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Predators: Past and Present

2008-07-25T23:45:22Z

They struggled to survive 70 million years ago. Now computer-generated animation gives new life to some of the most combative prehistoric creatures.

History's new "Jurassic Fight Club" offers a fresh perspective on familiar and lesser-known dinosaurs. Airing Tuesdays through Oct. 14, the series taps experts and sophisticated scientific research to piece together the ancient events behind recent paleontological finds.

Forensics and detailed reconstructions of clashes between predators illustrate new clues about dinosaurs, such as whether raptors had night vision and whether the animals could work in groups.

The premiere episode re-creates a case of dinosaur cannibalism. Deep cuts in the skeleton of a male Majungatholus indicated that the nine-foot-tall horned carnivore suffered a fatal encounter with a surprising adversary -- a female Majungatholus whose mating instincts were replaced by a need to feed.

Subsequent episodes include a look at the attacker of a Tyrannosaurus rex; a multiple-species battle that yielded more than 15,000 bones; and a face-off between an ice-age lion and an 11-foot-tall bear.
http://www.washingtonpost.com

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Rare fossils in India threatened

2008-07-25T21:35:13Z

By Salman Ravi
BBC News, Sahebganj, Jharkhand

A treasure trove of history preserved by nature for millions of years in eastern India is threatened with extinction.

Plant fossils, scattered all over the Rajmahal Hills in Sahebganj district of Jharkhand state, are fast finding their way into the hundreds of crusher machines that are reducing them into stone chips to be used in road construction.

Spread over approximately 2,600 sq km, the Rajmahal Hills are home to plant fossils dating back between 68 million years and 145 million years.

Over the years, geologists and palaeobotanists from all over the world have visited the area for their research.

Here, scientists could lay their hands on some of the rarest plant fossils ever conserved by nature.

Examples of these Jurassic age plant fossils - known as Rajmahal Flora - are to be found in many museums across the globe.

The Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany in the northern city of Lucknow also has an impressive collection.

'Worried'

But this wonder of nature is fast disappearing and geologists say the fossils may soon all be gone.

The state government of Jharkhand has given out a mining lease in the area to private companies who are practically blowing up the hills to obtain rocks which are then crushed to make stone chips.

"This is what is worrying us. The treasure which nature has conserved for millions of years would be wiped out in a matter of months if an immediate ban on stone mining is not imposed in the area," says Syed Raza Imam Rizvi, head of the geology department at Sahebganj College.

"Those who have the mining lease are cutting down the hills. All the hills need to be conserved for research.

"If proper excavation and study is carried out, we could also find the fossils of reptiles and other animals which existed during the Jurassic and the Triassic age. Maybe one day we can even find a fossil of a dinosaur here," Mr Rizvi says.

The villagers in the area, from the Pahadiya tribe, say they are fed up of trying to protect the fossils from suspicious visitors.

"We have been guarding these fossils like our ancestors did in the hope that a park would come up here some day and the government would take care of it. Now everything is being wiped out," says Gangu Pahadiya, the headman of Tara village.

'Fossil Road'

When the state of Jharkhand was created in 2000, the government announced a "Jurassic Park" would be set up in Sahebganj to conserve the rare fossils in their natural habitat.

Local people said the government erected a sign some years ago for the proposed park.

But now the board is gone, and some say the project has been shelved.

Since many villages in the region are inaccessible, the authorities decided to build a road to Tara village, where rare fossils lie scattered around.

The road has been christened "Fossil Road", but geologists say what is shocking is that the stone chips used for constructing the road are actually fossils.

A forest department official in the area, Pujan Singh, admitted that rare fossils were being used for road construction.

"The entire Rajmahal Hills are full of fossils of plants and reptiles. Those who have taken the mining lease don't care about it. They don't know about it," Mr Singh said.

"The fossils are finding their way into the crusher machines that are reducing them into chips. We have tried to stop it, but there is very little that we can do. The mining department has allotted them a lease," he said.

'Precious gifts'

Jharkhand Chief Minister Madhu Koda promised the fossils would be protected.

"We are proud of possessing nature's precious gifts in the form of fossils. We are working on a proposal to conserve them," Mr Koda told the BBC.

But geologists say the authorities need to act immediately to save from destruction the evidence of a world that existed millions of years ago.

"The Rajmahal Hills need to be conserved in their natural habitat to facilitate further studies and research. If mining activities continue at such a pace, everything would be destroyed and the generations to come will never forgive us," said geologist Nitish Priyadarshi.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7520868.stm

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Nearly intact Tarbosaurus dinosaur skeleton uncovered in Gobi

2008-07-25T02:11:37Z

A Mongolian-Japanese team announced Wednesday that they had discovered a nearly complete skeleton of a Tarbosaurus dinosaur.

Found in the Gobi Desert, the Tarbosaurus is closely related to the better-known Tyrannosaurus.

Experts believe this is the first discovery of so well preserved a skeleton of a young dinosaur of this species.

The skeleton is said to date back 70 million years. It was discovered by members of the Center of Paleontology under the Mongolian Academy of Sciences working with members from Hayashibara Co., a biotechnology firm based in Okayama, Japan.

An adult Tarbosaurus would normally grow to a length of 12 meters. The skeleton found in the Gobi measures 2 meters long and is believed to have been five years old when it died
http://www.mongolia-web.com

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Live dinosaur dig online

2008-07-24T13:04:23Z

Jack Horner of the Museum of the Rockies, USA, and Angela Milner of the Natural History Museum, UK, share their experiences of digging up and researching dinosaurs in a Nature Live event at the Natural History Museum.

Milner will bring real dinosaur specimens out from the Museum's world-class collection and a live video link will show Horner in the US as he attempts to dig up dinosaur remains.

Snap Creek site
Jack Horner will report live from a famous site, where previous fossils of juvenile triceratops have been found, called Snap Creek near Fort Peck, eastern Montana, USA. The site is in the Montana badlands, a semi-desert area.

The rocks belong to the Hell Creek Formation 67-65 million years ago, the youngest rocks that contain dinosaurs. They are likely to find species such as Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus and possibly hadrosaurs (duck-billed dinosaurs).

Live online or visit event
People can watch the free Nature Live event as it happens on the Museum website or attend the event at the Museum in South Kensington.

'This event gives the audience a unique chance to see live, in real time, how dinosaurs are discovered an excavated,' says Milner.

Jurasic Park advisor, Jack Horner
Jack Horner is one of the most well known palaeontologists in the United States. He was technical advisor for the blockbuster Jurassic Park and his findings provided the first clear evidence that some dinosaurs cared for their young.

20 years of dinosaur study, Angela Milner
Angela Milner has studied dinosaurs for more than 20 years at the Natural History Museum and is a palaeontologist there.

Natural History Museum Baryonyx animatronic model
Her work has included some crucial discoveries such the fish-eating dinosaur Baryonyx , and showing that the most ancient bird known, the 147-million-year-old Archaeopteryx , had a brain similar to a modern sparrow, eagle or parrot.

The T.rex Diary Nature Live event is on Thursday 24 July at 15.00. Visit Nature Live

http://www.nhm.ac.uk

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Dinosaurs stopped evolving millions of years earlier than thought

2008-07-24T12:53:36Z

Dinosaurs finished evolving millions of years earlier than previously thought according to new "family tree" of the creatures analysed by scientists.

The giant beasts stopped developing around 50 million years before they became extinct, the "map" of their development, which features 440 of the known species of dinosaur, suggests.

Scientists have previously believed that dinosaurs continued to evolve in their later years on the planet, at the same time as mammals developed.

Graeme Lloyd, from the University of Bristol, led the study.

He said: "Supertrees are very large family trees made using sophisticated computer techniques that carefully stitch together several smaller trees which were previously produced by experts on the various subgroups.Our supertree summarises the efforts of two decades of research by hundreds of dinosaur workers from across the globe and allows us to look for unusual patterns across the whole of dinosaurs for the first time.

"It is the most comprehensive picture ever produced of how dinosaurs evolved."

The findings, which are published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B journal, show that dinosaurs had a high level of evolution in their first 50 million years, but that that rate then slowed to a halt.

It also suggests that dinosaurs were not part of the Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution, which took place around 100 million years ago.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk

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'Biggest' dinosaur tooth unearthed

2008-07-23T08:08:52Z

KANAZAWA--An amateur fossil hunter has unearthed what might be the largest domestic fossil of a dinosaur tooth in Hakusan, Ishikawa Prefecture.

Satoshi Utsunomiya, a 38-year-old company employee from Kanazawa, found the fossil in June on red rock in the lower Cretaceous strata of the earth.

Experts believe the time-worn tusk belonged to a therapod, a group of carnivorous dinosaurs that include the Tyrannosaurus rex, which roamed the Earth 130 million years ago.

Almost perfectly preserved, the tooth measures 8.2 centimeters in length and is 2.8 centimeters wide at its widest.

According to the National Museum of Nature and Science, the largest tooth found previously in Japan is the 7.5-centimeter-long Mifuneryu, which was unearthed in Mifunemachi, Kumamoto Prefecture, in 1979.

One expert says the Hakusan tooth is "the largest specimen found in perfect condition in this country."

Nobuomi Matsuura, 75, a former director of the Hakusan Dinosaurs Park Shiramine in Hakusan, and Masahiro Tanimoto, 55, a special member of the Palaeontological Society of Japan, authenticated the tooth.

(Jul. 22, 2008)
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/features/science

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Dinosaur diversity 'had a long pedigree'

2008-07-23T07:25:41Z

July 23, 2008 - 9:30AM

Advertisement
The belief that dinosaurs underwent explosive species diversification just before they were wiped out is an illusion, for the beasts' main evolutionary shifts took place millions of years before, a study says.

The strange demise of the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous era some 65 million years ago has given rise to a popular view that almost has the tinge of Greek tragedy.

Just as the rulers of the Earth had reached their evolutionary zenith, a catastrophic event - possibly a space rock that slammed into Earth - brought the curtain down on their long reign.

Scientific support for this view comes from the number of dinosaur fossils dating from a period called the Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution, between 125 million and 80 million years ago, when Earth's book of life was changed forever.

During this epoch of riotous biodiversity, flowering plants, social insects, butterflies, modern groups of lizards, mammals, and possibly birds, too, all emerged.

Some experts have suggested that dinosaurs were also part of the show, as so many weird fossils, such as duckbilled hadrosaurs, horned ceratopsians, pachycephalosaurs and other wonders, date from this time.

But a new study, published in the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, says that dinosaurs were less than a sideshow in the DNA spectacular.

Researchers led by Graeme Lloyd of the University of Bristol devised a "supertree" of dinosaur evolution, patiently analysing how more than 450 species - about 70 per cent of the known finds - developed.

They conclude that the big evolutionary splurge for dinosaurs occurred in the Late Triassic, some 225 million to 200 million years ago. This was about 15-40 million years after dinosaurs first emerged.

A second, but smaller, diversification occurred in the Mid Jurassic, some 170 to 160 million years ago.

By that time, all the main dinosaur lineages that were hoofing around in the Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution had been established.

"Our new evidence confirms that the (Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution) was a key in the origination of modern continental ecosystems, but that the dinosaurs were not a part of it," their paper says.

"Sample bias" - the availability of many fossils from this period - could be to blame for the distorted picture, it suggests.

A leading theory for the end of the dinosaurs is that a large asteroid or comet whacked into the modern-day Yucatan peninsula in Mexico, unleashing firestorms and dust clouds that obscured the Sun, inflicting climate change that ravaged vegetation.

Smaller creatures, led by mammals, which were able to adapt to the new climate and available food, inherited the planet.

http://news.theage.com.au/world

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Yemen embraces its Jurassic past

2008-07-21T20:42:28Z

By Stephanie Hancock
BBC News, Madar village, Yemen

The village of Madar is perhaps an unlikely setting for a major scientific discovery that has been hailed as a 'new frontier' for the Middle East.

Tucked away in the heart of rural Yemen, Madar now finds itself in the limelight after a series of dinosaur prints were discovered in the village - the first such discovery on the Arabian Peninsula.

The dinosaur tracks have been lying exposed, above ground, for centuries, but scientists only recently stumbled across them following a tip-off from a local journalist.

Villagers have lived alongside the now famous footprints for generations, but never had any inkling about how important they would turn out to be.

"Before these tracks were named, we believed they were footprints from giant camels," said Yahir Saleh Arshami, who has dinosaur tracks running right in front of his house.

"But now they tell us they are from dinosaurs - we were extremely surprised. Luckily I built my house around the footprints so as not to disturb them."

The prints are located in several different sites dotted around Madar village, and are from both ornithopods - bipedal dinosaurs - as well as sauropods, which walked on four legs and are the largest animals ever to have lived on earth.

Ancient beach

At 150 million years old, the tracks are so ancient they were made before the landmasses of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula were separated by the Red Sea.

Scientists are extremely excited about the discovery.

"These prints are very important in terms of culture and history, but they also allow us to go back in time and trace their history, and find out about the environment at the time," said Dr Mohammed al-Wosabi, of the University of Sana'a.

Dr Wosabi was the first scientist to view the tracks.

"These prints were made on limestone rock, which is only deposited in shallow marine areas, so we know these dinosaurs were living in a beach-type environment."

But perhaps more importantly, the prints - some of which are half a metre wide - also offer a glimpse into the dinosaurs' behaviour, vital information which cannot be gleaned by studying fossils alone.

The footprints capture a specific moment in time, almost like a photograph, and by analysing the spacing of the tracks scientists can tell what the dinosaurs were doing all those millions of years ago - even how quickly they were walking.

"The prints show a herd of eleven dinosaurs walking together," said Dr Wosabi.

"We can see that the smaller animals were walking quickly to keep up with the bigger dinosaurs, while the bigger ones slowed down their pace so the smaller ones could keep up.

"This is an example of social behaviour we did not know about before."

Villagers in Madar are both excited and proud to have such an important discovery right on their doorstep.

'Great adventure'

"It is thanks to Dr Wosabi that we know about these footprints - we used to just pass on by them," said Abdul Aziz, a local councillor in Madar.

"It's a great adventure to have dinosaur prints here, it feels really great - all this culture and history, and right here in our village as well."

One of the biggest challenges for scientists who studied the prints was explaining to villagers what dinosaurs looked like.

"We brought picture books to show the villagers, and especially the children, what dinosaurs were," said Dr Wosabi.

"When they saw the pictures the villagers were surprised - stunned even - because what they thought were camels had changed into dinosaurs. They were very shocked."

But villagers have now embraced their famous heritage, and most of Madar's 3,000 inhabitants have even watched the Hollywood blockbuster, Jurassic Park.

Scientists in Yemen have applied for the prints to be given Unesco status, not only to properly protect them, but also in the hope that the dinosaur tracks might help pull in curious tourists as well.

Madar's friendly locals are keen for more foreigners to visit the village.

As Mr Arshami, whose home is ringed by dinosaur prints, said: "It's something good for the country and many people have come to see this site. For scientists and tourists, it's very good. We hope more tourists will come."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7517307.stm

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Canal fossils give clue to formation of Americas

2008-07-18T22:53:12Z

PANAMA CITY 19-07-08 Scientists in Panama have unearthed hundreds of animal fossils dating back 20 million years, which could shed more light on how and when the American continent became connected.

Geologists from the U.S. Smithsonian Institution, which has a permanent base in Panama, say engineers digging to widen the Panama Canal have uncovered more than 500 fossils including teeth and bones of rodents, horses, crocodiles and turtles that lived before a land bridge linked North and South America.

""With these discoveries we will be able to get more information about the process by which the continual land bridge was formed,"" Smithsonian geologist Camilo Montes told Reuters.

Since February, the geologists accompanied engineers on excavations to expand the canal, having been invited by the government to make sure nothing of value was destroyed.

Scientists believe the South American and Caribbean tectonic plates collided around 15 million years ago, causing volcanic activity that eventually formed a thin strip of land linking the Americas and separating the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The bridge was probably fully formed, in a way that mammals could walk over it, some 3 million years ago.

By comparing the Panama discoveries to fossil records from each continent, paleontologists hope to determine where individual species came from. Volcanic debris embedded in the same layer of rock as the fossils will help pinpoint the time when the animal was found on either side of the land bridge.

""We will be able to get a much more precise date for when the continents started to close together,"" said Montes.

The forging of the Americas resulted in a mass migration of animals, while the separation of the two oceans transformed the world's climate and prompted the development of new species. Montes said determining exactly when this closure happened could be key to understanding the link between major changes in ocean currents and our climate, providing some insight into the impact of global warming.

""The closure could be linked to an ice age which affected North America around the same time, perhaps by altering ocean currents,"" Montes said.

""Some have argued the timing of the ice age is a coincidence. A more accurate timeline for the closure could tell us whether those two things were separate or linked.""

The excavations are part of an archeological project to explore an area that will soon become part of the $5.25 billion project to expand the overcrowded Panama Canal.

http://www.tehrantimes.com

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Moderator

2008-07-18T16:39:42Z

Dear Folks; I have been overseas for two months and prior to that inadvertently was unsubscribed. I therefore humbly ask for your approval to re-commence as moderator of Fossils and Natural stuff.

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segment on mammoths to air July 30

2008-07-17T22:15:02Z

The tangled tusks of two Ice Age mammoths and the quest to unravel the mystery of their deaths is the focus of an NET Television-produced segment for the PBS series "NOVA scienceNOW," airing Wednesday, July 30, at 8 p.m. CT on NET1 and NET-HD.

During the summer of 1962, on a ranch in the Nebraska Badlands near Crawford, surveyor Ben Ferguson stumbled across some unusually large fossils. A crew of University of Nebraska paleontologists, including undergraduate student Mike Voorhies, was working nearby and was called to investigate. The scientists soon realized that Ferguson had found the remains of a pair of Ice Age mammoths.

"We dug forward and found ribs and there was a nice skull. That was really exciting. Another few days of digging revealed there were actually two complete mammoth skeletons with their tusks tangled up," said Voorhies, now retired and emeritus curator of vertebrate paleontology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln State Museum.

The mammoth fossils were from a species of prehistoric elephants that towered 13 feet high, weighed up to 10 tons and had 12-foot tusks. These titans roamed North America's grasslands 12,000 years ago. Despite their massive size, these mammoths were plant eaters and normally passive, according to Voorhies.

But these two animals had struggled to their deaths, their tusks locked and intertwined like a pair of twisted tree trunks with one tusk poking into the eye of the other. Voorhies said it appears the two male mammoths were so well matched for battle that neither one backed down. But why were they fighting? By looking inside the fossilized tusks, modern forensic science can read a record of the mammoths' final days that will finally put this mystery to rest.

Voorhies recruited University of Michigan professor and forensic paleontologist Dan Fisher to join the investigation. Fisher pioneered the study of mammoth tusks to detect age, nutrition and behavior of the mammoths. The clues give scientists a rare glimpse of animal behavior preserved in the fossil record.
http://www.nptelegraph.com/articles/2008/07/17

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Marsupials And Humans Share Same Genetic Imprinting That Evolved 150 Million Years Ago

2008-07-17T22:06:15Z

ScienceDaily (July 15, 2008) — Research published in Nature Genetics by a team of international scientists including the University of Melbourne, Department of Zoology, has established an identical mechanism of genetic imprinting, a process involved in marsupial and human fetal development, which evolved 150 million years ago.

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Plants & Animals
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Cloning
Biotechnology
Fossils & Ruins
Charles Darwin
Origin of Life
Evolution
Reference
Allele
Allele frequency
Placenta
Vector (biology)
“This paper shows that we share a common genetic imprinting mechanism which has been active for about 150 million years despite the differences in reproductive strategies between marsupials and humans,” said Professor Geoffrey Shaw of the Department of Zoology at the University of Melbourne, a coauthor on the paper.

Professor Marilyn Renfree who lead the University of Melbourne research team says marsupials give birth to very small young that develop mainly within the pouch while humans have more developed young at birth that undergo a large period of growth in the uterus.

“Our team provided vital samples and genetic resources from marsupials to enable this study and contributed our world-leading expertise on marsupial biology and genomics to the interpretation of the results,” Professor Renfree said.

Genomic imprinting is a mechanism that regulates gene expression in the developing fetus and plays a major role in regulating its growth.

“We all carry two copies of every gene in our DNA, one inherited from our mother and one from our father. So for each gene we have a ‘back-up’. Normally, both copies of the gene are used for development, but in some special cases the gene from either our mother or father is switched off, so we only have one active copy. This phenomenon is known as genomic imprinting,” explained Dr Andrew Pask also from the Department of Zoology.

“Because there is no back up copy, when errors occur in this process, it results in many human genetic diseases mainly affecting growth and brain function.”

Pask explains that a key gene regulating fetal growth is the Insulin-like-growth-factor-2 or IGF2 which is an imprinted gene.

“We inherit a single working copy of this gene from our fathers, while the copy we inherit from our mothers is switched off. The switch for this gene is controlled by another gene known as H19. The H19 gene is unusual gene that makes a microRNA and not a protein.”

“MicroRNA genes have been sought in marsupials for years, and now for the first time one has been discovered,” Dr Pask said.

Pask explains that the microRNA structure is virtually identical to that of mice and humans, but there was no evidence of this gene or a similar microRNA in the more distantly related platypus.

The study was a large team effort involving researchers in the UK, from the Babraham Institute, the Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge, in Australia, from the University of Melbourne, and the USA, from the University of Texas at San Antonio (all part of the Sequence Analysis of Vertebrate Orthologous Imprinted Regions ‘SAVOIR’ consortium).

“Understanding how genetic imprinting evolved is important,” said Dr Shaw, “It helps us to determine how the mechanism works and what we can do to avoid the development of a number of human diseases.”

-

Adapted from materials provided by University of Melbourne.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases

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Reconstruction the brain morphology of Homo Liujiang cranium fossil by 3-D CT

2008-07-16T21:22:18Z

hominin fossils are the most important materials to explore human origins and evolution. Since most hominin fossils are incomplete, or filled with a heavy calcified matrix, it is difficult or often impossible to reconstruct the endocast in a real fossil without destroying it. Accordingly, traditional methods limited the study of human brain evolution. CT can explore fossils in a noninvasive way by transforming a real fossil into a virtual object, and make it possible for paleoanthropologists to extend the study of fossil specimens from the exterior to the interior. A new research, led by Wu Xiujie from Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP), Chinese Academy of Sciences, is reported in Volume 53, Issue16 of Chinese Science Bulletin. Using high-resolution industrial CT, the Homo Liujiang brain image was reconstructed.

The Liujiang cranium is the most complete and well-preserved late Pleistocene human fossils ever unearthed in South China. Because the endocranial cavity is filled with hard stone matrix, earlier studies focused only on the exterior morphology of the specimen using the traditional methods. Arguments about the phyletic evaluation of the Liujiang hominin fossil have existed for a long time. In this study, the authors used high-resolution industrial CT to scan the Liujiang cranium, and reconstruct the three-dimensional (3-D) brain image. Compared with the endocasts of the hominin fossils and modern Chinese, most morphological features of the Liujiang brain are in common with modern humans, including a round brain shape, bulged and wide frontal lobes, an enlarged brain height, a full orbital margin and long parietal lobes. There are a few differences between Liujiang and the modern Chinese in our sample, including a strong posterior projection of the occipital lobes, and a reduced cerebellar lobe. The measurement of the virtual endocast shows that the endocranial capacity of Liujiang is 1567 cc, which is in the range of Late Homo sapiens and much beyond the mean of modern humans. The brain morphology of Liujiang is assigned to Late Homo sapiens.

IVPP is the only special institute mainly dealing with the research of origin and evolutionary history of hominin fossils. In the past 80 years, a few complete hominin crania fossila were found in China. "With CT scanning and 3D visualization techniques to reconstruct virtual specimens, it is now possible for Chinese hominin paleontologists to conduct paleoneurological studies of our national treasures", said Dr. Wu Xiujie, "In the long run, these more advanced studies will not only address questions related to Chinese evolutionary history, but make the Chinese data important to paleoanthropologists throughout the world". The study is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

###

Reference: Wu X J, Liu W, Dong W, et al. The brain morphology of Homo Liujiang cranium fossil by three-dimensional computed tomography. Chinese Science Bulletin, 2008, 53 (16
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases
Contact: Xiujie Wu
wuxiujie@ivpp.ac.cn
86-108-836-9124
Science in China Press

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More good stuff from Texas ! Rock club hosts expert on trilobite fossils

2008-07-16T21:19:00Z

John Moffitt, an expert on fossils and paleontology from the Houston Gem and Mineral Society, will be guest speaker tomorrow, July 17, at the regular meeting of the Pine Country Gem and Mineral Society in Jasper.

Moffitt's topic is trilobites, an ancient marine species that has been extinct since the Permian era. Moffitt's collection of trilobites was once featured in a special exhibit at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.

Moffitt was inducted into the Rockhound Hall of Fame in 2002. He frequently leads field trips to local school children, and strives to show others how to respect collecting sites so future generations can have access to fossils and minerals.

Meetings are free and open to the public every third Thursday at the clubhouse, 110 Zavalla St. in Jasper beginning at 7 p.m.
http://www.jaspernewsboy.com

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Agate Fossil Beds

2008-07-16T21:16:08Z

By Agate Fossil Beds National Monument staff Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Visitation at Agate Fossil Beds National Monument increased by eight percent over the previous June. Five General Management Plan meetings were held during the month of June to get input, ideas and concerns from the local communities about the direction that the management of Agate Fossil Beds should go.

More information about this process can be found under the management section of Agate’s web site at www.nps.gov/agfo.

Nebraska Wildflower Week was May 31 - June 8 and walks were offered on a daily basis and will continue as staffing allows and the flowers bloom. The Yellow Iris along the Niobrara did not make a showing for Wildflower Week but were in full bloom much of the rest of the month. Two Native American artists, Robert White and Arthur Short Bull, participated in the Artists-in-Residence program in June. Agate Fossil Beds staff set up booths at the Intertribal Gathering at Fort Robinson State Park and at the summer music festivals in Mitchell and Crawford.

The park was also involved with the second annual High Plains Adventure Camp. This year’s theme was “Paleontology, Can You Dig It?” and the campers visited several fossil sites in the area with one of the highlights being a night at Agate Fossil Beds Visitor Center. The nighttime museum was also the setting for a film shoot about the ferocious Dinohyus that will air on National Geographic Channel in the spring.

At the Fossil Freeway Kickoff Dinner, Superintendent Blanca Stransky presented checks to the Boys and Girls Club of Chadron and the High Plains Adventure Camp on behalf of the National Park Service. The Fossil Freeway Coalition also received a check for $10,000 from Marty Sterkel, the Assistant Associate Regional Director for Partnerships in the National Park Service, to be used for a future Travel Writer’s Conference.

Coming up is Artist-in-Residence Arthur Short Bull, watercolor painter, July 18 - 20. The staff at Agate Fossil Beds looks forward to seeing everyone at the Sioux County Fair and Rodeo Parade. Later this summer, Park Ranger Maribeth Kambitsch also will be doing an evening program at Fort Robinson State Park.

Agate Fossil Beds National Monument is located 22 miles south of Harrison on State Highway 29
( I found this link to be informative http://www.nps.gov/agfo)
http://www.thechadronnews.com

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Go Norton ! Fossil forest could acquire status ; this is the sort of thing that should happen more often !!

2008-07-16T00:55:21Z

NORTON - Fossils are very much on the mind of Norton Mayor Wendy Alcorn and village council these days.

For more than three years, council has worked on making the Norton fossil forest a productive attraction. Alcorn was pleased last week to hear Joggins, across the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia, was successful in its bid to make its fossil cliffs a UNESCO world heritage site.
The Norton fossil forest, in a series of highway rock cuts between Norton and Sussex, was among the geological sites Dr. Randy Miller includes in his efforts to have the Greater Saint John area considered for North America's first UNESCO geopark.
Since 2004, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), has overseen a global network of important geological sites imparted with geopark status. A geopark is a geological heritage area with a system of protection, education and sustainable development, incorporating not only the site's geological attractions but ecological, cultural and historical features as well. There are about five-dozen geoparks world-wide, mostly in Europe, China and Australia.
The Village of Norton submitted a funding request last month for $25,000 to the Regional Development Corporation to conduct a feasibility study. The study would examine post-opening operating expenses and projected income to determine whether a proposed fossil interpretive centre in the village could have long-term sustainability.
"It's been four years. We thought at first it would be a lot quicker," Alcorn said of the village's plan to build on the fossils' potential. Alcorn had just begun her first term as Norton mayor when the fossil story broke in 2004.

Three years ago, she visited Joggins with a Norton fossil committee to learn how that community made its fossil cliffs a significant attraction. Not long afterward, the Joggins Fossil Institute began its UNESCO application process.
The Norton committee is exploring options for promoting a 350 million-year-old fossil forest, possibly the world's oldest forest. The fossil remains are 45 million years older than the fossil cliffs of Joggins, where the world's oldest reptile fossil was found.

If the proposed feasibility study gets a government thumbs up, Joggins institute director Jenna Boon may be on board as an advisor for the Norton project. In his proposal, Saint John consultant George Quigley named Boone as a potential resource team member. As senior project manager of the Joggins fossil cliffs project, she was involved in bringing both the new interpretive centre and the UNESCO designation to fruition.
Other resource team members named were Tom Sharpe, a National Museum of Wales curator studying a fossil forest unearthed in that country, and Randy Miller, curator of geology and paleontology at the New Brunswick Museum.
Last month, Miller gave a presentation in Germany on the first proposed UNESCO Geopark in North America. The proposed Greater Saint John geopark would extend from Lepreau Falls to Norton, including the Kingston Peninsula and the Fundy Trail. The region's rock formations have been the source of important geological discoveries since the 1830s and record up to a billion years of earth history, according to Miller.

"There are some really interesting fossil sites in Norton, Saint John and Lepreau," he said.
http://kingscorecord.canadaeast.com

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Dinosaur professor to lure tourists with fossils

2008-07-15T06:06:47Z

A mild-mannered Chinese professor is being hailed as the world's greatest palaeontologist for his part in the discovery of 30 new species of dinosaurs over the past 15 years.
He specialises in the winged and feathered dinosaurs that were the ancestors of today's birds, and his discoveries include creatures such as the "Gigantoraptor", a one-and-half ton beast that is the largest bird-like dinosaur found so far, the four-winged "Microraptor" and the buck-toothed and tiny "Incisivosaurus", one of his favourite dinosaurs, which had rodent-like teeth.

Prof Xu's achievement has boosted the prestige of Chinese scientists who struggle to compete with their western counterparts, and created an opportunity for China to extend the range of its tourist attractions.

With its vast land mass and ideal geological conditions for finding fossils, the country is a palaeontologist's paradise.

The dangers he faces while searching for dinosaur fossils in some of the remotest regions of China - ranging from lethal insects to armed gangs of criminals and fossil thieves - have led him to be compared to Indiana Jones, the fictional archaeologist and action hero played by Harrison Ford in Steven Spielberg's films.

"I agree there are some similarities," the quietly spoken professor told The Sunday Telegraph.

"Palaeontology is different from other science because you're in the field in a harsh environment. But my day-to-day work when I'm not in the field is fairly boring. There's a lot of paperwork."

Prof Xu works at the Beijing Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology.

His discoveries - some made personally, others as part of a team - have made him a star in the world of palaeontology.

"Xu has been incredibly successful, the result of excellent scholarship and an unerring ability to spot interesting new finds," said Dr Paul Barrett, a palaeontologist and expert on Chinese dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum, where he will host three public events on the topic this week.

"He is the most prolific discoverer of new dinosaur species alive today. Only a few historical figures have named more."

To do so, Professor Xu has had to travel to some of the harshest regions of the world.

Much of his work has been in the Gobi Desert or in the remote, far-western province of Xinjiang, where scorpions, snakes and spiders roam - and where it is either blazing hot or bitterly cold.

"You have to be very careful in the Gobi," he said. "There are lots of poisonous insects and I've had people on my teams bitten. Another problem is that the fossils are often very big and people can get injured getting them out of the ground. I've also had big problems with vehicles, things like brake failure."

Despite facing such hazards, Professor Xu is a modest character who likes playing badminton and spending time with his wife and two sons.

But he does admit to having been inspired by the legendary Roy Chapman Andrews, an American palaeontologist and explorer who is reputed to be the model for Indiana Jones.

A crack shot who hated snakes, like Jones, Andrews led expeditions to Mongolia in the early 1920's where, while battling the local brigands, he became the first man to discover a dinosaur egg.

"Andrews is a great guy in terms of discovering fossils," said Prof Xu. "I think most palaeontologists know about him. You see the old photos of him carrying guns and it's so different from now.

"Actually, I'd like to be able to take guns with us because in Xinjiang there are wolves and criminals. There have been cases of geologists being killed by criminals. But we're not allowed to carry guns."

Like all palaeontologists working in China, he has to find the fossils before the numerous fossil thieves do.

A thriving black market in dinosaur relics, especially eggs, at home and abroad means farmers who find fossils are tempted to sell them for many times their annual income.

"It's annoying because it often destroys the fossils," said Professor Xu. "It's illegal, but stopping it is very difficult."

In January, the Australian government returned 750 kilos of dinosaur fossils, including rare T-Rex eggs, which had been stolen from China.

China's determination to crack down on such thefts reflects its realisation that dinosaurs can help boost its tourist trade, and the country is hoping Professor Xu's discoveries will help bring in more tourists after the Olympics.

A series of dinosaur parks have opened in recent years and the fossils on display have proved popular with both Chinese and foreign visitors.

In April, the 160 million RMB (£11.8 million) World Dinosaur Valley in Lufeng in south-western Yunnan Province became the largest park yet to open.

Equally important to China has been the prestige Professor Xu has garnered for the country.

Palaeontology is one of the few areas of science in which China can compete with the West.

"There's still a long way for us to catch up in most scientific disciplines, but in palaeontology we can do it because we have so many fossils and it requires less funding," he said

http://www.telegraph.co.uk

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Go you Texan volunteers !!

2008-07-14T21:51:31Z

GARLAND - Digging for Late Cretaceous fossils in Garland? That's exactly what more than two dozen volunteers did Sunday while in the hot heat.

The dig began after a Garland resident discovered a mosasaur near his home along Duck Creek.

The Dallas paleontological society members worked 400 hours to excavate the bones of the creature.

While mosasaurs weren't dinosaurs, they were lepidosaurs, which were reptiles with overlapping scales. The carnivorous sea reptiles swam in an ocean that scientists believe covered Texas millions of years ago.

"We finally got it to a point to flip the main jacket that contains the skull," said Rocky Manning, Dallas Paleontological Society.

"Oh, it's been interesting" said Charles Amyx, the man who unearthed the Mosasaur bones in January from the river bottom behind his home. "I've been taking pictures everyday and built me a path through my yard so people can come down here and see it."

The excavation of the creature started in March.

One volunteer said she traveled six hours to participate in the dig.

"It's really very fulfilling because a lot of this wouldn't be recovered without us," said Pauline Maullinex. "The museums don't have the money or the personnel."

The coordinated effort unearthed the animal scientists estimate to be at least 40 feet long.

"This was a particularly nice mosasaur," Manning said. "It was almost full grown. A full grown mosasaur has a jaw of almost four feet."
http://www.khou.com/news

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"Speed Bonnie Boat", a new meaning?

2008-07-13T23:31:44Z

Published Date: 13 July 2008
By Marc Horne
THE arid plains of Wyoming and the rugged, rain-soaked mountains of Skye are a world apart, but scientists now believe the two areas were once so close together they formed a giant playground for some of the biggest and most ferocious creatures the planet has ever seen.

Near-identical dinosaur footprints – 165 million years old – have been discovered in Skye's Trotternish peninsula and in the home of Buffalo Bill.

The similarity is so striking that paleontologists believe the dinosaurs roamed the same landscapeADVERTISEMENT, before the continents drifted apart and the Atlantic Ocean was formed.

Dinosaur expert Dr Neil Clark of Glasgow's Hunterian Museum believes the two areas have compelling prehistoric connections.

He said: "The dinosaur footprints in Red Gulch are very similar to those found near Staffin on Skye. They are both of exactly the same age. At the time they were made Skye was a lot closer to what is now North America and may have allowed a migration of dinosaurs between Skye and America."

During the Middle Jurassic era Scotland and North America are believed to have been part of the supercontinent Pangaea. During that time, the areas of land that eventually became Scotland and Wyoming were still 2,500 miles apart, but Clark notes that is less than the annual distance travelled by modern day caribou.

Dr Michael Brett-Surman, a dinosaur expert at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in Washington DC, said the possibility of dinosaurs travelling between Skye and Wyoming could not be ruled out.

The academic, who has named four dinosaurs and has visited the site on Skye, said: "It is physically possible because at that time all the continents were connected as Pangaea. The prints on Skye and those in Wyoming are extremely similar. Both areas were in the same bio-geographic province."

The scientists involved in the research are now looking at twinning their respective areas. Brett-Surman said:

"It would be good to formalise the links. The Smithsonian is always willing to work with fellow institutions, especially the Hunterian in Glasgow."

Clark is also keen for the tie-up to go ahead. He said: "The Red Gulch footprints were only discovered in 1997 not long after the majority of dinosaur finds were discovered on Skye.

"One form this twinning exercise may have is an internet link up between schools on Skye and those near Red Gulch to discuss the effects that the discovery of dinosaurs has had on those communities."

Evidence of dinosaurs on Scottish soil was rare until 1982 when a single ornithopod footprint was discovered at Skye's Brothers Point.

Since then numerous dinosaur footprints and trackways have been found on the Trotternish peninsula.

The footprints found in both Skye and Wyoming are believed to have been created by theropods, tiny scavenging dinosaurs with curved, dagger-like teeth and claws for eating flesh.

The prints were produced by both adult and juvenile dinosaurs, demonstrating that the creatures lived in family groups and looked after their young. Theropods are similar to the vicious velociraptors, meaning 'speedy predator', which were shown in the film Jurassic Park.

An ecomuseum has been created at Staffin to allow visitors to search for fossils and view those which have already been found.

http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com

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You Lucky Montantans !!

2008-07-13T23:26:28Z

The first baby dinosaur bones found in North America, the world's longest dinosaur reconstruction and the opportunity to go diggin' up actual dinosaur bones are just a few of the gems that make Montana the Treasure State.

The 15 stops along the Montana Dinosaur Trail give folks a little peephole into the past through unique paleontology displays, interpretations and replicas and actual skeletons of dinosaurs and other fossils found around the state. And two of these dino hot spots happen to be less than an hour's drive away, at the Two Medicine Dinosaur Center in Bynum and the Old Trail Museum in Choteau.

"We have a new Maiasaura display," said Gina Dalrymple, board president at the Old Trail Museum. "It's the first one that was found all still together; it was found right here in our area."

http://www.greatfallstribune.com

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The Surrey Iguanodon"Not the only Dinosaur in the VIlllage then"

2008-07-12T14:53:54Z

July 11, 2008 -- An Iguanodon feasting on ferns died, perhaps after becoming stuck in a marshy floodplain, and was then consumed by an enormous dinosaur with huge claws that left behind a few of its teeth, suggests a new study on animal and plant remains excavated in southern England.
The findings, which are described in a paper accepted for publication in the journal Cretaceous Research, even indicate what happened in the region well before the Iguanodon was born, as well as what took place after the hungry carnivore, Baryonyx, enjoyed its Iguanodon feast.
"Our study is in that regard remarkable, as it is a comprehensive, multidisciplinary study of the sedimentology and all the different microfossil groups present in the dinosaur-bearing bed," co-author Susanne Feist-Burkhardt told Discovery News.
She added, "Usually you will find a publication each about one fossil group and it is difficult to fit the information together into a single coherent picture."
That was not the case for this set of finds, dating to around 130,000 years ago and excavated at the Smokejacks Brickworks in Ockley, Surrey. The animal remains, along with pollen grains from some of the world's earliest flowering plants, spores, megaspores, green algae and shellfish, all paint a picture of certain events and what the environment there was like during the Early Cretaceous.
The pollen and spores indicate that many thousands of years before the Iguanodon was born, cone-bearing trees and big shrubs dominated the site. As time went on, liverworts and various types of ferns and mosses emerged. Dense fern undergrowth was then dotted here and there with the early flowers, all belonging to the genus Retimonocolpites.
When the Iguanodon came on the scene, this plant eater had its pick of edibles.
"Iguanodon was a large herbivorous animal and probably fed on all available vegetation, the conifers as well as the leafy and more nutritious pteridophytes (mosses and ferns)," explained Feist-Burkhardt, a researcher in palynology at the Natural History Museum in London. "The Iguanodon probably moved out onto the exposed floodplain for the only available freshwater during the dry season and fed on the available plants

She said numerous, extremely well-preserved ostracods, a shellfish commonly known as "seed shrimp," were preserved in the sediment next to the Iguanodon's remains. She even thinks the decaying dino's body created a "micro-environment" that helped to prevent the calcium carbonate in the shells from dissolving.
Two Baryonyx teeth were also found near the Iguanodon, which she said might indicate "Baryonyx was scavenging the Iguanodon carcass." Other studies show that this carnivore ate a lot of fish, so it's possible the long-snouted meat eater with big, sharp claws stumbled upon the Iguanodon body while gulping down fish.
The manner in which the Iguanodon's body decomposed suggests the herbivorous dinosaur may have died in a standing position, or had its body fall in that way, with its head resting where the shallow pool of freshwater met the sediment surface. Green algae, enriched by nutrients in the dead dino's flesh, then bloomed brightly around it.
David Batten, honorary professor of paleontology at the University of Manchester, has also conducted studies on the plant microfossils at the Smokejacks Brickworks site, as well as surrounding regions.
He told Discovery News that the new study presents findings that "are consistent with previous observations."
The Surrey finds add to the evidence that England was once a dinosaur hot spot. One 95-mile-long section of the nearby Dorset coast has so many ancient animal and plant remains that locals now refer to it as The Jurassic Coast.
http://dsc.discovery.com/news

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Fish Fossil May Resolve Questions On Natural Selection

2008-07-12T07:07:14Z

A researcher from the University of Chicago said newly identified fish fossils discovered in several European museums might resolve a long-standing question about evolutionary theory.

The 50 million-year-old fossils fill in a “missing link” in the evolution of flatfishes and explain one of nature's most extraordinary phenomena, namely how flatfish such as sole, flounder halibut developed the bizarre but useful trait of having both eyes on one side of their head.

Even more extraordinary is the fact that every flatfish is born symmetrical, with one eye on each side of its skull. But as the flatfish develops from a larva to a juvenile, one eye gradually “migrates” up and over the top of the head, coming to rest in its adult position on the opposite side of the skull.

For flatfish, which lie on their sides at the bottom of the sea, unique specialization provides a clear survival advantage in allowing the fish to use both of their eyes to look up. But until now, scientists have not understood how evolutionary forces gave rise to this structural adaptation because there had not been a discovery of any so-called transitional fossils that showed the intermediate steps in the trait’s evolution.

"This problem of the evolution of asymmetrical flatfishes was particularly puzzling to biologists because it was very hard to explain what evolutionary forces might have led to this transition," said Matt Friedman, the study’s author and a graduate student at the University of Chicago.

"How can you arrive at the pattern seen in living flatfishes via gradual evolution? There seems to be no adaptive reason to start down the gradual evolutionary path toward the flatfish condition, because surely these intermediates would not have any kind of evolutionary advantage," said Friedman, who also serves as a research associate at The Field Museum.

Some view this missing link as a flaw in the theory of natural selection. They argue that intermediate, transitional forms of the fish could not exist because there would be no survival benefit from having one eye that was slightly off center on the opposite side of the head.

Biologists subscribe to the “hopeful monster” theory, which says these changes occurred all at once through a large-scale mutation, which fortunately turned out to be very useful.

But Friedman's find indicates that flatfishes followed a more conventional evolutionary plan.

"There was no macromutation that all of a sudden gave them both eyes on the same side of the head," he said during a Reuters telephone interview.

More than 500 species of modern flatfishes live in fresh and salt water. All have an uncommon flattened body shape well suited to life at the bottom of the sea. Some flatfishes have both eyes on the left side of their head while other families have both eyes on the right side.

The flatfish typically have white or pale undersides, with camouflaged uppersides to blend in with their surroundings. Some species are even able to change the color of their upperside. Weighing as much as 720 pounds, these carnivorous bottom-feeders vary considerably in size from 4 inches to 7 feet.

Friedman’s study examined several specimens of two kinds of fossil fishes from the Eocene (about 50 million years ago) of northern Italy. One of these is a newly described genus that Friedman named Heteronectes, which means "different swimmer", which he discovered in a museum drawer at the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria.

The other fossil, called Amphistium, is known from several specimens from the same Italian site as Heteronectes and a single fossil from France. Although it has been known to science, it has been incorrectly classified for more than 100 years. All prior studies of Amphistium erroneously concluded that it had a symmetrical skull.

Examining the anatomy of Amphistium and Heteronectes with a wide range of techniques, including CAT scanning and chemical preparation, which dissolves the rock surrounding the fossil skeleton, Friedman discovered that both represent primitive flatfishes with a somewhat asymmetrical skull.

However, in both species one eye had begun migrating, but had not quite crossed the middle of the head, displaying an intermediate condition between what is found in ordinary symmetrical fishes and extraordinary asymmetrical flatfishes. The discovery disproves the notion that flatfishes arose suddenly as "hopeful monsters".

"It's not quite in the Cyclops position," Friedman told Reuters.

The find provides evidence of two steps in the gradual assembly of one of the most bizarre body structures found among vertebrates. But it also raises the question of why this bizarre intermediate form developed.

"It turns out they [flatfish] don't lie flat and completely prone on the sea floor. They actually will prop themselves up slightly with their fins," Friedman said.

Once in that position, it would have been advantageous to have a slightly asymmetrical eye arrangement, he said.

Interestingly, Friedman found that while the right eye had migrated in some specimens of Amphistium, it was the left eye that had moved in other specimens. This is different than most living flatfish species, where individuals are always either left or right eyed. It also indicates that mixed 'handedness' is primitive for flatfishes.

"There is a broad implication for the tempo and mode of evolution here," Friedman said.

"Scientists had long assumed flatfishes must have arisen suddenly because they could not imagine the adaptive significance of intermediates, but this work delivers clear evidence that such intermediates did exist, and therefore, that flatfish asymmetry arose gradually."

The fossils provide clues to the lifestyle of these primitive fish, and provide evidence of the evolutionary forces that might have led to their strange anatomy.

"It is certain that these extinct fishes were predators," Friedman said, noting that one of the Amphistium specimens had preserved the remains its last meal in its stomach: a fish nearly half its own length.

"Many flatfishes lie in wait on their sides to ambush unsuspecting prey, but they don't always lie flat—they often prop themselves above the seafloor with their fins. It's possible that Amphistium and Heteronectes did the same, and that even incomplete asymmetry would have given them a better view of things above and around them than no asymmetry at all."

But Friedman was cautious about making too many inferences from his discovery.

"Our inability to imagine is what got us into this predicament," he said, in reference to the long-standing flatfish debate.

The new discoveries were published in the journal Nature July 10, 2008.
http://www.redorbit.com/news

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Just a matter of size!

2008-07-11T06:15:02Z

by Staff Writers
Washington DC (SPX) Jul 11, 2008
After taking a fresh look at an old fossil, John Flynn, Frick Curator of Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History, and colleagues determined that the brains of the ancestors of modern Neotropical primates were as small as those of their early fossil simian counterparts in the Old World.
This means one of the hallmarks of primate biology, increased brain size, arose independently in isolated groups-the platyrrhines of the Americas and the catarrhines of Africa and Eurasia.

"Primatologists have long suspected that increased encephalization may have arisen at different points in the primate evolutionary tree, but this is the first clear demonstration of independent brain size increase in New and Old World anthropoids," says Flynn of the paper that appeared in the Museum's publication Novitates this June. Encephalization is the increase in brain size relative to body size.

Animals with large encephalization quotients (E.Q.'s) are those with bigger brains relative to their body size in comparison to the average for an entire group. Most primates and dolphins have high E.Q.'s relative to other mammals, although some primates (especially apes and humans) have higher E.Q.'s than others.

At the heart of the new paper is the development of more accurate equations for estimating body size in platyrrhines, or New World "monkeys."

Most fossils are fragments of skulls or teeth so, to help in estimating their body size (and then E.Q.), Flynn and colleagues collected 80 measurements of the skulls, jaws, and teeth of 17 different species of living New World monkeys that ranged across the full spectrum of body sizes.

This study is one of the first to estimate body size with platyrrhines instead of their better-studied counterparts from the Old World, and this detailed analysis uses new statistical approaches to tease out which characteristics correlate best with body size. The goal is to apply this equation to fossilized specimens.

Chilecebus, found high in the Andes and described by Flynn and collaborators in 1995 in Nature, is one such fossil. The skull dates to 20 million years ago and is the oldest and most complete well-dated primate skull from the New World.

In the Novitates paper, Flynn and colleagues more accurately estimate that Chilecebus weighed about 583 grams and had an E.Q. of only 1.11-a much smaller relative brain size than any living New or Old World anthropoid, which have E.Q.'s ranging from 1.39-2.44 (and even higher for humans).

"The result is clear: early fossil members of both the New World and Old World anthropoid lineages had small brain sizes, thus the larger brain sizes seen in both groups today must have arisen independently," says Flynn.

"Documenting that large brains evolved separately several times within Primates will enhance understanding of the timing and pathways of brain expansion and its effects on skull growth and shape, and may lead to new insights into the genetic controls on encephalization."

Eric Delson, the Chair of Anthropology at Lehman College, City University of New York and a Research Associate at the Museum, concurs. "This work confirms that brain size increase may be one of the common characteristics of all primates," he says.

"The relatively small brain of Chilecebus contrasts with that of the slightly younger (16.5 million years ago), larger brained fossil Killikaike found in Argentina and described two years ago. It is probable that brain size also increased independently in the lemurs of Madagascar, as well as in the apes (of which humans are the extreme case) and the cercopithecid monkeys of Africa and Asia."
http://www.terradaily.com/reports

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A 'Leonardo'-with skin yet!

2008-07-10T23:42:38Z

SILVER SPRING, Md., July 10, 2008 - 'Leonardo' was found in Montana almost fully intact. Ninety percent of his body is covered in skin. We know what he ate for his last meal. What makes this so impressive? Leonardo is a 77 million year-old dinosaur. Discovery Channel reveals what is unquestionably one of the most unexpected and important dinosaur discoveries of all time in the one-hour high-definition special SECRETS OF THE DINOSAUR MUMMY, premiering Sunday, September 14 at 9 PM (ET/PT).
Discovered in 2000 by a team of amateur paleontologists exploring Malta, Montana, Leonardo -- named for graffiti found near his burial site -- is the first dinosaur mummy with intact digestive tract contents ever found. With this once-in-a-lifetime finding, scientists now have more than just bones to fully reconstruct how dinosaurs looked and lived. From the cause of death to Leonardo's last meal, scientific tests provide far more detail than the team of scientists ever expected. Skin impressions and actual fossilized samples of the digested food still inside the viscera, plus skin and joints, allow the team to create the first reconstruction of a giant dinosaur, accurate both inside and out.
"Discovery Channel has obtained exclusive access to what promises to be an extraordinary development in the history of paleontology -- a high-tech exploration deep into the body of a dinosaur that lived 77 million years ago," said John Ford, president and general manager of Discovery Channel. "It's a privilege to be able to document the amazing discoveries made possible by this perfectly intact dinosaur and share them with our viewers."
Leonardo is a young Brachylophosaurus, a four-legged plant-eating duck-billed dinosaur, the very first juvenile of the species discovered with extensive skin. He was approximately three to four years old when he died and would have been 20 feet long, weighing about 2,000 pounds.
From high-tech testing of Leonardo's remains, scientists have positively identified what a plant-eating dinosaur ate -- something that has never been done before. Leonardo's last meal consisted largely of leaves which included ferns, magnolias and conifers. Additional analysis has confirmed at least 40 different types of prehistoric plant pollen preserved in his stomach. Since most dinosaurs were herbivores, this find is an incredibly important step in learning more about the creatures' lives on the planet.
Another finding that was only possible due to Leonardo's intact remains is the strong evidence for a crop. Modern plant-eating birds have crops to aid in the digestion process, but there was no evidence of the possibility that dinosaurs may have also had crops until Leonardo was unearthed. This startling discovery has led to new theories of how these creatures lived.
Leonardo will be on display at The Houston Museum of Natural Science in a specially created exhibit -- Dinosaur Mummy CSI: Cretaceous Science Investigation -- beginning September 19, 2008
.http://www.marketwatch.com

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Species that have come and gone

2008-07-10T13:21:39Z

Santa Barbara CA (SPX) Jul 09, 2008
Diversity among the ancestors of such marine creatures as clams, sand dollars and lobsters showed only a modest rise beginning 144 million years ago with no clear trend afterwards, according to an international team of researchers. This contradicts previous work showing dramatic increases beginning 248 million years ago and may shed light on future diversity.
"Some of the time periods in the past are analogies for what is happening today from global warming," says Jocelyn Sessa of Penn State. "Understanding what happened with diversity in the past can help us provide some prediction on how modern organisms will fare. If we know where we have been, we know something about where it will go."

Using contemporary statistical methods and a paleobiology database, the researchers report in the July 4 issue of Science, a new diversity curve that shows that most of the early spread of invertebrates took place well before the Late Cretaceous, and that the net increase through the period since, is proportionately small relative to the 65 million years that elapsed. The research team was led by John Alroy of the University of California at Santa Barbara.

One key to the new curve is the Paleobiology Database, housed at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, University of California, Santa Barbara. Previous research was based on databases of marine invertebrate fossils that recorded only the first occurrence of an organism and the last occurrence of the organism. There was no information in between for the organism.

"Over 30 years ago, researchers looked at the curve they had and considered that perhaps diversity did not increase at all," says Mark E. Patzkowsky of Penn State.

"What researchers saw was the diversity curve leveled off for quite some time and then took off exponentially. However, diversity results are strongly controlled by sampling techniques."

The new database allows researchers to standardize sample size because it includes multiple occurrences of each fossil. Researchers can randomly choose equal samples from equal time spans to create their diversity curve. This new curve uses 11 million-year segments, but the researchers hope to reduce the time intervals to 5 million years to match the interval of the previous curve, known as Sepkoski.

The data for this study contains 284,816 fossil occurrences of 18,702 genera that equals about 3.4 million specimens from 5384 literature sources. The old curve, developed by J. John Sepkoski Jr., used a database that contained only about 60,000 occurrences.

The researchers also looked at evenness in diversity. If there are 100 specimens divided into 10 time intervals, they could be divided with 10 individual specimens in each interval, or 91 specimens could be in one interval with one each in the remainder. The more even the distribution, the higher the evenness.

"Evenness says something about resource distribution," says Patzkowsky. "Much of invertebrate diversity has been attributed to diversity increase in the tropics, but the curve is not driven by that totally. It seems that 450 million years ago was not so different from today because it also contained more diversity in the tropics."

The major points of the Sepkoski curve are still seen in the new curve. Some things that are not seen, such as the decrease in diversity due to the Cretaceous Tertiary (KT) extinction 65 million years ago are not visible because of the scale of the intervals used. The extinction and recovery in the KT took less than 11 million years and so do not show.

Some things not seen on the Sepkoski curve include a peak in the Permian. Also unexpected is that the diversity in the Jurassic (206 to 144 million years ago) is lower than diversity in the Triassic (248 to 206 million years ago), indicating a dip and rise in the diversity curve.

The curve then rises in the Cretaceous and remains more or less flat after that. The previously thought exponential increase in diversity is not there.

"Comparing diversity through time is about how our world works, about the origin of species and how diversity changes with temperature," says Sessa. "If we think that the net increase over time will not get much greater, things are very different from if the diversity increases exponentially."

http://www.terradaily.com/reports

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Latvian Fossils Close The Gap Between Fish And Land Animals, Say Researchers

2008-06-29T21:03:34Z

New exquisitely preserved fossils from Latvia cast light on a key event in our own evolutionary history, when our ancestors left the water and ventured onto land. Swedish researchers Per Ahlberg and Henning Blom from Uppsala University have reconstructed parts of the animal and explain the transformation in the new issue of Nature.

It has long been known that the first backboned land animals or "tetrapods" - the ancestors of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, including ourselves - evolved from a group of fishes about 370 million years ago during the Devonian period. However, even though scientists had discovered fossils of tetrapod-like fishes and fish-like tetrapods from this period, these were still rather different from each other and did not give a complete picture of the intermediate steps in the transition.
In 2006 the situation changed dramatically with the discovery of an almost perfectly intermediate fish-tetrapod, Tiktaalik, but even so a gap remained between this animal and the earliest true tetrapods (animals with limbs rather than paired fins). Now, new fossils of the extremely primitive tetrapod Ventastega from the Devonian of Latvia cast light on this key phase of the transition.

“Ventastega was first described from fragmentary material in 1994; since then, excavations have produced lots of new superbly preserved fossils, allowing us to reconstruct the whole head, shoulder girdle and part of the pelvis”, says Professor Per Ahlberg at the Department of Physiology and Developmental Biology, Uppsala University.

The recontructions made by Professor Ahlberg and Assistant Professor Henning Blom together with British and Latvian colleagues show that Ventastega was more fish-like than any of its contemporaries, such as Acanthostega. The shape of its skull, and the pattern of teeth in its jaws, are neatly intermediate between those of Tiktaalik and Acanthostega.
With the help of new, superbly preserved fossils, Per Ahlberg and his colleagues have been able to reconstruct the whole head, shoulder girdle and part of the pelvis.
“However, the shoulder girdle and pelvis are almost identical to those of Acanthostega, and the shoulder girdle is quite different from that of Tiktaalik (the pelvis of Tiktaalik is unknown), suggesting that the transformation from paired fins to limbs had already occurred. It appears that different parts of the body evolved at different speeds during the transition from water to land”, says Per Ahlber
http://www.scientificblogging.com

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The last 'sophisticated' Britons

2008-06-26T19:50:44Z

Pulborough, UK (SPX) Jun 26, 2008
An archaeological excavation at a site near Pulborough, West Sussex, has thrown remarkable new light on the life of northern Europe's last Neanderthals. It provides a snapshot of a thriving, developing population - rather than communities on the verge of extinction.
"The tools we've found at the site are technologically advanced and potentially older than tools in Britain belonging to our own species, Homo sapiens," says Dr Matthew Pope of Archaeology South East based at the UCL Institute of Archaeology. "It's exciting to think that there's a real possibility these were left by some of the last Neanderthal hunting groups to occupy northern Europe. The impression they give is of a population in complete command of both landscape and natural raw materials with a flourishing technology - not a people on the edge of extinction."

The team, led by Dr Pope and funded by English Heritage, is undertaking the first modern, scientific investigation of the site since its original discovery in 1900. During the construction of a monumental house known as 'Beedings' some 2,300 perfectly preserved stone tools were removed from fissures encountered in the foundation trenches.

Only recently were the tools recognised for their importance. Research by Roger Jacobi of the Leverhulme-funded Ancient Human Occupation of Britain (AHOB) Project showed conclusively that the Beedings material has strong affinities with other tools from northern Europe dating back to between 35,000 and 42,000 years ago. The collection of tools from Beedings is more diverse and extensive than any other found in the region and therefore offers the best insight into the technologically advanced cultures which occupied Northern Europe before the accepted appearance of our own species.

"Dr Jacobi's work showed the clear importance of the site," says Dr Pope. "The exceptional collection of tools appears to represent the sophisticated hunting kit of Neanderthal populations which were only a few millennia from complete disappearance in the region. Unlike earlier, more typical Neanderthal tools these were made with long, straight blades - blades which were then turned into a variety of bone and hide processing implements, as well as lethal spear points.

"There were some questions about the validity of the earlier find, but our excavations have proved beyond doubt that the material discovered here was genuine and originated from fissures within the local sandstone. We also discovered older, more typical Neanderthal tools, deeper in the fissure. Clearly, Neanderthal hunters were drawn to the hill over a long period time, presumably for excellent views of the game-herds grazing on the plains below the ridge."

The excavations suggest the site may not be unique. Similar sites with comparable fissure systems are thought to exist across south east England. The project now aims to prospect more widely across the region for similar sites.

Barney Sloane, Head of Historic Environment Commissions at English Heritage, said: "Sites such as this are extremely rare and a relatively little considered archaeological resource. Their remains sit at a key watershed in the evolutionary history of northern Europe. The tools at Beedings could equally be the signature of pioneer populations of modern humans, or traces of the last Neanderthal hunting groups to occupy the region. This study offers a rare chance to answer some crucial questions about just how technologically advanced Neanderthals were, and how they compare with our own species."

The project, which has been running with the assistance of the landowners since February 2008, has been directed by Dr Matthew Pope of UCL and Caroline Wells of Sussex Archaeological Society, working closely with specialists from the Boxgrove Project and the Worthing Archaeological Society.

The true importance of the Beedings site was not recognised until the 1980s when Dr Roger Jacobi of the British Museum showed that the collection of flint tools contained large numbers of long, straight-sided blades which had been thinned at each end, possibly to allow hafting. The presence of tools damaged through high-velocity impact suggested they were used as spear tips. Jacobi interpreted the site as a hunting camp where game herds could be clearly observed and kit repaired in anticipation of the next kill. Jacobi's work showed that the flint tools from Beedings were technologically similar to those from a number of north European sites. These sites are distributed from Devon, England in the West across the north European Plain to Nietoperzowa Cave, Poland. They possibly date to 38,000 years ago
http://www.terradaily.com/

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Wooly Mammoth gene study

2008-06-14T13:39:25Z

University Park PA (SPX) Jun 13, 2008
A large genetic study of the extinct woolly mammoth has revealed that the species was not one large homogenous group, as scientists previously had assumed, and that it did not have much genetic diversity.
"The population was split into two groups, then one of the groups died out 45,000 years ago, long before the first humans began to appear in the region," said Stephan C. Schuster, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State University and a leader of the research team.

"This discovery is particularly interesting because it rules out human hunting as a contributing factor, leaving climate change and disease as the most probable causes of extinction." The discovery will be published later this week in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The research marks the first time scientists have dissected the structure of an entire population of extinct mammal by using the complete mitochondrial genome -- all the DNA that makes up all the genes found in the mitochondria structures within cells.

Data from this study will enable testing of the new hypothesis presented by the team, that there were two groups of woolly mammoth -- a concept that previously had not been recognized from studies of the fossil record.

The scientists analyzed the genes in hair obtained from individual woolly mammoths -- an extinct species of elephant adapted to living in the cold environment of the northern hemisphere. The bodies of these mammoths were found throughout a wide swathe of northern Siberia. Their dates of death span roughly 47,000 years, ranging from about 13,000 years ago to about 60,000 years ago.

Schuster and Webb Miller, professor of biology and computer science and engineering at Penn State, led the international research team, which includes Thomas Gilbert at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and other scientists in Australia, Belgium, France, Italy, Russia, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The team includes experts in the fields of genome evolution, ancient DNA, and mammoth paleontology, as well as curators from various natural-history museums.

Another important finding for understanding the extinction processes is that the individuals in each of the two woolly-mammoth groups were related very closely to one another. "This low genetic divergence is surprising because the woolly mammoth had an extraordinarily wide range: from Western Europe, to the Bering Strait in Siberia, to Northern America," Miller said.

"The low genetic divergence of mammoth, which we discovered, may have degraded the biological fitness of these animals in a time of changing environments and other challenges."

Our study suggests a genetic divergence of the two woolly-mammoth groups more than 1-million years ago, which is one quarter the genetic distance that separates Indian and African elephants and woolly mammoths," Miller said. The research indicates that the diversity of the two woolly-mammoth populations was as low centuries ago as it is now in the very small populations of Asian elephants living in southern India.

"The low genetic divergence of the elephants in southern Indian has been suggested as contributing to the problems of maintaining this group as a thriving population," Schuster said. Intriguingly, the mitochondrial genomes revealed by the researchers are several times more complete than those known for the modern Indian and African Elephants combined.

Whereas studies before this research had analyzed only short segments of the DNA of extinct species, this new study generated and compared 18 complete genomes of the extinct woolly mammoth using mitochondrial DNA, an important material for studying ancient genes.

This achievement is based on an earlier discovery of the team led by Miller, Schuster, and co-author Thomas Gilbert, which was published last year and that revealed ancient DNA survives much better in hair than in any other tissue investigated so far.

This discovery makes hair, when it is available, a more powerful and efficient source of DNA for studying the genome sequences of extinct animals. Moreover, mammoth hair is found in copious quantities in cold environments and it is not regarded as fossil material of enormous value like bone or muscle, which also carries anatomical information.

"We also discovered that the DNA in hair shafts is remarkably enriched for mitochondrial DNA, the special type of DNA frequently used to measure the genetic diversity of a population," Miller said. The team's earlier study also showed that hair is superior for use in molecular-genetic analysis because it is much easier than bone to decontaminate.

Not only is hair easily cleaned of external contamination such as bacteria and fungi, its structure also protects it from degradation, preventing internal penetration by microorganisms in the environment.

An important aspect of the new study is that the hair samples it used had been stored in various museums for many years before being analyzed by the researchers, yet the scientists were able to obtain lots of useful DNA from them. "One of our samples originates from the famous Adams mammoth, which was found in 1799 and has been stored at room temperatures for the last 200 years," Schuster said.

This research technique opens the door for future projects to target interesting specimens that were collected a long time ago and are no longer available from modern species, the scientists said. Even the molecular analysis of entire collections seems now possible, an effort that the team calls "Museomics."

"We plan to continue using our techniques to untangle the secrets of populations that lived long ago and to learn what it might have taken for them to survive," Schuster said. "Many of us also have a personal interest in learning as much as we can about how any species of large mammal can go extinct."

The research was supported, in large part, by Penn State University, Roche Applied Sciences, and a private sponsor. Additional support was provided by the National Human Genome Research Institute, Marie Curie Actions, the Australian Research Council, the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, and the Pennsylvania Department of Health.
http://www.terradaily.com

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UK natural history museum

2008-06-06T09:59:54Z

Folks. I am in the UK at the moment and whilst in London I spent two full days at the natural history museum.The dinosaur trail was just fantastic and I have some great pics of the exhibits that I shall post .If you have a chance to go there get to the dinos early as by 11am there was a line at least 500 long waiting to go through.The working model of rex was fascinating . rob

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Fossil embryo

2008-05-30T18:07:26Z

By Michael Perry

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian scientists unveiled on Thursday the fossilized remains of the oldest vertebrate mother ever discovered, a 375-million-year-old placoderm fish with embryo and umbilical cord attached.

The fossil, found in the Gogo area of northwest Australia, is proof that an ancient species had advanced reproductive biology, comparable to modern sharks and rays, said John Long, head of sciences at the Museum of Victoria in Melbourne.

"It is not only the first time ever that a fossil embryo has been found with an umbilical cord, but it is also the oldest known example of any creature giving birth to live young," Long told Reuters
http://www.topix.com/science/paleontology/

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Flying reptiles

2008-05-30T18:04:56Z

With a name like T. Rex, you'd expect to be safe from even the fiercest paleo-bullies. Turns out, ancient, flying reptiles could have snacked on Tyrannosaurus Rex babies and other landlubbing runts of the dinosaur world. A new study reveals a group of flying reptiles that lived during the Age of Dinosaurs some 230 million to 65 million years ago did not catch prey in flight, but rather stalked them on land. Until now, paleontologists pictured the so-called "winged lizards" or pterosaurs as skim-feeders. In this vision, the creatures would have flown over lakes and oceans grabbing fish from the water's surface, much as gulls do today. The new findings, detailed this week online in the journal PLoS ONE, don't ground the animals totally. "In our hypothesis, flight is primarily a locomotive method," said co-researcher Mark Witton of the University of Portsmouth in England. "They're just using it to get from point A to point B. We think the majority of their lives, when they're feeding and reproducing, that's all being done on the ground rather than in the air." To uncover these feeding habits, Witton and Portsmouth colleague Darren Naish analyzed fossils of a group of toothless pterosaurs called azhdarchids, which are much larger on average than other pterosaurs. For example, one of the largest azhdarchids, Quetzalcoatlus, weighed about 550 pounds (250 kilograms) with a wingspan of more than 30 feet (10 meters) and a height comparable to a giraffe. Witton and Naish learned that more than 50 percent of the azhdarchid fossils had been found inland.

Other skeletal features, including long hind limbs and a stiff neck, also didn't fit with a mud-prober or skim-feeder. "All the details of their anatomy, and the environment their fossils are found in, show that they made their living by walking around, reaching down to grab and pick up animals and other prey," Naish said. A skim-feeder, such as a gull, trawls its lower jaw through the water, eventually smacking into a fish or shrimp and pulling it from the water.

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Yemeni dino tracks

2008-05-21T20:08:51Z

LONDON - For the first time, dinosaur footprints have been found on the Arabian Peninsula.

In ancient coastal mudflats in Yemen, fossils reveal that a herd of 11 gigantic dinosaurs — sauropods, the largest animals that ever walked on land — tramped deep tracks into the earth that have lasted roughly 150 million years.

Nearby, there are tracks of a lone ornithopod — a large, common vegetarian with birdlike, three-toed feet that walked on its hind legs, sometimes referred to as the "cow of the Mesozoic," said researcher Anne Schulp of the Maastricht Museum of Natural History in the Netherlands. The Mesozoic Era is also known as the Age of Dinosaurs,
Altogether, these new tracks help shed the most light to date on the mysterious history of dinosaurs in the Arabian Peninsula. Only a few dinosaur fossils have been reported so far from the Arabian Peninsula — isolated bones from the Sultanate of Oman and possible fragments of a sauropod from the Republic of Yemen.

"No dinosaur trackways had been found in this area previously. It's really a blank spot on the map," Schulp said.

And "big dinosaurs don't live alone," Schulp told LiveScience. "I'm sure there were some carnivorous dinosaurs around as well, as well as much smaller animals, not only dinosaurs."

Just as expert trackers can learn much about their quarry today from tracks, so too can scientists discover critical details about dinosaurs. For instance, the fact that sauropods did not leave furrows from their tails with their footprints means these giants did not drag their lengthy tails behind them. Instead, they must have held them high off the ground, to help balance their bodies, given their equally long necks.

"We really want to learn when did which dinosaurs live where, and why was that?" Schulp said. "How did the distribution change over time, why did one replace another and move from one place to another?"

http://www.msnbc.msn

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Platypus, and yes I have seen them in the wild

2008-05-20T06:32:16Z

When scientists announced last week that they had deciphered the complete genetic playbook for the duck-billed platypus, the public reacted with considerably more enthusiasm than it had accorded similar bulletins about the sequencing of, say, the mustard plant, the mosquito or the wild chicken. A “fantastic response,” said Jennifer Marshall Graves of the Australian National University in Canberra, a principal author on the report. “More than I expected.”

One reason for the glowing reviews is that people love platypuses the way they love penguins and panda bears, as adorable, clumsy and nonthreatening creatures that remind them of kids playing dress-up. But the platypus trumps its plush-toy costars by adding a kind of Dada prankishness to the equation, what with its bill that looks like a Charlie Chaplin shoe, the leathery, thumb-sized eggs it insists on laying, the Daffy Duck webfeet outfitted with venomous spurs and the milk that dribbles down its unnippled chest. That the genetic code of the platypus proved to be as bizarrely pastiched as its anatomy enhanced the popular appeal of the report, published in the journal Nature.

Yet for researchers in the burgeoning field of comparative genomics, the real beauty of having spelled out all 2.2 billion chemical letters of the platypus’s genetic blueprint lies not with the freak-show charm of the animal but rather with its sublime ordinariness, positioned as almost a platonic abstraction of a mammal, yet one with enough specifically derived features to remind us that it is just an animal trying to make its way in the world. It is archaic and post-modern, primitive and refined. By studying the platypus and its close relatives, scientists hope to better understand the genesis and evolution of the entire mammalian family tree.

“Modern mammalian diversity is enormous,” said Zhe-Xi Luo, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, “but our view of that diversity has been heavily influenced by our focus on two of the three groups of mammals, the placentals and the marsupials.”

That fixation isn’t surprising, he said, given their numbers. Placental mammals that gestate their young internally, as do we and most of the pelts we know, account for 95 percent of the world’s 5,600 species of mammals, and marsupials like the kangaroo, koala and our very own opossum, whose young are born at a grublike stage and do most of their developing externally, often in a pouch, constitute nearly all the rest.

The third group of mammals, the monotremes, claims a measly three distinct animals, and all are indigenous to Australia and New Guinea: the duckbilled platypus and the long-beaked and short-beaked echidnas, also known as spiny anteaters. Yet this small club goes very deep, and with the sequencing of the platypus genome, Dr. Luo said, “the total scope of mammalian diversity” can now be explored.

The monotremes are considered the most ancient mammalian group, dating back to the Jurassic period, which began roughly 200 million years ago. They are not our direct ancestors, but rather split off from the rodenty line that gave rise to us and marsupials some 180 million years ago, with marsupials breaking away maybe 40 million years later.

However ancient the rupture, the last common ancestor between us and monotremes was clearly mammalian, for we all sport mammalian traits, some of us more luxuriously than others. The duckbilled platypus, for example, is jacketed in two layers of fine, dense fur, the better to keep it warm in its semi-aquatic existence, and “it’s the softest fur you can imagine,” said a co-author of the platypus paper, Wesley Warren of Washington University School of Medicine.

Monotremes also have a four-chambered heart, a mammalian jaw hinge and a set of tiny middle ear bones that, unlike in reptiles, are separated from the lower jaw and hence lend mammals their highly sensitive hearing. And though a platypus mother lacks nipples, the fluid that oozes from two round patches of skin on her belly is the same sort of rich blend of sugars, proteins, fatty acids, vitamins and antimicrobial agents lionized by La Leche.

Monotremes also possess features that hark back to a runty mammal’s lot at play among the giants of Jurassic park. They can dig themselves into the haven of a hole within moments. They are most active in the evening and at dawn, in contrast to the diurnal dinosaurs. They have true or vestigial spurs on their back legs, which the male platypus still packs with a snakelike venom. While the poisonous spearlets are now directed largely against rival males, the trait could well have served among ancestral monotremes as the equivalent of a bee’s sting, to ward off the Bigfeet that ever threatened to crush them.

At the same time, the monotremes still pay homage to their premammalian forebears. The group name, monotreme, means “one-holed,” and so echidnas and platypuses have the equivalent of a bird or reptile cloaca, a single all-purpose orifice for excretion, sex and the laying of eggs.

The laying of eggs is, of course, a monotreme’s clearest vinculum to a reptilian-avian mode of life. After digging herself an underground nest and padding it with vegetation, a female platypus lays one to three eggs and incubates them for about 10 days.

On hatching, the babies are barely the size of a gumdrop, and they will spend the next five months nursing in the burrow, emerging only when they are close to full-grown, maybe the size of a housecat. It’s time to start hunting for a living, to dive into a pond in search of crustaceans, which the platypus does with the help of chemoreceptors to smell the prey and electroreceptors to detect the minor electrical field surrounding the prey and mechanoreceptors to track movement of the prey and a toothless but tough horny bill for seizing and crushing the prey it has amply sensed.

“They’re voracious, curious creatures, constantly moving and nibbling on things,” Dr. Warren said.

For its part, the echidna is highly specialized for eating ants and termites, with a long pointed snout and a wormlike, sticky tongue.

In the specifics of their hunting gear, the platypus and echidna reveal their highly stylized sides, the kidskin fit between themselves and their niches, and the ways they have profoundly evolved since their ancestors and ours started loosening their jawbones and sweetening the glandular secretions with which they moistened their eggs. Monotremes are like the fantasy geezer aunt you never knew you had, breezing in from the other side of the world, with wild tales of the past and no plans for slowing down.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13

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See, It really wasn't dead

2008-05-19T19:26:34Z

As we know, it has shuffled off its mortal coil and joined the choir invisible. Its metabolic processes are history. It is demised.

But while the parrot in the celebrated Monty Python sketch is well and truly dead, those hilarious exchanges between John Cleese and Michael Palin have winged their way into comedy immortality.

Cleese complained that the Norwegian Blue sold to him by pet shop owner Palin was lifeless - and kept upright by being nailed to its perch.

The dead parrot sketch in Monty Python first aired in 1969

Adding to the absurdity was the fact that parrots - being tropical birds - don't come from Scandinavia.

Or do they? For now, in a development putting the sketch in a completely different light, it turns out that the Norwegian Blue did exist.

Dr David Waterhouse, a fossil expert and Python fan, has found that parrots not only lived in Scandinavia 55million years ago, but probably evolved there before spreading into the southern hemisphere.

His discovery was based on a preserved wing bone of a previously unknown species, given the scientific name Mopsitta Tanta - and now nicknamed the Norwegian Blue.

The dead parrot script, voted Britain's favourite alternative comedy sketch by Radio Times readers in 2004, was written by Cleese and Graham Chapman and first broadcast in 1969.

As he returns the ex-parrot to Palin's pet shop, Cleese is assured it is just resting or stunned, being "tired following a prolonged squawk" and "pining for the fjords".

Cleese bangs it on the counter, trying to wake it up, screaming: "Hello, Mister Polly Parrot! I've got a lovely fresh cuttlefish for you!" But it is definitely expired.

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