For the first time, fossilized remains of a dinosaur's brain tissue have been discovered on a pebble in England. But there's something about this fossil that paleontologists never expected to see.
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The first dinosaur brain reveals something experts never expected to see
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No one can figure out why the T. rex had tiny arms — but these are the most popular theories
Scientists have wondered for years why the Tyrannosaurus Rex has the tiny 3 1/3 foot arms. Recent discoveries suggest that they evolved them to counterbalance their huge heads.
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A brand new dinosaur called the 'Mud Dragon' was just unearthed accidentally — and it's striking
A new bird-like dinosaur was just discovered in south China. The specimen was uncovered in the Ganzhou area, during construction work at a school, and it narrowly missed being destroyed by a dynamite explosion.
Researchers at the University of Edinburgh and China carried out a study to identify it.
It belongs to a group called the oviraptorosaurs — funny-looking feathered dinosaurs with sharp beaks which were ancestors of birds.
The team named the species Tongtianlong limosus, which roughly translates as "muddy dragon on the road to heaven," or so it's been nicknamed, "mud dragon."
The findings were published in the journal Nature, which describes what the strange creature probably would have looked like. It had feathers and a beak-like a bird, but it was flightless. It was also the size of a donkey.
The researchers speculate that during the time Tongtianlong limosus was walking the earth, dinosaurs were experiencing a population boost and diversifying into new species. This group was probably one of the largest groups of dinosaurs to do so before the assumed asteroid impact 66 million years ago, which killed all non-bird dinosaurs.
"This new dinosaur is one of the most beautiful, but saddest, fossils I’ve ever seen,"Dr Steve Brusatte, a professor of geoscience and one of the researchers at the University of Edinburgh that studied the fossil, said in a statement. "But we’re lucky that the ‘Mud Dragon’ got stuck in the muck, because its skeleton is one of the best examples of a dinosaur that was flourishing during those final few million years before the asteroid came down and changed the world in an instant."
The Tongtianlong limosus was found almost completely intact, lying on its front with its wings and neck outstretched. The scientists think that the creature died in this pose after being buried in mud about 66-72 million years ago.
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Remarkable feathered dinosaur tail found in chunk of amber
Some 99 million years ago, a juvenile dinosaur got its feathery tail stuck in tree resin, a death trap for the small creature.
But its misfortune is now giving scientists unique insight into feathered dinosaurs that prospered during the Cretaceous Period.
Researchers said on Thursday a chunk of amber - fossilized resin - spotted by a Chinese scientist in a market in Myitkyina, Myanmar, last year contained 1.4 inches (36 mm) of the tail of the dinosaur, complete with bones, flesh, skin and feathers. The dinosaur itself was no more than 6 inches (15 cm) long, about the size of a sparrow.
"This is the first of its kind," said paleontologist Ryan McKellar of the Royal Saskatchewan Museum in Canada, one of the researchers involved in the study published in the journal Current Biology. "I'm blown away."
The scientists suspect the tail belonged to a type of two-legged, bird-like dinosaur called a maniraptoran, one of several groups of dinosaurs that possessed feathers. Birds, which first appeared about 150 million years ago during the Jurassic Period, evolved from small, feathered dinosaurs.
The researchers used sophisticated scanning and microscopic observations to study the tail. They determined it boasted a chestnut-brown upper surface, with a pale or white underside, a pattern known as counter-shading.
"We're seeing feathers still attached to the tail, and we can see how they attach, the shapes that they have down to the micrometer scale, and things like pigment patterns within the feathers," McKellar said.
The tail consisted of eight vertebrae, soft tissue and feathers exquisitely preserved in three dimensions.
McKellar said getting its tail stuck in resin "would have been a game-ender for that particular animal. They don't drop their tails like some lizards."
The tail's anatomy enabled the scientists to rule out that it belonged to a bird because it was long and flexible and lacked a pygostyle, fused vertebrae that in birds support the tail feathers.
The discovery also sheds light on the evolution of feathers. The ones trapped in the amber were more primitive than those of birds, lacking much of the central shaft seen in bird feathers.
Amber has long been a boon to paleontologists. Numerous creatures have been found entombed in amber, including insects, lizards, amphibians, mammals and birds, as well as plants including flowers.
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A scientist snuck into a disputed region of Myanmar to discover the first feathered dinosaur tail
Scientists recently found a feathered, 99 million-year-old dinosaur tail preserved in a chunk of amber from a mine in Myanmar.
Researchers have known for about two decades that many dinosaurs (not just birds) were covered in feathers. And individual dinosaur feathers have been found before. But this appendage, just under one and a half inches long, is the first example of non-bird dinosaur bone, muscle, and feathers all found in one place.
The team behind the discovery published their findings in the journal Current Biology. They were led by Lida Xing and Ryan McKellar, who also published a paper in June on the discovery of two baby bird dinosaur wings preserved in amber in the same region of Myanmar.
The feathers on the tail are structured more like ornamental feathers on modern birds than flight feathers, and this small creature would probably have been incapable of flight. There was also a significant amount of iron found in the amber, suggesting the remains of the dinosaur's blood.
According to Motherboard, Xing found the small chunk of amber in an amber market in a part of the Kachin State in northern Myanmar controlled by the Kachin Independence Army — not an easy area for a foreign researcher to work.
He disguised himself as a local Burmese man, and was able to sneak into the area, meet with a prospector, and eventually locate and purchase the sample.
The result: a first look for science at the actual structure of feathers on non-bird dinosaur tissue.
It's not yet clear exactly what species of dinosaur left this tail behind. But it appears to have been a young coelurosaur. That is, from the group of dinosaurs that includes t-rex, raptors, and modern birds.
The tail was flexible, and different from the fused tails modern birds use for flight. It was chesnut-brown on top and pale on the bottom, which Motherboard reports Xing said may have helped it blend into the terrain.
SEE ALSO: Scientists discovered two feather-covered dinosaur wings preserved in amber
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Scientists uncovered a bloody, feathered dinosaur tail that got stuck in tree sap 99 million years ago
Scientists made an unprecedented discovery that sheds light on our understanding of dinosaurs.
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A dinosaur skeleton just sold for nearly £1 million at an auction in France
The skeleton of a ferocious dinosaur called Kan was sold at a French auction this week for 1.1 million euros (£900,000), AFP reports.
The bones belonged to an Allosaurus, which was a carnivorous dinosaur whose species went extinct about 135 million years ago. The name basically means "different lizard" and Kan is about 7.5 metres long and 2.5 metres tall, though other individuals reached over 12 metres in length.
The AFP said Aguttes auction house described the dinosaur remains as "the archetype of the great predators of the Jurassic Era."
An unnamed buyer purchased the skeleton over the phone, according to Aguttes, and it will go on public display somewhere in France. However, the buyer is being secretive about where or when that will happen.
"[They want] to keep the location a surprise," a spokesman for Aguttes told AFP.
The sale fell just short of the 1.3 million euros which someone paid for another Allosaurus skeleton in 2010 at Sotheby's in Paris.
Allosaurus was one of the earliest dinosaur discoveries
There are plenty of Allosaurus fossils because it was one of the first dinosaur species discovered. At least 46 of the 74 dinosaurs found in Utah's Cleveland-Lloyd Quarry , a site containing the densest concentration of Jurassic dinosaur bones in the world, are an Allosaurus, according to the US Bureau of Land Management.
However, Allosaurus bones have been found all over the world, in places such as Portugal, Siberia, and Tanzania.
They could reach 1,500 kg in weight and according to one study, they lived up to 28 years old.
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A just discovered, 90-million-year-old bird could help predict the future of the planet
A new type of large, prehistoric bird has just been unearthed in the Canadian arctic.
A team of geologists from the University of Rochester discovered the new species, which is approximately 90 million years old, and published their findings this week in the journal Scientific Reports. The discovery places the bird among the oldest avian records ever found in the Northern hemisphere.
The bones of the bird, named Tingmiatornis arctica, show that it probably looked a bit like a cross between a large seagull and a cormorant, a large equatic bird, and was likely a similar size with a wingspan of over a meter.
The name of the genus Tingmiatornis loosely translates to "those that fly" from the word " Tingmiat" in the Inuktitut language, which is spoken in the central and eastern Canadian Arctic. Tingmiatornis arctica also had sharp teeth and features that allowed it to dive.
Along with other fossils from previous expeditions, the new bird helps paint a clearer picture of the ecosystem that would have existed some 93.9 to 89.8 million years ago in the Canadian Arctic. It could also provide further evidence of the intense global warming that scientists think may have taken place over that time — and even help us paint a clearer picture of the future of climate change.
How climate records can help us prepare for the future
Building historic climate records helps scientists determine how different species and ecosystems are affected by climate change. The way different species are distributed around countries can help predict the effects too.
"Before our fossil, people were suggesting that it was warm, but you still would have had seasonal ice," said John Tarduno, the chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Rochester and the leading scientist on the expedition, in a statement. "We're suggesting that's not even the case, and that it's one of these hyper-warm intervals because the bird's food sources and the whole part of the ecosystem could not have survived in ice."
By looking at fossil and sediment records, the team determined that Tingmiatornis arctica would have lived in a volcanic environment which would have been busy with turtles, champsosaurs and crocodile-like reptiles. This is very different to the Arctic temperatures you find there now.
'What that world could look like, a world without ice at the arctic'
"The fossils tell us what that world could look like, a world without ice at the arctic," said Richard Bono, another member of the team who is a PhD candidate in earth and environmental sciences at the University of Rochester.
Tingmiatornis arctica fossils were found above lava fields, which would have formed from a series of volcanic eruptions. When these volcanoes pumped carbon dioxide into the Earth's atmosphere, it caused a greenhouse effect, which allowed large birds like Tingmiatornis arctica to thrive.
The environmental clues are the biggest indicators the team has to explain why the bird was found where it was.
"It's there because everything is right," Tarduno said. "The food supply was there, there was a freshwater environment, and the climate became so warm that all of the background ecological factors were established to make it a great place."
SEE ALSO: A scientist snuck into a disputed region of Myanmar to discover the first feathered dinosaur tail
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How humans compare to the actual size of dinosaurs
Most of us imagine dinosaurs as the huge, towering prehistoric beings that once walked the Earth. But it turns out that dinosaurs were actually a wide range of sizes— and some of them weren't much larger than a turkey. Here's how big all the dinosaurs from "Jurassic Park" are relative to an average human man.
Monica Manalo contributed reporting on a previous version of this article. Graphics by Skye Gould. Research by Jessica Orwig.
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A surprising factor in the extinction of the dinosaurs may have been how long their eggs took to hatch
Approximately 66 million years ago, a massive asteroid or comet smashed into the Earth near what we now think of as the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico. On the other side of the world, in India, at a place called the Deccan Traps, a period of intense volcanic eruption began — one that would last tens of thousands of years.
These catastrophic and powerful events are often considered the primary causes of the mass extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous period that wiped out most of the dinosaurs along with 75% of life on the globe.
But brand-new research reveals another factor that may have played a role in ending the era of the most massive creatures to ever walk the surface of the planet. It seems dinosaur eggs took a particularly long time to hatch. That means that when they had to compete for sparse resources in a post-extinction event world with the more efficient amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals that made it through that era into the next one, dinosaurs may have lost out.
Compared to reptiles, birds lay few eggs, and they are particularly large. This could hamper their competitiveness, since it exposes them to destructive risks. But bird eggs hatch about twice as fast as reptiles (their behavior keeps eggs warm and stable), which researchers think helps enough survive to hatch. Dinosaurs still exist in the form of birds — avian dinosaurs — and so researchers thought that the eggs of the non-avian varieties would still hatch at about the same fast rate as bird eggs do. After all, from what we can tell, non-avian dinosaur and bird eggs have similar structures and birds are the only remaining dinosaurs for us to base these hypotheses on.
But the new study, published January 2 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reports that dinosaur eggs took far longer to hatch. For one species studied, researchers estimate that a comparable bird egg would take between 40 and 82 days to hatch. The dinosaur egg, it seems, would have incubated between 83 and 171 days before it was ready, more like a reptile.
And that changes a lot of what we know about dinosaurs.
It's all about the teeth
The amount of time it takes for young to be born has a significant impact on how a species lives. It can define mating season, migratory behavior, and other characteristics.
Dinosaurs had large eggs and, in general, adults expended more energy than comparably sized reptiles or amphibians, putting a limit on their competitiveness.
By studying the growth of embryonic teeth in other species, researchers have been able to determine how long it took for the infants of those species to develop. So the team behind this study, consisting of researchers from Florida State, the University of Calgary, and the American Museum of Natural History, decided to try to calculate embryonic tooth growth in two dinosaur species, Hypacrosaurus stebingeri (a sort of "duck-billed" dinosaur) and Protoceratops andrewsi (a less-famous relative of the Triceratops).
The researchers saw that a certain measure that can be used to calculate embryonic tooth development in both human and crocodilian species exists in dinosaur species as well. So they evaluated fossil teeth from the above species.
Their calculations showed that the Protoceratops egg would have taken more than twice as long to incubate as a comparable bird egg, and would have been just a bit quicker to develop than a similar reptile. The Hypacrosaurus egg would have incubated even longer, needing more time than a similar reptile.
As the study authors write, this means that many hypotheses of dinosaur behavior may need to be re-evaluated. It was thought that perhaps these species made long migrations back and forth from the Arctic between seasons, but long egg incubation periods may have made this impossible. And while these new findings are just based on evaluations of fossils from two species of dinosaur, the authors say they think these long incubation periods would most likely be found in all toothed dinosaurs — though further research could always change that conclusion.
The other big effect this may have had is on the extinction of these creatures. We already believe dinosaurs expended more energy and needed more resources than reptiles or amphibians. They took a long time to mature, unlike many mammals and birds. When the resources of the world were devastated by a changed climate after the asteroid struck and during the period of volcanic activity, it became hard for any large species to survive. Slow hatching rates would have been just another blow to the non-avian dinosaurs. And that may help further explain why none made it through that time.
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Dark, cold days may have been what actually drove the dinosaurs extinct
Dinosaurs went extinct around 66 million years ago, and it is widely believed that a giant asteroid was the reason. However, the exact turn of events has been a bit of a mystery, as a single strike — although devastating — may not have been enough to completely wipe out all life on Earth.
Climate scientists have worked out that it may have been the aftermath of the asteroid hit that was the final straw for the dinosaurs. According to a new study, droplets of sulfuric acid formed high up in the air after the impact of the asteroid, blocking out sunlight for years.
The new study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, shows how the aftermath of the asteroid strike would have impacted any surviving life on Earth. Plants would all have died due to the lack of light, and this would have had a direct and fatal impact on the rest of the food chain.
Previous theories have focused on the dust ejected by the impact, but new computer simulations show that sulfuric acid droplets are much more likely. The acid could also have mixed into the oceans, severely disturbing marine life too.
"The big chill following the impact of the asteroid that formed the Chicxulub crater in Mexico is a turning point in Earth history," said Julia Brugger, lead author of the study from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), in a statement. "We can now contribute new insights for understanding the much debated ultimate cause for the demise of the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous era."
A shock to the system
Things were a lot toastier on Earth when the dinosaurs were around, at least until the asteroid arrived. After the strike, the average temperature fell from 27 degrees to 5 degrees Celsius in the tropics. Dinosaurs were used to living in a tropical climate, and had evolved and adapted to it. A a 22 degree drop would be quite a shock to the system, especially as the researchers say the global average temperature was below freezing point for about three years.
Ice caps expanded, ocean circulation became disturbed, and surface waters cooled down making the seas denser and heavier. Marine ecosystems were severely affected, which probably contributed to the extinction of species like ammonites — marine mollusc animals that you often see as fossils.
According to the study, it took about 30 years for the climate to recover, and by then the damage to dinosaur life had been done. This, of course, left the space for a new era of organisms to thrive that would evolve into humans.
"It is fascinating to see how evolution is partly driven by an accident like an asteroid's impact — mass extinctions show that life on Earth is vulnerable," said co-author Georg Feulner who led the research team at PIK. "It also illustrates how important the climate is for all lifeforms on our planet. Ironically today, the most immediate threat is not from natural cooling but from human-made global warming."
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The remains of a new, small 'horn-faced' dinosaur have just been uncovered in Mexico
A giant asteroid struck the Earth 65 million years ago, an event which is largely believed to have driven the dinosaurs extinct. Today, paleontologists are still digging up remains from the days when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, and they're discovering new species more often than you might think.
This month, researchers in Mexico discovered what they believe to be a brand new species after a decade-long expedition. They were working in the Ejido La Salada area of the desert in the state of Coahuila when they came across the fossilized remains of a dinosaur which they believe roamed the Earth 73 million years ago.
The new discovery was named Yehuecauhceratops mudei, which comes from the Nahuatl word "yehuecauh" for ancient, the Greek word "ceratops" for face with horns, and "mudei" in honor of the museum, according to Telesur. The new finding was recently unveiled in Mexico's Museo del Desierto (MUDE).
The expedition was led by palaeontologist Hector Rivera Sylva and biologist Jose Ruben Guzman Gutierrez from MUDE, and also included a team of 40 specialists from Germany. Their findings were published in the Journal of South American Earth Sciences.
The team knew the area was likely to contain potential dinosaur findings because remains of various animal species, a crocodile and other fossil remains already been discovered there by the scientific community.
At first, when they uncovered the bones, the team didn't give much importance to them. They looked similar to other discoveries so they were set aside, until someone took a closer look.
In the end, an almost complete set of Yehuecauhceratops mudei was uncovered, including the scapula, the femur, cranial fragments, the jaw and fragments of the collar. Around 60% of its skeleton was able to be constructed.
Yehuecauhceratops mudei was relatively small at 3 metres long, and belongs in the same group as Agujaceratops and Coahuilaceratops dinosaurs, the ceratopsids. It was an herbivore and would have lived in the area when it consisted of freshwater coastal marshes and floodplains.
The team are now continuing to search the Coahuila area for more promising results.
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A new theory could overturn one of the most central 'facts' about dinosaurs
Much of what we "know" about dinosaurs has changed in recent years.
We've learned that many of them were covered in feathers, that part of what drove them extinct was how long it took for their eggs to hatch, and that some of them even thrived in snowy, Arctic winters.
But the idea that dinosaurs can be divided into two major groups has remained unchanged for almost 130 years. As those of us who were dinosaur-obsessed children know, these groups are the bird-hipped Ornithschia, including Stegosaurus, Triceratops, and duckbills; and the lizard-hipped Saurischia, which include sauropods like Brontosaurus and theropods like Tyrannosaurus Rex and the Velociraptors we all know and love.
A new paper published in the journal Nature challenges those divisions, arguing that we may need to rewrite the entire dinosaur family tree.
This is a big deal. "When I first read Matthew Baron’s new dinosaur study, I actually gasped,"writes Ed Yong at The Atlantic.
The original division dates back to 1888, when Harry Govier Seeley spotted major differences in the pelvic bones of certain dinosaurs. The division seemed so significant that for almost a century, many scientists didn't even think all dinosaurs had necessarily evolved from a common ancestor, as paleontologist Kevin Padian of Berkeley writes in a commentary for Nature.
But Baron and his co-authors decided to take another look at the simple division that has defined the dinosaur family tree for so long. They examined 74 types of dinosaurs, taking a look at 457 different characteristics to see what similarities and differences they found. And instead of basing their new division on one major characteristic, they argue that a number of different aspects of dinosaur anatomy should make the family tree split in new ways. These inherited traits, things like the shapes of thigh bones, length of shoulder bones, and the ridges on jawbones, showed different patterns of inheritance than a purely-hip based division would.
Specifically, they say that the Onithschia and the theropods are more closely linked and branched off from each other. This separates the massive sauropods, placing them much closer to the very first dinosaurs, the herrerasaurs.
Here's what the old and new trees would look like.
"Put it this way: This is like someone telling you that neither cats nor dogs are what you thought they were, and some of the animals you call 'cats' are actually dogs,"writes Yong.
This is a huge, major hypothesis, and one that could require the rewriting of any textbooks that discuss paleontology, but that doesn't mean it's fully accepted yet. It will be some time before the paleontology community comes to a conclusion on whether or not the full family tree should be re-evaluated, and there may be changes in the ways that certain groups are divided along the way.
"This is a textbook changer — if it continues to pan out," Thomas Holtz, a paleontologist at the University of Maryland, tells Nature News. "It's only one analysis, but it's a thorough one."
The ideas that Baron and his team have suggested could have other major implications. They suggest that the very first dinosaurs, the herrerasaurids (which predate the dinosaurs we are all familiar with by far), were omnivores that walked on two legs and had grasping arms, something that Padian says is consistent with other recent research.
More surprisingly, this revamp of the family tree suggests dinosaurs could possibly have originated in the Northern Hemisphere and not in South America (Gondwana), though this is less certain.
Either way, as Chelsea Whyte points out over at New Scientist, there's another major implication here that we can all take to heart.
Maybe hips really do lie.
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A shocking new study just disproved the 130-year-old theory about where dinosaurs came from
A study, recently published in Nature, is the first to seriously question dinosaur evolution. Where and when did the first dinosaurs appear on Earth? For the last 130 years, scientists thought dinosaurs evolved 230 million years ago on an ancient continent called Gondwana. But this new study claims neither the time nor the place is right. What we thought we knew about the first dinosaurs is completely wrong.
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5 dinosaur eggs were just discovered at a construction site in China
Five dinosaur eggs were found in the Guangdong province of China. The eggs are believed to be 70 million years old. Three of the five eggs were destroyed but were still visible in the fossil. They likely belonged to a plant-eating dinosaur in the Cretaceous period.
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Scientists discovered a new 'shin-destroying' armored dinosaur — and named it after Zuul from 'Ghostbusters'
When researchers at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) pieced together the fossilized 75-million-year-old bones of the ankylosaurid specimen they acquired last year, they noticed something strange.
The remarkably well-preserved armored dinosaur — which was a new species — bore an uncanny resemblance to an already existing fictional character: Zuul, from the 1984 film "Ghostbusters."
The dinosaur and fictional demon both have a "short, rounded snout and prominent horns behind the eyes," according to a statement from the museum.
Here's Zuul the dinosaur:
And here is Zuul, Gatekeeper of Gozer:
The newly identified ankylosaurid's full name is Zuul crurivastator, with the species name translating to "destroyer of shins." The dinosaur belongs to a group of armored creatures that had massive, weapon-like clubs for tails. These tails were about 10 feet long and covered in spikes (so able to destroy the shins of any predators willing to take them on).
The Ontario researchers describe the creature in a new study published in the journal Royal Society of Open Science.
All in all, it was about 20 feet long, on par with a white rhinoceros.
The armored herbivore's bones came from the Judith River Formation of Montana.
"The preservation of the fossil is truly remarkable. Not only is the skeleton almost completely intact, but large parts of the bony armor in the skin are still in its natural position," Dr. David Evans, Temerty Chair and Curator of Vertebrate Palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum, and leader of the project, said in a press release.
Those well-preserved bones helped confirm that this is indeed a new species.
"I’ve been working on ankylosaurs for years, and the spikes running all the way down Zuul’s tail were a fantastic surprise to me – like nothing I’ve ever seen in a North American ankylosaur,"said Dr. Victoria Arbour, the lead author of the study. "It was the size and shape of the tail club and tail spikes, combined with the shape of the horns and ornaments on the skull, that confirmed this skeleton was a new species of ankylosaur."
It's been a good week for dinosaur discoveries. On May 9, researchers published a study identifying for the first time a creature that was discovered 20 years ago. It made the cover of National Geographic magazine at that time, but its species didn't get determined until now. That dinosaur, a type of giant oviraptor, resembled an ostrich and was about 25 feet long. It has been officially dubbed Beibeilong sinensis, or "baby dragon from China."
The "baby dragon" fossils are 90 million years old, so the two newly named dinos were not contemporaries and lived in different locations. But if they had ever come into contact, it's safe to say that Zuul's armor and tail could have helped protect it from the giant birdlike predator.
SEE ALSO: The largest dinosaur footprint ever found has been discovered in 'Australia's own Jurassic Park'
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NOW WATCH: 5 dinosaur eggs were just discovered at a construction site in China
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A reptile that decapitates birds and can live until 100 is the sole survivor of a lineage as old as the first dinosaurs
Have you ever heard of the tuatara? It’s a reptile that decapitates birds with its saw-like jaws, lives to about 100 years old, and can remain active in near-freezing temperatures.
It’s also the sole survivor of a lineage as old as the first dinosaurs.
May 2017 marks 150 years since the tuatara was first recognised not to be a lizard.
Most tuatara exist on windswept offshore New Zealand islands, where they spend their days in burrows or basking lazily in the sun.
In the evening they are more active, and use their large eyes to spot a variety of prey such as beetles, spiders and snails. They also occasionally eat lizards, frogs, baby tuatara and birds – the headless bodies of birds are not infrequently reported from their island homes.
Although capable of bursts of speed, tuatara have a reputation for slowness. They grow slowly, they reproduce slowly and they live for a long time.
Interestingly, they are most active at cool temperatures (5-18℃) that would put many other reptiles out of action. New Zealand lizards have similar traits, suggesting that these characteristics are relatively recent adaptations to local conditions.
The tuatara is often referred to as having a third eye because of a light-sensitive organ on the top of its head, similar to the ones found in many lizards.
Ancient isolation
Ancestors of the tuatara have probably been on land associated with New Zealand since it separated from the rest of the Gondwana supercontinent about 80 million years ago. During that time, they have had to cope with big changes in the region’s shape and size (New Zealand may have been mostly submerged 23 million years ago) and, until recently, a cooling climate.
Recent fossils from the past few thousand years show that tuatara were widespread across the mainland until humans arrived (with Pacific rats) about 750 years ago.
Tuatara are now threatened by climate change. This is because the sex of a tuatara is determined by the temperature that their eggs experience – rising temperatures will skew populations towards males.
Mainland reintroductions to cooler latitudes will hopefully reduce this problem. Captive breeding programs are also showing signs of success.
A special place in biodiversity
The initial claim that the tuatara is not a lizard was based on anatomical differences such as the presence of a second row of upper teeth, which is not seen in any lizard.
Subsequent genetic and fossil discoveries have confirmed that the tuatara has a separate heritage.
We now know that the tuatara is the only living member of Rhynchocephalia, a reptile group that was diverse and widespread between 240 million and 60 million years ago. Its fossil relatives included small carnivores with scissor-like jaws, large chunky herbivores, and even aquatic forms with crushing tooth plates.
The tuatara is often referred to as a “living fossil” or even a “living dinosaur”. Although these labels are not helpful scientifically, they reflect a widespread appreciation that the tuatara has a special place in the animal kingdom.
The animal group known as “amniote vertebrates” includes more than 30,000 species divided between six major radiations: mammals (5,416 species), turtles (341), crocodylians (25), birds (at least 15,845), lizards and snakes (10,078), and (tuatara).
As the only living member of Rhychocephalia, and only living cousin to Squamata (lizards and snakes), the tuatara has an important role to play in understanding the evolution of all animals with backbones.
Recent contributions to science
Despite several hundred research articles on the tuatara, we are still learning new things about this species all the time.
The origin of male genitals
Recent examination of tuatara embryos suggests that although adult male tuatara lack external genitalia (that is, they have no external penis), their ancestors did possess a penis of some kind.
This evidence in turn supports a hypothesis that external genitalia originated just once within amniotes (mammals, birds, crocodiles, lizards, tuatara) but has since undergone dramatic modification and was even lost in some groups of birds as well as an ancestor of the tuatara.
Biomechanics of biting
The frame-like skull of the tuatara has also become an important subject for biomechanics.
Sophisticated computer models have been used to predict muscle activity, bite force, sensory feedback from the jaw joints and stress distribution in the bones during biting.
These models have also shown that the shearing action of the lower jaw involves tooth on tooth contact and that the soft-tissue connections between bones are important for spreading stress around the skull more evenly.
How kneecaps developed
Recently, X-ray micro CT scans of several tuatara specimens helped established which sesamoid bones– structures at joints such as the knee cap – are likely to be relatively ancient and which are relatively new.
Culture, myths and legends
The tuatara is a national icon in New Zealand, where it has appeared on the five cent coin and several postage stamps.
Further afield, it has also given its name to a brewery, musical group, a DC super hero, a backpackers accommodation, a tour company, a scientific journal, a company selling mobile phone covers, and, with no hint of irony, a V8 sports car that can reach a top speed of 444km per hour.
Tuatara are highly important to māori culture. The word “tuatara” is itself māori, meaning “peaks on back” (referring to the crest along its neck and back). Tuatara are regarded as “taonga” (treasure), viewed as guardians of knowledge, and sometimes associated with bad omens.
A curious urban legend associated with the tuatara is that of the cenaprugwirion, a “curious 1-ft-long lizard-like reptile supposedly inhabiting burrows in and around Abersoch in North Wales”.
Before tuatara were protected in 1895, they were commonly imported to Europe as pets and curios. Some have suggested these animals might represent escaped tuatara from that time.
Tuatara are frequently in the news. During the 1980s, wild population of tuatara were targeted by poachers who were suspected to be selling them in exchange for drugs.
Henry the tuatara acquired celebrity status when he became a dad at 111 and met Prince Harry several years later.
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The largest dinosaur ever used secret air sacs to stay super light
The largest dinosaurs to have ever lived were surprisingly light. I know that might sound strange when we’re talking about animals stretching over 100 feet long and weighing upwards of 45 tons, but it’s true. Immense, long-necked dinosaurs like Supersaurus had extraordinarily light bones assisted by a complex system of air sacs that so pervaded their skeletons that you can see exactly where they would have been even though the actual soft tissues decayed away millions and millions of years ago. This was true for comparatively smaller species, too. Even an "average" sauropod was far larger than an African elephant or Paraceratherium, the largest land mammal of all time. Sauropods were enormous by comparison, and air sacs assisted them at all scales.
Not all sauropod had the same complement of air sacs, though. The anatomy and extent of those structures varied from species to species. And, as paleontologist Luci Ibiricu and colleagues report, a South American sauropod named Katepensaurus goicoecheai had a pneumatic variation never seen before.
If you haven’t heard of Katepensaurus before, that’s probably because it was part of a relatively obscure group of sauropods called rebbachisauridsthat lived in South America, Africa, and Europe. They were cousins of Diplodocus that were stomping around during the Cretaceous, after the heyday of North American diplodocids was long over. But apparently some of these dinosaurs took pneumatic skeletons to a degree not seen before in other dinosaurs.
Drawing from external anatomy, CT scans, and digital models of the dinosaur’s bones, Ibiricu and coauthors detected evidence of interconnected air sacs in the transverse processes of Katepensaurus back vertebrae. These are the wings of bone that stick out on either side of a vertebral body and are important muscle attachment sites. No one had seen evidence of pneumatic structures like these before in sauropods. The closest comparable structures had only been seen in avian dinosaurs – birds – and other theropods.
Looked at as a whole, Katepensaurus had a pretty light skeleton. The bones of the dinosaur’s neck and spine give away the presence of an extensive air sac skeleton like that seen in many of its relatives, and the discovery of new air spaces in the vertebrae along the dinosaur’s back only add to the view of sauropods as light for their size. This unique system likely even extended into the tail vertebrae.
But what does this all mean for how the dinosaur lived? Ibiricu and colleagues have some ideas. The most obvious consequence would be that the air sacs allowed sauropods to keep their bones light without sacrificing strength. That’s one of the benefits modern birds enjoy from having extensive air sac systems. And even this fact has further implications. A lighter skeleton requires less muscle power to move, Ibiricu and coauthors note, and therefore reduced the amount of bodily heat produced by motion. Given that Katepensaurus and its exceptionally-airy relatives lived at a time of high global temperatures, anything that would have staved off heat stress would have been an advantage.
Without a living Katepensaurus, this idea is difficult to test. And the researchers point out that other sauropods that lived in the same places and times as exceptionally-airy rebbachisaurids didn’t share the same degree of pneumatic modification, so perhaps the heat hypothesis isn’t the whole story here. Nevertheless, the entire point of paleontology is to try to understand long-dead species as they were in life. That requires putting ourselves in the place of these organisms, thinking of the pressures and needs they experienced on a daily basis. Thinking of how a little extra inflation benefitted Katepensaurus is a step in that direction.
Reference:
Ibiricu, L., Lamanna, M., Martínez, R., Casal, G., Cerda, I., Martínez, G., Salgado, L. 2017. A novel form of postcranial skeletal pneumaticity in a sauropod dinosaur: implications for the paleobiology of Rebbachisauridae. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica. doi: 10.4202/app.00316.2016
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This man played Barney the dinosaur for 10 years — here's what it was like
Everyone recognizes the large purple dinosaur, but not many people know the man inside the costume. David Joyner played Barney for 10 years on TV and in live performances, and dancing around in that huge costume was not very easy. We spoke with Joyner about what it was like being one of the most famous children's characters of all time, and what he is up to now.
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Following is a transcript of the video:
Being Barney was never an accident. I was supposed to do this character.
Hi I'm David Joyner. I played Barney from 1991 until 2001.
After I got my degree in electronic engineering technology, I worked for Texas Instruments for six years as a software analyst. Before I was Barney, I was a live mannequin. I would move mechanically. And people would literally bring their children, set them on the mall floor, and go shop.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be on television so bad. I would stand in front of the television and basically lip sync.
There's a lot of psychic energy in my family, and there's a lot of clairvoyance. And a lot of times, with me, if I'm trying to figure out a situation, I'll dream about it.
Well the night before the audition, I had this dream. And in this dream, Barney passes out. And I have to give Barney mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. So on the way to the audition, I'm sitting at a stoplight, and something says "Look up." So I look up, and there's this billboard. It says "Breathe life into your vacation — Southwest Airlines." And then it hits me. I had to breathe life into Barney in my dream. If I go into this audition and breathe life into this character, I'm going on vacation. And that's exactly what I did.
So, of course, they called me and asked if I would be Barney. And I said, "Of course." I pretty much already knew that I was going to be Barney. But it was great getting that phone call.
Being inside this costume is pretty cool. Now Barney is about 70 pounds, and it can get over 120 degrees inside. So inside you're sweating profusely. It's a t-rex, so you're basically just up to your elbows in being able to move. And then also, Barney's feet were huge. Now I did have some sneakers inside that were glued to the bottom of the feet.
The head doesn't come off. The head doesn't swivel. There's no facial expressions that can be made. I can only see a certain amount, because of the peripheral of Barney's mouth. And when Barney's mouth is closed, I can't see anything. So what I would literally do is I would walk around my apartment as if I was blind. I would close my eyes, and I would try to feel energy. And try to feel the energy of anything that was around me. And then try to pick things up.
Sometimes, when they took a break, I put a fan in the mouth, I'd sit down on an Apple box, and I'd put my hand on my knees, and I would just close my eyes. So I would literally meditate.
When I was 19, I started studying Tantra. And a lot of times when people think about Tantra they think it's all about sex. Well Tantra's much more than that. Because Tantra deals with loving energy, life force energy, and energy that rises through your system.
Now, it's no accident that I've been spreading "I love you" all around the world.
Now a lot of times you hear those words, and some people like, "Oh my god, that song," and I'm like, "No, no, no" listen to it. I love you, you love me. We're a happy family. So now, we're now gathered together in this beautiful harmonious thing that’s happening. So it's a beautiful thing to know how that song has impacted pretty much this next generation.
The voice of Barney was a gentleman named Bob West. We would do what we call "dinosync." As I have my headphones on, I can literally hear him taking his breath. And knowing that as he's about to speak, I'm almost inside of him, knowing exactly what he's about to say.
I remember receiving the first residual check, and the check was so big. And I was just like, "Oh my god, are you kidding me?" So I had this beautiful white stucco home, and I paid for the house with residuals, which is really cool.
After doing Barney for 10 years, I decided, "Ok, it's time to make that move to Los Angeles." And if I don't make the move now, then I'll probably never make that move.
I was on "Shameless.""That '70s Show.""ER." A SWAT agent on "24." I was an attorney on "The Young and the Restless."
So "Hip Hop Harry" is what I'm doing now. "Hip Hop Harry" is a cool, hip-hop rapping, break dancing teddy bear that runs an after-school center called Hip Hop Central.
And our ratings are starting to grow. I'm 53 years old. And I am not ashamed to admit that I am 53 years old, still playing in costumes.
Barney was beautiful. Barney was very, very good to me. I loved being Barney. I loved everything about being Barney. But that chapter is gone.
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The T. Rex couldn’t actually sprint like it does in ‘Jurassic Park’ — but it was still a deadly creature
Scientists at the University of Manchester have new proof that T. rex wasn't nearly as terrifying as we thought. The animal's tremendous size and weight prevented it from running at top speeds of 45 mph, like is shown in the blockbuster "Jurassic Park." If T. rex ran at those speeds its leg bones would have snapped under the force. Sad.
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