Stories tagged dinosaurs
Tyrannosaurs rex: Jane, the Burpee Museum's T-rex looms out of the darkness in Rockford, IL.
Courtesy Mark RyanThree years ago, the world of vertebrate paleontology was abuzz with news of soft tissue discovered inside the fossilized femur of a Tyrannosaurus rex dug up in Montana. The discovery resulted in several published papers and science-based television shows on the subject.
Now a new study published on PloS One claims the supposedly 64 million-year-old “dino tissue” may have been nothing more than some slime that had infiltrated the fossil bone sometime around 1960.
Mary Schweitzer, the paleontologist who made the original claim for dinosaur soft tissue isn’t very happy about the new study, and is defending her research team’s original analysis. Read about the controversy here, and stay tuned for more fireworks.
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Tarbosaurus
Courtesy BogdanovJapanese and Mongolian scientists have successfully recovered the complete skeleton of a Tarbosaurus (related to the giant carnivorous Tyrannosaurus) from a chunk of sandstone they dug up in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia.
The dinosaur came from a geological layer created about 70 million years ago in the late Cretaceous period.
The almost complete young dinosaur find will be useful toward discovering more about the growth and development of dinosaurs.
Read more and view a photo at USA Today.
Signs of color preserved in stone?: Fossil feather from Brazil (left) displays similarities with recent woodpecker feather (right)
Courtesy J.Vinther/YaleResearchers at Yale University are reporting the discovery of pigmentation within the fossilize feather from a bird or dinosaur. Using a powerful electron microscope, paleobiologist Jakob Vinther and his team claim that particles seen in the 100-million-year-old fossil appear to be similar to those seen in the feathers of living birds. This could mean that color - a characteristic long-thought lost in the fossil record - could someday be determined from the remains of pigment.
Vinther’s colleagues included Yale paleontologist Derek E. G. Briggs and Yale ornithologist Richard O. Prum. The results of their study will appear in an upcoming issue of Biology Letters. The research shows that dark stripes in the Cretaceous-aged feather display many similarities to the make-up of black melanin particles found in modern bird feathers. Melanin compounds determine color in plants and animals, a trait useful for such things as camouflage, species identification, and courtship display. In humans, melanin colors our skin and also protects us from overexposure to sunlight.
For a long time, the dark granules seen in fossilized feathers were thought to be the carbon remains of bacteria that had worked at decomposing the organism prior to fossilization. But advances in electron microscope technology have given scientists a closer - and clearer – picture of the feather’s structure, and instead show them to be fossilized melanosomes containing melanin pigment.
"Feather melanin is responsible for rusty-red to jet-black colors and a regular ordering of melanin even produces glossy iridescence,” Vinther said. “Understanding these organic remains in fossil feathers also demonstrates that melanin can resist decay for millions of years."
Under the scope, the lighter bands of the fossilized feather showed only the rock matrix, while the darker bands displayed traces of residue closely resembling the organic compounds found in the feathers of modern birds.
“You wouldn’t expect bacteria to be aligned according to the orientation of the feathers,” said Vinther.
Another bird fossil showed similar organic traces in the feathers surrounding its skull. The 55-million-year-old fossil from Denmark also preserved an organic imprint of the eye that showed structures similar to the melanosomes found in eyes of modern birds.
Nanostructure studies could one day provide paleontologists with evidence of colors other than just black and gray tones, and not just in fossil feathers. Vinther figures other organic remains such as fur from prehistoric mammals or fossil skin impressions from dinosaurs could prove to be the remains of the melanin.
LINKS
ScienceNews story
Yale website story
Cosmos magazine website story
Melansome info
Fossil Cabin Museum: Como Bluff is located just over the ridge seen in the background.
Courtesy Mark RyanOut on the High Plains of Wyoming about 50 miles northwest of Laramie sets one of the wackiest constructions in the world, a museum built entirely from fossilized dinosaur bones!
Known today as Fossil Cabin Museum, the structure sets smack dab on the border of Carbon and Albany counties near the nose-end of the Como Bluff anticline. It still operates as a museum, but access to it is spotty, depending on whether anyone’s around to let you in.
Fossil Cabin Museum wall: Fragments of 150 million year-old dinosaur bones make up the museum's exterior walls.
Courtesy Mark RyanThe oddity was built using 5,796 dinosaur bones fragments, more than 50 tons of them! At the time of construction traffic flowing past the site was heavy with motorists on their way east or west along Highway 30, the popular Lincoln Highway route.
Thomas Boylan, the guy who put together this strange museum, came to Wyoming from California, and established a homestead on the site in 1902. Boylan’s land was within walking distance of Como Bluff, an historic dinosaur graveyard from which 30 years before many of the first Jurassic-aged dinosaurs were dug up and introduced to the world. Boylan spent a lot of time hunting for dinosaur fossils and after 15 years had amassed quite a collection bone fragments. His dream was to construct an entire skeleton out of them.
“At first I planned to get enough of them together to mount a complete dinosaur skeleton, however erecting such a skeleton is a long and costly task for an individual to undertake so I abandoned the idea and proceeded to use them the best I could,” Boylan said.
Fossil Cabin postcard c. 1936
Courtesy Mark Ryan collectionCost and time weren’t the only reasons Boylan abandoned his dream. After consulting with paleontologists at the University of Wyoming Geological Museum he also learned that although he certainly had a boatload of dinosaur bones, they were from a large variety of species and didn’t amount to an entire skeleton of any one creature. Whatever the case, he and his son Edward (who for a time would serve as the museum’s curator) spent late 1932 and early 1933 constructing the building out of his collection.
Fossil Cabin postcard c. 1936
Courtesy Mark Ryan collectionNearby, they also built a residential home that - while not constructed out of dinosaur bones - was intentionally built to approximate the length of a Diplodocus in order to give visitors an idea of the size of one of the larger creatures extracted from the nearby dinosaur pits. Boylan also operated a service station alongside the roadside attraction, filling visitors’ cars with gasoline, as his museum filled their heads with science.
In 1938, Robert Ripley of “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” fame mentioned the museum in his syndicated newspaper feature calling it "The Oldest Cabin in the World". But the museum has gone by several other names including Fossil Museum, Dinosaurium, Creation Museum, and Dinosaur House. Boylan often referred to it as “The Building That Used to Walk”.
Fossil Cabin Museum entry
Courtesy Mark RyanThe Boylans operated the roadside exhibit throughout the 30s and 40s, playing host to tourists and the occasional paleontologist revisiting the historic fossil fields. After Tom died in 1947, his wife Grayce continued the operation until the new interstate was built through Laramie in the late 1960s and tourist traffic past the museum all but disappeared. Nearby towns like Bosler, Rock River and Medicine Bow faded as well. In 1974, Mrs. Boylan sold all the property to Paul and Jodie Fultz, who tried to keep the attraction going, but the Fossil Cabin’s glory days had passed.
I’ve visited the area a few times and only once was anyone around to let me inside the museum. It looked closed, but I walked up to the nearby residence and knocked on a door framed by two large sauropod femurs. A young kid appeared, and was kind enough to allow me inside the museum for a $2 admission fee. As I “toured” the museum, he explained in a western drawl how he and his dad were living on the property, watching over it for the owner who had moved to Medicine Bow. They worked mainly as hunting guides for animals a little more current than what made up the museum’s exterior walls. 
Fossil Cabin Museum information sign: Brontosaurus was first named for a specimen discovered at Como Bluff.
Courtesy Mark RyanThe displays inside had seen better days, and I regret not taking photographs. A couple dusty glass cases held some large dinosaur bones, minerals, and marine fossils found around Como. A few faded and out-of-date science posters hung in tatters on the otherwise bare walls. Generally, it was a shambles. Which is too bad, because it could be a very nice little museum, and probably was in its time.
If anyone’s interested, the property is currently for sale. I know if I won the lottery it’d be the first thing I’d buy. With a little paint and wallpaper, and a pullout bed or futon, it’d make a nifty summer cabin for visits to Wyoming. Or a pleasant addition to the Dinos and Fossil gallery here at the Science Museum of Minnesota.
I should mention that this building is not the first of its kind. Bone Cabin Quarry, a rich dinosaur fossil site located along the Little Medicine river about 10 miles north of Como Bluff, was named after a sheepherder’s cabin built in the late 1800s. The cabin’s foundation had been created from the abundant dinosaur bones found in the region.
What would the perfect museum artifact be? Maybe a mummified dinosaur. I know here at SMM to of our most popular exhibit areas are the dinos and our mummy. Well, paleontologists in Montana have uncovered a mummified dinosaur. A full video report is available here. The mummified duck-bill dino actually still has mummified food in its digestive tract and much of its skin left on, giving us much more solid information about dinosaur soft-tissue matters. The dinosaur, named Leonardo, goes on exhibit in Houston this fall.
First dinosaur trackway found on Arabian Peninsula
in Earth and Space Science, Life Science, Diversity of Organisms, and Interdependence of Life
Ornithopod trackway in Yemen
Courtesy Nancy StevensThe first dinosaur tracks discovered on the Arabian Peninsula are presenting science with new information about dinosaur herding behavior, and the global patterns of their evolution.
A series of parallel tracks made by 11 individual sauropods and a set of ornithopod footprints cutting across them was discovered about 28 miles north of Sana'a, the capitol of the Republic of Yemen. The sauropod footprints show varying sizes meaning the trackway was probably made by a herd of both adults and their smaller offspring.
"Smaller individuals had shorter stride lengths, and took more steps to keep up with the larger individuals," said Nancy Stevens, an assistant professor of paleontology at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. Stevens co-authored the paper with Anne Schulp, a paleontologist at the Netherland’s University of Maastricht. The paper can be found online at PloS ONE.
A sauropod is one those huge, long-necked, small-headed herbivores with an equally long tail. When viewed from the side, sauropods remind you of a gigantic snake with tree-trunk legs digesting an elephant-sized meal. An ornithopod, on the other hand, is a smaller (about the size of a school bus!) plant-eater that walked on two legs (bipedal).
The dinosaurs produced the tracks along the shoreline of an ancient waterway that existed during the Jurassic Period nearly 150 million years ago. "This mudflat would have been like a highway for them, with little tree cover," Anne Schulp said.
Fossils related to these same types of dinosaurs -- and of the same age -- have been found elsewhere in eastern Africa, adding to the contention that they co-existed when the Arabian Peninsula was fully connected to the African continent. Today, the Red Sea separates the two landmasses.
Ichnology is the study of trace fossils, which can be anything created by an animal while it was alive. These include footprints, coprolites (fossil dung), skin impressions, bite marks, signs of burrowing, etc. Non-organic evidence such as ripple marks and raindrops are sometimes included in the study. Footprints are sometimes referred to as ichnites.
By the way, a new exhibit in the Dinosaurs and Fossils gallery here at the Science Museum of Minnesota displays some trackways from the Coconino Formation in Northern Arizona. The tracks are believed to have been preserved in sandstone by a four-legged mammal-like reptile that lived some 260 million years ago during the Permian period. We’ve also covered the science of Ichnology earlier in these pages.
Researchers take tracksite measurements
Courtesy Nancy StevensBack on the Arabian Peninsula, careful measurements were taken of each track and it’s relationship to nearby footprints. Data from print dimensions and stride length can reveal much about the size and speed of the track maker. The sauropod adults were estimated to have reached 10 to 13 feet in height at the hips and shoulders. The longest sauropod trackway, composed of 16 individual prints measured about 16 meters (about 53 feet). Stevens and Schulp believe it could extend even further once the northern end of the trackway’s limestone layer is exposed.
"We have just scratched the surface," Dr. Schulp said. "We're pretty sure there's a lot more to discover out there."
LINKS
Scientific American website story
Glen Kuban’s Ichnology site
Dinosaur Tracking Research Group
Dinosaurs coming to St. Paul
in Earth and Space Science, Diversity of Organisms, Earth Structure and Processes, and History and Nature of Science
Goodness, gracious, here they come!: No reason to panic. Just think of them as giant parakeets that could swallow you whole.
Courtesy Mark RyanNo, this isn’t about the herds of conventioneers descending upon the Saintly City for the Republican National Convention next fall. That would be disrespectful. I’m talking about the dinosaurs coming in June for five days at the Xcel Energy Center in a show called “Walking with Dinosaurs: The Live Experience“.
These aren't the same dinos that overran the Twin Cities last year during the Science Museum's 100th anniversary celebration. These latest dinosaurs are from Immersion Edutainment, an Australian company that uses a mix of computers, hydraulics, puppets, and actors to create a live show based on the highly acclaimed BBC television series by the same name.
And just in case you’re worried, these aren’t going to be cuddly and lame purple dinosaurs dancing about on ice, or jerky, hard-cased theme park animatronics, or even colorful plaster statues– no siree Bob – these are going to be scientifically accurate Mesozoic behemoths complete with life-like flexible skin, rippling muscles, swinging tails, snapping jaws, and heart-pounding sound-effects that will shake your popcorn right out of its box.
During the 90-minute show, a “paleontologist” serves as ringmaster and narrator, offering scientific insights into the world of these fantastic creatures. Geological concepts such as plate tectonics and continental drift help put things in perspective, as ten dinosaur species are presented in their proper order from the late Triassic to the late Cretaceous, including two enormous Brachiosaurs and everyone’s favorite, Tyrannosaurus rex. This is going to be one really BIG show!
Music and video projection will add to the dramatic content of the presentation and the program is deemed appropriate for all ages although some scenes could be a bit too intense for some very small kids.
Hoards of Australians evidently flocked to this thing when it toured sports arenas there. Performances here run June 11-15 at the Xcel Energy Center. And if 90 minutes of dinosaurs running amok aren’t enough for you, after the show, you can scoot across the street to the Science Museum and see the remains of some real dinosaurs. What could be better than that?
All the information you need about “Walking with Dinosaurs: The Live Experience” can be found at the Immersion Edutainment website.
That's one horny dinosaur, alright: Teen-aged triceratopses may have jousted to impress the ladies.
Courtesy wallyg
Scientists digging in central Mexico have uncovered the bones of a previously unknown dinosaur. The species, not yet named, had three horns and a massive neck frill, similar to the familiar Triceratops. The scientists peculate that these dinosaurs used their neck frills for display, to attract mates. Adolescent males may have used their horns in head-butting contests, like some modern sheep do, to establish dominance.
Well I'll be!: A dinosaur on a bus.
Courtesy T-Oh! & MattPeruvian officials discovered a 19-pound dinosaur jaw bone the cargo hold of a bus this week.
The bone appears to be from a triceratops, or one of its relatives, although such dinosaurs have never been found in Peru before.
More perplexing to scientists, however, is the prospect of a population of dinosaurs living and dying in a bus's cargo area.
Edmontosaurus: Not an actual Edmontosaurus. But the real one that's being dug up will help us learn how accurate this one is.
Courtesy russilwvongResearchers at North Dakota’s state museum are unearthing a 65-million-year-old rock, using tiny brushes and chisels to uncover a nearly complete dinosaur fossil, with skin and all.
Pretty sweet.
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