Dinosaur news

[thetyrantlizard]

The December issue of National Geographic will have a cover story about Extreme Dinosaurs, and one of the featured dinos will be Nigersaurus, dubbed the cow of the Mesozoic. (This is what Thor should be taking care of instead of mammalian bovines ;D ) It had a very short neck by sauropod standards and couldn't even point its head to look forwards, I suppose so no one could interrupt its eating. My kind of dinosaur ;D

Here's what his bizarre head looks like (the Nigersaurus, not Thor ;D ):

[Thorondor 33]

thetyrantlizard said:

Here's what his bizarre head looks like (the Nigersaurus, not Thor ;D ):

Ha-Ha.

[thetyrantlizard]

The ancestor of Triceratops has been discovered in Alberta and is on display at the Royal Tyrrell Museum. It's called Thorondorsaurus Eotriceratops xerinsularis. The skull was 3 meters long, and it is bigger than any Triceratops found in Alberta.

[tomhet]

3 meters long! That's big.

[thetyrantlizard]

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article2963586.ece

They found a site in Spain which contained numerous dinosaur remains, including those of 3 species of armoured titanosaurs They have had to rush to excavate it all because they are building a railway over the site. (Nothing must stand in the way of progress after all The distribution of Star Wars toys and Smallvil*** DVDs to the ends of the Earth must be unhampered by such inconveniences as significant paleontological finds ;D ) It puts another nail into the theory that the dinosaurs were in a terminal decline before the end of the Cretaceous, which no serious scientist now believes, except for writers of dinosaur books In fact, dinosaurs were diversifying rapidly right up to their extinction by the meteor 65 million years ago.

[Thorondor 33]

Cool news.

thetyrantlizard said:

The distribution of Star Wars toys and Smallvil*** DVDs to the ends of the Earth must be unhampered by such inconveniences as significant paleontological finds ;D )

LOL, yeah. ;D

[thetyrantlizard]

They discovered a hadrosaur mummy that was found not only with skin but also with internal organs Studies indicate that the skin was striped and scaly and that hadrosaurs were more muscular than assumed--they could run 45 kph. They said that means it's faster than t-rex, which I found absurd--in which ecosystem does the prey run faster than the predator? That simply means t-rex's top speed is underestimated--I'm guessing t-rex does 50 kph. Also, because the vertebra of a hadrosaur were not linked together, as they are portrayed in museum displays, but were a centimeter apart with some sort of disk between them, most hadrosaur reconstructions, and reconstructions of large dinosaurs in general, are a yard or more too short. This means dinosaurs are even bigger than most present estimates

[tomhet]

^^^ OMFG!!!! That must be like one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs of recent times.

[Thorondor 33]

And it had no sign of feathers. Rock on.

[thetyrantlizard]

The dinosaur is now officially identified as an edmontosaurus The findings will be showcased in a National Geographic special Dino Autopsy on 9 December. So far they've managed to only CT-scan the tail; the body and head will follow in a few weeks. It has already revealed that the edmontosaur was partially scavenged on by a crocodile called Borealosuchus, which was itself preserved (it got stuck inside the dinosaur).

They also say that the dinosaur had a much bigger, erm, bottom that has traditionally been presumed for hadrosaurs--25% larger. This would explain something that I have always found puzzling. Bipedal dinosaurs (and hadrosaurs were capable of running on two legs) are supposed to be perfectly balanced on the pelvic region, the head and front of the body balanced by the tail--yet, as any one who has a Battat t-rex knows, most dinosaur toys have a tendency to fall on their faces, because it is obvious the tail is nowhere near massive enough to support the head. Now that we know hadrosaurs have huge posteriors perhaps toy makers can make the tails of all biped dinos larger to improve balance.

[Thorondor 33]

Hmmm, I may like the look of traditional dinos. =/

[thetyrantlizard]

The scientist who analyzed the find, Dr. Phil Manning, has a book out on January about "Dakota", as the edmontosaur is called. It's titled Grave Secrets of Dinosaurs: Soft Tissues and Hard Science.

[thetyrantlizard]

It is now alleged that Dracorex, Stygimoloch, and Pachycephalosaurus are actually different growth stages of the same animal. Because it is Jack Horner making the claim, I would hardly take it as fact without further corroboration. His reasoning is fishy.

www.earthsky.org/radioshows/52063/dinos-suffer-case-of-mistaken-identity?q=printme

[thetyrantlizard]

It is one thing to conclude that the CT-scans of the domes of the stygimoloch and dracorex show that they are from juvenile animals. It is a very different matter to state definitively that they are from the SAME species. They could be juveniles of different species, and it is not necessarily true that either, or both, of them would grow into Pachycephalosaurus. They could very well be the same species; we just don't have proof.

And he says that he compared the growth stages of the 'pachy' with human babies. LOL. Do humans have domes on their heads, and do babies have spikes that shrink with age?

It is very obvious that Horner is not a logical person. He does not even know what a false analogy is, let alone a non sequitur.

[thetyrantlizard]

A primitive sauropodomorph has been discovered in Antarctica. From the Early Jurassic, it is called Glacialisaurus, and it weighed about 4-6 tons and is related to Massospondylus.