Free Republic

It's not often you see a dinosaur with a girth and toothy grimace reminiscent of Tyrannosaurus rex yet covered in a downy winter coat worthy of L.L. Bean. But that's what a team of paleontologists in China reports. They've dubbed their find Yutyrannus huali (beautiful feathered tyrant), a creature that stretched 30 feet from tail-tip to snout and weighed 1.5 tons. It's the largest dinosaur yet to host feather-like features all over its body – features well preserved on three nearly complete, mostly intact fossil skeletons the team found....

A 65 million year old tsunami is still wreaking havoc in the scientific community, a New Mexico State University professor says. The 300-foot-tall tsunami - an aftereffect of the giant meteor impact that some scientists think killed off the dinosaurs - scrambled fossils and rock and has made the event very hard to date, said Timothy Lawton, head of NMSU's geology department.

A new paper published in Naturwissenschaft reveals a fossil from 120 million years ago that proves that some lizards were not laying eggs but rather giving birth to live young. The fossil was discovered by Susan Evans, a professor from the University College London Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, in the Jehol region of Northeast China. This area has revealed hundreds of dinosaur, amphibian, reptile, fish, bird, mammal, invertebrate and plant fossils. The lizard in this case has been identified as Yabeinosaurus which scientists believe to be similar to the gecko. Evans did not pay much attention to the...

Fossil – just stone? No, a research team in Lund, Sweden, has discovered primary biological matter in a fossil of an extinct varanoid lizard (a mosasaur) that inhabited marine environments during Late Cretaceous times. Using state-of-the-art technology, the scientists have been able to link proteinaceous molecules to bone matrix fibres isolated from a 70-million-year-old fossil; i.e., they have found genuine remains of an extinct animal entombed in stone. With their discovery, the scientists Johan Lindgren, Per Uvdal, Anders Engdahl, and colleagues have demonstrated that remains of type I collagen, a structural protein, are retained in a mosasaur fossil. The scientists...

Coxoplectoptera Adult (upper), Coxoplectoptera Larva (lower) German scientists at the Stuttgart Natural History Museum were leading in the discovery of a new insect order from the Lower Cretaceous of South America. The spectacular fossils were named Coxoplectoptera by their discoverers and their findings were published in a special issue on Cretaceous Insects in the scientific journal Insect Systematics & Evolution. The work group, led by basal insect experts Dr. Arnold H. Staniczek and Dr. Günter Bechly, determined that these fossils represent extinct relatives of modern mayflies. Coxoplectoptera, however, significantly differ from both mayflies and all other known insects in...

Brontomerus mcintoshi is a newly discovered dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous of North America. The name Brontomerus means "Thunder thighs" -- a name chosen because the peculiar shape of the hip bone shows that it would have had enormously powerful thigh muscles in life. (PhysOrg.com) -- A new dinosaur named Brontomerus mcintoshi, or "thunder-thighs" after its enormously powerful thigh muscles, has been discovered in Utah, USA. The new species is described in a paper recently published in the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica by an international team of scientists from the U.K. and the U.S. A member of the long-necked sauropod...

LONDON – A new dinosaur named Brontomerus mcintoshi, or "thunder-thighs" after its enormously powerful thigh muscles, has been discovered in Utah, USA. The new species is described in a paper recently published in the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica by an international team of scientists from the U.K. and the U.S. A member of the long-necked sauropod group of dinosaurs which includes Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus, Brontomerus may have used its powerful thighs as a weapon to kick predators, or to help travel over rough, hilly terrain. Brontomerus lived about 110 million years ago, during the Early Cretaceous Period, and probably had...

Palaeontologists have discovered two mammal hairs encased in 100 million-year-old amber. While older 2D fossilised hairs are known, those preserved in the amber are the oldest 3D specimens known. The hairs, found alongside a fly pupa in amber uncovered in southwest France, are remarkably similar to hair found on modern mammals. That implies that the shape and structure of mammal hair has remained unchanged over a vast period of time.

Like a zombie clawing its way out of the grave, a new dinosaur species was discovered when scientists spotted a hand bone protruding from a cliff in the Gobi desert of Inner Mongolia, paleontologists have announced. Called Linheraptor exquisitus, the new dinosaur is a raptor, a type of two-legged meat-eater, that lived during the late Cretaceous period in what is now northeastern China "We were looking at these very tall red sandstone walls that were all abraded by the wind, and I saw this claw sticking out of the side of the cliff," recalls Jonah Choiniere, a grad student at...

Researchers from the University of Granada (UGR) have compared the disaster caused by the Aznalcóllar spillage in the Doñana National Park in Andalusia 11 years ago with the biggest species extinction known to date. What do these two disasters have in common? The scientists say that carrying out comparisons of this kind will make it possible to find out how ecosystems recover following mass extinctions. Until now, scientists used to study the fossil record in order to analyse how organisms responded to major environmental changes in the past, such as the mass extinction of species during the Cretaceous period (65...

(PhysOrg.com) -- Marine microorganisms have been found in amber dating from the middle of the Cretaceous period. The fossils were collected in Charente, in France. This completely unexpected discovery will deepen our understanding of these lost marine species as well as providing precious data about the coastal environment of Western France during the Cretaceous.This work was carried out by researchers at the Géosciences Rennes laboratory (CNRS/Université de Rennes 1), together with researchers from the Paléobiodiversité et Paléoenvironnement laboratory in Paris (CNRS/Muséum national d'histoire naturelle/Université Pierre et Marie Curie) and the Centre de Géochimie de la Surface in Strasbourg (CNRS/Université de...

Scientists Discover 356 Animal Inclusions Trapped In Opaque Amber 100 Million Years OldExamples of virtual 3D extraction of organisms embedded in opaque amber: a) Gastropod Ellobiidae; b) Myriapod Polyxenidae; c) Arachnid; d) Conifer branch (Glenrosa); e) Isopod crustacean Ligia; f) Insect hymenopteran Falciformicidae. (Credit: M. Lak, P. Tafforeau, D. Néraudeau (ESRF Grenoble and UMR CNRS 6118 Rennes)) ScienceDaily (Apr. 1, 2008) — Paleontologists from the University of Rennes (France) and the ESRF have found the presence of 356 animal inclusions in completely opaque amber from mid-Cretaceous sites of Charentes (France). The team used the X-rays of the European light source...

The Shiva Crater is discussed in a recent article in Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, an Australian scientific journal, by the two scientists. In the early 1990s, based on new geological evidence, Chatterjee surmised that a crater extending from the seabed off the city of Bombay into the state of Gujarat was created by a meteor fall. He named it after Shiva. He also argued that the Shiva Crater was actually one-half of a larger crater; the other part lay undersea near the Seychelle Islands, 2,800 km southeast of India. When pieced together, the original crater (split by continental shifting)...

SALT LAKE CITY - The first known North American skulls of Cretaceous era sauropods — big dinosaurs with little heads — have been uncovered in recent years by Brigham Young University and Dinosaur National Monument researchers. About a dozen sauropod skulls are known from the earlier Jurassic era, but these are the first in North America for the Cretaceous, the final 80 million years of the dinosaur period. The four Cretaceous sauropod skulls or parts of skulls were found close to each other at the monument, which straddles the Utah-Colorado border. "We've really got a remarkable — it's almost mind-boggling...

Research by Dr. Christopher Noto and a team of paleontologists published this week in the international journal Palaios describes recently discovered fossils from the Cretaceous Period (145-65 million years ago) of Texas that show evidence of attack by a new species of giant crocodyliform (croc-relative). Bite marks on fossil bones provide a rare glimpse of predatory behavior that indicate this animal was a top predator that regularly consumed turtles and even ate dinosaurs... For most extinct species, scientists can never directly observe such predatory behavior. Paleontologists must resort to other, indirect indicators. Bite marks on fossil bone are a great...

It's official, long-necked sauropod dinosaurs once roamed every continent on Earth — including now-frigid Antarctica. The discovery of a single sauropod vertebra on James Ross Island in Antarctica reveals that these behemoths, which included Diplodocus, Brachiosaurus and Apatosaurus, lived on the continent in the upper Cretaceous Period about 100 million years ago.

MONDAY, Oct. 10 (HealthDay News) -- Head to the American Museum of Natural History's Web site, and you'll see the major draw this fall is a splashy exhibit on dinosaurs. And not just any dinosaurs, but two-legged carnivorous, feathered "theropods" like the 30-inch-tall Bambiraptor -- somewhat less cuddly than its namesake. The heyday of the theropods, which included scaly terrors like T. rex and velociraptor, stretched from the late Triassic (220 million years ago) to the late Cretaceous (65 million years ago) periods.

Dinosaur fossils don't come much more impressive than this. With 98 per cent of its skeleton preserved, this young predatory theropod from southern Germany may be the most complete dinosaur ever found. Oliver Rauhut, curator of the Bavarian State Collection for Palaeontology and Geology in Munich, announced the find yesterday. Although Chinese bird and dinosaur fossils are famed for delicate details such as their feathers, they don't match this 72-centimetre-long theropod in terms of clarity and completeness of preservation. The young dinosaur has been dated at 135 million years old, putting it in the early Cretaceous, but it has yet...

The world's oldest known spider silk has been found in a 130 million-year-old piece of amber. The discovery, which dates from the Early Cretaceous period, was made in amber beds located near Jezzine in Lebanon. The fibre is 90 million years older than the thread that previously held the record for the oldest preserved silk, according to the report in the journal Nature. The Lebanese silk strand is four millimetres in length and has tiny glue droplets spaced out along it. The diameter of the thread, and the size, density, arrangement and shape of the droplets, closely match those in...

Dino impact gave Earth the chill A cloud of sulphate particles may have blocked out the sun's warmth Evidence has been found for a global winter following the asteroid impact that is thought to have killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Rocks in Tunisia reveal microscopic cold-water creatures invaded a warm sea just after the space rock struck Earth. The global winter was probably caused by a pollutant cloud of sulphate particles released when the asteroid vapourised rocks at Chicxulub, Mexico. The results are reported in the latest issue of the journal Geology. Italian, US and Dutch...

Angolatitan adamastor, a new sauropod dinosaur, is the first dinosaur discovered in Angola. It is the only occurrence of these long-necked dinosaurs in sub-Saharan Africa of its geological age. An international team of paleontologists unveiled the newly discovered dinosaur fossil today. The large plant-eating dinosaur was 13 meters long and lived 90 million years ago (Late Cretaceous Period). "To us, finding such a dinosaur in rocks of this age in Africa is extremely surprising" says paleontologist Octávio Mateus, who discovered the skeleton... The new dinosaur is known only from a forelimb, discovered in 2005 about 70 km north of Luanda...

A new study claims that the ancient winged reptiles known as pterosaurs used a "pole-vaulting" action to take to the air.They say the creatures took off using all four of their limbs. The reptiles vaulted over their wings, pushing off first with their hind limbs and then thrusting themselves upwards with their powerful arm muscles - not dissimilar to some modern bats. The research is published in the open-access journal Plos One. Pterosaurs lived at the same time as the dinosaurs, but belonged to a different group of reptiles. They existed from the Triassic Period until the end of the...

Tyrannosaurus rex was far from a plodding Cretaceous era scavenger whose long tail only served to counterbalance the up-front weight of its freakishly big headTyrannosaurus rex was far from a plodding Cretaceous era scavenger whose long tail only served to counterbalance the up-front weight of its freakishly big head. T. rex's athleticism (and its rear end) has been given a makeover by University of Alberta graduate student Scott Persons. His extensive research shows that powerful tail muscles made the giant carnivore one of the fastest moving hunters of its time. As Persons says, "contrary to earlier theories, T. rex had...

Maine Crater Related to Dino-Killer Asteroid? By Larry O'Hanlon, Discovery News April 3, 2003 — The evidence is still skimpy, but there is a chance that the dino killer asteroid was not alone when it walloped the Earth 65 million years ago. A possible second crater, at least as big or bigger than the famous Chicxulub crater off Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, may have been created by a second hit moments after Chicxulub and off the coast of Maine. "It probably is a crater, but we really don't have age data," said marine geologist Dallas Abbott Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia...

A large fragment of an asteroid that punched 160km-wide (100 miles) hole in the Earth's surface has been found. The beachball-sized fossil meteorite was dug out of the 145-million-year-old Morokweng crater in South Africa. It is a unique discovery because large objects are widely believed to completely melt or vaporise as they collide with the planet. Writing in the journal Nature, an international team says the find will further knowledge on asteroid impacts. The Morokweng crater is one of the largest on Earth, and was formed at the boundary of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. Created by an asteroid...

Dinosaur that lived 85 million years ago was size of a bus, but breathed like a bird A huge carnivorous dinosaur that lived about 85 million years ago had a breathing system much like that of today's birds, a new analysis of fossils reveals, reinforcing the evolutionary link between dinos and modern birds.

WASHINGTON (Feb. 18) - A frog the size of a bowling ball, with heavy armor and teeth, lived among dinosaurs millions of years ago - intimidating enough that scientists who unearthed its fossils dubbed the beast Beelzebufo, or Devil Toad. But its size - 10 pounds and 16 inches long - isn't the only curiosity. Researchers discovered the creature's bones in Madagascar. Yet it seems to be a close relative of normal-sized frogs who today live half a world away in South America, challenging assumptions about ancient geography. The discovery, led by paleontologist David Krause at New York's Stony Brook...

According to the going theory, a six-mile-wide asteroid slammed into the Yucatán Peninsula 65 million years ago, throwing enough dust up into the atmosphere to dim the sun for years, killing off green plants and triggering a famine that wiped out all the dinosaurs in the geologic blink of an eye. Not so fast, says U.S. Geological Survey geologist emeritus James Fassett. A few years ago, Fassett’s colleagues were digging in a fossil-rich area of New Mexico when they uncovered the four-foot-long fossilized thighbone of a duck-billed, plant-eating hadrosaur in a sandstone cliff. When Fassett dated the bone to half...

It’s a disaster scenario that Hollywood has picked up on (think Deep Impact). An incoming object menaces the Earth. Scientists try to destroy it with nuclear weapons, but the horrified populace soon discovers that the blast has simply broken the object into pieces, each with the potential to wreak havoc planet-wide. Now we learn that an impact between two asteroids causing a similar crack-up may have resulted in the cataclysmic event some 65 million years ago that destroyed the dinosaurs. Researchers from Southwest Research Institute and Charles University (Prague) have been studying the asteroid (298) Baptistina, combining their observations with...

WASHINGTON - Will you walk into my parlor, said a Cretaceous spider to an ancient fly. The classic spider's web, like Charlotte would have woven, was invented just once, way back in the Cretaceous period some 136 million years ago, scientists report. Called an orb web, it's the generally circular style spun by two major types of spiders, which had raised the possibility of the two groups evolving this form separately. But a paper in Friday's issue of the journal Science says a comparison of the spider genes related to web making shows that the orb web developed just...

Link post: the image and the thread (to discuss it) are below: Geology Picture of the Week, January 2-8, 2005: Evidence of Ancient Cretaceous Catastrophe

Considering that news is still dominated by the tsunami and its aftereffects (and aid and recovery efforts), my mind is still on that kind of topic. I recalled back during the days when the Chicxulub impact site was being identified as the main Cretaceous/Tertiary (K/T) event that the supporting evidence for the regional location was thick layers of ejecta at the K/T boundary found around the Caribbean. I checked for pictures and found a few; below is one of the best from Belize. Can you see the K/T boundary? Go to the linked article to read more about this image...

Papers have been flapping with new headlines about the latest in a long line of alleged dinosaur ancestors of birds. This one is claimed to be a sensational dinosaur with feathers on its hind legs, thus four ‘wings’.1 This was named Microraptor gui—the name is derived from words meaning ‘little plunderer of Gu’ after the paleontologist Gu Zhiwei. Like so many of the alleged feathered dinosaurs, it comes from Liaoning province of northeastern China. It was about 3 feet (1 meter) long from its head to the tip of its long tail, but its body was only about the size...

CAPE CHARLES, Va. - Geologists drilling half a mile below Virginia's Eastern Shore say they have uncovered more signs of a space rock's impact 35 million years ago. For more than two weeks, scientists drilled around the clock alongside a parking lot across the harbor from Cape Charles. They stopped at 2,700 feet. From the depths came jumbled, mixed bits of crystalline and melted rock that can be dated, as well as marine deposits, brine and other evidence of an ancient comet or asteroid that slammed into once-shallow waters near the Delmarva Peninsula. Cape Charles is considered Ground Zero for...

Dinosaur Breath The largest flying creature alive today is the Andean condor Vultur gryphus. At maximum size it weighs about 22 pounds and has a wingspread of about 10 feet. But 65 million years ago in the late cretaceous period, the last age of dinosaurs, there was another larger flying animal, the giant pterosaur Quetzalcotalus. It had a wingspread of over 40 feet, the size of a small airplane. Other pterosaurs were also quite large. The pteranodons of the late jurassic period, the classic flying dinosaurs of magazine illustrations, had a maximum wingspan of about 33 feet. This presents a...