Business Insider: Paleontology en-us Thu, 20 Jun 2013 06:16:49 -0400 Thu, 20 Jun 2013 06:16:49 -0400 The latest news on Paleontology from Business Insider Business Insider 18 Complicated Scientific Ideas Explained In Plain English Sat, 09 Feb 2013 17:48:11 -0500 Arika Okrent <p><img class="float_right" src="" border="0" alt="Numbers Math Quant Physics Pi" width="400" /></p><p>A few months ago, Randall Munroe of the webcomic <a href="" target="_blank">xkcd</a> published a description of the <a href="" target="_blank">Saturn V rocket</a> using only the 1000 most frequent words in English.</p> <p>Under this restriction, the rocket was called "up-goer five," the command module was "people box," and the liquid hydrogen feed line was "thing that lets in cold wet air to burn."</p> <p>The comic inspired Theo Anderson, a geneticist who supports accessible science education, to build a <a href="" target="_blank">text editor</a> that would force the user to write with only the 1000 most frequent words. He then invited scientists to describe what they do using the editor.</p> <p>Geologists Anne Jefferson and Chris Rowan created the <a class="hidden_link" href="">Tumblr</a> "<a href="" target="_blank">Ten Hundred Words of Science</a>" to collect examples of scientific text rendered into up-goer five speak.</p> <p>From the site, here are examples of up-goer simplified science from 18 different fields.</p><h3>1. Olfactory biology</h3> <img src="" alt="" /> <p><p>"I watch boy flies try to do it with girl flies to see if they really like to do it, or they like boys flies more.</p> <p>"This happens when they can&rsquo;t smell something the girl flies have that makes them want to do it with girl flies or something the boy flies have that makes them not want to do it with boy flies." <em></em></p> <p><em>Jennifer Wang, research technician in a lab studying fruit fly olfactory behavior</em></p></p> <br/><br/><h3>2. Web development</h3> <img src="" alt="" /> <p><p>"Computers are used to share pictures, words, and movies (usually of cats) with other computers.</p> <p>"The computers need to show the cats on boxes with tiny lights in them, but don&rsquo;t know how. People like me tell the computer many words so that it knows how to change the tiny lights to look like a cat.</p> <p>"We try to make the lights change very fast so that you don&rsquo;t have to wait for your cats. Some days the lights are all wrong, and we have to tell the computer more words to make them look like cats again." <em></em></p> <p><em>Brandon Jones, Google Chrome GPU Team</em></p></p> <br/><br/><h3>3. Political economy</h3> <img src="" alt="" /> <p><p>"I try to see if bad people with power let bad people in business do bad things for easy money. Also I try to see if this hurts good people and their money." <em><a href="" target="_blank"></a></em></p> <p><em><a href="" target="_blank">Warren Durrett</a>, political economist</em></p></p> <br/><br/><a href="">See the rest of the story at Business Insider</a> Even The Biggest Dinosaurs Had Teeny Tiny Brains Fri, 25 Jan 2013 11:43:00 -0500 Charles Choi <p><img class="float_right" src="" border="0" alt="Ampelosaurus dinosaur brain size" width="400" /></p><p>An advanced member of the largest group of dinosaurs ever to walk the Earth still had a relatively puny brain, researchers say.</p> <p>The scientists analyzed the skull of 70-million-year-old fossils of the giant dinosaur <em>Ampelosaurus</em>, discovered in 2007 in Cuenca, Spain, in the course of the construction of a high-speed rail track connecting Madrid with Valencia.</p> <p>The reptile was a sauropod, long-necked, long-tailed herbivores that were the largest creatures ever to stride the Earth.</p> <p>More specifically, <em>Ampelosaurus </em>was a kind of <a href="">sauropod</a> known as a titanosaur, many if not all of which had armor-like scales covering their bodies.</p> <p>Sauropod skulls are typically fragile, and few have survived intact enough for scientists to learn much about their brains. By scanning the interior of the skull via CT imaging, the researchers developed a 3-D reconstruction of <em>Ampelosaurus</em>' brain, which was not much bigger than a tennis ball.</p> <p>"This saurian may have reached 15 meters (49 feet) in length; nonetheless its <a href="">brain</a> was not in excess of 8 centimeters (3 inches)," study researcher Fabien Knoll, a paleontologist at Spain's National Museum of Natural Sciences, said in a statement. [<a href="">Gallery: Stunning Illustrations of Dinosaurs</a>]</p> <p>The first sauropods appeared about 160 million years earlier than this fossil.</p> <p>"We don't see much expansion of brain size in this group of animals as they go through time, unlike a lot of mammalian and bird groups, where you see increases in brain size over time," researcher Lawrence Witmer, an anatomist and paleontologist at Ohio University, told LiveScience. "They apparently hit on something and stuck with it &mdash; expansion of brain size over time wasn't a major focus of theirs."</p> <p>For years, scientists have wondered how the <a href="">largest land animals</a> ever lived with such tiny brains. "Maybe we should flip that question on their end &mdash; maybe we shouldn't ask how they could function with tiny brains, but what are many modern animals doing with such ridiculously large brains. Cows may be triple-Einsteins compared to most dinosaurs, but why?" Witmer said.</p> <p>Their computer model also revealed the ampelosaur had a small inner ear.</p> <p class="float_right"><img src="" border="0" alt="Ampelosaurus dinosaur brain size" width="620" /></p> <p>"Part of the inner ear is associated with hearing, so the fact it had a small inner ear means it probably wasn't all that good at hearing airborne sounds," Witmer said. "It probably used a kind of hearing we don't think much about, which depends on sounds transmitted through the ground."</p> <p>The inner ear is also responsible for balance and equilibrium, Witmer said.</p> <p>"Given what we know about its inner ear, <em>Ampelosaurus</em> probably didn't put a real premium on rapid, quick jerky eye or head movements, which makes sense &mdash; these are relatively large, slow-moving, plant-eating animals," he said.</p> <p>Knoll and his colleagues had previously developed 3-D reconstructions of another sauropod, <em>Spinophorosaurus nigeriensis</em>. In contrast to <em>Ampelosaurus</em>, <em>Spinophorosaurus</em> had a fairly developed inner ear.</p> <p>"It is quite enigmatic that sauropods show such a diverse inner ear morphology whereas they have a very <a href="">homogeneous body shape</a>," Knoll said. "More investigation is definitely required."</p> <p>Currently scientists are debating whether sauropods held their heads near the ground, grazing on low vegetation, or high up like giraffes to browse on high leaves. "It could be that learning more about the inner ear could tell us what sauropod neck posture was like," Witmer said.</p> <p>The scientists detailed their findings online Jan. 23 in the journal PLOS ONE.</p><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> Fossil Of 244-Million-Year-Old Giant Carnivore Discovered Tue, 08 Jan 2013 14:43:00 -0500 Charles Choi <p><img class="float_right" src="" border="0" alt="giant ichthyosaur drawing sea monster t-rex of the sea" width="400" /></p><p>Newfound fossils of a giant dolphin-shaped reptilian predator are now shedding light on how the world recovered after the most devastating mass extinction in history, researchers say.</p> <p>This <a href="">prehistoric sea monster</a> could provide information on how the planet might deal with the mass extinction humans are causing now, scientists added.</p> <p>The giant marine predator was at least 28 feet (8.6 meters) long, fossils showed.</p> <p>The carnivore was recovered over a course of three weeks in 2008 from what is today a mountain range in central Nevada, and is now kept at the Field Museum in Chicago.</p> <p>This new species, formally named <em>Thalattoarchon saurophagis</em> &mdash; which means "lizard-eating ruler of the sea" &mdash; was an early member of the <a href="">ichthyosaurs</a>, marine reptiles that evolved from land reptiles just as modern whales did from land mammals. Ichthyosaurs cruised the oceans for 160 million years, apparently going extinct about 90 million years ago, some 25 million years before the age of dinosaurs ended.</p> <p>"They were the most highly adapted of all marine reptiles, acquiring a fishlike shape and <a href="">giving birth to live young</a>," said researcher Martin Sander, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Bonn in Germany.</p> <p><em>Thalattoarchon</em> possessed a massive skull and jaws armed with large teeth with cutting edges used to seize and slice prey. The researchers say it probably could have tackled victims as large as itself or larger. [<a href="">See Images of the Prehistoric Sea Monster</a>]</p> <p><img class="float_left" src="" border="0" alt="skull t-rex of the sea" width="400" />"Our new carnivorous ichthyosaur was a top predator, meaning that it had the same role as killer whales in the sea and <em>Tyrannosaurus</em> or the big cats of today on land," Sander said. "This is the first predator in a long row of predators down to this day. The players have changed, but not the game."</p> <p>Most of the animal was preserved, including the skull &mdash; except the front of the snout &mdash; parts of the fins, and the complete vertebral column up to the tip of the tail. The fossil was christened "Jim" after its discoverer, Jim Holstein, of the Field Museum.</p> <p>The newfound carnivore apparently lived 244 million years ago, just 8 million years after <a href="">the greatest mass extinction</a> in Earth's history, <a href="">a die-off at the end of the Permian period</a> that killed as many as 80 to 96 percent of all ocean species. Relatively small species were the main survivors.</p> <p>"Our 'Jim' was thus the first in a long row of <em>T. rex</em>es of the sea, which is why we named him <em>Thalattoarchon</em>, 'ruler of the seas,'" Sander said.</p> <p>The fact that a giant predator capable of tackling similarly large prey arose so soon after the end-Permian mass extinction reveals that ecosystems recovered rapidly after the die-off.</p> <p>"A top predator is a very good indicator that the ecosystem was complete, because if the highest level in the food web is there, the lower levels must have been there as well. Otherwise it won't work," Sander said.</p> <p>Ichthyosaurs diversified very rapidly. "We hope that by studying this group we can better understand the processes of evolution at the grand scale," researcher Lars Schmitz, an evolutionary biologist at Claremont McKenna College, told LiveScience.</p> <p>The finding could give scientists a sense of what's to come of Earth in the future.</p> <p>"Ecosystem recovery has been a big topic of research for a while, partially because we as humans are causing one of the biggest extinctions right now," Sander said. "People thus have a keen interest in knowing how long it takes to rebuild things once you have destroyed them."</p> <p>The scientists, who were supported by the <a href="" class="hidden_link">National Geographic</a> Society, detailed their findings online today (Jan. 7) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.</p><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> This Gigantic Sea Monster Ruled Ancient Rivers Thu, 20 Dec 2012 10:33:00 -0500 Charles Choi <p><img class="float_right" src="" border="0" alt="sea monster illustration" width="400" /></p><p>Giant reptilian predators with a lifestyle comparable to modern freshwater dolphins may have made their home in ancient rivers, researchers say.</p> <p>While dinosaurs dominated the land, a variety of reptiles reigned in the seas, and included <a href="">dolphin-shaped ichthyosaurs</a> and the <a href="">Loch-Ness-Monster-like plesiosaurs</a>.</p> <p>In the new study, scientists investigated another similar beast &mdash;&nbsp;extinct carnivores known as <a href="">mosasaurs</a>, generally thought of as gigantic finned marine lizards similar and perhaps even related to present-day monitor lizards.</p> <p>The mosasaur fossils were unearthed starting in 1999 from an open-pit mine in the Bakony Hills of western Hungary.</p> <p>The researchers discovered several 84-million-year-old specimens, ranging from small juveniles to adults 20 feet (6 meters) long that had limbs like a land-dwelling lizard, a flattened, crocodile-like skull, and a tail unlike other known members of the mosasaur family.</p> <p>The fossils were discovered in areas that were once freshwater floodplains home to fishes, amphibians, turtles, crocodiles, terrestrial lizards, pterosaurs, dinosaurs and birds. This newfound reptile appears to be the first known freshwater mosasaur, an animal comparable to modern river dolphins now seen in the Amazon, Ganges and Yangtze rivers.</p> <p>The new species is named <em>Pannoniasaurus inexpectatus</em>. "Pannonia" refers to the part of Hungary it was found in, "saurus" means lizard, and "inexpectatus" refers to the unexpected occurrence of this mosasaur in freshwater environments. [<a href="">T. Rex of the Seas: A Mosasaur Gallery</a>]</p> <p>"The size of <em>Pannoniasaurus</em> makes it the largest known predator in the waters of this paleo-environment," said researcher L&aacute;szl&oacute; Mak&aacute;di, a paleontologist at the Hungarian Natural History Museum.</p> <p>The evolutionary history of mosasaurs suggested by these new findings is remarkably similar to that of whales and dolphins, Mak&aacute;di told LiveScience.</p> <p>"To the best of our knowledge, the ancestors of mosasaurs and of some related reptiles moved from land to aquatic realms at least 100 million years ago. Whether these were marine or freshwater environments, it is [uncertain], however some finds in Japan suggests the latter," Mak&aacute;di said.</p> <p>"Then sometime between this event and 85 million years before present &mdash; the age of our locality in Hungary &mdash; some primitive members of the already-marine mosasaurs adapted to freshwater life. <em>Pannoniasaurus</em> represents these. This scenario is very similar to the evolutionary history of cetaceans &mdash; whales, dolphins."</p> <p>The researchers plan to investigate new <em>Pannoniasaurus</em> fossils as they pop up in the hopes of learning more about the beast's biology, such as how it moved and what it might have eaten, Mak&aacute;di said.</p> <p>The scientists detailed their findings online today (Dec. 19) in the journal PLoS ONE.</p><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> Fossil Discovered In The 1930s Could Be The World's Oldest Dinosaur Tue, 04 Dec 2012 19:01:00 -0500 Randy Astaiza <p><img class="float_right" src="" border="0" alt="Dinosaur Nyasasaurus Triassic" width="620" /></p><p>No one really knows when dinosaurs evolved.</p> <p>Hoping to clear up this mystery, researchers have been studying the mysterious fossil of <em>Nyasasaurus parringtoni</em>, which predates all other dinosaurs by 10 million to 15 million years.</p> <p>Their analysis appears today, Dec. 4, in the journal <a href="">Biology Letters</a>. From what they found, this ancient-of-the-ancients finding could be either the world's oldest dinosaur, or at least the closest relative to the dinosaurs ever discovered.</p> <p>"If the newly named <em>Nyasasaurus parringtoni</em> is not the earliest dinosaur, then it is the closest relative found so far," study researcher Sterling Nesbitt, of the University of Washington, said in a <a href="">press release</a>.</p> <p>"<em>Nyasasaurus</em> and its age have important implications regardless of whether this taxon is a dinosaur or the closest relatives of dinosaurs," Nesbitt said. "It establishes that dinosaurs likely evolved earlier than previously expected and refutes the idea that dinosaur diversity burst onto the scene in the Late Triassic, a burst of diversification unseen in any other groups at that time."</p> <p>Nyasasaurus is the size of Labrador retriever with a really long tail, and was discovered in the early 1930s in the Ruhuhu Valley of Southern Tanzania, but wasn't described until now. While the oldest known dinosaurs date back to the Triassic period about 230 million years ago, <em>Nyasasaurus</em> dates back to 243 million years ago, based on the stratified Earth in which it was found.</p> <p>Before the analysis of the <em>Nyasasaurus</em> fossils, the closest relatives to the early dinosaurs were considered to be the silesaurids, a sister-lineage of animals that evolved around the same time as the dinosaurs, but took another evolutionary path. The two lineages have a common ancestor sometime in the early Middle Triassic.</p> <p>Based on an analysis and comparison of the <em>Nyasasaurus</em> bones with those of early dinosaurs and silesaurids, the researchers were able to say that <em>Nyasasaurus</em> is either oldest example of the dinosaur lineage, or the closest relative to dinosaurs in the sister-linage of the silesaurids ever found.</p> <p>The findings suggest that dinosaurs evolved at the latest during the middle Triassic Period, and supports the hypothesis that dinosaurs came from the southern portion of Pangaea, which is now South America, Africa, Madagascar, Antarctica, Australia, and India.</p><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> Dinosaurs Slim Down In New Study Fri, 23 Nov 2012 14:17:28 -0500 Charles Q. Choi <p><img class="float_right" src="" border="0" alt="Brachiosaurus new skin bones model" width="400" /></p><p>The fact that bones have curves has now thrown a curveball into calculations of dinosaur weight, researchers say.</p> <p>New estimates suggest dinosaurs may have been lighter than once thought, scientists explain.</p> <p>With the rare exceptions of fossilized scraps of <a href="">skin</a>, <a href="">feathers</a>, <a href="">bristles</a> and other relatively soft tissues, all that remains of most extinct creatures are their skeletons. One way that investigators seek to learn more about these lost animals is to deduce their weight from their bones.</p> <p>Traditionally, researchers would calculate estimates of dinosaur mass using a leg measurement such as the circumference of leg bones, understanding the relationship between body mass and this circumference in modern animals, "and scaling this up to <a href="">the size of a dinosaur</a>," said researcher Charlotte Brassey, a biomechanist at the University of Manchester in England.</p> <p>For the sake of simplicity, these calculations often model leg bones as columnar beams. However, "as soon as we introduce irregularities into their shape &mdash; the lumps, bumps and curves that are typical of animal bones &mdash; then they no longer behave like columns," Brassey told LiveScience. [<a href="">Gallery: Stunning Illustrations of Dinosaurs</a>]</p> <p><strong>Dinosaur crash tests</strong></p> <p>To overcome any errors that simplifying these curved organic structures might introduce, the scientists developed complex 3-D models of leg bones from eight modern animal species &mdash; the giraffe; the white-tailed eagle; the American flamingo; the European hedgehog; the common murre, a large bird; the rock hyrax, a guinea piglike animal; the Senegal <a href="">bush baby</a>, a type of monkey; and the European polecat, a weasel-like animal.</p> <p><img class="float_left" src="" border="0" alt="dinosaur bones stress" width="400" />When the researchers digitally crash-tested the bones by virtually loading stress on the ends of the bones, they found "the smallest change in the position or direction of loading induced significant amounts of bending," Brassey said.</p> <p>By simplifying leg bones down to basic columns, previous studies could have underestimated the stresses experienced in animal limbs by up to 142 percent.</p> <p>"We've always known that reducing bones down to simple beams was a huge simplification," Brassey said, but it was only after she created the models and compressed them "that I realized how infeasible it was."</p> <p><strong>True dinosaur mass</strong></p> <p>This raises concerns that past equations regarding fossil species, including dinosaurs, could have overestimated the maximum body weight their legs were capable of supporting.</p> <p>"Unfortunately, it's not as simple as saying, 'These equations underestimate stress by 20 percent.' Instead, it depends on the underlying shape of the bone," Brassey said. "A whole-body approach to <a href="">mass prediction in dinosaurs</a> might be preferable."</p> <p>When the researchers carried out such a whole-body approach to mass prediction with <a href="">Giraffatitan</a>, the giant dinosaur previously called <em>Brachiosaurus</em>, they came up with a body mass of 25 tons (23 metric tons), "which is quite a bit lower than some previous predictions," Brassey said. Previous mass estimates for <em>Giraffatitan</em> ranged from 31 to 86 tons (28 to 78 metric tons.)</p> <p>"Other scientists will argue that finite element analysis remains too computationally expensive and time-consuming," Brassey said. "We appreciate this, and have also introduced improvements to the beam equations in our study for those who do not wish to use finite element analysis." (Finite element analysis is a method of breaking down a problem into many small elements that can be solved in relation to one another using complex equations.)</p> <p>The findings another intriguing question: Why are bones curved in the first place?</p> <p>"We've found that it massively increases stress levels when loading the bones in compression, which would be disadvantageous, yet most bones still have some degree of curvature, so evolution hasn't acted to get rid of this curvature," Brassey said.</p> <p>There have been plenty of suggestions as to why the curvature is there &mdash; for instance, to pack muscles around the bones. "But we still haven't really come up with the solution yet," Brassey said.</p> <p>The scientists detailed their findings online Nov. 21 in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.</p> <ul> <li><a href="">Image Gallery: Drawing Dinosaurs</a></li> <li><a href="">Dinosaur Detective: Find Out What You Really Know</a></li> <li><a href="">25 Amazing Ancient Beasts</a></li> </ul><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> Our Ancestors Were Making Deadly Stone-Tipped Spears 500,000 Years Ago Fri, 16 Nov 2012 11:58:00 -0500 Kate Wong <p><img class="float_right" src="" border="0" alt="stone-tipped spears human ancestors" width="400" /></p><p>Human ancestors were fashioning sophisticated hunting weapons half a million years ago.</p> <p>An analysis of stone points from a site in South Africa called Kathu Pan 1 indicates that they were attached to shafts of wood and used as spears.</p> <p>The finding pushes the earliest appearance of hafted multicomponent tools back by some 200,000 years.</p> <p>Previous discoveries had hinted at the potential antiquity of this technology.&nbsp;</p> <p>Based on evidence that both early modern humans and our closest relatives, the Neandertals, made stone-tipped spears, some researchers hypothesized that their common ancestor &mdash; a species called <em>Homo heidelbergensis </em>&ndash; shared this know-how. At half a million years old, the newfound stone points are old enough to be the handiwork of this common ancestor.</p> <p>No wooden shafts were preserved at Kathu Pan 1, but marks on the bases of the stone points and fractures on their tips were consistent with hafting and impact, respectively.</p> <p>Furthermore the edge damage on the ancient points matched up with damage obtained experimentally when new points made from the same raw material as the old ones were hafted onto wooden dowels and thrusted into antelope carcasses. Jayne Wilkins of the University of Toronto and her colleagues describe the work in the November 16 <em>Science.</em></p> <p>These new findings follow on the heels of last week&rsquo;s revelation that <a href="">bow-and-arrow technology</a> is older than previously thought and add to a growing body of evidence that, on the whole, our long-ago predecessors were more innovative than they are often given credit for. Stay tuned &mdash; more on this theme to come.</p><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> Why Dinosaurs Had Wings Fri, 26 Oct 2012 15:46:00 -0400 Nick Collins <p><img class="float_right" src=";maxY=300" border="0" alt="Birds paleontology wings dinosaur fossil" width="481" height="300" /></p><p>The first feathers and wings in nature evolved for decoration rather than flying, according to a new study.</p> <p>Today's birds inherit their wings and feathers from their dinosaur ancestors, which are thought to be the first animals to have grown them millions of years ago.</p> <p>Now a study of new fossils discovered in Canada suggests that feathers and wing-like structures may have originally developed for the purpose of attracting mates and not flying or keeping warm.</p> <p>Experts from Calgary University examined the fossils of one young dinosaur and two adults from the feathered species <em>Ornithomimus edmontonicus</em>, found in 75-million-year-old rock formations.</p> <p>Marks on the remains showed that each of the animals was covered in small, downy feathers but one of the adults also had longer feathers with stiff central shafts protruding from its forelimbs.</p> <p>The fact that the ostrich-like dinosaurs did not develop feathers until adulthood suggests that they were only used once they were sexually mature, perhaps for courtship rituals, to attract partners or for brooding.</p> <p>The wing-like forelimbs and feathers most likely developed further for other purposes such as flying or keeping warm at a later stage of evolution, researchers wrote in the <em>Science</em> journal.</p> <p>Dr Darla Zelenitsky, who led the study, said: "This dinosaur was covered in down-like feathers throughout life, but only older individuals developed larger feathers on the arms, forming wing-like structures.</p> <p>"This pattern differs from that seen in birds, where the wings generally develop very young, soon after hatching."</p> <p>Co-author Fran&ccedil;ois Therrien, of the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, added: "The fact that wing-like forelimbs developed in more mature individuals suggests they were used only later in life, perhaps associated with reproductive behaviors like display or egg brooding."</p> <p>The fossils marked the first discovery of ornithomimid specimens preserved with feathers, and suggest that all dinosaurs of the same family, would have been covered in feathers like many other types of dinosaur.</p> <p>They were also the first of their kind to be found in the Western Hemisphere, with most other feathered dinosaur skeletons limited to sites in China and Germany.</p> <script src=";video_pcode=RvbGU6Z74XE_a3bj4QwRGByhq9h2&amp;embedCode=dpcWljNjoPA55pj0cm1pl4KQItqOsaXd&amp;width=460&amp;deepLinkEmbedCode=dpcWljNjoPA55pj0cm1pl4KQItqOsaXd" type="text/javascript"></script> <p>While previous evidence of feathers had only been found in fine-grained rock, the new fossils were unearther in sandstone, suggesting that many more may be found in rocks deposited by ancient rivers across the world.<img class="nc_pixel" src="" border="0" alt="" width="1" height="1" /></p><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> The Super Badass Velociraptor From Jurassic Park Is Actually Nothing Like That At All Sat, 13 Oct 2012 06:44:00 -0400 Kim Ann Zimmermann <p><img class="float_right" src=";maxY=300" border="0" alt="velociraptor dinosaur skeleton" width="400" height="300" /></p><p>Velociraptor&mdash;"raptor" for short&mdash;roamed the Earth about 75 million to 71 million years ago toward the end of the Cretaceous Period, which was the glory days of the dinosaurs.</p> <p>Velociraptor was named in 1924 by Henry Fairfield Osborn, president of the American Museum of Natural History.</p> <p>He bestowed the name on this dinosaur, which is derived from the Latin words "velox" (swift) and "raptor" (robber or plunderer), as an apt description of its survival tactics.</p> <p>Earlier that year, Osborn had called the dinosaur "Ovoraptor djadochtari" in an article in the popular press, but was later referred to as Velociraptor in scientific journals and papers.</p> <p>There were two species of Velociraptors. Fossils of the V. mongoliensis species have been discovered in Mongolia. A second species, V. osmolskae, was named in 2008 for skull material discovered in Inner Mongolia, China.</p> <p>A member of the dromaeosaurid family, Velociraptor was roughly the size of a small turkey and smaller than others in this family of dinosaurs, which included the Deinonychus and Achillobator. Adult Velociraptors were up to 6.8 feet (2 meters) long, 1.6 feet (0.5 meter) tall at the hip and weighed up to 33 pounds (15 kilograms).</p> <p>Like <a href="">Tyrannosaurus rex</a>, Velociraptor had a prominent role in the "Jurassic Park" movies, but scientists do not believe it resembled anything close to its Hollywood depiction in terms of size or appearance. While the Velociraptor was featherless in the movies, paleontologists discovered quill knobs on a well-preserved forearm from Mongolia in 2007, indicating <a href="">Velociraptor had feathers</a>. The feathers were just for show&mdash;most likely to attract a mate, regulate body temperature and help females protect their eggs&mdash;as Velociraptor did not fly.</p> <p>Although many of its closely related ancestors could fly, Velociraptor is thought to have been grounded due to its weight in proportion to its short forelimbs. Scientists theorize that the <a href="">short forelimbs</a> could have been the evolutionary leftovers of what were once wings.</p> <p>Although it shared many of the same physical characteristics with other dromaeosaurs, Velociraptor's distinguishing features included a long skull that was concave on the upper surface and convex on the lower. It also had a distinctive upturned snout.</p> <p>Its 26 to 28 teeth were widely spaced and serrated, especially toward the back, making them ideal for catching and securing quick-moving prey.</p> <p><a href="">Velociraptor's tail</a> of hard, fused bones was inflexible and not useful as a weapon but it kept him balanced as he ran, hunted and jumped. Scientists estimate that a Velociraptor could jump as high as 10 feet (3 meters) straight in the air.</p> <p>Velociraptor, like other dromaeosaurids, had two large hand-like appendages with <a href="">three curved claws</a>. The claws were used the same way as birds of prey use talons&mdash;as hooks to keep victims from escaping.</p> <p>The jaws were lined with 26 to 28 widely spaced teeth on each side, each more strongly serrated on the back edge than the front. A <a href="">sickle-shaped retractable claw</a> on each hindfoot was likely used to finish the job of killing its prey by piercing its throat.</p> <p>The moniker of "speedy thief" is a bit misleading. The Velociraptor may have been able to run up to roughly 40 mph (60 kph) on its two skinny legs, but it could only sustain that speed for very short bursts.</p> <p><strong>What did Velociraptor eat?</strong></p> <p>A carnivore, it is believed that the Velociraptor survived on mostly small mammals such as reptiles, amphibians, and other smaller, slower dinosaurs.</p> <p>The horned dinosaur Protoceratops, a herbivore, was a <a href="">favorite meal</a> of the Velociraptor, according to paleontologists. It also preyed on other herbivore dinosaurs.</p> <p><strong>Fossil discoveries</strong></p> <p>The first Velociraptor fossil was discovered by Peter Kaisen on the first American Museum of Natural History expedition to the Outer Mongolian <a href="" class="hidden_link">Gobi</a> Desert in August 1923. The skull was crushed but complete and one of the toe claws was also recovered.</p> <p>Velociraptor fossils have been found in the Gobi Desert, which covers southern Mongolia and parts of northern China. In all, about a dozen Velociraptor fossils exist and all known specimens of Velociraptor mongoliensis were discovered in the Djadochta Formation (also spelled Djadokhta), in the Mongolian province of &Ouml;mn&ouml;govi. [<a href="">Image Gallery: Dinosaur Fossils</a>]</p> <p>While North American teams were not permitted in communist Mongolia during the Cold War, Soviet and Polish scientists collaborated with Mongolian scientists on expeditions that recovered several more Velociraptor specimens. On one of these expeditions in 1971, a Polish-Mongolian team discovered the fossils of a <a href="">Velociraptor and a Protoceratops in the midst of battle</a>. They were preserved by a sand dune that collapsed on them.</p> <p>Between 1988 and 1990, a joint Chinese-Canadian team discovered Velociraptor remains in northern China. In 1990, a joint Mongolian-American expedition to the Gobi, led by the American Museum of Natural History and the Mongolian Academy of Sciences, turned up several well-preserved skeletons.</p><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> Complex Brains Existed 520 Million Years Ago In Cockroach Relative Wed, 10 Oct 2012 17:05:00 -0400 Katherine Harmon <p><img class="float_right" src="" border="0" alt="Ancient Arthropod fossil china " width="400" /></p><p>Your everyday <a href="">cockroach</a> might not seem terribly intelligent. But new fossil evidence from 520 million years ago suggests that this insidious insect might have had some surprisingly smart early ancestors.</p> <p>Cockroaches and other insects belong to a group called the <a href="">arthropods</a>, which arose some 540 million years ago. A new Chinese fossil is yielding new insights into how the arthropod <a href="">brain evolved</a> and shows that within the first 20 million years of the group&rsquo;s emergence, the arthropod brain had already become surprisingly advanced. <a href="">The new findings</a> are based on a three-inch-long fossil arthropod known as <em>Fuxianhuia protensa,</em> found in what is now China&rsquo;s Yunnan Province and were described online October 10 in <em>Nature</em> (<em>Scientific American</em> is part of Nature Publishing Group).</p> <p>&ldquo;The fossil provides the most convincing, and certainly the oldest, description of nervous-system tissue in a fossil arthropod,&rdquo; Graham Budd, of Uppsala University&rsquo;s Department of Earth Sciences, wrote in an accompanying essay published in the same issue of <em>Nature</em>. The evidence for this brain material consists of &ldquo;dark, iron-rich mineral traces,&rdquo; Budd noted, which can be interpreted as sections of a <a href="">multi-part brain</a>.</p> <p><em>Fuxianhuia</em>&lsquo;s body is understandably primitive, which is par for the prehistoric course, given that it lived some 290 million years before the dinosaurs emerged. But the brain architecture was a surprise. After examining the fossil under a dissecting microscope, the researchers found that this animal had three distinct, closely situated brain sections. It also has three optic neuropils, which are connected by nerve fibers. The well-preserved fossil even shows hints of linking fibers that connected these separate areas. &ldquo;No one expected such an advanced brain would have evolved so early in the history of multicellular animals,&rdquo; Nicholas Strausfeld, a neurobiologist at the University of Arizona and co-author on the new paper, said in a prepared statement.</p> <p><em><img class="float_left" src="" border="0" alt="Ancient Arthropod fossil china brain" width="400" /></em>These findings might seem clear cut, but they have been made in &ldquo;one of the most controversial and interesting arthropod species to boot, <em>Fuxianhuia</em>,&rdquo; Budd noted.&nbsp;<em>Fuxianhuia</em> has typically been classified as an early arthropod that was probably close to the common ancestor of all other hard-bodied invertebrates&mdash;of which there are more than 1.1 million described extant species. But <a href="">the brain of this early creature</a> bears a striking similarity to the brains of common bugs (the group that includes insects and arachnids) and malacostracans, (the group that includes crabs and <a href="">lobsters</a>), which have the three main brain sections and the connected optic neuropils. Another major group of arthropods, however, called the branchiopods (which includes brine shrimp and <em><a href="">Daphnia water fleas</a></em>) that emerged later, have much simpler brains with only two optic neuropils that are not connected like those in <em>Fuxianhuia</em>.</p> <p>Strausfeld and his colleagues suggest that the new finding points to a malacostracan-type origin for modern day insects&mdash;rather than an ancestral primitive brain that more closely resembled that of <em>Daphnia</em>. If that is the case, &ldquo;it is remarkable how constant the ground pattern of the nervous system has remained,&rdquo; Strausfeld said. This <a href="">early complexity</a>&mdash;especially in the optic area&mdash;could help to explain the stunning diversity of visual abilities in modern day relatives, such as compound eye vision.</p> <p>Another possibility, albeit a controversial one, is that <em>Fuxianhuia</em> is, indeed, ancestral to all of these groups but the brains of those in the branchiopods actually simplified over time. &ldquo;Either way,&rdquo; Budd noted, the findings &ldquo;will prompt hasty reexamination of many old specimens, and quite possibly some recasting of recent theories.&rdquo;</p><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> These Vegetarian Dinosaurs Could Probably Out-Chew An Elephant Sat, 06 Oct 2012 12:08:00 -0400 Charles Choi <p><img class="float_right" src="" border="0" alt="Dinosaur teeth" width="400" /></p><p>Giant plant-eating dinosaurs may have been champion chewers up there with the likes of mammals such as horses, bison or elephants, researchers say.</p> <p>The finding could help explain why <a href="">these behemoths</a> dominated the plains of Europe, Asia and North America during the last part of the age of dinosaurs, scientists added.</p> <p>Duck-billed herbivores called hadrosaurids thundered across the world during the Late Cretaceous period, dating about 65 million to 100 million years ago. They <a href="">grazed on horsetails</a>, ferns and primitive flowering plants on the ground, and browsed on Earth's conifers.</p> <p>The plants these dinosaurs fed on were tough and covered with hard, tooth-gouging particles. Hadrosaurids <a href="">chewed their meals</a> with teeth that possessed flattened grinding surfaces much like those of horses and bison. Some hadrosaurids sported up to 1,400 of these teeth, and were continually replacing them.</p> <p>"They were like walking pulp mills &mdash; I suspect they could eat any kind of plant they ran into," said researcher Gregory Erickson, a paleobiologist at Florida State University in Tallahassee.</p> <p>The chewing teeth of mammals can be relatively complex, possessing four major types of tissue of varying hardness. These combinations help keep the grinding ridges and valleys on a tooth's surface from wearing and breaking down. In contrast, most reptile teeth are comparably simple, with only two kinds of tissue &mdash; hard enamel and a softer bone-like material. [<a href="">Paleo-Art: Stunning Dinosaur Illustrations</a>]</p> <p>"It didn't make sense to me that the complex surfaces we see in hadrosaur teeth could be done with the simple tooth tissues reptiles are supposed to have," Erickson said.</p> <p>Now researchers find hadrosaurid teeth were far more complex than those of known reptiles &mdash; they were composed of six different types of tissue.</p> <p>"They were as sophisticated, if not more sophisticated, than any known mammal," Erickson told LiveScience.</p> <p>After analyzing fossil hadrosaurid teeth with microscopy and X-rays and by testing them with diamond-tipped probes, the researchers found the way tissues were distributed varied substantially within each tooth. This would allow a single tooth to assume different forms and functions as the tooth changed over time, exposing different surfaces as the teeth migrated across the chewing surfaces in the mouths of the dinosaurs over time.</p> <p>The complexity of hadrosaurid teeth would have proved excellent tools for handling tough, gritty plants. This could explain why this group of dinosaurs was so common.</p> <p>Now Erickson and his colleagues plan to use these methods to investigate teeth from both extinct and living reptile and mammal species to see how these groups diversified in response to their diet.</p> <p>"We still don't have a good understanding even of <a href="">how horse teeth work</a>," Erickson said.</p> <p>The scientists detail their findings in tomorrow's (Oct. 5) issue of the journal Science.</p><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> A Russian Boy Stumbled Across A 30,000 Year Old Woolly Mammoth Carcass Fri, 05 Oct 2012 14:55:00 -0400 Faine Greenwood <p><img class="float_right" src="" border="0" alt="Wooly Mammoth" /></p><p>For a long-extinct Ice Age species, mammoths have been making a lot of news lately&mdash;and the remarkable, hairy finds simply keep on coming.</p> <p>An 11-year-old Russian boy has reportedly stumbled upon the 30,000 year old carcass of one of the colossal beasts on the Tamir Peninsula, in a serendipitous scientific discovery.</p> <p>The carcass is already considered one of the most impressive finds in the history of Ice Age paleontology.<a href=""> You can see photos here, at; </a></p> <p>The boy, who hails from the Krasnoyarsk region of Russia, apparently stumbled upon the carcass and told his parents, who quickly alerted scientists, <a href="">reports the Moscow Times. </a></p> <p><a href="">The half-ton mammoth has retained </a>some of its organs, and there are also scraps of flesh and fur, which scientists will doubtless find immensely useful for research purposes.</p> <p>The mammoth carcass is reportedly the best-preserved such find since 1901, <a href=";pg=PA52&amp;lpg=PA52&amp;dq=beresovka+mammoth&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=vcymKO-Rvc&amp;sig=SUNEAZFPmYWjrU5YWpf0ilyPGAE&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=h-FtUMq5O4rniALyzoHwDg&amp;ved=0CCIQ6AEwATgK#v=onepage&amp;q=beresovka%20mammoth&amp;f=false">when the famous Beresovka Mammoth</a> was found by a local deer hunter in a more southerly portion of the Krasnoyarsk region.</p> <p>The Beresovka specimen was actually stuffed and is preserved in St Petersburg - <a href="">you can see a photo here. </a>No word yet on whether the new mammoth find will be displayed to the public in the near future.</p> <p>The remarkably well preserved corpse may also give new hope to those hoping to clone a fresh, new wooly mammoth or two from preserved DNA.</p> <p><a href="">In September, Russian scientists </a>found a frozen mammoth specimen in Russia's Yakutia region, on the Arctic coast&mdash;although it appears that that specimen is not as intact as the newest find.</p> <p>It's not entirely clear how long wooly mammoths survived or what exactly killed them off, <a href="">although some estimate that the last </a>died out around 4,000 years ago, likely in Siberia and on certain Siberian islands.</p><p><a href="">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> See The Five Freakiest Dinosaurs Ever Dug Up Thu, 04 Oct 2012 12:00:00 -0400 The Week <p><img class="float_right" src="" border="0" alt="Freaky dinosaur Linhenykus" width="400" /></p><p>When we think about dinosaurs, it's typically hulking beasts like the fearsome <em>Tyrannosaurus rex</em> and the noble triceratops that come to mind.</p> <p>But the era of giant lizards spanned hundreds of millions of years, and for every popular dino&nbsp;that made a cameo in <em>Jurassic Park</em>, there are dozens of little-celebrated, freakishly bizarre creatures with feathers, fingers, and other evolutionary idiosyncrasies.</p> <p>Here, five of the strangest dinosaurs paleontologists have unearthed.</p><h3>1. The cross between a porcupine and a parrot</h3> <img src="" alt="" /> <p><p>The 2-foot-long <em>Pegomastax </em><em>africanu</em>s, a peculiar little beast that lived 200 million years ago, had pig-like fangs, a parrot-like beak, and was covered in porcupine-like quills that made it look like a "<a href="">strange little bird</a>." Despite its pointy teeth, recent research suggests it subsisted primarily on plants, baring its fangs primarily for self-defense. If the animal were alive, <a href="">says study author Paul Sereno</a>, "it would be a nice pet &mdash; if you could train it not to nip you."</p></p> <br/><br/><h3>2. The pot-bellied dinosaur covered in feathers</h3> <img src="" alt="" /> <p><p><em>Therizinosaur</em> isn't a household name, <a href="">says Brian Switek at <em>Smithsonian Magazine</em></a>. But they are "some of the strangest dinosaurs ever found." The "long-necked, pot-bellied omnivores" possessed unusually long claws, making them more odd than frightening. "The image is wholly different from the dinosaurs I first met as a kid," says Switek. "Perfect for a creature that has pushed the boundaries of what we think a dinosaur is."</p></p> <br/><br/><h3>3. The cat-sized cross between a mammal and dinosaur</h3> <img src="" alt="" /> <p><p>The 20-inch long <em>Thrinaxodon</em> wandered the Woodlands of Africa 250 million years ago, sporting a "<a href="">cat-like profile</a>" and, quite possibly, fur. It belonged to a group of early Triassic creatures that experts say bridged the gap between dinosaurs and mammals, and could itself have been an ancient ancestor of modern-day mammals.</p></p> <br/><br/><a href="">See the rest of the story at Business Insider</a>