Author Topic: Halbred's Paleo-News Thread  (Read 117622 times)

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Offline Halbred

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Re: Halbred's Paleo-News Thread
« Reply #25 on: March 27, 2009, 03:06:47 AM »
Good question, Kai. Here's one interesting hypothesis:

http://www.mnhn.ul.pt/geologia/gaia/30.pdf

I don't think it's recieved much support. Feathers are similar, chemically, to reptilian scales (especially the "scute" scales on the front of bird feet and the bodies of crocodilians). Lots of beta keratins. Anyway, a lot of people don't realize that lizard scales are integument just like hair on mammals or feathers on birds--there's naked skin under those scales (in the embryo), and each scale has an "origin" point. What probably happened is that somewhere in ontogenetic development, the genes controlling scale formation mutated, and instead of scales, you get chick fuzz.

Chick fuzz is basically a short, hollow, pointy "scale." Further epigenetic factors happen on both ends of the Dinosauria family tree. Ornithischians must've been pretty happy with the chick fuzz, because it seems like all they did was elongate it (in Psittacosaurus and Tianyulong). Saurischians were, overall, pretty happy to either keep the elongated chick fuzz (Beipiaosaurus, Sinosauropteryx) or just lose their feathers entirely (sauropods). One branch of theropods, the Maniraptora, further experimented with feathers and developed (eventually) modern feathers...

Modern feathers are, in a way, chick fuzz that has chick fuzz. You know how a tree branches? That's basically what a feather is. The shaft (quill) branches hundreds of other shafts (barbs). In yet more advanced feathers, the barbs themselves have barbs (barbules) which hook onto the next barb and lock the whole structure together.

This is not a fur tree:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Shaft_of_Indian_Peacock_tail_feather.jpg

So a feather is basically a pointed scale that builds on itself.

Now, here's MY question: Given that Dollo's Law states that once you LOSE a structure or organ secondarily (through evolution), you cannot get it back, how did so many dinosaurs revert to scaled skin if the common ancestor of all ornithodirs were feathered?
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Offline Halbred

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Re: Halbred's Paleo-News Thread
« Reply #26 on: April 14, 2009, 03:32:48 AM »
Somewhat exciting news for Alaskans: Two partial Troodon braincases were described in the newest issue of JVP from the Prince Creek Formation. These are the first non-dental remains of Troodon found in Alaska. Two important things: Troodon is the most common theropod dinosaur in Alaska (in fact, the second most-common dinosaur period) and it's twice as big as its brothers in Alberta. This means that Troodon was ridiculously successful at high latitudes and dominated the carnivore guild up here.
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Offline Mop it up

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Re: Halbred's Paleo-News Thread
« Reply #27 on: April 14, 2009, 04:20:30 PM »
This is something which I found interesting:

Dino With "Vacuum Mouth" Revealed

When I saw the headline my first thought was "Oh my mop, Birdo was a real dinosaur!"

Offline Halbred

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Re: Halbred's Paleo-News Thread
« Reply #28 on: April 15, 2009, 09:01:40 PM »
Ah, Nigersaurus. More like a Cretaceous lawnmower. Here's a more in-depth description:

http://whenpigsfly-returns.blogspot.com/2007/11/lawnmowers-of-early-cretaceous.html

And here's a link to the technical description:

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0001230

One of my favorite sauropods. Structural extremes, indeed.
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Offline vudu

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Re: Halbred's Paleo-News Thread
« Reply #29 on: April 16, 2009, 01:45:34 PM »
Ah, Nigersaurus.

Is that a real dinosaur name or do I have to report you to a moderator?
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Offline UltimatePartyBear

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Re: Halbred's Paleo-News Thread
« Reply #30 on: April 16, 2009, 03:34:13 PM »
There's only one 'g' in that word.  Do I have to report you to a spelling teacher?

Offline Halbred

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Re: Halbred's Paleo-News Thread
« Reply #31 on: April 20, 2009, 12:53:27 AM »
Vudu, I'll give you one guess as to what African country that sauropod was discovered in.
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Offline GoldenPhoenix

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Re: Halbred's Paleo-News Thread
« Reply #32 on: April 20, 2009, 12:06:22 PM »
Vudu, I'll give you one guess as to what African country that sauropod was discovered in.

Nigeria. FINAL ANSWER.

Oh wait that is for vudu!
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Offline vudu

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Re: Halbred's Paleo-News Thread
« Reply #33 on: April 20, 2009, 02:04:42 PM »
Nigeria. FINAL ANSWER.

Oh wait that is for vudu!

It's called the Nigersaurus, not the Nigeriasaurus.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess Niger.
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Offline bustin98

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Re: Halbred's Paleo-News Thread
« Reply #34 on: April 20, 2009, 10:05:25 PM »
LOL, GP 'is always wrong'.

Offline Halbred

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Re: Halbred's Paleo-News Thread
« Reply #35 on: April 22, 2009, 08:48:03 PM »
Yeah, Niger...which I guess is technically part of Egypt? Sort of? Geography's not my bag.

New awesome find in Nature today. I can't do justice to the description given by Ed Yong so I'll just post his link:

http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/04/puijila_the_walking_seal_beautiful_transitional_fossil.php
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Offline Halbred

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Re: Halbred's Paleo-News Thread
« Reply #36 on: May 19, 2009, 10:40:54 PM »
New adapid primate described in PLoS ONE today, Darwinius masillae. Don't believe the media hype surrounding this fossil. It's in excellent condition, it's complete, it has its last meal in its belly. That's awesome. But it's not rearranging the entire primate family tree. I could say more, but I'll just get into an angry rant. Long story short: The media is run by morons who think pterosaurs are dinosaurs and every goddamn fossil that comes out of the ground is a "missing link." There is no much thing, and even then, it's just not true.
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Offline bustin98

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Re: Halbred's Paleo-News Thread
« Reply #37 on: May 19, 2009, 11:27:04 PM »
I read the article on CNN. The headline called it a missing link, yet the details didn't say why or how. I just blew it off as whatever.

Its kinda like a Lemur but its missing a claw and a toothcomb. Wow.

Offline blackfootsteps

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Re: Halbred's Paleo-News Thread
« Reply #38 on: May 21, 2009, 08:00:02 AM »
Yeah, Niger...which I guess is technically part of Egypt? Sort of? Geography's not my bag.

Hah, definitely not your bag, Niger is in central-west Africa while Egypt is in the very northeast corner. Great thread though ;)
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Offline Halbred

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Re: Halbred's Paleo-News Thread
« Reply #39 on: July 05, 2009, 08:48:29 PM »
Dropped to Page 3? And there's not even a topless girl in here (British joke). Bringin' it back!

First off, I was remiss in posting this a few weeks ago. Brand new ceratosaur (related to Ceratosaurus and Carnotaurus) that is extremely wierd in having a toothless beak and a unified sternal plate. The authors suggest that it's odd fingers point to a frame shift in theropod genetics whereupon Digits II-IV come to resemble Digits I-III, and Digit I is lost. Me? I'm not convinced. Ceratosaurs have oddly abbreviated, stumpy little hands anyway, so this new animal (Limusaurus) may just be an extreme example of that. There's no doubt a frame shift must have happened (birds retain II-IV), but Limusaurus may not speak to that transition.

Darren Naish's excellent write-up (as well as great comments) here: http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2009/06/limusaurus_is_awesome.php. And the paper is not free, it's from Nature magaine. I have an electronic copy if anyone wants it.
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Offline Halbred

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Re: Halbred's Paleo-News Thread
« Reply #40 on: July 05, 2009, 08:50:26 PM »
Also, three new Australian dinosaurs! All known from good fossils, unlike most Australian dinosaurs, which are known from single bones and not much else. This paper really is free to the public: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0006190. Excellent early summary here: http://svpow.wordpress.com/2009/07/03/new-thunder-from-down-under/.
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Offline Halbred

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Re: Halbred's Paleo-News Thread
« Reply #41 on: August 04, 2009, 10:25:44 PM »
I know, I know, nobody gives two craps anymore, but I try.

Say hello to Suminia getmanovi, who has already broken some important barriers in the 15 years since it was first described (Ivakhnenko 1994). Until just recently, the cute little synapsid was known only from a wonderfully-preserved skull, which demonstrated that Suminia was among the first tetrapods to develop a shearing bite (herbivorous). In the newest edition of Proceedings of the Royal Society B, (http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2009/07/24/rspb.2009.0911), Frobisch & Reisz describe a slab containing some fifteen Suminia skeletons at various levels of completeness, and make a rather startling claim about them: Suminia was arboreal!

Arboreality--that is, climbing around in trees--is fairly easy to spot in a skeleton. Grasping climbers (like squirrels, monkeys, and chameleons) have predictably convergent skeletal features that allow easy movement through the trees. Among these adaptations are elongate fingers and toes with small claws and (usually) opposability of one or more digit. An elongate torso also helps. Suminia has both elongate hands and feet, and its 1st manual digit (thumb) is offset from the other four, implying opposability. The tail shows some features suggesting it was prehensile (like chameleons, drepanosaurs, and new world monkeys), but the skeletons will require further, more detailed study for that verdict.

The media, who never know what to do with non-mammalian synapsids, have been running some funny headlines, including "Early human relative predates dinosaurs!" (MSNBC) which they then changed to "Mammals' family tree predates dinosaurs," which misses the point entirely and still manages to be sort of wrong.

Y'see, kids, Mammalia is a monophyletic group of amniotes that form BUT ONE BRANCH of the Synapsida, an enormous group that also bore out critters like Lystrosaurus, Dimetrodon, Gorgonops, and Lycosuchus. Synapsida is the sister group of the Sauropsida, which includes every other group of living amniotes, including turtles, snakes, lizards, crocs, and dinosaurs. So saying Suminia is an early human relative is kind of like saying that turtles are early bird relatives. Yeah, they're on the same major branch (Sauropsida) but it's a meaningless statement at best, and a dishonest one at worst.

Anyway, Suminia is an arboreal synapsid from the PERMIAN, which is mind-blowing in itself.
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Offline ShyGuy

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Re: Halbred's Paleo-News Thread
« Reply #42 on: August 05, 2009, 12:37:22 PM »
So I hear they found some protein sequences for dinosaurs. How is that possible? stealth troll
« Last Edit: August 08, 2009, 07:11:29 AM by ShyGuy »

Offline Halbred

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Re: Halbred's Paleo-News Thread
« Reply #43 on: August 05, 2009, 09:40:34 PM »
Incredibly good preservation in the long bones of Brachylophosaurus and Tyrannosaurus!
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Offline Caliban

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Re: Halbred's Paleo-News Thread
« Reply #44 on: August 05, 2009, 09:47:58 PM »
Were these long bones fossilized?

Offline bustin98

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Re: Halbred's Paleo-News Thread
« Reply #45 on: August 08, 2009, 01:13:17 AM »
I'm still reading, Halbred.

Offline Halbred

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Re: Halbred's Paleo-News Thread
« Reply #46 on: October 14, 2009, 05:38:44 PM »
Wow, it's like I abandoned the thread. Fear not!

Several new things to talk about. Four of them happened at or around the paleo conference I attended last month.

A new basal eusauropod, Spinophorosaurus, was discovered. It's very big and well preserved, and is known from a virtually complete skeleton (some distal limb elements are missing). Most interestingly, the tail has a genuine thagomizer at the tip, like a stegosaur. Seems that stegosaurs and sauropods were evolving similar structures during the Jurassic and Cretaceous. See also Brachytrachelopan (a dicraeosaurid diplodocoid) and Miragaia, a dacentrurine stegosaur.

Even stranger, a new tyrannosaurid, Raptorex (awful name) was found in China. Very small animal, only three meters long, but possesses almost all the synapomorphies one normally associates with higher members of the group. Proportionatelly, it looks like an albertosaurine. This animal suggests that the classic tyrannosaurid body plan evolved at a small size first instead of arising as the animals got larger.

Wierdest of all, a new four-winged maniraptor, Anchiornis, was described. It's not actually brand-new: it was named earlier this year based on a juvenile specimen. At that time, it was thought to be a basal bird close to Archaeopteryx, but a new adult specimen shows that it's actually a troodontid (the oldest known member of the group) and that it, like Microraptor, has hindwings. This provides evidence for the idea that the four-winged condition is primitive for Paraves, but was lost fairly quickly in Aves.

Today, a new pterosaur was described. An exciting new pterosaur! It combines the postcranial feature of Rhamphorhynchus with the skull of a fairly derived pterodactyloid. This is kind of like finding a bird skull on a dromaeosaur body, and it suggests that the transition from basal rhamphorhynchoid body plan to derived pterodactyloid body was modular, affecting different areas of the skeleton at different times. Clearly, the skull was the first to transform.

Darren Naish gives a wonderful overview here: http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2009/10/darwinopterus_transitional.php
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Offline vudu

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Re: Halbred's Paleo-News Thread
« Reply #47 on: October 14, 2009, 05:42:14 PM »
Several new things to talk about. Four of them happened at or around the paleo conference I attended last month.

Screw that!  Tell us about your lunch with Greg!
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Offline ShyGuy

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Re: Halbred's Paleo-News Thread
« Reply #48 on: October 14, 2009, 10:29:12 PM »
You know, all these new dinosaurs. I wonder how many species a future paleontologist would find if they discovered a fossilized dog kennel of today.

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Offline Stratos

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Re: Halbred's Paleo-News Thread
« Reply #49 on: October 17, 2009, 05:38:55 AM »
Wierdest of all, a new four-winged maniraptor, Anchiornis, was described. It's not actually brand-new: it was named earlier this year based on a juvenile specimen. At that time, it was thought to be a basal bird close to Archaeopteryx, but a new adult specimen shows that it's actually a troodontid (the oldest known member of the group) and that it, like Microraptor, has hindwings. This provides evidence for the idea that the four-winged condition is primitive for Paraves, but was lost fairly quickly in Aves.

Wait, four wings? How many animals, extinct or otherwise, have more than two? This is news to me.

Are there any pics?

I Googled this pic of it, but I can't tell what are legs and what are wings. Or are they counting the feathers on the hind legs as wings?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Anchiornis_BW.jpg
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