News thread

[Ceratodromeus]

Posted in the nile crocodile profile, two juvenile crocodile mummies found with dozens of hatchling sized animals. very cool stuff

www.livescience.com/56990-croc-mummy-full-of-baby-crocs.html

[spartan]

news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/12/feathered-dinosaur-tail-amber-theropod-myanmar-burma-cretaceous/

The tail of a 99-million-year-old dinosaur, including bones, soft tissue, and even feathers, has been found preserved in amber, according to a report published today in the journal Current Biology.

[Infinity Blade]

What exactly happened? Was most if not all of the dinosaur covered in amber with the specimen subsequently breaking into smaller pieces (of which this this amber specimen was a part of)?

[spartan]

I'm not sure. All I could find in the article regarding it was this

The close contact between the skin and surrounding amber, paired with the mummified external appearance of the skin where it has shriveled across the surface of the vertebrae, suggest one of two scenarios. Either the tail bearer was dead and partially desiccated before encapsulation, or else it rapidly dried due to resin interactions. Early-stage drying is further supported by the limited amount of cloudy amber surrounding the tail (Figures 1C and S2), which is a preservational feature related to decay products or moisture interacting with resin [22]. However, drying and resin impregnation were not sufficient to preserve cellular detail in the soft tissues. Based on the clays observed where bone breaches the amber surface, skeletal material was likely exposed on the surface after resin polymerization. The bone has been partially dissolved and infilled with clay from the surrounding matrix [17], much like insect body cavities in this deposit (Figure S2A). Presence of Fe2+ within the carbonized remains suggests that organic components were trapped early and remained undisturbed by subsequent events.

www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(16)31193-9

but I didn't read the whole thing yet.

[Ceratodromeus]

Not really relevant but a local news reporter just said this dinosaur came from the "crustaceous" period and i about pissed myself laughing

[Infinity Blade]

The Crustaceous period. The rise and age of crustaceans and the destruction of the stoopid dinosores.

[Infinity Blade]

Ontogenetic dental changes in Limusaurus.

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161222131647.htm

[Ceratodromeus]

A new species of gibbon with a badass name
www.livescience.com/57480-star-wars-inspired-skywalker-gibbon.html

[Infinity Blade]

A new species of moth has been named after Donald Trump.

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170117191314.htm

[Infinity Blade]

Phocoena sinus is now down to just thirty individuals.

www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/02/world-s-most-endangered-marine-mammal-down-30-individuals

[creature386]

A new fossil supports the notion that trilobites carried their eggs in their heads (in some pouches for that probably):
geology.gsapubs.org/content/early/2017/01/09/G38773.1

[creature386]

A dicynodont named after bulbasaur:
peerj.com/articles/2913/
Here is an image:

Oops, wrong one:

blogs.plos.org/paleocomm/2017/01/31/synapsida-gotta-catch-em-all/

[elosha11]

My seven year old son loves Pokemon! I have to show him this article.

[spartan]

www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/03/27/worlds-biggest-dinosaur-footprint-discovered-in-australias-own-jurassic-park/?utm_term=.e569fe5d9d64

But the dinosaurs' tracks remained. The footprint assemblage, which contains evidence of 21 species, is the most diverse in the world, researchers reported Friday in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

One of those tracks is the largest dinosaur print ever recorded: a 5-foot-9-inch print from a sauropod, or long-necked dinosaur. The tracks also provide the first evidence that spiky tailed stegosaurs lived in the land down under.

This is the famous Broome Titanosaur I guess?

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02724634.2016.1269539

[Infinity Blade]

New really well preserved nodosaur.



www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/06/dinosaur-nodosaur-fossil-discovery/