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

From Giant Dinosaur to Tiny Hummingbird

So, the theory is that Tyrannosaurus Rex gave birth to today’s birds, right?

Well, not exactly. T Rex was one of the of the theropod dinosaurs. It reached 40 ft in length, stood 12 ft tall at the hips, and weighed around 10 tons. However, other members of the theropod family were of various sizes, all the way down to 1 foot in length and 110 grams (3.9 oz) in weight. And throughout the ages following the T Rex, members of the theropod family grew smaller and smaller, and their skeletons changed four times faster than the skeletons of other dinosaur families. However, the theropods had hollow bones, like birds.

From what I’ve been reading, it isn’t terribly likely that birds evolved directly from T Rex, but they are both considered members of the theropod family. The largest modern theropod is the ostrich, 9 ft tall and up to 320 pounds. The smallest avian is the bee hummingbird, just over 2 inches long and weighing less than 2 grams. Although the theropods have shrunk since the days of T Rex, they continue with a wide range of sizes.

Ever wonder where birds got their feathers? The flying reptiles that nature started with didn’t have any. But the last decade or so, scientists have discovered non-flying dinosaurs that had feathers. How did that happen?

If I understood what I read, the transition began when some scales elongated into a filament. Over time, the filament developed ‘branches’, which eventually became numerous enough to form feathers. Scales and feathers are both made of keratin, and scientists have found that embryonic alligators contain some feather keratin, but that this type of keratin is suppressed in later stages of development in favor of scale keratin. Oh, and by the way, T Rex is more closely related to birds than to alligators.

Actually, lots of dinosaurs had feathers. Perhaps they didn’t grow feathers in order to fly, they grew them as insulation against the cold. And to look pretty to the opposite gender. Only later did the feathers help some glide from tree to tree and feathers started to become part of flying.

Are you up for a story about a T Rex covered in peacock and ostrich feathers?

Christmas Eve!

Today is Christmas Eve. Or, rather, the day I post this will be Christmas Eve day. You’d think I’d write about Christmas, wouldn’t you? But I’ve already discussed holidays, several times during the life of this blog, and I don’t want to get too repetitive.

Besides, as I write this, I am nowhere near ready for that holiday; I still have gifts to purchase (not to mention wrap, NONE of them are wrapped yet), a grocery list to make, groceries to buy, and an entire house to clean. These things have been weighing on my mind since Thanksgiving, and I need a break from thinking about Christmas.

So, I’ve been reviewing some science stories I down-loaded during 2014 but never got around to incorporating into a blog, trying to figure out what to say in my next several blogs. (It’s called advanced planning, something I probably don’t do enough of.) There’s some good stuff here.

1.              The Willy Wonka elevator is not necessarily pure fiction.

2.              The Keppler telescope isn’t dead yet. In fact, they’ve fixed it... sort of.

3.              Everybody is talking about a trip to Mars, but Venus is much closer, so... Yeah, there’s plans for that!

4.              There’s a big geothermal project in western US.

5.              Lab-grown burgers.

6.              Rocks that mysteriously move by themselves when no one is looking.

7.              Roads made of solar panels.

8.              Wyoming cave has a treasure of Ice Age fossils.

9.              Cloning woolly mammoths. (Or have I already done that one?)

10.                    Robot farmers.

11.                    Blood test for suicide.

12.                    2-million-year-old pre-man, what was he like?

13.                    Ancient Caribou hunting.

14.                    Ancient lizard fish graveyard.

15.                    Ancient Chinese flying reptile.

16.                    Ancient squirrel.

17.                    Chatting with a Stone Age person.

18.                    Ancient Tsunamis.

19.                    Ichthyosaur fossil.

20.                    The first bird.

21.                    Pinocchio Rex.

22.                    The Scourge of Jurassic Europe.

23.                    Ancient footprints in UK.

24.                    6,000-year-old parasite egg.

25.                    Ancient men and their dog buddies.

26.                    Stonehenge skeleton.

27.                    Fossil eggs.

28.                    Do failed stars have planets?

29.                    Super Earth.

30.                    Orphan planets.

31.                    Twin planets.

Jeepers. That’s enough for half of next year, even if I don’t have enough info on some of them. Maybe I should keep this list and cross them off as I write that blog. After all, I wouldn’t want to repeat myself.

And that doesn’t count any subjects I come across in Archeology, Discovery and the other magazines that I read. Or any new stories I come across on the internet.

Well, my cup runneth over, I guess. The problem will be deciding which of these to write about when. Any suggestions what you’d like me to start with?

Can Dinosaurs Be New?

One of my Junior High science projects was a ‘diorama’ and report on dinosaurs. I carefully carved my 3 chosen specimen from Ivory soap bars and painted the inside of a cardboard box to be their home.

That was so long ago, the dinosaurs I carved out and reported on were the stegosaurus, tyrannosaurus rex, and the... brontosaurus. Nobody talks about brontos anymore. It’s kind of like they never existed. Actually, they never did. Somehow, somebody stuck the wrong head on another dino’s body, and nobody caught it until-- Well, I don’t know when they figured it out, sometime between my science project and the time my kids went into their ‘dinosaur’ stage.

Since then, there have been tons of dinosaurs and other creatures discovered. Instead of a world inhabited by a handful of giant, scaly lizards, we can now picture a world inhabited by any number of lizards, fish, insects, some mammals, and birds. Even some reptiles that disguised themselves as birds.

Take, for instance, the one I read about this week; the Changyuraptor yangi. It was covered in feathers, including foot-long tail feathers. It was a reptile, and it couldn’t fly. It might have been able to glide, or as one scientist put it, “... if you pushed them out of a tree, they'd fall pretty slowly.”

This despite being described as having 4 wings. Really? No, not exactly. The feathered forelimbs were somewhat akin to a bird’s wings. The backlimbs were also feathered, in such a way that they looked like wings. Lots of feathers, but not a bird.

The Changyuraptor was discovered in China, which seems to be THE place for any self-respecting feathered reptile to have lived. Stegosaurs lived in Western America some 25-30 million years earlier. Since they had armour instead of feathers, I guess they couldn’t aspire to live in China. T.Rex  and their relatives seemed to live where-ever they wanted.

I’m glad I didn’t have to try to carve 4 ‘wings’ and feathers on a creature for my science project. Still, my hackles rise a little when I see a headline about a ‘NEW’ dinosaur being discovered. Whatever their form, dinosaurs aren’t ‘new’. Their dead body has been sitting in the ground for millions of years. It’s not their fault if we’ve only just found them.