellite captured this natural-color image of Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve on September 15, 2000. The caldera dominates the view, and the southern rim casts a blue-gray shadow on nearby snow and ice. (Because of the angle of sunlight, this image may cause the optical illusion known as relief inversion.)
A lake lies near the caldera’s northeastern margin. Vegetation is scarce immediately around the caldera, but farther away the slopes are green.
The caldera formed about 3,500 years ago when an explosive eruption blew out roughly 3,000 feet (1,000 meters) of overlying mountain. More recent volcanic activity has pockmarked the caldera with cinder cones and lava flows.
The dinosaur tracks in Aniakchak are far older than the crater. They were left by plant-eating dinosaurs about 70 million years ago. Anthony Fiorillo, based at the Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas, discovered the tracks and wrote about them in 2004. Left by hadrosaurs, the tracks consist of smaller handprints and larger footprints.
Most people think dinosaurs lived in tropical, or at least temperate, environments—not at high latitudes such as Alaska. So how could dinosaurs thrive so far north?
Plate tectonic theory indicates that some lands that are now situated at high latitudes once rested nearer to the equator. So one explanation could be that the landform wasn’t in the same place when the tracks were formed. However, studies of rock layers from the area indicate that the Aniakchak area was already in place at about the same latitude 70 million years ago.
Though Aniakchak was in roughly the same place (almost 57 degrees north), it doesn’t mean that it had the same climate. In fact, global climate about 70 million years ago was significantly warmer than today. So dinosaurs did not have to endure the temperatures common in modern Alaska, although they did experience some cold conditions and possibly snow. Regardless of temperatures, dinosaurs living at high latitudes coped with prolonged periods of darkness, as nighttime lasts nearly 18 hours during the winter in Aniakchak
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