Dinosaurs - still with us
…In most cases, the dinosaurs would have needed lips to protect their teeth, as the majority of them weren't water dwelling creatures. They would have had scaly lips, just like reptiles such as the monitor lizard.
“It’s also important to remember that teeth would have been partially covered by gums. If we look at where the enamel stops, we can see that a substantial portion of the teeth would be hidden in the gums. The teeth would have appeared much smaller on a living animal." Reisz concluded: “In popular culture, we imagine dinosaurs as more ferocious-looking, but that is not the case.”…
… found in present-day Utah. …new species of dinosaur— a large, horned, herbivorous creature that could have been anywhere from 19 to 26 feet long and weighed in at one to two tons. …named Machairoceratops cronusi, … thought to have lived about 77 million years ago.…
Today we take the appearance of dinosaurs for granted, but it’s taken centuries of careful study to learn how to accurately read the clues in the fossil record.… Did dinosaurs have lips? This is something we still don’t know, and is an area of current debate.…
…"We stumbled on these things completely by chance," says Susannah Maidment of Imperial College London, whose team was trying to study bone fossilisation by cutting out tiny fragments of fossils.
Instead, they found blood-like cells and collagen from 75-million-year-old dinosaur fossils – 10 million years before T. rex appeared.
Although the cells are unlikely to contain DNA, those extracted from better preserved fossils using the same technique may do so, she says. …
Scientists say they've discovered Washington state's first dinosaur fossil… 80 million-year-old bone fragment probably belonged to an older, smaller cousin of the Tyrannosaurus rex. …Researchers have been examining the nearly 17-inch-long, 9-inch-wide fragment for about three years. They say it probably came from a 3-foot thigh bone.…
Among newly discovered, 160-million-year-old, fossils in northeastern China is one of Yi qi (“Yi” meaning “wing” and “qi” meaning “strange”), a pigeon-sized dinosaur without feathered wings. Instead, Yi qi has a long bone extending from the wrist, which resembles the structure of bat wings. …completely new to dinosaurs, and only by comparing it to bats, flying squirrels and the like could the researchers, published in Nature, even guess as to its function.…
Fossil hunters in Chile have unearthed the remains of a bizarre Jurassic dinosaur that combined a curious mixture of features from different prehistoric animals. The evolutionary muddle of a beast grew to the size of a small horse and was the most abundant animal to be found 145 million years ago, in what is now the Aysén region of Patagonia. … one of the most remarkable dinosaur finds of the past 20 years, and promises to cause plenty of headaches for paleontologists hoping to place the animal in the dinosaur family tree. … “I don’t know how the evolution of dinosaurs produced this kind of animal, what kind of ecological pressures must have been at work…” a horny beak, flatter teeth for chomping plants, a small head and slender neck. “It’s a therapod that turned vegetarian….”
…found seven partial skeletons, amounting to around 150 bones…. "Given the size of these bones, which surpass any of the previously known giant animals, the new dinosaur is the largest animal known that walked on Earth…. Its length, from its head to the tip of its tail, was 40m. Standing with its neck up, it was about 20m high - equal to a seven-storey building." …lived in the forests of Patagonia between 95 and 100 million years ago….
Pterodaustro guinazui… lived about 100 million years ago… had about 1,000 teeth… had a diet similar to that of flamingos: small crustaceans like brine shrimp… flamingos do get their pink color from what they eat…
a new tyrannosaur species in northeastern China that lived 60 million years before T. rex. The fossil record preserved remains of fluffy down, making it the largest feathered dinosaur ever found.
If a T. rex relative had feathers, why not T. rex? Scientists said the evidence is trending in that direction
[h/t Ace of Spades]
Scientists have discovered that the original statistical model used to calculate dinosaur mass is flawed, suggesting dinosaurs have been oversized.... implications for numerous theories about the biology of dinosaurs, ranging from their energy metabolism to their food requirements and to their modes of locomotion....
skull characteristics of a new species of parrot-beaked dinosaur and its associated gizzard stones indicate that the animal fed on nuts and/or seeds. These characteristics present the first solid evidence of nut-eating in any dinosaur.
an artist and illustrator specialising in prehistoric animals; Mesozoic reptiles mostly, and pterosaurs in particular.
Ancient protein dating back 80 million years to the Cretaceous geologic period has been preserved in bone fragments and soft tissues of a hadrosaur, or duck-billed dinosaur....
What do you do when you have a fossil quarry that has yielded some of the most important and rarest of dinosaur fossils in North America, but the fossil-bearing layer of rock is tilted at 70 degrees and there is so much rock that not even jackhammers can get you to the fossils any longer? ... Over several days these skilled employees, using their expertise with explosives, blew away the rock covering the fossils and exposed a significant amount of the fossil-bearing layer so that excavation can begin again this year. Without their talents, scientifically important fossils would have remained locked underground in their stony mausoleum.....
Seventy-seven million years later, scientific detective work conducted by University of Calgary and Royal Tyrrell Museum researchers used this unique fossil nest and eggs to learn more about how nest building, brooding and eggs evolved. But there is a big unresolved question: Who was the egg-layer?
Top 25 Blog-Heap-o'Links Headers
Mindful Webworks for art's own sake (and some for fun). The art and wonder of it all await your scrutiny.
Webworks dedicated to getting people and property from here to there in an intelligent and automated way, and all the history and means of transportation.
Webworks directly concerning (as opposed to merely inspired by) the Urantia Papers.
Subscribe to Urantiana
Webworks regarding human liberties and similar social and legal fundamentals.
Presented in illustrated documentary, what we know of his story, and the history of our community he inspired.
LEGAL AND SAFE! But your mother might not approve.