Stories tagged paleontology

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

Tags : paleontology, nanostructure, nano technology, fossils, dinosaurs, color, ancient birds

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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.

Tags : prehistoric, paleontology, fossils, dinosaurs, como bluff, Americana

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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

Tags : dinosaurs, dinosaur footprints, ichnology, paleontology, fossil footprints

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The world used to be so awesome and scary: Some quetzalcoatlus strut their way into my dreams.
Courtesy Matt Witton and Darren NaishI’m all about pterosaurs. You should be too, really. I mean, eventually everyone will be into pterosaurs, and won’t it feel good to have boarded that train before it was cool? You’ll have, as it were, the best seat. You can be like, “Eh, whatever. I was into rhamphorynchoids when all y’all were poopin’ your pants over diplodocus.”

Pterodactyloids, obviously, are cooler than rhamphorynchoids, but you’re going to want to say “rhamphorynchoid” to prove what smoking hot Schmidt you really are.

Why are pterosaurs so cool? You probably already know, deep down, but please allow me to reemphasize, for my own sake.

Pterosaurs, as you all know, are extinct flying reptiles, like pterodactyls and pteranodons, right? They lived at the same time as the dinosaurs, and for about the same length of time as the dinosaurs (for about one hundred fifty million years), but they weren’t dinosaurs at all—if you can fly, you’re not a dinosaur, and pterosaurs definitely flew. Towards the end of the cretaceous, pterosaurs shared the skies with birds, but they weren’t birds either—pterosaurs evolved for flight long-before birds and independent of them (they were the first vertebrates to be able to fly). So, for millions upon millions of years, pterosaurs were the undisputed masters of the skies, and they evolved into all sorts of crazy forms. We can all picture pteranodons—pterosaurs twice the size of condors, with leathery wings and the big, pointy head crest—but pterosaurs came in a lot more flavors than that. Some were the size of pigeons, while others (like the SMM’s quetzalcoatlus) had wingspans easily exceeding thirty feet. Some, it seems, had adapted to live like flamingos do today, by scooping up mouthfuls of water, and filtering out food through more than a thousand straight, bristle-like teeth. Wild.

New research shows that some pterosaurs may also have specialized in hunting on the ground.

Initial reaction: Hey, you know what else specializes in hunting on the ground? Shrews. And you know what aren’t very cool? Shrews. Well, shrews are kind of cool, come to think of it, but they aren’t particularly impressive. So, an initial reaction follow-up: I don’t care about this. Herons and storks walk around and eat things out of the shallows. There’s nothing to be surprised about here.

Wrong. This stuff is rad. See, there probably were pterosaurs that hunted in shallow water like cranes, but that’s not what we’re dealing with here—these pterosaurs strolled around on the prairies looking for food. And, here’s the kicker, these aren’t little eagle-sized pterosaurs, these are the “azhdarchids,” the biggest of the big pterosaurs, with thirty-plus foot wingspans.

Hatzegopteryx: Keeping it real. Unfortunately, there were no people around when the azhdarchids were flying, but we provide good scale.
Courtesy Mark P. WittonThink about an animal the size of a plane landing in a field to chase down a fox-sized dinosaur, before snapping it up in a six-foot-long beak. Some of these pterosaurs would have been as tall as a giraffe. A flying, giraffe-sized, terrestrial predator. You have to admit, that’s super cool.

The prevailing theory (one still considered valid by many paleontologists) has been that these very large pterosaurs would have lived more like large seabirds do today—flying over lakes and oceans to grab fish from the water. This is probably a pretty accurate model for many pterosaurs, but further studies of azharchid skeletons and trackways (they left a lot of footprints around) indicate that their long limb bones, stiff necks, and relatively small, padded feet would have been well suited for stalking around on solid ground. Furthermore, about half of the azharchid fossils come from inland sediments (that is to say, places where there wasn’t a large body of water when the pterosaurs were alive).

I like this. I’m into this. Get on the boat with me. It’s called the S.S. Awesome, and we’re setting sail for the distant harbors of Hiptown.

UPDATE--One of the most recently discovered azhdarchids, the hatzegopteryx looks to be even bigger than the quetzalcoatlus, with a wingspan exceeding 40 feet. Also, it's head was almost two feet wide. That means it could have swallowed you whole, hotshot. I just thought people should know that.

Tags : quetzalcoatlus, pterosaur, paleontology, Awesome

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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.

Tags : prehistoric animals, paleontology, geology, dinosaurs, dinosaur show

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European Light Source
Courtesy P. Ginter/ESRFThe second leg in the fossilized remains of a 92 million year-old snake has been revealed thanks to a powerful x-ray machine at the European Light Source (European Synchrotron Radiation Facility or ESRF) in Grenoble, France.

The fossil, frozen in a broken slab of Lebanese limestone, was discovered several years ago and described in 2000. One of the legs has always been visible on the surface of the fossil, but the other limb, trapped beneath the limestone matrix, was only suspected.

But using the powerful synchrotron device operating in a facility near the Alps, researchers bombarded the fossil with intense x-rays and were able to bring the second limb to light for the first time since its burial in the Late Cretaceous period.

The remarkable image shows a bent leg, complete with femur, tibia, and fibula. "We can even see ankle bones," said Paul Tafforeau, ESRF's resident paleontologist.

"In most cases, we can't find digits; but that may be because they are not preserved or because, as this is a vestigial leg, they were never present."

An image of the revealed second leg can be seen here at the BBC website. Scroll down to the middle of the page to see it.

The primitive snake, known as Eupodophis descouensi, is 33 inches long (although a 4 inch portion of it is missing). Its vestigial leg is only 0.8 inches.

Some modern snakes, such as pythons and boas, display hints of their evolved-away legs (called spurs), but evidence in the fossil record is extremely rare.

That’s why the ESRF is proving so useful. Through a process called computed laminography, it utilizes 2 dimensional pictures to construct a 3D image of hidden parts that scientists can study in detail without having to damage the rare and valuable fossil.

Snakes first appeared about 150 million years ago. The study of E. descouensi’s legs could help answer questions regarding snake origins either as evolving from sea lizards or from terrestrial ones that burrowed.

The high-energy light from the ESRF’s machine can peer through just about anything. Recently, it was reported to have revealed ancient insects trapped for 100 million years in opaque chunks of amber.

LINKS

BBC website story
ESRF website
More photos of ESRF
Natural History of Snakes

Tags : X-ray technology, snakes with legs, snakes, paleontology, fossil snakes

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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.

Tags : bats, fossils, paleontology, Eocine, giant

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