5 "Oddball" Crocs Found in Sahara Desert
A strange assortment of prehistoric crocodilyform fossils have been found in Africa. Crocodilyforms are ancient cousins of today’s alligators, crocodiles, and caimans.
For instance, the rodent-like RatCroc had buckteeth for rooting through the ground after tubers or simple animals.
The flat-bodied PancakeCroc was the “ultimate sit-and-wait predator,” Sereno said. The animal would lie motionless and “wait for something stupid” to swim into its rail-thin, 3-foot-long (0.9-meter-long) jaws, which were lined with rows of spiky teeth.
DuckCroc had a long, smooth, sensitive nose to poke through vegetation as well as hook-shaped teeth to snag frogs and small fish in shallow water.
And the plant-eating DogCroc had lanky legs that meant it was likely spry enough to run into the water if threatened.
By far the mightiest of the lot, BoarCroc was a 20-foot-long (6.1-meter-long) “saber-toothed cat in armor” that ate dinosaurs for dinner.
DuckCroc and DogCroc were previously known to scientists, and the rest are new discoveries by a team headed by Paul Sereno, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago. The expedition found fossils of all five in Niger and Morocco. Link (with video) -via Digg
(image credit: Mike Hettwer/National Geographic)
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Dinosaur Built (and Named) Like a Tank
Paleontologists Bill and Kris Parsons of the Buffalo Museum of Science in New York found a dinosaur skull in Montana in 1997. In the years since, they’ve excavated the rest of the skeleton of a new dinosaur called Tatankacephalus cooneyorum.
“These were big dinosaur versions of a Sherman tank,” Bill Parsons said. “They were armored and they withstood whatever came at them, and they just kept going.” T. cooneyorum was about 15 to 20 feet (4.5 to 6 meters) in length.
And this dinosaur had its share of protection, with two sets of stubby horns, one on the cheeks and the other around its eyes, two thick domes at the back of the skull and thickened areas around the nasal region.
Bill Parsons suspects T. cooneyorum was covered with hundreds or even thousands of bony plates equipped with spikes and a tail tipped with a club, similar to other ankylosaurs. Such protection, along with a swinging clubbed tail, would have kept at bay any of the small dinosaurs around at the time, Parsons said.
T. cooneyorum dates from around 112 million years ago. Link -via the Presurfer
(image credit: Bill Parsons)
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Darwinopterus, the New Flying Reptile
Fossils of flying reptiles come in two versions: the older long-tailed pterosaurs and the more recent short-tailed versions. The fossil gap between the two was a mystery until 20 skeletons of a new species were discovered early in 2009 in northeast China. The new pterosaur was named Darwinopterus in honor of the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth.
“Darwinopterus came as quite a shock to us,” explained David Unwin part of the research team and based at the University of Leicester’s School of Museum Studies. “We had always expected a gap-filler with typically intermediate features such as a moderately elongate tail – neither long nor short – but the strange thing about Darwinopterus is that it has a head and neck just like that of advanced pterosaurs, while the rest of the skeleton, including a very long tail, is identical to that of primitive forms”.
The discovery lends credence to the theory that evolution is not an even process, but contains periods of rapid evolution. Link -via Digg
(image credit: Mark Witton, University of Portsmouth)
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Ardipithecus
Fifteen years ago, Berkeley scientist Tim White and a team of researchers from Ethiopia and America found bones of a hominid older than the 3.2 million-year-old Lucy (A. afarensis). The team collected 110 bones, enough to reconstruct the skeletons of what was unveiled today as Ardipithecus ramidus. These bones date from 4.4 million years ago! Carl Zimmer points out several ways that this prehistoric species tells us new things about the development of humans. For example, in some animal species (including apes), male canine teeth are much bigger than the female version. These are the species in which competition for females often turns violent.
White and his colleagues found so many teeth of different Ardipithecus individuals that they could compare male and female canines with some confidence. The male teeth turn out to be surprisingly blunted. This result suggests that hominids shifted away from a typical ape social structure early in our ancestry. If this was a result of males forming long-term bonds with females and helping raise young, this shift was able to occur while hominids were still living a very ape-like life. Ardipithecus existed about 2 million years before the oldest evidence of stone tools, suggesting that technology was not the trigger for the evolution of nice hominid guys.
There have been a couple of hominid bones found that are even older than Ardipithecus, but none with enough fossils to even begin reconstructing a skeleton. Link -via Metafilter
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Legendary Man-eating Bird
The native Maori of New Zealand tell of a giant man-eating bird called Te Hokioi. Now scientists have identified a real bird that fits the description. Haast’s Eagle has been extinct for only 500 years, and may be the source of the Maori tales. The bird with up to a four meter wingspan was first discovered in 1870, but until recently was thought to be a scavenger. Recent scans show the bird to be strong enough to kill prey much larger than itself.
“It was certainly capable of swooping down and taking a child,” said Paul Scofield, the curator of vertebrate zoology at the Canterbury Museum.
“They had the ability to not only strike with their talons but to close the talons and put them through quite solid objects such as a pelvis. It was designed as a killing machine.”
Its main prey would have been moa, flightless birds which grew to as much as 250kg and 2.5 metres tall.
“In some fossil sites, moa bones have been found with signs of eagle predation,” Dr Scofield said.
Link -via the Presurfer
(image credit: John Megahan/PLoS Biology)
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Squid Drawn from 150 million-year-old Ink
Scientists found the fossil of an ancient squid of the species Belemnotheutis antiquus at a dig near Trowbridge, England, when they reopened an archaeological site that had been abandoned for 170 years. Inside there was a one-inch black ink sac that still contained ink granules. As an experiment, researchers ground up a small portion of the ink and dissolved it in an ammonia solution. Then they used the sample to draw a picture of what the squid may have once looked like! Excavation leader Dr. Phil Wilby said,
“It is difficult to imagine how you can have something as soft and sloppy as an ink sac fossilised in three dimension, still black, and inside a rock that is 150 million years old.
“The structure is similar to ink from a modern squid so we can write with it. I suppose we could theoretically use it for food colouring, too, but I don’t think I will try tasting it.”
A sample of the ink has been sent to Yale University for further analysis. Link -via the Presurfer
(image credit: BMPS)
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The Color of Dinosaurs
Scientists thought they’d never know what colors the dinosaurs were, since fossils are rock-colored and even recently-discovered mummified scraps of the animals are faded. Jakob Vinther, a graduate student at Yale, was researching fossil feathers when he discovered that melanin granules survived in their original shapes and patterns, which can be compared with existing feathers to determine their original color.
Perhaps the most surprising and most exciting application of this research is that it may allow us to predict the colors of many dinosaurs.
“These include many of our most well loved dinosaurs,” says Prum. “Like velociraptor, the dinosaur that chased the kids around the kitchen in Jurassic Park, was actually fully plumaged.”
While these dinosaur feathers were not used for flight until the appearance of the transitional species Archaeopteryx, the first known bird, they were probably useful for warmth. Prum says we could even learn more about the color of one of the most famous dinosaurs of all, Tyrannosaurus rex.
“In the classic mural The Age of Reptiles in the Yale Peabody museum, they depicted T-rex, which is one of the iconic, huge, bipedal, meat-eating dinosaurs,” he says. “Recent fossil discoveries have shown that the closest relative of these huge tyrannosaurids actually had tiny skin appendages or fossil feathers—’dino-fuzz.’
Link (with video) -via Metafilter
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The Mysterious Downfall of the Neandertals
The standard theories of why Neandertals disappeared 28,000 years ago don’t hold up, so scientists are looking in new directions. The assimilation/interbreeding theory should’ve yielded some DNA evidence, but there is none. The replacement/war theory isn’t as cut and dried as it could be, since modern humans lived in the same territories as Neandertals for 15,000 years. Climate change? Sure, the earth was cooling at the time, but Neandertals had lived through ice ages before.
But the isotope data reveal that far from progressing steadily from mild to frigid, the climate became increasingly unstable heading into the last glacial maximum, swinging severely and abruptly. With that flux came profound ecological change: forests gave way to treeless grassland; reindeer replaced certain kinds of rhinoceroses. So rapid were these oscillations that over the course of an individual’s lifetime, all the plants and animals that a person had grown up with could vanish and be replaced with unfamiliar flora and fauna. And then, just as quickly, the environment could change back again.
Scientists are looking into the idea that Neandertals just weren’t as adaptable as modern humans, and over time lost out in the competition for resources in a changing world. Link -via Metafilter
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Giant Clawed Dinosaur Found
Scientists have announced the discovery of a giant dinosaur in Utah. The fossil skeleton belonged to Nothronychus graffami, which stood 13 feet tall and had claws nine inches long!
Its skeleton, described in the current issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society B, represents the most complete remains ever excavated of a therizinosaur, meaning “reaper lizard.” It is one of only three such dinosaurs ever found in North America.
Lead author Lindsay Zanno told Discovery News that therizinosaurs, including the new Utah species, “are unusual in that they have small heads with a keratinous beak at the front of the mouth — the same material as the beak of modern birds — and small leaf-shaped teeth.”
“Their bellies are proportionally enormous, supporting large guts,” added Zanno, who is a researcher in the Department of Geology at The Field Museum. “They have greatly enlarged claws on their hands, short legs and tails, and four-toed feet.”
The dinosaur’s anatomy suggests it ate both plants and animals. Link
(image credit: Victor Leshyk)
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World's Oldest Willie
A 400 million-year-old fossil fish with a reproductive organ resembling a penis has been identified by Australian scientists. This is the earliest known structure used for sexual reproduction as we know it. The bone attached to the pelvis is called a clasper, and was used to penetrate a female during mating. The fish was a member of the extinct class of armored fish called placoderms.
Study author and palaeontologist Dr Kate Trinajstic, of Curtin University in Perth, says the clasper was discovered in a fish specimen uncovered in the Gogo region of Western Australia in 2001.
She says the team originally discounted the bone as the reproductive organ because they thought it was part of the pelvic gurdle.
On closer inspection, Trinajstic says they realised it was a sexual organ.
“We were surprised because it’s so big,” she says. “We were expecting something smaller.”
(image credit: John Long)
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A Dinosaur Named Banjo
Three new species of diniosaur have been found in the Australian outback. Two plant-eating species were nicknamed “Clancy” and “Matilda”. The third dinosaur is a carnivore dubbed Australovenator Wintonensis, but nicknamed Banjo.
The meat-eating Banjo has been dubbed Australia’s answer to the feared Velociraptor.
“The cheetah of his time, Banjo was light and agile,” said Queensland Museum paleantologist Scott Hocknull, who is among the scientists being credited with the discoveries.
“He could run down most prey with ease over open ground. His most distinguishing feature was three large slashing claws on each hand. Unlike some theropods that have small arms (think T. rex), Banjo was different; his arms were a primary weapon.
“He’s Australia’s answer to velociraptor, but many times bigger and more terrifying.”
The bones will eventually go on display to the public. Link -via Fark
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Scientists Extract Dino Blood from Ancient Bones
Paleontologist Mary Schweitzer of North Carolina State University and colleagues apparently have never watched Jurassic Park. Why else would she extract dino "blood" from ancient bones?
A dinosaur bone buried for 80 million years has yielded a mix of proteins and microstructures resembling cells. The finding is important because it should resolve doubts about a previous report that also claimed to have extracted dino tissue from fossils.
… Schweitzer took a look at the pristine leg bone of a plant-eating hadrosaur that had been encased in sandstone for 80 million years. She and colleagues exhaustively tested the sample, sequencing the proteins they found with a new and better mass spectrometer and sending samples to two other labs for verification.
Now they report recovering not just collagen – which conveys little evolutionary information because it is the same in almost all animals – but also haemoglobin, elastin and laminin, as well as cell-like structures resembling blood and bone cells. The proteins should reveal more about dinosaur evolution because they vary much more between species.
This can’t possibly end well: Link
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