The Beltway Dinosaur Track

Spectacular dinosaur stomping grounds discovered just outside D.C. No, not politicians.

. . . on a summer day in 2012, a self-taught fossil hunter named Ray Stanford noticed the unmistakable shape of the nodosaur’s track as he drove out of a parking lot at what is now  NASA’s Goddard Space FlightCenter in Greenbelt.

Years of excavation and analysis revealed the contours of that fossil print and dozens more on a single 8.5-foot-long slab of sandstone, Stanford and his colleagues announced Wednesday. It is the largest and most diverse assemblage from the dinosaur age found in the Mid-Atlantic region — and it ranks among the best fossil trackways in the world.

“I like to call it the Rosetta Stone,” said Martin Lockley, a dinosaur track expert at the University of Colorado Denver who participated in the research. The evidence on that slab surface preserves animals as they lived rather than as they died — revealing the ecology of their age in exquisite detail, he said.

And because no prints overlap, Lockley thinks the tracks were laid down and preserved in a “geologic instant” — no longer than a few days but, more likely, during a few hours. In such a contained setting, herbivore and carnivore, reptile and mammal, predator and prey all intersected and potentially interacted.

“One could literally make a movie about everything going on in this slab,” Stanford said.

Sorry, it's behind the paywall at the WaPo, so I'll quote generously.

The excavated slab weighed more than four tons, so the space flight center arranged to have paleontologist Stephen Godfrey make a fiberglass cast that would be easier to study. In fall 2015, the model was installed in Stanford’s basement, where he would meticulously brush fine silt grains into the mold’s dips and divots to reveal the prints. Then came hours of staring at the slab and attempting to divine what happened 110 million years ago from the faint impressions on its surface.

“I could not sleep,” he recounted this week. “It was a time of total amazing discovery.”

“Every time you came down and looked at it and turned the light at a different angle, you’d see something new,” added his wife, Sheila, who often joined him in surveying the slab. Like her husband, she has no formal paleontology training. But she spotted some of the slab’s more interesting features, including the impression of a winged pterosaur dipping its pointed jaw into the earth in search of food, then pushing off from the ground to take flight.

In all, the slab contains about 70 footprints from at least eight types of animal, the Stanfords and their colleagues report in an article published Wednesday in the journal Scientific Reports. Just one other discovery from the Mesozoic era (the 200 million-year span during which dinosaurs roamed Earth) bears as many mammal prints.

Wombat-socho has "Rule 5 Sunday: Eagles With Elbows" ready and waiting.

Well, I'm Convinced

Chick With Huge Boobs Explains Why Dinosaurs Are A Hoax.



Or you might even say a boob with huge big adequate boobs:

More dino-babes?

I Guess One of the Dinosaurs Broke a Mirror

Seven years of bad luck: The end-Cretaceous mass extinction was rather unpleasant

Though the story is probably familiar, there are still significant questions about exactly what happened during that cataclysm. Many species were seemingly in trouble before that colossal meteoroid crashed into the coastal Yucatan, perhaps partly because of a long-lived series of massive volcanic eruptions in what is now India. This has led some to question whether the impact was as deadly as it's made out to be. But we've also filled in some details of just how the meteoroid impact would mess up the Earth, and these include mind-blowing tsunamis, rampant wildfires, and see-sawing climate effects. So how lethal was the impact?

A team led by Charles Bardeen at the National Center for Atmospheric Research employed a climate model to investigate one major aspect of this story. In many places around the world, there is a thin geologic layer that marks the time of the impact event. It contains soot that apparently blanketed the planet after wildfires kicked it up into the air. (These wildfires would be triggered globally by the heat of debris reentering the atmosphere.) Was there enough soot to black out the Sun?

 Given the failure of modern climate models to accurately predict our climate out even a few years, one has to give them a lot of credit for trying to base their science on climate models of an earth many millions of years ago, which is much less understood than the present.

Several estimates have been made of the total amount of that soot based on the volume that can be found in the rock layer, but these range from 750 billion kilograms to 35 trillion kilograms. The researchers ran several different simulations based on those estimates. In each case, the soot particles are injected high into the atmosphere because soot absorbs sunlight, so it heats up the air around it, causing the air to rise and take the soot with it.

The simulations showed that most of the soot falls out of the atmosphere within a year, but that still leaves enough up in the air to block out 99 percent of the Sun’s light for close to two years, with the poles clearing up fastest. Photosynthesis in the ocean ends once you get to one percent of sunlight, so the authors use this as the threshold for plant life.

That’s two years of perpetual twilight without plant growth, which is probably enough to explain the extinction of plankton species in the ocean (and most things up the food chain from there).

And, of course, a biting cold would come with the dim Sun. In the simulation, the average ocean surface temperature drops by as much as 11 degrees Celsius (20 degrees Fahrenheit), and the average temperature on land suffers a 28-degree-Celsius (50-degree-Fahrenheit) drop. Most of the planet’s land area would have been below freezing for the first couple of years. Only a limited area along some coasts and parts of the tropics would escape the frost.

That surface cooling—coupled with the soot-warmed air high above—would drastically slow the water cycle, reducing global precipitation by about three-quarters for six years. Even the monsoons shut down. If you’re keeping track, we’re now talking about a dark, frozen, desert world. Only a very small area of land is bright enough, warm enough, and wet enough for plants to survive.

For organisms that somehow managed to survive through this desolation, conditions could actually have returned to normal pretty rapidly. There’s a sort of critical point as the levels of soot in the stratosphere drop; once it's crossed, the rest quickly clears up. That's because a ton of water vapor would also have risen into the stratosphere with all that soot, and that water vapor acts like a planetary radiator, emitting heat energy to space and accelerating the stratospheric cooling. As the soot level drops below the critical point, less sunlight is absorbed, and the water vapor cools and condenses. It then drops out and takes the remaining soot with it in a matter of months.

In the simulations, that process takes place in year seven, bringing back the sunshine and most of the precipitation. At that point, surface temperatures are only about 5 degrees Celsius below their starting point, and they return to normal over the next decade.

So it all sounds like something we should really try to avoid. How about some more effort going into asteroid location and tracking, and developing methods  to divert them?

Get Off My Lawn!

Utterly brilliant - by Ralph_the_Rex

Probably the best thing on the internet right now - by IG @Ralph_The_Rex

Posted by FrightProps on Saturday, December 26, 2015

Paleontologists Pan Jurassic World

Paleontologists give "Jurassic World" science thumbs down

Though most paleontologists haven't yet seen the movie that is set to open June 12, they have picked apart the trailer and movie-inspired toys for evidence about the way dinosaur anatomy and behavior are portrayed. And they have found plenty to complain about.

Scientists are like that; nothing is ever good enough when it comes to  portraying their own work.

No, the Pterosaurs couldn't have lifted people up into the air - their feet were not able to pick up items. They got the Gallimimus all wrong, giving it teeth in its jawless beak and getting the proportions out of whack. And for some reason they forgot to put feathers on Velociraptor and Gallimimus, giving them scaling or smooth skin instead and ignoring one of the biggest advancements in paleontology over the past two decades.

I suppose they should have given T. Rex feathers and made it act like a big chicken?

Paleontologists praised the Mosasaur that jumps from a Sea World-like pool for having interior "palatal" teeth, which is something scientists only recently discovered. But others complained it was much bigger in the movie than it would have been in real life.

That's just a camera trick. Besides, the Mosasaur was created for the park; of course they'd super size it.

"For all its errors - and there definitely were some - the original 'Jurassic Park' movie was very effective about bringing the then-new 1980s discoveries to people of the 1990s," Thomas R. Holtz, Jr., a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Maryland, told CBS News. "Sadly, the dinosaurs in 'Jurassic World' have not been updated with any new information from the 1990s or 2000s or 2010s, and indeed in a few cases are less accurate than in the original movie!"

I'm going to bet that most of the paleontologists interviewed were just kids or teenagers when Jurassic Park came out, and their tolerance for its errors is just the rosy glow of their childhood speaking.

Andrew Farke, who specializes in the evolution and functional morphology of the Ceratopsians (horned dinosaurs) at the Raymond Alf Museum of Paleontology, agreed "the dinosaurs are a step backwards" and that they are not much too look at.

"The plot might be OK. I think it's quite fun to have a peek inside a functioning dinosaur theme park," he said. "But the dinosaurs themselves ...ugly! Across the board, a major step backward for the visuals and accuracy."

Perhaps paleontologists should pay Hollywood to portray their pets more perfectly.

Kirkland said he is not so annoyed that script writers have introduced a genetically modified dinosaur known as Indominus rex - calling it a plot device and a handy bad guy. He seemed more upset about the lack of dinosaur diversity and the absence of some of his new favorites - Deinocheirus, Therizinosaurus, Kosmoceratops, Styracosaurus, and Gastonia.

He is upset that the Hollywood writers didn't introduce a bunch of his favorites (out of a few hundred species) that none of the movie goers would recognize. Yeah, that's a ticket to success.

Definitely a must see movie, if only because it's going to become a cultural icon.

Wombat-socho has the weekly compendium up at The Other McCain: "Rule 5 Sunday: Pipe Dreams."

Are You Ready for the Dino-Chicken?

When Will We See an Actual Dino-Chicken?

Talk of a “chickenosaurus” lit up the science world last week when researchers announced they had modified the beak of a chicken embryo to resemble the snout of its dinosaur ancestors. But although some experts have lauded the feat, a beak is just one of many modifications needed to revert a chicken into a dinosaur.

Dinosaurs ruled the planet for 130 million years, so clearly they knew how to perpetuate themselves, but scientists have not had much to go on, in terms of their exact mechanics for doing the deed.

Given these obstacles, how close are scientists to creating a dino-chicken?

Can I expect a little Velociraptor for Christmas this year? That would be a hit at the beach.

“From a quantitative point of view, we’re 50 percent there,” said Jack Horner, a professor of paleontology at Montana State University and a curator of paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies.

Horner has long supported the idea of modifying a chicken to look like a dinosaur, and unlike the researchers on the latest study, he actually wants to raise a live one. And why stop there? By understanding how and when to modify certain molecular mechanisms, countless changes could be within reach. As Horner pointed out, a glow-in-the-dark unicorn is not out of the question.

A glow in the dark unicorn might even be easier. Start with a horse, add a little Narwhale, and steal a few genes from fire flies. I'm kind of surprised they aren't in the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog already.

There are four major modifications needed to make a so-called chickenosaurus, Horner said. To turn a chicken into a dinosaurlike beast, scientists would have to give it teeth and a long tail, and revert its wings back into arms and hands.

The creature would also need a modified mouth — a feat accomplished by the researchers who did this latest study, he said.

“This dino-chicken project — we can liken it to the moon project,” Horner told Live Science. “We know we can do it; it’s just there are … some huge hurdles.”

10 years? 5?

Featured at Pirate's Cove in the weekly "Sorta Blogless Pinup" and links.

Newest! Oldest! Biggest!

The new dinosaur Dreadnoughtus

Scientists have discovered the fossilized remains of a new long-necked, long-tailed dinosaur that has taken the crown for largest terrestrial animal with a body mass that can be accurately determined.

Measurements of bones from its hind leg and foreleg revealed that the animal was 65 tons, and still growing when it died in the Patagonian hills of Argentina about 77 million years ago.

“To put this in perspective, an African elephant is about five tons, T. rex is eight tons, Diplodocus is 18 tons, and a Boeing 737 is around 50 tons,” said study author and paleontologist Kenneth Lacovara at Drexel University. “And then you have Dreadnoughtus at 65 tons.”

Dreadnoughtus, meaning “fears nothing,” is named after the impervious early 20th century battleships.

What, it wasn't named after big acoustic guitars?

Although it was a plant-eater, a healthy Dreadnoughtus likely had no real issues with predators due to its intimidating size and muscular, weaponized tail. 

Except, of course, when it was a baby. Then it was at the bottom of the food chain like any old chicken. Curiously the specimen, already the largest land animal known, was still growing rapidly when it died:

To look for hints of age, Lacovara and his colleagues looked for any traces of bone growth. As the animal gets older, parts of the skeleton will fuse together, and its bone growing cells will morph from fluffy to flat.

“With Dreadnoughtus, there's no indication that there was any cessation or slowing of growth [in the bones],” he said. “When it died at 65 tons, it was growing fast, which is kind of scary.”

And what good is a giant dinosaur without a dinobabe to ride it?

Student Arrested, Suspended Over Dinosaur Killing Fantasy

High school student says he was arrested for killing dinosaur in class assignment

Story illustrated with some equally realistic human dinosaur encounters.

A 16-year-old Summerville High School student says he was arrested Tuesday morning and suspended after writing about killing a dinosaur using a gun.

Alex Stone said he and his classmates were told in class to write a few sentences about themselves, and a "status" as if it was a Facebook page.

So, at Summerville High School, they actually have to teach kids how to use facebook?  Maybe they should try a business letter, or a letter to bureaucracy begging for mercy, things that are far more likely to be useful.

Stone said in his "status" he wrote a fictional story that involved the words "gun" and "take care of business."

"I killed my neighbor's pet dinosaur, and, then, in the next status I said I bought the gun to take care of the business," Stone said.

I think that's the point that the teacher should have realized she (and I'm willing to be it was a she) that the story was not a realistic scenario.

Stone says his statements were taken completely out of context.

"I could understand if they made him re-write it because he did have "gun" in it. But a pet dinosaur?" said Alex's mother Karen Gray."I mean first of all, we don't have dinosaurs anymore. Second of all, he's not even old enough to buy a gun."

Technically, some have argued that birds are the descendants of dinosaurs with minor advances and should be considered as dinosaurs, so I suppose if he could be fantasizing about killing his neighbor's chicken or parakeet, it could be considered possible. And while it is certainly illegal for a 16 year old to buy a gun, it's more than likely that with only a little effort, a 16 year old could probably buy one with sufficient money and effort. Making drinking by teenagers illegal certainly hasn't prevented any number of them from obtaining beer.

Investigators say the teacher contacted school officials after seeing the message containing the words "gun" and "take care of business," and police were then notified on Tuesday.

The cops should have laughed them off. But they are not allowed to anymore.  Each event, however silly, must be investigated as a potential Columbine.

Were students pre-informed that the word "gun" was forbidden in school essays?  I doubt it. That would draw too much attention from pro-second amendment parents who might object in advance.  No, the anti-gun crowd is trying to make the concept of guns forbidden with random and extreme punishments.

Summerville police officials say Stone's bookbag and locker were searched on Tuesday, and a gun was not found.

According to Gray, Stone was suspended for the rest of the week. Gray says she is furious that the school did not contact her before her son was arrested. She says her son followed directions and completed an assignment.

Amen. The trick to working with teenagers is to be explicit with your rules. If the word "guns" is forbidden, write that down. If fictional stories are out in an assignment to make a fictional facebook post (already a contradiction), you have to make that clear, otherwise the students will (especially the more restive males), and even if you make it absolutely clear, they'll leave footprints right up and onto the line.

The teacher and administrators responsible for this should be sued. Or better, as Instapundit suggests:

To be thorough, they should have searched the neighbor’s yard for a dead Triceratops, too. Everyone involved in this tragedy should be flogged naked through the streets, then put in the stocks wearing a dunce cap.

Wombat-socho has the grand summary "Rule 5 Sunday: Peaches En Regalia" up at The Other McCain.

Newest "Biggest Dinosaur Ever"

At least the biggest for now. Maybe.

Based on its huge thigh bones, it was 40m (130ft) long and 20m (65ft) tall. Weighing in at 77 tonnes, it was as heavy as 14 African elephants, and seven tonnes heavier than the previous record holder, Argentinosaurus.

Scientists believe it is a new species of titanosaur - an enormous herbivore dating from the Late Cretaceous period.

A local farm worker first stumbled on the remains in the desert near La Flecha, about 250km (135 miles) west of Trelew, Patagonia.

That bone would wreak havoc on a plow. How nice of the scientists to come and clear the field for them.

 A film crew from the BBC Natural History Unit was there to capture the moment the scientists realised exactly how big their discovery was. By measuring the length and circumference of the largest femur (thigh bone), they calculated the animal weighed 77 tonnes.

"Given the size of these bones, which surpass any of the previously known giant animals, the new dinosaur is the largest animal known that walked on Earth," the researchers told BBC News. "Its length, from its head to the tip of its tail, was 40m. "Standing with its neck up, it was about 20m high - equal to a seven-storey building."

A mighty fine mount for a Dino-babe!

The most recent pretender to the throne was Argentinosaurus, a similar type of sauropod, also discovered in Patagonia.

Originally thought to weigh in at 100 tonnes, it was later revised down to about 70 tonnes - just under the 77 tonnes that this new sauropod is thought to have weighed.
The picture is muddied by the various complicated methods for estimating size and weight, based on skeletons that are usually incomplete.

What happens when this one is revised downwards? Is every news source that ran this story going to run a revision?  I doubt it.  Biggest is funnest.  It's no fun (and therefore no story) when it turns out to be #2 or #3.

Argentinosaurus was estimated from only a few bones. But the researchers here had dozens to work with, making them more confident that they really have found "the big one". Dr Paul Barrett, a dinosaur expert from London's Natural History Museum, agreed the new species is "a genuinely big critter. But there are a number of similarly sized big sauropod thigh bones out there," he cautioned.

"Without knowing more about this current find it's difficult to be sure. One problem with assessing the weight of both Argentinosaurus and this new discovery is that they're both based on very fragmentary specimens - no complete skeleton is known, which means the animal's proportions and overall shape are conjectural. "Moreover, several different methods exist for calculating dinosaur weight (some based on overall volume, some on various limb bone measurements) and these don't always agree with each other, with large measures of uncertainty.

So, without knowing a little more about the animal than they can gather from the current fragments, it's probably bigger than the last one we discovered.

Wombat-socho has the big "Rule 5 Sunday: Memorial Day Weekend Edition" post up at The Other McCain.

Undersea Volcano Sets New Size Record

Scientists confirm existence of largest single volcano on Earth

Covering an area roughly equivalent to the British Isles or the State of New Mexico, Tamu Massif is nearly as big as the giant volcanoes of Mars, placing it among the largest in the solar system
...
Located about 1,000 miles east of Japan, Tamu Massif is the largest feature of Shatsky Rise, an underwater mountain range formed 145-130 million years ago by the eruption of several underwater volcanoes.

That puts it at just about the Jurassic/Cretaceous boundary.  Something else for the dinosaurs to have worried about

Until now, it was unclear whether Tamu Massif was a single volcano, or a composite of many eruption points.

By integrating several sources of evidence, including core samples and data collected on board the JOIDES Resolution, scientists have confirmed that the mass of basalt that constitutes Tamu Massif did indeed erupt from a single source near the center. The results appear today in a paper in the journal Nature Geoscience.

“Tamu Massif is the biggest single shield volcano ever discovered on Earth,” says lead paper author Will Sager of the University of Houston. “There may be larger volcanoes, because there are bigger igneous features out there such as the Ontong Java Plateau. But we don’t know if these features are one volcano or complexes of volcanoes.”

So it's the largest volcano on earth, unless we find another bigger one that's been hiding.  Ain't science grand?

Tamu Massif covers an area of about 120,000 square miles.

By comparison, Hawaii’s Mauna Loa–the largest active volcano on Earth–is a mere 2,000 square miles, or less than 2 percent the size of Tamu Massif.

To find a worthy comparison, one must look skyward to the planet Mars, home to Olympus Mons. That giant volcano, which is visible on a clear night with a good backyard telescope, is only about 25 percent larger by volume than Tamu Massif.

It does not appear that the volcano is active now or has been in the geologically recent past, which is likely a good thing, as that much volcanic activity in a short period would surely have  deleterious consequences on the earth's atmosphere and climate.

Seen at Watts Up With That.