The Real Colors of a Dinosaur Revealed for the First Time (via Gizmodo)
The paleontologist team—who published the results of their study in last issue of Science—obtained 29 melanosome samples from all over the body of the Anchiornis, comparing them to the feathers of modern birds. The result was an accurate map of the animal’s colors, the first true-to-life picture of a dinosaur.
Ancient Whale Sucked Mud For Food (via BBC News)
An ancient “dwarf” whale appears to have fed by sucking small animals out of the seafloor mud with its short snout and tongue, experts say. Researchers say the 25 million-year-old fossil is related to today’s blue whales - the largest animals on Earth. The ancient animal’s mud slurping may have been a precursor to the filter feeding seen in modern baleen whales. These whales strain huge quantities of tiny marine animals through specialised “combs” which take the place of teeth….This animal still had teeth; it had not yet evolved the baleen plates - used for filter-feeding - which characterise present-day baleen whales.
Poisonous Prehistoric ‘Raptor’ Discovered in China (via ScienceDaily)
A group of University of Kansas researchers working with Chinese colleagues have discovered a venomous, birdlike raptor that thrived some 128 million years ago in China. This is the first report of venom in the lineage that leads to modern birds….
The dromaeosaur or raptor, Sinornithosaurus (Chinese-bird-lizard), is a close relative to Velociraptor. It lived in prehistoric forests of northeastern China that were filled with a diverse assemblage of animals including other primitive birds and dinosaurs….
The venom most likely sent the victim into rapid shock, shrinking the odds of retaliation, escape or piracy from other predators while the raptor manipulated its prey….
The genus had special depressions on the side of its face thought by the investigators to have housed a poison gland, connected by a long lateral depression above the tooth row that delivered venom to a series of long, grooved teeth on the upper jaw. This arrangement is similar to the venom-delivery system in modern rear-fanged snakes and lizards. The researchers believe it to be specialized for predation on birds.
Colossal Sea Monster Unearthed (via BBC Earth News)
The fossilised skull of a colossal “sea monster” has been unearthed along the UK’s Jurassic Coast. The ferocious predator, which is called a pliosaur, terrorised the oceans 150 million years ago. The skull is 2.4m long, and experts say it could belong to one of the largest pliosaurs ever found: measuring up to 16m in length….
Pliosaurs were a form of plesiosaur, a group of giant aquatic reptiles that dominated the seas around the same time that dinosaurs roamed the Earth. They had short necks and huge, crocodilian-like heads that contained immensely powerful jaws and a set of huge, razor-sharp teeth. Using four paddle-like limbs to propel their bulky bodies through the water, they made easy work of passing prey such as dolphin-like ichthyosaurs and even other plesiosaurs….
Crushed Bones Reveal Literal Dino Stomping Ground
Imagine the gruesome sound of bones snapping as a thirsty, 30-ton dinosaur tramples a heap of fresh carcasses on his way to a rapidly shrinking lake.
That’s the scene revealed by a painstaking analysis of thousands of bones unearthed near Moab, Utah by geologists from Brigham Young University.
So far the researchers have identified 67 individual dinosaurs representing 8 species – and they have only scratched the surface of this diverse quarry. Mysteriously, nearly all of the 4,200 bones recovered so far are fractured, as reported in the scientific journal Palaeo. “Although enough bones were recovered to assemble several complete dinosaurs, the vast majority of bones are broken to bits and pieces, just pulverized,” said BYU professor Brooks Britt, lead author on the study. The researchers reconstructed how the bones got there and why they are in such bad shape.
The quarry, located immediately west of Arches National Park, contains dinosaurs of all sizes and ages, indicating a massive die-off event. The location of this dense cluster of bones – near the shore of an ancient lake bed – suggests a drought was the cause.
Yet the biggest puzzle was the cause of all the fractures. A closer look revealed that most of the breaks were angled “greenstick” fractures that occur in fresh bones. The bones broke before they became brittle….
The heavy-footed culprits? Huge, plant-eating sauropods and iguanodontids that stomped more than 100 million years ago during the Early Cretaceous Period. Some of the sauropods from this quarry are cousins to the brachiosaurus….(continues @ ScienceDaily)
Dinosaur eggs found in India (via BBC News)
Geologists in southern India say they have found hundreds of dinosaur egg clusters which could be about 65 million years old….
Was Mighty T. Rex ‘Sue’ Felled By A Lowly Parasite? (via ScienceDaily)
When pondering the demise of a famous dinosaur such as ‘Sue,’ the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex whose fossilized remains are a star attraction of the Field Museum in Chicago, it is hard to avoid the image of clashing Cretaceous titans engaged in bloody, mortal combat.
It is an image commonly promoted by museums and dinosaur aficionados. Sue’s remains, in fact, exhibit holes in her jaw that some believed were battle scars, the result of conflict with another dinosaur, possibly another T. rex.
But a new study, published in the online journal PLoS ONE, provides evidence that Sue, perhaps the most famous dinosaur in the world, was felled in more mundane fashion by a lowly parasite that still afflicts modern birds. The study, conducted by an international team of researchers led by Ewan D.S. Wolff of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Steven W. Salisbury of the University of Queensland, Australia, pins the demise of Sue and other tyrannosaurs with similar scars on an avian parasitic infection called trichomonosis, caused by a single-celled parasite that causes similar pathologies on the mandibles of modern birds, raptors in particular.
It is possible the infection in her throat and mouth may have been so acute that the 42-foot-long, 7-ton dinosaur starved to death….
Tiny T. rex fossil discovery startles scientists (via CNN)
A pint-sized version of the Tyrannosaurus rex, with similarly powerful legs, razor-sharp teeth and tiny arms, roamed China some 125 million years ago, said scientists who remain startled by the discovery.
The predator, nicknamed Raptorex, lived about 60 million years before the T. rex and was slightly larger than the human male, scientists said.
The findings, to be released Friday in the journal Science, are based on fossilized remains discovered in lake beds in northeastern China. They show a dinosaur with many of the specialized physical features of Tyrannosaurus rex at a fraction of its size.
Runway found for flying reptiles (via BBC News)
An ancient runway for flying reptiles called pterosaurs has been found in France, say researchers writing in a Royal Society journal. Led by Jean-Michel Mazin, the international team found a 150 million year-old landing strip in Crayssac in South West France. The “trackway” shows how the reptile landed feet first, then stuttered before walking on all fours. It is still is not known how they took off.
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