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How Did a Dinosaur Become a Mummy?
Fossilization happens when minerals gradually replace bone in an animal that is buried underground. Mummification happens when a body's soft tissue dries completely out and is preserved by desiccation. A few mummified remains of dinosaurs have been found with evidence that the dead animal was quickly buried in dry conditions, such as in an avalanche. But an Edmontosaurus found in South Dakota in 1999 defied all explanation. The 40-foot-long reptile died 67 million years ago, but its bones were found covered by fossilized skin! That could have only happened if the sky were dried out, as in mummification, before it was fossilized. But this dinosaur died in wet conditions, and was not immediately buried. In fact, there is evidence that it laid on the earth's surface long enough for other animals to take a few bites out of him. How could its skin have have been preserved at all?A new theory about the Edmontosaurus nicknamed Dakota was published this week. Scientists now believe that scavengers helped the drying process. By tearing the skin open, they allowed for the blood, gasses, body fluids, and internal organs to ooze out before putrefaction, which sped up the ability of the skin to dry out. The precise sequence of events that led to Dakota turning to just skin and bones before being buried and fossilized has to be a pretty rare event, but one that gave us dinosaur skin to study 67 million years later.(Image credit: Natee Puttapipat)#dinosaur #fossil #mummification #desiccation #mummy
The First Dinosaur (That We Know Of)
What species is the oldest dinosaur? To answer that, we have to define what a dinosaur is. Sure, a dinosaur is an extinct reptile, but there were other reptiles before and after dinosaurs. Scientists have defined dinosaurs by their hips and legs. What distinguished dinosaurs from the crocodile-like reptiles of the ancient world was the converting of the vertebrae into sacra, modified structures that allowed reptiles to point their back legs in one direction, allowing them to walk forward on two legs. Sure, not all dinosaurs were bipeds, but they all descended from those that evolved that ability. Using that definition the oldest dinosaur was Nyasasaurus, according to fossils dating back around 243 million years. Dinos were getting off the ground when a mass extinction event 200 million years ago left them as the dominant animal for a period of 135 million years. Compare that to humans, who have only been around a few million years, and have only recorded our history for a few thousand years, which is just a dot in the earth's timeline. Read about Nyasasaurus, the oldest dinosaur so far, at Real Clear Science.(Image credit: KDS444) #dinosaur #Nyasasaurus
World's Oldest Belly Button Discovered
A fossil found in China is in such good shape that scientists identified its belly button. The fossil belongs to a Psittacosaurus, a bipedal dinosaur that lived between 100 and 120 million years ago! Now wait, you may think, don't belly buttons belong to placental mammals? Yes, but they also happen in egg-laying species. The embryos of birds and retiles have a cord attached to the yolk sack within the egg, which can leave a scar. Most modern egg-laying animals lose the scar soon after hatching. However a few species, such as alligators, keep their "umbilical scar" throughout their lives. The Psittacosaurus fossil was unearthed in 2002. A new laser imaging technique called Laser-Stimulated Fluorescence (LSF) was used to map the fine details of its skin, and revealed the umbilical scar. It also revealed scales, wrinkles, and skin patterns. With this technology, we can see dinosaurs as they existed in life. This is the oldest example of a belly button in a non-avian dinosaur more than 66 million years old. Read more about this research at Smithsonian.(Image credit: Jagged Fang Designs) #bellybutton #navel #dinosaur #umbilicalscar #paleontology
Fossils May Show Us the Day of the Asteroid Impact
Around 66 million years ago, a 12-kilometer-wide asteroid slammed into the earth, causing a massive explosion that sent debris into the atmosphere for years. The impact was felt 3,000 kilometers away, where it caused animals to die instantly. Earth tremors caused waves of water to surge onto land. Particles of molten rock invaded the gills of fish. A turtle was impaled on a piece of wood. A dinosaur had its leg blown off. Some 66 million years later, humans dug up the remains of that devastating event in South Dakota, at an archaeological dig called Tanis. Scientists have been studying the fossils of Tanis for years. They can't definitively say that the chaos at Tanis was left on the exact day of the Chicxulub impact that wiped out the dinosaurs, but the signs are all there. The chemical makeup of the particles found in fish are what one would expect from the impact. The well-preserved dinosaur leg, from a Thescelosaurus, shows no signs of disease, and the rest of it is nowhere nearby. The Tanis fossils will be the subject of a BBC special titled Dinosaurs: The Final Day with Sir David Attenborough, to be broadcast on BBC One on April 15th. It will be aired on the PBS series Nova this fall. Read about the extraordinary finds from Tanis at BBC News. -via Damn Interesting#Chicxulub #fossil #dinosaur #Tanis #asteroid
Dearc sgiathanach the Jurassic Pterosaur: World's Largest Pterodactyl Fossil Found in Scotland
What began as an ordinary excavation trip for Amelia Penny, ended up becoming a historic Jurassic Park moment. The University of Edinburgh’s PhD student unearthed a pterosaur fossil during a trip to the Isle of Skye, Scotland. The discovery is said to be the best-preserved skeleton of a pterosaur found in Scotland, experts say.The gigantic flying predator lived around 170 million years ago. Popularly known as a pterodactyl, the species had an estimated wingspan of over 2.5 metres. The species has been given the Gaelic name Dearc sgiathanach (pronounced jark ski-an-ach), which translates as ‘winged reptile’ and also references the Isle of Skye, whose Gaelic name means ‘the winged isle.’The pterodactyl will now be part of National Museum Scotland’s collection for further study.Image: Stewart Attwood/The University of Edinburgh#fossil #dinosaur #pterosaur #pterodactyl #Scotland #IsleofSkye
Fossil Records Show that Even Dinosaurs Get Respiratory Diseases like Pneumonia
Meet Dolly—not American singer Dolly Parton, or Dolly the sheep who was the first mammal cloned from an adult somatic cell, but—the first evidence of any kind of respiratory infection in a non-avian dinosaur.
Scientists Find First Evidence of Respiratory Illness in a Dinosaur
A dinosaur with the sniffles? It's not so far-fetched. Paleontologists have previously found evidence of cancer and infections from injuries in dino fossils. But this discovery came in a roundabout way. In 1990, the skull and vertebrae of a long-necked diplodocid, later named Dolly, was unearthed in Montana. A 2018 study of the vertebrae found some growths that resembled broccoli. Paleontologist Cary Woodruff had never seen such growths. He reached out to other scientists (via Twitter), and heard back from avian and reptile experts who recognized the signs of a condition called airsacculitis that is found in modern birds and reptiles. That happens when an infected air sac is close to the vertebrae, and the bacteria or fungus that caused a respiratory infection migrates to the bone. Dolly must have been sick for some time.
Dinosaur Egg Fossil Contains Exquisitely Preserved Embryo
A group of fossils were uncovered in Ganzhou, Jiangxi province, China, in 2000. They were delivered to a museum where they were stored. Only in 2015 did a researcher notice that a fossil dinosaur egg had a crack that revealed an embryo inside, developed to just days short of hatching. The 66 million-year-old dinosaur was an oviraptorosaur, a type of dinosaur that would evolve into birds. And the embryo, named "Baby Yingliang," shows many birdlike features. These include a beak, egg teeth used to break out of a shell, a hard shell, and embryonic feathers. Baby Yingliang was still a dinosaur, however, as it had front claws instead of wings. A feature not previously seen in embryonic dinosaur fossils is the "head tucking" posture found in embryonic birds.
How Did Birds Survive the Asteroid Impact That Killed the Dinosaurs?
Around 66 million years ago, the Chicxulub event changed the world when an asteroid slammed into the Yucatan Peninsula and plunged the world into a darkness that killed off 75% of the existing species. The dinosaurs were the best-known of the victims. But not all dinosaurs died out. The few that survived were birds. Even then, the surviving bird species were only a small percentage of the birds that existed before the asteroid impact. Why these these particular species of birds survive? What's the difference between Cretaceous birds and those living today? It appears to be big brains. But it's not just size- new scans of Ichthyornis, a bird that went extinct after the asteroid impact, shows a small forebrain, or cerebrum, like many dinosaurs. Modern birds have much larger forebrains compared to their other brain structures. The forebrain is responsible for many functions, so scientists don't yet know exactly how a larger forebrain aided some birds' survival, but speculate that it might have made them more able to modify their behavior in the face of a new environment. Just don't call them birdbrains. Read more about this research at LiveScience. -via Damn Interesting Image credit: Torres et al/CC BY 4.0)#bird #dinosaur #birdevolution #extinction #asteroid #birdbrain
What Dinosaurs Really Looked Like
It's only been a couple of hundred years since we identified the first dinosaur fossils. Since then, we've learned an awful lot about them, yet our knowledge is limited by what they left behind. Bones can fossilize, but there is a dearth of soft tissue, skin, hair, feathers, and all those things that we recognize existing species by. Since dinos were categorized as reptiles, we envisioned them as a prehistoric version of known lizards, with muscles and scaly skin draped over the bones. In the last few decades, better science tools have enabled us to detect clues about how wrong we were.
New Species of Dinosaur with Bizarre Armored Spikes Discovered in Morocco
A peculiar fossil with a series of spikes connected to a rib was recently discovered in the Middle Atlas Mountains in Morocco. It turned out to be the remains of the oldest ankylosaur ever found and was the first discovery of its kind in Africa.Dr. Susannah Maidment, a researcher at theNatural History Museum (NHM) and honorary senior lecturer at the University of Birmingham, said, “At first we thought the specimen could be part of a stegosaur, having previously found them at the same location. But on closer inspection, we realized the fossil was unlike anything we had ever seen.” She added, “It is completely unprecedented and unlike anything else in the animal kingdom.”Researchers named the species Spicomellus afer, with Spicomellus meaning “collar of spikes” and afer meaning “of Africa.”This extraordinary specimen was thought to be fake at first, but CT scans proved it to be real. The discovery also suggested that ankylosaurs and stegosaurs co-existed instead of competing with each other. Now, it is part of NHM’s collections and atopic for further studies.Image: Trustees of the Natural History Museum#dinosaur #ankylosaur #NewSpecies #spikes #discovery
Our Frozen Past: A Gripping Dinosaur Adventure
This beautiful but wordless animation shows dinosaurs living their everyday lives, and the struggle of a mother protecting her young vs. hungry predators looking for a meal. It's set in Alaska, 69 million years ago, which was in the Cretaceous period. That's toward the tail end of the dinosaurs, and they were starting to evolve into creatures better adapted to the cooling planet. At least the smartest ones did.
Chicken-sized "Dragon" Dinosaur Found in the UK is a New Species
Scientists are often out in the field, digging up fossils and taking specimens of living species, trying to identify new species, old or new. But sometimes, they are right there under our noses, in a drawer of a museum. That was the case of a new species of dinosaur now called Pendraig milnerae. The fossil bones were excavated in Wales in the 1950s, but were misidentified. Since they were not considered unique or even particularly interesting, those bones were filed away at the Natural History Museum in London. A new look at the old bones was made possible by paleontologist Angela Milner, who located the bones in a drawer full of "crocodile material." Milner died a few months ago, and the species is named for her. The genus Pendraig is a word that means "chief dragon" in Welsh. This small dinosaur may be called a dragon, but it was about the size of Mushu. Or a chicken. Scientists do not know if the species is really that small, or whether the fossil came from a juvenile. There is the possibility that that P. milnerae evolved to be smaller like some other species that became isolated on an island, like the Wrangel Island mammoths. Read more about the new dinosaur species at NBC. (Image credit: James Robbins) #dinosaur #Wales #Pendraigmilnerae
Chicago T-Rex Ran Into an Old Friend at the Museum
YouTuber Chicago T-Rex visited the Field Museum in Illinois and ran into an old friend!#dinosaur #t-rex #FieldMuseum #fossil #ChicagoView the full video clip below:
Meet Cotylorhynchus romeri, the Chonky Pinhead Dinosaur
Yes, the Cotylorynchus romeri dinosaur, a synapsid (the ancestor of mammals) that lived in the Early Permian period about 300 million years ago, did look kind of like a pinhead. Plus, it's kind of chonky.But don't laugh at all that girth - that's actually how the herbivore stayed alive: it was simply much, much larger than any predator of the era.#dinosaur #synapsid #herbivoreImage: Rtrifunovski/Dinopedia
New "Very Small and Cute" Beetle Species Found in Fossilized Dinosaur Dung
Biologist Martin Qvanström of Uppsala University in Sweden and his colleagues were studying 230-million-year-old coprolites or fossilized droppings when they discovered something unusual: a large number of beetle fragments preserved in the dung.The researches named the newly discovered beetle species Triamyxa coprolithica. Qvanström surmised that it was probably semiaquatic with a convex body shape, saying "Boat shaped almost. Very small and cute."From New Scientist:“To get fossilised remains of this quality, researchers have relied in the past on finding them in amber (fossilised tree resin),” says Jesus Lozano-Fernandez at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona, Spain. “The novelty here is the possibility of looking at what is inside of the opaque fossilised poo.”The earliest amber deposits formed about 140 million years ago early in the Cretaceous period, meaning we can’t rely on amber to learn about beetle evolution before that.These coprolites allow us to learn about this and ecological relationships in an earlier period called the Triassic.The droppings containing T. coprolithica probably came from Silesaurus opolensis, a reptilian dinosaur relative which ate these beetles in large numbers.#fossil #beetle #coprolite #dinosaur #paleontology #insect
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