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Dinosaurs: New Findings & Theories

T-Rex love bites.

One of nature’s most impressive displays happens when animals—from buffalo bulls to betta fish—fight each other over mates, territory, and status.

Now, scientists have evidence that dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex were doing it, too—and biting each other’s faces in the process.

Researchers analyzed 528 fossilized therapod skull bones, 122 of which had deep bite marks and healed lesions. The marks appeared in about 60% of adult-size animals, but not in any of the younger ones, the researchers report this week in Paleobiology. That suggests the dinosaurs bit each other only when they reached sexual maturity—at about the same time they would have been looking for mates or trying to establish social dominance. The orientation of the bite marks further suggests the most likely fight scenario involved two dinosaurs squaring off side by side, with each animal delivering lateral head swings to seize their opponent’s skull or lower jaw (see artist’s illustration of Gorgosaurus, above).

The researchers also examined the skulls of smaller dinosaurs that gave rise to all of today’s birds. None of these had bite marks, suggesting that—like the birds that descended from them—these animals may have stopped fighting violently over females, and instead started to woo them with shiny feathers.

https://www.science.org/content/art...ex-em-face-bites-suggest-cretaceous-love-hurt
 
How the dinosaurs erupted on to the Earth.

A series of major volcanic eruptions that took place more than 230 million years ago may have driven the rise of dinosaurs, scientists believe.

During the Late Triassic Carnian Pluvial Episode (CPE) the world experienced significant environmental changes which led to an increase in temperatures and humidity, largely due to volcanic activity. This interval forced some species into extinction while others evolved, as well as the plants they fed on and changes to the atmosphere.

Researchers, including a group from the University of Birmingham, analysed sediment and fossil plant records from a lake in northern China’s Jiyuan Basin to better understand what happened, matching it up with pulses of volcanic activity.

They broke down the period into four distinct episodes of volcanic activity.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/world/arid-40708085.html
 
'Hell Heron' dinosaur discovered on the Isle of Wight.

"The discovery of two new species of dinosaur, which likely roamed the south of England 125 million years ago, has shed new light on the predators.

Palaeontologists have described one of the carnivorous reptiles as a "hell heron", comparing its hunting style to a fearsome version of the bird.

The remains of the three-toed dinosaurs were found on an Isle of Wight beach.

They belonged to the spinosaurid group and are thought to have been 9m (29ft) in length with 1m-long (3ft) skulls."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-58728161
 
Fossils unearthed in a Welsh quarry over 50 years ago have been assigned as a new species. Scientists have named it 'Chief Dragon'.

"More than half a century after first being unearthed from a Welsh quarry, four small fossil fragments have finally been assigned to a new species of dinosaur.

Researchers from London's Natural History Museum say Pendraig milnerae is the oldest meat-eating dinosaur ever discovered in the UK.

It existed over 200 million years ago, their analysis suggests.

The name Pendraig means "chief dragon" in Middle Welsh.

The animal was very likely the apex, or top, predator in its environment. That said, it wasn't exactly a giant. Think of something chicken-sized with a very long tail."

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-58806682
 

Big John, largest known triceratops skeleton, sold at auction​

The skeleton fetched a European record price of €6.65m ($7.74m; £5.6m).

Some 66 million years ago, Big John roamed modern-day South Dakota in the US, where the dinosaur's bones were unearthed in 2014.
With its huge collared skull and three horns, the plant-eating triceratops was a giant of the Cretaceous period.

A private, anonymous collector from the US bought Big John's skeleton, which was put on public display at the Drouot auction house in Paris last week.

The collector was "absolutely thrilled with the idea of being able to bring a piece like this to his personal use", Djuan Rivers, a representative for the buyer, said.
The palaeontologists who discovered Big John managed to dig up 60% of the dinosaur's skeleton.

Its 200 pieces - including the 2m-wide skull of the dinosaur - were painstakingly assembled by specialists in Trieste, Italy. Those bones form a skeleton 8m long by 3m high.

There are signs of damage on the skull where researchers believe the dinosaur may have been struck by another in a battle.

Big John died on an ancient floodplain and was buried in mud, which preserved the dinosaur's bones for millions of years.

"It's a masterpiece," Iacopo Briano, a palaeontologist involved in Big John's reconstruction, told France Inter last month. "There are quite a few triceratops skulls around in the world, but very few of them almost complete.”
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hunck said:

Big John, largest known triceratops skeleton, sold at auction​

The skeleton fetched a European record price of €6.65m ($7.74m; £5.6m).

Some 66 million years ago, Big John roamed modern-day South Dakota in the US, where the dinosaur's bones were unearthed in 2014.
With its huge collared skull and three horns, the plant-eating triceratops was a giant of the Cretaceous period.

A private, anonymous collector from the US bought Big John's skeleton, which was put on public display at the Drouot auction house in Paris last week.

The collector was "absolutely thrilled with the idea of being able to bring a piece like this to his personal use", Djuan Rivers, a representative for the buyer, said.

View attachment 46996
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The most fearsome beast to ever roam the planet. The ultimate ceratopsians Triceratops was at the peak of development. Details about the beastie below
https://www.abqjournal.com/2390096/oldest-species-of-horned-dinosaurs-found-in-nm.html
 
What a schnozzle!

A new species of dinosaur with an unusually large nose has been identified by a retired GP who spent lockdown rummaging through boxes of hundreds of old bones.

Jeremy Lockwood, who is studying for a PhD at the University of Portsmouth, set himself the task of cataloguing every iguanodon bone discovered on the Isle of Wight.

As the 64-year-old from Chale, near Ventnor, Isle of Wight, sorted the bones from the collections of the Natural History Museum in London and the Dinosaur Isle Museum, he discovered the unique “bulbous” nasal bone.

Dr Lockwood, who studies in the school of environment, geography and geoscience, said: “For over 100 years, we’d only seen two types of dinosaur on the Isle of Wight – the plant-eating Iguanodon bernissartensis and Mantellisaurus atherfieldensis. ...

https://www.irishexaminer.com/world/arid-40741803.html
 
A new type of ankylosaur has been identified from fossil remains in Chile. This species' defensive tail wasn't a club nor was it spiked. Instead, it was flat with sharp 'blades' extending outward, like the macuahuitl (saw-sword) weapon used by ancient Mesoamerican civilizations such as the Aztecs and Mayans.

Stegouros.jpeg

New dinosaur species from Chile had a unique slashing tail

Fossils found in Chile are from a strange-looking dog-sized dinosaur species that had a unique slashing tail weapon, scientists reported Wednesday.

Some dinosaurs had spiked tails they could use as stabbing weapons and others had tails with clubs. The new species, described in a study in the journal Nature, has something never seen before on any animal: seven pairs of “blades” laid out sideways like a slicing weapon used by ancient Aztec warriors, said lead author Alex Vargas. ...

The plant-eating critter had a combination of traits from different species that initially sent paleontologists down the wrong path. The back end, including its tail weapon, seemed similar to a stegosaurus, so the researchers named it stegouros elengassen.

After Vargas and his team examined the pieces of skull and did five different DNA analyses, they concluded it was only distantly related to the stegosaurus. Instead, it was a rare southern hemisphere member of the tank-like ankylosaur family of dinosaurs. ...

The tail was probably for defense against large predators, which were also likely turned off by armor-like bones jutting out that made stegouros “chewy,” Vargas said. ...w
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FULL STORY: https://apnews.com/article/science-fossils-animals-chile-dinosaurs-b4f8957285f9f2e5acc00ad583380836
 
Here are the bibliographic details and abstract from the published research report on Stegouros.

PUBLISHED RESEARCH REPORT:
Soto-Acuña, S., Vargas, A.O., Kaluza, J. et al.
Bizarre tail weaponry in a transitional ankylosaur from subantarctic Chile.
Nature (2021).
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04147-1

Abstract
Armoured dinosaurs are well known for their evolution of specialized tail weapons—paired tail spikes in stegosaurs and heavy tail clubs in advanced ankylosaurs. Armoured dinosaurs from southern Gondwana are rare and enigmatic, but probably include the earliest branches of Ankylosauria. Here we describe a mostly complete, semi-articulated skeleton of a small (approximately 2 m) armoured dinosaur from the late Cretaceous period of Magallanes in southernmost Chile, a region that is biogeographically related to West Antarctica. Stegouros elengassen gen. et sp. nov. evolved a large tail weapon unlike any dinosaur: a flat, frond-like structure formed by seven pairs of laterally projecting osteoderms encasing the distal half of the tail. Stegouros shows ankylosaurian cranial characters, but a largely ancestral postcranial skeleton, with some stegosaur-like characters. Phylogenetic analyses placed Stegouros in Ankylosauria; specifically, it is related to Kunbarrasaurus from Australia and Antarctopelta from Antarctica, forming a clade of Gondwanan ankylosaurs that split earliest from all other ankylosaurs. The large osteoderms and specialized tail vertebrae in Antarctopelta suggest that it had a tail weapon similar to Stegouros. We propose a new clade, the Parankylosauria, to include the first ancestor of Stegouros—but not Ankylosaurus—and all descendants of that ancestor.
 
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This set of news stories and a special issue of Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology provide interesting details deduced from the fragile fossils of the huge pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus - discovered in 1975 and painstakingly studied ever since. Among other things, researchers now believe they've figured out how Quetzalcoatlus launched itself to fly.

This Giraffe-Sized Reptile Was the Largest Flying Creature to Ever Live
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...rgest-flying-creature-to-ever-live-180979193/

Largest-Ever Flying Animal Jumped 8 Feet Into the Air Before Liftoff
https://gizmodo.com/largest-ever-flying-animal-jumped-8-feet-into-the-air-b-1848181323

An extinct reptile with a massive wingspan leapt 8 feet in the air to take off
https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/08/world/pterosaur-quetzalcoatlus-reptile-flying-scn/index.html

FOCAL ARTICLE CITED BY THE NEWS STORIES ABOVE:
Matthew A. Brown, J. Chris Sagebiel & Brian Andres (2021)
The discovery, local distribution, and curation of the giant azhdarchid pterosaurs from Big Bend National Park
Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 41:sup1, 2-20
DOI: 10.1080/02724634.2020.1780599
SOURCE & FULL ARTICLE:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02724634.2020.1780599
 

Footprints in Spain show meat-eating dinosaurs were fast and furious​


It almost is not fair. Carnivorous dinosaurs were armed with menacing teeth inside muscular jaws, wielded dangerous claws on their hands and feet, and boasted keen vision and sense of smell. And, as new research confirms, some were pretty fast, too.

iu


Two trackways of Cretaceous Period fossilized footprints from about 120 million years ago discovered in northern Spain's La Rioja region show that the medium-sized meat-eating dinosaur species that made them could run at about 28 miles per hour (45 kph), scientists said on Thursday.

This roughly matches the top speed achieved by Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, the world's fastest human being.

Two trackways located about 65 feet (20 meters) apart were discovered, one with seven footprints and the other with five.

Each track - an impression of a three-toed foot with claws - measures around 12 inches (30 cm) long. They were made on the muddy surface of a lake plain.

The researchers believe the trackways were made by two different individuals of the same species. They suspect it was from one of two theropod families: the spinosaurs, many of which were fish-eaters, or carcharodontosaurs, known for shark-like teeth. The individuals were about 13-16 feet (4-5 meters) long and 7 feet (2 meters) tall, weighing 440-660 pounds (200-300 kg).

iu


Running speed was calculated based on the relationship between the animal's hip height - estimated from the footprint length - and stride length. The stride length from one of the trackways was 18.3 feet (5.6 meters), while the other was 17.2 feet (5.2 meters).

One of the dinosaurs ran 19.7-27.7 miles per hour (31.7-44.6 kph) - among the highest speed ever estimated for a dinosaur - and the other at 14.5-23.1 miles per hour (23.4-37.1 kph). One trackway indicates a smooth increase in speed. The other suggests an animal maneuvering as it ran.

https://news.trust.org/item/20211209173809-qez45

maximus otter
 
EnolaGaia said:
This set of news stories and a special issue of Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology provide interesting details deduced from the fragile fossils of the huge pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus - discovered in 1975 and painstakingly studied ever since. Among other things, researchers now believe they've figured out how Quetzalcoatlus launched itself to fly.

This Giraffe-Sized Reptile Was the Largest Flying Creature to Ever Live
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...rgest-flying-creature-to-ever-live-180979193/

Largest-Ever Flying Animal Jumped 8 Feet Into the Air Before Liftoff
https://gizmodo.com/largest-ever-flying-animal-jumped-8-feet-into-the-air-b-1848181323

An extinct reptile with a massive wingspan leapt 8 feet in the air to take off
https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/08/world/pterosaur-quetzalcoatlus-reptile-flying-scn/index.html

FOCAL ARTICLE CITED BY THE NEWS STORIES ABOVE:
Matthew A. Brown, J. Chris Sagebiel & Brian Andres (2021)
The discovery, local distribution, and curation of the giant azhdarchid pterosaurs from Big Bend National Park
Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 41:sup1, 2-20
DOI: 10.1080/02724634.2020.1780599
SOURCE & FULL ARTICLE:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02724634.2020.1780599
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Incredible that a reptile weighing up to 550 lps could jump - hurl itself 7' vertically in order to gain altitude for flight.
 
Newly published research on an ankylosaur's braincase suggests this squat armored beastie was sluggish and deaf (or at least was hard of hearing).
Surprising Dinosaur Discovery: Ankylosaur Was Sluggish and Deaf

German and Austrian scientists took a closer look at the braincase of a dinosaur from Austria. The group examined the fossil with a micro-CT and found surprising new details: it was sluggish and deaf. The respective study got recently published in the scientific journal Scientific Reports. ...
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FULL STORY: https://scitechdaily.com/surprising-dinosaur-discovery-ankylosaur-was-sluggish-and-deaf/

FULL PUBLISHED REPORT: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-03599-9
 
Didn't Edgar Cayce say that they were wiped out by a virus?
 
Iris said:
Didn't Edgar Cayce say that they were wiped out by a virus?
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I don't recall any claims that Cayce said the dinosaurs were wiped out by disease.

It's been a long, long time, but as I remember it ... The most commonly cited extinction item in Cayce's readings concerned giant animals that threatened the ability of the Atlanteans to live and prosper. The Atlanteans wiped out these giant animals using their crystal ray weapons. Another interpretation attributes the extinction to cataclysmic earth events (often claimed to include a polar reversal).

Some interpreters of Cayce's readings consider the giant animals to have been the dinosaurs, but others consider them to have been the megafauna that survived long after the dinosaurs' extinction. I'm not sure whether Cayce himself specified the giant animals threatening the Atlanteans were dinosaurs.
 
Yet another new dinosaur from Argentina, an 'armless therapod (from The Independent):

Scientists discover skull of new unusual ‘armless’ dinosaur species in Argentina​

Paleontologists have uncovered the skull of an “unusual” dinosaur that could be the close relative of the ancestors of an armless group of dinosaurs that roamed the Earth’s southern hemisphere about 70 million years ago.

The new species, Guemesia ochoai, was a species of abelisaurid – a clade of carnivorous dinosaurs that lived in parts of modern-day Africa, South America, and India, according to the study, published earlier this month in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
 
A review of the problems with fossil evidence for long-necked sauropods' long necks indicates our models and depictions of these creatures underestimate their actual neck lengths.
Long-necked dinosaurs probably had even longer necks than we thought

... Every sauropod neck you've ever seen is likely wrong, a new study finds.

Surprisingly few complete sauropod necks have been scientifically documented, and even specimens with relatively complete necks often have misshapen bones, distorted from tens of millions of years in the great outdoors. What's more, paleontologists often can't agree where the neck stops and the backbone begins; and many don't factor in how long sauropod necks would be if tissues such as cartilage and fat were included in models.

In short, "don't take too seriously the mounted skeletons that you see in museums," Mike Taylor, a research associate in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol in the U.K., told Live Science. If researchers had access to a complete sauropod neck and accurately accounted for its missing cartilage (which rarely fossilizes), sauropod necks could easily be about 3 feet (1 meter) longer than we currently envision them to be, he said. ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/problems-long-necked-sauropods

ONLINE-PUBLISHED RESEARCH REPORT: https://peerj.com/articles/12810/
 
Russian Dino Injures Wrist

A bone from the wrist of a 68m-year-old Russian dinosaur has been discovered by researchers from Queen’s University Belfast.

The bone shows the dinosaur had broken its wrist, with the information gathered from the study being hailed as "exceptional". The bone was found in a local quarry of the city of Blagoveshchensk, in far eastern Russia, by a team of experts, led by palaeontologist Dr Filippo Bertozzo.

For palaeontologists, the discovery of dinosaur bones with an injury can be expected, and fossilised fractures or breaks can provide information on the resilience and ability of dinosaurs to survive traumatic events. Bone fractures are the most common type of injuries preserved in the dinosaur fossil record.

The bone is from an Amurosaurus, a four-legged dinosaur with a duckbill snout that would have been about 6m long.
By analysing the bone, it was found that injury, which was likely caused by searching for food in rough terrain, did not cause the dinosaur to die immediately..

“After detailed examination of the broken bone, we have discovered that it was from the wrist of a dinosaur known as a hadrosaur Amurosaurus riabinini and that the accident most likely happened when the four-footed animal was running or jumping, possibly whilst roaming the land in search of food or water,” explained Dr Bertozzo.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40819374.html
 
Triannosaurus Rex.

With its immense size, dagger-like teeth and sharp claws, Tyrannosaurus Rex was a fearsome predator that once terrorised North America. Now researchers studying its fossils have suggested the beast may not have been the only tyrannosaurus species.

Experts studying remains thought to belong to T-Rex have suggested their variation shows evidence of not one species but three.

The lead author of the research, Gregory Paul, who was a dinosaur specialist on the film Jurassic Park, said the findings had multiple implications, noting that previously experts had studied the growth of the T-Rex using remains from different rock layers.

“That may not be a good idea to do because you may be [looking at] different species,” he said.

The team say it is to be expected that more than one tyrannosaurus species evolved over their million-or-so years on Earth, as has been found for other dinosaurs who lived at the same time, such as triceratops.

Writing in the journal Evolutionary Biology, Paul and colleagues report how previous work has revealed that fossilised bones designated as being from T-Rex vary in terms of their stout build or “robustness”, and different specimens had one or two pairs of lower incisor-like teeth.
.
.https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40819392.html
 
What about human footprints and dinosaur tracks found together?
There seem to be many of them, from Paluxy River in Texas to Africa - they can't possibly all be hoaxes.
Seems the history books might be mistaken!
 
Ronnie Jersey said:
What about human footprints and dinosaur tracks found together?
There seem to be many of them, from Paluxy River in Texas to Africa - they can't possibly all be hoaxes.
Seems the history books might be mistaken!
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The Paluxy River area "man tracks" have been debunked to the extent most creationists and young earth adherents don't even mention them any more. The single most complete online resource on this subject is Glen Kuban's Website - most specifically:

The Paluxy Dinosaur/"Man Track" Controversy
http://paleo.cc/paluxy/paluxy.htm

Man Tracks? A Topical Summary of the Paluxy "Man Track" Controversy
http://paleo.cc/paluxy/mantrack.htm

The Taylor Site "Man Tracks"
http://paleo.cc/paluxy/tsite.htm
 
EnolaGaia said:
The Paluxy River area "man tracks" have been debunked to the extent most creationists and young earth adherents don't even mention them any more. The single most complete online resource on this subject is Glen Kuban's Website - most specifically:

The Paluxy Dinosaur/"Man Track" Controversy
http://paleo.cc/paluxy/paluxy.htm

Man Tracks? A Topical Summary of the Paluxy "Man Track" Controversy
http://paleo.cc/paluxy/mantrack.htm

The Taylor Site "Man Tracks"
http://paleo.cc/paluxy/tsite.htm
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Thank you for posting this; however, what about this article puzzling about ancient paintings apparently showing dinosaurs?
One has to wonder if humans and others overlapped in time. I don't think we'll ever really know for certain.

https://apologeticspress.org/have-dinosaur-and-human-fossils-been-found-together-4664/
 
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