Paleontology

After so many trips back to the '80s and '90s, it's good to return to a book that's properly vintage. Dinosaurs was number 355 in the impressively diverse Little Golden Book series from Golden Press of New York, and was published in 1959. It was a simpler time, when a kids' dinosaur book could be purchased for a mere 25 cents, and palaeoart consisted of lush forests, erupting volcanoes, and giant lizards...all too literally.For you see, while the illustrator William de J. Rutherfoord was clearly an immensely talented individual - just take a gander at the beautifully painted cover art, with its murky, ashen sky and vibrant, surprisingly dynamic dinosaurs - he was a little prone to quite literally applying lizards' heads to dinosaurs' bodies. The cover provides one such illustration, with the noggin of a slightly perturbed-looking small lizard grafted atop the body of a generic sauropod. It looks bizarre to say the least, especially given that the chasing tyrannosaur appears to have the head of, you know, a tyrannosaur. The anatomical mash-up makes the book an entertaining read, though, as you can never quite be sure when a lizard-headed beastie will pop up next.In the tradition of countless dinosaur books before and since, the reader is taken on a (mostly) chronologically ordered trip through the ages, with illustrations of and snippets of text on the various animals to be found at different points in Earth's history. As such, the crocodylomorph Saltoposuchus makes an appearance early on - slightly ill-proportioned, but with lovely skin textures and patterns. For whatever reason, it's depicted standing next to the much later dinosaur Compsognathus, itself sporting a shrunken head and extra lizardy digits; it may be that the illustrator intended the animal to be Procompsognathus, but it ended up mislabelled. Regardless, these are very conventional depictions for the time, which makes what follows all the more baffling...Now, prior to the Dinosaur Renaissance, artists had a habit of interpreting dinosaurs' anatomy somewhat...loosely. Not only were the dinosaurs' obviously mightily muscular limbs reduced to weedy stilts propping up exaggeratedly blobby frames, but features like skulls were often smoothed over or their shapes changed in order to be closer to living reptiles, and in particular lizards like monitors. In this sense, Rutherfoord's approach can be seen as a particularly extreme example of an artistic convention, but...really? An iguana? For Allosaurus? Really!?! As already noted with the cover, what's strangest of all is the lack of consistency - even in the very same illustration, as the wonderfully knobbly Stegosaurus is entirely normal (even rather good) by contemporary standards. On the other hand, images like this wouldn't be so fantastically bizarre if Rutherfoord wasn't so good at painting, well, lizards - it's the realism evident in the iguana head that makes this image all the more amusing.Continuing with the theme, we see here two suspiciously serpentine sauropods - the Diplodocus in particular looks like a snake that's swallowed a decapitated elephant. That said, the vibrant skin patterns - at a time when sauropods were inevitably depicted as dull in every sense - are a very welcome change from the norm, and really help enliven this otherwise quite static (and somewhat familiar-looking) scene. And speaking of the familiar-looking...It's good ol' snorkelling Brachiosaurus again, here described as having the evasive habits of a cartoon ostrich - again, though, the bright-green-with-yellow-stripes look is just fabulous. Darling. I can't help but feel that an opportunity was missed for a rhyme here...There was Brachiosaurus, biggest of all.Massed fifty tons and was forty feet tall!But he couldn't run. He couldn't fight.Instead he went waltzing, all thro' the night.Or, you know. Something like that.Entering the Cretaceous, we encounter the usual suspects, all of which look rather conventional - there's a none-too

Testing the snowball Earth hypothesis for the EdiacaranAuthors:a. Alexei V. Ivanov (a)b. Anatoly M. Mazukabzov (a)c. Arkady M. Stanevich (a)d. Stanislav V. Palesskiy (b)e. Olga A. Kozmenko (b)Affiliations:a. Institute of the Earth's Crust, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Lermontov Street 128, Irkutsk 664033, Russiab. Institute of Geology and Mineralogy, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Academician Koptyug Boulevard 3, Novosibirsk 630090, RussiaAbstract:Ediacaran Siberia was at tropical paleolatitudes when the glacigenic strata of the Goloustnaya Formation (Baikal Group, Siberia) were deposited at sea level. The presence of such deposits (at tropical latitudes) is at the core of the snowball Earth hypothesis, which is generally accepted for the previous Cryogenian glaciations. To test this hypothesis for the Ediacaran Period, we determined concentrations of platinum group elements (PGE) in the transitional unit between glacigenic conglomerates and postglacial cap carbonates of the Goloustnaya Formation. We speculate that if oceans were completely covered by ice during the glaciation, the ice prevented accumulation of PGE-rich cosmic dust and micrometeorites during that period, i.e., the snowball Earth stage. Such particles would have accumulated rapidly on the ocean floor at the ice-melting event, providing a geochemical signal; however, unlike the previous Cryogenian glaciations, this signal is at a background level, and we conclude that either the Ediacaran glaciation did not reach the snowball stage, or it was of very short duration.

Scientists look at past climates to learn about climate change and the ability to simulate it with computer models. One region that has received a great deal of attention is the Indo-Pacific warm pool, the vast pool of warm water stretching along the equator from Africa to the western Pacific Ocean.In a new study, Pedro DiNezio of the International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa, and Jessica Tierney of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution investigated preserved geological clues (called "proxies") of rainfall patterns during the last ice age when the planet was dramatically colder than today. They compared these patterns with computer model simulations in order to find a physical explanation for the patterns inferred from the proxies.Their study, which appears in the May 19, online edition of Nature Geoscience, not only reveals unique patterns of rainfall change over the Indo-Pacific warm pool, but also shows that they were caused by the effect of lowered sea level on the configuration of the Indonesian archipelago."For our research," explains lead-author Pedro DiNezio at the International Pacific Research Center, "we compared the climate of the ice age with our recent warmer climate. We analyzed about 100 proxy records of rainfall and salinity stretching from the tropical western Pacific to the western Indian Ocean and eastern Africa. Rainfall and salinity signals recorded in geological sediments can tell us much about past changes in atmospheric circulation over land and the ocean respectively.""Our comparisons show that, as many scientists expected, much of the Indo-Pacific warm pool was drier during this glacial period compared with today. But, counter to some theories, several regions, such as the western Pacific and the western Indian Ocean, especially eastern Africa, were wetter," adds co-author Jessica Tierney from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.In the second step, the scientists matched these rainfall and salinity patterns with simulations from 12 state-of-the-art climate models that are used to also predict future climate change. For this matching they applied a method of categorical data comparison called the 'Cohen's kappa' statistic. Though widely used in the medical field, this method has not yet been used to match geological climate signals with climate model simulations."We were taken aback that only one model out of the 12 showed statistical agreement with the proxy-inferred patterns of the rainfall changes. This model, though, agrees well with both the rainfall and salinity indicators – two entirely independent sets of proxy data covering distinct areas of the tropics," says DiNezio.The model reveals that the dry climate during the glacial period was driven by reduced convection over a region of the warm pool called the Sunda Shelf. Today the shelf is submerged beneath the Gulf of Thailand, but was above sea level during the glacial period, when sea level was about 120 m lower."The exposure of the Sunda Shelf greatly weakened convection over the warm pool, with far-reaching impacts on the large-scale circulation and on rainfall patterns from Africa to the western Pacific and northern Australia," explains DiNezio.

A new study conducted at the University of Bristol and published online today in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology sheds light on how the brain and inner ear developed in dinosaurs.Stephan Lautenschlager from Bristol's School of Earth Sciences, together with Tom Hübner from the Niedersächsische Landesmuseum in Hannover, Germany, picked the brains of 150 million year old dinosaurs.The two palaeontologists studied different fossils of the Jurassic dinosaur Dysalotosaurus lettowvorbecki: a very young (juvenile) individual of approximately three years of age and a fully grown specimen of more than 12 years of age.Stephan Lautenschlager, lead author of the paper, said: "The two different growth stages of Dysalotosaurus provided a unique opportunity to study their brain, and how it developed during the growth of the animal."Using high-resolution CT scanning and 3D computer imaging, it was possible to reconstruct and visualise the brain and inner ear of Dysalotosaurus lettowvorbecki – a small, plant-eating dinosaur, which lived 150 million years ago, in what is now Tanzania.Co-author Tom Hübner said: "Well-preserved fossil material, which can be used to reconstruct the brain anatomy is usually rare. Thus, we were fortunate to have different growth stages available for our study."By looking at the brain and inner ear anatomy, the two researchers found that the brain of Dysalotosaurus underwent considerable changes during growth – most likely as a response to environmental and metabolic requirements. However, important parts responsible for the sense of hearing and cognitive processes were already well developed in the young individual.Stephan Lautenschlager said: "Our study shows that the brain was already well-developed in the young dinosaurs and adapted perfectly to interact with their environment and other individuals."This study has important ramifications for the understanding of how parts of the brain developed in dinosaurs. However, further research into that field is necessary to investigate if the pattern of brain development in individual dinosaurs is also reflected in a large scale trend during the more than 150 million years of dinosaur evolution.

I looked awful that day and they chose to use THAT pic? ugh.

Qinetiq North America unveiled a lightweight, air-launched prototype Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (UUV) engineered with three flexible antennas and the ability to accommodate two separate sensor payloads, company officials explained May 14 at the 2013 Special Operations Forces Industry Conference here.“It is designed to be deployed from a sonobuoy launch container which can drop from a SH-60 Sea Hawk helicopter or a P-8 [Poseidon surveillance plane]. Also, this has the ability to pivot vertically and expose antennas above the surface while using its motor to maintain stability,” said Carl Carlson, Sea Scout business development manager, Qinetiq.The antennas are able to receive a GPS signal, he added.The Sea Scout UUV can travel at speeds up to 15 knots and travel for up to 8 hours at slower speeds. The Sea Scout’s propulsion is built around a seawater flooded motor with a high-power handling capability, according to Qinetiq’s fact sheet on the system.

I’ve already mentioned that my time in Canada involved a short trip to Dinosaur Provincial Park with Darren Tanke, but we were also out with Mark Graham, a preparator at the Natural History Museum in London. Mark has kindly written up a guest post on the trip and the hunt for the lost Spinops quarry. Mark preparing Spinops The recent  Fossil Preparation and Collections Symposium (FPCS) hosted by the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, provided a great opportunity for me to give a talk about the recent conservation and mounting of a large skull of the ichthyosaur Temnodontosaurus platyodon and also to team up with Darren Tanke for some fieldwork in Dinosaur Provincial Park to try and find the location of a lost quarry. The quarry we sought had contained, in 1916, a bonebed of material which the legendary Sternbergs had collected for the then Geological Museum in London (now the NHM). Among the specimens collected was the partial skull and parietal elements of a horned dinosaur – a centrosaurine ceratopsian – which I had the privilege of preparing in 2008. It was a new species named Spinops sternbergorum and it was through this work that I got to know Darren (we were co-authors on the descriptive paper). He suggested that I take along a sample of the Spinops matrix so that we could use it to try and match the distinctive ironstone to exposures in an area “3 miles upriver from Steveville”, which the Sternbergs had recorded as the location of the find in their field notes. Locating abandoned quarries in the badlands from clues left in old photographs, fieldnotes, quarry markers and litter is something of a speciality of Darren’s and so I tagged on three days holiday at the end of the symposium to do some sleuthing with him. Spinops quarry material, replete with ironstone Dave Hone was also at the Tyrrell, undertaking research with Darren into bite marks on fossil bones and he also attended the symposium and gave a very insightful presentation titled ‘Scientific Communication of Fossil Preparation in the Digital Realm’ [Dave adds: this should go online at some point]. This discussed how his blog had been used to communicate Darren’s prepwork on the tyrannosaurine Gorgosaurus to a wide audience of professionals and amateurs. Following the symposium, Dave joined in the expedition in search of the Spinops quarry. First, we hired a small room in a ‘Hotel and BBQ Pit’ in a little place called Patricia, a few miles outside Dinosaur Provincial Park. It is an old haunt of Canadian palaeontologists and the accommodation could best be described as offering ‘substantial scope for improvement’. I experienced for the first time in many many years the joys of an upper bunk bed! But it all added to the fun and, as the name suggested, in the evening guests get to cook their own steaks, burgers and chicken on a big indoor barbeque. We were all up early the following morning and after a hot breakfast we set off for the field with pack lunches and plenty of water as the weather, which had been cold with snow flurries, had turned quite warm and windy. Darren had arranged access with a land owner and we drove across the prairie in search of a padlocked fence that we had been given the combination to. The terrain was incredibly flat and featureless but thanks to Darren’s knowledge and a bit of help from the GPS, we found our way. En-route we saw some great wildfowl and white tailed deer which gave Dave an opportunity to get busy with his telephoto lens. Hoodoo Soon enough we reached a point where the prairie fell suddenly away into coulees and down into the Red Deer River Valley with the great bluffs of the Upper Cretaceous rising all around. This landscape was formed after glaciers scraped away  great swathes of land during the last ice age 13,000 years ago and has been steadily eroding ever since, creating some wonderful capped pinnacles called hoodoos, where ironstone rich layers weather out atop columns of softer sandstone rocks, like giant m

Just remember. You have nothing to hide, right?

The systematics of Late Jurassic tyrannosauroid theropods from Europe and North AmericaAuthors:1. Stephen L. Brusatte (a,b,c)2. Roger B.J. Benson (d,e,f)Affiliations:a. Division of Paleontology, American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West at 79th St., New York, NY, 10024, USAb. Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Columbia University, New York, NY, USAc. School of GeoSciences, The University of Edinburgh, Grant Institute, The King's Buildings, West Mains Road, Edinburgh EH9 3JW, UKe. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3EQ, UKf. Department of Earth Sciences, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UKg. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3AN, UKAbstract:Recent discoveries of more than ten new species of tyrannosauroid theropods are helping to understand the origin and evolution of colossal body size and other characteristic features of Tyrannosaurus rex and its terminal Cretaceous relatives. Particularly important has been the discovery and reinterpretation of Late Jurassic tyrannosauroids from Europe and North America, which are intermediate in size and phylogenetic position between small basal tyrannosauroids and the largest Late Cretaceous species. The fragmentary nature of these Jurassic specimens, however, has frustrated attempts to understand their systematics and phylogeny. A new specimen from the Late Jurassic of England was recently named as a new species (Stokesosaurus langhami) of the genus Stokesosaurus, which is known from several fragmentary fossils from North America. We review the systematics and phylogeny of these European and North American specimens and show that there are no unequivocal synapomorphies uniting them. Furthermore, a revised phylogenetic analysis does not recover them as sister taxa. This necessitates a taxonomic revision of this material, and we name a new genus (Juratyrant) for the British specimen.