monjungle Dinosaurs Archive

Family Miacidae PrehistoricAnimals

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 11:55:19 GMT

The miacids were the earliest true carnivores to appear, during the Paleocene, some 60 million years ago. This is an artificial group, since it contains animals that were not closely related. However, it is a convenient classification that distinguishes these early car Miacids were mostly small mammals that lived in woodlands, where they were unlikely to become fossilized. The scant remains they have left indicate that they resembled the creodonts in many ways, although they were possibly more...

Order Lipotyphla PrehistoricAnimals

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:04:12 GMT

The Lipotyphla includes 5 fossil and 7 living families. The latter include hedgehogs, shrews and moles, as well as sole-nodons of the West Indies, golden moles of Africa, tenrecs of Madagascar and otter shrews of Central Africa. name Palaeoryctes time Early Paleocene to Early Eocene A well-preserved skull shows Palaeoryctes must have closely resembled a modern shrew in appearance, with a small sleek body and a pointed snout armed with little insect-crushing teeth. Although it ate mostly...

Formations FossilCollectors

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 03:13:09 GMT

But in practice and in principle, it is common and necessary to identify rocks as a formation, the name of which is usually a compound of a typical location and the rock type, such as the St. Peter sandstone or the Trenton limestone. If the formation consists of more than one type of rock, for instance, if it is of shale and limestone, it may be called by a more general name, such as the Supai formation, which appears in the walls of the Grand Canyon, or the Morrison formation, famous for its...

Info Tmz Trilobites

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 16:59:09 GMT

FIGURE 4.10. Simplified stratigraphy of the Cambrian-Ordovician rocks in the Taconic allochthon. Adapted from Landing 1988 , with permission. nant or when productivity in the surface waters was increased, allowing the accumulation of organic matter. These intervals also contain beds of limestone breccia or angular conglomerates that represent debris flows broken from the edge of the continental shelf that avalanched down into deeper water. Actually, a rather diverse fauna of trilobites has been...

Climates And Habitats CretaceousPeriod

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 01:20:02 GMT

The Middle and Late Jurassic Epochs were evenly warm and temperate across much of the globe. This is not to say that the world had only one uniform climate during the Jurassic. Just like today, there were Jurassic deserts, Jurassic mountains, Jurassic islands, and other regions, each of them with their own unique climatic regimes. Although the poles were warmer than they are at present, they were still cooler than equatorial regions. The submergence of large portions of continental landmasses...

Diadecte 1 PrehistoricAnimals

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 09:08:06 GMT

as a larva. This phenomenon is called paedomorphosis, and is seen in several modern salamanders, such as the cave-dwelling olm of Europe and the North American mudpuppy. The Mexican axolotl goes one step further it also retains the tadpole tail of its youth. name Pantylus time Early Permian locality North America Texas size 10 in 25 cm long A great head on a small, scaly body characterized this microsaur. It was a well-adapted land animal, moving about on short, sturdy limbs. It probably lived...

Triceratops After Marsh Triceratops

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 01:50:13 GMT

Marsh died at the age of sixty-seven on March 18, 1899, after a long, genuinely distinguished, and productive scientific career. Not surpris ingly, he left many projects unfinished, among them the projected monograph of the Ceratopsia, for which he had overseen the preparation of a large number of superb lithographic plates and illustrations, again at government expense. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, Henry Fairfield Osborn enjoyed an honorary appointment as vertebrate paleontologist to...

Our Discovery of the Western Interior Sea DinosaursBones

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 19:56:31 GMT

When Lewis and Clark set out in 1804 on their westward trek to explore the Louisiana Purchase, they had no idea they would also be crossing the expanse of an ancient ocean that once covered the middle of North America. It was early in the trip when they found the only fossil from the collections made by the expedition that survives today Chapter 5 . Along the Missouri River, near the northwest corner of what is now Iowa, they came across a fossil that Meri-wether Lewis described in a note that...

Removing Matrix FossilCollectors

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:53:33 GMT

After preliminary cleaning of the fossil, bits of matrix may still mask important details. Removal of these pieces to aid identification and create a more attractive display specimen requires skill and infinite patience. It takes at least an hour to clean a small trilobite which has soft, relatively easy-to-remove shale embedded between its ribs. It may take days to clean a limestone slab with many crinoid crowns. The principle behind cleaning matrix from a fossil is to exploit the difference...

Stratigraphy DinosaursBones

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 13:03:38 GMT

One of the important issues that will surface again and again in this book is the lack of stratigraphic information on the occurrence of most of the fossils that have been collected from the Smoky Hill Chalk. In this usage, stratigraphic occurrence refers to what approximate chronological level the fossil was found within the 2 00-m 600-ft. chalk unit. As noted earlier, this chalk was deposited in the Western Interior Sea over a period of about five million years. Fossils found near the bottom...

Table 1 DinosaursBones

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:13:01 GMT

Biostratigraphy of the Smoky Hill Chalk adapted from Hattin, 1982 Stewart, 1990 Everhart, 2001 . Time MYA Millions of Years Ago and boundaries as indicated by Hattin's 1982 marker units MU are approximate. The Smoky Hill Chalk Member of the Niobrara Chalk was deposited between 87 and 82 million years ago. Note that the Late Coniacian is unequally divided into two zones a lower zone P. pemiciosa from the base of the chalk to about MU 5 and a brief

time Late Jurassic to Early PrehistoricAnimals

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 22:30:00 GMT

Cretaceous locality North America Colorado, Utah and Wyoming , Africa Tanzania . Possibly Australia and Europe England and Romania size up to 10 ft 3 m long Dryosaurus also known as Dysalo-tosaurus was one of the largest of the hypsilophodonts. Although it was also one of the earliest, its anatomy was advanced in several ways. For example, each long, slender leg had only 3 toes. And there were no teeth in the front part of the upper jaw the horny beak at the front of the lower jaw met with a...

Book Contents And Format Origin of Dinosaurs

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 05:47:05 GMT

We see photo above have endeavored to make this book as comprehensive as possible, within practical limitations. Of the 15 chapters that follow, four chapters 1-3 and 15 are of a general nature and apply to the full spectrum of early mammals, whereas the remaining 11 chapters deal with the anatomy, paleobiology, and systematics of the particular groups of mammals known from the Mesozoic, extinct and extant. In chapter 1, we provide some general background on mammals within the context of...

Table DinosaursBones

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 18:02:48 GMT

Other Times Other Sharks DinosaursBones

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 21:30:16 GMT

This book is generally focused on a small geologically speaking , five-million-year window of time during the Late Cretaceous when the Smoky Hill Chalk was deposited on the bottom of the Western Interior Sea. The fauna from that interval 8 7-8 2 mya is the most widely collected and the most thoroughly studied of any period from the Cretaceous of Kansas. The chalk is accessible in many localities, preservation is excellent and the chalk matrix is relatively easy to remove. It is also my favorite...

Will The Real Tyrannosaurus Rex Please Stand Up TyrannosaurusRex

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 14:11:06 GMT

WSIH NORTH AMERICA, 65 MILLION YEARS AGO. The last of the dinosaurs are on the move. They're roaming inland and along the margins of a big, shallow inland sea. These animals are huge, many more than twenty feet long. But there are far fewer kinds of them than there were 10 million years before, when the seas were wider and the Huge herds of horned dinosaurs and giant duckbills tromp across the land, heading north in summer, south in winter. They munch on ferns and flowering plants. As they go,...

The Frontloader Transferred The Fossil Bundles To A Tiltbed Truck For The Bumpy Twomile Ride To The Gravel Road TyrannosaurusRex

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:22:39 GMT

and sometimes stepping on the fossils, and turning Pat white . This is not my favorite activity. The only digging I did was separating the skull from the pelvis. The skull is the most important part of the anatomy because of what it can tell us about the animal's evolution and behavior. And it's the most delicate. This skull was so close to the pelvis that moving either might damage both. So if anyone was going to screw up, I wanted to be the one. I began scraping with an awl until I found a...

The History Of Collecting Dinosaurs Triceratops

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 01:22:11 GMT

Another thing to notice about Table 1.1 is that our knowledge of horned dinosaurs, and of course of all dinosaurs, has a history and a very colorful and interesting history it is, as we shall see. There was a time when no one knew anything about dinosaurs. Indeed, the recognition of fossils themselves as the remains of once-living plants and animals that inhabited an ancient world was a very difficult intellectual accom plishment that we too easily take for granted we too readily heap scorn...

Internal Organs ReptilesDinosaurs

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 02:31:02 GMT

The anatomy of reptiles enables them to live on land. Thanks to their dry, scaly skin and their excretion of uric acid instead of urea, they minimize water loss. The heart distributes blood in a double circuit. Crocodiles were the first vertebrates to have a four-chambered heart the separation of the ventricles is incomplete in all other reptiles. The lungs, developed beyond those of amphibians, contribute to cardiac efficiency by allowing for greater exchange of gases. Longevity 45 years in...

Condensed Limestone Community LivingFossils

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 21:50:08 GMT

Areas of Jurassic shelf often show sequences commencing with mud and passing upward through sandy mud and muddy sand and finishing with sand Communities 64 to 68 . If the water became very shallow at a distance from land i.e upon a shoal or 'swell' the currents carrying sediments were usually diverted to deeper parts of the sea. Little material was deposited on the sea floor in these shallow 'swell' areas except the remains of the animals and plants living there. Condensed limestones are...

discovering TREX TyrannosaurusRex

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 07:15:51 GMT

HE TOWN OF JORDAN in eastern Montana has been the headquarters of T. rex country for almost a hundred years. But I knew I wouldn't find anyone who had known the original T. rex discoverer, the great Barnum Brown of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, since Brown had stopped digging here in 1909. The folks around Jordan surprised me, though, especially an energetic lady named Pauline Polly Wischmann, a historian from the nearby town of Circle. Pauline hadn't met Brown, but...

How To Make A Fossil Collection OrdovicianRocks

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 23:45:23 GMT

People who live in the Cincinnati area are very lucky with respect to fossils. The rock of the area is abundantly supplied with well preserved fossils, and, because of the many hillsides, the rocks containing the fossils are well exposed. The great abundance of beautifully preserved fossils sometimes is bad for local collectors. They become so used to finding essentially perfect specimens that they ignore fossils that aren't complete and fully eroded from the rock. That's really sad, because...

T Rex Weather TyrannosaurusRex

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 22:03:31 GMT

kirk johnson collected this beautiful fossil leaf in montana of an extinct member of the laurales. a group that contains avocado and cinnamon trees. Knowing the plants tells us something about the climate in T. rex's time. We have modern relatives for many of these plants and so we know what climates suit them best. According to these analogies, during most of T. rex's time, the climate was what you'd expect to find on average in North Carolina, but without so much change between seasons....

AFRICA Pjj Origin of Dinosaurs

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 04:37:03 GMT

The most significant Late Cretaceous mammals recovered from the African region are from Madagascar figure 2.6 . We include Madagascar in the section on the modern African region, but point out that it actually maintained some limited contact with India during the early part of the Late Cretaceous epoch. A diverse vertebrate fauna has been recovered from the Anembalema Member of the Maeverano Formation, near the village of Berivotra in the Mahajanga Basin, northwestern Madagascar see summary by...

The Fossil Record Of Horned Dinosaurs Triceratops

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 17:48:15 GMT

With ceratopsians, we are rather fortunate. Horned dinosaurs have one of the best fossil records of any group of dinosaurs. There are close to four hundred specimens in museum collections around the world. Twenty-three genera and perhaps thirty species have been described to date, with more to come.11 There is an average of more than 30 specimens per genus. Even if the extremely abundant Psittacosaurus and Protoceratops were eliminated from this tally, we would still be left with a respectable...

Prelude to the Paleozoic Late Proterozoic Collisions and the Grenville Orogeny Trilobites

Sun, 04 Dec 2011 20:50:12 GMT

The oldest rocks in New York, exposed in the Adirondack Mountains and the Hudson Highlands, are somewhat more than 1 billion years old. These are crystalline rocks that were metamorphosed or altered from older rocks by enormous heat and pressure Figure 4.2 . Some were originally igneous rocks, formed from the cooling and crystallization of magmas, and others are sedimentary deposits, such as quartz sandstones, limestones, and shales. These were transformed metamorphosed by recrystallization and...

lifestyles of the huge and famous TyrannosaurusRex

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 12:47:28 GMT

NCE WE'VE FOUND AS much hard data as we can from our T. rex skeleton and all the others, and from T. rex's environment, we're back to speculating about T. rex in the flesh, this time with some more reasonable inferences. We're left with an awful lot of pure guesswork, however, since we still don't have a T. rex nest, eggs, or much of a young T. rex. It's a reasonable guess to say female T. rexes laid eggs, since we have eggs from many other dinosaurs, including carnivores like the man-sized...

TREX predator or scavenger TyrannosaurusRex

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 10:03:42 GMT

AAA AS T.REX A VICIOUS killer Ask mostanyone, including most paleontologists, and they'll say yes. Ask me, I'd say no. You may have noticed that I haven't referred to it as a predator once in this book, only as a carnivore. We're all guessing, but I think those who cast T. rex as a predator are letting some common prejudices cloud their thinking. For sure, T. rex ate a lot. It takes a lot of hamburger to feed a six-ton, or bigger, animal. But it shouldn't have mattered to T. rex whether lunch...

name Ursus spelaeus time Pleistocene to Recent locality Europe Austria PrehistoricAnimals

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 06:05:54 GMT

Germany, Netherlands, Spain, UK and USSR size 6 ft 6 in 2 m long The genus Ursus is represented today by the brown, or grizzly, bear, the polar bear and the American black bear. But in Pleistocene times, the cave bear, Ursus spelaeus, was a particularly numerous and impressive species. It lived in Europe during the height of the Ice Age, and often escaped the worst of the winters by hibernating in Alpine caves. Many bears seem to have congregated together for this long, annual sleep, to judge...

A Brief History of Fossil Fish Collecting in Kansas DinosaursBones

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 22:40:16 GMT

Though not from Kansas, the first known fossil fish from the Niobrara Chalk was collected by the Lewis and Clark expedition in August of 1804 from the bank of the Missouri River in what is now Harrison County, Iowa. The fish jaw ANSP 55 16 is currently in the collection of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia and is the only fossil specimen surviving from that expedition Spamer et al., 2000 . The history of this fossil is somewhat confused, however, because it was originally...

The Best Fossil Finds Are Often Those Where Only A Bit Of Bone Sticks Out TyrannosaurusRex

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 18:23:12 GMT

ABOVE THE SURFACE. IN THOSE CASES MOST OF THE BONE IS STILL SHELTERED FROM EROSION. THAT'S HOW IT WAS WITH KATHY WANK EL'S T. REX. during the long dry spells. When it shrinks it cracks all over, making the ground into a layer of cracked crust over dust, stuff we call popcorn. You can just imagine what the popcorn cracking does to bones. If a T. rex died and was fossilized in bentonite, it could end up in a million pieces. Yet another reason it's so hard to find a dead T. rex is that there...

Wyoming Asia China and PrehistoricAnimals

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 11:54:20 GMT

Europe France size 5 ft 1.5 m long Hyrachyus was generally very similar to Heptodon see pp. 258-261 , but a little larger and more heavily built. It was a common and widespread animal. Many species are known, ranging from the size of a modern tapir to that of a fox. Hyrachus appears to be ancestral to both the later tapirs and the rhinoceroses. Indeed, its resemblance to a primitive form of the latter group is so .pronounced that it is often classed as rhinoceros, albeit a lightweight one.

Cretaceous Park T Rexs Animal World TyrannosaurusRex

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 13:05:49 GMT

We know a lot more about T. rex's world than we do about most other dinosaur communities. Quite a few of the dinosaurs we know about come from the era of the tyrannosaurs, the last 15 million years of dinosaur life. That's less than 10 percent of dinosaur time. The richest collections of dinosaurs, however, come from Montana and western Canada at the time of Albertosaurus, several million years before T. rex lived. By most estimates though not all , there were fewer kinds of dinosaurs by the...

Order Dermoptera PrehistoricAnimals

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 03:07:56 GMT

The dermopterans constitute the group of flying lemurs a confusing name since they are neither lemurs, nor do they fly. Only 2 species survive today the colugos Cynocepkalus of Southeast Asia, both strict vegetarians. These modern animals, less than 1 ft 30 cm long, can glide as far as 450 ft 137 m from tree to tree on outstretched skin membranes. It is assumed, though there is no direct evidence for this, that Mid-Paleocene and Early Eocene dermopterans could do likewise. There is some...

Theropod Giants and Feathered Dinosaurs CretaceousPeriod

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 21:23:55 GMT

The story of predatory dinosaurs began during the early stages of dinosaur evolution with the appearance of the first theropods in the Late Triassic Epoch. By the Middle and Late Jurassic Epochs, the evolutionary lineages of meat-eating dinosaurs had diversified dramatically, leading in one direction to such large carnivores as Allosaurus Late Jurassic, western North America and in another direction to such small, chicken-sized insectivores as Compsogna-thus Late Jurassic, Germany . The Late...

Horned and BoneHeaded Dinosaurs CretaceousPeriod

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 21:10:22 GMT

One of the most familiar images in the folklore of dinosaurs is a battle to the death between Tyrannosaurus and the horned dinosaur Triceratops Late Cretaceous, western North America . Triceratops was a large horned dinosaur, one of the last of its kind, and probably would have made a formidable foe for T. rex had the theropod been careless enough to engage it in a tussle. Weighing as much as 6 tons 5.4 tonnes , a defensive-minded Triceratops had many advantages to draw upon in battle. Its...

The Family Tree ReptilesDinosaurs

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 04:53:12 GMT

The first reptiles descended from ancestral amphibians. They distinguished themselves from their ancestors through mutations that allowed them to free themselves from their dependence on water for reproduction. Among these adaptations, the amniotic egg stands out, but equally important were the development of sex organs that favored internal copulation, an impermeable skin, and the formation of a low volume of urine that eliminates uric acid instead of urea. These adaptations to its environment...

Sexual Dimorphism CretaceousPeriod

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 04:11:11 GMT

Sexual dimorphism occurs when male and female individuals of a single species exhibit different anatomical traits. Such traits can be determined reliably in dinosaurs only when an abundance of specimens from the same species can be compared. Such traits helped dinosaurs distinguish male individuals of their species from females, and may have also been related to particular behaviors. For example, male African elephants have tusks, while females do not. These tusks are used during combat or...

What if anything is a reptile DinosaursHistory

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 00:10:19 GMT

Organisms are commonly classified according to the biological classification system, first developed by the Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus 1707-1778 . His hierarchical system is the very famous or infamous ranking of groups of organisms in groups of decreasing size kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species. Individuals are generally referred to by italicized generic genus and specific species names, for example in the case of a famous large dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex. Any name...

PLATE Vkv Trilobites

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 19:22:29 GMT

PHACOPS Emmrich, 1839. Phacops rana crassituberculata Stumm x2.9 . Silica Shale, Hamilton group, Devonian Cazenovian , Sylvania, Ohio. RLS coll., id. now at FMNH. Side view a and top view b of a large adult specimen whitened with magnesium oxide. Of all North American trilobites, the Phacops of the Silica Shale are probably the most spectacular because of their lifelike preservation. Phacops rana crassituberculata S t u m m x3.6 . Silica Shale, as in plate 195 RLS coll., id. now at FMNH . A...

DISCUSSION Nps Paleobiology

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 12:38:06 GMT

The claw geometry of mammals and birds both pedal and manual correlates well with arboreal and terrestrial habitats. In a study of over 500 species of birds, Feduccia 1993 demonstrated that modern ground and tree-dwelling birds could be distinguished on the basis of pedal claw curvature. The claw arc measurements for ground birds ranged from 52.2 to 77.6 , those of perching birds from 101.8 to 125.3 , and those of trunk-climbers form 129.5 to 161.6 Feduccia, 1993 . The ungual phalanges on pedal...

Respiration in Varanids Paleobiology

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 07:01:33 GMT

Lung morphology. Varanids and helodermatids are the only lizards that possess multichambered lungs Perry, 1998 . They are generally large and heterogene-ously subdivided into various chambers, with the apical chambers supplied with inspired air through a cartilage-reinforced secondary bronchus Perry, 1998 . The dorso-medial region of the varanid lung is where the majority of gas exchange occurs via dense parenchyma, while the caudal sacculated sections are poorly vascularized, highly compliant...

What it looked like DinosaursTimeline

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 01:39:28 GMT

Palaeontologists consider Bagaceratops to be far more primitive than the ceratopids - even though it came later than many of them. Like the ceratopids, Bagaceratops has a relatively stocky build and short legs. However, along with its horn, its crest is nowhere near as large as those of Styracosaurus sty-RAC-o-SORE-us nor is Bagaceratops itself anywhere near as big. Its closest relative is probably Protoceratops pro-toe-KAIR-ah-tops , which is about twice the size of its smaller cousin. With...

the bare bones TyrannosaurusRex

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 22:08:47 GMT

OW THAT WE'VE GOT all the bones back in the lab, what do we do with them Usually we put them in storage for a few years. Unlike wine, they don't get any better in the basement. But, like other paleontology museums, the Museum of the Rockies has a huge backlog of fossils waiting to be cleaned. And just because T. rex has the biggest fan club doesn't mean we can shove aside the preparation of other valuable study specimens when a T. rex comes in the door. We've got a waiting list for fossil...

Family Viverridae PrehistoricAnimals

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 16:55:00 GMT

This family of small carnivores contains the modern civets, genets and mongooses. The viverrids are among the oldest of the carnivores, with an ancestry dating back as far as the Middle Paleocene, about 60 million years ago. They are also among the most adaptable and least specialized of all carnivores. Viverrids are mostly long-bodied, short-legged animals. Many of them are opportunistic omnivores, eating a great variety of food from earthworms, mollusks, crabs, fish, birds and reptiles...

Suborder Protosuchia PrehistoricAnimals

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 15:19:12 GMT

Although their skulls were slightly more crocodilelike in appearance, the proto-suchians were still long-legged land-dwellers like the sphenosuchians above . They lived all over the world during the early part of the Jurassic period. Some members may have developed a secondary palate that separated the mouth from the nasal passages, but it could only have been made of a fleshy membrane as yet, since there is no sign of the solid bony palate developed in later crocodiles. name Protosuchus time...

Phylum Arthropoda LivingFossils

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 04:03:14 GMT

Aquatic, terrestrial and aerial invertebrates, with a segmented body and jointed legs hence the name covered by chitin. Growth takes place through moults, so the chitin skeleton shows no growth lines. subphylum TRILOBITOMORPHA Cambrian to Permian In addition to the trilobites, this subphylum includes the class TRILOBITOIDEA, which are largely represented by fossils from the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale of British Columbia. They appear to be a varied group, but to have similar appendages to...

Cretaceous Sauropods CretaceousPeriod

Sat, 24 Sep 2011 17:18:48 GMT

The sauropod group Neosauropoda is subdivided into two major clades the Diplodocoidea comprising the Rebbachisauridae, Di-craeosauridae, and Diplodocidae and the Macronaria composed mainly of the Camarasauridae, Brachiosauridae, and Titanosauria . Of these, only the Macronaria had taxa that survived into the Early and Late Cretaceous Epochs as members of the brachiosaurs and titanosaurs. The Macronaria were distinguished from other sauro-pods by skull features that included a nasal opening that...

Fishes Large and Small DinosaursBones

Sat, 24 Sep 2011 14:00:12 GMT

The big Xiphactinus swam effortlessly through the clear, warm waters of the Western Interior Sea in a solitary, never-ending search for its next meal. Ten years old and nearly four meters long, it had not yet reached full size, but it was already larger than any of the other species of fish in this ocean except the giant ginsu sharks. Although still wary of the occasional prowling shark, the X-fish's only other major competitor for the larger fish that it preyed upon were the large marine...

Introduction PrehistoricAnimals

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 13:23:50 GMT

The solar system, which includes the Earth, is about 4-6 billion years old. The earliest traces of life on our planet are microscopic fossils of blue-green algae and bacteria that are found in rocks some 3.5 billion years old opposite . The atmosphere of the ancient Earth contained no oxygen. Like most modern green plants, the early algae produced oxygen, but this would have quickly disappeared because it combined readily with various elements and compounds in the Earth's crust. Not until about...

Lipp Alian Trilobites

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 23:38:53 GMT

Grenville mountain belt, fully formed by a billion years ago, was exposed in a life-less continental interior to the forces of weathering and erosion. We know that by about 550 million years ago, an entire thickness of continental crust had been removed and erosion had exposed the roots of the ancient Grenville Mountains. Laurentia is the term geologists apply to the ancestral Paleozoic core of North America, lacking certain areas such as the present eastern seaboard region eastern...

Suborder Cryptodira PrehistoricAnimals

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 18:35:26 GMT

The cryptodires were the most successful group of chelonians, and survive to this day most modern turtles and tortoises belong to this group. Many of them can retract their heads into the shell by lowering the neck and pulling it back vertically. As a group, the cryptodires evolved along with their pleurodire cousins during Jurassic times. But by the end of that period they had become enormously diverse, and replaced the pleurodires in the seas, rivers and lakes of the world. New forms...

Fossilrange Chart Richmondian OrdovicianRocks

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 13:07:37 GMT

Silurian limestone overlying Ordovicion unconformity 3rd coral zone FAVISTINA, LABE CHI A TE TRADIUM L epadocystis sp Calapoecia huronensis v Faustina slellala schyrodonta sp Homotrypa sp Silurian limestone overlying Ordovicion unconformity 2nd coral zone LABECHIA, TE T RADIUM Con stellaria polystome la Cyrtodontu a umbonata Ceraurus sp Homotrypa beds LABECHIA, TFTRADUJM- 1st coral zone large cephalopod fauna J Hebertella alveola Cyrtodontu o sp tschyrodonta elongala ' turkey track layer...

Missing link DinosaursTimeline

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 07:22:04 GMT

Archaeopteryx was the first feathered dinosaur to be found anywhere. Originally, palaeontologists suggested it could be a major link between dinosaurs and birds, but now some think that Archaeopteryx is a bit of a dead end in avian evolution. It has feathers and light bones like birds do, but it also has a flat breastbone and a long, bony tail, which birds don't have. However, Archaeopteryx is some kind of link between feathered and non-feathered creatures and, as such, is a highly prized...

Family Calymenidae Burmeister 1 Trilobites

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 03:38:45 GMT

Subfamily Calymeninae Burmeister, 1843 CALYMENE Brongniart, 1822. Calymene breviceps Raymond, Waldron Shale, Silurian, Niagaran, Waldron, Indiana x2.6 . Gurley coll. of UCWM loaned by FMNH. Several complete individuals, rolled and unrolled. Calymene niagarensis Hall x2.8 . Racine Formation in the Niagaran Limestone, Silurian, McCook, Illinois RLS coll., id. now at FMNH . Negative mold encrusted with dolomite crystals. In spite of the coarse grain of the surface, anatomical details of the...

Chirostenotes Temnocheirus Cutting Hand BroncosaurusRex

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 20:30:56 GMT

Warm forest, hills, desert, or plains Solitary or family 1-2 adults, 1-2 young a descendant of the original dinosaur Chirostenotes a beaked, bipedal omnivore with a short, bumplike horn on its beak, long and powerful clawed forearms, and a surprisingly short tail. Roughly the size of a black bear of Earth, Chirostenotes temnocheirus, the cutting hand, has turned its clawed forearms into lethal weapons, indeed. The lifestyle of this curious animal is a combination of the bear and the ostrich....

Preemptive Strike DinosaurExtinction

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 17:19:35 GMT

If the Alvarez theory is correct, the change from Cretaceous time to Tertiary time happened instantaneously, everywhere around the globe, in which case the K-T boundary clay can represent but a mere eyeblink of geologic time a few hundred or a few thousand years at most. Furthermore, the boundary would have to be the same age everywhere. Officer and Drake claimed to have evidence that, on the contrary, the age of the boundary differs by hundreds of thousands of years at different locales. If...

Family Tapiridae PrehistoricAnimals

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 12:13:36 GMT

The family to which the modern tapirs belong, the Tapiridae, can be traced back as far as the Early Oligocene, about 40 million years ago. The 4 species of living tapirs are all placed in the single genus Tapirus. Two species occur in Central America and northern South America and 2 in Southeast Asia none remain in the group's original northern stronghold. This scattered relict distribution has often been cited as evidence for the existence of the southern supercontinent of Gondwanaland. It is...

Bipedality and the Fully Erect Gait Mammals

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 12:01:20 GMT

The reason predatory dinosaurs became bipedal is not at all clear. The only thing that can be said in the end is that bipedalism was a serendipitously crucial adaptation The earliest known biped was the Early Triassic thecodont Euparkeria. Fig. 4A . Though normally quadrupedal, this small reptile was capable of shifting to a bipedal gait when moving quickly. In the Middle and Late Triassic, bipedality became increasingly common among the thecodonts and evolved independently in several lineages...

bibliography TyrannosaurusRex

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 01:03:18 GMT

Wherever possible I've relied on what other scientists tell me when it comes to describing other people's research. I grew up with undiagnosed dyslexia, and reading is not easy for me. Besides, scientific papers are pretty tough going, even for scientists. But I've included some papers that I've read among the publications I've consulted to help me with this book, just in case you're interested in looking through them. It is worth reading at least one scientific paper to see how a scientist...

MATERIALS AND METHODS Osteological Correlates of Known Skin Structures Paleobiology

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 20:43:41 GMT

Because ceratopsid horn cores and bosses are novel structures that have no direct homologs in extant taxa an extant phylogenetic bracket EPB level III inference per Witmer, 1995 , we compared these structures to convergent structures in extant taxa to address structural and functional relationships. A diverse group of extant amniotes comprising 96 specimens from 84 taxa was sampled to test relationships between skin structures and underlying bone morphology Table 1 . Convergent examples of...

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Fmy Paleobiology

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 16:33:11 GMT

Marina Sereda assisted in all cataloging, photographing, and describing of all theropod teeth. H. David Sheets copied and mailed morphometric software, as well as gave input on software applications. Kathleen M. Scott, George R. McGhee, and Kathryn A. Weiss gave critical comments on this manuscript. Christine L. Chandler provided necessary literature. Helpful advice was given by Peter Dodson, Henry John-Alder, Robert J. Blumenschine, Peter J. Morin, Raymond R. Rogers, Rudyard Sadlier, and...

Cladistics and the Fossil Record of Theropods MesozoicBirds

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 05:31:37 GMT

Critics of the hypothesis that birds are theropod dinosaurs have claimed that the stratigraphic record supports their view, by indicating that the relevant theropod taxa occur too late in time. Feduccia 1996 90 , for example, states, Birds are supposed to be derived from the coelurosaurian dinosaurs, and the form initially used to relate dinosaurs to birds, Deinonychus, is from the early Cretaceous, some 40 million years after Archaeopteryx, and the most birdlike dinosaurs are from the late...

Convergence FossilCollectors

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 02:46:55 GMT

Fossils were at one time classified primarily by similarities of structure of the hard parts of organisms. This was found to be misleading as paleontologists discovered that some entirely unrelated creatures had developed similar structures, presumably because they were useful to different organisms that had adopted similar ways of life. This trick of nature, which Professor George Gaylord Simpson has called the bane of the taxonomist, is called convergence. Perhaps the most obvious example is...

Hesperornithes CretaceousPeriod

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 00:51:29 GMT

The Hesperornithes were a highly specialized subgroup of aquatic ornithuromorphs. Also loonlike but probably all flightless, these large birds measured up to 3.3 feet 1 m long and were divers. There are about nine valid taxa of Hesperornithes and they are definitely known only from fossil localities in the Northern Hemisphere. The best-known hesperornithean is Hesperornis Late Cretaceous, western North America , for which several skulls and partial skeletons have been found. When it was first...

Info Mln LivingFossils

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 00:42:54 GMT

Table VII Stratigraphical Nomenclature and correlation in the Carboniferous of Western Europe, U.S.S.R. and U.S.A. The Series names for Western Europe are those recognized by the International Subcommission on Carboniferous Stratigraphy. The Stage names for the Dinantian are those recently proposed by George et al. 1976 . Table VII Stratigraphical Nomenclature and correlation in the Carboniferous of Western Europe, U.S.S.R. and U.S.A. The Series names for Western Europe are those recognized by...

Order Actinistia PrehistoricAnimals

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 16:55:54 GMT

The actinistians, or coelacanths, have a long evolutionary history, longer in fact than anyone thought. They arose in the Middle Devonian and the last fossils found come from Late Cretaceous rocks, some 70 million years old. Then, in 1938, a living coelacanth was caught in the deep waters of the trench that separates Madagascar from southern Africa. The people of the nearby Comoro Islands had known of this fish for generations, but it was new to science. The term living fossil was awarded to...

North America Origin of Dinosaurs

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 15:54:38 GMT

Several previously mentioned occurrences of possible mammals in the Late Triassic of North America specifi-cally North Carolina and Texas Clemens et al., 1979 are now thought more likely to represent therapsids, as noted earlier Sues, 2001 . In the meantime, however, more secure records of mammals from both the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic have been reported from the continent. Adelobasileus cromptoni see Lucas and Hunt, 1990 is known by the posterior part of a skull from Home Creek, Crosby...

Coelophysoidea Neoeratosauria and Tetanurae DinosaursHistory

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 12:29:37 GMT

At its base, Theropoda is the wellspring of the three major groups of descendants Coelophysoidea named after Coelophysis and including some related, less well-known forms , Neoceratosauria named after one of its members, the Jurassic Ceratosaurus and including some other bad boys, including the formidable Cretaceous-aged Carnotaurus and Tetanurae tetanus - stiff uro - tail . It was in Tetanurae that some of the most remarkable theropod evolution took place. Members of this group, whose record...

locality Africa Namibia Asia PrehistoricAnimals

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 10:25:06 GMT

China and Europe France size 6 ft 6 in 2 m long Although bears are not found in Africa today, they lived there in the past. Agriotherium lived in southwestern Africa, a whole continent away from its usual haunts of Europe and Asia. Agriotherium was a very large bear, even larger than the Kodiak bear above . It was also very primitive, and looked rather like a dog in some ways. However, its teeth had developed the typical bear pattern. It is therefore safe to assume that was omnivorous. name...

Latitude and Longitude N W NewarkBasin

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 07:10:49 GMT

Tectonostratigraphic Sequence TS III Stratigraphic Unit Lockatong Formation Age Late Carnian Early Late Triassic 222 Ma Main Points 1. Long section of typical facies at hinge margin of Lockatong 2. Marginal to deep-water lacustrine environments 3. Well-developed Van Houten cycles in more basinward environment A long section, recently expanded, is exposed along Gorge Road from its intersection with Old River Road to the contact with the Palisade sill at the Legend Hills Condominium development...

Revelation SeaDragons

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 06:41:07 GMT

Fossilists and social reformers alike could claim 1824 as a banner year the dawning of a new era of understanding. At the same time Buckland was busy exploring caves and fossiling at Stonesfield, those preoccupied with the harsh realities of their present world witnessed Parliament's repeal of the Combination Act. The Combination Act, which had been in force for the previous twenty-five years, made it illegal for workers to join together to improve working conditions, effectively banishing...

Alligators and Caimans ReptilesDinosaurs

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 22:36:22 GMT

have four feet. In this way, they are very similar to lizards. They are distinguished by their great size and ferocity. Several rows of bony plates that look like spines or teeth run down the length of their back They can stay in the water for long periods of time, and they are able to swallow underwater without drowning. They make their nests in holes on the beach. The Johnston's, or freshwater, crocodile, of tropical northern Australia, can gallop to the water by raising all four feet off the...

Dryptosaurus Ingens Leaping Claw BroncosaurusRex

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 18:49:49 GMT

Improved grab, swallow whole, pounce Hide 7, Jump 17, Listen 11, Spot 10 Solitary or family 1-2 adults, 1-2 young Dryptosaurus ingens is a vast descendant of the original carnosaur Dryptosaurus, a vicious predator whose powerful hind legs were made for jumping as well as running. A dark green in color, this 30-foot monster likes to hide among the trees and pounce on unsuspecting prey, a practice that plays merry hell with the nerves and morale of those who travel in known dryptosaur country. D....

name Scarrittia time Early Oligocene locality South America PrehistoricAnimals

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 16:26:16 GMT

Argentina size 6 ft 2 in 2 m long Scarrittia is the only member of the Leontiniidae that we know from a well-preserved skeleton. In life, it probably looked much like a lumbering, flat-footed rhinoceros. Scarrittia was a rather heavy animal with a long body and neck, stout legs, 3-toed hoofed feet, and a very short tail. The tibia and fibula were partly fused at the top, so the feet could not be turned sideways. The face was quite short and the jaws contained the full complement of 44...

Fossil Croups Of Minor Importance To Beginners OrdovicianRocks

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 12:47:17 GMT

The phylum Porifera includes the sponges. The name means hole bearing, a reference to the system of holes and canals whereby the animal circulates water through itself. Sponges are primitive creatures. They are multicellular, but the cells are not organized into tissues. Members of the phylum are characterized by specialized cells which cause water to flow through the animal by means of beats of whip-like structures termed flagella sing., flagellum . Many sponges have hard parts composed of...

name Thesodon time Early Miocene locality South America PrehistoricAnimals

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 10:32:01 GMT

Argentina size 6 ft 6 in 2 m long Trotting across the Pampas plains, this browsing and grazing long-necked creature would have looked much like a modern guanaco. The main difference would have been in the feet, which in Thesodon were 3-toed and hence rather heavier. The position of the nostrils in the skull suggests that a trunk was also present, but this may have been no more prominent than the one carried by the living saiga antelope. The lower jaw was very slim and the mouth had a full set...

Selected readings Yyb DinosaursHistory

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 09:26:13 GMT

Barsbold, R. and Osmolska, H. 1990a. Ornithomimosauria. In Weishampel, D. B., Dodson, P. and Osmolska, H. eds. , The Dinosauria, 2nd edn. University of California Press, Berkeley, pp. 225-244. Barsbold, R. and Osmolska, H. 1990b. Oviraptorosauria. In Weishampel, D. B., Dodson, P. and Osmolska, H. eds. , The Dinosauria, 2nd edn. University of California Press, Berkeley, pp.249-258. Clark, J. M., Maryaiiska, T. and Barsbold, R. 2004, Therizinosauroidea. In Weishampel, D. B., Dodson, P. and...

Order Therapsida PrehistoricAnimals

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 01:33:38 GMT

The therapsids were advanced synapsid reptiles, and the direct ancestors of the mammals. Although the remains of the first therapsids are found at the base of the Late Permian, they had diverged from the sphenacodont pelycosaurs more than 20 million years before, probably during the Early Permian. They spread rapidly to all parts of the world, including Antarctica. The therapsids are grouped into several suborders see pp. 58-59 , only one of which, the cynodonts, survived into the Jurassic see...

Family Elephantidae PrehistoricAnimals

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 21:19:29 GMT

This is the family to which the modern elephants belong. They differ from their earlier relatives, the mastodonts, principally in the form of the teeth. True elephants have lost the tusks of the lower jaw, and this has enabled them to modify their method of mastication. Mastodonts ground their food in a complex rotary motion, whereas elephants cut or shear it. The change of action has also affected the teeth, which are taller, with longer, more complex enameled surfaces. In many species, there...

Likely Tyrannosaurids TyrannosaurusRex

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 20:07:25 GMT

Alectrosaurus olseni was named by Charles Gilmore in 1933 from bones found in the Gobi Desert of Inner Mongolia. Gilmore may have combined two different animals. Ken Carpenter thinks Alectrosaurus is not a tyrannosaurid, but Phil Currie believes it was a primitive tyrannosaurid. It was about sixteen feet long and less than half a ton in weight, with skinny shoulders and legs. Alioramus remotus was named by Sergei Kurzanov of the USSR in 1976 from a skull and a few bones from Mongolia. Alioramus...

Marginocephalia DinosaursHistory

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 17:57:00 GMT

Marginocephalia margin - edge kephale - head . It's not a name you'll hear from the local 5-year-old dino-it-all. Yet, the name Marginocephalia reflects an important connection between two major, superficially different-looking, groups of dinosaurs Pachycephalosauria pachy - thick and Ceratopsia kera - horn ops - face . Together with Ornithopoda Chapter 7 , marginocephalians make up the taxon known as Cerapoda Figure 6.1 . Figure 6.1. Cladogram of Ornithischia, emphasizing Cerapoda and Margino...

T-rex Arm Muscles TyrannosaurusRex

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 17:48:06 GMT

One of the greatest features of Kathy Wankel's T. rex is that it has all the arm bones, shoulder to fingers. Only the claws are missing. That's the first time we've ever had all those parts from a T. rex. And those bones allowed my co-workers to draw some conclusions about how those arms worked, conclusions that surprised me. What didn't surprise me was how small T. rex's arms were no longer than mine. In evolution it's an amazing reduction over earlier tyrannosaurs. Once you look at the actual...

Order Sirenia PrehistoricAnimals

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 09:58:34 GMT

The sirenians, or sea cows, are the only group of mammals to have become fully adapted, aquatic herbivores. Today, they are represented by 3 species of manatee Trichechus and a single species of dugong Dugong dugon . They all have bulbous bodies, forelimbs modified into flippers, no hindlimbs and a horizontally flattened tail, like that of a whale, which they use to propel themselves through the water at a leisurely pace. Sirenians are known from the Early Eocene of Hungary. Their evolution is...

Trilobite Names Trilobites

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 06:28:21 GMT

Trilobites are named using the rules of zoological nomenclature published in English and French in the InternationaJ Code of ZooJogicaJ NomencJature ICZN . This code is used worldwide by all scientists irrespective of the language of publication. In dealing with the names of trilobites or any other kind of organism , it helps to understand the basic rules, how names come about, and how they can change over time. For example, and as mentioned already, in 1824 J. E. Dekay first reported IsoteJus...

Info Bqq Triceratops

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 03:32:50 GMT

This exercise is not a rigorous one, but it seems to convey a reasonably consistent picture of the size of the animals in the deposit. Note that in our real animal, that is to say, NMC 2245, as in all ceratopsids, the humerus is not the same length as the femur but only about two-thirds the length of the femur. Thus the 355-mm femur of C. mariscalensis certainly comes from a smaller animal than the 352-mm humerus. Lehman concluded his work by diagnosing Chasmosaurus mariscalensis. He noted that...

and the African secretary bird PredatorBirds

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 03:14:05 GMT

sil families the Bathornithidae, which appear in beds 40 million to 20 million years old in North America, and the Idiornithidae, found in certain European rock formations 40 million to 30 million years old. Some scientists believe these families are so closely related that they should all be grouped in the family Cariamidae. MOST OF THE TERROR birds were considerably larger than their living relatives. The creatures ranged in height from one to three meters just shy of 10 feet . The earliest...

INTRODUCTION Xgb Paleobiology

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 10:08:38 GMT

The field of population biology was revolutionized in the 1930s and 40s with the application of actuary tables derived from the insurance industry to infer population dynamics the balance between mortality rates and attrition that creates the demography of a population Pearl and Miner, 1935 Deevey, 1947 . Life tables, as they are referred to in ecology, serve as a foundation from which one can study influences on population structure such as predation, accidents, disease, growth rates,...

Trilobites CambrianExplosion

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 01:20:25 GMT

the best known and most typical Cambrian fossils are trilobites. The familar Cambrian species Elrathia kingii figure 4.12 has been quarried in great quantities from the Wheeler Shale of western Utah and can be found all over the United States in rock shops and museum stores, often fashioned into bolo ties and earrings. The Ute Indians of Utah made specimens of Elrathia into amulets, calling them by the Ute name timpe khanitza pachavee, which roughly translates to little water bug that likes to...

New Theories Unlocking The Mystery Of The Dinosaurs And Their Extinction DinosaursExtinction

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 13:15:38 GMT

Copyright 1986 by Robert T Bakker Illustrations copyright 1986 by Robert T, Bakker All rights reserved. No part ot this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher Inquiries should be addressed to Permissions Department, William Morrow and Company, Inc., 105 Madison Ave New York NY 10016. Library of Congress...

Cataloging And Displaying Fossils FossilCollectors

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 12:53:53 GMT

A jumble of fossils on a shelf is nothing but a heap of curiosities of neither scientific nor monetary value. Among them may lie a one-of-a-kind fossil, a new species, perhaps even a missing link that could throw light on the relationships of some group of plants or animals. Or a common fossil may take on new interest because it is from a locality where such a species has not been found before or from a rock series in which it has never been seen previously. But if the fossil has not been...

Dispatching Dinosaurs FlyingDinosaurs

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 02:31:27 GMT

According to some treatises, there are about 410 named species of dinosaurs. This is far short of all the dinosaur names that have stuffed the literature. Dinosaurs have been outrageously oversplit. A recent volume on dinosaur taxonomy edited by David Weishampel, Peter Dodson, and Hal-ska Osmolska listed, in addition to valid species, about 209 nomina dubia, that is, species of dubious distinction. These rejects were originally described from inadequate bits of the skeleton, a part of a rib, a...

Locked In Battle With A Protoceratops Both Were Apparently Killed Suddenly By A Gobi Desert Sandstorm 1 TyrannosaurusRex

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 22:41:53 GMT

RIGHT ARTIST ROBERT WALTERS DEPICTED THEIR BATTLE IN THIS PAINTING. recently dead animal, unless of course you find a bullet hole in its skull. There are exceptions. One set of dinosaur fossils from Mongolia shows a small predator and a horned dinosaur wrapped around each other. It seems some tragedy befell both of them before one of them could kill the other. And a huddle of young armored dinosaurs found in a sand dune in Inner Mongolia a few years ago probably died just as they lay from the...

Subclass Lepospondyli PrehistoricAnimals

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 20:58:22 GMT

Contemporary with the large, bulky labyrinthodonts see pp. 50-53 were a group of smaller, insectivorous amphibians, grouped together as the lepospondyls. The anatomical feature that unites them is the structure of their vertebrae. These amphibians evolved in the Carboniferous period, and survived until the end of the Permian. During this span of some 100 million years, a variety of small lepospondyls evolved, which tended to look like salamanders or snakes. They can be grouped into 3 major...

Hypotheses Tested in This Study Paleobiology

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 17:45:44 GMT

The two most prominent hypotheses of integumentary structures described a flat keratinous pad and a rhinoceros-like horn are supplemented by several other morphological hypotheses in this study Fig. 3 . The additional hypotheses represent combinations of different integumentary tissues. Some of these combinations are represented by structures in extant taxa that have not previously been suggested as analogs for Pachyrhi-nosaurus horns e.g., hornbill casques , whereas other combinations are not...

Family Myrmecophagidae PrehistoricAnimals

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 17:13:26 GMT

The myrmecophagids, or true ant-eaters to distinguish them from the completely unrelated marsupial ant-eaters such as the modern numbat Myr-mecobius are highly specialized for exploiting a diet of ants and termites. Their evolution is little known an early form, Protamandua, from the Early Miocene about 20 million years ago, was already a typical anteater. name Eurotamandua time Middle Eocene locality Europe Germany size 3 ft 90 cm long Until recently, when a fossil anteater was discovered in...

Info Mkt Trilobites

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 15:37:33 GMT

The two parts of the specimen in plate 49 are now assembled to show how the trilobite was originally found. In no way could the trilobite bring the cephalic margin to match the border of the long pygidium. Even so, enrollment protection, also in view of the presence of a robust telson, not preserved here, protruding from the tip of the pygidium. A perfectly enrolled specimen of the Ordovici an trilobite Foerste from Waynesville, Ohio x9 . RLS coll. now at FMNH. Probable life posture of the...

Extraordinary Eggs PrehistoricEarth

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 08:18:47 GMT

Fossilized dinosaur eggs have been found all over the world, sometimes in vast numbers. One Spanish site holds 300,000. These were probably laid at a mass-breeding ground that dinosaurs returned to each year. There are about 40 different kinds of dinosaur egg, from cannonballs and long loaves to tiny eggs that would fit in your hand. Like birds' eggs, they all had hard shells. A few contain babies' bones, clues to the kind of dinosaur that laid them. Fossilized mud nests with the remains of...

Protorothyrididae PrehistoricAnimals

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 04:35:44 GMT

Members of this family are the earliest-known reptiles. They first appeared in the Late Carboniferous period, and survived into Mid-Permian times, a span of some 50 million years. The protorothy-ridids were the basal stock from which many specialized groups evolved, including the ruling reptiles the dinosaurs, crocodiles and flying pterosaurs see pp. 90-93 . name Hylonomus time Late Carboniferous locality North America Nova Scotia size 8 in 20 cm long Hylonomus is the earliest-known,...

Family Enaliarctidae PrehistoricAnimals

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 00:40:40 GMT

The enaliarctids were the earliest members of the otarioids to evolve, and were the ancestors of the modern sealions, fur seals and walruses. They lived during the Early Miocene, about 23 million years ago, and like the phocids above , probably evolved from among the mustelids. Later in the Miocene, about 18 million years ago, enaliarctids gave rise to another extinct family of early seals, the desmatophocids below . Later still, about 15 million years ago, some of the enaliarctids evolved into...

Dodson Paleobiology

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 22:38:33 GMT

femur can be determined. Contrary to expectation, the authors reject their hypothesis, a result that will disappoint some paleobiologists. Phil Manning is a paleontologist at University of Manchester who uses among other research tools the linear accelerator at Stanford University. Manning et al. 2009 use 3D FEA to compare the functionality of an owl claw to that of Velociraptor. The authors conclude that the recurved claws of Velociraptor were suitable for both climbing and prey capture, but...