Stories tagged fossils
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
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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.
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.
A couple of "very large" bats: And do you know what they're thinking about? They're thinking about watching you when you're asleep, and maybe climbing into your hair.
Courtesy robotbreederA recent issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology reports the discovery of half a dozen new (that is to say extinct) species of “giant” fossilized bats in Africa. The bats date from the Eocene, about 35 million years ago, and will no doubt shed great light on bat evolution. For instance, it has been thought that the northern hemisphere was the site of most bat evolution—that bat species went through the greatest diversification only after reaching the northern hemisphere—and now it seems that bats evolved into their modern forms in Africa before dispersing across the world.
The six new fossils are some of the most recent products of more than 25 years of fieldwork in Africa, and the largest of them would have weighed just less than half a pound in life; it was a “giant.”
The discovery and associated press release leads me to a single, important conclusion: people toss around the term “giant” way too freely. I realize that it’s something of a relative term (too be fair, the paleontologist said that the fossil was a “giant among bats”), but I think things have simply gone too far. Nothing that weighs less than half a pound is “giant” (unless it’s, like, a paperclip. That would be a pretty big paperclip), and some guidelines need to be set forth. I propose the following as a starting point, and I would appreciate additional points from readers.
1)Objects that are normally small (equal to or lesser than a 30 pound bag of dog food), to obtain the descriptor of “giant,” must be equal to in size or larger than a dog. Which dog? My brother’s dog, Morgan.
2)Objects normally of normal size (“normal size” being defined as a mass differing from my own by no more than forty pounds) may be called “giant” only if they exceed said forty pounds, or are of a “normal” mass, but are physically large enough to make me uncomfortable.
3)For food items to be accurately termed “giant” they must be at least twice their normal size, and potentially pose a physical threat to nearby humans. For example, while I might be able to choke on a normal sized hamburger in the course of chewing and swallowing, a truly “giant” hamburger would have to pose a suffocation risk while still outside of my mouth. A food item like a pancake, which could cause suffocation at its normal size, would then have to be large enough to, say, weigh a body down to the point where the victim could no longer reach another source of food or water (obviously a dangerous situation).
4)For monsters, a creature must be large enough to cause significant structural damage to a building of no less than three stories. So something like Bigfoot, while certainly still “big,” is not technically “giant.” At least not until it obtains demolition tools—who would argue with it then?
“Giant” rules aside, I’m still not sure that this Eocene fossil quite qualifies, even as a “giant among bats.” Flying Foxes, for instance, can achieve a wingspan of nearly six feet, and weigh up to a kilogram. Even though this wouldn’t place the Flying Foxes in the category of “giant” according to my rules (see guideline #1—giant fruit bats remain smaller than Morgan), they certainly blow the fossil bats out of the water. Or out of the sky. Or out of the dirt, I guess.
This may seem like a petty concern to raise, but I only do it for the good of society. When something really giant shows up (and something will—watch Godzilla if you don’t believe me), we’ll need some potent adjectives to deal with it. What we’re doing now is like abusing antibiotics. Potentially worse.
Pterosaurs and their Mesozoic friends: Illustration from an 1880s science book
Courtesy Mark RyanThe fossil remains of a new species of pterosaur, a flying reptile that lived during the time of the dinosaurs, have been uncovered in China, but nearby Japan probably has no cause for alarm.
Although it’s not believed to be an adult specimen, the prehistoric critter is remarkable in its size and the structure of its feet. Its wingspan measures less than twelve inches, leading scientists to think it may be one of the smallest pterosaurs ever found. The findings appear in this week’s online version of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Pterosaurs weren’t dinosaurs but were closely related to them. They were the first known vertebrates to evolve winged flight and co-existed with dinosaurs during the Mesozoic Era.
Most pterosaur specimens have been found previously along what used to be coastal regions. This new one inhabited the gingko forest that covered the western portion of China's Liaoning province some 120 million years ago.
An important feature seen in the new toothless pterosaur is that some of its toe bones appear to be curved leading its discoverers to believe it was arboreal and spent a lot of time perched in the Early Cretaceous trees. Subsequently, they have named the creature Nemicolopterus crypticus, which means, "hidden flying forest dweller".
"It is interesting to see some clear arboreal adaptations in this species," said Matthew Carrano, a paleontologist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. "It confirms a suspicion we had, that pterosaurs were more diverse in their habitats than we knew from the [fossil] record." Carrano was not part of the research team.
It also means the size range of pterosaurs now extends from this sparrow-sized percher to the gigantic Quetzalcoatlus whose wingspan reached up to 36 feet!
By the way, an impressive Rodan-sized skeleton of Quetzacoatlus can be seen at the Science Museum overhead as you enter the lobby.
LINKS
Psittacosaurus: Look how his skin bristles and shines!
Courtesy AMNHNo, this isn't about making your skin brontosaurus smooth or how to remove the million year-old age spots you've noticed cropping up on the back of your hands. This is about the secrets revealed in the remains of a 100 million year-old plant-eating dinosaur that are providing new information about the anatomy of the prehistoric beasts.
The Psittacosaurus (“parrot lizard”) fossil was dug up in China by paleontologists from England and South Africa. Besides the usual bones, some of the beaked dinosaur’s skin was preserved as well, providing a rare glimpse into its skin structure.
The outer covering of the bipedal herbivore seems to have been torn open by a predator or scavenger, leaving its skin folded back to reveal a cross-section of it. Tooth marks found on the fossil add weight to that theory.
The preservation of skin and other soft tissue is a rare occurrence in the fossil record. But sometimes, unusual burial conditions can result in some uncommon and very remarkable fossils.
In the Psittacosaur’s case, the folded back skin exhibits more than 25 layers of collagen, suggesting it to be of a rugged variety like that of sharks or reptiles today. A tough hide would have been an asset against the daily rigors the Psittacosaurus no doubt faced during its lifetime in the Early Cretaceous.
The scientists also wonder if the thick skin may not have been further protected with feather or scales. Of course, all you need is a bottle of Skin-so-soft or some Vaseline.
LINKS
Story on BBC.com
An alternate theory holds that dinosaurs died of embarrassment: A Fredrogersaurus, obviously wishing he were dead, extinct, or just anywhere but here.
Courtesy Elston
Biting insects spread all kinds of diseases. (You can learn all about this in the Science Museum’s newest exhibit, Disease Detectives.) Now a scientists thinks they may have also helped kill off the dinosaurs. George Poinar, a professor of zoology at Oregon State University, notes that many insects from dinosaur times have been preserved in amber. Many of them carry microbes that can cause malaria, dysentery and other illnesses. He speculates that these illnesses could have been the major cause of the dinosaurs’ long, slow demise. The asteroid impact / volcanic activity / climate change simply finished them off.
Poinar and his wife Roberta have published a book, What Bugged The Dinosaurs? Insects, Disease And Death In The Cretaceous. In it they also note that, late in the dinosaur era, flowering plants spread rapidly, helped along by newly-evolved insect pollinators. This sudden change in available food may have also played a hand in the dinos’ extinction.
A bear practices its fighting skills on a monkey: What a strange picture.
Courtesy scottobearFantasy cage matches, I have found, are a good way to pass the time. Bear vs. robot got me through most of junior high. How would that turn out? Robot would probably win, really, with all that mechanical strength, and maybe laser eyes, but you never know; bears are tenacious, and the Terminator series has set a long precedence for against-the-odds robot defeats.
The possibilities for these match ups are endless: bear vs. robot, robot vs. vampire, right brain vs. left brain, toaster vs. bread – you get the idea. Just let your imagination run free, and hypothetical combat scenarios can forever replace the humdrum activities of everyday life.
Every so often, I’ve found, the real world will even throw out a match for the ages. Recently discovered fossils in China suggest that around 400,000 years ago giant pandas and an extinct species of giant ape were in direct competition for the same ecological niche.
Pandas 400,000 years ago were more or less like modern pandas. They were a little bit bigger, but, like the pandas of today, they ate bamboo almost exclusively. The apes in question, gigantopithecus blacki, were probably the largest that have ever lived. Gigantopithecus was about ten feet tall, weighed twelve hundred pounds, and probably ate… bamboo.
So we have huge bears and super huge apes both looking to get their paws on the same sweet, juicy, ancient Chinese bamboo. Would they have ever actually thrown down, though? And would it matter if they did, without someone there to see it? It would have been like a tree falling in the woods, with no one around (if falling trees weren’t so boring). Except, it turns out, there may have been someone around after all.
Some archaeologists believe that ancient human may have been a third contender in the competition for food (bamboo?) and habitat in region. Gigantopithecus and early humans probably had about half a million years of overlap before the ape went extinct around 300,000 years ago, and if humans “migrated like the panda through what is now southern China, they likely had contact with the giant apes.”
Spectacular. Human/giant ape interactions are usually pretty interesting, and with a big bear thrown in the mix… well, anything could happen.
No, not quite anything. The apes went extinct, humans came out of it pretty well, and the bears did so-so.
From National Geographic.
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