Did T. Rex Have Feathers?

Full Article:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46954385/ns/technology_and_science-science

The discovery of a giant meat-eating dinosaur sporting a downy coat has some scientists reimagining the look of Tyrannosaurus rex.

With a killer jaw and sharp claws, T. rex has long been depicted in movies and popular culture as having scaly skin. But the discovery of an earlier relative suggests the king of dinosaurs may have had a softer side.

The evidence comes from the unearthing of a new tyrannosaur species in northeastern China that lived 60 million years before T. rex. The fossil record preserved remains of fluffy down, making it the largest feathered dinosaur ever found.

If a T. rex relative had feathers, why not T. rex? Scientists said the evidence is trending in that direction.

"People need to start changing their image of T. rex," said Luis Chiappe, director of the Dinosaur Institute at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, who was not part of the discovery team.

Much smaller dinosaurs with primitive feathers have been excavated in recent years, but this is the first direct sign of a huge, shaggy dinosaur. Scientists have long debated whether gigantic dinosaurs lost their feathers the bigger they got or were just not as extensively covered.

The new tyrannosaur species, Yutyrannus huali, is described in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. Its name is a blend of Latin and Mandarin, which translates to "beautiful feathered tyrant."

New Raptor Dinosaur Used Giant Claw to Pin, Slash Prey?

"Incredibly rare" fossils give insight into raptor behavior, study says
Christine Dell'Amore
September 21, 2011
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/09/110921-new-raptor-dinosaur-fossils-talon-toe-killing-utah-science

Talk about a lucky break — paleontologists have found "incredibly rare" fossils of a new species of raptor dinosaur that severely fractured its giant-clawed foot about 76 million years ago, paleontologists say.

The six-foot-long (two-meter-long) Talos sampsonsi lived in the rainy, "hothouse world" of late-Cretaceous North America, which was then two continents—Laramidia in the west and Appalachia in the east—divided by a shallow seaway.

It's one of the few troodontid theropods—small, birdlike predators—ever discovered in North America, said study leader Lindsay Zanno, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.

Doctoral student Mike Knell, who found Talos while searching for fossil turtles in Utah in 2008, "stumbled across one of the nicest raptors that we've found in North America," she said.

"It was a thrilling discovery for those of us who got to work on it."

The dinosaur is named for the mythological Greek figure Talos—a winged figure that supposedly could run at lightning speed—as well as Utah paleontologist Scott Sampson.

Raptor Dinosaur Used Talon to Puncture Prey?

Perhaps most exciting about Talos is its injured second toe, which has added to an existing debate on what troodontids did with the giant, sickle-like claw on that toe, study leader Zanno said.

Paleontologists have offered opposing explanations for the claw, for example that it helped troodontids climb, acted as a weapon in killing prey or fighting foes, or even enabled the dinosaur to clean itself.

When the scientists analyzed Talos's injured toe bone via a CT scanner, they found a mark that indicated that the injury—possibly caused by a bite from another animal—had been traumatic.

Assuming the dinosaur used the talon when walking, such a serious injury would've caused Talos to limp on that leg, which in turn would've caused obvious changes to the skeleton's structure, Zanno noted.

Instead, "we found the complete opposite," she said—the skeleton was otherwise unscathed.

This strengthens the theory that the raptor dinosaur carried its giant toe off the ground—an idea already supported by raptor tracks that lack claw marks, according to the study, published September 19 in the journal PLoS ONE.

Instead, Talos may have wielded its claw like a puncturing device when hunting, for example by getting a foothold as the raptor scrambled up a larger animal's back, Zanno said. Or, like some modern-day birds, the dinosaur may have used the claw as a weapon while fighting with other dinosaur rivals.

It's "giving us a window into the biology of the animal that we don't get from your average, everyday specimen," Zanno said.

New Dinosaur an Omnivore?

The fact that the toe was traumatically injured at all suggests the dinosaur used it as a weapon, said Thomas R. Holtz, Jr., a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Talos was "probably not going to get a wound like that from preening its feathers," said Holtz, who wasn't part of the study.

Based on the new findings and previous dinosaur tracks, Holtz suspects the dinosaur used its claw to pin down small animals and slash bigger prey.

What's more, the specimen's post-wound survival hints that the raptor was omnivorous, Holtz speculated. With its claw unusable for hunting, the dinosaur presumably had to eat plants or other foods to stay alive while it healed.

Holtz and colleagues have previously found that troodontids had teeth more like those of plant-eating reptiles than carnivorous ones, he added.

Study leader Zanno added, "In the end we can never observe the behavior of this animal—it's always going to be controversial."

But "the more individual lines of evidence that we can add that can support the [weapon] hypothesis, the stronger it becomes."

Asteroid Framed for Murdering Dinosaurs

From Space.com:

The source of the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago remains a mystery, a new study finds.

Some researchers had thought the deadly asteroid was a piece of a larger space rock called Baptistina. Baptistina broke apart after a massive in-space collision about 160 million years ago, the theory went, spawning a swarm of mountain-size chunks of rock. One of those eventually slammed into Earth, killing off the dinosaurs and many other species.

Scientists are confident that a 6-mile-wide (10-kilometer asteroid) is indeed what wiped out the dinosaurs. But new observations from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) space telescope suggest the space rock didn't come from Baptistina.

The timing just isn't right, according to the new study....

Origin of Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Is Still a Mystery
20 September 2011
http://www.space.com/13008-dinosaur-killing-asteroid-mystery-nasa.html

Jurassic Mammal

From National Geographic:

A tiny, shrew-like creature of the dinosaur era might have been, in a sense, the mother of us all.

Named the "Jurassic mother from China" (Juramaia sinensis), the newfound fossil species is the earliest known ancestor of placental mammals—animals, such as humans, that give birth to relatively mature, live young—according to a new study.

The 160-million-year-old specimen pushes back fossil evidence for the evolutionary split between the placental and marsupial lineages by 35 million years. Although it's unclear if the creature is a direct ancestor of modern placentals, it's "either a great grand-aunt or a great grandmother," the study authors say.

Placentals—including creatures from mice to whales—are all that remain of the so-called eutherian mammals, of which J. sinensis is the oldest known specimen.

The first eutherians evolved from the ancestors of marsupials, which have pouches and give birth to comparatively immature offspring...

Dino-era Mammal the "Jurassic Mother" of Us All?
John Roach
August 24, 2011
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/08/110824-placental-mammal-shrew-fossil-earliest-ancestor-evolution-science

Most dinosaurs were vegetarian, research suggests

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/dinosaurs/8214257/Most-dinosaurs-were-vegetarian-research-suggests.html

Most dinosaurs were vegetarian, research suggests
Most dinosaurs were vegetarian rather than meat-eating beasts, research suggests.
Andy Bloxham
21 Dec 2010

While Tyrannosaurus Rex sums up the image of a dinosaur wreaking terror by ripping flesh with powerful jaws, many of its closest relatives were more content nibbling leaves.

A new study of the diet of 90 species of theropod dinosaurs challenged the conventional view that nearly all theropods hunted prey, especially those closest to the ancestors of birds.

Rather it showed that among the most bird-like dinosaurs known as coelurosaurs plant eating was a common way of life.

Their diet may have also helped them survive and exploit new environments becoming the most successful group of dinosaurs throughout the Cretaceous Period, 145-65 million years ago.

Dr Lindsay Zanno of the Chicago Field Museum said: "Most theropods are clearly adapted to a predatory lifestyle, but somewhere on the line to birds, predatory dinosaurs went soft."

Theropods are a group of bipedal dinosaurs colloquially known as "predatory" dinosaurs and include the iconic hunters Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor.

Among theropod dinosaurs, all modern birds and several groups of their closest extinct relatives belong to a subgroup known as Coelurosauria.

Most were feathered and most intelligent dinosaurs and those with the smallest body sizes also belong to this group.

However researchers have been only left with fossilized bones and teeth to work with and so had to deduce their diets.

For example the bone-crunching teeth and jaws of Tyrannosaurus rex were the tools of a megapredator or that the tooth batteries of Triceratops were used for shearing plant material.

However many coelurosaurian dinosaurs have more ambiguous adaptations such as peg-like teeth at the front of the mouth or no teeth at all so determining their diet has been a challenge.

Dr Zanno added: "These oddball dinosaurs have been the subject of much speculation but until now, we have not had a reliable way to choose between competing theories as to what they ate."

But a small number of fossilized dinosaur dung, stomach contents, tooth marks, the presence of stones within the stomach that serve as a gastric mill for digesting vegetation have been found along with a number of species.

And two dinosaur species preserved locked in the throes of combat have been found to cast light on the mystery of what dinosaurs ate.

The researchers found almost two dozen anatomical features statistically linked to direct evidence of herbivory including a toothless beak.

"Once we linked certain adaptations with direct evidence of diet, we looked to see which other theropod species had the same traits. Then we could say who was likely a plant eater and who was not."

Applying their data on diet, the researchers found that 44 theropod species distributed across six major lineages were eating plants and that the ancestor to most feathered dinosaurs and modern birds had probably already lost its appetite for flesh alone.

Because plant eating was found to be so widespread in Coelurosauria, the hypercarnivorous habits of T. rex and other meat eating coelurosaurs like Velociraptor should be viewed "more as the exception than the rule."

Besides identifying diet, the researchers analyzed whether different groups of coelurosaurs followed the same evolutionary pathways toward an herbivorous diet.

They found that over time, species lost their flesh-rending teeth, developing strange tooth types such as peg, wedge, and leaf-shaped teeth, and ultimately, some lost most or all of their teeth altogether and replaced them with a bird-like beak.

The beaks then continued to evolve into a myriad of forms and help support a high degree of dietary diversity in modern birds.

One theory why they were so successful was that the break up of continents and origin of new habitat opened up new dietary niches for coelurosaurs to explore.

Dr Zanno said: "The ability to eat plant materials may have played a pivotal role in allowing coelurosaurian dinosaurs to achieve such remarkable species diversity.

"But more study is needed to understand what role dietary shifts may play in evolutionary processes."

Because ceolurosaurian dinosaurs include the closest extinct relatives of birds, understanding their biology is also extremely important to understanding how, why, and under what conditions birds evolved and first took flight.

"We don't know what drove the ancestors to birds to take flight," she says, "seeking food in the trees is just one of many possibilities."

Using statistical analysis to find correlations between physical traits and diet could offer a new window as to how evolution works.

"Being able to establish diet in extinct animals with confidence will allow us to start tackling even broader questions, such as whether animals tend to increase in body and diversity when they evolve herbivory."

The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

God needs a Creationism exhibit in Tulsa!

http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-17009-Freethought-Examiner~y2009m8d13-God-needs-a-Creationism-exhibit-in-Tulsa

God needs a Creationism exhibit in Tulsa!
August 13, 2009
Freethought Examiner
D.M. Murdock

For a change, here's something amusing on the religion front. The recent brouhaha at the Kentucky Creationism Museum, which last week was descended upon by atheist professor Dr. P.Z. Myers and some 300+ non-believers, along with the seizure for "tax fraud" of Dinosaur Adventure Land, the creationist theme park in South Carolina, have evidently inspired others to "honor" God with more wacky human works of the same ilk.

In this regard, a current candidate for the office of mayor in Tulsa, Oklahoma, has decided that what God really needs is a Creationism exhibit at the Tulsa Zoo! Yes, that's right, the God of the universe "needs to be honored in the city," according to Republican Anna Falling:

As part of that effort, Falling has resurrected a failed push for an exhibit at the Tulsa Zoo that would tell the Genesis story of God creating the world in six days and resting on the seventh, originally proposed by Christian activist Dan Hicks in 2005, Tulsa World reported.

The all-powerful, self-contained God of the cosmos "needs" something! In fact, he needs to be honored in Tulsa, of all places! You see, God is fascinated by Tulsa—and he really likes the silly Creationist museums, theme parks and exhibits that humans put together. So, we can be sure that God will nod his gigantic head in approval when more of these kooky displays pop up in American cities. What fun—the circus is coming to town!

But, seriously, would not such a god, were he real, be honored best by the daring and sublime critical thought exhibited most often by doubters in organized religion, rather than the extreme gullibility and simple-mindedness adhered to by bibliolaters and assorted other religionists?

Do Dinosaurs Still Exist?

http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/090604-lost-world-dinosaurs.html

Do Dinosaurs Still Exist?
Benjamin Radford
LiveScience's Bad Science Columnist
Thu Jun 4, 2009

The idea of still-living dinosaurs has captured the public imagination for well over a century.

Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, published a 1912 novel called "The Lost World," set in the remote Venezuelan jungle where dinosaurs still survive in modern times. Films such as "Jurassic Park" and "Land of the Lost," which opens Friday, were inspired by Conan Doyle's vision - in fact the sequel to "Jurassic Park" was titled "The Lost World."

The animated film "Up" (currently No. 1 at the box office) also takes place in this lost world, the plot involving the discovery of an unknown, multicolored dinosaur.

For most of us, fiction is good enough. Yet some believe that giant dinosaurs still exist today, just beyond the reach of scientific proof.

Lake monsters

There are hundreds of lakes harboring reputed monsters around the world, from Scotland's Loch Ness to Canada's Lake Okanagan, America's Lake Champlain to Argentina's Lake Nahuel.

The explanations for such monsters include dinosaurs and dinosaur-like animals. Believers and researchers ask what else could be so big, and account for the sightings.

Many believe that lake and sea monster reports can be "explained" as animals like the plesiosaur (a long-necked aquatic reptile that reached 40 feet in length) or the ichthyosaur (shonisaurus sikanniensis), which were as big as a submarine.

Mokele-Mbembe

In the remote jungles of central Africa, native stories tell of a dinosaur-like creature said to be up to 35 feet long, with brownish-gray skin and a long, flexible neck. Many believe that it lives in caves it digs in riverbanks, and feeds on elephants, hippos, and crocodiles.

Roy Mackal, a retired University of Chicago biologist who conducted two expeditions in search of the Mokele-Mbembe, believes that the descriptions of the creature suggest "a small sauropod dinosaur."

Despite more than two dozen searches for the "living dinosaur" as recently as last year, evidence is elusive. There are no photographs or films of the creature, no bones or teeth, no evidence beyond stories and anecdote.

The surprising truth

Of course the fatal flaw in the idea that giant dinosaurs still lurk in remote jungles or cold, deep lakes is that all the evidence suggests they died out about 65 million years ago. Many of the lakes said to hide dinosaurs were created only about 10,000 years ago.

If dinosaurs had existed up until much more recently - say, the Nixon administration or even Shakespeare's time - the likelihood of a few remaining, lonely huge dinosaurs might be plausible. But 65 million years is a long time for giant dinosaurs to live and die without leaving any recent fossils.

Yet scientifically speaking, not all dinosaurs died out. Most of us see dinosaurs every day, and some people even have them in their homes. Birds are the modern version of dinosaurs, though seeing Will Ferrell or Jeff Goldblum running terrified from an approaching pigeon just isn't very dramatic.

Benjamin Radford is managing editor of the Skeptical Inquirer science magazine. His books, films, and other projects can be found on his website. His Bad Science column appears regularly on LiveScience.

Biggest Dinosaurs Grew Huge by Not Chewing

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/10/081009-dinosaur-big.html

Biggest Dinosaurs Grew Huge by Not Chewing Their Food
Kate Ravilious
for National Geographic News
October 9, 2008

Dinosaurs known as sauropods—the largest land animals that ever lived—grew huge and were an evolutionary success in part because they didn't bother to chew their food, new research suggests.

Sauropods weighed up to 88 tons (80 metric tons)—ten times more than an African elephant—and measured as high as 23 feet (7 meters).

The group of dinosaurs, which included the brachiosaurus and diplodocus, loomed over the animal kingdom for more than 140 million years until the late Cretaceous period, 65 million years ago. (See a brachiosaurus herd.)

Scientists think the animals evolved to be so large to discourage big predators, like Tyrannosaurus rex, from eating them. But how they maintained such massive body sizes has remained mysterious.

The herbivores, or plant-eaters, had hardly any teeth and are thought to have swallowed their food whole—an entire bush in one gulp, for example. They browsed large areas, barely moving and consuming vast quantities in short periods of time.

So they needed long necks to reach food high in trees and a huge gut to process and break down their unchewed meals, said Martin Sander, a palaeontologist at the University of Bonn in Germany and co-author of the study, published tomorrow in the journal Science.

"You can only have this long neck if you don't chew your food, otherwise your head would be full of teeth and too heavy to support," he said.

Paul Upchurch, an expert on sauropods from University College London, said that "most palaeontologists agree that feeding is the key to understanding sauropod gigantism."

Survival Strategies

To outgrow their predators, sauropods didn't just need lots of food. They also needed to develop fast, so they could attain their full size before being eaten, experts said.

Sauropod bones show that they did indeed grow swiftly. A 22-pound (10-kilogram) hatchling could become a 220,000-pound (100,000-kilogram) grown-up in about 20 to 30 years—quick by dinosaur time.

"This tells us that they must have been warm-blooded and had a high metabolic rate compared to cold-blooded creatures," said the University of Bonn's Sander.

Like all dinosaurs, sauropods laid nestfuls of eggs. By producing so many young at a time, "a population could recover quickly, even after a big catastrophe," Sander said.

Large modern mammals, such as elephants, give birth to far fewer offspring, raising their chances of extinction should a disaster occur.

So why don't we see gigantic elephants and crocodiles roaming around today?

Experts think that reptiles, such as crocodiles, still maintain the egg-laying advantage, but their cold blood prevents them from growing fast enough to reach a great size.

Mammals have warm blood, but can't grow as big as sauropods due to their slow reproductive strategy and the need to chew their food.

Huge Flying Reptiles Ate Dinosaurs

http://www.livescience.com/animals/080527-giant-reptile.html

Huge Flying Reptiles Ate Dinosaurs
By Jeanna Bryner, Senior Writer
27 May 2008

A group of flying reptiles called Quetzalcoatlus may have strolled along a fern prairie eating baby dinosaurs for lunch.

With a name like T. rex, you'd expect to be safe from even the fiercest paleo-bullies. Turns out, ancient, flying reptiles could have snacked on Tyrannosaurus Rex babies and other landlubbing runts of the dinosaur world.

A new study reveals a group of flying reptiles that lived during the Age of Dinosaurs some 230 million to 65 million years ago did not catch prey in flight, but rather stalked them on land.

Until now, paleontologists pictured the so-called "winged lizards" or pterosaurs as skim-feeders. In this vision, the creatures would have flown over lakes and oceans grabbing fish from the water's surface, much as gulls do today.

The new findings, detailed this week online in the journal PLoS ONE, don't ground the animals totally.

"In our hypothesis, flight is primarily a locomotive method," said co-researcher Mark Witton of the University of Portsmouth in England. "They're just using it to get from point A to point B. We think the majority of their lives, when they're feeding and reproducing, that's all being done on the ground rather than in the air."

To uncover these feeding habits, Witton and Portsmouth colleague Darren Naish analyzed fossils of a group of toothless pterosaurs called azhdarchids, which are much larger on average than other pterosaurs. For example, one of the largest azhdarchids, Quetzalcoatlus, weighed about 550 pounds (250 kilograms) with a wingspan of more than 30 feet (10 meters) and a height comparable to a giraffe.

Witton and Naish learned that more than 50 percent of the azhdarchid fossils had been found inland. Other skeletal features, including long hind limbs and a stiff neck, also didn't fit with a mud-prober or skim-feeder.

"All the details of their anatomy, and the environment their fossils are found in, show that they made their living by walking around, reaching down to grab and pick up animals and other prey," Naish said.

A skim-feeder, such as a gull, trawls its lower jaw through the water, eventually smacking into a fish or shrimp and pulling it from the water. "Regardless of what they hit, the impact force drives the head and neck underneath the body and into the water, thus requiring a hugely flexible neck," Witton said.

This is the case with gulls and pelicans (which are considered plunge divers), but azhdarchid's neck, despite potentially reaching nearly 10 feet (3 meters) in length, was super stiff. "Whatever these animals were doing, it had to involve minimal neck action," Witton said.

Their tiny feet also ruled out wading in the water or probing the soft mud for food. "Some of these animals are absolutely enormous," Witton told LiveScience. "If you go wading out into this soft mud, and you weigh a quarter of a ton, and you've got these dinky little feet, you're going to just sink in."

The reptile's head also was pretty lengthy, up to 10 feet (3 meters). So Witton said an azhdarchid would only have to dip its head part way to the ground, enough for the tip of its jaws to touch down, to hunt and feed on terrestrial prey. Back before they went extinct 65 million years ago during the event that also killed off non-avian dinosaurs, these pterosaurs could lunch on animals ranging from small bird-like Velicoraptors to T. rex babies to amphibians.

Tests Confirm T. Rex Kinship With Birds

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/25/science/25dino.html

April 25, 2008
Tests Confirm T. Rex Kinship With Birds
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD

In the first analysis of proteins extracted from dinosaur bones, scientists say they have established more firmly than ever that the closest living relatives of the mighty predator Tyrannosaurus rex are modern birds.

The research, being published Friday in the journal Science, yielded the first molecular data confirming the widely held hypothesis of a close dinosaur-bird ancestry, the American scientific team reported. The link was previously suggested by anatomical similarities.

In fact, the scientists said, T. rex shared more of its genetic makeup with ostriches and chickens than with living reptiles, like alligators. On this basis, the research team has redrawn the family tree of major vertebrate groups, assigning the dinosaur a new place in evolutionary relationships.
Similar molecular tests on tissues from the extinct mastodon confirmed its close genetic link to the elephant, as had been suspected from skeletal affinities.

“Our results at the genetic level basically agree with what has been seen in skeletal data,” John M. Asara of Harvard said in a telephone interview. “There is more than a 90 percent probability that the grouping of T. rex with living birds is real.”

Dr. Asara and Lewis C. Cantley, both of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, processed the proteins from tissue recovered deep in bones of a 68 million-year-old T. rex excavated in 2003 by John R. Horner of Montana State University. Mary H. Schweitzer of North Carolina State University discovered the preserved soft tissues in the bones.
For the molecular study, Dr. Asara and Chris L. Organ, a researcher in evolutionary biology at Harvard, compared the dinosaur protein with similar protein from several dozen species of modern birds, reptiles and other animals.

Dr. Organ was the lead author of the journal report, which concluded that the molecular tests confirmed the prediction that extinct dinosaurs “would show a higher degree of similarity with birds than with other extant vertebrates.” The researchers said they planned to extend their investigations to include comparisons of T. rex protein with more species of birds, reptiles and other dinosaurs.

Dinosaur paleontologists were not surprised by the findings. An accumulation of fossil evidence in recent years had given them increasing confidence in their contention that birds descended from certain dinosaurs.

Mummified dinosaur may have outrun T Rex

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071203/ap_on_sc/dinosaur_mummy

Mummified dinosaur may have outrun T Rex
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer
12-3-7

One of the most complete dinosaur mummies ever found is revealing secrets locked away for millions of years, bringing researchers as close as they will ever get to touching a live dino.

The fossilized duckbilled hadrosaur is so well preserved that scientists have been able to calculate its muscle mass and learn that it was more muscular than thought, probably giving it the ability to outrun predators such as T. rex.

While they call it a mummy, the dinosaur is not really preserved like King Tut was. The dinosaur body has been fossilized into stone. Unlike the collections of bones found in museums, this hadrosaur came complete with skin, ligaments, tendons and possibly some internal organs, according to researchers.

The study is not yet complete, but scientists have concluded that hadrosaurs were bigger — 3 1/2 tons and up to 40 feet long — and stronger than had been known, were quick and flexible and had skin with scales that may have been striped.

"Oh, the skin is wonderful," paleontologist Phillip Manning of Manchester University in England rhapsodized, admitting to a "glazed look in my eye."

"It's unbelievable when you look at it for the first time," he said in a telephone interview. "There is depth and structure to the skin. The level of detail expressed in the skin is just breathtaking."

Manning said there is a pattern of banding to the larger and smaller scales on the skin. Because it has been fossilized researchers do not know the skin color. Looking at it in monochrome shows a striped pattern.

He notes that in modern reptiles, such a pattern is often associated with color change.

The fossil was found in 1999 in North Dakota and now is nicknamed "Dakota." It is being analyzed in the world's largest CT scanner, operated by the Boeing Co. The machine usually is used for space shuttle engines and other large objects. Researchers hope the technology will help them learn more about the fossilized insides of the creature.

"It's a definite case of watch this space," Manning said. "We are trying to be very conservative, very careful."

But they have learned enough so far to produce two books and a television program. The TV special, "Dino Autopsy," will air on the National Geographic channel Dec. 9. National Geographic Society partly funded the research.

A children's book, "DinoMummy: The Life, Death, and Discovery of Dakota, a Dinosaur From Hell Creek," goes on sale Tuesday and an adult book, "Grave Secrets of Dinosaurs: Soft Tissues and Hard Science," will be available in January.

Soft parts of dead animals normally decompose rapidly after death. Because of chemical conditions where this animal died, fossilization — replacement of tissues by minerals — took place faster than the decomposition, leaving mineralized portions of the tissue.

That does not mean DNA, the building blocks of life, can be recovered, Manning said. Some has been recovered from frozen mammoths up to 1 million years old, he said. At the age of this dinosaur, 65 million to 67 million years old, "the chance of finding DNA is remote," he said.

A Manchester colleague, Roy Wogelius, who also worked on the dinosaur, said "one thing that we are very confident of is that we do have some organic molecular breakdown products present." That look at chemicals associated with the animal is still research in progress.

Matthew Carrano, a paleontologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, said he could not comment in detail about the find because he had not seen the research. But, he added, "Any time we can get a glimpse of the soft anatomy of a dinosaur, that's significant."

The findings from Dakota may cause museums to rethink their dinosaur displays.

Most dinosaur skeletons in museums, for example, show the vertebrae right next to one another. The researchers looking at Dakota found a gap of about a centimeter — about 0.4 inch — between each one.

That indicates there may have been a disk or other material between them, allowing more flexibility and meaning the animal was actually longer than what is shown in a museum. On large animals, adding the space could make them a yard longer or more, Manning said.

Because ligaments and tendons were preserved, as well as other parts of Dakota, researchers could to calculate its muscle mass, showing it was stronger and potentially faster than had been known.

They estimated the hadrosaur's top speed at about 28 miles per hour, 10 mph faster than the giant T. Rex is thought to have been able to run.

"It's very logical, though, that a hadrosaur could run faster than a T. rex. It's a major prey animal and it doesn't have big horns on its head like triceratops. Hadrosaurs didn't have much in the way of defense systems, so they probably relied on fleet of foot," Manning said.

Dakota was discovered by Tyler Lyson, then a teenager who liked hunting for fossils on his family ranch. Lyson, who is currently working on his doctorate degree in paleontology at Yale University, founded the Marmarth Research Foundation, an organization dedicated to the excavation, preservation and study of dinosaurs.
___
On the Net:

National Geographic dinosaur site: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/dinosaurs

National Geographic Channel dinosaurs: http://www.ngcdinos.com

Marmarth Research Foundation: http://www.mrfdigs.com

Duck-billed dinosaur amazes scientists

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071003/ap_on_sc/new_dinosaur

Duck-billed dinosaur amazes scientists
By BROCK VERGAKIS, Associated Press Writer
Wed Oct 3, 2007

Scientists are amazed at the chomping ability of a newly described duck-billed dinosaur. The herbivore's powerful jaw, more than 800 teeth and compact skull meant that no leaf, branch or bush would have been safe, they say.

"It really is like the Arnold Schwarzenegger of dinosaurs — it's all pumped up," said Scott Sampson, curator of the Utah Museum of Natural History.

The newly named Gryposaurus monumentensis, or hook-beaked lizard from the monument, was discovered near the Arizona line in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 2002 by a volunteer at the site. Details about the 75-million-year-old dinosaur, including its name, were published in the Oct. 3 edition of Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

Duck-billed dinosaurs were previously known to have been among the most imposing herbivores, with hundreds of teeth and a body that could knock down trees.

Gryposaurus monumentensis, at least 30 feet long and 10 feet tall with a robust jaw and thick bones, was like a duck-billed dinosaur on steroids, said paleontologist Terry Gates.

"It's basically the Cretaceous version of a weed-whacker," he said. "You have a very formidable herbivore."

Although paleontologists said Wednesday that the dinosaur could eat just about any plant it wanted, scientists still aren't sure what it dined on.

Southern Utah is now a rocky desert with few trees, but 75 million years ago it was a dinosaur haven that looked something like Louisiana today, Gates said.

"It's very humid and wet, with lots of ponds and lots of rivers and creeks flowing through it. It was very lush," he said.

The discovery of new species, including Gryposaurus monumentensis, will help scientists understand more about what the earth was like millions of years ago, he said.

Sampson said fossils of duck-billed dinosaurs once lived throughout the northwestern part of North America. The newly discovered version has a smaller skull that allowed it to apply more force to what it was eating.

"By shortening the skull, you can get more power per bite. The shrinking of the skull and the robustness of the jaw and snout all lead me to think this guy was made to eat," Gates said.

However, the duck-billed dinosaur's teeth and size would not have been much of a defense against area predators such as the tyrannosaur. Scientists also aren't sure if the new dinosaur was a loner or traveled in herds for protection because so few skeletal remains have been found.

It's one of several questions scientists are hoping to answer, along with how and why different species of the duck-billed dinosaur developed.
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Chinese villagers eat dinosaur bones

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070704/ap_on_fe_st/china_dinosaur_medicine

Chinese villagers eat dinosaur bones
Wed Jul 4, 2007
Associated Press

Villagers in central China dug up a ton of dinosaur bones and boiled them in soup or ground them into powder for traditional medicine, believing they were from flying dragons and had healing powers.

Until last year, the fossils were being sold in Henan province as "dragon bones" at about 4 yuan (50 cents) per kilogram (2.2 pounds), scientist Dong Zhiming told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Dong, a professor with the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said when the villagers found out the bones were from dinosaurs they donated 200 kilograms (440 pounds) to him and his colleagues for research.

"They had believed that the 'dragon bones' were from the dragons flying in the sky," he said.

The calcium-rich bones were sometimes boiled with other ingredients and fed to children as a treatment for dizziness and leg cramps. Other times they were ground up and made into a paste that was applied directly to fractures and other injuries, he said.

The practice had been going on for at least two decades, he said.

Dong was among a team of scientists who recently excavated in Henan's Ruyang County an 60-foot-long plant-eating dinosaur, which lived 85 million to 100 million years ago. Local officials held a news conference Tuesday, showing off the find to the public for the first time.

Another two dinosaur fossils were being excavated in the area, which is rich in fossilized dinosaur eggs, Dong said.