Check out the awesome Triceracopter over at Gizmodo.com. The saurian-machine hybrid is an imposing sculpture created in 1977 by artist Patricia Renick. Now it's for sale. You should buy it (for me) - collectibles are a great hedge against inflation.
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Some of my dinosaur drawings from c. 1963: I was obviously partial to Stegosaurus although I seemed to be limited to a side view.
Courtesy Mark Ryan January 30th is Draw A Dinosaur Day. It also happens to be my birthday, and I can't think of a better way to celebrate than to draw a dinosaur and upload it to the Draw A Dinosaur Day website. It doesn't have to be your birthday to participate in the festivities - anybody can submit a picture. Just grab some paper and a pencil, pen, paintbrush, or even your mouse and computer and draw your favorite dinosaur. Then scan it or whatever, and post it to their site between now and February 2nd. Personally, my drawing technique is a bit rusty so I've dug through the archives and found some dinosaur pictures I drew back in the middle of the last century that I'm thinking of uploading. This is the holiday's 4th year.
Three new Australian dinosaurs: Top: Australovenator wintonensis; middle: Wintonotitan wattsi: bottom: Diamantinasaurus matildae
Courtesy T. Tischler, Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum of Natural HistoryThree new dinosaur species from the mid-Cretaceous period have been unearthed in Queensland, Australia. Australovenator wintonensis was a relatively small but deadly 1100 pound theropod that hunted its prey 98 million years ago. Remains of two new sauropods species were also found. Wintonotitan wattsi was a giraffe-like titanosaurus, while Diamantinasaurus matildae ( a stockier, more hippo-like plant-eater. Australia has given up very few dinosaur fossils because the continent has remained relatively flat and undisturbed by the tectonic forces that churn up fossil-containing layers on other continents. Paleontologists had to bulldoze off more than a yard of overburden to get to the fossil layer. Australovenator is nicknamed "Banjo" after poet A.B. "Banjo" Paterson who wrote Australia's unofficial anthem, "Waltzing Matilda" on a nearby sheep ranch in the late 19th century. The new research appears in the online journal PLoS ONE but you can also read more here.
And it's nothing to be ashamed of.
(Image by red5standingby on Flickr.com)
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Two years ago, everyone was talking about the work of paleontologist Mary Schweitzer: she noticed that thin slices of a 68-million-year-old fossil femur from a Tyrannosaurus rex looked like they still contained soft tissue. (See photos of the bone.) Using antibodies to the collagen protein, she showed that the bone still contained intact collagen molecules—the main component of cartilage, ligaments, and tendons.
Hello, dinos?: A new study shows that preserved collagen from a 68-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex is similar to that of chickens. (Photo courtesy Danelle Sheree)
She used antibodies to a type of collagen extracted from chickens. The fact that the antibodies stuck suggested that T. rex collagen is similar to that of birds. And when she compared the preserved soft tissue to that of modern animals, the closest match was an emu—a flightless bird.
To learn more about the collagen in the T. rex bones, Schweitzer worked with John Asara, a chemist at Harvard University, to analyze it using mass spectrometry.
The Economist describes the technique this way:
This technique identifies molecules (or fragments of molecules) from a combination of their weight and their electric charges. Knowing the weights of different sorts of atoms (and of groups of atoms that show up regularly in larger molecules, such as the 20 different amino acids from which proteins are assembled) it is usually possible to piece together fragments to form the profile of an entire protein.
When Asara compared the profile he'd created to proteins from living animals, the closest matches were to chickens and ostriches. (Schweitzer and Asara's study was published in the April 13, 2007, issue of the journal Science.)
Many paleontologists already believed, based on fossil bones, that birds are dinosaurs or their descendants. But this new paper provides even more evidence of the fact.
Buzz stories on the subject from last year:
- "Bring 'em back alive, Part I"
- "Tyrannosaurus rex flesh pictures"
- "More soft tissue recovered from fossils"
Recent news articles:
T-rex doing the Funky Chicken, a dance that's been passed down to his barnyard descendents. Photo courtesy Mark Ryan.
Please contact us if you have questions about the rights on this image.
It's the day before Thanksgiving, and I'm too lazy to look for real science news, so here's a cute story about how rock star Brian Eno identified a diosaur fossil that a fan was wearing as a necklace.
Two years ago, a scientist in Australia has a really lucky day. Tired after driving for several hours, he stopped to stretch his legs and -- boom! -- he tripped over a 100-million-year-old pterosaur jaw. (Pterosaurs were flying reptiles that lived at the same time as dinosaurs. The Science Museum has one hanging in our main lobby.) The jaw bone was encased in rock; after two years of careful preparation, the bone is finally free and can be studied by scientists.
(OK, so it wasn't a technically a dinosaur, and it was actually off to the side of the road, but c'mon, how often do I get to reference my favorite bad song of the Seventies?)
Dinosaur body found
Imagine how much we could learn if instead of only bones, we could find a dinosaur body. Nate Murphy, curator of paleontology at the Judith River Dinosaur Institute, along with 20 experts in various fields are X-raying and photographing a dinosaur named Leonardo this week. In October, Murphy plans to present his findings at a medical imaging conference in Houston.
Leonardo is a 77-million-year-old fossilized mummy of a duck billed dinosaur known as a brachylophosaur. Since the mummy is now stone, it had to be removed in one, world record sized, 6.5 ton chunk. Leonardo's stomach contents are so well-preserved that researchers can tell what he had for his last supper; a salad of ferns, conifers, and magnolias. The stomach also contained the pollen of more than 40 different plants. The scientific work on Leonardo will keep paleontologists occupied for years. Murphy hopes the studies will build interest and funding for more tests — particularly CT scans that could take three-dimensional images instead of the one-dimensional pictures captured in the X-rays this week.
X-rays show more than just bones.
Until now, the technology didn't exist to look at what was inside of Leonardo. Over the next 20 months, the Discovery Channel is filming how non-destructive x-rays combined with imaging technology from Eastman Kodak that is 10 times as sensitive as film, and a computer that sifts through the layers of data will reveal skin and bone and Leonardo's insides. Here is a Discovery Channel video about Leonardo.
See an X-ray of our mummy.
Here at the Science Museum of Minnesota we used X-ray imaging to look inside our mummy. You can see where the heart has been relocated. Our mummy is in Collections Gallery on the fourth floor.
Sources: National Geographic; Great Falls Tribune
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