New dinosaur species discovered in Natural History Museum after nearly a century
27 replies, posted
[release]
[IMG]http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02076/Spinops_2076428b.jpg[/IMG]Illustration of new horned dinosaur Spinops identified from skull bone fossils overlooked in the Natural History Museum collections for over 90 years Photo: NHM
[URL="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/nick-collins/"][IMG]http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01768/Collins_60_1768733j.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
[B]By [URL="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/nick-collins/"]Nick Collins[/URL], Science Correspondent[/B]
7:04PM GMT 06 Dec 2011
[B][IMG]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/template/ver1-0/i/share/comments.gif[/IMG][URL="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/dinosaurs/8938066/New-dinosaur-species-discovered-in-Natural-History-Museum-after-nearly-a-century.html#disqus_thread"]28 Comments[/URL][/B]
The remains of the herbivores, from the same family as the Triceratops, were excavated from a quarry alongside a large group of fossils in a so-called "bone bed" in Alberta, Canada in 1916.
But the bones were described as "rubbish" by the Museum's Keeper of Geology at the time, and lay unnoticed for almost 100 years before experts realised they belonged to an undescribed species.
They was rediscovered by a current group of researchers who decided to take another look at the fossils and realised that they were unlike any others known to science.
Dr Andrew Farke, who led the research team, said: "I knew right away that these fossils were something unusual, and it was very exciting to learn about their convoluted history.
"Here we have not just one, but multiple individuals of the same species, so we’re confident that it’s not just an odd example of a previously known species."
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The find means that paleontologists will have to redefine how the horned dinosaur group, plant-eating dinosaurs sporting large horns and bony frills on their necks, are classified.
Dr Paul Barrett, the Natural History Museum's resident researcher, said: "This discovery is of particular importance as it has implications on the way we use the spines that extend from the bony neck frill, which may have been used for identification between individuals, in our classifications of these animals.
"These embellishments are central to determining relationships between the groups of horned dinosaurs and are a sign of evolutionary relatedness."[/release]
[URL]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/dinosaurs/8938066/New-dinosaur-species-discovered-in-Natural-History-Museum-after-nearly-a-century.html[/URL]
Brilliant.
That's gotta be one of the coolest looking dinosaurs.
The dinosaurs intrigue me. It's such a mysterious time period in Earth's history, with enormous reptiles roaming the entire surface for millions of years, it's like an experiment with evolution. If it wasn't for a likely asteroid that basically let them know to give up, there could be an intelligent "dinosaur" species dominant on Earth instead.
[QUOTE=deathstarboot;33614669]The dinosaurs intrigue me. It's such a mysterious time period in Earth's history, with enormous reptiles roaming the entire surface for millions of years, it's like an experiment with evolution. If it wasn't for a likely asteroid that basically let them know to give up, there could be an intelligent "dinosaur" species dominant on Earth instead.[/QUOTE]
Be glad in the fact that dinosaurs are not truly gone. Birds are the closest living relatives citing their links back to the maniraptora family. If geneticists wanted to truly bring back a dinosaur, it'd be through a chicken because we've already mapped their genomes and can spur embryonic development inside the egg to produce inherited, but dormant traits.
God dammit saying this while owning chickens that are too stupid to lay on their eggs makes me wish I knew someone who could do this. I want a fucking raptor, or at least a mutant chicken creature.
[QUOTE=deathstarboot;33614669]The dinosaurs intrigue me. It's such a mysterious time period in Earth's history, with enormous reptiles roaming the entire surface for millions of years, it's like an experiment with evolution. If it wasn't for a likely asteroid that basically let them know to give up, there could be an intelligent "dinosaur" species dominant on Earth instead.[/QUOTE]
Though my Jurassic period knowledge could be expended in a single breath (I'm pretty sure there were some dinosaurs), I was under the impression that the most intelligent dinosaur species were small and bird-like, rather than gigantic and reptilian, and I would not want to tango with a race of hyper-intelligent raptor people with a few million years' more evolution under their belts than us.
Given the massive amounts of food needed to sustain the giant dinosaur species, it's likely that they would have died out eventually anyway, meteor or no meteor. Or, at the very least, they would have shrunk down to more manageable sizes.
[QUOTE=purvisdavid1;33615123]Be glad in the fact that dinosaurs are not truly gone. Birds are the closest living relatives citing their links back to the maniraptora family. If geneticists wanted to truly bring back a dinosaur, it'd be through a chicken because we've already mapped their genomes and can spur embryonic development inside the egg to produce inherited, but dormant traits.
God dammit saying this while owning chickens that are too stupid to lay on their eggs makes me wish I knew someone who could do this. I want a fucking raptor, or at least a mutant chicken creature.[/QUOTE]In Jurassic Russia, poultry eats you.
[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;33615217]Though my Jurassic knowledge could be expended in a single breath (there were some dinosaurs, of that I'm pretty sure), I was under the impression that the most intelligent dinosaur species were small and bird-like, rather than gigantic and reptilian, and I would not want to tango with a race of hyper-intelligent raptor people with a few million years' more evolution under their belts than us.
Given the massive amounts of food needed to sustain the giant dinosaur species, it's likely that they would have died out eventually anyway, meteor or no meteor. Or, at the very least, they would have shrunk down to more manageable sizes.[/QUOTE]
Like a lot of things concerning Dinosaurs, when someone talks about intelligent Dinosaurs it can be misleading. Most Dinosaurs were basically two legged Crocodiles in terms of brain power, even the smartest Dinosaur was only as smart as the smartest modern day bird, but the trend was shifting toward intelligence by the end of the Cretaceous though it wasn't a huge leap in intelligence. Even so they were far more advanced than any modern animal in terms of their overall biology.
As for food, I highly doubt this was a problem. In North America during the last 10 million years of the Mesozoic alone, large herbivorous Dinosaurs such a Edmontosaurus or Pachyrhinosaurus roamed in herds numbering in the tens of thousands. It's not especially uncommon to find massive bonebeds of herbivorous Dinosaurs that died during a migration over a large waterway, you see the same thing today in large herds of Caribou and Wildebeest when they migrate over a waterway.
The key is there were no Humans to push the animals into small pockets, the Dinosaurs were free to cover the entire planet and they did.
[QUOTE=GlebGuy;33614526]That's gotta be one of the coolest looking dinosaurs.[/QUOTE]
Naw man, Feathered Raptors are the coolest.
[img]http://pterosauria.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/utahraptor.jpg[/img]
[QUOTE=GlebGuy;33614526]That's gotta be one of the coolest looking dinosaurs.[/QUOTE]
The thing is, we really don't have any evidence of how dinosaurs were colored. Everything you see on TV in that respect is complete speculation; T-rex could have been purple for all we know.
Those stripes and blue blotches in the picture don't really have a reason for being there besides making it look more interesting.
[QUOTE=Katatonic717;33616186]Naw man, Feathered Raptors are the coolest.
[img]http://pterosauria.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/utahraptor.jpg[/img][/QUOTE]
[IMG]http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/imagebuzz/web05/2010/11/10/7/how-t-rex-really-looked-like-24746-1289391497-24.jpg[/IMG]
Naw man, feathered T-Rexes is where it's at. Look at those tiny-ass wings.
[QUOTE=notxmania;33616386]The thing is, we really don't have any evidence of how dinosaurs were colored. Everything you see on TV in that respect is complete speculation; T-rex could have been purple for all we know.
Those stripes and blue blotches in the picture don't really have a reason for being there besides making it look more interesting.[/QUOTE]
It's thought that pigments in fossilized feathers might be preserved, that being the case the feathers of Archeopteryx may have been reddish/copper colored similar to this chicken:
[Img]http://i.imgur.com/15XZj.jpg[/Img]
And skin imprints of some Dinosaurs such as Edmontosaurus have scales in striped patterns, some hypothesize that the pattern of the scales may have something to do with coloration.
Skin imprints aren't exactly new, but they're finding more and more preserved skin imprints associated with skeletons, it was once thought that the skin was lost entirely so no one bothered to look for it unless it was right in front of them and they'd just bore right through where the skin and soft tissue would have been to get to the skeleton.
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkjTdiIVH8s[/media]
inb4 reptillians
Uh
That looks like a Kosmoceratops, a Dinosaur that's already been discovered.
Sorry, it's not always a "New Species". Torosaurus is off the list, it's been debunked as just a fully grown Triceratops.
/bubblebursting
[QUOTE=Zillamaster55;33620664]Uh
That looks like a Kosmoceratops, a Dinosaur that's already been discovered.
Sorry, it's not always a "New Species". Torosaurus is off the list, it's been debunked as just a fully grown Triceratops.
/bubblebursting[/QUOTE]
Looks more like an Anchiceratops or a Pentaceratops with stubby horns. Pretty much a generic Chasmosaur.
The jury is still out on Horner's little 'Torosaurus = Triceratops' theory too, last I heard there were a few papers coming out to refute his theory. There's a lot more to Ceratopsians than just "They look similar" because on the inside they can be completely different.
Horner also suggests Stygimoloch and Dracorex are just juvenile Pachycephalosaurus as well.
Anyone ever seen a featherless bird? They look just like dinosaurs
Dinosaurs are awesome in that most of them were naturally built like war machines.
[QUOTE=purvisdavid1;33615123]Be glad in the fact that dinosaurs are not truly gone. Birds are the closest living relatives citing their links back to the maniraptora family. If geneticists wanted to truly bring back a dinosaur, it'd be through a chicken because we've already mapped their genomes and can spur embryonic development inside the egg to produce inherited, but dormant traits.
God dammit saying this while owning chickens that are too stupid to lay on their eggs makes me wish I knew someone who could do this. I want a fucking raptor, or at least a mutant chicken creature.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, the meteorite killed off the cool creatures and left us with the ugly birds.
[QUOTE=shian;33623481]Yeah, the meteorite killed off the cool creatures and left us with the ugly birds.[/QUOTE]
birds are great
crows are like the most intelligent animal after us
[QUOTE=Contag;33624982]birds are great
crows are like the most intelligent animal after us[/QUOTE]
Most of the Corvids are pretty intelligent, but I'm pretty sure there are a few other species that are considered more intelligent.
[img]http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSrkUkY3lt_TNe0BYiEbYceXT3BbU4hEabaREi0_O9sh3Js_p3cGg[/img]
[quote]Savage's book, Crows: Encounters with the Wise Guys of the Avian World (October 2005), explores the burgeoning field of crow research, which suggests that the birds share with humans several hallmarks of higher intelligence, including tool use and sophisticated social behavior.
The shared traits exist despite the fact that crows and humans sit on distinct branches of the genetic tree.
"No other animal—not even a chimp—has ever spontaneously solved a problem like this, a fact that puts crows in a class with us as toolmakers," Savage writes in her book.[/quote]
[editline]8th December 2011[/editline]
[quote]Crows are clever, inquisitive, and could possibly be more intelligent even than great apes. Unlike many primates, crows have been shown to be able to obtain food without having it fall into a trap. Crows do "reason casually and use analogy in a way not seen even in our closest relatives, the great apes," announces the Telegraph which published information from a team at Auckland University.
Teams of scientists from the Royal Society: Biological Sciences have put together experiments that were designed to show us exactly how smart these birds are. In fact, the experiments had been created specifically for that reason, using trap-tubes to see if the crows could find a way to access treats while avoiding the traps. It was once thought that these sort of situations called for logic that, until then, had yet to show in animals; to succeed in the experiment, the test subject would need to think about how the trap works. Studies included six New Caledonian crows who were presented with both trap-tube and trap-tables. The crows were all able to solve the problems of obtaining the trapped treats, while twenty species of great apes who were also presented with the same trap-table experiment failed. "The crows' success with the trap-table suggests that the crows were transferring their casual understanding to this novel problem by analogical reasoning. However, the crows didn't understand the difference between a hole with a bottom and one without. This suggests the level of cognition here is intermediate between human-like reasoning and associative learning." announces Proff Russell Gray of the University of Auckland where they carried out there studies.
Crows also remember people and places. They have good seeing, and even when you're just walking by on the sidewalk, don't be surprised to see a crow sitting above on a telephone pole watching you. They're not only watching you, but learning from you. During studies at University of Washington in Seattle, it was discovered that crows were able to recognize different individuals. One experiment at the University involved wearing masks and walking around areas with lots of crows. Whenever a man would put on a rather distorted looking mask, the crows would automatically call and warn each other about this strange masked human. It was also concluded in these studies that crows passed this information onto their young; chicks who watched their parents warning about masked humans, grew up retaining those warnings. Whenever a masked person walked around the grown chicks-these chicks were tagged and tracked as adults-the crows would remember what their parents had done and would in turn, react the same way.
Social
Many birds are social animals. When crows are together, it's called a "murder." Parents will work together to rear their young, along with a possible older chick from the last brood. When a family member is injured, they will gather around it to help protect the bird.
Crows are not only social, but they are one of the few animals who are said to recognize death, and to mourn when another of their species dies. It's said that when a member of the murder dies, the whole flock will come together, and though they normally speak to one another in soft cooing noises, or give shrill squawks to warn each other, during times of grief, the flock is all but silent. After a while of being gathered around their dead family member, they will eventually take off, silently, like one big black mass in the sky. People who have witnessed this act claim it to be rather "eerie."
Like any normal family, crows speak to one another. There are two different noises dominant among crow language. One is that loud cackling that we hear all the time, which is usually a warning to one another. Another way to speak is to murmur to each other, this is almost like having a conversation. But, another thing that crows do, is not just talk to each other, but they gossip. According to Professor David Craig who co-authored a study that was published in Animal Behaviour, crows will hold grudges and, if a human hurts a crow, then they will gossip around, spreading the word until pretty much every bird in the crow world recognizes the individual assailant. Craig says that, "Crows hold a grudge, and they are big gossips. They spread the information around. If you're bad to one crow, many more may hear about it."
There is a possibility that, just as crows recognize dangerous people, they might also recognize those individuals who act positive toward the birds. One example that could help to justify this reasoning, is Kaeli Swift who, at her college campus, had fed several crows treats. She fed them along with another woman who had been feeding the crows for several years. The crows took food from the woman they knew much more often than they did Kaeli.
Thriving Around Humans
So crows are definitely smart. In fact, you could say that though this is their talent, it is also a downfall to their reputation; it is because they are so intelligent, that people don't like them. I say this because crows are one of the few animals on earth that are able to not only survive, but thrive when humans themselves are thriving and growing. The more we grow, the more they thrive. So, next time you see a crow picking through the garbage, just remember, it's our garbage they're cleaning up.
Crows will not only thrive on garbage, though. They use other human built attributes to their benefit. Roads and traffic can come in handy when you're hungry and have a hard nut to crack. Crows have been known to (and I've also seen this happen in front of my very eyes) drop nuts down onto busy streets to shatter them open under cars that are driving by. Many crows will even wait for the cross-walk light to come on or for the traffic light to turn red before diving down and eating their meal in safety. [/quote]
[editline]8th December 2011[/editline]
Now, the literature is divided on whether or not this demonstrates insight or merely an advanced measure of psychomotor cognition, but at the same time, the literature is divided on how much a similar mechanism is responsible for our own intelligence.
I know because I had to study this stuff
crows are as intelligent, if not more, than our primate cousins
I want to meet someone who knows something about giving chickens tails, teeth, true arms, and a more reptilian face. God I'd love to raise raptor like chickens.
Seriously, who's never wondered what tail or arms taste like?
[QUOTE=Contag;33625143][editline]8th December 2011[/editline]
[editline]8th December 2011[/editline]
Now, the literature is divided on whether or not this demonstrates insight or merely an advanced measure of psychomotor cognition, but at the same time, the literature is divided on how much a similar mechanism is responsible for our own intelligence.
I know because I had to study this stuff
crows are as intelligent, if not more, than our primate cousins[/QUOTE]
Speaking of intelligent animals, Ants are cool. They have agriculture, cattle, slavery and warfare. Well, I'm not saying those last two are cool, but you know what I mean.
Holy shit, a dinosaur whose natural habitat was a museum? That's radical.
[QUOTE=st0rmforce;33625127]Most of the Corvids are pretty intelligent, but I'm pretty sure there are a few other species that are considered more intelligent.
[/QUOTE]
If you compare the ways in which crows and primates display logic, problem-solving and other forms of intelligence, I'd say it's fairly clear that the former are the more intelligent of the two.
But crows don't look like us, so of course we think primates are smarter.
[editline]9th December 2011[/editline]
Basically what Contag said.
[QUOTE=Katatonic717;33616186]Naw man, Feathered Raptors are the coolest.
[img]http://pterosauria.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/utahraptor.jpg[/img][/QUOTE]
Is that how some raptors actually looked like?
Because then it's almost like a chicken but with flesh eating mouth. And bigger too.
[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;33626183]Holy shit, a dinosaur whose natural habitat was a museum? That's radical.[/QUOTE]
Must be a nerdosaurus.
[QUOTE=gazzy_GUI;33632176]Must be a nerdosaurus.[/QUOTE]
Holy shit I just found my old crayon drawing of a Nerdosaurus
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