Dinosaurs •

Dinosaurs Did Not Roar, They Cooed

July 12, 2016 By Rebecca McGhee Leave a Comment

According to the latest study conducted by researchers at Texas University, dinosaurs did not roar, they cooed. It appears that the ancient reptiles communicated with each other in ways similar to birds rather than what Hollywood made us believe.

Up until now, archaeologists and paleontologists found that dinosaurs emitted loud, frightening roars that echoed through the lush vegetation, making themselves heard for many miles. However, knowing that their direct descendants are birds, scientists decided to check for any similarities in the vocal organs of the animals.

The researchers involved in the study analyzed the vocal cords of birds and then compared them to the fossilized vocal organs found in dinosaurs remains.

The results suggest that many dinosaur species were likely to vocalize with a closed mouth. That translated into a sort of pensive “umm” or a disapproving “hmm” rather than the roar that Jurassic Park movies featured.

Think about the way a pigeon coos. Now imagine the pigeon being 5 feet tall with long and razor-sharp claws and big pointy teeth. The coo is starting to sound awfully menacing and not adorable at all.

This is not the first dinosaur-related discovery made with the help of bird anatomy. Feathers are actually taking the place of scales when the animals are depicted in drawings.

Some researchers even went as far as mounting a prosthetic tail on a chicken in order to see how the dinosaurs moved around. According to their results, the head of the reptile was kept low, forming a straight line with the tail. They used to take large steps, making use of their long claws any chance they got.

Previous studies linked the lineage of birds with that of dinosaurs, explaining that they were probably covered in feathers and acted more like giant ostriches than gigantic lizards.

More details about the study will be made available next month when the article will be published. The paper is scheduled to appear in next month’s issue of Evolution magazine.

Now that science established that dinosaurs did not roar, do you think that they were not as frightful as they were pictured in movies and TV shows? Let us know what’s your opinion on how the dinosaurs sounded in the comment section below.

Image source: Wikipedia

Seeds Saved Birds from the Dinosaur Extinction

April 22, 2016 By Deborah Nielsen Leave a Comment

The fossils of several feathered non-avian Maniraptoran dinosaurs

While the reason behind the extinction of the dinosaurs is a generally known fact, it was only in a recent study that we found out that the giant reptiles that ruled out planet in the past had been on the decline for some fifty million years before they went extinct.

This had to do with more than a single factor, as volcanic eruptions, the separation of the continents, and on-going climate change caused by billions of tons of carbon dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere all contributed to the dinosaurs’ slow but certain decline. But that’s not to say that had the asteroid not hit the dinosaurs would have still been extinct.

Oh no, they would likely have still been around today, only in a much different form than the one to which we are used. This is even proven by the fact that there are still members of the theropod class of dinosaurs still alive today. And yes, I am talking about birds.

But seeing as they evolved from dinosaurs that were alive sixty-six million years ago, how exactly did they manage to evolve? Well, according to a recent study from the Universities of Toronto and Alberta, seeds saved birds from the dinosaur extinction. Well, not birds as we know them today, but maniraptoran dinosaurs, a clave of small carnivorous theropods that largely resembled today’s birds.

So if the modern day birds’ ancestors were carnivorous and they were alive when the asteroid hit, how is it that we still have birds, and what did seeds have to do with anything? Well, as the climate was changing, as the dinosaurs were dying off, and as the sunlight was covered by a cloud of ash, food was beginning to be very scarce.

While meat was getting rarer and rarer, and plants couldn’t really photosynthesize with no sunlight, one of the very few sources of food remaining were seeds. Buried in the ground and viable for consumption for up to five decades, the dinosaurs that wanted to survive had to adapt to their new conditions.

Of course, larger dinosaurs couldn’t really survive on just seeds, so the smaller, carnivorous, toothed maniraptorans had to combine their meaty diet with plenty of seeds. Over time, they evolved so that they lost their teeth and started eating mostly seeds and other creatures smaller than them, eventually reaching the form of today’s birds.

One of the biggest problems with identifying that particular class of dinosaurs was that their bones were very fragile. So, it’s a very common occurrence for the only fossils encountered by scientists to be the teeth, as they tended to be stronger than the regular bones. This made it quite hard for the team to actually find out when maniraptorans evolved into birds, even if they tried to reverse engineer the process by following the birds’ ancestors instead of the dinosaurs’ descendants.

Image source: Wikimedia

Paleontologists Uncover Oldest and Smallest Dinosaurs In North America

December 11, 2014 By Rebecca McGhee Leave a Comment

A group of US researchers discovered the oldest horned dinosaur from North America. They found dinosaur equal to the size of a house cat which is nearly 15 million years old.

In 1997, a Scott Madsen uncovered the jaw and skull of Aquilops Americuns. After several years researchers identified it as a milestone work of art. However, the new species is known as Aquilops americanus which means Eagle Face. It lived around 107 million years ago on the earth.

Andrew Farke, a paleontologists informed at first Scott thought it was generic. Later on, it becomes apparent that it is an early horned dinosaur. The new discovery will certainly give an insight about the life style of early dinosaurs. These dinosaurs lived in North America nearly 108 million years ago.

This new specie is pretty similar to the animals of Asia such as Archaeoceratops oshimai and leptoceratops gracilis. Researchers were surprised with the size of the Aquilops. It is approximately weigh around 3.5 pounds and was around two feet in length. The plant eater animal is so small that anyone can hold it with one arm. The remnants of skull would fit quite effortlessly in one hand.

The little dinosaur does not possess horn like Triceratops. It has numerous other features which were not present in the horned dinosaurs such as toothless beak. This kind beak is also present on turtles and Triceratops. Commonly, it is known as rostral bone.

The report is published in 10 December’s edition of Journal PlOS One.

Birds are Theorized to be Direct Descendants of the Dinosaurs

September 27, 2014 By Rebecca McGhee 3 Comments

Anyone who has seen the classic movie Jurassic Park knows that today’s birds are theorized to be direct descendents of the dinosaurs. Well, that theory is now fact as scientists have closed the gap between the two thus proving the theory correct.

Bolstering this new discovery is an assortment of items including the existing record of fossils and those fossils that show some of the dinos indeed had feathers. Imagining those frightening and sometimes funny giant lizards with feathering is something that stirs the imagination and may well mean our depictions of them in the past have been wrong in many cases.

There is no ‘missing link’ so to speak but a gradual evolution of the creatures into feathered ones and then progressively dwindling in size probably due to the mass extinction event eons ago that wiped out the age of dinosaur domination. Over 850 physiological features from some 150 extinct species of bird gave way to this discovery by Steve Brusatte, Edinburgh University’s top paleontologists and his team. Piecing together the puzzle allowed for them to make a family tree of sorts showing the evolutionary pattern thus clinching the theory into factual examination.

No one knows why birds beat out the dinosaurs or what remained of them after the asteroid impact that almost wiped their species clean but one George Gaylord Simpson, noted paleontologist put out a postulate in the 1940s that when that new physiological form takes place the diversification of bird species rose and spread out.

With this new data, it will take scientists some time as well as illustrators and even Hollywood to rethink and redesign what dinosaurs may have looked like. There is doubt that one would see a brontosaurus or T Rex adorned in colorful plumage but there are large species of dinosaurs that may well have had such. New data as to which species did or did not have feathers will be bandied about and that information will be seen in text books and on the big screen no doubt.

This discovery is just another in the long line of new data about dinosaurs emerging in the news of late. More gigantic dinos have been discovered as well as odd shaped ones and those in areas no one had suspected to find fossils. It goes to show we still have a lot to discover about dinosaurs and the millions upon millions of years they dwelt on Earth.

Meteor Which Worn Out Dinosaurs, Wobbles Up Plants Also: Scientists Claimed!

September 17, 2014 By Jason Leathers 3 Comments

Meteorite, which destroyed dinosaurs beside evergreen blossoming plants 66mn years back gave rise to the deciduous plants. According to a recent study conducted these plants losses the leaves eventually over the season.

Slayer meteorite that stubs out the dinosaurs, too hits the North America’s woodlands. However, according to the new study, the ruthless circumstances after impact privileged fast growing blossoming plants, shoving woodlands towards a new pecking array.

Therefore, modern day woodlands could stump a new Brachiosaurus. The majority of the slow-rising trees and shrubs chewed simply by dinosaurs usually are smallest gamers in contemporary woodlands, since the plants wouldn’t get used to post-impact climate sways, analysts revealed today in a journal named as PLOS Biology.

“At present, when anyone examines woodlands around the world, you do not observe a lot of woodlands with evergreen blossoming plants. Alternatively, they may be taken over by deciduous types, “spelled out by study’s lead writer Benjamin Blonder.

The University of Arizona researchers said that the meteorite effect devastated blossoming plants to a greater degree as compared to their deciduous mates did in the past. Later on, the properties regarding deciduous plants made these people far better capable to reply swiftly to chaotically diverse post-apocalyptic local climate circumstances.

Dinosaurs stomped through forest ruled by evergreen angiosperms, which never drop leaves. Angiosperms are flowering plants, grasses and trees, excluding conifers like spruce and pine. The dinosaur-era angiosperms included ancient relatives of holly, rhododendrons and sandalwood. Other plants in the primeval forests included beeches, cycads, gingko, leafs and palm trees.

Relic data indicate that angiosperms of most kinds prospered prior to a new meteorite or else asteroid worn-out directly into earth 66mn years back. This astounding flare overcooked large woodlands which had grown-up from Canada to the New Mexico. Throughout United States, around 62% plant genus proceeded to go vanished, based on previous reports.

When the fire is over, the angiosperms which usually shed their leaves, rebound back with healthier leaves. One of the environmentalists Blonder, sought for the reason of why the angiosperms shed their pure green leaves during winter. The research workers aperture primitive leaves from Wyoming’s Hell-Creek Formation.

The research workers analyze from this, that the belongings of leaves possibly aided them to endure all the miserable weather. The cold usually press environment in direction of more growing tactics of plants. He also says that when photosynthesis didn’t take place then leaves usually shows a depletion effects hence deciduous class ought to be privileged over ever-green plants.

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