Dinosaurs News,Evolution Of Dinosaur,Dinosaur Teeth Backbone Food,Dinosaur Display Museums,Dinosaur Pictures Movies,Dinosaur Footprint Fossils

Rareresource

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

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Scientists reaffirm theory that giant asteroid killed dinosaurs

A team of scientists has agreed that a giant asteroid killed off Dinosaurs and a majority of other species on Earth more than 65 million years before.

The researchers examined evidence and agreed it supports a single-impact theory first proposed 30 years ago on the cause of the mass extinction.

Since 1980, scientists have gathered an overwhelming amount of evidence that illustrates a single asteroid about 6 miles in diameter and traveling at thousands of miles an hour, slammed into the Gulf of Mexico, said Richard Norris, a paleoceanographer at the University of California San Diego.

The impact caused a crater 24 miles deep and 125 miles wide, according to Norris, who was part of the research group.

The crater was found out in 1991 in Chicxulub, Mexico, on the Yucatan Peninsula, said scientists who called it the "smoking gun" that backed up the asteroid theory.
Norris compared the asteroid's impact with a blast from hundred million tons of TNT.
"It's mostly more powerful than all the atomic weapons on the planet going off all at once," he said.

The researchers wanted to settle disputes about what destroyed the dinosaurs. Some theories have argued that it would have taken many meteorites to cause such a cataclysmic incident. Another rival theory suggested that the mass Extinction was a consequence of a massive volcanic eruption in India that took place around the same time as the impact.

Labels: Dinosaur picture, Dinosaur unit, Dinosour age, Dinosour world, New Dinosaurs

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Prehistoric island 'Jurassic Parkette' ruled by dwarf dinosaurs

Paleontologists have found out a prehistoric "lost world" which was ruled by miniature Dinosaurs. Sort of a pigmy Jurassic Park, the island was the hometown of dinos who were up to 8 times smaller than some of their mainland cousins, reports the Telegraph.

Dwarf Dinosaur fossils were discovered in what is now modern day Romania, in an area known as Hateg, which, 65 million years before - when the creatures were living there - was an island, reports The Telegraph.

One of the fossils was of Magyarosaurus, which was slightly bigger than a horse, but was related to some of the biggest creatures to ever walk the Earth - gigantic titanosaurs such as Argentinosaurus, which reached up to 100 feet long and weighed around 80 tons.

Professor Michael Benton, from the University of Bristol, who carried out the research with scientists at the Universities of Bucharest of and Bonn, said: "Most of the famous dinosaurs that we know about were living on big landmasses at the last part of the Cretaceous period.

The curious thing about Europe at this time was that it was mostly covered by sea and much Eastern Europe was a sort of archipelago of islands.

If you are a gigantic dinosaur on a small island with limited food and space, then the evolutionary pressure is either to go extinct or to get smaller.

The discovering will be published in the scientific journal Palaeogreography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.

Labels: Dinosaur unit, Dinosour age, Dinosour history, Dinosour world, New Dinosaurs

Friday, February 26, 2010

World's largest group of dinosaur footprints discovered in Shandong

At present, a large group of Dinosaur footprints were discovered at Zhucheng city, Shandong province.

Paleontologists from Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences came to the location and verified the collection to be the largest ever discovered.

The group of footprints is located in an area of more than 2,600 square meters, and more than 3,000 footprints of different kinds of dinosaurs emerge in various shapes and sizes.

This is another significant discovery that follows the discovery of world's largest group of Dinosaur Fossils in the same city.

Labels: Dinosaur unit, Dinosour age, Dinosour history, Dinosour world, New Dinosaurs

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Giant skulls discovered at Utah's Dinosaur Monument a 'fortuitous' find

Scientists, such as Dan Chure, refer to sauropods, the gigantic, long-necked plant-eating Dinosaurs, as "headless wonders."

Not only are their noggins puny in relation to their colossal bodies, but very hardly do paleontologists ever recover entire sauropod skulls, said Chure, of Dinosaur National Monument. But a fresh species unearthed at the monument several years before was identified from four skulls - two fully intact - found within a few feet of each other.

Abydosaurus mcintoshi was recognized to the world Tuesday in the German science weekly Naturwissenshaften, where Chure published findings with Brigham Young University collaborators. The new sauropod is supposed to be a distant descendant of brachiosaurus, which roamed Utah 150 million years before.

Discovering just one skull would be impressive, but four is beyond what any Dinosaur hunter could hope for. The skulls revealed jaws crammed with dozens of minute teeth.

"It's a fortuitous thing. In numerous dinosaurs, the bones of the head do not fuse up, especially in sauropods. You have an array of components that are held collectively by soft tissue. The only thing that resides together is the brain case," said Brooks Britt, a BYU geology professor.

National Park Service employees initially discovered an interesting cache of bones near the monument's visitor's center in the late 1990s and enlisted Britt's help to prepare the specimens.

The monument is well-known for Dinosaur Discoveries made in late-Jurassic-era Morrison Formation. But these new bones were in the younger Cedar Mountain Formation, a 105-million-year-old sandstone that dates the bones to the middle of the Cretaceous, the 3rd and final chapter of dinosaurs' reign that ended 66 million years ago.

After the initial find, park staff delivered a 3-ton block to BYU's Museum of Paleontology.

Labels: Dinosaur unit, Dinosour age, Dinosour history, Dinosour world, New Dinosaurs

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Science Uncovers What Dinosaurs Really Looked Like

Scientists have wonderful powers. They can really go back in time and tell you what Dinosaurs look like. They can notify you where plants and babies come from. They’re similar to wizards in labcoats.

The most latest development? Scientists have decoded the complete-body patterns of a dinosaur, so you can see what it really looked like while it was breathing. And boy, does it seem to be kinda weird. Like something you’d fight in opposition to a Soul Caliber game, or a gigantic turkey that frequents dark Hollywood clubs and raves. Basically, totally bizarre.

How did they perform this? How did they dig up the cosmetology secrets of the dinosaurs that are not live and gone? They took pigments from protofeathers and examined them heavily. So the foremost dinosaur we have in complete color is the 155-million-year-old Anchiornis huxleyi. It seems like an irritable chicken-monster that will peck out your eyes in your sleep. It seems like Lady Gaga’s guard dog.

My question is, if science has been capable of colorizing dinosaurs, how long is it until we’ll be able to clone them? I predict at the most, two years, at which point you’ll be able to get teacup dinosaurs as house-pets, and try to make sure they don’t shred your pillows that you bought at Barney’s.

Labels: Dinosaur picture, Dinosaurs games, Dinosour world, New Dinosaurs

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

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Dwarf Dinosaurs existed on 'Neverland'-Like Island

Dinosaurs on an island in Transylvania existed small and never really grew up.

• Dwarf dinosaurs survived on a Late Cretaceous island, the latest analysis of bones confirms.
• Dwarf dinosaurs appear to have emerged from a process called progenesis, which reduces the developmental period.
• The dwarf dinosaurs existed fast, reaching sexual maturity at earlier ages than their mainland counterparts, and they likely died young.

When Hungarian baron Franz Nopcsa claimed that his sister in 1895 found out bones belonging to dwarf dinosaurs on his family's Transylvanian estate, many thought his claims were on par with Count Dracula fiction.

The latest study not only proves the existence of dwarf dinosaurs, but also explains how dinosaurs shrank during the Late Cretaceous at a Neverland-like place -- Hateg Island, Romania -- where dinos never really grew up.

According to the study, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, the unusual phenomenon emerges to have only affected few of the island's dinosaur residents.

Labels: Dinosaur unit, Dinosour age, Dinosour history, Dinosour world, New Dinosaurs

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Yale scientists complete colour palette of a dinosaur for the first time

Deciphering microscopic clues buried within Fossils, scientists have uncovered the vibrant colours that adorned a Feathered Dinosaur extinct for 150 million years, a Yale University-led research team reports online Feb. 4 in the journal Science.

Unlike recently published work from China that inferred the existence of two types of melanin pigments in various species of feathered dinosaurs, the Science study analysed colour-imparting structures called melanosomes from an complete fossil of a single animal, a feat which facilitated researchers to disclose rich colour patterns of the entire animal.

In fact, the analysis of melanosomes conducted by Yale team was so precise that the team was able to allocate colours to individual feathers of Anchiornis huxleyi, a four-winged troodontid dinosaur that lived during the late Jurassic period in China. This Dinosaur sported usually grey body, a reddish-brown, Mohawk-like crest and facial speckles, and white feathers on its wings and legs, with bold black-spangled tips.

'This was no sparrow or crow, but a creature with a very notable plumage,' said Richard O. Prum, chair and the William Robertson Coe Professor of Ornithology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale and a co-author of the study. 'This would be a very striking animal if it was alive today.'

The colour patterns of the limbs, which strongly look like those sported by modern day Spangled Hamburg chickens, probably functioned in communication and may have helped the dinosaur to attract mates, suggested Prum.

Labels: Dinosaur picture, Dinosaur unit, Dinosour age, Dinosour world, New Dinosaurs

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Birds Got Too Fat to Fly After Dinosaurs Vanished?

It's been long thought that the ancestors of emus, ostriches and other flightless birds that flew once were flightless too. But a latest study says that they only began exploring the ground in earnest after Dinosaurs were wiped out about 65 million years before.

The unexpected disappearance of dinosaurs opened up new, predator-free niches, where food was plentiful and flight wasn't required for quick escapes, said study leader Matthe Phillips of the Australian National University in Canberra.
The birds then got so plump that they became too heavy to fly, whether they desire or not, the study suggests.

Using Fossil DNA, Phillips and colleagues examined the genome of a giant moa, an extinct flightless bird that lived in what is now New Zealand.

The team establish that the moa's closest relatives were tinamous—small ground-dwelling birds still found in South America that can barely fly.

During most of the Cretaceous period (146 to 65 million years ago), South America, Australia, New Zealand, and Antarctica were joined as part of the massive southern continent Gondwana. About 80 million years before, New Zealand drifted away from Gondwana.

The researchers propose that a moa ancestor may have flown from another location—possibly what would become South America—to New Zealand, where the bird hopped to the ground and eventually evolved into the moa.

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

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Another Loose End Tied Up In Bird-Dino Debate

Let's say you're Haplocheirus sollers. You've got two gangly legs, stubby arms and feathery adornments that look similar to something even a third-class figure skater wouldn't wear. On top of that, you have the ragged claws of a horror film monster, and a tail that seems like something from an overgrown rat.

As Dinosaurs go off, you're an odd bird -- even though you're not a bird at all.
According to a paper in the most up-to-date issue of the journal Science, the newly discovered Haplocheirus is the oldest known member of a group of dinosaurs called alvarezsaurs.

For years, researchers have debated whether alvarezsaurs come down from dinosaurs or birds. The majority accepted that they were dinosaurs, but gaps in the Fossil record -- especially a lack of any alvarezsaur fossils predating birds -- left the issue open to debate.

The discovery of Haplocheirus by a team of paleontologists from George Washington University widen the fossil record of alvarezsaurs back in time by 63 million years -- a good 15 million years before the first birds appeared.

With this innovative evidence that alvarezsaurs existed before birds, there's little room to argue that they could be anything other than dinosaurs. Strange-looking dinosaurs, but dinosaurs, nonetheless.

Labels: Dinosaur unit, Dinosour age, Dinosour world, New Dinosaurs

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

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Hunting the T-rex on Montana's Dinosaur Trail

About 77 million years before the juvenile duckbill dinosaur was attacked on the plains of what is now known as Montana, US, by a pack of Jurassic predators.
Fatally wounded, the young Brachylophosaurus struggled to the border of an inland sea, where he sank into the soft sand and died.

The salt water mummified him, preserving the wrinkles and scales on his skin and even his final meal of conifers and magnolia-like plants.

He remained buried until he was noticed north of Malta, in central Montana, in 2000.
Named after graffiti carved in a nearby rock, Leonardo is now a worldwide palaeontological star and a foremost attraction at the Great Plains Dinosaur Museum in Malta, one of the stops along Montana's so-called Dinosaur Trail.

The Dinosaur Trail links collectively a series of dinosaur-related museums, laboratories and archaeological sites including the Great Plains Museum.
The idea of a dinosaur trail was daydream for local tourism authorities who wanted to capitalize on the state's wealth of Fossil resources.

Labels: Dinosaur unit, Dinosour age, Dinosour history, Dinosour world, New Dinosaurs

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Bone up on dinos

JUST like being on a actual archeological dig, the Queensland Museum’s school holiday program I Dig Dinos will give kids the experience of hunting for Dinosaur bones and Discovering Fossils.

Queensland Museum Sought Bank acting director Bernadette McCormack said through its relationship with the community-based Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum and the Outback Gondwana Foundation, the museum would showcase some amazing fossil finds, including one of Australia’s newest Dinosaur Discoveries.

Wintonotitan wattsi, nick-named Clancy, was one of the three new species of dinosaur named for the first time this year after being unearthed close to Winton in the centre of the state.

The program comprise viewing of real dinosaur bones, children’s activity zone and talks from paleontologists Dr Scott Hocknull and Dr Alex Cook. And be on the lookout for T-rex junior - a 4m juvenile who will be raiding around the museum.

The program “I Dig Dinos” will be at Queensland Museum South Bank until January 24 from 9.30am-4pm daily.

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

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

South Florida Science Museum presents "Diggin' Dinosaurs: An Adventure Millions of Years in the Making"

Something big is coming to the South Florida Science Museum starting January 16th through May 2nd, 2010. Diggin' Dinosaurs: An Adventure Millions of Years in the Making features many of the most feared terrestrial carnivores including the gigantic Giganotosaurus, a genus of carcharodontosaurid Dinosaur that existed 98 to 96 million years ago, to other larger-than-life predators including, the Monolophosaurus, Tuojiangosaurus, Tyrannosaurus rex and Velociraptor. This hands-on exhibit allows visitors to experience dinosaurs by handling an Oviraptor egg, excavating a skeleton, or taking a turn at the Wheel of Dinosaur Misfortune.

The South Florida Science Museum is hosting "Diggin' Dinosaurs" as part of the celebration commemorating the finding of Suzie, the Ice Age mastodon currently on display at the Museum. The skeleton was found in superb condition during an excavation project in West Palm Beach in 1969. Suzie was a juvenile mastodon, a type of pre-historic elephant that wandered Florida and much of North America during Earth's most recent Ice Age.

The South Florida Science Museum has been a resource for scientific information for almost a half century with the mission of exciting curiosity and furthering the understanding of science and technology. Through a strong partnership with the School District of Palm Beach County, the Museum serves as a resource for exploring which compliments and supplements formal educational environments. Diggin' Dinosaurs: An Adventure Millions of Years in the Making is a paleontology based exhibition that is expected to welcome school students, as well as residents and visitors from Palm Beach County and beyond.

"Diggin' Dinosaurs" will be open daily to the public January 16, 2010 to May 2, 2010.

Labels: Dinosaur picture, Dinosour age, Dinosour world, New Dinosaurs

Monday, January 11, 2010

190m-yr-old dino fossils found in Argentina

BUENOS AIRES: A Species of Dinosaur that existed 190 million years ago has been found in Argentina, a researcher said.

No discoveries with these uniqueness had been made in the region. “It's an significant discovery because it helps us understand the environmental diversity of the period," researcher Santiago Bessone of the Museum Egidio Feruglio, an institution based in the Argentine Patagonian city of Trelew that was accountable for the expedition, told EFE.

The experts exposed on Bayo mountain , some 80 km from the Patagonian town of Gastre, fossils of at least two dinosaurs that actually lived during the Jurassic period and about which little is known, museum experts said.

The scientists suspected that in the area there could have been Dinosaur Skeletons from the herbivorous sauropod family, which measured between 15-20 meters long and had a small head, big feet ,long neck and a powerful tail.

These dinosaurs roamed the Earth at a time when mammals did not yet survive and when the climate and flora were very different from what they are today, the scientists said.

Bessone, a member of the team,said:The expedition, which took place last month, "lasted about 20 days and now we are fully into the stage of studying and investigating the fossils in detail".

During their explorations, financed by German scientific institutes, the researchers found numerous bones, many of them embedded in heavy blocks of stone that still have not been moved from the place they were found, some 1,400 km south of Buenos Aires.

The skeletons are not complete, but it was likely to gather bones from the front and back legs, hips and spine.

The researchers also found "fossils of very primitive flying reptiles" of the pterosaur family that measured more than a meter long and were agile in flight, supported by wings with hollow bones.

Labels: Dinosour age, Dinosour world, New Dinosaurs, Species of Dinosaur

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Birdlike dinosaur rained down the pain, packed a venomous bite

Newly found out raptor may have employed venom to subdue his prey -- as if fangs and claws weren't enough.

And has powerful jaws, razor-sharp teeth, sickle-shaped claws, and can cut you down silently .The Sinornithosaurus — a birdlike raptor — that is, if you were unfortunate adequate to run across him 125 million years ago.

If that deadly arsenal wasn’t enough to make this dinosaur a ferocious predator, the latest discovered venom that was delivered with his bite surely was. The New York Times reports that a group of paleontologists have found evidence to propose that this birdlike raptor was indeed venomous.

Don’t get the Sinornithosaurus confused with his famous cousin, the Velociraptor, made famous in the original Jurassic park movie — and definitely not with his meme-like brother-in-law, the Philosoraptor— because this avian predator can do harm on the ground and in the air.

Enpu Gong of Northeastern University in Liaoning, David A. Burnham of the University of Kansas, and colleagues recognized Sinornithosaurus was venomous after examining fossils found in 1999 in the Liaoning Quarry of northeastern China. The fossil leftovers showed typically unusual features for that of a dinosaur — grooves in the teeth and a duct running along the base of the teeth.

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

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Scientists: Fossil of Chinese dinosaur genus indicates that some dinosaurs were venomous

Scientists have long known that carnivorous dinosaurs used claws and teeth to kill prey. Now there is evidence that some of them may have used venom, too.

In a report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences during the week before Christmas, Chinese and American researchers announced that a fossilized individual from the dinosaur genus Sinornithosaurus had depressions on the side of its face that could have housed poison gland.

The researchers also observed in a fossilized skull a long depression above the dinosaur's teeth that, in their view, may well have delivered venom into a number of long, grooved teeth on the animal's upper jaw.

The teeth would have permitted the dinosaur to grab prey and hold onto it long enough for the venom to take effect.

This structure is commonly found in modern venomous birds and reptiles.

Sinornithosaurus is a genus of the dromaeosauridae, a Family of Dinosaurs that were ancestors of current birds. The dromaeosaurs also included raptor species recognized for a long and sharp claw used to slice open prey.

Animals within the genus would have been about 3 feet long and lived about 125 million years ago in forests within the northeastern region of China.

Labels: Dinosaur unit, Dinosour age, Dinosour history, Dinosour world, New Dinosaurs

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

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Add Venom to Arsenal of Dinosaurs on the Hunt

Some dinosaurs, it is identified, were ferocious creatures — using claws, jaws, teeth, horns or even tails to subdue their prey.

But did some make use of poison, too?

A group of paleontologists has found evidence to imply that at least one dinosaur, the birdlike raptor Sinornithosaurus, was venomous. It perhaps used its poison to stun small birds or other prey, the researchers write in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Sinornithosaurus, which was about 3 feet long and lived 125 million years ago, was described in 1999 based on fossils discovered at the Liaoning Quarry in northeastern China. The original description noted some unusual features, with grooves in the teeth and a duct running along the base of the teeth.

David A. Burnham of the University of Kansas and Enpu Gong of Northeastern University in Liaoning and colleagues have now interpreted those features, and a cavity in the skull not previously described, as evidence of a venom delivery system similar to that found in some living lizards.

Labels: Dinosaur unit, Dinosour age, Dinosour world, New Dinosaurs

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 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, December 12, 2009

Dinosaurs originated in South America

Bones found out in a New Mexico quarry indicate that the first dinosaurs appeared in what is now South America, with some migrating northward into the US as the continent began to split apart.

The 213-million-year-old fossils of prior unknown carnivorous dinosaur Tawa hallae include several of the best preserved dinosaur skeletons from the Triassic Period.Tawa was about six feet long - the size of a large dog, but with a much longer tail.

"If you have continents splitting separately, you get isolation," said lead author Sterling Nesbit of the University of Texas at Austin. "So when barriers develop, you would anticipate that multiple carnivorous dinosaurs in a region should correspond to a closely related endemic radiation. But that is what we don’t see in early dinosaur evolution."

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

Content on this page requires a newer version of Adobe Flash Player.

Main menus

Dino Gallery

Dinosaur news

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Friday, February 26, 2010

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Monday, February 15, 2010

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Friday, January 29, 2010

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Monday, January 11, 2010

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Latest Dino NEWS