Posted on 01/06/2006 3:05:32 AM PST by Virginia-American
A lost bet and a sweet tooth led to the announcement this week of a new mammal named after a chocolate brand.
Dubbed Kryoryctes cadburyi — as in Cadbury chocolate — the dinosaur-era mammal was roughly the size of a large cat, covered with quills, and toothless.
A distant relative of today's spiny anteater, the species lived about 106 million years ago alongside dinosaurs in what is now Australia.
The tale of how the low-slung creature came to be named after a candy company, however, begins about ten years ago in a rocky cove some 140 miles (220 kilometers) southwest of Melbourne.
Searching for a Mammal Among Dinosaurs
Tom Rich, now curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Museum Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, led a dig at Dinosaur Cove from 1984 to 1994. As its name implies, the seaside site had been a dinosaur hangout more than a hundred million years ago.
The crew at Dinosaur Cove expected to find dino fossils, but the crown jewel would be a mammal bone—evidence of mammals living among dinosaurs in Australia is fairly rare.
Helen Wilson, then a student at Australia's Monash University, was one of the bone diggers in the summer of 1987.
"The food at the dig was terrible, and all of us students lived on chocolate," Wilson said. "I asked Tom what we'd get if we found a dinosaur jaw, and he said he'd give me a kilo [2.2 pounds] of chocolate"—which she went on to win and consume almost single-handedly.
If a dinosaur jaw was worth two pounds of chocolate, what would a mammal specimen merit?
"For Tom, a mammal bone was the holy grail," Wilson said.
Quite certain that a mammal bone wouldn't be found, Rich promised a cubic meter [35 cubic feet, or about a ton] of chocolate to anyone who came up with a specimen.
By 1994 Dinosaur Cove was "dug out" and the paleontologists shut down the dig.
But there were still bones that had been sent to the lab and hadn't been evaluated. One—labeled "humerus? turtle?"—caught Rich's attention.
"It was certainly a humerus [upper part of a forelimb] but unlike any turtle known to the human race," Rich said.
He sent it off to two colleagues who specialized in primitive mammals. They had their own work to do, but eventually got around to the "humerus? turtle?" fossil.
The specialists determined that the fossil was in fact a mammal bone, from an early echidna, to be exact.
Echidnas are insect-eating burrow dwellers that, unlike other mammals, lay eggs. The two living species of echidnas, also known as spiny anteaters, occur only in Australia and New Guinea.
The mammal experts wrote up the scientific description for publication, and the newfound mammal was announced this week in the December issue of the Journal of Mammalian Evolution.
One Ton of Chocolate
Rich was thrilled that the dig had turned up an ancient mammal but somewhat dismayed at having to come up with a ton of chocolate, worth about U.S. $10,000.
Fortunately, Cindy Hann, a teacher and volunteer from the Dinosaur Cove dig, came to his rescue.
Hann had taught a boy whose father was the head of the Cadbury factory in Melbourne. He offered to make good on the chocolate bet.
"It turns out that it is technically impossible to make a cubic meter of chocolate, because the center would never solidify," Rich said. So the chocolate factory made a cubic meter of cocoa butter, the basis of all chocolate.
Because there was no way of knowing who had actually found the bone, Rich invited all of the volunteers who had participated in the Dinosaur Cove dig to the presentation of the prize at a local Cadbury chocolate factory.
After photos were taken of the giant slab of cocoa butter, the bone diggers were let loose in a room full of chocolate bars.
"It was a bit like Willy Wonka," Wilson said. "There were chocolate bars on the counters, the tables. We carried out boxes and boxes of chocolate."
Naming a newfound animal species is largely left up to the scientist who discovered the creature.
Kryoryctes means "cold digger" and reflects the fact that the animal was well adapted for digging and lived at polar latitudes. (A hundred million years ago, Dinosaur Cove, at the southern end of Australia, was well within the Antarctic Circle.)
As for the second part of the mammal's name—cadburyi—it's a safe bet you can figure it out for yourself.
I'm always learning things from the crevo threads:
"It turns out that it is technically impossible to make a cubic meter of chocolate, because the center would never solidify,"
Me too. :-)
Simple, bring a long straw.
You cannot make up stuff this insane. LOL!!
No pics of this critter?
Reminds me, I once had an idea for a children's Easter story set Down Under, the Paschal Platypus (the Aussies not appreciating bunnies...)
Imagine Mama P. with her Easter basket, all the colored eggs, the eggs hatch, all these baby platypuses, colored just like the Easter eggs.
the last rhyme being
"... all the baby platypodes
scampering o'er the Antipodes"
All I need is the rest of the rhymes, a plot and an illustrator.
No pics. The article has pictues of the paleontologists and the site, but no pussy-cat-sized cholocate echidnas
Cadbury-Schweppes also owns Dr. Pepper
"Now here we go again. Them there aethist scientists have gone and filled yer heads with this fool nonsense about critters that didn't exist nohow. Now pick up yer Bibles and get yourself some real God's truth!" /sarcasm mode off
Cute li'l thread. But as for pingability, you know I strive to avoid ping fatigue. Alas, this one is "just another fossil." (As are we all.)
It is, however, archiveable.
BS. Take a meter-cube container. Pour a thin layer of melted chocolate on the bottom. Let the layer solidify, then pour another layer on top of it. Repeat until container full.
A little chocolate humor :-)
Not to be confused with Kerryctes which means "gold digger" an animal that is well adapted for marrying rich widows.
Quite certain that a mammal bone wouldn't be found, Rich promised a cubic meter [35 cubic feet, or about a ton] of chocolate to anyone who came up with a specimen.
Sometimes people say that Evolution is not "testable" -- whole new species do not arise from fruitflies in the lab. On the other hand, sometimes people say that Evolution is "tested" all the time -- paleontologists dig in a certain strata of rock, expecting to find certain things, and Lo! They find what they expect to find. That confirms ("tests") part of the Theory.
But when a paleontologist is "quite certain" that something like a mammal fossil will NOT be found -- and then it is -- well, that just, uh, expands our knowledge.
I'm sooo jealous.
I wonder what will happen now, if someone digs up fossils under Hershey, Pennsylvania...
"But when a paleontologist is "quite certain" that something like a mammal fossil will NOT be found -- and then it is -- well, that just, uh, expands our knowledge."
The mammal bone was not expected not because it would have been against the accepted evolutionary theory, but because it was highly unlikely to be found in any specific find from that time. They are very rare at that strata. It was a calculated risk that Rich made, and he lost. I don't think he is upset to have lost. This wasn't in any way a find that went against paleontological theory.
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