World’s Most Armored Dinosaur

It was the world’s most armored dinosaur, until evolution did something strange.

Fossils found in Morocco have revealed that the armored body of Spicomellus was also covered in bone spikes that reached nearly a meter in length. The preserved remains are dated to more than 165 million years ago. They also show that the animal lost some of its armor as it evolved.

Spicomellus had a multitude of plates and spikes all over its body. These included meter-long neck spikes, huge spikes projecting upwards over the hips, and a range of long, blade-like spikes.

Spicomellus was a type of ankylosaur, which were heavily armored herbivores with bony skins similar to turtles. They lived from the Middle Jurassic to the Late Cretaceous period but went extinct 66 million years ago when a comet wiped out most dinosaurs.

Sometimes described as ‘walking coffee tables’, ankylosaurs were four-legged, squat and under 10 feet in length.

Usually, species become better at defending themselves over time. But this discovery showed that ankylosaurs lost some of their protection, despite their environment being more dangerous in the Cretaceous period. This particular fossil is the oldest known ankylosaur. Scientists thought that later species might have inherited similar features, but they didn’t. Therefore, experts believe the fearsome variety of spikes may have actually been used for attracting mates and showing off to rivals rather than for defense.

In later species, the spikes are gone, having been replaced by flat plates, which were likely used only for defense. The scientists speculate that as larger and more fearsome predators evolved, ankylosaur armor became simpler, less showy, and more defensive. This suggests they wanted to draw less attention to themselves.

The end of Spicomellus’ tail hasn’t been found, but some of the vertebrae have been fused together, which suggests it had a club or similar tail weapon.

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/this-was-world-s-most-armoured-dinosaur-then-evolution-did-something-strange/ar-AA1LkPbP?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=9c063d459322482f930a164f96dd0e06&ei=68

Colorado 'swamp dweller' mammal

Working near Rangely, Colorado, paleontologists have uncovered an unknown state resident—a fossil mammal about the size of a muskrat that may have scurried through swamps during the Age of Dinosaurs.

They identified the creature from a piece of jawbone and 3 molar teeth, and named it Heleocola piceanus. It lived in Colorado roughly 70 to 75 million years ago, at a time when an inland sea covered large portions of the American West. “Heleocola” roughly translates to “swamp dweller” in Latin.

Said one team member, “Colorado is a great place to find fossils, but mammals from this time period tend to be pretty rare. So it’s really neat to see this slice of time preserved in Colorado.”

Compared to the much larger dinosaurs living at the time, like tyrannosaurs or horned ancestors of Triceratops, this new fossil might seem tiny and insignificant. But it was surprisingly large for mammals at the time.

This discovery helps paint a more complete picture of a Colorado that would be all but unrecognizable to residents today. Seventy million years ago, this area was where land met water. Creatures like turtles, duck-billed dinosaurs and giant crocodiles may have flourished in marshes and estuaries, gorging themselves on wetland vegetation and fish.

The bit of mammal jaw emerged from a slab of sandstone that was collected from the site in 2016. The fossil measured about an inch long.

Before an asteroid killed off the non-avian dinosaurs 66 million years ago, mammals tended to be small—about the size of today’s mice or rats. They are largely identified from the tiny teeth they left behind.

In comparison, this one was positively huge. A cousin to modern-day marsupials, this animal weighed 2 pounds or more. But it’s not quite a record. The Didelphodon, another fossil mammal from the same period, may have weighed as much as 11 pounds. H. piceanus’ teeth indicate it dined on plants, with a few insects or small animals mixed in.

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/paleontologists-discover-colorado-swamp-dweller-mammal-that-lived-alongside-dinosaurs/ar-AA1sNCLe?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=ed46623d933043f19069e3bf9a8f9350&ei=83 

Armored Dinosaur had a Bulletproof Vest

Many dinosaurs relied on plate armor to keep them safe from predators. But one went so far as to grow a ‘bulletproof vest’ over its plate armor. The best-preserved dinosaur fossil on record is a type of ankylosaur called a nodosaur. The nodosaur was a herbivore that grew 18 feet long and lived 110 to 112 million years ago. One of these fossils was so well preserved, scientists were able to determine the strength of its keratin plates and the bony spikes that covered them. It is estimated that the nodosaur could survive a crash with an F150 pickup that was going at speed.

Usually, only the bony spikes remained on other armored dinosaur fossils, because keratin (dead cells that form structures like hair and fingernails) doesn’t fossilize well. So when paleontologists studied armored dinosaurs in the past, they assumed the main protection came from the bony structures, which they thought might have been covered by a thin layer of keratin like a turtle shell.

In 2017, an exceptionally well-preserved fossil was discovered in a mine in Alberta, Canada. The fossil was so well preserved that researchers could analyze the color of its armor and even look into its stomach to see its last meal.

There was a keratin layer over the bones, but it was much thicker than anticipated. It was over 6 inches thick in some places. The keratin sheath over a modern cattle horn is only 0.6 inches thick. The keratin sheath would allow for flexibility and could easily be removed if it got damaged. It would be like trimming a broken nail instead of needing to heal a broken bone.

This armor could withstand much more force than predators of the time could deliver, which suggests the armor may have been used during fights between males who were vying for female mates.

This research also reveals new insight into dinosaur armor in general. It is likely that other armored dinosaurs also had thick keratin sheaths. And those with armored and weaponized faces and heads were probably using a lot more keratin than is normally modeled.

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/armored-dinosaur-could-withstand-the-impact-of-a-high-speed-car-crash-thanks-to-the-bulletproof-vest-over-its-plate-armor/ar-AA1tHLFo?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=f4e5ca4b3d53413dc221ad6255622e96&ei=63

Jurassic Park Period Part 6

 Fauna - Amphibians & Land Animals

Amphibians - The Early Jurassic Prosalirus is thought to represent the first frog relative capable of hopping like living frogs. Recognizable frogs like the South American Notobatrachus are known from the middle of the Jurassic. Although salamander-like amphibians are known from the Triassic, salamander ancestors first appeared during the Jurassic.

But most of the land animals mentioned were dinosaurs. Dinosaurs had morphologically diversified in the Late Triassic, but experienced a major increase in diversity and abundance during the Early Jurassic after the extinction of other reptile groups, becoming the dominant vertebrates in terrestrial ecosystems.

Theropods - Theropods are a group of dinosaurs that had hollow bones and 3 claws on each appendage. They first appeared in the Late Triassic. One group, called the Neotheropoda, persisted into the Early Jurassic. The earliest 'bird snout' members of the averostrans appear during the Early Jurassic and continue throughout the rest of that period and the Jurassic. Most theropods were carnivorous, although the unusual Limusaurus of China had a herbivorous diet, with adults having beaked jaws, making it the earliest known theropod to have converted from an ancestrally carnivorous diet. The Coelurosaurs first appeared during the Middle Jurassic, including early tyrannosaurs such as Proceratosaurus. The scansoriopterygids was a group of small feathered coelurosaurs with membraneous, bat-like wings for gliding, and records have been found from the Middle to Late Jurassic.

Ornithischians - This refers to an extinct order of mainly herbivorous dinosaurs characterized by a pelvic structure superficially similar to that of birds. Hence they were called "bird-hipped", or Ornithischia. However, birds are only distantly related to this group, as birds belong to the theropod line of dinosaurs. The Ornithischians included those known as "horn-faced", such as Triceratops, and the armored dinosaurs such as stegosaurs and ankylosaurs. There is strong evidence that certain groups of ornithischians lived in herds, possibly segregated by age. Some were at least partially covered in hair- or feather-like pelts, and there is much debate of whether these pelts may have been primitive feathers.

The earliest definitive ornithischians appear during the Early Jurassic. The earliest Ankylosauria and Stegosauria appear during the Middle Jurassic. At least some ornithischians were covered in protofeathers.

Sauropodomorphs - Sauropods are a group of "lizard-hipped" dinosaurs. They had long necks and tails, small heads and 4 huge, pillar-like legs. They became the dominant large herbivores in terrestrial ecosystems during the Jurassic. Some reached gigantic sizes, becoming the largest organisms to have ever lived on land. Bipedal sauropodomorphs continued to exist into the Early Jurassic, but went extinct by the beginning of the Middle Jurassic. Quadrupedal sauropomorphs were a hold-over from the Late Triassic. One type of quadrupedal from the earliest Jurassic of South Africa reached an estimated weight of 12 tons, far in excess of other known sauropodomorphs.

So it appears there were lots and lots of dinosaurs ambling across the landscape. I know I earlier said we would pause to look at some of the better-known dinosaurs, but I didn't realize how many episodes the Jurassic Period would take, just to give it this brief look. So I've changed my mind, and the next episode (all the rest of the fauna) will finish up the Jurassic Period before I go on to the next time period in the history of the Earth. Later on, when I've finished the Earth's prehistory, I'll find a time to take a look at various species of dinosaurs, so keep watching, because I'll get to them!

Jurassic Park Period Part 1

 

Paleogeography

Everybody knows about dinosaurs, right? And thanks to the Jurassic Park series of movies, we all know the dinosaurs lived during the Jurassic Period. But what else is noteworthy about this geologic period? I'll try to uncover something other than various dinosaurs to study.

However, I am just as fascinated with dinosaurs as any little kid, so I'll spend some time studying some of our favorites while I'm at it.

The Jurassic Period started 201.3 million years ago and ended approximately 145 million years ago. There was, as seems so common with these geological periods, an extinction event at the dividing point between the Triassic and Jurassic Periods.

The Triassic/Jurassic extinction event seemed to be caused by the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province, which, as best I can figure out, means a lot of magma and lava was moving around in the areas currently known as northwestern Africa, southwestern Europe, southeastern North America and Northeastern South America.

The articles I read seemed to indicate that this was not just a matter of volcanic activity, that some of it could have been caused by the action of diverging plate tectonics. We are aware of the Atlantic rift, where two tectonic plates are moving away from each, allowing a large volume of magma to flow, but this is not considered a volcano. This magma movement began about 201 million years ago, and continued for about 600,000 years. It was the largest activity of this type known to man, covering roughly 11 million km².

By the beginning of the Jurassic, the supercontinent Pangaea had begun rifting into two landmasses: Laurasia to the north and Gondwana to the south. The rifting between North America and Africa was the first to happen, in conjunction with the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province

By the beginning of the Jurassic, there was flooding in most parts of central and western Europe, transforming it into an archipelago of islands surrounded by shallow sea. Beginning in the Early Jurassic, the proto-Atlantic was expanded by the "Viking Corridor" (or Transcontinental Laurasian Seaway) which stretched between the Baltic Shield and Greenland, and was several hundred kilometers wide. All during the Jurassic, the North Atlantic Ocean remained relatively narrow, while the South Atlantic did not open until later.

At the beginning of the Jurassic, North and South America remained connected, but at some point, they rifted apart to form the Caribbean Seaway, which connected the north Atlantic Ocean with what is now called the Pacific Ocean, although it was much larger back then, taking up over half the globe and was called the Panthalass Ocean.

About 183 million year ago, another magmatic event started, the Karoo-Ferrar event, this one in South Africa and Antarctica. This triggered another extinction event by causing widespread oceanic anoxia, ocean acidification and elevated temperatures. I am uncertain if these types of conditions were responsible for the Triassic/Jurassic extinction event.

Madagascar and Antarctica rifted away from Africa in association with the eruption of the Karoo-Ferrar large igneous provinces, which opened the western Indian Ocean and began the fragmentation of Gondwana.

During the Middle to Late Jurassic, the Sundance Seaway, a shallow inland sea, covered much of northwest North America.

The sea level rose and fell many times during the Jurassic, peaking at one point as high as 140 meters (462 feet) above the present level.

Wow! So much happening! And that's just the geography! This makes me wonder what else was going on!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurassic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Atlantic_magmatic_province

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_igneous_province

Triassic Period Part 2

 Now let's take a look at the inhabitants of the Triassic Period.

Three categories of organisms can be distinguished in the Triassic record: survivors from the Permian–Triassic extinction event, new groups which flourished briefly, and other new groups which went on to dominate the Mesozoic Era.

To go back to the beginning, after the extinction event just before the Triassic Period began, the Earth's biosphere was impoverished. It was well into the middle of the Triassic before life recovered its former diversity. Therapsids (including what would become mammals) and archosaurs (including crocodilian reptiles) were the chief terrestrial vertebrates of this period. A specialized subgroup of archosaurs, called dinosaurs, first appeared late in the Triassic, but did not become dominant until the succeeding Jurassic Period.

The first true mammals also evolved during this period, as well as the first flying vertebrates, the pterosaurs, who were a specialized subgroup of archosaurs.

In marine environments, new types of corals appeared in the Early Triassic, forming small patches of reefs of modest extent compared to the great reef systems of modern times. The shelled ammonites (whose shell resembled that of the modern nautilus, but is not an ancestor) recovered, diversifying from a single line that survived the Permian-Triassic extinction.

The fish fauna was remarkably uniform, with many families and genera exhibiting a global distribution in the wake of the mass extinction event. There were also many types of marine reptiles. The first of the lizard-like animals appeared in the Early Triassic seas and soon diversified, and some developed to huge size during the Late Triassic.

On land, the surviving plants included ginkos, ferns, and horsetails, among others. Seed plants came to dominate the terrestrial flora. In the northern hemisphere, conifers and ferns flourished. A seed fern genus would dominate Gondwana throughout the period.

Many groups of terrestrial fauna appeared in the Triassic period or achieved a new level of evolutionary success during it. They include lungfish, Temnospondyls (early amphibians that had mostly been replaced by reptiles, they made a come-back in this period), Rhynchosaurs (the primary large herbivores in many Triassic ecosystems), Phytosaurs (looked like crocodiles, but unrelated), Aetosaurs (heavily armored and mostly herbivorous), Rauisuchians (the keystone predators of most Triassic terrestrial ecosystems), Theropods (dinosaurs but not the large kind that would come later; most were 1-2 meters long), and Cynodonts (a large group that includes true mammals, complete with hair and a large brain).

Some amphibians were among those groups that survived the Permian-Triassic extinction event. The first ancestors of frogs are known from the Early Triassic, but did not become common until the Jurassic (which comes next).

Among reptiles, the earliest turtles appeared during the Late Triassic Period.

During the Triassic, archosaurs displaced therapsids as the dominant amniotes. This may have contributed to the evolution of mammals by forcing the surviving therapsids and their mammalia-form successors to live as small, mainly nocturnal insectivores. Nocturnal life may have forced the mammaliaforms to develop fur and a higher metabolic rate.

Though the end-Triassic extinction event was not equally devastating in all terrestrial ecosystems, several important clades of large reptiles disappeared, as did most of the amphibians, groups of small reptiles, and others (except for the proto-mammals). Some of the early, primitive dinosaurs also became extinct, but more adaptive ones survived into the Jurassic. Surviving plants that went on to dominate the Mesozoic Era included modern conifers.

The cause of the Late Triassic extinction in uncertain. It was accompanied by huge volcanic eruptions that occurred as the supercontinent Pangaea began to break apart about 202 to 191 million years ago, forming one of the largest known inland volcanic events since the planet had first cooled and stabilized. Another possible but less likely cause for the extinction event might be global cooling.

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triassic

Mesozoic Era

 Okay, we're going to take a quick overview look at the Mesozoic Era, also known as the Age of Reptiles. It lasted from 252 to 66 million years ago. It has 3 Periods nestled within it; the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. It was characterized by dinosaurs, conifers and ferns, a hot greenhouse climate, and the tectonic break-up of Pangaea.

The Mesozoic began just after the largest well-documented mass extinction in Earth's history, and it ended with another extinction event.

During this era, the supercontinent Pangaea broke into separate landmasses that would eventually move into their current positions during the following era. There was not much mountain building during this era, but what little did occur took place around what is now known as the Arctic Ocean. In contrast, the supercontinent Pangaea gradually split into a northern continent, Laurasia, and a southern continent, Gondwana. (Seems like this name has been used before.) By the end of the era, the continents had split up and some had rejoined into their present forms, though not their present positions. Laurasia became North America and Eurasia, while Gondwana split into South America, Africa, Australia, Antarctica and the Indian subcontinent, which would eventually slam into Asia, giving rise to the Himalayas, but not during this Era.

The climate varied, alternating between warm and cool periods. Overall, the Earth was hotter than it is today. The Triassic (first) Period was generally dry and highly seasonal, especially in Pangaea's interior. Low sea levels would have exacerbated temperature extremes. Pangaea's interior probably included expansive deserts.

Sea levels began to rise during the Jurassic (second) Period, most likely caused by seafloor spreading. The sea levels could have risen as much as 656 ft (200 m) above today's sea level. This would have flooded coastal area. In addition, the breaking up of Gondwana into smaller continents created new shorelines. Temperatures continued to increase for a time, then began to stabilize. With the proximity of water, humidity also increased, and the deserts retreated.

The climate of the Cretaceous (third) Period is more widely disputed. Probably, higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could have almost eliminated the north-south temperature gradient, meaning that temperatures were about the same across the planet, about 10 degrees Centigrade higher than today.

Dinosaurs first appeared mid-way through the first period, and became the dominant terrestrial vertebrates by early in the second period, then died out at the end of the third period. Archaic birds appeared during the 2nd period (Jurassic), evolving from a branch of dinosaurs. True birds appeared in the third period. Mammals also appeared during this era, but they remained small (less than 33 lb) until the third period. Flowering plants appeared early in the third period and rapidly diversified, replacing conifers and other gymnosperms as the dominant group of plants. But we'll take a closer look at flora and fauna as we get to those periods.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesozoic

Ichthyosaurs

 

Ichthyosaur is Greek for ‘fish lizard’, and is the name for a group of large extinct marine reptiles. They lived during the time of the dinosaurs, but formed a separate group from them and may not have been closely related.

Ichthyosaurs thrived during much of the Mesozoic era. Based on fossil evidence, they appeared about 250 million years ago, and at least one species survived until about 90 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous. During the early Triassic period, ichthyosaurs evolved from some unidentified land reptile that returned to the sea. In a case of convergent evolution, they gradually came to resemble modern dolphins and whales, which evolved from land-dwelling mammals millions of years after the ichthyosaurs returned to the ocean. These ‘fish lizards’ were abundant until the later Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, when they were replaced as the top aquatic predators by the Plesiosauria, another marine reptilian group.

Ichthyosaurs averaged 2-4 meters (6.6 to 13.1 ft) in length. Some specimens were as short as 1 ft, while other species were much larger. During the Triassic, the Shonisaurus popularis was about 15 meters (49 ft) long. The Shastasaurus sikanniensis was estimated in 2004 to have been 21 meters (69 ft) long. Some lower jaw fragments found in England indicated a length between 20 and 25 meters (66 to 82 ft).

Weight estimates indicate a 2.4 meter (8 ft) Stenopterygius weighed around 163-168 kg (359-370 lb), while a 4 meter (13 ft) Ophthalmosaurus icenicus weighed 930-950 kg (2,050-2,090 lb). That would be a lot of tuna! Or salmon.

The earliest members of the ichthyosaur lineage were eel-like, but later members resembled more typical fishes or dolphins. Their limbs had been fully transformed into flippers, and some species had a fin on their backs and a more vertical fin at the rear of a rather short tail.

Their heads were pointed, and the jaws often came equipped with conical teeth to catch smaller prey. Some species had larger, bladed teeth to attack large animals. Their eyes were very large and the neck was short. Later species had a stiff trunk with a more vertical tail fin, which made for a powerful propulsive stroke. Ichthyosaurs were air-breathing, warm-blooded and bore live young. It’s possible they had a layer of blubber for insulation.

They may have looked like fish, but they were not. They were reptiles. They adapted so well to their environment that some of them developed dorsal fins and vertical tail fins without their ancestors having had anything there to be adapted.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichthyosaur

Whale Ancestors

Where did whales come from? How did a fish evolve to become as large as a modern whale?

Actually, whales took a round-about route to evolve into today’s huge ocean creatures. They are actually descended from a land animal.

There are plenty of clues in a whale’s body and biology that their ancestors lived on land:

* They breathe air.

* They nurse their young with their own milk.

* Their paddle-shaped flippers encase hand bones with five ‘fingers’.

* As embryos, whales have tiny back limbs which disappear before birth.

It turns out that hippos are the closest living relatives of whales, but not their ancestors. Both hippos and whales evolved from four-legged, even-toed, hoofed ancestors that lived on land about 50 million years ago. The hippo’s ancestor stayed on land, but the whale ancestor—which was about the size of a goat—moved to the sea and evolved into swimming creatures over a period of about 8 million years, which is quite fast for evolutionary processes.

When fossils of gigantic ancient whales were first discovered, they were mistaken for dinosaur fossils and given the name Basilosaurus. But later, they were recognized as mammals. These prehistoric whales were more elongated than modern whales and had small back legs and front flippers. Their nostrils were situated halfway between the tip of the snout and the forehead. They had earbones just like those of modern whales. Therefore, Basilosaurus showed the link between whales and their terrestrial ancestor.

The current theory is this: That some land-living hoofed animals favoured the flavor of plants at the water’s edge. Eating them had the added advantage of allowing them to easily hide from danger in shallow water. Over time, their descendants spent more and more time in the water, possibly in an ancient estuary, and their bodies became adapted for swimming. The front legs became flippers. A thick layer of fat called blubber replaced their fur coats to keep them warm and streamlined. Their tails became bigger and stronger for powerful swimming, and their back legs shrunk. Their nostrils gradually moved to the top of their heads so that they could breathe easily without having to tilt their heads while swimming. As these creatures began to feed on a different diet, they lost their teeth in favor of a baleen filter method of feeding.

Between these articles, there was some disagreement about what whale ancestors ate. One stated that they favored plants found at the water’s edge. Another felt they ate small land animals and fish found close to shore. Neither article had any information on the teeth whale ancestors had, so their eating preferences seem pretty much up in the air.

So, what can we learn from this tale of whales? Be careful what and where you eat? Evolution is your friend? I find myself wondering if whales would ever come back out of the water, what would they evolve to then? Some version of a goat-sized, hoofed animal again? One of the articles did mention that occasionally, a whale comes along that does have vestigial back legs that are completely encased within their body. Therefore, it seems possible that back legs could make a comeback.

Come on, work with me here. If octopuses can come out of the ocean and become a terrestial bad guy, as some scientists seem to think, then surely whales can also emerge from the oceans. Given enough time to evolve.

 

https://us.whales.org/whales-dolphins/how-did-whales-evolve/

https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evograms_03

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/when-whales-walked-on-four-legs.html

Velociraptors

Velociraptors lived about 75 to 71 million years ago. There are 2 known species, both from Mongolia. The second species was only discovered in 2008.

They were depicted in the Jurassic Park movie as swift bipedal reptiles with a long tail and an enlarged sickle-shaped claw on each hindfoot, 6 1/2 feet tall and weighing about 180 pounds. Not so, say the scientists. They were bipedal reptiles, they were fast, and they had the fearsome claw. But they also had feathers, and were actually the size of a turkey. The raptors depicted in the movie series were based on a related genus, because the script said they had to look suitably fierce.

Instead of being 6.5 feet tall, velociraptors were as much as 6.75 feet long, snout to tail tip. Scientific artistic renditions show a very long, feathered tail. They were about 1 ft 7 inches high at the hip and weighs about 33 lbs. Although bipedal, their body and tail were roughly parallel to the ground. Their forefeet were also feathered, but were too short to serve as wings.

Their skulls grew up to 10 in long. The jaws were lined with 26-28 widely-spaced, serrated teeth on each side, more strongly serrated on the back edge than the front.

Their hands were large, with 3 curved claws. However, the structure of the wrist bones forced the hands to be held with palms facing inwards and not downwards.

On their feet, the first toe was a small dewclaw, and the 2nd held the ferocious claw spoken about earlier, which could get 2.5 inches long along its outer edge. Only their 3rd and 4th toes were used in walking or running. Although some beliere their 2nd toe claw was used for disemboweling prey, tests have proven it was most likely used for stabbing and holding, to keep their prey from escaping.

If we’re going to compare fiction to fact, then we must consider the depiction in the Jurassic Park movies of velociraptors hunting in packs. Although there are some indications of other species in the family hunting in packs, there is little to no indication in the fossils of velociraptors doing it.

Most of the known velociraptor fossils have been found in current desserts, under conditions that indicate the locale at the time of their death was also arid and covered in sand dunes, or possibly a little less arid.

Now, my first thought about incorporating velociraptors in a story involves a comedy-ish story where a town in the desert is suddenly overrun by predatory turkeys, which turn out to be—according to the local Wise Guy—descendants from velociraptors, long thought extinct these millions of years. Of course, once the raptors ate up all the local cats, dogs, and chickens, they would necessarily start picking on larger prey... large dogs, wolves, goats... children? Alas, I don’t do horror, which is where this thought is quickly leading me. Anybody out there have any other ideas?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velociraptor

https://www.livescience.com/23922-velociraptor-facts.html

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/velociraptor-facts.html

Quetzalcoatlus

If you think the name looks a lot like the name of the Aztec feathered god, you are right. the fossils of this winged reptile were named after that god. This type of pterosaur is the largest known example of flying animal. The artist’s rendition that was intended to give some clue as to size showed a standing quetzalcoatlus just as tall as a giraffe (with a neck just as long), and a wing span of about 36 feet (11 m). The human man in the picture was not quite as tall as the back legs were long.

As I read the article, I was reminded again and again of the ‘airplanes’ in the Flintstones cartoons, where a small cabin sat atop a huge flying reptile. Not very feasible, as even this huge creature would probably be able to carry only 2-3 humans on its back. And I don’t know if it could fly with that much extra weight.

The skeleton pictures showed a skull that was mostly beak, with a bony crest on the forehead, between the large eyes. It doesn’t have any teeth, and its wings are depicted as looking quite a bit like a bat’s wing. It is also depicted as folding its wings in half and possibly using its wings as support when standing or walking. Most of the known fossils of this creature were found in Texas.

Several feeding patterns have been suggested for the Quetzalcoatlus, but the most recent one is that they stalked small vertebrates while on the ground, similar to the modern stork.

There has been much argument among scientists about Quetzelcoatlus’ ability to fly. The latest thought is that they would use powered flight to get to a point where they could use thermal gliding. The wing muscles were found to be quite robust, which they would not be if the animal were purely a terrestrial animal.

There are potentially 2 species of Quetzelcoatlus. Measurements I’ve given are for the larger specie, there is possibly another specie that is about half as large.

So, if this extinct species comes back to life, that could make life difficult for the human population. While adults might be too large for the smaller Quetzelcoatlus to attack, children would probably be seen as ‘fair game’. And even adults might have to watch out if the larger variety is around.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quetzalcoatlus

Dinosaurs

Like most kids, I had a steady interest in dinosaurs when I was young. I never truly outgrew that interest, and the science magazines I read don’t have much to report on them very often. How disappointing. I long to learn all the new stuff they’ve learned since I was a kid. Can you imagine my surprise a few decades ago when I discovered Fred Flintstone’s powerhouse Brontosaurus never actually existed? It was the result of a few bones that did not necessarily belong together and a scientist’s active imagination while trying to put them together.

One of my school science projects was on dinosaurs. I bought several giant bars of Ivory soap and tried to carve them into various dinosaurs. The T-Rex didn’t want to stand up, the stegasaurus’ back plates were difficult to carve without breaking them off. The easiest to carve was the brontosaurus, which way back then still had a place on the dinosaur family tree.

I can’t do justice to dinosaurs in a few hundred words. After all, they were around - in one form or another - for millions of years. So I plan to look around, pick some interesting versions and report on them over the course of several months.

What do you think you know about dinosaurs? Were they all cold-blooded? Covered in reptile scales or simply skin similar to our own? Did they do any parenting of their young, or simply lay their eggs and move on through the countryside? Did they really evolve into birds? How big did they get? What was their smallest representative? Are there any ‘dinosaurs’ alive today, or maybe animals that look very similar to their ancient ancestors?

I remember a story - I don’t remember if I saw it visually or read it - where a group of hadrosaurs (That’s what I remember their type being, but I may be completely wrong.) had left Earth in some fashion back in the Long Ago, and established a home on another planet in another system. And now their descendants were space travelers and meeting humans in the vastness of space.

Wouldn’t that be something?

Well, since we’re approaching that point where we may be space traveling in a few generations (meaning, outside our home system), maybe we should be considering what evolved dinosaurs might be like. And to do that, we should start by learning what dinosaurs were actually like.

Any suggestions you want me to look at?

Unique Argentina Dino

Sometime around 2012, an Argentina rancher found an old bone sticking up out of the dirt. Intrigued, he scratched around, trying to dig it up, then contacted paleontologists at the local museum to come see what he had.

He had found some big bones. And when the paleontologists dug around, they discovered the remains of 6 of the biggest titanosaurs ever discovered.

Titanosaurs lived about 100 million years ago, on all the continents, including Antarctica, which was not covered in snow and ice, and may or may not have been located at the south pole at the time. The ‘Titans’ were herbivores. The most complete skeleton was for a young adult some 122 feet long (its neck was 39 feet) and weighing 70 tons (about the same weight as 10 modern African elephants). One of the femurs uncovered was 8 feet long; long enough to be a living room sofa, if it were more comfortable to sit on. How big would it have gotten when it was fully grown? How did it get that big? And what kind of creature - if any - could consider one of these dinner?

As I stated, there were (at least) 6 individuals found at this dig site, which at the time these Titans died, would have been the flood plain of a river. ALL of them were young adults. But they didn’t die as one group; there were at least 3 separate events that took lives, which may have been a few years to centuries apart. A theory is that the youngsters got separated from their herd and died from stress and hunger.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/19/science/titanosaur-argentina-american-museum-of-natural-history.html

Tyra

 I thought I’d take a look at Tyrannosaurus Rex. We all remember Tyra, right? Always represented as having a mighty roar and sharp, pointy teeth, and teeny, tiny forearms that wouldn’t even reach its mouth. Why would it evolve with such useless arms?

The first thing I discovered was that those tiny arms were quite strong, and each ‘hand’ had 2 sharp claws. So in a fight, if its mouth was already full of opponent, or it was still looking for the chance to sink its teeth into an opponent, those claws could be used to protect its belly, maybe? Well, not its abdomen, but the chest area. Any attack below that would call for leg action, either to stab or slice with its bigger foot claws, or to back up and get those fearsome teeth involved.

Other uses for these arms have been suggested; that they were used to grasp the female during sex, or that they assisted Tyra in rising from resting on the ground. Or from falling down, or being knocked down, or whatever. But one suggestion is actually supported by biomechanical analysis, and that is that the arms held Tyra’s struggling prey as the teeth did the work of killing it. Those arms are almost always shown bent at the elbow and held close to the body. And there’s a reason for that; Tyra’s shoulders could only move 40°, and its elbow only moved a maximum of 45°. So, no charades or sign language for this creature! To help you think about that, a healthy human shoulder can move 360°, while the elbow allows 165° of movement.

I had trouble picturing these restrictions. If you want, try this: Hold your arm down along your body and bend your elbow to make the forearm perpendicular to your body. This is your starting position. Now, keeping the elbow stiff in that position, raise your upper arm to not quite half-way to being perpendicular to your body. That is about how much Tyra’s shoulder could move. Now, extend your forearm to halfway between where it is and it being straight at the elbow. Imagine all the things you and I would not be able to do if that was all the further we could move those joints!

Okay, so these tiny arms may have been somewhat useful, but why did they evolve that way? What were Tyra’s ancestors like? And are there any descendants still around?

It was hard to find anything definitive about ancestors. The family tree that includes Tyra has many branches in that same time period, and they all seemed to have ‘stunted’ arms. A recent discovery from an earlier epoch held an almost complete skeleton of a very similar creature, possibly an ancestor of Tyra and/or other branches of that family tree. That article did not include much description - only that it was ‘horse-sized’ compared to Tyra’s ‘elephant-size - but the ‘artist’s rendering’ showed that ancestor as a skinnier Tyra, with somewhat longer and looser arms. That article stated that the ancestor already had a big brain, keen eye-sight, and sharp hearing at lower frequencies, and deduced that the Tyra family had developed these ‘smarts’ before it developed the brawn.

And of course, when the meteor hit and killed almost all the herbivores, a few Tyras - out of sheer desperation - shed over 99% of their weight, sprouted feathers and became birds. No, not really. When the herbivores died, Tyra’s family tree died, too. But some distant relatives - the maniraptoriformes family - did live on, and some of those did develop into modern birds. Which is good, because those tiny, practically frozen arms of the Tyra family were not going to launch a Tyra into the air, no matter how many feathers it had!

And now I’ll be shoving all this information into the grist mill that is my day-dreaming mind. Perhaps, on another planet, the end of the dinosaurs did not happen quite so fast, and the Tyras did manage to slim down and learn to fly. What do you think? Some kind of bird? Or dragon? Or something else entirely?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrannosaurus

http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2016-03-16/pregnant-t-rex-discovery-sheds-light-on-evolution-of-egg-laying/7251466

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-15/t-rex-tiny-ancestor-could-hold-clue-to-predator-dominance/7246928

Prehistoric Groundhog

Groundhog Day happens in February, when everybody - it seems - wants to know ‘Will this winter never end?’ How groundhogs ever got associated with predicting the end of winter is a mystery to me. Did any of them ever get a degree in climatology? No, not a one. They just lay in their borrow, blissfully sleeping through the cold when someone sticks his hand in, grabs one and pulls it out. Still blinking, the confused and shocked groundhog is held up high as a display, a crowd cheers and claps, and then... I don’t know, maybe they stuff the rodent with sweet treats as a reward for being a good sport. Not that the poor guy had any choice in the matter.

I started thinking, ‘Where do groundhogs come from?’ Yes, I know, from mommy and daddy groundhogs. What I mean is, millions of years ago, human ancestors were about the size and shape of a mouse, and they lived underground. Humans are a lot bigger now, and very few of us live underground. So, if we went back to that time - roughly 66 million years ago - would our ancestors be sharing burrows with ancient groundhogs? What would a groundhog from that long ago be like?

66 million years ago, all the southern hemisphere landmasses were gathered together into one supercontinent called Gondwana. Dinosaurs were still around, so I can’t blame our ancestors for seeking safety underground. Groundhogs of that day weighed 20 pounds (about twice the size of today’s groundhogs), had a skull 5 inches long and massive chewing muscles. Let’s see somebody pull one of those out of a sound sleep and hold it aloft!

A sample skull of the creature was found in a rock from Madagascar. This ancient groundhog was probably the largest mammal known for that time period, and lived on seeds, roots and nutty fruits. Its teeth included sharp incisors and wear-proof molars. Large eyes let it see in low light, and the intricate inner ear indicates it could hear higher frequencies than modern man can. A large nasal cavity means it had a keen sense of smell, and most likely it was agile. (The better to dodge large dinosaur feet?)

Alas, that particular rodent has gone extinct. So I’m not sure why it’s called a groundhog. I would assume a ‘prehistoric groundhog’ would be an ancestor of today’s groundhogs, but apparently, it’s only another branch on the family tree of groundhogs. A branch that broke, leaving other branches to fill in the hole.

Well, it did live in Madagascar, so it might have fallen prey to a blind snake, predatory frog or vegetarian crocodile, which were also Madagascar specialties.

www.theguardian.com/science/2014/nov/05/prehistoric-groundhog-vintana-sertichi-gondwana-dinosaurs

www.yahoo.com/news/prehistoric-groundhog-gets-day-204743464.html

www.newscientist.com/article/dn26696-peer-inside-the-head-of-a-giant-prehistoric-groundhog/

The Malagasy Dinosaur

When I first read the name Malagasy Dinosaur, my eyes rearranged the letters and I thought I had read “Madagascar Dinosaur”. Then I thought, Of course not. Madagascar isn’t big enough to have had a population of dinosaurs.

Well, it turns out Madagascar is big enough. I guess you can’t judge a place by how it looks on a map. Especially not when it’s snuggled up next to a continent as big as Africa.

Madagascar is an island, and it’s believed it separated from the super-continent Gondwana about 85 million years ago. It has plenty of wildlife of some pretty strange species, as evolution has worked to fill all the niches in the food chain. Fossils found on Madagascar seem to indicate it’s had some strange species for a long, lo-o-ong time. Here’s some samples:

Beelzebofus antinga, an extinct frog that weighed up to five kilo (11 pounds). It is the heaviest extinct frog ever known. (Okay, not a dinosaur, but still…) If they were still around, maybe they’d be raised as food, like a chicken?

Rapetosaurus krausei was a dinosaur that reached 15 meters (49 feet) in length. It walked on all 4 feet and had a small head on a very long neck. It was a vegetarian, so I suppose we’d only have to worry that it might step on us, if we’d been alive at the same time as it.

Rahonavis ostromi was about 50 cm (19-20 inches), wore feathers over its entire body, had claws, a long skull and a mouth full of sharp teeth. Could this be the ‘missing link’ between dinosaurs and birds?

Sinosuchus clarki looked somewhat like a modern crocodile. Kinda. Except it was less than 80 cm (32 inches) long, including a short, broad head and a short tail. It also had teeth perfect for grazing on plants, and bone plates under its skin to protect it from predators.

Speaking of crocodile-like dinosaurs, the Araripesuchus tsangatsangana looked a lot like modern crocodiles, except it had much longer legs.

But none of these interesting creatures were the one called the Malagasy dinosaur. Only the Majungasaurus crenatissimus bears that nick-name. The Malagasy looked similar to a Tyrannosaurus rex, except it only reached a length of 6 to 8 meters (19 to 26 feet) and probably only weighed a ton. Even though it was so much smaller than its cousins, scientists say it took 20 years to reach its full size, so it grew much more slowly than the others, also. They made that discovery by studying cross-sections of several bones from a nearly complete skeleton found in 2003. The bones had marks of annual growth, rather like trees have tree rings. Of course, some bones had marrow in the center, displacing the earliest years’ record of growth. Other bones were hollow, and many of the bones were carved in order to reduce the creature’s weight.

The Malagasy lived 66 to 70 million years ago. However, it seems to have links to dinosaurs in south Asia (India) and South America (Argentina). So, could it be that Madagascar clung to Gondwana longer than was thought?

http://www.madamagazine.com/en/die-dinosaurier-von-mahajanga/

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/science/fearsome-malagasy-dinosaur-remained-a-pipsqueak-most-of-its-life/ar-AAksFEa

Ick! It’s an Ichthyosaur!

Ichthyosar means “fish reptile” in Greek. Fossils reveal that they appeared about 250 million years ago, and one branch lasted until 90 million years ago. Their ancestors were some unidentified land reptile that decided to return to the water and become fish-like, much like dolphins and whales.

Science became aware of ichthyosaurs in the early 1800s when the first complete skeleton fossil was discovered in England. Later that century, many more Ichy fossils were found in Germany, and some of them included soft tissue remains. (No longer soft, after being fossilized, of course.)

Ichys ranged from 1 meter to over 16. Some resembled modern fish, others looked more like dolphins. They had pointed heads and often pointed teeth. Some could and did attack large animals that wandered into reach. They had large eyes, probably so they could dive deep. Their legs had completely converted into flippers, although many species’ flippers had numerous digits and phalanges (bones of the digits). They were not really fish, because they breathed air, gave birth to live offspring (up to 11 at a time), and were warm-blooded.

Life as an ichy was not all hunting and reproducing. One fossil had bite marks on its snout, apparently from one of his own kind. The bites had started to heal, so it survived the attack, but was this common? Or had he/she really made someone angry? Another fossil was complete… except for its tail. The theory is that it was ambushed by another of the big ocean predators, which bit off its tail. That ichy – unable to swim – sank deeper, drowned, and eventually became a fossil.

At one of my jobs, they decided to install an aquarium. If you want a healthy aquarium, you need a bottom feeder, usually a catfish. The fish they got included a bottom feeder, probably some type of catfish, but I thought it was ugly; flat bottom, thick whiskers, brown with black spots on skin that looked slightly fuzzy. I wound up calling it ‘Ichy’. I was familiar with the name, but didn’t realize they had all died out long ago. And since this fish didn’t actually look anything like an Ichthyosar, the name really didn’t fit.

I feel sorry for that poor bottom-feeder, now. I grew to rather like him, but I still called him ‘Icky’ (my pronunciation). It really wasn’t fair. I’m sure others of his species – whichever one he belonged to – thought him quite acceptable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichthyosaur

Science Quiz

For 7 years, I’ve tried to ‘update my science [knowledge].’ I’ve always wanted to write science fiction, but my last science class was a quarter century ago, the one before that in 1970. I’d been busy working full time, raising kids, and so on. So when I retired and started writing science fiction, I found the vast research I did – and the results produced – shot huge holes in my time, the story background, and the plot I had picked.

Therefore, I subscribed to magazines, watched science and history documentaries, did other ‘educational’ things. I love to learn but… have I caught up? Am I ready to write science fiction?

Last week, I received the Jan/Feb 2017 issue of Discover. It includes a list of the ‘Top 100 Stories of 2016’. As I read through some of this list and the entry for each article, I realized I was not familiar with everything listed. Have I failed?

I decided to keep track of which stories I had and had not already heard about. Now, I don’t get to read a magazine in one sitting, so as of today, I’ve only gotten to #40. Don’t worry, I will finish this issue, but in the meantime, how many of these 40 items had I already learned about before this issue?

First, the ones I had no knowledge of:

#4. Oldest Human DNA Revises Our Family Tree (I’d heard of Neanderthals & Denisovans, but not this particular story)

#5. Biologists Create Organism with Smallest Genome

#9. New Particle Fizzles, Leaving Physicists to Soul Search

#10. Did Lucy Fall and Not Get Up? (I knew about Lucy, but this was a new hypothesis that she died by falling out of a tree.)

#11. Bangladesh Sits Atop Potential Major Quake Zone

#12. Big Data May Lead to Earlier Alzheimer’s Diagnosis

#18. Electrons ‘Split’ in New Form of Matter

#19. Science in a Post-Brexit World

#22. NIH Proposes Lifting ‘Chimera’ Research Ban

#23. Picky Primes (Prime numbers are not as random as believed.)

#24. Finding China’s Great Flood

#27. Battle for Access (Should scientific papers be available to all, or only those who can afford to subscribe to scientific journals?)

#28. A Bone to Pick about Philistines

#29. Go, Go AlphaGo (Computer learns game, beats human champion.)

#31. Pushing the Limits of Life in the Lab

#32. Disrupting Dopamine Dogma

#35. Mathematicians Find the Answers (I was unaware of this question.)

#36. T. Rex Evolution: Smarts First, Size Second

#37. The Rise and Fall of Theranos (Fake medicine exposed)

#39. Plenty of Room at the Bottom (Saving data with chlorine and copper)

#40. Pluto’s Hidden Ocean (I knew it had one, but this article is about how it’s freezing, breaking Pluto apart.)

And the ones I was familiar with:

#1. Einstein’s Ripples in Space-Time

#2. Earth’s Surprise Neighbor Hints at Exoplanet Abundance (planets of Proxima Centauri)

#3. A New Enemy Emerges (zika and mosquitoes)

#6. The Pace – and Problems – of Climate Change Accelerate

#7. Can America Avoid Another Flint?

#8. Looking for Planet Nine

#13. Persistent Heat Decimates Coral Reefs

#14. The Ozone Hole is Finally Healing (Still has a long way to go.)

#15. More Hobbitses, Prescious! (More remains of hobbit-sized hominids found.)

#16. We Are All Africans

#17. The Falcon Has Landed, Now SpaceX is Eyeing Mars

#20. Ceres Hosts an Ice Volcano

#21. Regulating the Brave New World of Human Gene Editing

#25. The End of the Periodic Table? (How many more elements can scientists make?)

#26. Drug Couriers for Brain Injuries

#30. Crowdsourced Study Pinpoints Depression Genes

#33. Planets of the Milky Way

#34. Superbug Arrives in the US (Bacteria not deterred by any known medicine.)

#38. A Sharp Find (Ancient sword found in Denmark)

How did I shape up? Hmm, 21 stories I did not know; 19 I was semi-familiar with. If I were in school, that would be less than 50%, a solid F. But, I can’t know everything, so I don’t feel bad. Besides, some of these articles have hinted at background knowledge or even a story plot. I am stoked!

What have you learned in the past 7 years? I bet it’s a lot, whether science or not.