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Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Velociraptor Dinosaur's cousin discovered

Scientists have found out a new species of Dinosaur that was closely related to the Velociraptor.

The 1.8m-long predator was a dromaeosaurid - a family of theropod dinosaurs from which modern birds come down.

The researchers found out its exquisitely well preserved skeleton in sediments dating from the Upper Cretaceous period in Inner Mongolia.

The Fossilised skeleton was in almost perfect condition - with entire claws and teeth - despite being between 145 and 65 million years old.

Its examination was directed by Xing Xu from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

He and his colleagues described several distinguishing features, particularly of its jaw and feet, that enabled them to recognize it as a dromaeosaurid - a name that means "running lizard".

It had, for example, what the researchers explained as "raptorial claws" on its feet.

The highly evolved predator, which has been named Linheraptor exquisitus, represents an entirely latest genus within that family.

"Linheraptor is alike Velociraptor in many features," wrote the scientists.
They positioned out, however, that it was not Velociraptor's closest relative within the dromaeosaurid family.

Labels: Dinosaur footprint, Dinosaur fossils, Dinosour cartoon, Dinosour family, Fossils

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Tyrannosaur dinosaurs called Australia home

A piece of bone discover in Victoria more than 20 years before has belatedly stunned scientists, who say the fossilised piece of pelvis once belonged to an ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex.

The news is important as the 30-centimetre-long fossil is the first evidence that Tyrannosaur Dinosaurs existed and evolved in the southern hemisphere.

Palaeontologist and Museum Victoria senior curator Tom Rich said the discovery of the Fossils, discover at Dinosaur Cove near the Otway coast in 1989, would shed new light on the evolutionary history of this group of Dinosaurs, regarded as highly successful predators characteristic of the northern hemisphere.

''You can't imagine [now] that this was a group that was restricted to the northern hemisphere,'' Dr Rich said. ''Their evolution took place roughly anywhere on dry land on earth.''

Dating back to the premature Cretaceous period, about 100 million years before, when Australia lay alongside Antarctica, the fossil is thought to have belonged to a 3-meter-long, 80-kilogram reptile with tyrannosauroid features including a small head, short arms and powerful jaws.

Labels: Dinosaur unit, Dinosour age, Dinosour family, Dinosour history, Dinosour world

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Fossil illustrates dinosaur caught in collapsing sand dune

Researchers have found out a nearly complete Dinosaur Fossil which appears to have been caught in a collapsing sand dune.

The Seitaad ruessi fossil, illustrated in the journal PLoS One, is a relative of the long-necked sauropods that were once Earth's biggest animals.

S. ruessi, discovered in what is now Utah, could have walked on all four legs, or risen up to walk on just two.

It is from the Early Jurassic period, between 175 and 200 million years before.

At that time, all of Earth's continents were still joined in the super-continent Pangaea, and sauropodomorphs like S. ruessi have been originate in South America and Africa.

Unlike the sauropods to which they are associated, S. ruessi was relatively small, about a metre tall and 3.5-4m long with its lengthy neck and tail, weighing in at between 70 and 90kg.

Much of the fossil, first found out by a local artist in 2004, was perfectly preserved in sandstone. Still, it is missing its head, neck and tail.

Labels: Dinosaur footprint, Dinosaur fossils, Dinosour cartoon, Dinosour family, Dinosour history

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Dinosaur skeleton to auction for $6-8m

A 66 million year-aged collectible will be going under the hammer at the Las Vegas Strip on Saturday.

Auctioneer Bonhams & Butterfields is giving natural history buffs the chance to possess "Samson", a fossilised female Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Samson's 170 bones were found out 17 years before in South Dakota, US, and make-up more than half the skeleton of the 40-feet-long, 7.5 ton Dinosaur.

Bids are hoped to apex $6m when it is sold at the Venetian hotel-casino in Las Vegas, on October 3.

The sale will contain hundreds of Dinosaur bone fragments in plastic bags - these separate bones could be added to Samson if experts are willing to invest the necessary thousands of hours.

The T. Rex is being vend among 41 other lots of museum-ready pieces, including a 28-foot duck-billed Dinosaur skeleton and a Seven-foot Fossil shark.

The collection will be on public preview for two weeks prior to the auction.

Labels: Dinosaur footprint, Dinosaur fossils, Dinosour cartoon, Dinosour family, Dinosour history

Friday, March 19, 2010

China exposes Thousands of Dinosaur Footprints

More than 3,000 Dinosaur Footprints, all facing the same way, have been found out by researchers after a three-month excavation in the eastern Shandong province of China. Possibly representing a migration or panicked stampede, both the quantity and size of the prints distinguish this wonderful discovery.

Estimated to be more than 100 million years aged and dating back to the mid Cretaceous period, Dinosaur remains have been discovered more than thirty sites in the Zhucheng area. Therefore, the moniker, “dinosaur city.”

The prints range in size from 4 to 32 inches long and are thought to belong to at least six different dinosaur kinds including: Tyrannosaurs, Coelurosaurs and Hadrosaurs.

The area is said to be the world’s major grouping of fossilized dinosaur bones. Since 1964, there have been two major digs in this region and experts consider the large numbers of dinosaurs found could give vital clues about their extinction so many millions of years before.

It is possible that even more Dinosaur footprints may be uncovered as the excavation continues. At this time, plans are being made to set up a Dinosaur Fossil park in the area.

Labels: Dinosaur footprint, Dinosaur fossils, Dinosour cartoon, Dinosour family, Dinosour history

Monday, March 15, 2010

Famous dinosaur fossil hunters

Movies like Jurassic Park make our fascination with dinosaurs seem risky and exciting. Dinosaur hunting can be both hazardous and exciting, but not in the way that the movies portray.

Dinosaur hunting is intellectually exciting, but things do not normally occur as quickly or as flashily as in the movies. Much of it is more tedious, sweaty job. Long trips to isolated places, shovels and picks. Viewing at pieces of rocks and bones, comparing bits of evidence.

There have been lots of people over the years interested in the past. Some have been interested in the distant past of prehistoric times. Bones have been found out for thousands of years. It was not until the 19th century, though, that some of those bones became known belonging to a different sort of animal. Large. Reptilian. Dinosaur!

The premature study of what became known as dinosaurs began in Europe, with many of the leaders in the field being British.

One of the premature dinosaur hunters was Gideon Mantell (1790-1852), who was a doctor from East Sussex, England. In 1822 he explained a tooth that his wife is said to have found along the road while traveling in West Sussex. The story of Gideon Mantell is accessible on a National Geographic DVD titled The Dinosaur Hunters.

Labels: Dinosaur footprint, Dinosaur fossils, Dinosour cartoon, Dinosour family

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Dinosaur DNA rebuilt from ancient eggs

Jurassic Park has just taken a giant T-Rex-sized step toward becoming reality after ancient DNA from long-extinct creatures was effectively extracted.

The DNA was taken from creatures such as the 10ft, half tonne elephant bird and effectively extracted from pieces of eggshell, trapped in Fossils for thousands of years.

The innovative technique `has major implications in the fields of archaeology, palaeontology, conservation and forensics', said Australian biologists. 'We got DNA signatures from a variety of fossil eggshells, including the extinct moa, elephant birds and a 19,000-year-old emu,' said Murdoch University's Charlotte Oskam.
The researchers utilized lasers to highlight DNA `hotspots' under a microscope, marking them with fluorescent green dye. 'We demonstrated that genetic material is preserved in the eggshell matrix and have successfully imaged the DNA via microscopy,' they said.

Their study, to be published this week, is the first to determine the way to tease out genetic strands from eggshells.

Bird eggs are resilient and act as a barrier to oxygen and water - the key reason of DNA damage.

Modern shells have antimicrobial chemicals and it is possible these remain active in fossil shells, also helping to protect the significant genetic code.

`Biomolecules preserved in fossil eggshell are a formerly untapped source of DNA,' said Ms Oskam.

`But even inserting particular genes into living species does not bring an extinct species back to life. And personally I believe it is unethical to recreate a species that is extinct,' she concluded.

Labels: Dinosaur unit, Dinosour cartoon, Dinosour family, Dinosour history

Monday, March 1, 2010

Skulls of new dinosaur species found in Utah

Scientists have made a rare discover: four skulls of a new species of giant plant-eating dinosaur, one of them completely intact.

Skulls of plant-eating Dinosaurs were so light and fragile that they have hardly been preserved to be discovered by paleontologists. Reaction to the discover, made in Dinosaur National Monument in eastern Utah, was "probably not printable in a newspaper," said Dan Chure, a paleontologist with the monument.

Chure said that everyone was actually dumbfounded and can go your complete career without seeing one of these. .To find multiple heads was just phenomenal.

Abydosaurus, which lived about 100 million years before, is a type of sauropod, the largest kind of dinosaur to walk on land. Like its relative Brachiosaurus, the long-necked Abydosaurus had a massive body with 3-trunk legs but a relatively tiny head, about one-two-hundredth the size of its body mass. The smallest sauropods might weigh as little as 10 tons; the largest as much as 50 or 60 tons.

The skulls that were found out were those of juvenile dinosaurs, which were probably about 25 feet long when they died, Chure said.

The dearth of skulls among Dinosaur Fossils has posed a hurdle in discovering about the creatures' biology and evolution, researchers said.

Labels: Dinosaur footprint, Dinosaur fossils, Dinosour cartoon, Dinosour family

Friday, February 19, 2010

Dinosaur 3D movie screens at IMAX theatre

Dinosaurs persist to fascinate old and young alike, Christine Catt, marketing specialist at science north said.

“Dinosaurs Alive! 3D featuring the most ancient dinosaurs of the Triassic Period to the monsters of the Cretaceous, reincarnated and life-sized for the giant IMAX screen, is now playing,” Catt said.

“From the exotic, trackless expanses and sand dunes of Mongolia’s Gobi Desert to the dramatic sandstone buttes of New Mexico, the film will pursue American Museum of Natural History paleontologists as they explore some of the greatest dinosaur finds in history.”

The film is presented in English and French, Catt added.

The movie is sponsored by a number of media companies, with Northern Life.

Labels: Dinosaur unit, Dinosour age, Dinosour cartoon, Dinosour family, Dinosour history

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Montana students to study dinosaur eggs in China

Nine Montana college students are programmed to be in China for six weeks this spring to learn Dinosaur eggs that have porous but thick shells.

Montana State University paleontologist Frankie Jackson states eight of the students are undergraduates and one is working on a master's degree. All the students are looking for careers in research.

Six of the undergraduates are from Montana State, one is from Rocky Mountain College and other from Dawson Community College.

An MSU graduate learner is already in China conducting research.

Jackson utters a $145,000 grant from the National Science Foundation is paying for the research.

Labels: Dinosaur unit, Dinosour age, Dinosour family, Dinosour history, Dinosour world

Monday, February 15, 2010

New Species of Tyrannosaur discovered in Bisti Wilderness area

The finding of Dinosaur bones in the Bisti Wilderness area in 1998 was a significant find for paleontologists who uncovered what became dubbed the "Bisti Beast."

But 12 year after, the scientific community isn't just looking at more dinosaur bones in a museum. Rather, a new species of Tyrannosaur.

The discovery requires more than a decade to validate, but paleontologists applaud the find and honor the discovery as another breakthrough in evolutionary science.

The Bisti Beast at present has an official name: Bistahieversor sealeyi (pronounced bistah-he-ee-versor see-lee-eye). The skull is more than 1 meter long and the entire dinosaur stood more than 30 meters tall.

"Anytime they discover a different species, it opens up a new realm for working with evolution," said Sherrie Landon, Paleontologist Coordinator for the Bureau of Land Management Farmington Field Office.

The Bisti Wilderness is plush with other dinosaur, small mammal and reptile fossils, but federal regulations avoid most digs in the area.

"The only way anything's going to be exposed is if it's exposed naturally by wind and rain," said Bill Papich, spokesman for the Bureau of Land Management.

Only walking and hiking are allowed in federally designated wilderness areas, Papich said. Bicycling and other outdoor activities are banned, including excavations.

But researchers obtained a special authorization to do the dig in the 1990s.

The Bisti Beast roamed the wilderness area 74 million years before, said Thomas Williamson, curator of paleontology at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science in Albuquerque, where the Tyrannosaur is on display.

Labels: Dinosaur unit, Dinosour age, Dinosour family, Dinosour history, Dinosour world

Friday, February 12, 2010

Birds May Have Not Evolved from Dinosaurs

It might have been the other way around

Over the past few years, many scientific studies that refute the widely held idea that birds evolved from Dinosaurs have been published in different respected journals around the globe. Such is the case with a latest paper appearing in the latest issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), which throws added doubts on the decade-old idea.

What the researchers behind this investigation advise is that ground-dwelling theropod dinosaurs were not the source for the ancestors of modern birds. This work casts latest doubts on the established theory of how flight evolved.

Oregon State University Zoology Professor John Ruben is the author of the new research, which deals primarily with the fossil of a creature known as a microraptor that was exposed back in 2003. While studying a 3D model of the creature, Ruben and his team determined that its flying potential was only limited to gliding on variety of air currents from atop trees, and that the tiny animal was unable to fly on its own.

This paper is consistent with previous ones published in the field over the previous years, and Ruben believes that evolution may have actually derived some dinosaurs from birds, and not the other way around.

“We're ending by breaking out of the conventional wisdom of the last 20 years, which insisted that birds evolved from dinosaurs and that the debate is all over and done with . This issue isn't resolved at all . There are just too many inconsistencies with the thought that birds had dinosaur ancestors, and this newest study adds to that,” the expert says.

According to the theory developed at Oregon, it may be that birds and dinosaurs actually had a common ancestor, very much related to the common link between humans and primates. After the two types of animals split, dinosaurs and birds each developed their separate ways, with the winged creatures eventually giving birth to raptors as we know them today.

Labels: Dinosaur footprint, Dinosour cartoon, Dinosour family, Dinosour history

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Ancient dinosaur had stripes, researchers say

Some Dinosaurs had russet-colored feathers, and one jazzy specimen had a Mohawk crest and stripes, researchers say in the former reports to confidently assign colors to dinosaurs.

Their colors have long been a subject of speculation among school children and researchers.

In the latest study, reported in Thursday's online edition of the journal Science, scientists focused on melanosomes, which impart color.

They were able to assign color to individual feathers and thus work out color patterns for the entire Fossil of Anchiornis huxleyi, a small, feathered, two-legged dinosaur that lived approximately 150 million years ago.

The animal would have weighed about four ounces (110 grams) and emerges to have had a dark gray or black body and wings with some white feathers that gave it a stripe pattern, plus a reddish-brown crest and speckles on the face.

"This was no crow or sparrow, but a creature with a very remarkable plumage," said Richard O. Prum, professor of ornithology at Yale University and a co-author of the study.

"This would be a very striking animal if it was alive at present," Prum said in a statement.

The specimen they studied was originated in China, which was also the home 125 million years ago of Sinosauropteryx, a creature that seems to have had russet-colored feathers, according to a paper published previous week in the journal Nature.

Prum speculated that the color pattern of A. huxleyi could have served as a signal to attract mates.

Co-author Julia Clarke, an associate professor of paleontology at the University of Texas at Austin, proposed that color patterns for camouflage or display must have had a key role in the early evolution of feathers in dinosaurs.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, University of Akron, the National Geographic Society and Yale University.

Labels: Dinosaur unit, Dinosour age, Dinosour cartoon, Dinosour family, Dinosour history

Friday, February 5, 2010

Dinosaur footprints lost with crumbling Bolivia rock face

Around 300 Dinosaur footprints believed to be about 65 million years old were lost when the rock wall that contained them cleaved off and crumbled, a Bolivian national park director said Wednesday.

Parque Cretacio director Wilmer Astete informed ATB television that heavy rain and seismic instability had weakened a slab of rock measuring 80 meters (yards) in Cal Orcko, which signifies calcium peak in the Quechua language.

"That rock wall is about 140,000 square meters (1.5 million square feet) and piece of it collapsed. We've missed 300 footprints" made by two titanosaurs, he added.

The Dinosaur tracks were wiped out on Tuesday, Astete said, adding that efforts to safeguard the complete rock wall from fracturing would cost up to 30 million dollars a year, far exceeding the reach of the park administration's budget.

Regardless of the loss, the park remains the site of one of the world's largest collection of dinosaur tracks, Astete said.

Some 5,000 footprints left by 300 Species of dinosaurs from the Cretaceous period (65-145 million years ago) are embedded in the rock face at Cal Orcko, which is situated a few kilometers outside Sucre, Bolivia's constitutional capital.

Local authorities said they were learning plans to protect the archeological site from further damage.

Labels: Dinosaur unit, Dinosour age, Dinosour cartoon, Dinosour family, Dinosour history

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Chinasaurs: New dinosaurs with flight

China has made yet another astounding finding that is transforming everything we thought we knew about Dinosaurs - a 160 million-year-old creature that holds the claim that modern day birds are in fact dinosaur descendants.

In a Reuters interview by Dr. Xu, a member of the research team that found out the fossil, as having "unique features... it shares few features with birds. It shifts its hands sideways, like how birds can fold their wings. Its head, hind limbs, vertebral column, hands are all bird-like." That makes it... a lizard parakeet?

The Fossil was discovered in Xinjiang and is a member of the Alvarezsaurs family, this grandpa of a fossil predates all other discoveries by over 63 million years. The fossil shares numerous similar features to birds, but at this point in history was distinctly a dinosaur.

Because it is older than other fossils, it offers an significant link in the evolutionary record showing how birds have slowly developed from dinosaurs. Now we can say with more certainty that our feathered friends are in fact prehistoric living dinosaurs, which is pretty cool.

The fossil is one of 132 latest dinosaurs found by China. Some of our other incredible and long named Dinosaur discoveries comprise a dinosaur with four wings called Anchiornis huxleyi, a gigantic bird raptor called Gigantoraptor Erlianensis and a small feathered dinosaur called epidexipteryx.

Labels: Dinosaur unit, Dinosour age, Dinosour cartoon, Dinosour family, Dinosour history

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Fossil find in China boosts dinosaur-bird link

A Dinosaur fossil discovered in northwestern China has gave fresh evidence that although its tribe resembled birds millions of years ago, it must have evolved separately - helping confirm that modern birds are indeed living dinosaurs.

It lived a full 160 million years before in the Jurassic period, long before the feathered Archaeopteryx, the first true flying bird, emerged in the fossil record, scientists said.

The newfound Dinosaur is a member of a group that some scientists had thought evolved into modern-day birds. However, because this fossil is so old, it gives weight to the dominant sight that modern birds, not the newly discovered birdlike creatures in China, were the ones that evolved from dinosaurs.

Like a bird, the dinosaur had 3 toes on each leg, a birdlike keel-shaped chest and a long beak. The ten-foot-long dinosaur, named Haplocheirus sollers or "simple, skillful hand," had short forearms with massive claws.

Labels: Dinosaur footprint, Dinosaur fossils, Dinosour cartoon, Dinosour family

Monday, February 1, 2010

Dinosaur Skin Color Revealed

Paleontologists Say Early Dinosaurs had Red "Mohawk" with Red and White Striped Tail

As much as paleontologists have sorted out about the Dinosaurs, one of the chief aspects of their appearance-what color they were-has remained mysterious. But in a new Nature study, a team of British and Chinese scientists report that they establish a way to unlock the color patterns of one of the earliest feathery dinosaurs-it had a red mohawk, they say, with a red and white striped tail.

The dino in question is called Sinosauropteryx, which existed about 125 million years ago. Looking at Fossils originate in China, the team led by Mike Benton found what they think are the remains of feathers. And they found a bit inside the feathers that matches modern birds: melanosomes.

These structures offer the melanin pigment in bird feathers (and human hair), and what color they are depends on the shape. “A ginger-haired person would have more spherical melanosomes, and a black-haired or grey-haired person might have more of the sausage-shaped structures,” said Professor Benton.

Labels: Dinosaur footprint, Dinosaur fossils, Dinosour cartoon, Dinosour family

Friday, January 29, 2010

Birds became fat as dinosaurs died

A sedentary lifestyle is often liable for causing obesity among humans.

Actually, the same thing happened to certain birds 65 million years ago.
The vanishing of Dinosaurs from earth at that time made the flying ancestors of the emu, cassowary and the ostrich lazy, new Australian research has found.

Instead of soaring away from gigantic beasts, they fattened up and turn into flightless, the study by Canberra's Australian National University (ANU) found.
New Zealand's now extinct flightless moa birds descended from a small, South America flying fowl, the examination of mitochondrial genome series found.
Earlier, scientists believed flightless birds, also known as ratites, shared a common flightless ancestor.

Dr Matthew Phillips the Study director said that as dinosaurs died out, natural selection favored the fatter birds.

“The Extinction of the Dinosaurs likely lifted predation pressures that had previously chosen for flight and its necessary constraint, small size,” he said.
Lifting of this pressure and added abundant foraging opportunities would then have selected for larger size and consequent loss of flight.

Dr Phillips said-“The ancestors of flightless birds originally flew to other parts of the world from the northern continents.”

Labels: Dinosaur unit, Dinosour age, Dinosour family, Dinosour history, Dinosour world

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Alligators breathe like birds due to shared dinosaur ancestor

Alligators breathe like birds owing to a Dinosaur ancestor they share in common, scientists have discovered.

Researchers investigated that, just as it does in birds, air flows in one direction as it loops through the lungs of alligators.

The breathing method is supposed to have first appeared in ancient reptiles called archosaurs which dominated the Earth 251 million years ago.

In contrast, mammalian breath flows in and out of branching cul-de-sacs in the lungs named alveoli.

Archosaurs evolved along two different paths, one of which gave up to the crocodilian ancestors of alligators and crocodiles.

The other produced the flying pterosaurs and ultimately birds.
The researches on alligators propose that birdlike breathing probably evolved earlier than previously thought, before the archosaur split. It may explain why archosaurs turn into dominant in the Early Triassic Period which followed a devastating mass extinction known as the ''Great Dying''.

Prior to the Extinction event, which destroyed 70% of all land life and 96% of sea life, reptile-like mammals called synapsids were the largest animals on Earth.
After it, mammals were outshined by reptiles in the form of archosaurs and, later, dinosaurs.

Labels: Dinosaur unit, Dinosour cartoon, Dinosour family, Dinosour history

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Dinosaurs come to Roanoke

“Walking with Dinosaurs” is coming back to Roanoke, and on Monday we got a different sneak peek.

The baby T-Rex came to Hotel Roanoke to perform for few local boy scout troops in the Blue Ridge Mountains Council as they celebrated the Centennial Anniversary of Boy Scouts of America.

The Dinosaur looks extremely realistic, but it’s a man in a costume.

The international show took 6 years to produce and cost $20 million.
The show takes the viewers back 150 million years.

“I believe there’s this fascination .What occurred to them, what was it like when they were roaming the earth and dominating the entire globe. Now you get to notice them as best we can tell, what it was like,“ said Matthew Rimmer.

“Walking with Dinosaurs,“ is programmed to perform at the Roanoke Civic Center this weekend.

Labels: Dinosaur unit, Dinosour age, Dinosour family, Dinosour history

Thursday, December 31, 2009

Dinosaur National Monument Free to Campers This Winter

Dinosaur National Monument park officials announced this week that the Split Mountain campground in Utah will remain open throughout the winter, according to AP and other media reports.

Three additional campgrounds at the monument will also be open, but only the hardiest of hikers can attain them due to snowfall levels.
DNM spokesperson Carla Beasley warned that even the Split Mountain campground is particularly cold during the winter months owing to its proximity to the chilly Green River. Cold air tends to settle at the river, which usually remain in the entire area at teeth-chattering temperatures.

However, if you are an experienced camper, the news is good for dinosaur enthusiasts.

The National Park Service states, "Dinosaur fossils can only be noticed on the Utah side of the park. The chief exhibit wall of dinosaur fossils is closed due to significant life, health, and safety issues, but a temporary visitor center is open. Also, few fossils can be seen by hiking 3/4 mile from the temporary visitor center."

Labels: Dinosaur unit, Dinosour cartoon, Dinosour family, Dinosour history

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Questioning the Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Theory

New research challenges the thought that the asteroid impact that killed the Dinosaurs also sparked a global firestorm.

Scientists modeled the consequence that sand-sized droplets of liquefied rock from the impact had on atmospheric temperature. The asteroid is thought to have gouged away the Chicxulub crater on the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico.

Formerly it was thought that the falling spherules, as the tiny rocks are called, heated up the atmosphere by several degrees for up to 20 minutes — hot enough and long enough to cause whole forests to spontaneously burst into flames.

As evidence for this, scientists pointed to what appears to be carbon-rich soot from burned trees exposed in the thin band of debris dating back to the impact some 65 million years ago, a shift in geologic time called the K-T boundary.

Labels: Dinosaur unit, Dinosour age, Dinosour family, Dinosour history, Dinosour world

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Dentists might have saved dinosaurs!

If the dinosaurs had dentists to take care of their teeth, they would have been possibly alive today.

At least, this is the picture that is rising out of a new research by scientist of David Varricchio and colleagues.

Infectious diseases can be transmitted by touching ,sneezing, or biting each other on the face, a habit that may have driven the dinosaurs to extinction through the transmission of a protozoan parasite.

This led the scientists to realize that a protozoan parasite was to blame for the diseased jawbones seen in many tyrannosaurid fossils.

The parasite’s modern-day equivalent, which infects birds, eats away at the jawbone and can cause ulcers so ruthless that the host starves to death.
Living in the jaw, the parasite may have been transfered from one dinosaur to another dinosaur during head biting.

According to Jacqueline Upcroft, a member of f1000 Biology, “This organism generally infects pigeons, doves, turkeys and raptors, causing necrotic ulceration in the upper digestive tract,” and in extreme cases it can fully pierce the bone.
The similarity of the fossilized jawbones and modern-day samples imply that the parasite was deadly enough to kill infected dinosaurs.

“This may not have been an segregated situation but may have occurred en masse and led to the Extinction of the Species,” said Upcroft.

Labels: Dinosaur unit, Dinosour age, Dinosour family, Dinosour history, Dinosour world

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Teeth Suggest Dinosaur Was Venomous

Well-preserved fossils of a feathered dinosaur that exist about 124 million years ago — along with certain aspects of its teeth and skull — imply that the turkey-sized creature was venomous.

Sinornithosaurus was unearthed in China and first described by scientists about 10 years ago, but the telling details of the creature’s cranial anatomy are just now being described, says David Burnham, a paleontologist at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.

The majority of the teeth in each side of the creature’s upper jaw have grooves that run from the base of each tooth to the tip, a characteristic seen in some of today’s venomous reptiles. A huge triangular depression on the creature’s upper jawbone — a feature not previously reported in other dinosaurs or their relatives — probably held venom-producing glands, Burnham and his colleagues report online December 21 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Venom curving from those glands probably pooled in reservoirs at the base of each grooved tooth until the dino bit its prey, Burnham says.

Labels: Dinosaur footprint, Dinosaur fossils, Dinosaur unit, Dinosour cartoon, Dinosour family, Dinosour history

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Good Dentistry May Have Saved The Dinosaurs

Infectious diseases can be spreaded by sneezing, touching, or – for Tasmanian devils – biting each other on the face, a habit that may have driven the dinosaurs to extinction through the transmission of a protozoan parasite.

Jacqueline Upcroft, a member of f1000 Biology, draw attention to the 'paleobiological detective work' of David Varricchio and colleagues published in PLoS One. This led them to figure out that a protozoan parasite was to blame for the diseased jaw bones seen in many tyrannosaurid fossils.

The parasite's modern-day equivalent, which infects birds, eats away at the jawbone and can stimulate ulcers so severe that the host starves to death. Living in the jaw, the parasite may have been passed from one dinosaur to another dinosaur during head biting.

Upcroft said, "this organism generally infects pigeons ,doves, turkeys and raptors, causing necrotic ulceration in the upper digestive tract," and in extreme cases it can fully penetrate the bone.

The similarity of the fossilized jawbones and modern-day samples suggest that the parasite was deadly enough to kill infected dinosaurs. Furthermore, as Upcroft notes, "this may not have been an separated situation but may have occurred en masse and led to the extinction of the species."

Labels: Dinosaur unit, Dinosour age, Dinosour family, Dinosour history, Dinosour world

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Dinosaur-killing impact set Earth to broil, not burn

The asteroid impact that ruined the age of dinosaurs 65 million years ago didn't incinerate life on our planet's surface – it presently broiled it, a new study suggests. The work resolves nagging questions about a theory that the affect triggered deadly wildfires around the world, but it also bring up new questions about just what led to the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period.

The impact of a 10-km asteroid is liable for the extinction of the dinosaurs and most other species on the planet. Early computer models demonstrate that more than half of the debris blasted into space by the impact would fall into the atmosphere within eight hours.

The models predicted the rain of shock-heated debris would radiate heat as intensely as an oven set to "broil" (260 °C) for at least 20 minutes, and maybe a couple of hours. Intense heating for that extend would heat wood to its ignition temperature, causing global wildfires.

Yet some species survived, and the global layer of impact debris doesn't contain as much soot as would be expected from burning the world's forests, raising questions about the scope of post-impact wildfires

Labels: Dinosaur footprint, Dinosaur fossils, Dinosour cartoon, Dinosour family

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