Dear Kitty. Some blog

This video is called Tribute to Proceratosaurus. It has also Ceratosaurus images.

From the BBC:

Oldest T. rex relative identified

Scientists have identified the most ancient fossil relative of the dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex.

The new addition to T. rex’s clan is known from a 30cm-long skull uncovered during excavations in Gloucestershire in the 1900s.

The well-preserved fossil is held in London’s Natural History Museum.

A British-German team has now uncovered evidence linking it to what may be the most famous dinosaur family of all.

The dinosaur, named Proceratosaurus, lived about 165m years ago, during the middle Jurassic Period.

The two-legged meat-eater would have measured about 3m long and weighed up to 60kg.

The palaeontologists used computed tomography (CT) techniques to generate a 3D image of the delicate skull to investigate its internal structure in meticulous detail.

Dr Angela Milner, associate keeper of palaeontology at the Natural History Museum, told BBC News: “This is a unique specimen. It is the only one of its kind known in the world.”

She added: “It was quite a surprise when our analysis showed we had the oldest known relative of T. rex.

“Fossils collected a century ago can now be studied again with the benefit of much greater knowledge of dinosaurs from around the world.”

Originally described in 1910 as a new species of Megalosaurus, the fossil was presented to the museum in 1942.

The skull had been unearthed during excavations for a reservoir close to Minchinhampton in Gloucestershire.

Dr Milner said that despite obvious differences between the skulls of Proceratosaurus and T. rex - such as their divergent sizes - the two shared many similarities.

“If you look at the animal (Proceratosaurus) in detail, it has the same kinds of windows in the side of the skull for increasing the jaw muscles,” she told BBC News.

“It has the same kinds of teeth - particularly at the front of the jaws. They’re small teeth and almost banana-shaped, which are just the kind of teeth T. rex has.”

“Inside the skull, which we were able to look at using CT scanning, there are lots of internal air spaces. Tyrannosaurus had those as well.”

Although the skull has attracted much interest because of its exquisite preservation, it has not been closely studied until now, thus, its link to the tyrannosaurs remained undiscovered.

“This is still one of the best-preserved dinosaur skulls found in Europe,” said co-author Dr Oliver Rauhut from the Bavarian State Collection for Palaeontology and Geology in Munich.

“It is really surprising that it has received so little attention since its original description.”

See also here.

From British daily The Morning Star:

Oldest dinosaur comes up for air

Tuesday 03 November 2009

Scientists have launched an excavation project to dig up Britain’s oldest dinosaur after it spent more than 210 million years entombed in rock.

The condontosaurus antiquus

No, it is Thecodontosaurus antiquus

is the oldest known dinosaur in Britain and one of the oldest in the world.

A rock specimen discovered at Tytherington Quarry in South Gloucestershire in the 1970s contains the fossilised remains of the so-called Bristol Dinosaur.

Scientists at the University of Bristol were finally able to begin the excavation project after securing a grant of £295,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

The Bristol Dinosaur project will last three years and will see a complete skeletal reconstruction of the dinosaur attempted for the first time.

During the Triassic period, the kangaroo-sized, plant-eating species lived in herds grazing on the lush islands around what is now Bristol.

The outlines of these islands can still be seen today in the shape of the land - Bristol’s Downs were one such island.

From ScienceDaily:

Newly Discovered Ankylosaur Dinosaur Is ‘Biological Version Of An Army Tank’

ScienceDaily (Nov. 1, 2009) — A husband and wife team of American paleontologists has discovered a new species of dinosaur that lived 112 million years ago during the early Cretaceous of central Montana.

The new dinosaur, a species of ankylosaur, is documented in the October issue of the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences. Ankylosaurs are the biological version of an army tank. They are protected by a plate-like armour with two sets of sharp spikes on each side of the head, and a skull so thick that even ‘raptors’ such as Deinonychus could leave barely more than a scratch.

Bill and Kris Parsons, Research associates of the Buffalo Museum of Science, found much of the skull of the newly described Tatankacephalus cooneyorum resting on the surface of a hillside in 1997. Because the skull was 90% complete, it was possible to justify this fossil as a new species.

“This is the first member of Ankylosauridae to be found within the Early Cretaceous Cloverly Geologic Formation,” said Bill Parsons, who characterized the fossil as a transitional evolutionary form between the earlier Jurassic ankylosaurs and the better known Late Cretaceous ankylosaurs.

The skull is heavily protected by two sets of lateral horns, two thick domes at the back, and smaller thickenings around the nasal region. “Heavy ornamentation and horn-like plates would have covered most of the dorsal surface of this dinosaur” said Bill Parsons.

“For years, Bill and Kris have been collecting fossils from a critical time in Earth’s history, and their hard work has paid off,” said Lawrence Witmer, professor of paleontology at Ohio University who was not involved with this study. “This is a really important find and gives us a clearer view of the evolution of armored dinosaurs. But this is just the first; I’m sure, of what will be a series of important discoveries from this team.”

Parsons also illustrated the dermal armour of this new species based on the theory by Museum of the Rockies paleontologist John R. Horner that there was an outer keratinous sheathing on it as found in modern turtle shells and bird beaks. In his new reconstruction, Parsons suggests that Tatankacephalus exhibited complex and colorful patterns rather than the dull appearance suggested in earlier ankylosaur portraits. “According to Horner’s theory, many other dinosaurs also had this kind of sheathing and also may have been diversely colored,” said Parsons.

As to its name, the broad, short horns on the back of its skull resemble the horns found on a modern buffalo skull and Tatankacephalus loosely translates as ‘Buffalo head.’ Parsons also noted, “of course any further allusions to the city of Buffalo are completely intentional as well.”

Tatanka means American bison in the Lakota language.

See also here.

Terrible Teens Of T. Rex: Young Tyrannosaurs Did Serious Battle Against Each Other: here.

Spider Research Offers Fossil Insight

This video says about itself:

A team of British researchers have been rebuilding fossils of 300-million year old spiders using computer 3-D technology- they say they are providing a clearer picture of how some extinct species once lived on early Earth.

From the BBC:

Saturday, 31 October 2009

Spider web confirmed as ‘oldest’

Spider webs encased in amber which were discovered on an East Sussex beach have been confirmed by scientists as being the world’s oldest on record.

The amber, which was found in Bexhill by fossil hunter Jamie Hiscocks and his brother Jonathan, dates back 140 million years to the Cretaceous period.

Professor Martin Brasier said they were the earliest webs to be incorporated into the fossil record.

He has published his findings in the Journal of the Geological Society.

Professor Brasier, who is a palaeobiologist at the University of Oxford, said: “This amber is very rare. It comes from the very base of the Cretaceous, which makes it one of the oldest ambers anywhere to have inclusions in it.”

‘Sticky droplets’

He added: “These spiders are distinctive and leave little sticky droplets along the spider web threads to trap prey.

“We actually have the sticky droplets preserved within the amber. These turn out to be the earliest webs that have ever been incorporated in the fossil record to our knowledge.”

His studies revealed that the spider that spun the web is related to the modern day orb-web or garden spider.

Scientists think the web became trapped in conifer resin after a forest fire and then became fossilised inside the resulting amber.

Mr Hiscocks and his brother also found the fossilised remains of an Iguanodon jaw bone on the coastline.

From Rotterdam zoo in the Netherlands:

28-10-2009

Recently, in Blijdorp zoo, two Chinese crocodile lizards have been born. After some of those special reptiles were born in 1987 and 1989, at last, after twenty years, there is success! … The people can see the Chinese crocodile lizards in the Rivièrahal. …

Chinese crocodile lizards are rare, both in the wild [China and Vietnam] and in zoos. … At the moment, in 10 European zoos, just 30 animals live (including six adult lizards plus the two babies in Blijdorp). Births are rare.

From the Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard in England:

New Sauropod dinosaur species may have been discovered in Cotswold Water Park

2:00pm Tuesday 27th October 2009

By Andy Woolfoot

A NEW species of dinosaur bone is believed to have been discovered at the Cotswold Water Park.

The fossilised remains of a giant plant-eating Sauropod dinosaur identified as Cetiosauriscus was uncovered during the restoration of a site which had been quarried by Hanson Aggregates.

Only a few bones of this type of dinosaur have ever been found in Britain and analysis of the bone indicates that it could belong to a group of Dinosaurs whose remains are very rarely found in the UK.

The Cetiosauriscus inhabited Northern Europe during the Middle Jurassic period 168 million years ago.

Several hundred pieces of bone, which were unearthed from the edge of a drainage ditch by palaeontologist Dr Neville Hollingworth, have been painstakingly pieced together over the last six months to form a giant 1.4m long leg bone.

Dr Hollingworth had to sift through several tons of clay to rescue the bones before the site was flooded.

He said: “There was a point when I wondered if I would recover all the pieces in time – although it took me over a week to get everything out of the ground it was worth it for such an exciting find.”

He added that it was most likely that the leg bone belonged to a Sauropod - the group of long-necked plant-eaters that includes the diplodocus.

“Such discoveries of dinosaur bones of this size are extremely rare because most of Britain was covered by the sea during the Jurassic period of geological time,” Dr Hollingworth continued.

“It may have fallen to the sea floor from a rotting carcass. The animal would have been almost 20m (65ft) long.

“What is most interesting is how the bone ended up in the Oxford Clay which is a marine deposit.

“The chances are that the land living animal was swept into the sea, perhaps by a flood where the carcass was eaten by scavengers. ”

Despite diligent searching no other bones of this giant reptile were found.

The Sauropod leg bone will be on display at the Fossil Fest, a family event being organised by the Cotswold Water Park Society on Sunday at the Four Pillars Hotel, South Cerney.

Paul Sereno - Dinosaurs: Phylogenetic reconstruction from Darwin to the present [Pharyngula]: here.

From the BBC:

Wednesday October 28 2009

Lizard found in a bag of salad

People working at a cafe at Scotland’s National Trust got a shock when a live lizard climbed out of a bag of salad!

Restaurant manager David Neil found the lizard, who’s being called Rocky, when he opened a packet of rocket imported from Israel.

Experts have since identified Rocky as an eight-inch-long Lebanon lizard.

For the moment, he’s living in a CD holder on top of a computer screen to keep him warm while the search is on to find a proper home.

The National Trust for Scotland’s nature expert, Lindsay Mackinlay, said it was “absolutely fantastic” that Rocky had survived his long journey.

“He has obviously been travelling for a number of days and would probably have been refrigerated throughout much of the journey,” he said.

“Thankfully he’s doing well and is very alert now that he has warmed up a bit.”

Though pliosaurs lived at the same time as dinosaurs, contrary to what this video says, they were plesiosaurs, not dinosaurs.

From British daily The Guardian:

Fossilised skull of ’sea monster’ pliosaur found on Dorset coast

Ferocious prehistoric predator’s skull is 2.4 metres and could belong to creature measuring up to 16 metres in length

* Haroon Siddique and agencies
* Tuesday 27 October 2009 11.29 GMT

The fossilised skull of a “sea monster”, which may be the largest of its type ever found, has been unearthed on the Dorset coast.

The skull from the ferocious prehistoric predator the pliosaur is 2.4 metres long and could belong to a creature measuring up to 16 metres in length from tip to tail and weighing up to 12 tonnes.

Pliosaurs were a form of plesiosaur, a group of giant aquatic reptiles that terrorised the ocean 150m years ago, around the same time that dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

They had short necks and huge, crocodile-like heads that contained immensely powerful jaws and a set of huge, razor-sharp teeth.

Richard Forrest, a plesiosaur expert, said the discovery was fortunate because pliosaur skulls were generally found crushed flat.

“What is fantastic about this new skull, not only is it absolutely enormous, but it is pretty much in 3D and not much distorted,” he said. “You have this wonderful lower jaw – and you can just see from the depth and the thickness that this was immensely strong.

“It could have taken a human in one gulp; in fact, something like a T-Rex would have been breakfast for a beast like this.”

The fossil was found by a local collector on the Jurassic Coast, a 95 mile stretch of coastline covering Dorset and East Devon that spans 185m years of geological history. Dorset county council purchased it for £20,000 with money from the heritage lottery fund, and it will now be scientifically analysed, prepared and then put on public display at Dorset County Museum. …

Experts believe it could rival recent finds made in Svalbard, an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, where beasts dubbed “the Monster” and “Predator X” [see also here] were thought to have measured 15m, and in Mexico, where the “Monster of Aramberri” was discovered in 2002, and is believed to have been of similar dimensions.

“We only have the head, so you cannot be absolutely precise,” said Martill.

“But it may be vying with the ones found in Svalbard and Mexico for the title of the world’s largest.” …

Richard Edmonds, the council’s earth science manager for the Jurassic Coast, said the rest of the creature may still be entombed in the rock but it could take decades for it to emerge.

“The ground is dipping very steeply, and as it is such a huge specimen it will be buried beneath layer upon layer of rock, so we will have to patiently wait for the next big landslide,” he said.

See also here.

This video says about itself:

Tribute to Prehistoric Crocodiles

Tribute to:
Chimerasuchus
Harpacochampsa
Baru
Isisfordia
Allodaposuchus
Araripesuchus
Armadillosauchus
Bernissartia
Chenanisuchus
Chthonosuchus
Comahuesuchus
Dakosaurus
Deinosuchus
Chenanisuchus
Teleosaurus
Geosaurus
Goniopholis
Guaranisuchus
Itasuchus
Junggarsuchus
Mahajangasuchus
Mariliasuchus
Mekosuchus
Metriorhynchus
Sarcosuchus
Notosuchus
Pallimnarchus
Pristichampsus
Purussaurus
Quinkana
Simosuchus
Stomatosuchus
Trilophosuchus
Volia

Song: Crawling In The Dark

From the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society:

What is Geosaurus? Redescription of Geosaurus giganteus (Thalattosuchia: Metriorhynchidae) from the Upper Jurassic of Bayern, Germany

MARK THOMAS YOUNG and MARCO BRANDALISE DE ANDRADE

ABSTRACT

The holotype and referred specimens of Geosaurus giganteus, a metriorhynchid crocodile from the Tithonian (Upper Jurassic) of Germany, is redescribed, along with a historical overview of the genus and species. This taxon is unique among metriorhynchids as its serrated, strongly lateromedially compressed dentition is arranged as opposing blades, suggesting it was adapted to efficiently slice through fleshy prey. A new phylogenetic analysis of Crocodylomorpha is presented, which finds G. giganteus to be nested within what is currently considered Dakosaurus, whereas the other species currently assigned to Geosaurus form a clade with Enaliosuchus and the holotype of Cricosaurus.

The phyletic relationship of G. giganteus with other metriorhynchids indicates that the current definition of the genus Geosaurus is polyphyletic, and that the inclusion of subsequent longirostrine species to this genus is in error. The re-analysis presented herein demonstrates Geosaurus to be composed of three species sensu stricto. The appropriate taxonomic amendments to the Metriorhynchidae are also provided.

From Discovery News:

Tiny Dinosaur Lived Among Giants

Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News

Oct. 20, 2009 — Though only as big as a squirrel, Fruitadens haagarorum — a recently identified dinosaur from Colorado — coexisted with enormous other species.

With the largest Fruitadens specimens weighing less than two pounds and measuring around 28 inches long, the North American dinosaur comes close to being the world’s smallest, but not quite, according to a new study.

This diminutive dinosaur is, however, now North America’s smallest known dinosaur. The 150-million-year-old creature is also the world’s smallest known ornithischian dinosaur, a group that included horned, duck-billed and armored dinosaurs, along with many other diverse species.

“The smallest known dinosaurs — just slightly smaller than Fruitadens — are from China and they represent some of the closest relatives of birds,” co-author Luis Chiappe told Discovery News.

“(The new dinosaur) may look bird-like because of its size, but in fact it isn’t very closely related to birds or Archaeopteryx (the world’s first known bird),” added Chiappe, who is director of the Natural History Museum’s Dinosaur Institute in Los Angeles.

He and an international team of experts describe the new species in the latest Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The dinosaur’s name was not inspired by edible fruit, but instead by the Fruita Paleontological Area, northwest of Grand Junction, Colo., where its remains were discovered.

Fruits were probably on its menu, however, along with eggs and almost anything else it could get in its mouth.

“The shape of Fruitadens’ teeth suggests it was probably eating both plants and small animals — i.e. insects,” co-author Laura Porro told Discovery News.

She explained that in addition to being an ornithischian dinosaur, it was also a member of a family of dinosaurs called heterodontosaurids, meaning “different-toothed lizards.” The teeth of these dinosaurs, like those of fellow omnivore humans, erupted in different shapes, with some resembling canines, others looking like molars and so on.

Most modern reptiles, such as alligators and iguanas, have more uniform teeth.

Relatives of Fruitadens, which have been found in England, South Africa and other countries, lived when “all continental land masses were connected into a single, giant continent called Pangea,” Chiappe said. Some of these dinosaurs probably then traveled to North America, explaining how the bones of the tiny dinosaur wound up in Colorado.

“Colorado is the place where the rocks containing the fossils of Fruitadens are exposed, but presumably the species lived elsewhere in North America,” he added, mentioning that it would have coexisted with other, much larger dinosaurs, such as Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus.

The presence of such gigantic herbivores may even help to explain why heterodontosaurids shrunk over the years and became omnivores. Not able to compete with the giant sauropods, “heterodontosaurs evolved to become small, ecological generalists. Think modern raccoons,” Porro said.

“Dinosaurs were once thought of as large, lumbering plant or meat eaters,” she added. “We now know there were lots of small dinosaurs about, that some dinosaurs were specialists that ate primarily fish or insects, that different species of plant-eating dinosaurs may have specialized in different types of plants, and that some dinosaurs may have climbed trees or even dug burrows.”

She concluded: “We can now envision the world of the dinosaurs as a much richer, fuller place.”

Visitors to the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles can soon view a display featuring the tiny Fruitadens next to the 70-foot-long dinosaur Mamenchisaurus, which also lived during the Late Jurassic.