Monday, April 25, 2011
Dinosaurs just want to say "Hey!"
If you haven't seen Jurassic Park, this might be a tad disturbing, but it's pretty darn funny nonetheless.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
An Adorable 7-Year-Old Paleontologist Teaches Ellen
Seven-year-old dinosaur expert Riley Chandler visited Ellen to teach her all about the ferocious creatures -- and ended up charming the entire audience.
Aimee the Apatosaurus Planter & Succulent
see the whole collection here: http://www.etsy.com/shop/PlaidPigeon?ref=top_trail
Can you spot us? Let us know!
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
What color were dinosaurs?
What color were dinosaurs? Well, at least one of them had a feathered mohawk tail in a subdued palette of chestnut and white stripes.
Dinosaur fossils are mostly drab collections of mineralized bones. A few preserve traces of skin, and fewer still preserve structures that many scientists have argued are feathers.
In the new study, Michael Benton, a paleontologist at the University of Bristol, and colleagues have analyzed the structures of what appear to be feathers and say they match the feathers of living birds down to the microscopic level. They used microscopic features to determine the ancient feathers’ color.
The study builds on earlier work on fossil bird feathers by Jakob Vinther, a graduate student at Yale, and his colleagues. In 2006, Mr. Vinther discovered what looked like an ink sac preserved in a squid fossil. Putting the fossil under a microscope, he discovered the sac was filled with tiny spheres. The spheres were identical to pigment-loaded structures in squid ink, known as melanosomes. Mr. Vinther knew that melanosomes created colors in other animals, including bird’s feathers. He and his colleagues made a microscopic inspection of fossils of feathers from extinct birds. They discovered melanosomes with the same sausage-shaped structure as those found in living birds. By analyzing the shape and arrangement of the fossil melanosomes, they were able to get clues to their original color. They determined, for example, that a 47-million-year-old feather had the dark iridescent sheen found on starlings today.
continue reading here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/science/28dino.html
Dinosaur fossils are mostly drab collections of mineralized bones. A few preserve traces of skin, and fewer still preserve structures that many scientists have argued are feathers.
In the new study, Michael Benton, a paleontologist at the University of Bristol, and colleagues have analyzed the structures of what appear to be feathers and say they match the feathers of living birds down to the microscopic level. They used microscopic features to determine the ancient feathers’ color.
The study builds on earlier work on fossil bird feathers by Jakob Vinther, a graduate student at Yale, and his colleagues. In 2006, Mr. Vinther discovered what looked like an ink sac preserved in a squid fossil. Putting the fossil under a microscope, he discovered the sac was filled with tiny spheres. The spheres were identical to pigment-loaded structures in squid ink, known as melanosomes. Mr. Vinther knew that melanosomes created colors in other animals, including bird’s feathers. He and his colleagues made a microscopic inspection of fossils of feathers from extinct birds. They discovered melanosomes with the same sausage-shaped structure as those found in living birds. By analyzing the shape and arrangement of the fossil melanosomes, they were able to get clues to their original color. They determined, for example, that a 47-million-year-old feather had the dark iridescent sheen found on starlings today.
continue reading here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/science/28dino.html
Monday, April 18, 2011
Dinosaurs...the ice age.
Buy them here: http://www.perpetualkid.com/fossiliced-dinosaur-ice-cube-trays---set-of-2.aspx
That's Quite A Suit, Mate.
Why couldn't my elementary school do this? All we got were fire drill demonstrations.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
7 Surprising Dinosaur Facts
photo credit: sxc.hu
Pigeon-sized dinosaur
Although the museum's new exhibit focuses on large dinosaurs, not all dinosaurs were massive – some species were actually pretty small. In fact, "many were cat – or even pigeon-size," Norell said. The smallest known pterodactyl, the Nemicolopterus crypticus (discovered in 2008), had a wingspan of only 10 inches.
Growth spurts
Dinosaurs grew relatively quickly. The mamenchisaurus, for example, a four-legged, plant-eating dinosaur with a long neck that made up half of its total 70-foot body length, took only about 30 years to grow to adult size.
Fluffy dinos
While most illustrations of dinosaurs depict them as having scaly or thick, leathery skin similar to that of modern-day elephants, it was actually common for dinosaurs to have protofeathers, or a feather-like covering. Protofeathers weren't necessarily a marker for flight, however, as flightless dinos including the velociraptor and beipiaosaurus had downy fluff but no wings.
Long in the tooth
At approximately 45 feet long and 14,000 pounds, the T. rex – one of the largest land carnivores of all time – must have looked pretty imposing based on its size alone. But this massive monster also boasted the longest teeth. Including the root, a T. rex's tooth can be nearly 10 inches long, or the length of an iPad. With 50 to 60 of those enormous teeth set in its 4-foot-long jaw, the T. rex could bite off 500 pounds in a single chomp – about the weight of an adult male tiger.
Piecing it together
Only one complete or even partial dinosaur skeleton is needed in order to identify an entirely new species. "Almost half of the 1,200 or so dinosaurs that have been named are known from unique single specimens," Norell said.
They roam among us
"Dinosaurs are not extinct – we just call them birds," Norell said. "In fact, birds are more closely related to dinosaurs like the T.rex than the T.rex is to sauropods like the mamenchisaurus."
Baby face
Like most baby animals, dinosaur tots were baby-faced. In 2010, researchers found the skull of a juvenile plant-eating dinosaur that suggested that some young dinosaurs had proportionally larger eyes and smaller, cuter faces than their parents.
Credit to: http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/7-surprising-dinosaur-facts-1416/
An Exhibit to Visit
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"Dinosaurs Unearthed," a 10,000-square-foot exhibit of more than 20 moving, roaring animatronic creatures, opened today and runs through Sept. 5 at the Detroit Science Center, where excited families waited patiently in a line that almost stretched out the door. The exhibit includes five full-size skeletons and nearly 40 fossil and egg replicas from the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, 65 million to 250 million years ago.
The gargantuan prehistoric beasts are entertaining and educational. "The exhibit kind of tells the story of the connection between dinosaurs and birds," said Todd Slisher, the center's chief operating officer. "Part of that connection is the fact that they've discovered that a lot of dinosaurs had these downy coverings, which are called protofeathers — early feathers — so they link that to birds, and also things in the skeletal structure."
Friday, April 15, 2011
Walking With Dinosaurs in New Jersey?
Bloomfield resident Guy Gsell has a vision. And that vision is 24 life-size animatronic dinosaurs all rearing their terrifying heads and roaring in a theme park in Secaucus, starting in May, 2012. His company is officially called Jerseysaurus, but the obstacles are formidable enough that he jokingly calls it JerseyTsuris.Gsell, who is now known in Hudson county as “the dinosaur guy,” spends his days meeting with paleontologists, talking to the Meadowlands Commission staff, visiting the factory in Texas where the animatronic dinosaurs are made, checking out other dinosaur exhibits and looking to lease a parcel of at least 15 acres in Secaucus. There are three potential tracts that meet his specifications, one of which even affords a view of the Empire State Building.
But he hasn’t nailed it yet. “If I don’t get a lease, I don’t have a dinosaur park.”
Like the Renaissance Faire, “Field Station: Dinosaurs” would be housed in tents, with no permanent buildings. “It’s supposed to feel like a scientific encampment,” Gsell says. He’s planning on a parking lot for the folks from New Jersey and envisions a NJ Transit train — “the Dinosaur Express” — for folks from New York City. He plans on charging $20 for adults and $17.50 for kids, and having the park ready enough to start selling it at the NJ teachers’ convention in November.
"I have read Jurassic Park,” says Gsell. “My dinosaurs will not be attacking people, because they’re fake.” Still, there’s enough artificial intelligence built into the mammoth creatures — the dinosaur formerly known as a brontosaurus is 33 feet long — to give one pause.
“They roar, they move their heads to track your movements,” Gsell says. “And when the crowds get big they get nervous.”
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
New Dinosaur Discovered in New Mexico
New dinosaur species is a missing link It’s fitting that a place called Ghost Ranch, New Mexico, would yield the discovery of a scary-looking creature. But it’s not a ghost - it’s a dinosaur.
This dog-sized, ferocious-looking critter is called Daemonosaurus chauliodus, which means something along the lines of “buck-toothed evil lizard,” says Hans-Dieter Sues, lead author of the published research describing this dinosaur, and curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.
The illustration above compares the head and neck with a quarter. You can see that it has a short snout and enormous front teeth.
Scientists found the skull and neck of this previously unrecognized dinosaur, and described it in a study in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
This dinosaur provides a link between what paleontologists consider “early” and “later” dinosaurs. There’s a gap in the fossil record between the oldest known dinosaurs, which walked or ran on their hind legs about 230 million years ago in Argentina and Brazil, and other predatory dinosaurs that lived much later. Daemonosaurus chauliodus helps fill in a blank in dinosaur history.
This newly discovered species lived about 205 million years ago, and probably preyed on other dinosaurs and other small animals, Sues said. At that time, what is now the American Southwest was located close to the equator, so it was warm and monsoon-like with heavy seasonal precipitation. This dinosaur was probably active during the day, although its large eyes suggest it could have seen at night as well.
How did it go extinct? It may have fallen victim to an extinction event that occurred about 200 million years ago. As the continents were separating, there was a large zone of volcanic activity. Enormous quantities of lava was released, doing “horrible things to the atmosphere.” Most dinosaurs made it through (that is, until an asteroid struck around 65 million years ago), but perhaps not this one.
“It just shows that even here in the United States, there are still many new dinosaurs to be found,” Sues said. “People always think we have to go to some remote places, but, right here in northern New Mexico, we can still find new dinosaurs.”
Build-A-Dino
It appears the build-a-bear nation is stretching its bounds with a new line of make it yourself dinosaur toys. Headline is? "True Friendship Is Never Extinct." (Oh please.)
Do you live near one of these locations? We wish we did.
T-REX Café™ at Lake Buena Vista in Florida
T-REX Café™ at The Legends at Village West in Kansas City
Saint Louis Science Center, St. Louis, Missouri
Broadway at the Beach, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
5th Ave. at 46th, New York City, New York
check out more of the store's details online here: http://www.buildadino.com/
Prehisotoric Birds May Have Survived Because of Smell
About 65 million years ago, most of the dinosaurs and many other animals and plants were wiped off Earth, probably due to an asteroid hitting our planet. Why did some species survive? A new study suggests that one group of survivors, the birds, may have sniffed their way across by evolving an enhanced sense of smell.
Scientists had long thought that birds have a poor sense of smell. But several recent studies show that birds use smell to help them forage for food, communicate with other birds, and even orient themselves in flight. And a 2009 study of dinosaur olfaction, led by paleontologist Darla Zelenitsky of the University of Calgary in Canada, found that dinosaur lineages thought to have given rise to today's birds some 150 million years ago had a keener sense of smell than dinosaurs that went extinct without leaving feathered progeny behind.
read more from this article here: http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/04/early-birds-smelled-good.html?ref=hp
Scientists had long thought that birds have a poor sense of smell. But several recent studies show that birds use smell to help them forage for food, communicate with other birds, and even orient themselves in flight. And a 2009 study of dinosaur olfaction, led by paleontologist Darla Zelenitsky of the University of Calgary in Canada, found that dinosaur lineages thought to have given rise to today's birds some 150 million years ago had a keener sense of smell than dinosaurs that went extinct without leaving feathered progeny behind.
read more from this article here: http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/04/early-birds-smelled-good.html?ref=hp
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Did dino's have waddles?
Big dinosaurs with flat backs. Learn all about platysaurus in this free dinosaur information video from a science expert.
Expert: Franklin Rhuel
Dr. Franklin Ruehl is a nuclear physicist with a PhD from UCLA. He researches and lectures in many fields including ufo's and medicine.
Filmmaker: Nili Nathan
Monday, April 11, 2011
Giants Who Scarfed Down Fast-Food Feasts
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| A life-size model of a 60-foot female Mamenchisaurus, whose fossilized bones were discovered in China, was close to ready at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. |
“We actually have been re-engineering a sauropod,” said P. Martin Sander, a paleontologist at the University of Bonn and leader of the research team. “We are looking for physical advantages it had over other large animals and assessing various hypotheses.”
One clear explanation has emerged: These were the ultimate fast-food gourmands. Reaching all around with their long necks, these giants gulped down enormous meals. With no molars in their relatively small heads, they were unequipped for serious chewing. They let the digestive juices of their capacious bodies break down their heaping intake while they just kept packing away more chow.
This was seemingly the only efficient way for sauropods to satisfy their appetites and to diversify into some 120 genera, beginning more than 200 million years ago. They eventually dominated the landscape for a long run through the Cretaceous, only to die out with all nonavian dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
adapted from a New York Times article
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: April 11, 2011
Intro-dino-duction
This is a blog about all things dinosaur. To make you laugh, indulge your fanaticism, and enrich your mind. Because who doesn't love giant prehistoric reptiles (or are they reptiles)?
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