Posts tagged dinosaurs
Dinosaur Swam a Strong Doggy-Paddle
Claw marks on a 100-million-year-old riverbed in China reveal how some dinosaurs doggy-paddled over long distances, scientists say. “What we have are scratches left by the tips of a two-legged dinosaur’s feet,” study researcher Scott Persons, of the University of Alberta, said in a statement. “The dinosaur’s claw marks show it was swimming along in this river and just its tippy toes were touching bottom.”
Birds Descended from Gliding Dinosaurs:
“The oldest known feathered dinosaurs would be Anchiornis (155 million years ago) and Epidexipteryx (between 152 million and 168 million years ago),” Yale University paleontologist Nicholas Longrich told Discovery News. “Feathers seem to have appeared initially for insulation. Basically they start out as down, and later are used to make wings.”
Opalized dinosaur tooth Fossils are normally formed when minerals fill the cellular spaces and crystallize. Opalized fossils, on the other hand, form when bits of silica gel settled into the cracks and fissures of the cellular spaces and form opal. (via)
what sweet tooth!
dude, was “Predator X” not a cool enough name? high standard *scoff*
wait, they’re calling it funkei?! that’s pretty damn cool.
i feel a science rap coming on…
Sea Monster ‘Predator X’ Gets Official Name
It’s official: A giant, marine reptile that roamed the seas roughly 150 million years ago is a new species.
The animal, now named Pliosaurus funkei, spanned about 40 feet (12 meters) and had a massive 6.5-foot-long (2 m) skull with a bite four times as powerful as Tyrannosaurus rex.
In 2006, scientists unearthed two massive pliosaur skeletons in Svalbard, Norway, a string of islands halfway between Europe and the North Pole. The giant creatures, one of which was dubbed Predator X at the time, looked slightly different from other pliosaurs discovered in England and France over the last century and a half.
“They were the top predators of the sea,” said study co-author Patrick Druckenmiller, a paleontologist at the University of Alaska Museum. “They had teeth that would have made a T. rex whimper.”
“It’s not just that we found a new species, we’ve been discovering a whole ecosystem,” Druckenmiller said.
Dome-headed Dinos Battled with Their Heads
Fossilized skulls of dome-headed dinosaurs retain signs of injuries from violent head butting or head shoving.
The dinosaurs, known as pachycephalosaurs (meaning “thick-headed lizards”) have long puzzled paleontologists, who wondered why the heads of these dinosaurs looked to have built-in football helmets.
TWiDN: Highest Skydive Won’t Save Jurassic Park
This week in Discovery News we lift you up with the highest skydive ever, pull you back down when you find out there’s never going to be a Jurassic Park, and then leave you wanting more with an amazing archeological find: Aztec skulls.
i will now have the jurassic park soundtrack in my head the rest of the day.
Jurassic Park Won’t Happen: Dino DNA Dead
In “Jurassic Park,” scientists extract 80-million-year-old dino DNA from the bellies of mosquitoes trapped in amber.
DNA’s half-life at 521 years, meaning half of the DNA bonds would be broken down 521 years after death, and half of the remaining bonds would be decayed another 521 years after that, and so on.
Thus, 65 million year old dinosaur DNA would have decayed to essentially squat.
John Hammond will never say (twice), “We have a T-Rex.”
Dinosaurs May Have Been Warm-Blooded
How warm an animal is has an impact on their metabolism — and how quickly they can grow and have babies.
Feds Take Disputed Dino Fossils into Custody
Homeland Security investigators took custody of crates of fossilized Tarbosaurus bones until a federal case is resolved.
Dinosaur Farts May Have Warmed Ancient Earth
The greenhouse gas methane produced by all sauropods across the globe would have been about 520 million tons per year.
Dinosaurs in Space: A Paleocosmological Rebuttal
mad science
Why Huge Dinosaurs Had Such Tiny Babies
A new study may explain many mysteries about dinosaurs, such as why enormous species had such small offspring, why non-flying dinos went extinct, and why today’s birds fly.
The paper, published in the journal Biology Letters, emphasizes how mammals and birds — but not non-avian dinosaurs — were able to persist beyond a major extinction 65.5 million years ago. The large body size and egg-laying ways of dinos may have helped to do them in, along with hungry mammals.
“The most successful (dinosaurs) were the very large ones that were able to escape the competition trap and replenish their numbers. After the mass extinction, they again tried to evolve large size, but to escape the competition trap they had to become multi-ton animals,” lead author Daryl Codron told Discovery News.
