Dinosaurs

[hesham8]

Instead of posting one long story, I've decided to post MANY average length stories from the NBC News.

Dinosaur With Vacuum Mouth Discovered

WASHINGTON - Perhaps it was one of those eureka moments, when the scientists realized they had discovered a new dinosaur with mouth parts designed to vacuum up food.
The 110 million-year-old plant eater, discovered in the Sahara Desert, was to be unveiled Thursday by the [Only registered and activated users can see links. ].
Discoverer Paul Sereno named the elephant-sized animal Nigersaurus taqueti, an acknowledgment of the African country Niger and a French paleontologist, Philippe Taquet.

Sereno, a National Geographic explorer-in-residence and paleontologist at the [Only registered and activated users can see links. ], said the first evidence of Nigersaurus was found in the 1990s and now researchers have been able to reconstruct its skull and skeleton.
While Nigersaurus' mouth is shaped like the wide intake slot of a vacuum, it has something lacking in most cleaners — hundreds of tiny, sharp teeth to grind up its food.
The 30-foot-long Nigersaurus had a feather-light skull held close to the ground to graze like an ancient cow. Sereno described it as a younger cousin of the North American dinosaur Diplodicus.
Its broad muzzle contained more than 50 columns of teeth lined up tightly along the front edge of tis jaw. Behind each tooth more were lined up as replacements when one broke off.
Using CT scans the researchers were able study the inside of the animal's skull where the orientation of canals in the organ that helps keep balance disclosed the habitual low pose of the head, they reported.
Nigersaurus also had a backbone consisting of more air than bone.
"The vertebrae are so paper-thin that it is difficult to imagine them coping with the stresses of everyday use — but we know they did it, and they did it well," Jeffrey Wilson, assistant professor at the University of Michigan and an expedition team member, said in a statement.
The dinosaur's anatomy and lifestyle were to be detailed in the Nov. 21 issue of journal PLoS ONE, the online journal from the [Only registered and activated users can see links. ], and in the December of National Geographic magazine.

The first bones of Nigersaurus were picked up in the 1950s by French paleontologists, but the species was not named at that time. Sereno and his team honored this early work by naming the species after Taquet.
The research was partly funded by National Geographic.



Large Waddling Dinosaur Discovered







A strange, long-necked waddling dinosaur with massive arms and probably enormous claws has been discovered.

It walked only on its hind legs like the carnivorous [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] from which it evolved, but Suzhousaurus megatherioides, meaning "giant sloth-like reptile from Suzhou," was an herbivore, says researcher Daqing Li of the Third Geology and Mineral Resources Exploration Academy of Gansu Province in northwestern China, where the fossil specimen was found.

The creature belongs to a group of dinosaurs called [Only registered and activated users can see links. ], characterized by long necks capped by small heads, massive arms and claws, and flaring ribs and hips that made their bodies very wide.

"Suzhousaurus is unique in being the oldest well-known, very [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] of this group of dinosaurs," Li said.

The dinosaur was formally named, on the basis of one specimen, in a study published recently in the journal Acta Geologica Sinica. Li and his colleague Hailu You of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences found the animal's partial skeleton, which includes most of the back vertebrae, the shoulder, the front leg and part of the hips.

New era
Previously, big therizinosaurs like this were known only from about 90 million to 66 million years ago, near the end of the Age of Dinosaurs, but Suzhousaurus was around about 115 million years ago, during the early [Only registered and activated users can see links. ].

When first found, therizinosaurs were thought to be gigantic turtle relatives and later some kind of weird theropod. Then they were thought to be related to sauropods, and some people thought they were a lineage separate from sauropods and theropods that originated all the way back to the in late Late Triassic when dinosaurs first evolved, said study team member Matt Lamanna of Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

Then, in the '90s, paleontologists agreed that therizinosaurs are very modified theropods that had gone vegetarian. They have smaller leaf-shaped teeth like many other plant-eating dinosaurs rather than the sharp, serrated teeth of most other theropods. Therizinosaurs are thought to be closely related to birds. Based on the discovery of feather-like structures in one ungainly member of the group, Beipiaosaurus, therizinosaurs were probably all feathered, Lamanna said.

Despite being herbivores, therizinosaurs retained the three-clawed forelimbs typical of many other theropods, which they might have used to pull tree branches toward their mouths like giant ground sloths and for defense against [Only registered and activated users can see links. ].

Big beast
Suzhousaurus was big compared to most of its feathered theropod relatives, measuring about 7 yards (6.5 meters) from head to tail. It is one of the largest known therizinosaurs, and probably the largest known from the Early Cretaceous. Its upper arm bone is among the longest-known of any theropod, Lamanna said.

Suzhousaurus' closest known relative may be Nothronychus, fossils of which have only been found in somewhat younger rocks in New Mexico and Utah. This suggests that dinosaurs regularly [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] a transitory land bridge between North America and Asia early in the Cretaceous Period, said Lamanna and Jerry Harris of Dixie State College of Utah, who determined the evolutionary relationships of Suzhousaurus.

"More and more, paleontologists are discovering similar kinds of dinosaurs in rocks of Early Cretaceous age in both eastern Asia and western North America," Lamanna said. "The most primitive known therizinosaur comes from Utah, so the group may have originated in North America, but they apparently evolved larger body size relatively quickly once they got to Asia."
The dinosaur lived on a warm, semi-arid plain dotted with shallow, temporary lakes, said study co-author Ken Lacovara of Drexel University, who studies the environment that Suzhousaurus lived in.

"It shared its world with a host of other Early Cretaceous dinosaurs, including giant, long-necked, plant-eating sauropods and early relatives of duck-billed herbivores," he said.

Large Duck Billed Dinosaur Discovered





A toothy, big-boned dinosaur uncovered in Utah is helping scientists recreate what ancient North America looked like 75 million years ago.
Dubbed Gryposaurus monumentensis, the new species was a member of the so-called duckbilled dinosaurs, so named because their flat, bony snouts resembled duck beaks. Unlike ducks, however, duckbilled dinosaurs, also called hadrosaurs, had teeth, which they used to munch on tough, fibrous plants.
Similar to a shark, a duckbilled dinosaur essentially had a conveyer belt of teeth in its mouth, a seemingly endless supply. G. monumentensis, for example, had more than 300 teeth available in its mouth to slice up plants. And stacked below in columns hidden within the jawbone were many more replacement teeth, so a duckbill might have sported more than 800 teeth at any moment.

"It was capable of eating most any plant it wanted to," said Terry Gates, a paleontologist at the Utah Museum of Natural History and the [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] who was involved in the discovery. "With its robust jaws, no plant stood a chance."
Jaws weren't the only robust thing about G. monumentensis. All of its bones were likewise massive. Scott Sampson, another Utah Museum paleontologist who was involved in the study, called the animal the "[Only registered and activated users can see links. ] of duckbilled dinosaurs."
"It was a like a dinosaur on steroids," Sampson added. "The bones were thick, not just in the skull, but in the limbs as well."
The researchers think G. monumentensis was a key player in the [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] of ancient North America. "Duckbilled dinosaurs are the most common fossil that we find in the rock that we do our prospecting," Gates said. "From that we know they were probably one of the most common dinosaurs within this ecology 75 million years ago."
The new species is detailed in the Oct. 3 issue of the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.
Big problem
Most of what is known about G. monumentensis comes from a massive well-preserved skull and jawbone unearthed by the researchers in the Kaiparowits Formation in Utah in 2003. The team later found enough bones in other areas of the site to assemble a nearly complete skeleton. From these bones, paleontologists estimate the creature's head would have been just under three feet (one meter) in length, with an adult G. monumentensismeasuring up to 30 feet (9 meters) in length.
The heftiness of G. monumentensis poses several problems for paleontologists trying to envision what North America looked like 75 million years ago. How the massive duckbill could survive alongside other giants, and why it didn't mingle even with its own relatives, are two head-scratchers.
At that time, southern Utah was very different from the arid desert and red-rock country there today. During much of the Late Cretaceous, a shallow sea split North America into eastern and western landmasses.
The western landmass, where G. monumentensislived, was only about one-fifth the size of North America. Yet crammed on this relatively small island were several large plant-eating dinosaur species.
While G. monumentensis chomped greens in Utah, other species of duckbilled dinosaurs were grazing farther north in places such as Montana and Alberta, Canada.
Dinosaur overcrowding
Sampson estimates that as many as six duckbilled dinosaur species lived in so-called "West America" at any one time, up to 30 different duckbilled species over a span of several million years. And all of this was in addition to other large plant-eating dinosaurs, such as horned reptiles that were the ancestors of [Only registered and activated users can see links. ].
Why the multiple duckbilled species didn't intermingle more is a mystery, since scientists know of no physical barriers like rivers or mountains that would have impeded the creatures' movements. "Think about white-tailed deer that are found all over North America today," Sampson said. "We wouldn't expect to see that many kinds of species and separated on such a fine resolution."




Massive Dinosaur Bird Discovered





A gigantic [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] weighing as much as a car towered over its relatives about 70 million years ago, a new finding suggests.
The unearthed beaked dinosaur was not full-grown, yet it tipped the scales at more than 3,000 pounds. [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] who discovered its remains estimate the behemoth was just 11 years old when it perished.
Chinese scientists unearthed the skeletal remains of the dinosaur, now named Gigantoraptor erlianensis, in the Erlian Basin of Inner Mongolia, China.
At up to 16 feet tall and 26 feet long, Gigantoraptor dwarfed its relatives, a group of small, feathered theropods called Oviraptorosaurs. The hefty dinosaur weighed 35 times more than other Oviraptorosaurs.
“It’s one thing to find a big dinosaur,” said Matthew Lamanna, assistant curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, “but it’s another thing to find a big dinosaur from a lineage that was thought to be small.” Lamanna was not involved in the discovery.



In addition to its size, Gigantoraptor sported several bird-like features, such as a longer arm and more avian-like leg, not present in its relatives. The scientists say this finding sheds light on theropod (two-legged carnivorous dinosaurs) evolution leading to the [Only registered and activated users can see links. ].
Xing Xu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and Lin Tan of the Long Hao Institute in China, as well as their colleagues, discuss the finding in the June 14 issue of the journal Nature.
Oddly shaped
Gigantoraptor was also much ganglier than other dinosaurs. Typically, larger dinosaurs had proportionally stouter limbs and shorter lower legs than their smaller relatives. Relative to its size, Gigantoraptor had unusually slender limbs and lengthy legs.
“It increases our conception of the diversity of dinosaurs,” Lamanna told LiveScience.

Based on its close relationship to other feathered species, Gigantoraptor likely had feathers on its tail and arms, which were used as a display. While body-covering feathers act as insulation, and would have been necessary for the smaller dinosaurs, Gigantoraptor probably didn’t need such a cold protector, the scientists suggest.
“It’s unexpected discoveries like this that show, ‘Hey we know a lot about dinosaurs but there’s still so much left that we don’t know,’” Lamanna said.




The Tiny Dinosaur That Was Ready to Fly






Remains of a petite dinosaur reveal that some of the ancestors of birds had already shrunk in size before flight evolved.
The dinosaur, a mere 2 feet long (70 centimeters) and weighing the equivalent of two cans of soda, roamed the Earth 80 million years ago during the [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] (between 146 and 65 million years ago).

"This specimen shows that dinosaurs evolved small size earlier than we previously thought," said study team member Julia Clarke, a paleontologist at North Carolina State University and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.
Flight factors
A prerequisite for flight is the ability to lift one's body off the ground. So for [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] to take to the skies, they first had to "lose some weight." But did already-small dinosaurs shrink further in size after they took to the air and became birds? Or did they first shrink in size before they could fly?


Paleontologists had previously assumed it was the first scenario that occurred, but the new finding, detailed in the Sept. 7 issue of the journal Science, suggests otherwise.
"Paleontologists have long thought that miniaturization occurred in the earliest birds, which then facilitated the origin of flight," said lead author Alan Turner, a graduate student at the American Museum of Natural History and [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] in New York. "Now, the evidence shows that this decrease in body size occurred well before the origin of birds and that the dinosaurian ancestors of birds were, in a sense, pre-adapted for flight."
Tiny dinosaur
The tiny tot, dubbed Mahakala omnogovae, was unearthed in the southern Gobi Desert region in Mongolia. Turner and his colleagues analyzed the fossilized bones, including portions of its skull, forelimb, hindlimb and much of the vertebral column.
By comparing Mahakala with other small meat-eating dinosaurs, and birds, the paleontologists showed small size was a common feature within the two dinosaur lineages most closely [Only registered and activated users can see links. ], dromaeosaurids and troodontids.
Specifically, they placed the new species at the base of the dromoaeosaurids, a group of fierce predators equipped with switchblade-like talons, with the most famous member being "Jurassic Park" star Velociraptor.
However, the dinosaurs within these lineages didn't step down in size uniformly over time and, in fact, some of the dinosaurs' sizes ballooned by nearly three orders of magnitude.
"In this case, gigantism is kind of relative. These animals aren't reaching the size of T. rex or anything," Turner told [Only registered and activated users can see links. ].
Evolution of flight
If size-shrinking of dinosaurs occurred well before the [Only registered and activated users can see links. ], then paleontologists will have to revisit traditional beliefs about the evolution of modern-day birds.
"We had closely linked smaller size in dinosaurs, including birds, to flight, changes in growth strategy and metabolism: They got progressively smaller, grew faster and flew," Clarke said.
The new findings reveal small size occurred evolutionarily before other flight innovations. "It forces us to look at the ways we were explaining trends within this part of Dinosauria and to question our previous assumptions about causal factors in, and timing of, the acquisition of attributes seen in living birds," Clarke explained.

[therock3000]

lol. can they name something better than Nigersaurus. i know they found it from Niger, but still.. the tiny dinosaur that can fly? is that wings that i see on top of his/her arms/hands? :p

[RichardGarriot]

lololol Nigersaurus. :D

[EvilKing]

The first... uh.. thing looks very weird.
Is that Spongedino Squarehead? :D

[TruthIzMoney]

thats weird they have it showned with no teeth/ it sucks up like a vacumes :) so i guess vacumes ancestors would be nigersaures, if humans ancestors were apes? jk

[poyang]

i like the flying dinasours hehe.. i've never heard that flying dinasours exist.

[stpidgzp]

wow, newly found dinosaurs, So it means that our little birds today originated from that big one? omg, their ancestors can chew us up.hehe

[FalzarGregar]

WOWW lolzerz.A vacuum.I bet THATS how they thought of the vaccum.WOW.After seeing the mechanical Vaccum, I'm thinking the Nigersaurus is LAME and have to most lamest (not a word?) name for a dinosaur ever. lol Niger-saurus.

[hesham8]

Actually, my guess, determined by studying the picture, is that large birds, such as the ostriche and emu, originated from this large one, and its related species and subspecies:





However, this large dino-bird was, for lack of a better word, a freak. The other dino-birds in its family are quite small. They were closer to the size of this one:

Which is, in fact, just several feet long.

[jakxboiv3]

those dinos looks like an ostrich..