Animals Library: Dinosaur

Showing posts with label Dinosaur. Show all posts

T. Rex Predecessor Ruled Before Popular Dino Became King

Paleontologists have discovered a new apex predator dinosaur so large, it may just be the largest species of carnivorous dinosaur to have ever lived in North America.

The dinosaur, named Siats meekerorum a.k.a. "Man Eating Monster,” made its debut on the newest issue of Nature Communications. The fossil specimen of Siats was that of a juvenile, but even then, it’s estimated to measure at least 30 feet long, weighing in at around 9,000 pounds.

The dino’s name Siats is a tribute to the legends of the local Ute native tribe of Utah that tell of a man-eating monster. According to the study’s lead author Lindsay Zanno, Siats, being a juvenile still had plenty of room to grow. In fact, the juvenile Siats and an adult Acrocanthosaurus only had a femur length difference of 4 inches.

Zanno, director of the Paleontology and Geology Research Laboratory at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, added that their upper estimates of Siats’ body size gives it a body mass larger than T. rex, which occupies the number 1 spot in the ‘man-eater’ list. Siats is classified as a carcharodontosaur, a type of carnivorous dinosaur that’s not only enormous, but also had huge, jagged teeth.

He adds that the existence of an apex predator like Siats prevented T. rex from growing to become the monster that it was. It was only when the large beasts of the time mysyeriously died out that tyrannousaur-type dinos were able to flourish and occupy the spot of apex predator.

Read the full story on Discovery News.

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Mysteriously Intact T. Rex Tissue Finally Explained

The controversial discovery of 68-million-year-old soft tissue from the bones of a Tyrannosaurus rex finally has a physical explanation. According to new research, iron in the dinosaur's body preserved the tissue before it could decay.

The research, headed by Mary Schweitzer, a molecular paleontologist at North Carolina State University, explains how proteins — and possibly even DNA — can survive millennia. Schweitzer and her colleagues first raised this question in 2005, when they found the seemingly impossible: soft tissue preserved inside the leg of an adolescent T. rex unearthed in Montana.

Source: Here

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Predatory 'king of gore' dinosaur discovered

A new super-predator dinosaur that roamed the Earth 80 million years ago has been discovered in southern Utah.

It was closely related to its slightly larger relative, Tyrannosaurus rex, but lived earlier, making it the largest living land predator of its time.

Source: Here

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Dinosaur-era bird tracks: Proof of 100-million-year-old flight?

It's all about the fourth toe. While birds and dinosaurs both left three-toed footprints, few dinosaurs have the backward-facing fourth toe that birds use to grab a branch or provide drag during landing. So when Anthony Martin saw the four-toed impression left in an Australian rock more than 100 million years old, he knew he was looking at something special.

"The track seemed familiar, like a face I had seen before but couldn’t quite identify," writes the Emory University paleontologist in a blog describing the find. "Then I realized who it belonged to, and where I had seen many others like it. It was a bird track, remarkably similar to those in the sands and muds of the Georgia coast, made daily by the herons, egrets, and shorebirds."

Source: Here

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Dinosaur Shocker

Neatly dressed in blue Capri pants and a sleeveless top, long hair flowing over her bare shoulders, Mary Schweitzer sits at a microscope in a dim lab, her face lit only by a glowing computer screen showing a network of thin, branching vessels. That’s right, blood vessels. From a dinosaur. “Ho-ho-ho, I am excite-e-e-e-d,” she chuckles. “I am, like, really excited.”

After 68 million years in the ground, a Tyrannosaurus rex found in Montana was dug up, its leg bone was broken in pieces, and fragments were dissolved in acid in Schweitzer’s laboratory at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. “Cool beans,” she says, looking at the image on the screen.

Source: Here

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Dinosaur Feathers Found in Ancient Amber

Instead of digging through rocks and rubble to find fossils, a group of Canadian paleontologists decided to dig through museums’ amber collections instead. Their unique approach paid off when they discovered feathers and never-before-seen structures, which they think are something called dinofuzz. As described in Science Now,

Source: Here

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Dinosaurs were wired for flight, thanks to bigger brains

A new study in Nature finds that a wider range of dinosaurs may have had the neurological capacity to fly -- not just Archaeopteryx, the feathered dinosaur that’s considered the direct ancestor of birds.

While it’s well-established that birds are modern-day dinosaurs, how they evolved from fearsome, meat-ripping theropods to dainty doves remains a hot topic of research.

Source: Here

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Apatosaurus

The movie Land Before Time takes us back to when dinosaurs ruled the world and tells the story of a young Apatosaurus named Littlefoot, who is orphaned when his mother is killed by a T-Rex. As he finds his way to the Great Valley to avoid the famine, he is joined by other young dinosaurs, a Triceratops named Cera;, a Saurolophus named Ducky; an aerophobic Pteranodon named Petri; and an orphaned Stegosaurus named Spike. Together, they must find a way to survive the Sharp Tooth, a T-Rex, as they make their journey to the Great Valley and reunite with their families.

The Apatosaurus is a gargantuan dinosaur that lived off a plant-based diet. Many know this dinosaur as the Brontosaurus, but this name is actually scientifically redundant. They are known for their very long necks and tails, as well as for their giant bodies. These dinosaurs lived throughout the Jurassic Period, about 150 to 154 million years ago. These dinosaurs are on the top of the list of the largest animals to have ever existed on land. They usually grew to about 75 feet or 23 meters tall, weighing in at about 25 tons.

Compared to similar dinosaurs, the Apatosaurus had a less elongated body shape and was more heavily built. This means that the Apatosaurus had a tougher body structure which helped it survive its surroundings a little better. Fossil remains of these dinosaurs have been dug up in Wyoming’s Bone Cabin Quarry and Nine Mile Quarry and at Utah, Oklahoma and Colorado.

It was once believed that an Apatosaurus could not support their weight on land because they were too big, so they probably had to live in areas that were partly submerged, such as swamps. However, recent findings about their environments did not support the theory and actually backs up the idea of these animals being terrestrial dwellers.