tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/jurassic-7115/articlesJurassic – The Conversation2022-06-14T11:40:55Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1847862022-06-14T11:40:55Z2022-06-14T11:40:55ZJurassic World Dominion: a palaeontologist on what the film gets wrong about dinosaurs<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468455/original/file-20220613-45569-qfwhh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=85%2C39%2C4316%2C2435&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The T-Rex is a popular Jurassic World character</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.alamy.com/jurassic-world-3-le-monde-dapres-jurassic-world-dominion-2022-de-colin-trevorrow-prod-db-universal-pictures-amblin-entertainment-latina-pictu-image471393876.html?pv=1&stamp=2&imageid=DACA0A26-9535-40CE-A3C6-AA521ACE2749&p=728508&n=0&orientation=0&pn=1&searchtype=0&IsFromSearch=1&srch=foo%3dbar%26st%3d0%26pn%3d1%26ps%3d100%26sortby%3d2%26resultview%3dsortbyPopular%26npgs%3d0%26qt%3djurassic%2520world%2520dominion%26qt_raw%3djurassic%2520world%2520dominion%26lic%3d3%26mr%3d0%26pr%3d0%26ot%3d0%26creative%3d%26ag%3d0%26hc%3d0%26pc%3d%26blackwhite%3d%26cutout%3d%26tbar%3d1%26et%3d0x000000000000000000000%26vp%3d0%26loc%3d0%26imgt%3d0%26dtfr%3d%26dtto%3d%26size%3d0xFF%26archive%3d1%26groupid%3d%26pseudoid%3d%26a%3d%26cdid%3d%26cdsrt%3d%26name%3d%26qn%3d%26apalib%3d%26apalic%3d%26lightbox%3d%26gname%3d%26gtype%3d%26xstx%3d0%26simid%3d%26saveQry%3d%26editorial%3d%26nu%3d%26t%3d%26edoptin%3d%26customgeoip%3dGB%26cap%3d1%26cbstore%3d1%26vd%3d0%26lb%3d%26fi%3d2%26edrf%3d0%26ispremium%3d1%26flip%3d0%26pl%3d">Alamy </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Almost 30 years after Jurassic Park first screened, the beloved franchise is back with its latest film Jurassic World Dominion, released in the UK on Friday. Our favourite characters, such as the <em>Tyrannosaurus-rex</em> and <em>Velociraptor</em>, return and we meet some new ones, like the giant predator <em>Giganotosaurus</em>.</p>
<p>But how accurate is the film’s portrayal of dinosaurs?</p>
<p>In the opening scenes, we are reintroduced to world-renowned palaeontologist Alan Grant, who charmed millions of viewers in the first film. Once again, he is on a dig in Utah, unearthing fossils. We see him casually brush sand away to reveal a perfect dinosaur skeleton. Digs such as these are happening all over the world right now. It’s how palaeontologists learn about dinosaurs. In reality, <a href="https://dinomuseum.ca/2014/02/12/ask-a-palaeo-how-long-does-it-take-to-put-a-dinosaur-skeleton-on-display/">digs are not so easy</a>. They can involve long hours of hacking away using hammers and chisels to remove hard rock chip by chip. Even then, we try to avoid damaging bones, and leave the work of removing fine material from close to the bone until we are back in the lab. It can take several days to remove a single bone from rock.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Alan Grant wearing a lumberjack shirt and broad rimmed hat" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468462/original/file-20220613-47433-25le3b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468462/original/file-20220613-47433-25le3b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468462/original/file-20220613-47433-25le3b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468462/original/file-20220613-47433-25le3b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468462/original/file-20220613-47433-25le3b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468462/original/file-20220613-47433-25le3b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468462/original/file-20220613-47433-25le3b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sam Neill as Dr. Alan Grant in the 2001 instalment, Jurassic Park III.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-jul-16-2001-hollywood-ca-usa-sam-neill-as-dr-alan-grant-in-from-the-90110391.html?pv=1&stamp=2&imageid=00214AD8-3BE7-4A73-AEC9-6074073E59FF&p=372758&n=0&orientation=0&pn=1&searchtype=0&IsFromSearch=1&srch=foo%3dbar%26st%3d0%26pn%3d1%26ps%3d100%26sortby%3d2%26resultview%3dsortbyPopular%26npgs%3d0%26qt%3dalan%2520grant%26qt_raw%3dalan%2520grant%26lic%3d3%26mr%3d0%26pr%3d0%26ot%3d0%26creative%3d%26ag%3d0%26hc%3d0%26pc%3d%26blackwhite%3d%26cutout%3d%26tbar%3d1%26et%3d0x000000000000000000000%26vp%3d0%26loc%3d0%26imgt%3d0%26dtfr%3d%26dtto%3d%26size%3d0xFF%26archive%3d1%26groupid%3d%26pseudoid%3d%26a%3d%26cdid%3d%26cdsrt%3d%26name%3d%26qn%3d%26apalib%3d%26apalic%3d%26lightbox%3d%26gname%3d%26gtype%3d%26xstx%3d0%26simid%3d%26saveQry%3d%26editorial%3d%26nu%3d%26t%3d%26edoptin%3d%26customgeoip%3dGB%26cap%3d1%26cbstore%3d1%26vd%3d0%26lb%3d%26fi%3d2%26edrf%3d0%26ispremium%3d1%26flip%3d0%26pl%3d">Alamy</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Making progress</h2>
<p>Thanks to the fossils found by palaeontologists on such excavations, we have learned much about dinosaurs since the first Jurassic Park film, including the fact that many dinosaurs in the film, particularly predators, should have <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/epdf/10.1098/rsbl.2015.0229">feathers</a>. This includes the <em>Velociraptor</em> . The film features the young of many predators, many of whom would have likely been covered with downy feathers like fledgling birds today, but none of them are shown with these feathers. </p>
<p>Other dinosaurs in the film do have feathers. Some feathered dinosaurs, particularly early examples, had simple filaments, like the feathers of a chick rather than an adult bird. Later examples (such as raptors) developed more complex and adult bird-like feathers. The mighty herbivore <em>Therezinosaurus</em>, with claws longer than a human child, is covered with downy filaments in the film as it would <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/20670.pdf">have been in life</a>. We do also meet a raptor that is covered from head to toe in fully formed, adult bird-like feathers. In this respect, Dominion is spot on.</p>
<p>Another design quirk Dominion gets almost right is the colour of these feathers. The raptor is mostly red. Palaeontologists have been able to work out the colour of some dinosaur feathers based on <a href="http://doc.rero.ch/record/210394/files/PAL_E4402.pdf">preserved pigments</a>. These dinosaurs were mostly black, brown and red.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Huge velociraptor with red and grey feathers approaches two humans" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468457/original/file-20220613-24084-de5b1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468457/original/file-20220613-24084-de5b1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468457/original/file-20220613-24084-de5b1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468457/original/file-20220613-24084-de5b1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468457/original/file-20220613-24084-de5b1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468457/original/file-20220613-24084-de5b1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468457/original/file-20220613-24084-de5b1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The velociraptor is correctly shown with red feathers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.alamy.com/jurassic-world-dominion-2022-directed-by-colin-trevorrow-credit-amblin-entertainment-universal-pictures-perfect-world-pictures-album-image470566869.html?pv=1&stamp=2&imageid=D12579B1-B68A-41AF-A217-D28241208551&p=697459&n=0&orientation=0&pn=1&searchtype=0&IsFromSearch=1&srch=foo%3dbar%26st%3d0%26pn%3d1%26ps%3d100%26sortby%3d2%26resultview%3dsortbyPopular%26npgs%3d0%26qt%3djurassic%2520world%2520dominion%26qt_raw%3djurassic%2520world%2520dominion%26lic%3d3%26mr%3d0%26pr%3d0%26ot%3d0%26creative%3d%26ag%3d0%26hc%3d0%26pc%3d%26blackwhite%3d%26cutout%3d%26tbar%3d1%26et%3d0x000000000000000000000%26vp%3d0%26loc%3d0%26imgt%3d0%26dtfr%3d%26dtto%3d%26size%3d0xFF%26archive%3d1%26groupid%3d%26pseudoid%3d%26a%3d%26cdid%3d%26cdsrt%3d%26name%3d%26qn%3d%26apalib%3d%26apalic%3d%26lightbox%3d%26gname%3d%26gtype%3d%26xstx%3d0%26simid%3d%26saveQry%3d%26editorial%3d%26nu%3d%26t%3d%26edoptin%3d%26customgeoip%3dGB%26cap%3d1%26cbstore%3d1%26vd%3d0%26lb%3d%26fi%3d2%26edrf%3d0%26ispremium%3d1%26flip%3d0%26pl%3d">Alamy</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Unfortunately, there are many elements of dinosaur design the film gets wrong. Take the <em>Giganotosaurus</em>. We see this enormous predator with a series of spines along the back of his neck, and another set in the middle of his back. While <em>Giganotosaurus</em> certainly had a strong backbone, there is absolutely no evidence of <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/377224a0.pdf">spines like this</a>, and the design doesn’t look realistic to me.</p>
<h2>Size matters</h2>
<p><em>Giganotosaurus</em> falls victim to the biggest design crime of the franchise: size. So many of the dinosaurs are simply too big. <em>Giganotosaurus</em> looks much larger than <em>T-rex</em> and is able to easily beat it in a fight. While there is some debate about which animal was actually larger, the two were <a href="https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/top-5-biggest-and-smallest-theropod-dinosaurs/">similarly sized</a>, and would have been quite evenly matched. The giant ocean predator <em>Mososaurus</em> is also <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/epdf/10.1098/rstb.1995.0019">exaggerated</a> in its size. Near the end of the film it is shown as twice as large as a humpback whale. It would have been slightly smaller than an adult humpback. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="The gigantosaurus roams a grassy landscape" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468458/original/file-20220613-45505-vbzdfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468458/original/file-20220613-45505-vbzdfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=240&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468458/original/file-20220613-45505-vbzdfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=240&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468458/original/file-20220613-45505-vbzdfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=240&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468458/original/file-20220613-45505-vbzdfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468458/original/file-20220613-45505-vbzdfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468458/original/file-20220613-45505-vbzdfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Giganotosaurus, prehistoric predator of the cretaceous period.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/3d-rendering-giganotosaurus-prehistoric-predator-cretaceous-2116925585">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Another important creature in this film is the locust, genetically engineered with “cretaceous genes” to reach terrifying sizes. Giant insects did exist in the past – including dragonflies of up to one metre across – but during a period called the <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/carboniferous">Carboniferous</a>, which was almost twice as long ago as the period in which the oldest dinosaurs lived. Oxygen levels in the Carboniferous era were over <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/110808-ancient-insects-bugs-giants-oxygen-animals-science">50% higher</a> than oxygen levels today. With or without the right genes, locusts this big couldn’t survive in today’s oxygen levels.</p>
<p>Many new beasts are introduced in the film. Our heroes fend off a gang of the <em>Dimetrodon</em> (which has a structure like a sail on its back) and come face to face with a small lizard-like creature bearing large tusks, known as a dicynodont. Contrary to popular belief, these animals were <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14772019.2011.631042?needAccess=true">not actually dinosaurs</a>. They lived in a time called the <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/permian#:%7E:text=The%20Permian%20period%2C%20which%20ended,region%20frozen%20under%20ice%20caps.">Permian</a>, more than 30 million years before dinosaurs first appeared. They are actually members of a group called the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/animal/Synapsida">synapsids</a> that includes the ancestors of mammals. They are more closely related to you and me than they are to any dinosaur.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="3D impression of a giant lizard like creature" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468459/original/file-20220613-25540-1yqvu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468459/original/file-20220613-25540-1yqvu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468459/original/file-20220613-25540-1yqvu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468459/original/file-20220613-25540-1yqvu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468459/original/file-20220613-25540-1yqvu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468459/original/file-20220613-25540-1yqvu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468459/original/file-20220613-25540-1yqvu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A dimetrodon.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/3d-rendered-illustration-dimetrodon-2114900072">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Jurassic World Dominion has some merit. The introduction of feathers and new species show just how much we’ve learned in the last 20 years. However, it is filled with mistakes, speculation, and exaggeration. Museums can be a great place to learn some real facts about dinosaurs in a way Jurassic Park Dominion can never compete with. Watch this mediocre, bland action film by all means, but if you want to learn anything about dinosaurs, I suggest you start elsewhere.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184786/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben Igielman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The biggest crime of the film was exaggerating the size of dinosaurs.Ben Igielman, PhD student palaeontology , University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1702752021-10-21T04:44:45Z2021-10-21T04:44:45ZAustralia’s oldest dinosaur was a peaceful vegetarian, not a fierce predator<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427667/original/file-20211021-17-1j3e1kf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=32%2C19%2C4249%2C2824&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anthony Romilio</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ipswich, about 40 kilometres west of Brisbane, seems an unlikely place to find dinosaur fossils. Yet the area has produced the oldest evidence of dinosaurs in Australia.</p>
<p>A fresh look at these fossils now reveals they aren’t what they first seemed, and it’s prompting us to reconsider how the story of Australia’s dinosaurs began.</p>
<p>In research <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08912963.2021.1984447">published</a> today in Historical Biology, we reanalyse a sequence of 220-million-year-old tracks from the Ipswich Coal Measures, thought to have belonged to a carnivorous dinosaur. </p>
<p>We show they actually belonged to an early sauropodomorph — a distant relative of the plant-eating sauropods that roamed the planet much later, during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. This is the first time fossil evidence of early sauropodomorphs has been found in Australia. </p>
<h2>Subterranean dinosaur tracks</h2>
<p>The Ipswich area was once the principal source of coal for Queensland. Its suburbs including Ebbw Vale, New Chum and Swanbank were dotted with underground mines during the late 1800s and the first half of the twentieth century.</p>
<p>These mining operations involved the creation of deep shafts and tunnels, from which miners could access deposits of coal sandwiched between other layers of rock. Some tunnels would descend hundreds of metres below the surface.</p>
<p>The coal would be removed from the seam by hand, and pillars were left in its place to support the ceiling of the resulting underground “room”. It was difficult and dangerous work.</p>
<p>In 1964, miners working at the Rhondda colliery in New Chum made a startling discovery. As they removed the coal from a seam they were following 213 metres below the surface, a series of giant, three-toed tracks became exposed in the ceiling of the mine shaft. For the miners, it was as if a dinosaur had just walked over their heads.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427699/original/file-20211021-16-1f6x0w5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427699/original/file-20211021-16-1f6x0w5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427699/original/file-20211021-16-1f6x0w5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427699/original/file-20211021-16-1f6x0w5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427699/original/file-20211021-16-1f6x0w5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427699/original/file-20211021-16-1f6x0w5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427699/original/file-20211021-16-1f6x0w5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427699/original/file-20211021-16-1f6x0w5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fossilised plant remains found in association with the tracks provide a fascinating window into the world of Australia’s first dinosaurs. The highly diverse flora comprised a dense groundcover of ferns, cycad-like plants and horsetails that grew under a canopy of gingko, voltzialean conifers and seed-ferns (corystosperms), like this <em>Dicroidium dubium</em>.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Steven Salisbury</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These tracks remain the oldest-known dinosaur fossils in the entire continent. They’d been made by a dinosaur walking across a layer of swampy vegetation, which would be extracted as coal 220 million years later. Buried under fine silt and mud, they’d been preserved as natural casts. </p>
<p>It had been assumed some type of predatory dinosaur made the tracks. The only problem was the footprints were reportedly about 40–46 centimetres long. This would suggest the track-maker was just under 2m high at the hips.</p>
<p>This isn’t necessarily large for a theropod such as <em>Allosaurus fragillis</em>, which was about this size. <em>Tyrannosaurus rex</em> was even bigger, with a hip height of about 3.2m. </p>
<p>But the tracks found in Ipswich were created during the Late Triassic about 220 million years ago — 65 million years before <em>Allosaurus</em> and 150 million years before <em>T. rex</em>. And fossil evidence from around the world indicates theropods of a larger size didn’t appear until the start of the Early Jurrasic Period, 200 million years ago. </p>
<p>Was something unusual afoot in Australia during the Late Triassic?</p>
<p>As part of a broader review of Australian dinosaur tracks, we decided to take a closer look at the Rhondda colliery tracks. The mine has long been closed, so the original tracks are no longer accessible, but archival photographs and a plaster cast are held at the Queensland Museum. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/introducing-australotitan-australias-largest-dinosaur-yet-spanned-the-length-of-2-buses-162177">Introducing Australotitan: Australia's largest dinosaur yet spanned the length of 2 buses</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<h2>Dispelling the myth of the ‘Triassic terror’</h2>
<p>Using the photos and cast, we created a 3D digital model of the track to allow a more detailed comparison with other dinosaur tracks from around the world. </p>
<p>Our study revealed two important things. First, the footprints were not as big as initially reported. Excluding drag marks and other unrelated surface features, they are close to 32–34cm long (not 40–46cm as previously documented). </p>
<p>Second, the shape of the footprints and the sequence in which they were made is more consistent with early sauropodomorphs. Sauropodomorphs were the distant relatives of the lumbering sauropods of the Late Jurassic and subsequent Cretaceous Period. </p>
<p>The towering Triassic terror of the Ipswich Coal Measures was no more. In its place was a peaceful plant-eater.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Australia's oldest dinosaur, reconstructed based on a fossilised tracks founnd in 220 million year old rocks from Ipswich." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427698/original/file-20211021-24-ztn4dr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427698/original/file-20211021-24-ztn4dr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=195&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427698/original/file-20211021-24-ztn4dr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=195&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427698/original/file-20211021-24-ztn4dr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=195&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427698/original/file-20211021-24-ztn4dr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=245&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427698/original/file-20211021-24-ztn4dr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=245&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427698/original/file-20211021-24-ztn4dr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=245&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hypothetical reconstruction of the Ipswich sauropodomorph dinosaur, alongside an 3D orthographic image of one of the fossilised tracks form the Rhondda colliery, with a 1.8m person for scale.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anthony Romilio</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The remains of early sauropodomorph dinosaurs have been found in Upper Triassic rocks, aged between 220 million and 200 million years, in continental Europe, Argentina, Brazil and South Africa.</p>
<p>And by the start of the Jurassic, 200 million years ago, they had achieved a near global distribution, with fossils in North America, China and Antarctica. This isn’t surprising, given the continents at the time were still connected in a single landmass called Pangaea. </p>
<p>Our new interpretation of the Rhondda colliery tracks shows early sauropodomorphs lived in Australia, too, and that Australia’s first dinosaurs were friendlier than we thought.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-march-of-the-titanosaurs-the-snake-creek-tracksite-unveiled-161039">The march of the titanosaurs: the Snake Creek Tracksite unveiled</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/170275/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven W. Salisbury has received funding from the Australian Research Councile and National Science Foundation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anthony Romilio has received funding from Australian Geographic.</span></em></p>The oldest fossil evidence for dinosaurs in Australia came as a surprise when it was dug out by coal miners working in Ipswich.Steven W. Salisbury, PhD; Senior Lecturer, School of Biological Sciences, The University of QueenslandAnthony Romilio, PhD, Independent Researcher, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1541882021-04-21T08:26:26Z2021-04-21T08:26:26ZFat-footed tyrannosaur parents couldn’t keep up with their skinnier offspring, fossil footprints reveal<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381455/original/file-20210130-18933-t5ob7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=85%2C101%2C1745%2C1005&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Artwork by José Vitor Silva. </span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Tyrannosaurus rex</em> is perhaps the most famous of all dinosaurs. It and its closest kin, a group referred to as “tyrannosaurs”, have been embedded in popular culture as powerful and mobile predators. </p>
<p>Consider the below scene from the 1993 blockbuster Jurassic Park; an adult <em>T. rex</em> chases down a speeding Jeep — much to the thrill of the audience. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rxqHVoZ0fzc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The 1993 Jeep chase scene from Jurassic Park remains an iconic movie moment.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But Jeeps and fanciful theme parks aside, are these depictions realistic? </p>
<p>Our research, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02724634.2021.1878201">published today</a> in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, shows while young tyrannosaurs may have indeed been the vision of wrath depicted above, they likely became broader-footed, bulky and less mobile in adulthood. </p>
<h2>A new perspective</h2>
<p>Previous arguments about the way tyrannosaurs did (or didn’t) run either focused on their bones, or relied on computer models to simulate their running abilities.</p>
<p>Apart from being smaller, the skeletons of young tyrannosaurs are also more lightly built than their bulkier parents, which suggests they were probably faster and more nimble for their body size. Juveniles tended to have relatively longer legs and smaller skulls, and weighed much <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/2004/040809/full/040809-7.html">less than a fully grown adult</a>. </p>
<p>In fact, the volume of leg muscles needed to sustain a fast running pace in a six-tonne adult <em>T. rex</em> would have probably been <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/4151018a">biologically impossible</a>. This would require the dinosaur having as much as 86% of its total body weight just as leg muscle!</p>
<p>However, skeletons only represent part of the story. Fossilised footprints provide a unique snapshot in time of how an animal (or species) moved about its environment — one not provided by skeletons. </p>
<p>Fossilised footprints are a fleshed-out image of the feet as they once appeared in real life, with the soft parts still intact. </p>
<p>In 2015 and 2018, our team discovered a new collection of tyrannosaur footprints in rocks at a lonely outpost in western Canada, which we introduce for the first time in our new paper. </p>
<p>These footprints presented a unique opportunity to study how tyrannosaurs’ foot shapes changed from youth to adulthood. If their relative mobility decreased as they grew — as was previously hypothesised from studying their skeletons — then we’d expect this to be expressed in foot shape, too. </p>
<p>Younger and swifter animals would have more slender feet, whereas older individuals would have bulkier feet, less suited for speed and agility. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-many-tyrannosaurus-rex-walked-the-earth-159041">How many _Tyrannosaurus rex_ walked the Earth?</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Tracking ancient footprints through bear country</h2>
<p>The tyrannosaur tracks we found remain preserved in a wilderness area near Grande Prairie in Northwestern Alberta, Canada. The region is known for its bitter cold winters, which causes the rivers to flood in spring as snow-melt rolls off the nearby Rocky Mountains. </p>
<p>The footprints themselves are preserved along a bank of the Redwillow River, surrounded by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiga">Boreal forest</a>, which today is home to wildlife including brown bears, black bears and wolves. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383674/original/file-20210211-22-1xokosb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Tracksite in Albert, Canada" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383674/original/file-20210211-22-1xokosb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383674/original/file-20210211-22-1xokosb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383674/original/file-20210211-22-1xokosb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383674/original/file-20210211-22-1xokosb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383674/original/file-20210211-22-1xokosb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383674/original/file-20210211-22-1xokosb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383674/original/file-20210211-22-1xokosb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lush forest surrounded the track site where the tyrannosaur footprints were found in Alberta.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Thankfully our close encounters were largely with deer, although swarms of mosquitoes were a constant nuisance. </p>
<p>Tyrannosaur footprints in this area can be identified by the presence of three long and narrow toes, often with sharp, pointed claw marks. We found up to ten footprints, all about 72 million years old, ranging from 30 to 62 centimetres in length. </p>
<p>Although no bones were discovered, the footprints may have belonged to <em>Albertosaurus</em>. This tyrannosaur lived in Alberta at that time and was an earlier and smaller relative of <em>T. rex</em>. </p>
<h2>My, what big heels you have!</h2>
<p>Using a method called geometric morphometrics, we analysed the best tyrannosaur footprints from our collection of tracks, along with previously discovered footprints.</p>
<p>This method mathematically removes the effect of overall size difference between each footprint while examining important differences in footprint shape. </p>
<p>Applied to our samples, we found the main difference across all footprints was the surface area and width of the heel relative to the footprint’s length.</p>
<p>Larger prints had proportionally larger heels while smaller tracks had narrower, smaller heels.</p>
<p>This difference likely relates to the imposing size of an adult tyrannosaur, or specifically an adult <em>Albertosaurus</em>, which may have weighed between <a href="https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/2041-210X.12226">1,300 and 2,200 kg</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383676/original/file-20210211-22-1up9leq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Tyrannosaur track growth photo and diagram." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383676/original/file-20210211-22-1up9leq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383676/original/file-20210211-22-1up9leq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=209&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383676/original/file-20210211-22-1up9leq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=209&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383676/original/file-20210211-22-1up9leq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=209&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383676/original/file-20210211-22-1up9leq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=263&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383676/original/file-20210211-22-1up9leq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=263&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383676/original/file-20210211-22-1up9leq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=263&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">On the left is a photo of a tyrannosaur track likely made by a middle-aged <em>Albertosaurus</em>. The diagram on the right shows how tyrannosaur feet may have changed in both shape and size as they aged.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A wider and more fleshy heel probably helped adults maintain balance and support increased weight, but likely came at the expense of speed and agility. </p>
<p>Our work on footprints serves to support the hypothesis that as tyrannosaurs grew they underwent a shift from quick, sprightly juveniles to slower, heavy-set adults.</p>
<h2>Slowed down by old age</h2>
<p>Would this have been a problem for catching food as an adult tyrannosaur? Probably not. The large four-legged herbivores they hunted, such as <em><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982213013948">Edmontosaurus regalis</a></em> (which weighed about 4,000kg), were probably even slower.</p>
<p>So what about that chase scene from Jurassic Park? </p>
<p>Well, we still can’t be certain exactly how fast an adult <em>T. rex</em> could run. But we can say heavier and bulkier adults were probably slower for their body size than more slender juveniles. </p>
<p>Perhaps it should have been a juvenile tyrannosaur chasing that Jeep instead. Although, this wouldn’t have been quite as scary. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-could-dinosaurs-evolve-back-into-existence-148623">Curious Kids: could dinosaurs evolve back into existence?</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154188/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nathan James Enriquez receives funding from the Australian Government via a Research Training Program scholarship, and the University of New England. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicolas Campione receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Phil Bell receives funding from The Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>So how accurate is the T. rex’s running speed in that famous Jurassic Park jeep-chase scene?Nathan James Enriquez, PhD Student, University of New EnglandNicolas Campione, Senior lecturer, University of New EnglandPhil Bell, Palaeontologist, Earth Science Faculty, University of New EnglandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1589252021-04-15T16:44:33Z2021-04-15T16:44:33ZTiny beetle fossil reveals how insects greeted Earth’s earliest flowers<p>The world as we know it today is almost inconceivable without the rich and colourful landscapes created by plant life. Among them are flowering plants, or angiosperms, which are by far the most diverse and abundant group of plants, making up over <a href="http://www.mobot.org/MOBOT/research/APweb/welcome.html">80% of all known species</a>, including all our staple food crops. </p>
<p>But the world was not always like this. There was a time <a href="https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/nph.15011">when plant life was almost exclusively green</a>. Then, in the time of the dinosaurs, the world burst magnificently into bloom.</p>
<p>Flowers blessed our environment with chromatic vibrancy, but they also upturned food chains and elbowed out their nonflowering predecessors. Little is known about how ecosystems reacted to this sudden blossoming. But now, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41477-021-00893-2">a tiny beetle</a>, preserved in amber for 99 million years, has provided a valuable clue about how insects first began nourishing themselves on a colourful new platter of plants.</p>
<h2>First flowers</h2>
<p>While there are <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-020-01387-8">debates</a> about when exactly angiosperms originated, there is little quarrel that they first became diverse in the Early Cretaceous, around 125 million years ago.</p>
<p>It is believed that the explosive radiation of angiosperms that displaced the gymnosperms – the incumbent, flowerless champions of the plant world – caused <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rspb.2008.0715?casa_token=vqXdoSnSjFsAAAAA:1nJMvpV1U-rGBE-xgY2VKqKi6FFz6P_bEaJdcKVPktWF0phWZ_RA295T8BYoAZhzNIBTKSi26gsZN-s">unprecedented upheaval</a> in terrestrial ecosystems, changing the food chain at all levels from the herbivores to their predators. </p>
<p>The largest remaining group of gymnosperms are the conifers, such as pines and cypresses. Many gymnosperms are pollinated by wind, although some produce sugar-containing pollination drops, such as fern-like cycads, which maintain an <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982218308273">ancient relationship with beetles</a>. Flowering angiosperms quickly outcompeted most gymnosperms with their colourful and scented galleries, which advertised their nectar to attract pollinators.</p>
<p>Yet we know very little about the life of the earliest angiosperms. Most Cretaceous flowers have been recovered from burnt remains converted to charcoal, making reconstructions of how they looked a rare and difficult task. Scientists have also studied <a href="https://theconversation.com/revealed-the-first-ever-flower-140m-years-ago-looked-like-a-magnolia-81861">living angiosperms</a> to try to reconstruct what the world’s first flower might have looked like.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/revealed-the-first-ever-flower-140m-years-ago-looked-like-a-magnolia-81861">Revealed: the first ever flower, 140m years ago, looked like a magnolia</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The pollinators of these early flowers have remained shrouded in a further layer of mystery. Today, over <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14691">80% of angiosperms</a> depend on insects, such as bees and day-flying butterflies, to pollinate them. But these groups were either not present or not diverse in the Cretaceous. So who were the earliest pollinators of angiosperms?</p>
<h2>Jurassic pollinators</h2>
<p>Many insects had mutualistic associations with plants before the Cretaceous. Some <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/326/5954/840.editor-summary">Jurassic scorpionflies</a> possessed elongated mouth parts ideally suited for pollinating gymnosperms. And fortuitous fossils from Early Cretaceous amber in Spain have also revealed <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/109/22/8623">thrips</a> – small, slender insects – associated with the pollen of gymnosperms.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A yellow-bellied insect with wings and a scorpion's tail" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395240/original/file-20210415-21-15jjs5i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395240/original/file-20210415-21-15jjs5i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395240/original/file-20210415-21-15jjs5i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395240/original/file-20210415-21-15jjs5i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395240/original/file-20210415-21-15jjs5i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395240/original/file-20210415-21-15jjs5i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395240/original/file-20210415-21-15jjs5i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Today’s common scorpionfly is descended from similar insects that lived over 100 million years ago.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/common-scorpionfly-panorpa-communis-rudbeckia-black-1396527422">Dirk Daniel Mann/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But what of the relationship between the earliest angiosperms and their insect pollinators? In palaeontology, exceptional questions call for exceptional fossils, and it’s amber that often provides them. Amber is the resin of ancient trees that fossilised over millions of years and preserved its content with life-like fidelity. </p>
<p>Bits of insects and plants trapped inside provide an unparalleled window into ancient ecosystems. Scientists have amassed a unique collection of over 20,000 amber pieces from northern Myanmar, found in 2016. This amber dates to around 99 million years ago, during the golden age of angiosperm diversification, and preserves diverse insects, plants and even <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12089">occasional dinosaur remains</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ancient-lizard-found-preserved-in-99-million-year-old-amber-133363">Ancient lizard found preserved in 99-million-year-old amber</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>As palaeontologists working with amber, we have to sort out individual pieces, identify their content, and carefully carve them down to give a clear view of the fossil inside, sometimes down to the thickness of a microscope slide. In this Jurassic Park-like adventure, work has to be done slowly, with surgical precision.</p>
<p>Laborious work on the amber soon started to bear fruits. In late 2019, the amber from northern Myanmar yielded a tumbling flower beetle (<em>Mordellidae</em>) with numerous <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/116/49/24707">angiosperm pollen grains</a> attached to its body. This was followed by the discovery of short-winged flower beetles associated with <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589004220300973">eudicot pollen</a> similar to that produced by water lilies – an early diverging group of angiosperms. Further discoveries included <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-019-0652-7">an ancient wasp</a>, also associated with angiosperm pollen.</p>
<h2>Last supper</h2>
<p>Our study focused on a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41477-021-00893-2">short-winged flower beetle</a>,
or <em>Pelretes vivificus</em>, as the new fossil was named. It’s just over one millimetre in length: a lone speck in the clear orange amber.</p>
<p>But when we looked closer, we discovered that the beetle is associated with clusters of pollen grains: some attached directly to its body, others preserved in fossilised faecal pellets (coprolites). The coprolites are evidence of the beetle’s last meal, providing a unique line of evidence that demonstrates that the beetles indeed fed on pollen and that the two were not just preserved together by chance.</p>
<p>To identify the pollen, we used a selection of high-tech microscopes. The pollen turned out to be the fossil genus <em>Tricolpopollenites</em>. This group is attributed to the eudicots – a living group of angiosperms that includes willows, violets and coca plants. This makes <em>Pelretes</em> one of the earliest pollinators of angiosperms in the fossil record – and the earliest beetle with direct evidence of pollen feeding.</p>
<p>This tiny beetle has shown that soon after their rise to prominence, some of the earliest flowering plants already had their pollen feasted upon by insects. We now know that the association between flower beetles and angiosperms is truly ancient: unbroken for at least 99 million years when the world was erupting with colourful flowers.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/158925/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chenyang Cai does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Preserved in amber, a tiny beetle has shed light on the moment the world first burst into bloom.Chenyang Cai, Research Fellow, School of Earth Sciences, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1485412020-10-29T07:44:54Z2020-10-29T07:44:54ZColourful opal fossils point to a diverse group of giant dinosaurs that shared Australia’s terrain<p>North-central New South Wales today is known for its arid, drought-prone climate. During the <a href="https://www.livescience.com/29231-cretaceous-period.html">Cretaceous period</a>, however, it was a lush coastal floodplain with a <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031018218305960">high diversity of vertebrates</a> including dinosaurs, crocodiles, turtles and soaring <a href="https://theconversation.com/4-metre-flying-reptile-unearthed-in-queensland-is-our-best-pterosaur-fossil-yet-124581">pterosaurs</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366080/original/file-20201028-15-1svjbzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A typical landscape of the late Cretaceous Period." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366080/original/file-20201028-15-1svjbzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366080/original/file-20201028-15-1svjbzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=660&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366080/original/file-20201028-15-1svjbzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=660&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366080/original/file-20201028-15-1svjbzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=660&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366080/original/file-20201028-15-1svjbzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=829&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366080/original/file-20201028-15-1svjbzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=829&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366080/original/file-20201028-15-1svjbzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=829&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australian landscapes during the Cretaceous Period would have been much unlike today’s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://australian.museum/learn/australia-over-time/evolving-landscape/the-cretaceous-period/">Karen Carr/Australian Museum</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>New insights gleaned from opalised teeth, found near the town of Lightning Ridge, are now helping paint a picture of the most enormous dinosaurs to ever roam the planet: <a href="https://www.britannica.com/animal/sauropod">sauropods</a>.</p>
<p>Our work, published today in the journal <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/let.12407">Lethaia</a>, reveals up to three different sauropod species once lived in the region, feeding at different heights within the forest canopy. </p>
<h2>Scintillating and sizeable specimens</h2>
<p>Opalised fossils are natural casts made entirely out of opal. While they generally don’t preserve the original organism, they do preserve its shape.</p>
<p>In Lightning Ridge, opalised fossils are a <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/scientists-and-miners-team-up-preserve-opalized-fossils-180972734/">rich source of palaeontological information</a>. For decades, miners have excavated these fossils — including the sauropod teeth we studied — from deep underground its opal fields.</p>
<p>The sauropods were a group of dinosaur species with markedly long necks, long tails and a herbivorous diet. Potentially weighing up to <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1001853">90,000 kg</a>, they were the largest animals to have ever walked the Earth. </p>
<p>Sauropods were an extremely important component of the known vertebrate fauna in northern Australia. Until recently, we knew of four named species from Queensland: <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/srep34467"><em>Savannasaurus elliotorum</em></a>, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1342937X14001051"><em>Diamtinasaurus matildae</em></a>, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03115518.2017.1334826?casa_token=jOI9RnOWrDsAAAAA:Ns8YeY-zyG8wJfGkIlRw1vq-M2Y3pk-z-COe0_37cg3diw3mgNlUY0gG8RvF2dO-adYyLfA8_AhboA"><em>Austrasaurus mckillopi</em></a> and <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0006190"><em>Wintonotitan wattsi</em></a>. </p>
<p>However, whether this diversity was unique to Queensland, or extended into more southern regions, remained unknown.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/meet-savannasaurus-australias-newest-titanosaur-67383">Meet Savannasaurus, Australia's newest titanosaur</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The wisdom in studying teeth</h2>
<p>For our study, we examined 25 sauropod tooth fossils aged between <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0031018218305960?casa_token=p-U_WSyb38QAAAAA:zcAHyLOdhgD83lvJdbVb3kPdRseXxp533FVxbqVwhm4txCkrBTtajl7f1-SdrrXf-4RsB9Q7dII">95-100 million years old</a>. From these, we identified five “morphotypes”, or tooth-shape categories. Several features of a tooth can define its morphotype, including its symmetry, the presence or absence of grooves and wear patterns. </p>
<p>Humans have multiple morphotypes within their mouths, such as molars for grinding, incisors for nipping and canines for grasping. But unlike humans, we know all the teeth of sauropod species would have served similar functions and would have thus had little variation.</p>
<p>This is good news for us, because it means we can be pretty confident sauropod tooth fossils with different shapes came from different species.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365481/original/file-20201026-23-8ull5o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365481/original/file-20201026-23-8ull5o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=265&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365481/original/file-20201026-23-8ull5o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=265&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365481/original/file-20201026-23-8ull5o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=265&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365481/original/file-20201026-23-8ull5o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365481/original/file-20201026-23-8ull5o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365481/original/file-20201026-23-8ull5o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Five sauropod teeth fossils (not to scale) showing the diversity of tooth shapes found at Lightning Ridge. The fossils have different colours since they’re all made out of opal.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Timothy Frauenfelder</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We interpreted three of the five morphotypes in our fossil collection as coming from the upper jaw and the other two from the lower jaw. By comparing our fossils with those from more completely studied sauropods, we were able to link them with at least three distinct species that would have cohabited the area around what is now Lightning Ridge. </p>
<p>While we couldn’t assign the 25 tooth fossils to specific species (as we’d need more than just teeth to identify a dinosaur species), we do know all the teeth belonged to a large group of sauropods known as Titanosauriformes. </p>
<p>This group included the late Jurassic <em>Brachiosaurus</em>, which famously reared-up on its hind legs in the 1993 movie Jurassic Park. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WROrnCt8NF4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">You may remember this iconic <em>Brachiosaurus</em> scene from Jurassic Park.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Also, one of the morphotypes likely came from a later subgroup of Titanosauriformes, called Titanosauria. This group contained species such as the truly gigantic dinosaurs <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1001853"><em>Argentinosaurus</em></a> and <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/is-this-really-the-biggest-dinosaur-ever-discovered/536187/"><em>Patagotitan</em></a>.</p>
<h2>A tooth tells the truth</h2>
<p>Tooth fossils aren’t only useful to gauge past diversity, but also to infer diets of long-extinct animals. The dietary link is evident since teeth are the primary tool for obtaining and processing food.</p>
<p>When studying teeth, one way we can interpret diets is through looking for “microwear”. This refers to an assortment of small features found on teeth from tooth-to-food or tooth-to-tooth contact. </p>
<p>These features can be preserved in tooth fossils as scratches or pits visible on worn surfaces. Specifically, the ratio of scratches to pits can indicate the grittiness, or smoothness, of a dinosaur’s diet. </p>
<p>More pits means more grit (dust minerals) in the diet. This shows feeding took place closer to the ground. Conversely, more scratches indicates a diet of smoother food, such as foliage, found higher in the forest canopy.</p>
<p>While microwear patterns of <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0018304">North American sauropods</a> have been extensively researched, this is the first time they’ve been observed in sauropods from Australia. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366320/original/file-20201029-23-1ixqmg4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Rendering of two Savannasauruses." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366320/original/file-20201029-23-1ixqmg4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366320/original/file-20201029-23-1ixqmg4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366320/original/file-20201029-23-1ixqmg4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366320/original/file-20201029-23-1ixqmg4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366320/original/file-20201029-23-1ixqmg4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366320/original/file-20201029-23-1ixqmg4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366320/original/file-20201029-23-1ixqmg4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"><em>Savannasaurus elliottorum</em> (nicknamed ‘Wade’) — the only species in the Savannasaurus genus — was one of several long-necked sauropods that existed in Queensland during the mid-Cretaceous period.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.australianageofdinosaurs.com/page/2/australian-age-of-dinosaurs-terms-conditions">Travis Tischler/Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum of Natural History</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Zooming in on pits and scratches</h2>
<p>From our collection, two tooth fossils had preserved microwear features. The others were either not worn or had their microwear features obliterated during the opalisation process.</p>
<p>Interestingly, the fossils that did preserve microwear also had different morphotypes. This suggests at least two of the three sauropod species that once roamed NSW were able to coexist by consuming different food within the forest canopy.</p>
<p>One species had a higher proportion of scratches than pits, so it likely fed on soft vegetation between 1-10m above the ground. The other had a higher proportion of pits, which suggests it ate harder vegetation less than 1m above the ground.</p>
<p>Our research may have been limited to teeth, but it demonstrates even incomplete fossils can provide key insights into the lives of long-extinct creatures. </p>
<p>Importantly, it discloses the fascinating sauropod diversity that once inhabited New South Wales, previously identified only in Queensland.</p>
<p>Much like animals today, we believe their coexistence would have depended on them eating different foods in the same area. This would have led to a colourful, cosmopolitan dinosaur landscape in a past, much different, Australia. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/has-dinosaur-dna-been-found-an-expert-explains-what-we-really-know-133017">Has dinosaur DNA been found? An expert explains what we really know</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Acknowledgements: we’d like to thank the Australian Opal Centre and the Australian Museum for supplying the fossils for our research.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148541/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Timothy Frauenfelder received funding from Dr Phil Bell's Australian Research Council grant. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicolas Campione receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>Tooth fossils from NSW have confirmed sauropods weren’t exclusive to Queensland. They’re also providing a first look at how these colossal dinosaurs fed from Australia’s land.Timothy Frauenfelder, PhD Candidate in Palaeontology, University of New EnglandNicolas Campione, Research Fellow/Lecturer, University of New EnglandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1119122019-06-12T03:40:15Z2019-06-12T03:40:15ZCurious Kids: why did the dinosaurs die?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259634/original/file-20190219-121760-jndqte.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C3%2C1019%2C679&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Around 66 million years ago, a huge rock from outer space (called an asteroid) smashed into the Earth.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/chealion/4787266142/in/photolist-8i2Zrq-6yhEzK-kQZ1cn-kQZ5me-kQYh9r-kR1c4S-4mXKER-8v51D3-22chBV9-kQYbqc-6MhkYq-8EZ3SY-kQZ4Mi-zUcep-8v524A-cANWo3-8URBwf-b5VXh-9KZTKY-9Svepu-RDbtfs-yawwY-yyftdR-atKBrA-gYpZXV-kQYbG4-71niK4-kR1cE1-kQYZM4-kQYdkz-4JHWfE-8JmrUY-4JBsZ4-6VnsNQ-4JHWdh-eUc9q1-bnwDbe-8jvbVw-4JDFMP-25wNRz-8jrXKX-8HeWz-9ry3tM-6LDbfG-byBuxi-52EqQi-4a2qFU-4V3MN7-8BxKL-9MNcZg">Michael J/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/curious-kids-36782">Curious Kids</a> is a series for children. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au You might also like the podcast <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/kidslisten/imagine-this/">Imagine This</a>, a co-production between ABC KIDS listen and The Conversation, based on Curious Kids.</em> </p>
<hr>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Why did the dinosaurs die? – Whitaker, age 4.</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>That’s a great, and tricky question!</p>
<p>We know that dinosaurs ruled the Earth for about 180 million years. Then, around 66 million years ago, a huge rock from outer space (called an asteroid) smashed into the Earth.</p>
<p>It crash-landed near Mexico. It shook the ground. It made big waves in the sea.
Any animals and plants that were nearby would have gotten squashed or washed away!</p>
<p>The asteroid made lots of dust and dirt and rocks to fly up into the air. All that dust and dirt covered the planet and made the sky dark. There were many forest fires too.</p>
<p>Before the asteroid hit Earth, there were lots of volcanoes erupting in what we now call India. They made smoke, and ash, and gases fill up the air. We are not sure if the asteroid then hitting Earth made more volcanoes erupt. Maybe it was just very bad timing.</p>
<h2>From cold to hot</h2>
<p>It was so dusty and dark that the warm sunshine couldn’t reach the ground.
This made the Earth very cold. </p>
<p>But after the dust settled and the sun came out, the Earth got very hot indeed. The sea creatures, plants, and land animals didn’t like that very much. The plants probably had a hard time growing. The plant-eating animals ran out of plants to eat, and then the animals that ate other animals also ran out of food. So it became very hard for dinosaurs to survive.</p>
<p>But it’s still really hard to know for sure exactly why the dinosaurs died. Dinosaur-scientists (palaeontologists) still wonder whether it was because of the asteroid, or the volcanoes, or both the asteroid and volcanoes. Did the animals get too cold or too hot? Did they run out of food?</p>
<p>We might not ever know for sure, but we will always keep looking for answers!</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279056/original/file-20190612-32342-1eupnsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279056/original/file-20190612-32342-1eupnsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279056/original/file-20190612-32342-1eupnsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279056/original/file-20190612-32342-1eupnsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279056/original/file-20190612-32342-1eupnsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279056/original/file-20190612-32342-1eupnsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279056/original/file-20190612-32342-1eupnsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279056/original/file-20190612-32342-1eupnsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Here is a life-size skeleton of Muttaburrasaurus in the Queensland Museum. Muttaburrasaurus was a large, plant-eating dinosaur that lived in eastern Australia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-how-many-dinosaurs-in-total-lived-on-earth-during-all-periods-100460">Curious Kids: How many dinosaurs in total lived on Earth during all periods?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Who went extinct and who didn’t?</h2>
<p>Most of the dinosaurs died. We call this going “extinct”. An animal is extinct when it doesn’t exist anymore anywhere in the world.</p>
<p>It wasn’t just most dinosaurs that went extinct 66 million years ago. Among others that went extinct were: flying reptiles called pterosaurs, huge reptiles that swam in the ocean called plesiosaurs and pliosaurs, creatures with curled, spiral shells called ammonites, and lots of other plants and animals. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279049/original/file-20190612-32335-1ejb6fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279049/original/file-20190612-32335-1ejb6fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279049/original/file-20190612-32335-1ejb6fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279049/original/file-20190612-32335-1ejb6fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279049/original/file-20190612-32335-1ejb6fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279049/original/file-20190612-32335-1ejb6fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279049/original/file-20190612-32335-1ejb6fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279049/original/file-20190612-32335-1ejb6fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Here’s an artist’s impression of a pterosaurs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279052/original/file-20190612-32342-1o6m4g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279052/original/file-20190612-32342-1o6m4g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279052/original/file-20190612-32342-1o6m4g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279052/original/file-20190612-32342-1o6m4g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279052/original/file-20190612-32342-1o6m4g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279052/original/file-20190612-32342-1o6m4g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279052/original/file-20190612-32342-1o6m4g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279052/original/file-20190612-32342-1o6m4g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Huge reptiles called plesiosaurs once swam in the ocean.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But others survived. Different types of insects, lizards, crocodiles, mammals, birds, sharks, fish, crabs, snails, flowers, ferns and trees all made it through. </p>
<p>How? We don’t really know.</p>
<p>It could be because the animals were small and didn’t need much food. Maybe it was because they could eat crunchy seeds the dead plants left behind, or mushrooms growing on the dead plants, or tiny scraps of old, dry meat. Maybe it was because they could burrow into the ground to keep warm. Maybe it was because they could swim far away to keep safe. And maybe some of those dry, crunchy seeds could grow into plants after they were buried for a long time.</p>
<p>But we know they survived.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279054/original/file-20190612-32361-1pkz3xe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279054/original/file-20190612-32361-1pkz3xe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279054/original/file-20190612-32361-1pkz3xe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279054/original/file-20190612-32361-1pkz3xe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279054/original/file-20190612-32361-1pkz3xe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279054/original/file-20190612-32361-1pkz3xe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279054/original/file-20190612-32361-1pkz3xe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279054/original/file-20190612-32361-1pkz3xe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Woolly mammoths once roamed the Earth.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Those animals and plants found new homes. And as the plants grew bigger and stronger, the animals could grow bigger too. They could take the place of the big dinosaurs that had died. Big woolly mammoths, giant kangaroos, and whales now roamed the land and sea. New types of plants grew, like grass. And a long time later, human beings evolved – that’s us!</p>
<p>Now mammals rule the Earth.</p>
<h2>Not all the dinosaurs died</h2>
<p>Did you know that not all the dinosaurs went extinct 66 million years ago? They’re not the type of dinosaurs you might be thinking of, like <em>Tyrannosaurus</em>, or <em>Brachiosaurus</em>, or <em>Muttaburrasaurus</em>. The dinosaurs that survived were… birds!</p>
<p>That’s right! All birds are actually dinosaurs.</p>
<p>Ancient birds lived beside other dinosaurs. They survived the asteroid and volcanoes. And now birds live alongside us today.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-are-mermaids-real-99140">Curious Kids: Are mermaids real?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>I think it’s sad that all the other dinosaurs went extinct so long ago. But we can remember them by visiting museums and looking at fossils, or by reading books about them, or by watching birds fly through the sky.</p>
<p>But if it weren’t for all the other dinosaurs going extinct so long ago, fluffy little mammals wouldn’t have had room to grow and evolve. And there wouldn’t be any humans.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9GVvtKK5sFw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Today’s birds evolved from prehistoric times. Birds survived the asteroid that led to the extinction of dinosaurs.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>Hello, curious kids! Have you got a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au</em></p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168011/original/file-20170505-21620-huq4lj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168011/original/file-20170505-21620-huq4lj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168011/original/file-20170505-21620-huq4lj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168011/original/file-20170505-21620-huq4lj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168011/original/file-20170505-21620-huq4lj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168011/original/file-20170505-21620-huq4lj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168011/original/file-20170505-21620-huq4lj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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</figure>
<p><em>Please tell us your name, age and which city you live in. We won’t be able to answer every question but we will do our best.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/111912/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Caitlin Syme does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Dinosaurs ruled the Earth for about 180 million years. But around 66 million years ago, a huge rock from outer space (called an asteroid) smashed into the Earth. Then things got worse for dinosaurs.Caitlin Syme, PhD Candidate, Vertebrate Palaeontology, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/986752018-07-03T14:35:39Z2018-07-03T14:35:39ZHollywood’s mega-monsters head back east<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225968/original/file-20180703-116132-1i1jz8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Universal Pictures</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4881806/">Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom</a>, Hollywood’s most recent creature feature, has taken <a href="http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=main&id=jurassicworldsequel.htm">more than US$900m</a> at the global box office in just a few weeks. August sees The Meg unleashed – based on <a href="https://www.stevealten.com/books/meg/">Steve Alten’s novel</a>, it’s a <a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/mega_shark_vs_giant_octopus/">big-budget mega-Jaws</a> featuring Jason Statham battling a 75ft megalodon. And from <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1663662/?ref_=tt_rec_tt">Pacific Rim</a> (2013) to <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0831387/?ref_=tt_rec_tt">Godzilla</a> (2014) and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2231461/?ref_=tt_rec_tt">Rampage</a> (2018), these monster blockbusters can tell us a story about how Hollywood sits in global cinema, especially its power relationships with Asia.</p>
<p>It is widely believed that the giant monster movie is an import from Japan – often referred to by its Japanese name, <a href="https://reelrundown.com/movies/A-Beginners-Guide-To-Kaiju-Eiga"><em>kaiju eiga</em></a> (literally, strange beast films). In 1954, Gojira (Godzilla in English), in which a huge mutant dinosaur, awoken by nuclear tests, devastates Tokyo, <a href="http://www.vulture.com/2014/05/godzilla-meaning-monster-metaphors.html">set the template</a> for films that manifest the devastating effects of humanity’s destructive excesses in the form of giant city-smashing monsters.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aDCWRdS1olw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>This sci-fi sub-genre emerged from <a href="https://researchers.uq.edu.au/researcher/1034">processes of cultural exchange</a>, which helps us to see how one culture borrows or recycles material from another. Gojira borrowed aspects from two key American films: <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024216/">King Kong</a> (1933) and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045546/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms</a> (1953), both released in Japan not long before Gojira’s conception. Gojira’s name is a combination of the transliteration of gorilla, and the Japanese word for whale, kujira. The producer’s <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Atomic_Dreams_and_the_Nuclear_Nightmare.html?id=DpPxsgEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">working title</a> was even The Giant Monster from 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. </p>
<p>Combined with the influence of <a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2012/03/18/general/lucky-dragons-lethal-catch/#.WzI_2_Uo9hE">an incident</a> in which the Fukuryu Maru fishing boat was caught up in radiation from the Castle Bravo nuclear tests, we see a powerful demonstration of cultural exchange, where local and global ideas came together.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mTGMc-QPBlw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>Cultural exchanges have continued for a long time in this genre. American companies worked with Japanese studios to produce new versions of Godzilla and other <em>kaiju</em> movies. Collaboration with Japanese producers helped guarantee a steady supply of content for exploitation cinemas, drive-ins and later television, including <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKxQHhki_k8">Frankenstein Conquers the World</a> (1965), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrUFlFD4Lvo">King Kong Escapes</a> (1967) and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSpJXVP4agI">Yog: Monster from Space</a> (1970).</p>
<p><em>Kaiju eiga</em> were also produced across Asia, including <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zY-tnP3uJRM">Hong Kong</a>, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwreEB6gvrs">South Korea</a>. The most notorious example is North Korea’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCKSR0JArUQ">Pulgasari</a> (1985), produced by Kim Jong-il and directed by Shin Sang-ok, once South Korea’s most successful film producer, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/03/kim-jong-il-kidnapped-director-films-north-korea-cinephile">who was kidnapped by the regime</a> and forced to improve their cinema.</p>
<h2>Hollywood’s recycling habit</h2>
<p>In Hollywood, global tropes are adopted and reworked – and their nostalgic (sometimes fetishised) referencing is rife at the moment. Pacific Rim called its monsters <em>kaiju</em> in homage to the genre’s Japanese roots – and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2557478/?ref_=nv_sr_1">its sequel’s</a> climactic showdown occurs in Tokyo. Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One (2018) depicts a future dystopia where the populace has retreated into a pop culture saturated VR game. When one of its protagonists fights the evil corporate executive trying to take over <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBpgOIQR0sw">the game</a>, they take the forms, respectively, of anime robot <a href="https://mechabay.com/rx-78-2-gundam/">Gundam</a> and 1970s Godzilla enemy, <a href="https://wikizilla.org/wiki/Mechagodzilla">MechaGodzilla</a>, both icons of Japanese popular culture.</p>
<p>Rampage is an adaptation of a <a href="http://www.vulture.com/2018/04/rampage-the-most-faithful-video-game-adaptation-ever-made.html">1980s video game</a> in which giant monsters smash up cities. The largely plotless game spawned a film that critiques <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/rampage-what-makes-it-a-new-kind-monster-movie-1102661">the dangers of genetic experimentation</a>. Godzilla (2014) and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3731562/">Kong: Skull Island</a> (2017) initiated a Marvel-style shared <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/MonsterVerse">MonsterVerse</a>. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3741700/">Godzilla: King of the Monsters</a> was teased in the end credits of Kong, and the two <em>kaiju</em> will face off <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5034838/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">in 2019</a>.</p>
<h2>Eastern appeal</h2>
<p>The Jurassic World films challenge similar cultural and political ideas. As cinema becomes more transnational, cultural exchange and a changing global marketplace challenge our understanding of traditional power relationships. Hence, there is a different reason why we should consider Jurassic World a <em>kaiju</em> movie: the ownership of its producers. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"958762606864384000"}"></div></p>
<p>If you’ve been watching <a href="https://www.fifa.com/about-fifa/marketing/sponsorship/partners/wanda-group.html">the World Cup</a>, you’ll have seen hoardings advertising the Chinese company <a href="https://www.wanda-group.com/">Dalian Wanda</a>, one of China’s biggest conglomerates, who operate <a href="https://www.thewrap.com/chinas-wanda-group-merge-film-production-company-cinema-business/">the world’s largest cinema</a> holdings. In 2016, <a href="https://variety.com/2016/biz/asia/wanda-deal-with-legendary-1201676878/">it paid US$3.5 billion for Legendary Entertainment</a>, the production company behind the Jurassic World, Pacific Rim and Godzilla series. </p>
<p>An earlier deal with <a href="https://variety.com/2013/film/news/legendary-east-finds-key-partner-in-china-film-co-1200489836/">state-run China Film Group</a> had granted Legendary Entertainment unparalleled access to the Chinese market through co-production deals. The Meg is also <a href="https://variety.com/2016/film/asia/china-to-get-first-release-of-shark-thriller-meg-1201887432/">a Chinese co-production</a>.</p>
<p>Localised strategies have also appealed to Chinese audiences. Chinese star Jing Tian has appeared in several Legendary monster films – as a military leader in <em>kaiju</em> martial arts spectacular <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2034800/?ref_=nv_sr_1">The Great Wall</a> (2016), a biologist in Kong: Skull Island and a famous scientist in Pacific Rim: Uprising. Star casting has long been one of the key techniques used by Hollywood to appeal to local markets. Locations are also important – the action in The Meg has been relocated from Maui in the novel, to China. Its cast also includes <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0508356/">Li Bingbing</a>, a Chinese star who also appeared in the most recent Transformers movie.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225468/original/file-20180629-117422-xlaj8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225468/original/file-20180629-117422-xlaj8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225468/original/file-20180629-117422-xlaj8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225468/original/file-20180629-117422-xlaj8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225468/original/file-20180629-117422-xlaj8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1194&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225468/original/file-20180629-117422-xlaj8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1194&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225468/original/file-20180629-117422-xlaj8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1194&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Legendary’s films demonstrate the mixture of local and global features at work.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Legendary East and China Film Group</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Several monster movies have recently <a href="http://chinafilminsider.com/hollywood-blockbusters-better-china-u-s-recent-weeks/">grossed more in China</a> than domestically in the US. Pacific Rim: Uprising grossed almost twice as much, and Rampage over 50% more. By contrast, Star Wars films make negligible impact at the Chinese box office – clearly <a href="https://variety.com/2018/film/asia/monster-hunt-2-190-million-china-enjoys-half-billion-dollar-weekend-1202703946/">monster content</a> is more appealing to Chinese audiences.</p>
<p>This cycle of giant monster movies is currently the most prominent example of Hollywood’s globalised business. Its embrace of international material, familiar recycling and relationships with Asia are most strongly evidenced in these films. That’s not to say that all of this is new or one-way traffic: Legendary’s success with Godzilla inspired Toho studios to develop <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4262980/">not one</a> but <a href="https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/80180373">two new series</a> with the beloved national icon.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98675/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steve Rawle does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Monster movies are currently rampaging across the globe. Their popularity shows us how Hollywood’s place in world cinema is changing.Steve Rawle, Associate Professor in Media Production, York St John UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/860042017-10-25T18:31:46Z2017-10-25T18:31:46ZMeet the giant dinosaur that roamed southern Africa 200 million years ago<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191793/original/file-20171025-25544-htfgc5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kayentapus ambrokholohali footprints belong to an animal of about 26 feet long, dwarfing all the life around it.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Theropod image adapted by Lara Sciscio, with permission, from an illustration by Scott Hartman</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Globally at around 200 million years ago, in what’s known as the Early Jurassic, small and agile two-legged carnivorous dinosaurs called <a href="http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/saurischia/theropoda.html">theropods</a> roamed the ancient landscapes. In southern Africa, we know of their existence from their rare body fossils but also, importantly, from their fossil footprints.</p>
<p>Now our team’s new discovery, <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185941">published in <em>PLOS ONE</em></a>, unexpectedly reveals that very large carnivorous dinosaurs with an estimated body length of between 8 to 9 meters (or 26 feet) – that’s a <a href="https://www.convertunits.com/from/feet/to/story">two-story building</a> or two adult rhinos nose to tail – lived in southern Africa too. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191351/original/file-20171023-1689-2ow4d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191351/original/file-20171023-1689-2ow4d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191351/original/file-20171023-1689-2ow4d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=771&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191351/original/file-20171023-1689-2ow4d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=771&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191351/original/file-20171023-1689-2ow4d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=771&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191351/original/file-20171023-1689-2ow4d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=969&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191351/original/file-20171023-1689-2ow4d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=969&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191351/original/file-20171023-1689-2ow4d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=969&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Miengah Abrahams, a PhD student from the University of Cape Town, lying next to the dinosaur’s tracks. She is 1.6m tall.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lara Sciscio</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Evidence for this massive beast comes from a set of three-toed, 57cm long and 50cm wide footprints recently found in western Lesotho. This is a first for Africa. It places a huge carnivorous dinosaur in what was then the southern part of the <a href="https://www.livescience.com/37285-gondwana.html">supercontinent Gondwana</a> during Early Jurassic times.</p>
<p>Until this discovery, theropod dinosaurs were thought to be considerably smaller, at three to five metres in body length, during the Early Jurassic. </p>
<p>There has only been one other report of large carnivorous dinosaurs occurring as early as 200 million years ago. This also came from fossil footprint evidence in Poland’s <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/244483002_Slady_wielkich_teropodow_z_wczesnojurajskich_osadow_Gor_Swietokrzyskich_in_Polish_with_English_abstract">Holy Cross Mountains</a>. Such giants are rare. The iconic and enormous (about 12 metres long) <em>Tyrannosaurus</em>, for instance, only emerged around 128 million years later during the <a href="https://animals.howstuffworks.com/dinosaurs/late-cretaceous-period.htm">Late Cretaceous</a>. </p>
<p>The dimensions of the trackmaker with the 57cm long feet, although slightly smaller, come close to those of the well-known and younger Late Cretaceous theropod dinosaurs such as <em>Tyrannosaurus rex</em> or the similarly huge North African <em>Spinosaurus</em>.</p>
<p>The unanticipated footprint size of this Lesotho giant considerably expands the body size range of theropods in the Early Jurassic. Now the hunt is on to track down more theropod footprints – and perhaps even their body fossils.</p>
<h2>Lesotho’s giant carnivore</h2>
<p>Our <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185941">team of scientists</a> from South Africa’s University of Cape Town, the University of Manchester in the UK, <a href="http://www.fundaciondinopolis.org/">Fundación Conjunto Paleontológico de Teruel-Dinópolis</a> in Spain, and Brazil’s Universidade de São Paulo discovered the 200 million year old megatheropod trackway during recent fieldwork in Lesotho. </p>
<p>The footprints were found on a small dirt road approximately 2km from the National University of Lesotho at Roma (Maseru District) in the western part of the country. They are on a palaeosurface, an ancient land surface that has been preserved in time.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191391/original/file-20171023-1717-heeaf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191391/original/file-20171023-1717-heeaf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191391/original/file-20171023-1717-heeaf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=699&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191391/original/file-20171023-1717-heeaf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=699&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191391/original/file-20171023-1717-heeaf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=699&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191391/original/file-20171023-1717-heeaf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=879&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191391/original/file-20171023-1717-heeaf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=879&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191391/original/file-20171023-1717-heeaf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=879&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Once the dinosaur’s tracks had been identified and cleaned of rock debris, the team photographed and took silicon rubber impressions of them.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lara Sciscio</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The ancient surface is also covered in the footprints of other theropod dinosaurs. Even their footprint impressions are relatively large (30-40cm long) for the time period. </p>
<p>The 57 cm long Lesotho footprints have been named <em>Kayentapus ambrokholohali</em>. The trackmaker falls into an informal grouping of very large dinosaurs, called “megatheropods”, with footprints exceeding 50 cm in length and calculated hip heights greater than 2 m. </p>
<p>The new species name <em>ambrokholohali</em> was given to identify this particular footprint. It was derived in honour of Emeritus Professor David Ambrose, a now retired professor and Head Research Fellow at National University of Lesotho, for his detailed recording of the trace fossil heritage within Roma. </p>
<p>We were following in Ambrose’s footsteps, trying to relocate one of his documented sites, when we discovered the freshly exposed megatheropod footprints.</p>
<p>The latter part of the name, <em>kholohali</em>, is derived from two Sesotho words: “kholo”, meaning big, large or great and “hali”, meaning much or very. This was to describe its unexpectedly large size. </p>
<h2>Size matters</h2>
<p>The main bipedal predators during the Mesozoic (the “Dinosaur Era”) were large theropod dinosaurs. They included the <em>Allosaurus</em> (from the late Jurassic) and <em>Tyrannosaurus</em> (Upper Cretaceous). But early in the Mesozoic, theropod dinosaurs were usually relatively small (3–5 m body length). Truly large forms of theropods only started making their appearance around 100 million years later, within the Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous.</p>
<p>In light of this, the new discovery of these impressively large tracks expands the range of body size for theropods in the Early Jurassic at the very onset of their diversification. But, why were these theropods so much larger than anything else around at the time? An answer could lie in the timing of their evolution. </p>
<p>The megatheropod tracks appear after the end-Triassic <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/end-Triassic-extinction">mass extinction event</a>. This mass extinction event was the result of a biotic crisis that significantly affected animals both on land and sea. The biotic crisis allowed for the main competitors of theropod dinosaurs to be completely eradicated. Killing off the competition, coupled with changes in ecosystem composition, probably gave theropod dinosaurs “free reign” to dominate the Early Jurassic landscape and resources. </p>
<p>Another possible driver for larger theropod body size was the increased size of the herbivorous dinosaurs – like the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/nov/10/south-african-scientists-new-dinosaur-species-fossils-sauropod-highland-giant-karoo">Highland Giant sauropodomorph</a> – within the same ancient landscape. </p>
<p>It’s most likely that both factors lead to theropods in southern Africa being able to evolve into numerous forms and increase in abundance. But these are questions we can’t answer conclusively.</p>
<h2>Giant footprints, but still no fossils</h2>
<p>The body fossil evidence for theropod dinosaurs in southern Africa is slim. Luckily the footprints they left behind are not. By studying these and other tracks as well as the bone fossil record, scientists are able to tentatively link footprints to potential trackmakers. </p>
<p>To date, we have no body fossil material to match the <em>K. ambrokholohali</em>‘s footprints. Hopefully we’ll soon discover more unusual footprints and, from there, body fossils that will help add to our understanding of the complex ancient world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86004/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lara Sciscio and her colleagues received funding for this work from the National Research Foundation of South Africa
Competitive Programme for Rated Researches (NRF Grant number 93544 Bordy) and the Department of Science and Technology-National Research Foundation Centre of Excellence in Palaeosciences. The work was also supported by the ARAID (<a href="https://www.araid.es/">https://www.araid.es/</a>)</span></em></p>Until this discovery, theropod dinosaurs were thought to be considerably smaller, at three to five metres in body length, during the Early Jurassic.Lara Sciscio, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Geological Sciences, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/461882015-08-17T19:52:04Z2015-08-17T19:52:04ZFossils suggest an aquatic plant that bloomed underwater was among first flowering plants<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92097/original/image-20150817-5127-hqpl6d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Compression of the long-leaf form of _Montsechia_.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">David Dilcher</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Photosynthesis – the ability to convert energy from the sun into fuel – first appeared on Earth in single-celled organisms, which eventually evolved into algae, then mosses, then ferns. Flowering plants, now such a familiar part of our landscape, didn’t evolve until the Jurassic period, after dinosaurs and mammals had already hit the scene. At this time, insects were diversifying, and the evolving plants used the emerging bugs to carry their own genetic material from plant to plant. Flowering plants, also known as angiosperms, are a product of this early version of sex and its exchange of genetic material – so important in evolution.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92168/original/image-20150817-5103-15xv0kx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92168/original/image-20150817-5103-15xv0kx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92168/original/image-20150817-5103-15xv0kx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92168/original/image-20150817-5103-15xv0kx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92168/original/image-20150817-5103-15xv0kx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92168/original/image-20150817-5103-15xv0kx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92168/original/image-20150817-5103-15xv0kx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92168/original/image-20150817-5103-15xv0kx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Evolution of plant diversity.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Plant_Diversity_(2).svg">Laurenprue216</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A recent discovery and analysis of fossilized plants has opened up the discussion of the nature and relationships of these early plants. First found in the lithographic limestone being mined in the Pyrenees Mountains over 100 years ago, these fossils, with their strange sprawling stems, were little understood. Some thought they were mosses, some considered them to be conifers, but few recognized the fossils as flowering plants.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92187/original/image-20150817-5110-oph9xs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92187/original/image-20150817-5110-oph9xs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92187/original/image-20150817-5110-oph9xs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92187/original/image-20150817-5110-oph9xs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92187/original/image-20150817-5110-oph9xs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92187/original/image-20150817-5110-oph9xs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92187/original/image-20150817-5110-oph9xs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92187/original/image-20150817-5110-oph9xs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fossils collected in mountainous areas around El Montsec and Las Hoyas in Spain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">PNAS 10.1073/pnas.1509241112</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Now my colleagues and I, on a team of paleobotantists led by Bernard Gomez of Lyon, France, <a href="http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1509241112">have presented evidence</a> that this fossil, <em>Montsechia</em>, which lived as long ago as 130 million years, is the earliest known example of a fully submerged aquatic flowering plant. After careful analysis of hundreds of well-preserved newly collected fossils from northeastern Spain, we believe <em>Montsechia</em> flowered underwater and was pollinated underwater, living in a similar fashion to the plant <em>Ceratophyllum</em> that’s found around the world today.</p>
<p>Flowers are all about sex and getting new genetic material into the breeding line. <em>Montsechia</em> is an example of a very early line of evolution that solved this challenge in a new and novel way – relying on water to disperse its pollen, not the wind or animal pollinators. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92098/original/image-20150817-5098-1dcevs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92098/original/image-20150817-5098-1dcevs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92098/original/image-20150817-5098-1dcevs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92098/original/image-20150817-5098-1dcevs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92098/original/image-20150817-5098-1dcevs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92098/original/image-20150817-5098-1dcevs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92098/original/image-20150817-5098-1dcevs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92098/original/image-20150817-5098-1dcevs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Typical fragment of the short-leaf form of <em>Montsechia</em>.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">David Dilcher</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The plant we see in these new old fossils</h2>
<p>Based on the many fossil examples we examined, <em>Montsechia</em> floated in freshwater lakes and was submerged in the water. It had a spreading growth, branching freely. This flowering plant didn’t display any of the showy blossoms we tend to associate with flowers. But because it contains seeds enclosed in a fruit, the basic characteristic of angiosperms, it is classified as a flowering plant.</p>
<p>We’ve found two forms of this fossil: one form has leaves that are small and closely pressed to the stem. On this form, we frequently saw mature fruits.</p>
<p>The other form has leaves that extend out from the stems and only rarely are mature seeds found attached. We saw the two leaf types associated together at the same fossil localities.</p>
<p>Today, many flowers are made up of petals and then male stamens (with filaments and anthers that produce pollen) and female carpels (which mature into fruits and contain the seeds, like peas in a pod). We didn’t identify any male flowers or remains of where they were borne on the stems in <em>Montsechia</em>. It appears they had separate flowers to contain pollen organs and carpels.</p>
<h2>Fishing around for the first flower</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92151/original/image-20150817-5098-1ajya5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92151/original/image-20150817-5098-1ajya5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92151/original/image-20150817-5098-1ajya5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92151/original/image-20150817-5098-1ajya5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92151/original/image-20150817-5098-1ajya5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92151/original/image-20150817-5098-1ajya5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92151/original/image-20150817-5098-1ajya5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92151/original/image-20150817-5098-1ajya5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Magnolia flower.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/kevineddy/2491579148">Kevin Eddy</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When asking the question of what the first flower in the world was like, 30 years ago some botanists said that magnolias were the typical form. Later, others suggested that perhaps water lily flowers may be a better choice.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92145/original/image-20150817-5095-ug5afb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92145/original/image-20150817-5095-ug5afb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92145/original/image-20150817-5095-ug5afb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=668&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92145/original/image-20150817-5095-ug5afb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=668&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92145/original/image-20150817-5095-ug5afb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=668&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92145/original/image-20150817-5095-ug5afb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=839&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92145/original/image-20150817-5095-ug5afb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=839&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92145/original/image-20150817-5095-ug5afb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=839&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"><em>Amborella trichopoda</em>, previous contender for earliest angiosperm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/pennstatelive/5609235215">Penn State</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Then the tools of molecular systematics allowed botanists to use DNA and RNA from the nuclei and chloroplasts of plant cells to puzzle out relationships based on molecular characteristics. That’s when a genus called <em>Amborella</em>, found living today only in New Caledonia, gained favor as a possible first flowering plant.</p>
<p>Another contender, <em>Ceratophyllum</em>, was also once thought to be basal to all flowering plants before being displaced by <em>Amborella</em>, and its position in the angiosperms has been uncertain since. <em>Montsechia</em>, at 130 million years old – among the oldest megafossil remains known of any flowering plant – is in the lineage of <em>Ceratophyllum</em>. This makes this lineage of flowering plants one of the oldest known and suggests that underwater <em>Ceratophyllum</em> is back in the running to be the original flowering plant. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92141/original/image-20150817-5127-wjz6sy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92141/original/image-20150817-5127-wjz6sy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92141/original/image-20150817-5127-wjz6sy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92141/original/image-20150817-5127-wjz6sy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92141/original/image-20150817-5127-wjz6sy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92141/original/image-20150817-5127-wjz6sy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92141/original/image-20150817-5127-wjz6sy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92141/original/image-20150817-5127-wjz6sy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"><em>Ceratophyllum submersum</em> are the modern version of the fossilized plant.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ceratophyllum_submersum.jpg">Totodilefan</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2><em>Ceratophyllum</em>, modern descendent of first flower</h2>
<p><em>Ceratophyllum</em> consists of six species found around the world today in the single genus in its own order, Ceratophyllales. These plants, known as foxtails, live in freshwater lakes on all continents of the world today, save Antarctica.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92143/original/image-20150817-5110-1tjmadi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92143/original/image-20150817-5110-1tjmadi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92143/original/image-20150817-5110-1tjmadi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=690&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92143/original/image-20150817-5110-1tjmadi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=690&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92143/original/image-20150817-5110-1tjmadi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=690&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92143/original/image-20150817-5110-1tjmadi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=868&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92143/original/image-20150817-5110-1tjmadi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=868&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92143/original/image-20150817-5110-1tjmadi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=868&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Life cycle of a flowering plant.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Angiosperm_life_cycle_diagram-en.svg">LadyofHats Mariana Ruiz</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These modern-day descendents of <em>Montsechia</em> have separate male and female flowers with no sepals or petals, just simple reproductive organs, like stamens and carpels. When they reproduce, the stamens release the anthers that contain the pollen to float up to the water’s surface. Then the pollen is released and begins to slowly sink through the water column. As it descends, being moved by water currents, a branched pollen tube grows out. When the pollen tube makes it into the vicinity of a female, a branch will find a small hole enter and pollinate. This is how the plant fertilizes and creates a seed. </p>
<p>Because of the water dispersal of the pollen there is genetic mixing or outcrossing, just as if an insect had carried the pollen.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92152/original/image-20150817-5110-1tp9p9x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92152/original/image-20150817-5110-1tp9p9x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92152/original/image-20150817-5110-1tp9p9x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92152/original/image-20150817-5110-1tp9p9x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92152/original/image-20150817-5110-1tp9p9x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92152/original/image-20150817-5110-1tp9p9x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92152/original/image-20150817-5110-1tp9p9x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92152/original/image-20150817-5110-1tp9p9x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"><em>Ceratophyllum demersum</em>.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ceratophyllum_demersum.jpg">Totodilefan</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The fossil fruits of <em>Montsechia</em> also have a similar small pore in the fruit wall, and the seed is positioned similarly as those of <em>Ceratophyllum</em> today. This suggests that these very ancient flowers flowered underwater, were very simple in nature (no beautiful petals yet) and were pollinated underwater. This very early and inventive way for flowering plants to manage their reproduction so early in their evolution is impressive.</p>
<p><em>Montsechia</em> places the <em>Ceratophyllum</em> lineage as one of the oldest of all the flowering plants and suggests that we need to reevaluate the nature of the evolution of the original angiosperm again.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46188/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Dilcher does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The fossilized plant Montsechia relied on water to disseminate its genetic material and may rewrite the book on when and how the first flowering plants evolved.David Dilcher, Emeritus Professor of Geological Sciences and Paleobotany, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/429982015-06-17T02:36:21Z2015-06-17T02:36:21ZJurassic art: how our vision of dinosaurs has evolved over time<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85159/original/image-20150616-5842-14xi8xj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">How we think things may have looked: In early Cretaceous China, a pair of _Beipiaosaurus_ make way for a pack of _Yutyrannus_ trudging over a recent snowfall. Large pterosaurs (_Feilongus_) and tiny birds (_Eoenantiornis_) take flight.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brian Choo</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The release of the latest <a href="https://theconversation.com/jurassic-world-if-you-make-a-monster-it-will-always-bite-back-42481">Jurassic World</a> movie has again ignited debate over the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/06/12/science/jurassic-world-deconstructed-by-paleontologist.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0">accurate portrayal of dinosaurs</a>. Some people – including myself – are not happy with the depiction of some of the dinosaurs in the movie, but then getting that depiction right in the first place has always been a challenge.</p>
<p>While generations of researchers have pieced together an astounding view of the <a href="http://www.livescience.com/38596-mesozoic-era.html">Mesozoic Earth</a>, it is the artists who turn dry technical descriptions into the public vision of a world ruled by dinosaurs.</p>
<p>As knowledge improves with new discoveries and interpretations, so too has the accompanying artwork evolved over time.</p>
<p>Take the image (top), a reconstruction of mine of the feathered tyrannosauroid <a href="http://australianmuseum.net.au/yutyrannus-huali"><em>Yutyrannus</em></a> and you can see the fruits of multiple scientific disciplines converged in one picture.</p>
<p>During preparation, I consulted with palaeontologist <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/china-s-dinosaur-hunter-the-ground-breaker-1.11352">Xing Xu</a>, examined fossils, read palaeobotanical texts to get the plants right and noted palaeoclimatic studies which suggested a chilly setting.</p>
<h2>The first dinosaur park</h2>
<p>Within Crystal Palace Park, in south London, are some <a href="http://cpdinosaurs.org/">massive sculptures</a> that are the work of the most influential of the first generation of dinosaur artists, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Waterhouse_Hawkins">Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins</a>. Their anatomy is woefully outdated by today’s standards but, when unveiled in 1854, they created a public sensation. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85111/original/image-20150615-5812-ked5vm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85111/original/image-20150615-5812-ked5vm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85111/original/image-20150615-5812-ked5vm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85111/original/image-20150615-5812-ked5vm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85111/original/image-20150615-5812-ked5vm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85111/original/image-20150615-5812-ked5vm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85111/original/image-20150615-5812-ked5vm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85111/original/image-20150615-5812-ked5vm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"><em>Iguanodon</em> sculptures by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, at Crystal Palace, London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brian Choo</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The most iconic of the Crystal Palace statues are the <a href="http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/life/dinosaurs-other-extinct-creatures/dino-directory/iguanodon.html"><em>Iguanodon</em></a>, and different depictions of this creature mirrors our growing understanding of dinosaurs.</p>
<p>During the mid-1800s, the available fossil record was scant. In 1834, the British fossil hunter <a href="http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/famouspaleontologists/p/gideonmantell.htm">Gideon Mantell</a> (who named <em>Iguanodon</em> a few years earlier) presented a restoration based on a partial skeleton. With only modern animals for reference, he produced basically a scaled-up iguana with a nose-horn. </p>
<p>Eminent British anatomist <a href="http://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Owen">Richard Owen</a> took account of the structural requirements of a massive body and it was under his supervision that Hawkins created the bulky Crystal Palace quadrupeds, plodding on elephantine legs.</p>
<h2>Changing with new discoveries</h2>
<p>Everything changed in 1878 with the discovery of 38 complete skeletons in Belgium. This revealed an animal with forelimbs shorter than the hindlimbs, while the nose-horn turned out to be a thumb claw.</p>
<p>Belgian scientists had the first complete dinosaur skeletons, but with nothing in the fossil record to compare them with, they again used modern animals (wallabies and cassowaries) as a guide. The result was an upright, tail-dragging biped that served as the basis for depictions in the late 1800s through to the mid-20th century.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85113/original/image-20150615-5838-1opbgwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85113/original/image-20150615-5838-1opbgwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85113/original/image-20150615-5838-1opbgwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=347&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85113/original/image-20150615-5838-1opbgwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=347&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85113/original/image-20150615-5838-1opbgwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=347&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85113/original/image-20150615-5838-1opbgwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85113/original/image-20150615-5838-1opbgwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85113/original/image-20150615-5838-1opbgwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">(Left) late 19th century reconstruction of <em>Iguanodon</em> as a tail-dragging reptilian biped, and (right) modern reconstruction of <em>Iguanodon</em> as a muscular quadruped with tail held aloft.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Left image by Josef Smit, right image by Brian Choo</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With an improved understanding of anatomy, the study of fossil trackways and a re-examination of the Belgian material, it was recognised in the 1960s that <em>Iguanodon</em> walked mainly on all fours with the tail held out straight.</p>
<p>This is the current view as presented in the TV series <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/dinosaurs/fact_files/sky/iguanodon.htm">Walking with Dinosaurs</a> and the 2000 Disney movie <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0130623/">Dinosaur</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HlNRVZ871os?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Disney movie features Aladar, an <em>Iguanodon</em>.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>War and depression stifled palaeontology and, for much of the 20th century, depictions remained static and often copied from a few iconic artists such as <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/charles-r-knights-prehistoric-visions-16099537/">Charles Knight</a>. Viewed as evolutionary failures, dinosaurs were bloated sluggish beasts in primordial swamps.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85012/original/image-20150615-5816-1e9xaz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85012/original/image-20150615-5816-1e9xaz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85012/original/image-20150615-5816-1e9xaz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85012/original/image-20150615-5816-1e9xaz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85012/original/image-20150615-5816-1e9xaz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85012/original/image-20150615-5816-1e9xaz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85012/original/image-20150615-5816-1e9xaz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85012/original/image-20150615-5816-1e9xaz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Charles Knight working on Stegosaurus in 1899.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Charles_R._Knight.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A new vision evolves</h2>
<p>A turning point came in 1964 with American palaeontologist <a href="http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/famouspaleontologists/p/johnostrom.htm">John Ostrom’s</a> discovery of <a href="http://museumvictoria.com.au/melbournemuseum/discoverycentre/dinosaur-walk/meet-the-skeletons/deinonychus/"><em>Deinonychus</em></a>, an active, sophisticated, bird-like predator that turned the old stereotypes on their heads. Ostrom’s protege, American palaeontologist <a href="http://www.hmns.org/?option=com_content&id=88&Itemid=94">Robert Bakker</a>, produced sketches of <em>Deinonychus</em> and other dinosaurs in highly dynamic poses while depicting bird-like musculature instead of flaccid reptilian limbs.</p>
<p>Renewed interest fuelled fresh research, reinventing dinosaurs as highly successful animals that are <a href="https://theconversation.com/book-review-flying-dinosaurs-how-fearsome-reptiles-became-birds-30704">still with us today as birds</a>. A flurry of new discoveries, from dinosaur metabolism to parental behaviour, fed growing public demand for illustrations.</p>
<p>Talented new artists, among them <a href="http://www.hallettpaleoart.com/">Mark Hallet</a>, <a href="http://www.gspauldino.com/">Greg Paul</a> and <a href="http://douglashendersonehi.com/">Doug Henderson</a>, appeared in the 1970s and 1980s who committed those findings to canvas.</p>
<p>Today the sheer volume of fossil data is staggering, as are the range of tools and disciplines being employed by researchers. We glean molecular data from soft tissue, delve into bone cavities with CT scans and build virtual models to test ranges of motion.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85121/original/image-20150615-5842-1ag9zj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85121/original/image-20150615-5842-1ag9zj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85121/original/image-20150615-5842-1ag9zj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85121/original/image-20150615-5842-1ag9zj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85121/original/image-20150615-5842-1ag9zj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85121/original/image-20150615-5842-1ag9zj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85121/original/image-20150615-5842-1ag9zj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85121/original/image-20150615-5842-1ag9zj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Modern feathered reconstruction of <em>Deinonychus</em> preying on <em>Zephyrosaurus</em>.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Deinonychus_(Raptor_Prey_Restraint).jpg">Wikimedia/Emily Willough</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The digital revolution applies to many current artists as well, for example <a href="http://csotonyi.com/">Julius Csotonyi</a>, <a href="http://emilywilloughby.com/">Emily Willoughby</a> and myself, who rely at least partly on digital media to produce illustrations.</p>
<p>The rate of discovery today is such that artists have to tweak their images regularly to incorporate new data.</p>
<p>In 2011, I provided a reconstruction of the feathered Chinese dinosaur <a href="http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/aviandinosaurs3/p/microraptor.htm"><em>Microraptor</em></a> to accompany a <a href="http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/11/21/microraptor-the-four-winged-dinosaur-that-ate-birds/">discovery</a> made by my colleagues at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (<a href="http://english.ivpp.cas.cn/au/bi/">IVPP</a>) in China.</p>
<p>A new skeleton revealed the dinosaur had eaten a small bird, providing clues about the lifestyle of this predator. For reference, I examined the specimen along with additional fossils and was determined that my image conform to our current understanding of this animal. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84948/original/image-20150614-1461-rcg8hb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84948/original/image-20150614-1461-rcg8hb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84948/original/image-20150614-1461-rcg8hb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84948/original/image-20150614-1461-rcg8hb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84948/original/image-20150614-1461-rcg8hb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84948/original/image-20150614-1461-rcg8hb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84948/original/image-20150614-1461-rcg8hb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84948/original/image-20150614-1461-rcg8hb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">My 2011 reconstruction of a <em>Microraptor</em> preying on a bird. At left is the original version, on the right an updated version incorporating fossil pigment data.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brian Choo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For colour I used modern birds-of-prey as a guide. My <em>Microraptor</em> was brown with spotted wings and a pale underside. Yet only a few months after the picture was released, <a href="http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2012/03/08/a-shiny-dinosaur-four-winged-microraptor-gets-colour-and-gloss/">another team</a>, having examined the fossil pigments on a different specimen, determined that the life colouration was uniformly dark with an iridescent sheen. I promptly incorporated this new finding into an updated version my <a href="http://gogosardina.deviantart.com/art/Microraptor-and-Sinornis-recoloured-305058985">image</a>.</p>
<h2>Back to the movies</h2>
<p>Depictions of dinosaurs in movies, which are primarily made for for entertainment rather than education, tended to lag behind the science. Steven Spielberg’s 1993 movie <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107290/">Jurassic Park</a> – based on Michael Crichton’s 1990 novel of the same name – set a new standard for dinosaurs on the big screen.</p>
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<p>For the first time, according to concept artist <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Making-Jurassic-Park-Shay/dp/034538122X">Mike “Crash” McCreery</a>, the idea was:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[…] to get as far away from people’s perceptions of dinosaurs as possible, the upright bulky, clumsy kinds of creatures that have been seen in previous movies. The idea was to show that we were up-to-date on the current thinking that dinosaurs were probably warm-blooded and birdlike, rather than cold-blooded and lizardlike.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Allowing for artistic licence (the frilled spitting <a href="http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/typesofdinosaurs/ss/10-Facts-About-Dilophosaurus.htm#step-heading"><em>Dilophosaur</em></a>), Jurassic Park introduced current scientific thinking to the masses as Hawkins’ sculptures did over a century earlier.</p>
<p>As for this year’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0369610/">Jurassic World</a>, the fourth movie in the Jurassic Park franchise, I found it to be extremely entertaining.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3ul876u6AGM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>But the meticulous care that helped make the 1993 dinosaurs so revolutionary seems to have been lost. Much has <a href="https://theconversation.com/jurassic-world-if-you-make-a-monster-it-will-always-bite-back-42481">already been said</a> about the recent movie’s failure to keep up with with the science (especially the absence of feathers). Even granting the need for visual continuity with the previous movies, the Jurassic World dinosaurs are anatomically worse off than their original movie counterparts.</p>
<p>For example the long forelimbs and slender digits of <a href="http://museumvictoria.com.au/melbournemuseum/discoverycentre/dinosaur-walk/meet-the-skeletons/gallimimus/"><em>Gallimimus</em></a> were correctly depicted in the 1993 stampede while the <a href="http://www.jurassicworld.com/park-map/gallimimus-valley/">Jurassic World examples</a> have short, chubby arms that are mounted too high on the body.</p>
<p>It’s a little disappointing that Jurassic World ignores so many of the leaps in our understanding of how dinosaurs looked, even though the movie itself does acknowledge these are not actual dinosaurs but genetically modified recreations.</p>
<figure>
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<p>A few recent films have featured well made dinosaurs, including the <a href="http://www.bbcearth.com/movies/walking-with-dinosaurs-the-movie/">Walking with Dinosaurs</a> movie and the Australian produced <a href="http://screen.artshub.com.au/news-article/features/film/anne-richey/dinosaur-island-matt-drummond-and-jason-moody-243786">Dinosaur Island</a>, though none have been box office smashes.</p>
<figure>
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</figure>
<p>When I see the Crystal Palace dinosaurs today, I still draw inspiration and cannot fault Hawkins for anatomical errors that have accumulated with each successive discovery.</p>
<p>He looked at the available fossil evidence, consulted with experts, took note of the anatomy of living animals and used educated guesswork plus imagination to fill in the blanks. This is the same process that good paleoartists use today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42998/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian Choo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The latest Jurassic World movie has been criticised for its less than accurate portrayal of some of the dinosaurs. But how we imagine they looked and behaved has changed many times over the years.Brian Choo, Postdoctoral fellow in vertebrate palaeontology , Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/429152015-06-12T10:18:08Z2015-06-12T10:18:08ZBeyond dinosaurs, what would we need to create a Jurassic World?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84767/original/image-20150611-11437-ah1uwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">You couldn't just plop dinosaurs anywhere and expect them to survive. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/Laelops-Charles_Knight-1896.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Like many moviegoers this summer, I plan to watch Jurassic World. And because I’m a paleontologist, I’ll cheer for the movie’s protagonists (the dinosaurs) and jeer at the villains (the humans).</p>
<p>But no matter how thrilling this movie may be, one question will plague me throughout: where are the dung beetles?</p>
<p>Dung beetles – which are beetles that eat and breed in dung – would be only one of many ecological necessities for an actual Jurassic World-style theme park. </p>
<p>Yes, cloning long-extinct dinosaurs is <a href="https://theconversation.com/creating-dinosaurs-why-jurassic-world-could-never-work-35484">impossible</a>. But even if dinosaur genomes were available, the animals couldn’t simply be plopped anywhere. </p>
<p>So for the sake of argument, let’s say an extremely wealthy corporation did manage to create a diverse bunch of dinosaurs in a laboratory. </p>
<p>The next step in building a Mesozoic version of Busch Gardens would be figuring out how to recreate – and maintain – the dinosaurs’ ecosystems. Accomplishing this goal would require a huge team of scientists, consisting (at minimum) of paleontologists, geologists, ecologists, botanists, zoologists, soil scientists, biochemists and microbiologists. </p>
<p>Such a team then would have to take into account countless interacting factors for the dinosaurs’ recreated habitats. And perhaps they could take a page from <a href="http://rewilding.org/rewildit/">rewilding efforts</a> that are currently taking place throughout the world. </p>
<h2>The issue of food</h2>
<p>In a memorable scene from the original Jurassic Park, paleobotanist Dr Ellie Sattler examines an impressive heap of an ill Triceratops’s feces to look for digested remains of a toxic plant. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JylK4HuKMvQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">In the original Jurassic Park, a dinosaur becomes sick after eating a toxic plant.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Here, the filmmakers touched on a key challenge for recreating an environment from a different geologic period. <a href="http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/plant-resistance-against-herbivory-96675700">Many modern plants have evolved defenses against herbivores</a>, which include toxins that can swiftly impair any animal that hasn’t adapted to them. </p>
<p>Consequently, a time-traveling Triceratops would be taking a big risk with every visit to its local salad bar. Paleobotanists could try to solve this problem by cataloging fossil plants that lived at the same time as plant-eating dinosaurs, before picking out descendants of those plants that are still around today. Still, plant lists will never be good enough to say whether or not a Triceratops, Stegosaurus or Brachiosaurus ate those plants or if they could eat their descendants.</p>
<p>The same might hold true for carnivorous dinosaurs, which – for all we know – may have been picky eaters. For instance, although some Triceratops bones <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/did-tyrannosaurus-ever-battle-triceratops-95464192/?no-ist">hold tooth traces of Tyrannosaurus</a>, there’s no way to be sure a genetically engineered Tyrannosaurus would eat an equally inauthentic Triceratops (even if it were organic and free-range).</p>
<p>So despite a century of dinosaur flicks portraying tyrannosaurs and other predatory dinosaurs gratuitously munching humans, one bite of our species – or other sizable mammals – might make them sick. In other words, there’s no accounting for taste. </p>
<h2>Animals that do the dirty work</h2>
<p>The lack of dung beetles in that same scene with Dr Sattler also may have explained why the Triceratops’s feces were piled so high. We know from <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/3515235">fossil burrows in dinosaur coprolites</a> (fossil feces) that dung beetles fed on dinosaur droppings at least 75 million years ago. Similarly, Late Jurassic dinosaur bones from nearly 150 million years ago <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10420940701193284">hold the traces of carcass-eating insects</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84766/original/image-20150611-11427-5xbxez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84766/original/image-20150611-11427-5xbxez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84766/original/image-20150611-11427-5xbxez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84766/original/image-20150611-11427-5xbxez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84766/original/image-20150611-11427-5xbxez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84766/original/image-20150611-11427-5xbxez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84766/original/image-20150611-11427-5xbxez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dung beetles cleaned up after the dinosaurs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/Flightless_Dung_Beetle_Circellium_Bachuss,_Addo_Elephant_National_Park,_South_Africa.JPG">Kay-africa/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This makes sense: wastes, bodies and other forms of stored matter and energy must be recycled in functioning modern ecosystems. Accordingly, to maintain the productivity of these dinosaurs’ ecosystems, animals that perform essential services to the ecosystem would need to be introduced. </p>
<p>These include pollinators, such as bees, beetles and butterflies, as well as seed dispersers, like birds and small tree- and ground-dwelling mammals. Thus <a href="http://www.masraniglobal.com/">Masrani Global</a> – the imaginary corporation tasked with creating Jurassic World – should have added entomologists (insect scientists), ornithologists and mammalogists to the <a href="http://www.masraniglobal.com/careers/">career opportunities page</a> on its mock website.</p>
<h2>‘Pleistocene Parks’ a realistic possibility?</h2>
<p>Can we learn anything useful from such fanciful reconstructing of long-gone ecosystems, where large animals once roamed? Sure. </p>
<p>In so-called “rewilding” projects, imagination meets real science. These projects, which attempt to restore ecosystems by closely mimicking their previous iterations, often include reintroducing locally extinct animals. </p>
<p>Perhaps the most famous and successful of such rewilding projects began just after the release of the original Jurassic Park. </p>
<p>In 1995, wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park. Although admittedly not as exciting as releasing a pack of velociraptors into the woods, the reintroduction of wolves – which had been extirpated from the area earlier in the 20th century – <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2011.11.005">had a dramatic restorative effect</a>. </p>
<p>After the wolves gorged on elk – which, without predators, had overpopulated the region – riverine foliage grew more lushly. This prevented erosion and expanded floodplains, which gave beavers a better habitat to get to work damming rivers. </p>
<p><a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1257553">A similar experiment is taking place in Europe</a>, where increased numbers of large carnivores, such as wolves, bears and lynxes, are reshaping their ecosystems closer to their original states.</p>
<p>Bolstered by these successes, rewilding proponents have even <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/508027">proposed</a> reintroducing elephants, lions, cheetahs and other animals to parts of North America as ecological proxies to mammoths, American lions and American “cheetahs” that lived only a little more than 10,000 years ago in those areas.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84760/original/image-20150611-11430-18i4pw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84760/original/image-20150611-11430-18i4pw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84760/original/image-20150611-11430-18i4pw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84760/original/image-20150611-11430-18i4pw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84760/original/image-20150611-11430-18i4pw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84760/original/image-20150611-11430-18i4pw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84760/original/image-20150611-11430-18i4pw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84760/original/image-20150611-11430-18i4pw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Large animals from the Pleistocene Epoch.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_age_fauna_of_northern_Spain_-_Mauricio_Antón.jpg">Public Library of Science/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Given the much shorter elapsed time since their extinction, enough similar species today and no need for genetic engineering, a “Pleistocene Park” – Pleistocene being the geological epoch that was about 2.5 million to 11,700 years ago – would be far easier to achieve than a Jurassic World (while also being more alliterative).</p>
<p>So to any corporations out there that are thinking of making such a park, do us a big favor: whatever you do, don’t forget to include dung beetles.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42915/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anthony J. Martin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A “Pleistocene Park” might be a more realistic scenario.Anthony J. Martin, Professor of Practice, Emory UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/424812015-06-11T05:40:45Z2015-06-11T05:40:45ZJurassic World: if you make a monster it will always bite back<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0369610/">Jurassic World</a> brings to life the fantasy of an amusement park where genetically engineered dinosaurs are the main attraction, as first imagined in the <a href="http://www.michaelcrichton.com/books-jurassicpark.html">original book</a>, then movie <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107290/">Jurassic Park</a> back in 1993. This fourth movie in the franchise, in cinemas from today, is certainly action-packed, although there are a number of opportunities missed when it comes to how these beasts are represented.</p>
<p>Jurassic World’s dinosaurs are analogous to <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-curse-of-frankenstein-how-archetypal-myths-shape-the-way-people-think-about-science-42077">Frankenstein’s monster</a>, and they unleash the catastrophic consequences we expect when hubristic scientists become obsessed with forbidden knowledge. In this case, by tampering with the laws of nature to create new life forms for dubious ends. </p>
<p>The beasts are spectacular though. And like Mary Shelley’s monster, they are imperfect products of their environment. </p>
<p>The first three Jurassic Park movies went to great lengths to present dinosaurs that were as close to being real as the latest scientific interpretation of the time allowed. Leading palaeontologists were consulted to show how up-to-date the current thinking was on dinosaurs.</p>
<p>Although not 100% perfect, the end result was creatures that were accurate, to the best of our knowledge, and vividly realistic. Many a palaeontologist was brought close to tears by the life-like reconstructions facilitated by the advances of digital animation technologies. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aJJrkyHas78?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Jurassic World, however, commits some fairly serious errors in dinosaur reconstruction. Impressive though the beasts may be, whoever was behind their creation has ignored many recent breakthroughs in dinosaur science.</p>
<p>As renowned dinosaur expert <a href="http://www.geol.umd.edu/%7Etholtz/">Tom Holtz</a>, of the University of Maryland, told us:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Jurassic Park brought the understanding of dinosaurs of the 1980s to the movie goers of the 1990s. Jurassic World brings the understanding of dinosaurs of before the 1980s to the movie goers of 2015. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Bigger, louder and with more teeth</h2>
<p>Both the scientists in Jurassic World and the film makers responsible for its creation have something in common: the pressure of their consumers for more spectacular product.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84652/original/image-20150611-6801-1fdb21o.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84652/original/image-20150611-6801-1fdb21o.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84652/original/image-20150611-6801-1fdb21o.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84652/original/image-20150611-6801-1fdb21o.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84652/original/image-20150611-6801-1fdb21o.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84652/original/image-20150611-6801-1fdb21o.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84652/original/image-20150611-6801-1fdb21o.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84652/original/image-20150611-6801-1fdb21o.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The <em>Indominus rex</em> dominates all creatures in her path in Jurassic World.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ostensibly, the creation of the genetically engineered hybrid monster <a href="http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/saurischia/theropoda.html">theropod</a> of Jurassic World, the <em>Indominus rex</em>, is driven to satisfy the ever-increasing appetite for novelty of the visitors, who we are told have already become bored by the spectacle of living dinosaurs. And we don’t have to wait long before we see what happens when the tables are turned and <em>Indominus</em>, and its appetite, is unleashed.</p>
<p>Many of the other dinosaurs depicted in the film are accurately recreated, and we do have to be mindful that this is a fiction presenting a world <a href="https://theconversation.com/creating-dinosaurs-why-jurassic-world-could-never-work-35484">built on an impossible premise</a> of being able to recreate animals we are still learning more about each year. It’s no surprise the film makers find it hard to keep up. </p>
<h2>Creative differences</h2>
<p>Despite the involvement of expert palaeontologist <a href="http://www.museumoftherockies.org/AboutMOR/WhoWeAre/JackHorner.aspx">Dr Jack Horner</a> advising on the film, certain obvious omissions beyond his control will cause consternation to many a die-hard dinosaur fanatic.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gFRkvanD2ao?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>For example, we now have many kinds of theropod dinosaurs showing well-preserved feathers, especially in forms close to <em>Velociraptor</em> (for example <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/335/6073/1215.short"><em>Microraptor</em></a>), <em>Gallimimus</em> (<a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6106/510.short"><em>Ornithomimus</em></a> had feathers) and even close relatives of <em>Tyrannosaurus</em> had feathers (<a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v484/n7392/abs/nature10906.html"><em>Yutyrannus</em></a>). So why don’t any of the theropod dinosaurs in the movie have feathers?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84476/original/image-20150610-6790-161pig6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84476/original/image-20150610-6790-161pig6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84476/original/image-20150610-6790-161pig6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84476/original/image-20150610-6790-161pig6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84476/original/image-20150610-6790-161pig6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84476/original/image-20150610-6790-161pig6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=698&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84476/original/image-20150610-6790-161pig6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=698&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84476/original/image-20150610-6790-161pig6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=698&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A dinosaur, <em>Caudipteryx</em>, showing well-preserved feathers on the tail and arms. Many of the dinosaurs depicted in the movie should have had feathers covering their bodies, as the fossil evidence shows.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prof John Long, Flinders University</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our first view of <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/dinosaurs/fact_files/scrub/stegosaurus.htm"><em>Stegosaurus</em></a> in the new movie shows the tail held high above the ground as it should be, but in a later scene we see <em>Stegosaurus</em> dragging their tails on the ground. This ignores research showing that they held the tails aloft, as evinced by <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1251805099800998">well-preserved trackways</a> lacking tail drag marks.</p>
<p>The flying <a href="http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/pterosauria.html"><em>pterosaurs</em></a> are very well done, and appear realistic in physical appearance, but lose out on their behaviour.</p>
<p>Fish eaters such as <a href="http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/museum/public/ingensmount.html"><em>Pteranodon</em></a> are seen attacking and picking up humans with their delicate small foot claws. Although sporting a six metre wingspan, the body of a <em>Pteranodon</em> weighed only about 12kg to 15kg. So the idea of them picking up any people would be like a paper aeroplane picking up a puppy. </p>
<h2>Palaeontologists have been voted off the island</h2>
<p>A major shift from the first three movies, and one that explains the absence of palaeontologists in the movie, is that this enterprise is driven by profit rather than passion. The park’s original founder, John Hammond (played by the late <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000277/">Richard Attenborough</a> in the earlier movies), was an affable imperfect human, endearing in his quest to bring back the dinosaurs.</p>
<p>In this way he was similar to the original Dr Frankenstein, pursuing his scientific obsession with the origins of life. As the death toll mounted, he struggled to face the consequences of his actions. The true villain in the first film, though, was not Hammond, nor the rampaging dinosaurs pursuing their instincts, but the greedy Dennis Nedry, who sought to profit by selling Hammond’s dinosaur embryos to a rival.</p>
<p>But in this movie, Hammond and his quixotic vision is long gone. These days Jurassic World is in the hands of a corporation driven by profit and growth, the model of a modern capitalist enterprise which could be seen as the ultimate enemy of the natural world. </p>
<p>The site is managed by the highly intellectual Claire (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0397171/">Bryce Dallas Howard</a>), as perfectly manicured and polished as she is controlled and contained. Claire is under instruction by “Corporate” to create new dinosaurs, or “assets” as they are called, in order to increase numbers through the door: visitor numbers spike whenever they create a new exhibit. </p>
<p>Opposite Claire is Owen (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0695435/">Chris Pratt</a>), an ex-navy animal wrangler brought in to consult on the safety of enclosures. All muscle and machismo, Owen is unapologetically driven by instinct rather than intellect, and responsible for some of the cheesiest frat-boy lines we’ve had to endure in recent years. </p>
<p>We are led into their world of spectacle and witness a great white shark – that terrorised us for the last 40 odd years after <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073195/">Jaws</a> – hung out and reduced to bait for the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/seamonsters/factfiles/giantmosasaur.shtml">mosasaur</a> that leaps from the water to take it in one gulp. The crowd is drenched by the splash this new monster generates. The barriers between the exhibit and the spectators are clearly not impermeable. </p>
<h2>We need a hero</h2>
<p>As Jurassic World starts to come apart thanks to the unleashed <em>Indominus rex</em>, we need a capable hero to rescue the kiddies and the corporate ice-princess, who after being imprisoned in her glass office is just waiting to bust out her inner-Lara Croft.</p>
<p>Owen, the brawny anti-intellectual hero, demands that “if we’re going to do this, we do this my way”. Which means on a motor bike, with his raptor gang, with whom he has a relationship based on mutual respect.</p>
<p>The closer Claire comes to nature, the more sweaty and human she becomes, and this is the rub of the tale. The more corporate and clinical the world, the more divorced we are from nature, the more terrifying the consequences. Only Owen has retained his common sense and basic instincts.</p>
<p>Jurassic World presents (again) guileless humans surprised by the violence and calamity that ensues when the Pandora’s Box of science is opened. But as much as the film tries to make a bad guy out of the science, the real enemies are the humans who brought these creatures to life with less than philanthropic intent and a negligible sense of responsibility.</p>
<p>This discomfort has a number of parallels today, particularly regarding potential uses of genetic technologies, as well as human induced threats to our existence, such as terrorism and climate change.</p>
<p>Mary Shelley demonstrated nearly 200 years ago that with the power to create comes the responsibility for the consequences. Owen may be a meathead, but at the very least he is still human with a healthy respect for nature.</p>
<p>Forget the incongruities, such as imperfect representations of dinosaurs or the likelihood of any woman in Claire’s heels being able to outrun a <em>T. rex</em>., Jurassic World is still an enjoyable Hollywood tumble through the world of wonder and potential of science, nature and human beings.</p>
<p>The three are not mutually exclusive, and when united can conquer, create or destroy. The trouble is we don’t always know the consequences until it’s too late.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42481/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Long receives funding from The Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Heather L. Robinson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Plenty of action in the new dinosaur movie Jurassic World, in cinemas from Thursday. But how realistic are the dinosaurs and who are the real monsters when we play around with nature?John Long, Strategic Professor in Palaeontology, Flinders UniversityHeather L. Robinson, Research Associate & PhD Candidate, School of Humanities and Creative Arts, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/428642015-06-10T13:05:13Z2015-06-10T13:05:13ZSci-fi and Jurassic Park have driven research, scientists say<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84516/original/image-20150610-6814-1g3xc98.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Roaming among the dinosaurs in Jurassic World.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ILM/Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The park is almost open. Two decades on and Jurassic Park has morphed into Jurassic World, the one and only dinosaur theme park. Science has apparently evolved too: the genetically-engineered dinosaurs are to take a secondary role to a new star of the show, a genetically-engineered hybrid, worryingly named <a href="http://www.jurassicworld.com/dinosaurs/indominus-rex/"><em>Indominus Rex</em></a>. Undoubtedly, chaos will ensue.</p>
<p>In the wake of the 1993 Jurassic Park film, scientists who have anything – or even nothing – to do with palaeontology or molecular biology are almost always asked the same question: “Can we resurrect a dinosaur?” The answer is always an emphatic no. </p>
<p>But to some extent, Jurassic Park did actually drive and develop the science and technology of ancient DNA research. I’ve spent the past year interviewing scientists about the history of ancient DNA research and the effects of Jurassic Park on their work as part of my doctoral degree.</p>
<h2>Hope and hype</h2>
<p>Ancient DNA research walks a fine line between science and science fiction, something stressed by its short but sensational history. Its beginnings tell a story of science, speculation, hope, and hype – and Michael Crichton, the author of the original Jurassic Park novel, was quick to pick this up. Dinosaurs were always a frequent feature of museums, but breaking open perfectly preserved bones to discover what was inside was a novelty.</p>
<p>In the 1980s, innovative ideas behind the search for DNA from ancient amber insects to extinct museum specimens provided the inspiration for Jurassic Park, and the predictable and catastrophic consequences of bringing dinosaurs back. What wasn’t foreseeable was the incredible impact the movie would have – and still has – on the development of ancient DNA research.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84524/original/image-20150610-6804-13eqt6z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84524/original/image-20150610-6804-13eqt6z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84524/original/image-20150610-6804-13eqt6z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84524/original/image-20150610-6804-13eqt6z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84524/original/image-20150610-6804-13eqt6z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84524/original/image-20150610-6804-13eqt6z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84524/original/image-20150610-6804-13eqt6z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Indominus Rex.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ILM/Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was in the 1990s that the feverish search for the most ancient DNA from the most iconic fossils began. Scientists call it the “Wild West” and even “the Jurassic Park phase”. It is during this time that Jurassic Park’s influence is most evident.</p>
<p>As well as being the year that the film was released, 1993 also marked a turning point in the world of ancient DNA research: a team of researchers extracted and sequenced DNA from a 125-130m-year-old ancient weevil in Lebanese amber. <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v363/n6429/abs/363536a0.html">The results</a> were reported in <a href="http://www.nature.com/">Nature</a> on June 10 – one day after the Jurassic Park premiere and one day before its release in cinemas across the United States. </p>
<p>The timing was not a coincidence – and this didn’t go unnoticed. One scientist I spoke to remarked that it was “absolutely extraordinary that a scientific journal like Nature would hold on to an article to wait for the opening day of a movie”. It “caused a huge media splash”. </p>
<h2>Dinosaur resurrection</h2>
<p>That year, Jack Horner – palaeontologist and scientific consultant to Jurassic Park – proposed a project to investigate DNA from dinosaurs to the National Science Foundation. The grant was funded the same year the film was released and this, too, was no coincidence. One scientist told me that they thought NSF funded the project simply because of the film: “It was the perfect time for it”. (This, and all subsequent attempts at securing dinosaur DNA, have failed).</p>
<p>In addition to swaying publication timing and grant funding, Jurassic Park created a new generation of “geeky but glamorous” scientists. One researcher said: “Ancient DNA sounds cool” or “sounds like it should be cool”: “That really does stem back to Jurassic Park. It is still the legacy of that. That’s when it entered the popular consciousness”. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84525/original/image-20150610-6787-42yy73.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84525/original/image-20150610-6787-42yy73.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84525/original/image-20150610-6787-42yy73.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84525/original/image-20150610-6787-42yy73.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84525/original/image-20150610-6787-42yy73.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84525/original/image-20150610-6787-42yy73.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84525/original/image-20150610-6787-42yy73.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Behind the scenes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chuck Zlotnick</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the influence of Hollywood has not always been positive. Another scientist said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It raised expectations about DNA and what ancient DNA could do. Unfortunately, because it was made by a great director – Steven Spielberg – it’s a film that sticks in people’s minds. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>For this scientist, the movie and the media around it diminishes and even deceives the public about ancient DNA research: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>When I give a talk about ancient DNA, they put up a poster and it has a <em>dinosaur</em> on it. I’ve objected. I’ve said: ‘there’s <em>no</em> dinosaur DNA. You should <em>not</em> show the dinosaur’. It’s had a bad influence.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But for better or worse, the Jurassic Park legacy lives on. The rhetoric of resurrection has certainly blurred boundaries between fantasy and reality – especially in the media.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84526/original/image-20150610-6804-1652tpe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84526/original/image-20150610-6804-1652tpe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84526/original/image-20150610-6804-1652tpe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84526/original/image-20150610-6804-1652tpe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84526/original/image-20150610-6804-1652tpe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84526/original/image-20150610-6804-1652tpe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84526/original/image-20150610-6804-1652tpe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alive and well.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Bringing mammoths back</h2>
<p>The focus of this interest, however, has somewhat shifted. These days, questions are less about dinosaur resurrection and more about <a href="https://theconversation.com/produce-mammoth-stem-cells-says-creator-of-dolly-the-sheep-16335">mammoth de-extinction</a>, particularly after the discovery of potentially viable mammoth DNA in 2013.</p>
<p>When I ask ancient DNA researchers about mammoth de-extinction the overwhelming majority ask me: “Why would you want to de-extinct a mammoth?” De-extinction requires significant technological and biological improvements, as well as philosophical, political and ethical considerations.</p>
<p>The ethics of de-extinction runs both ways. Palaeontologist Michael Archer argues we have moral obligation to resurrect extinct species like the Tasmanian tiger, because we – through population and predation increase – were the cause of their demise. But most scientists disagree and argue time and money should be spent conserving the current environment. One researcher said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>If aliens landed and looked around then they’d be pretty surprised to see that we had decided to piss away the last of our resources on trying to bring back the mammoth.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Jurassic Park has certainly left a long and lasting legacy. It is a legacy that makes us question our motivation for de-extinction. And with the release of Jurassic World, this debate over science or sensation is set to take centre stage once again.</p>
<p><em><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/found-preserved-dinosaur-cells-but-sadly-scientists-still-cant-build-jurassic-world-42959">Read more here</a> about the discovery of preserved cells in Canadian dinosaur bones.</strong></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42864/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth Jones receives funding from the Department of Science and Technology Studies at UCL, the Division of Paleontology at American Museum of Natural History and the British Society for the History of Science.</span></em></p>Science-fiction, to some extent, can indeed create science.Elizabeth Jones, PhD Candidate in Science and Technology Studies, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/428182015-06-08T20:08:22Z2015-06-08T20:08:22ZBefore we build Jurassic World we need to study recent extinctions<p>It’s hard to have a conversation about bringing extinct creatures back to life without a tip-of-the-hat to <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107290/">Jurassic Park</a>, or the latest instalment, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0369610/">Jurassic World</a>, due out Thursday. Massive people-eaters escaping their bonds and ravaging humanity may make good cinema but the arguments both for and against de-extinction are more subtle and wide ranging.</p>
<p>De-extinction is based on the concept that extinction need not be forever. One way to save those animals and plants that we thought were already lost is via genomic techniques, which can link molecular biology and conservation.</p>
<p>The image of dinosaurs walking the modern-day Earth may be enough to turn some people on or off the idea immediately. But for a myriad of reasons, these great beasts of the long distant past aren’t among the immediate candidates for de-extinction.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/o8ZIxVxxYAQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Instead, creatures such as the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-25052233">Pyrenean Ibex</a>, the <a href="http://www.wired.com/2013/03/passenger-pigeon-de-extinction/">Passenger Pigeon</a> and our own <a href="http://www.examiner.com.au/story/1381582/thylacine-can-return-from-dead/">Tasmanian Tiger</a> – all animals that have gone extinct in living memory – are in the sights of scientists around the world as part of the <a href="http://longnow.org/">The Long Now Foundation</a>.</p>
<p>Professor Mike Archer of the University of New South Wales is a member of this foundation, and in a 2013 <a href="https://youtu.be/y2xxZ9RKEzM">TEDx DeExtinction talk</a> he said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[…] if it’s clear that we [humanity] exterminated these species then I think we not only have a moral obligation to see what we could do about it, but I think we’ve got a moral imperative to try to do something, if we can.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Not yet extinct, but close</h2>
<p>In addition to the prospect of returning the recent dead, the technologies developed for de-extinction may also come to the rescue of currently living (extant) but endangered animals.</p>
<p>For those close to the edge of extinction, one of the major problems hindering conservation is a lack of genetic diversity within surviving populations. Oliver Ryder, director of genetics at the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation and Research, said that <a href="http://blogs.sandiegozoo.org/2015/02/26/strategy-to-save-northern-white-rhino-is-launched-new-genetic-technologies-offer-hope-for-species/">cryo-preserved tissues</a> may be used to improve the genetic variability and reproductive vigour of the critically endangered Northern White Rhino.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84064/original/image-20150605-14138-1919zau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84064/original/image-20150605-14138-1919zau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84064/original/image-20150605-14138-1919zau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84064/original/image-20150605-14138-1919zau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84064/original/image-20150605-14138-1919zau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84064/original/image-20150605-14138-1919zau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84064/original/image-20150605-14138-1919zau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84064/original/image-20150605-14138-1919zau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Facing extinction: one of the last remaining Northern White Rhinos.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/djmccrady/3278825295/in/photostream/">Flickr/Don McCrady</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With many of our charismatic extant creatures sharing the same crisis, the development of these tools could be a blessing.</p>
<p>Growing interest and support for de-extinction would be particularly beneficial to natural history museums collections. The bones, soft tissue samples and skins collected from distinct populations of species could provide a diverse databank of DNA for de-extinction programs.</p>
<p>But de-extinction is a field that is controversial in the public eye, and at times, among scientific peers. David Burney, Professor of Conservation Paleobiology at Hawaii’s National Tropical Botanical Garden, <a href="http://longnow.org/revive/1stde-extinction/">has said</a> that if de-extinction is technically possible, then it’s inevitable, so it might as well be embraced. That view is not an argument with unanimous support.</p>
<p>The most common arguments against de-extinction hail from conservationists themselves. De-extinction is an expensive process and the concern is that the limited resources allocated to the conservation of living organisms may be diverted to pay for de-extinction research.</p>
<p>While the cost of gene sequencing and the molecular techniques have been decreasing rapidly, these are not the only costs in implementing de-extinction. Re-introducing and managing small populations of animals, managing captive breeding and providing suitable habitat will be expensive. So too will be closely monitoring populations, protecting them from the causes of their initial extinction and studying the effect of re-introduced species.</p>
<p>So, if evenly pitted against its currently employed counterparts for conservation management, how will de-extinction fare and how will we predict the potential effectiveness of a novel method?</p>
<p>One likely analogue is “rewilding”, the process of replacing extinct species with ecological analogues from other environments, for example, re-introducing Tasmanian Devils onto the Australian mainland.</p>
<p>Previous attempts have been met with controversy. The question of conserving species compared with preserving ecosystem functionality is one that perhaps deserves more considered public debate than it has received.</p>
<p>Perhaps returning the missing species, even if it went extinct long before living memory, would face the same critique. Not everyone is in favour of wild animals in their backyard, whether back from extinction or not.</p>
<h2>Back from the dead but not the right home</h2>
<p>But what of the other side of the coin? What if we resurrect species that belonged in ecosystems that no longer exist?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.pleistocenepark.ru/en/">Pleistocene Park</a>, in northern Siberia, is an experiment to show that over-hunting by humans caused both the animals – including mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, bison, horses, musk oxen, elk, saiga and yaks – and their Pleistocene habitats to vanish from the region.</p>
<p>Through grazing experiments, scientists are attempting to restore the ecosystem to what it was more than 10,000 years ago. But the missing density of herbivorous animals (such as the extinct mammoths) is said to be choking the tundra with moss.</p>
<p>If human alteration of the environment has been the main cause of extinctions over the last 1,000 years, how are we going to give it back? And which creatures that have adapted to the new landscape will we sacrifice to do so?</p>
<p>Given there have been successions of changing landscapes, each with its own biota, which one will we reinstate? If we were not able to protect these environments and the creatures that inhabited them in the past, why do we think we could do it now?</p>
<p>If we bring them back before we have halted our current rate of extinction, will we simply be dooming them to a second extinction event, a title currently only held by the Pyrenean Ibex?</p>
<p>Archer, a keen supporter of de-extinction, raised this point in his TEDx talk in relation to the Tasmanian Tiger:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>So, could we put it back? Yes. Is that all we would do? And this is an interesting question. Sometimes, you might be able to put it back, but is that the safest way to make sure it never goes extinct again? And I don’t think so.</p>
<p>I think gradually, as we see species all around the world, it’s kind of a mantra, that wildlife is increasingly not safe in the wild – we’d love to think it is, but we know it isn’t – we need other parallel strategies coming online.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Among all the questions, one thing seems clear: the application of de-extinction will need to be considered carefully on a case-by-case basis, with both forethought and public support.</p>
<p>For now the argument that de-extinction will be a boost to the resources of the conservation movement in the long term, rather than a drain on its already limited funds, is based on a mix of genuine hope and economic speculation.</p>
<p>It isn’t yet known if funding will follow excitement, or if the public will support the return of real past ecosystems.</p>
<p>Unlike some, we don’t believe that technical possibility necessitates inevitability, and so it is time to give some serious thought to de-extinction, when and why it could be applied, and to the conservation of the environment we still have. There is a long way to go before we consider a real Jurassic Park.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>See also:</strong> <a href="https://theconversation.com/creating-dinosaurs-why-jurassic-world-could-never-work-35484">Creating dinosaurs: why Jurassic World could never work</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42818/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Jurassic World is opening in cinemas this Thursday and again raises the idea of resurrecting extinct creatures. But there’s plenty of other contenders before we even think of recreating dinosaurs.Tamara Fletcher, Research Associate in Palaeontology, The University of QueenslandCaitlin Syme, PhD Candidate, Vertebrate Palaeontology, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/408582015-04-27T17:33:49Z2015-04-27T17:33:49ZHow we identified weird and wonderful ‘Jurassic platypus’ dinosaur<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79437/original/image-20150427-18128-1s0lxxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C419%2C1639%2C1508&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Calm down, I'm a vegetarian.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gabriel Lio</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When the platypus was discovered in very late 18th century, its bizarre features that appeared to be a mash-up of other animals perplexed naturalists. Now a creature from the past that would have looked like strange mix of unrelated dinosaurs has been discovered. And our research suggests that it belonged to a hitherto unknown lineage of herbivores that lived around 145m years ago, in the Jurassic period.</p>
<p>I was part of the international team that identified this strange creature by analysing bones enclosed in ancient rocks. Our research, <a href="http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/nature14307">published in the journal Nature</a>, reveals that the Chilesauraus was relatively small – a fully grown adult would have measured about 3.2 metres. We discovered this by investigating four whole skeletons and several other bones – a task that was not particularly difficult as the bones were well preserved. In fact, only a few skull bones and the end of the tail remain undiscovered. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79449/original/image-20150427-18126-1vyxieb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79449/original/image-20150427-18126-1vyxieb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79449/original/image-20150427-18126-1vyxieb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79449/original/image-20150427-18126-1vyxieb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79449/original/image-20150427-18126-1vyxieb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79449/original/image-20150427-18126-1vyxieb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79449/original/image-20150427-18126-1vyxieb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chileosaurus’ teeth suggest it was a vegetarian.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Fernando Novas</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The creature had leaf-shaped teeth, which means it was most likely a plant eater. Other signs were the robust legs, which resemble those of other herbivorous dinosaur groups, and the morphology of the pelvis that allowed to increase the gut capacity for processing plant material. Chilesaurus was the most common species of the braided river system in which it lived alongside with primitive crocodiles and large long-necked dinosaurs. </p>
<h2>A genealogical puzzle</h2>
<p>Identifying what the dinosaur looked like was not the most challenging of the research, but it was very difficult to figure out which dinosaur group it belonged to – an issue we spent many late nights discussing. We were completely astonished by the fact that each part of the skeleton that was cleaned out from the surrounding rock resembled a different group of dinosaurs.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79451/original/image-20150427-18167-zo0yja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79451/original/image-20150427-18167-zo0yja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79451/original/image-20150427-18167-zo0yja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79451/original/image-20150427-18167-zo0yja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79451/original/image-20150427-18167-zo0yja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79451/original/image-20150427-18167-zo0yja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79451/original/image-20150427-18167-zo0yja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The well-preserved skeleton.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gabriel Lio</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Its skull and neck look like those of primitive long-necked dinosaurs like <a href="http://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/12711/">Plateosaurus</a>; the vertebrae resemble those of primitive meat-eating theropods such as <a href="http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/dilophosaur/discovery.html">Dilophosaurus</a>; the pelvis is very similar to that of <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/432959/ornithischian">ornithischian dinosaurs</a> such as <a href="http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/life/dinosaurs-other-extinct-creatures/dino-directory/iguanodon.html">Iguanodon</a>; and the hand has only two well-developed fingers as in <a href="http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/prehistoric/tyrannosaurus-rex/">Tyranosaurus Rex</a>, but with a longer arm. </p>
<p>However, there is no possibility that Chilesaurus is simply made up of different dinosaur bones, because we found four partial skeletons. Working partly in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and partly in Birmingham, our team compared the bones to those of other dinosaur groups. Eventually we decided through different analyses that Chilesaurus belongs to a completely unknown lineage of dinosaurs that acquired herbivore habits from carnivorous ancestors. Chilesaurus is the first herbivorous <a href="http://zookeys.pensoft.net/articles.php?id=2415">theropod</a> (a lineage that includes mainly predatory dinosaurs) from the southern hemisphere. </p>
<p>We believe that the new dinosaur is a primitive <a href="http://www.app.pan.pl/article/item/app20090083.html">tetanuran</a> – a group of theropods that includes <a href="http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/megalosaurus-sci">Megalosaurus</a>, <a href="http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/life/dinosaurs-other-extinct-creatures/dino-directory/allosaurus.html">Allosaurus</a>, Tyrannosaurus and birds – but not <a href="http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/life/dinosaurs-other-extinct-creatures/dino-directory/carnotaurus.html">Carnotaurus</a> and other early dinosaurs.</p>
<p>The first bones were found by geologist Manuel Suarez and his seven-year old son. The study took four years and the analyses were conducted during the second half of last year.</p>
<h2>A Chilesaurus of our times</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79463/original/image-20150427-18164-1bij351.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79463/original/image-20150427-18164-1bij351.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79463/original/image-20150427-18164-1bij351.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79463/original/image-20150427-18164-1bij351.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79463/original/image-20150427-18164-1bij351.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79463/original/image-20150427-18164-1bij351.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79463/original/image-20150427-18164-1bij351.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Who are you calling weird?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/theadventuresofdan/6090780581/in/photolist-dttKLz-7ScYqT-6NHAqZ-ahdQSi-6vaSY1-7wUnoh-ovggpK-cV4bVE-5xYDez-me4Bbb-5KvTYW-ar6K-fUW53Q-GV3z-iFn9PW-2aABNR-e4FLij-dDipaw-dDcXc4-fKrjJ-mCNraB-q2A9XV-iFkovi-iFpjas-ckpHpL-5xYyX4-5xYw9v-aEbVmy-6kRqXb-5Fp72a-5xYERg-699idY-iFn95Q-91Pdid-rKJNEy-7Yguac-pXKyUF-5xYGvD-ar6Ymr-dCBVo2-4iDKQZ-dfREQL-nYK9aw-qC6YuH-6ku7Yz-CVXPu-hoiB4u-qtdoUV-e3e2DL-4D4iV">daniel.baker/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A bizarre combination of features like that seen in Chilesaurus can also be seen in living animal species, such as the <a href="http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/platypus/">platypus</a>, which is a mix of duck, beaver and otter. Some naturalists even considered it a hoax. But animals such as Chilesaurus and the platypus can be explained by an evolutionary process called convergence evolution, in which two unrelated species or groups acquire similar characteristics because of living in similar environments or having a similar behaviour.</p>
<p>Similarly, the bizarre anatomy of Chilesaurus will probably open a heated discussion about its relationships. Ultimately, the discovery reveals how much data is still completely unknown about dinosaurs and that there is still much waiting to be discovered in the rocks that tell the story of our planet in deep time.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40858/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Ezcurra receives funding from the DFG Emmy Noether Programme (BU 2587/3-1 to Richard Butler) and a Marie Curie Career Integration Grant (PCIG14-GA-2013-630123 ARCHOSAUR RISE to Richard Butler).</span></em></p>A dinosaur that looks like a bizarre mix of dinosaurs that it is not related to has been discovered in Southern Chile.Martin Ezcurra, PhD candidate, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/354842015-04-13T20:24:40Z2015-04-13T20:24:40ZCreating dinosaurs: why Jurassic World could never work<p>When the first <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107290/">Jurassic Park</a> movie hit the silver screens in 1993, I cried. Never before had dinosaurs, those magnificent creatures of bygone days, been brought to life so realistically. It was a palaeontologist’s dream come true. </p>
<p>Jurassic Park and its sequels were huge hits, and dinophiles around the world are now anxiously awaiting the release of the next instalment, <a href="http://www.jurassicworld.org/">Jurassic World</a> on June 4 this year.</p>
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<p>These films give an impression that science might be really be capable of bringing back a living dinosaur. The latest outing goes even further than the previous films, where only dinosaurs that once existed were recreated. Jurassic World is about the “genetically modified hybrid” dinosaurs.</p>
<p>But is this all really possible?</p>
<p>The answer is a kind of “yes”, but not in the same way that the Jurassic Park movies might suggest. </p>
<h2>Can we ever find and use dinosaur DNA?</h2>
<p>DNA is the building block of life. It’s the veritable blueprint for how cells divide, multiply and eventually build an organism’s body plan. We can <a href="http://www.genome.gov/25020028">clone</a> genetically identical organisms from the DNA of a parent organism, including mammals such as <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/d/dolly_the_sheep.htm">Dolly the sheep</a>.</p>
<p>When an organism dies, the soft tissues, including the DNA, break down and eventually are destroyed. But in some cases, parts of dead animals and plants are buried and preserved as <a href="http://australianmuseum.net.au/what-are-fossils">fossils</a>. And in very rare cases <a href="http://classic.rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/3/2/197.short">soft tissues of fossils</a> can be preserved.</p>
<p>In some cases parts of the DNA can be extracted from well-preserved fossils, as in the recent case of two extinct <a href="http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/12/18/molbev.msu338.short">Australian fossil kangaroos</a>, whose DNA was dated between 40,000 to 50,000 years old.</p>
<p>In these cases only small sections of the extremely long DNA molecule are ever found. Although these short segments of fossil DNA can often give us valuable information about the relationships of the extinct animal to its living relatives, they are far too fragmentary to ever give us the full picture of the animal’s genome.</p>
<p>For example, the human genome has 23 chromosomes composed of 3.2 billion base pairs of molecules. Reconstructing the full set of chromosomes is thus an impossible task if using just a few short segments of one chromosome as reconstructed from a fossil.</p>
<p>In their book <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17070.The_Science_of_Jurassic_Park_and_the_Lost_World_Or_How_to_Build_a_Dinosaur">The Science of Jurassic Park and The Lost World</a>, <a href="http://desalle.amnh.org/index.html">Rob Desalle</a> and David Lindley describe how the process shown in the movies for reviving a dinosaur from fragments of fossil DNA is fundamentally flawed.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76574/original/image-20150331-1245-y2r6b2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76574/original/image-20150331-1245-y2r6b2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76574/original/image-20150331-1245-y2r6b2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76574/original/image-20150331-1245-y2r6b2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76574/original/image-20150331-1245-y2r6b2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76574/original/image-20150331-1245-y2r6b2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76574/original/image-20150331-1245-y2r6b2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76574/original/image-20150331-1245-y2r6b2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Could a 90 million year old fossil mosquito preserved in amber contain traces of its last meal’s DNA?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mosquito_in_amber.jpg">Wikimedia/Brocken Inaglory</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The method used by the fictional genetics company, Ingen, involved finding dinosaur DNA still inside fossilised mosquitoes preserved intact in amber, which is sap that seeps from trees and often covers unwary insects.</p>
<p>While it’s true we do find superb life-like insect fossils in <a href="http://www.amnh.org/our-research/invertebrate-zoology/collections/amber">amber the same age as when dinosaurs lived</a> the insects do not contain even small fragments of their own DNA preserved, let alone the DNA of any dinosaur it may have bitten.</p>
<p>While in living mosquitoes it’s possible to <a href="http://www.malariajournal.com/content/12/1/109">identify host blood from its DNA</a>, if the mosquito has very recently taken the blood, survival of the DNA inside the insect gut is short-lived as it rapidly breaks down during digestion.</p>
<p>A mosquito trapped in amber has a slow death, allowing plenty of time for this digestive action to keep working and ultimately break down any traces of its last meal’s DNA.</p>
<p>Another premise in the movie is Ingen using frog DNA to patch up the fragments of dinosaur DNA to make up a relatively complete dinosaur strand of DNA. </p>
<p>Frogs and dinosaurs are genetically a long way apart, separated in real time by about 360 million years, using a <a href="http://www.timetree.org/index.php?found_taxon_a=8399%7Crana&found_taxon_b=9030%7Cgallus">divergence calculator</a> based on two living taxa, <em>Rana</em> (frog) and <em>Gallus</em> (chicken, as a living representative of a dinosaur).</p>
<p>The complex nature of DNA makes it impossible to ever reconstruct the exact DNA of an extinct animal using small fragments, especially when patched up using more than 99% of another distant relatives DNA! </p>
<h2>Could we bring dinosaurs back another way?</h2>
<p>So could we really create a dinosaur in this modern day and age? The idea of bringing back a dinosaur to life is complicated, but the idea of a genetically modified one as in the new Jurassic World is even more far fetched. The answer though does lie in genetic modification of our only living dinosaurs, the birds.</p>
<p>By breeding out the primitive features in birds we could ultimately breed them back to being dinosaurian like in appearance.</p>
<p>For exampl,e applying retinoic acid (derived from Vitamin A) at a certain stage of the chicken embryonic development gives a bird that has <a href="http://dev.biologists.org/content/58/1/63.short">feathers on its legs</a> and scales covering the body, reversing the feather-scale distribution. Already we have a more dinosaur-like living bird.</p>
<p>Well known American dinosaur palaeontologist, Jack Horner, has written a book with James Gorman entitled <a href="http://www.amazon.com/How-Build-Dinosaur-Science-Evolution/dp/0452296013/">How to Build a Dinosaur: The New Science of Reverse Evolution</a>. You can hear him speak about it <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/jack_horner_building_a_dinosaur_from_a_chicken?language=en">here</a> or in the video below.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0QVXdEOiCw8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>This method suggests that with controlled breeding of birds, and by implanting them with surrogate tissues, we could produce more dinosaurian features in living birds, which technically are real dinosaurs.</p>
<p>Horner says that an Australian Emu would be the likely place to start breeding from, as it’s already looking a lot like a dinosaur.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76233/original/image-20150327-16112-tjp297.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76233/original/image-20150327-16112-tjp297.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76233/original/image-20150327-16112-tjp297.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76233/original/image-20150327-16112-tjp297.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76233/original/image-20150327-16112-tjp297.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76233/original/image-20150327-16112-tjp297.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76233/original/image-20150327-16112-tjp297.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76233/original/image-20150327-16112-tjp297.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Early fossil birds like this Jurassic <em>Archaeopteryx</em> (Berlin specimen) had dinosaurian features like teeth and long bony tails.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Archaeopteryx_lithographica_(Berlin_specimen).jpg">Wikimedia/H Raab</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many early fossil birds, such as the Jurassic <em>Archaeopteryx</em> had dinosaur-like teeth, so the loss of teeth is widely regarded as an advanced feature of modern birds.</p>
<p>Matthew Harris, of the Max Planck Institute in Germany, has already made a bird with real teeth. He did this by transplanting mouse dental tissue into a chicken’s mouth to make a <a href="http://news.sciencemag.org/2006/02/mutant-chickens-grow-teeth">chicken with teeth</a>. </p>
<p>Similarly, a long skeleton-supported tail was present on dinosaurs and some early fossil birds such as <em>Archaeopteryx</em>. The loss of a long bony tail is a feature seen in all living birds.</p>
<p>Chickens and other bird embryos have longer tails with several vertebrae that later <a href="http://www.evodevojournal.com/content/5/1/25">fuse together as they develop</a>, so the raw material needed is already present. It would just need an inhibitor to stop the embryonic fusion of the tailbones and we would have birds with longer, more reptilian tails.</p>
<p>But what about arms? Birds lack arms with digits, as their forearm is modified into a wing. Their digits have been highly modified in the evolutionary process.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76681/original/image-20150331-1263-1r7lfa7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76681/original/image-20150331-1263-1r7lfa7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76681/original/image-20150331-1263-1r7lfa7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76681/original/image-20150331-1263-1r7lfa7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76681/original/image-20150331-1263-1r7lfa7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76681/original/image-20150331-1263-1r7lfa7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76681/original/image-20150331-1263-1r7lfa7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76681/original/image-20150331-1263-1r7lfa7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A primitive living bird, the Hoatzin, still has fingers on its wings like a dinosaur’s hand.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/43555660@N00/5479759823/">Flickr/Carine06</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet one primitive living bird, the Hoatzin, retains its digits exposed outside the wing, a condition not far removed from a dinosaur’s hand. Perhaps with careful breeding we could reverse engineer a bird with a dinosaur-like forearm using this species as a starting point.</p>
<h2>Using dinosaurs in today’s world</h2>
<p>As in Jurassic Park, the ethical question we need to ask is: why would we ever want to bring back dinosaurs to today’s world? Would they have any purpose, or just be odd curiosities?</p>
<p>Even a seasoned palaeontologist like myself can’t see any real need to ever do it apart from curiosity’s sake.</p>
<p>We may never be able to bring the long extinct dinosaurs back to life, but we can enjoy their CGi animated forms on the big screen. And more importantly, we can use them for massive commercial enterprises and the global marketing of educational products.</p>
<p>Dinosaurs, after all, are usually a child’s first introduction to the world of science. Indeed, some of us never grew out of the wonder of dinosaurs.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/35484/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Long receives funding from The Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>Scientists in the new Jurassic World movie have taken scary to a new level with genetically modified hybrid dinosaurs. But is any of this possible?John Long, Strategic Professor in Palaeontology, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/396552015-04-09T05:32:28Z2015-04-09T05:32:28ZTriassic mass extinction may give clues on how oceans will be affected by climate change<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77340/original/image-20150408-18036-y3pohj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mass extinction, good news for this guy. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/esparta/2250832672/in/photolist-4qU78S-66BE18-GqrBY-8LZWFh-nh9FNU-8MjSah-9MNcZg-7w3peb-b1tdeB-5C5Jts-7pFHLa-b2Vg9D-GXN8d-8pkqJ-7w3qfA-d83nYS-49VkLa-Y71Ch-9jciTZ-4Jutdo-5eTgDz-5G7Auz-o3aSey-rbj4ri-nK3EzJ-fRyXh-nJFq8R-6gmkHi-iqRikN-e77A7m-pG3mnn-bgzznr-bo43bw-b1FLUp-6tK9ke-aoWG96-9fumzk-dkkPkH-bmeUgH-38c686-wUMQx-bmeRYn-bmeNin-bmeQ98-bmeKKF-8EdvNp-bb4Cs2-p2C4jh-7KDJbp-roeyiw">Esparta Palma/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Just over 200m years ago, the end-Triassic mass extinction killed off more than half of the species of organisms living on Earth’s land and in the oceans. We are only just beginning to understand how this – and the period of runaway global warming that followed – changed the chemistry of open oceans.</p>
<p>The end-Triassic mass extinction marked the transition between the Triassic to the Jurassic Period and the rise of the large herbivorous dinosaurs, such as the <em>Diplodocus</em>. The extinction meant that previously abundant species were cleared from ecological niches which allowed dinosaurs to move in with little competition from other animals. The Jurassic lasted another 55m years until the beginning of the Cretaceous Period.</p>
<p>But the extinction also had profound effects on ocean ecosystems. <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/107/15/6721.short">Previous research</a> linked the extinction to rapid global warming and changes in ocean chemistry which were caused by massive volcanic eruptions that released large amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.</p>
<p>One of the unanswered questions has been how global warming changed the chemistry of the oceans. Some studies provide a picture of environmental changes on land and in coastal shallow seas, but until now there has been little information on the conditions of ecosystems in open ocean areas – known as pelagic zones – where water is neither close to the seabed or the shore.</p>
<p>We decided to investigate this unresolved problem, as open ocean settings better reflect global conditions in comparison to shallow coastal areas, as open oceans tend not to be subject to small climatic changes experienced by other areas such as shallow coastal regions near to shore. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77370/original/image-20150408-18075-1sdcp43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77370/original/image-20150408-18075-1sdcp43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77370/original/image-20150408-18075-1sdcp43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77370/original/image-20150408-18075-1sdcp43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77370/original/image-20150408-18075-1sdcp43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=993&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77370/original/image-20150408-18075-1sdcp43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=993&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77370/original/image-20150408-18075-1sdcp43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=993&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">To hot to handle .</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jessica Whiteside</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Toxic oceans</h2>
<p>We extracted and analysed fossilised organic molecules – known as biomarkers – that are the remains of microscopic marine organisms from sediments deposited at the bottom of what was the north-eastern Panthalassic Ocean - the vast body of water that surrounds the ancient super-continent Pangaea. The sediment is now preserved as rock exposed on the coast of Haida Gwaii (also known as the Queen Charlotte Islands) off the coast of British Columbia in Canada.</p>
<p>Different types of biomarkers signify the presence of certain groups of organisms and allow us to track their abundance in Triassic oceans. Our results show that for a 600,000-year interval immediately after the end-Triassic mass extinction, water close to the ocean surface became devoid of oxygen and was poisoned by hydrogen sulphide, a by-product of anaerobic bacteria that is extremely toxic to most other forms of life. This oxygen depletion and hydrogen sulphide poisoning disrupted the availability of nutrients, altering the food chains and causing a major disruption of marine ecosystems.</p>
<h2>Clues for the future</h2>
<p>These results are similar to another major event in the geologic record that was also caused by greenhouse gas release: the <a href="http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/life/dinosaurs-other-extinct-creatures/mass-extinctions/end-permian-mass-extinction/">end-Permian extinction</a>, the largest-known mass extinction.</p>
<p>Our team’s discoveries about the end-Triassic mass extinction event have direct relevance to today’s world because we are currently experiencing a rapid rise in the atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO<sub>2</sub>). Although the Earth was very different during the Triassic Period due to the lack of polar ice caps and higher initial CO<sub>2</sub> concentrations, the speed of CO<sub>2</sub> release from volcanic eruptions following the mass extinction is similar to those that we are experiencing today through the burning of fossil fuels. </p>
<p>The concern is that the consequences of rapidly rising atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub> levels can be expected to be similar: ocean acidification, oxygen depletion of the oceans, hydrogen sulphide poisoning and disruption of food chains through the killing off of photosynthesisers in the ocean. </p>
<p>Studies of ancient mass extinctions such as the one at the end-Triassic inform us of the possible consequences of our own CO<sub>2</sub> crisis.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/39655/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jessica H. Whiteside has received funding from National Science Foundation and Natural Environmental Research Council.</span></em></p>The end-Triassic mass extinction may be better known for preceding the rise of the dinosaurs, but it had a profound effect on oceans too.Jessica H. Whiteside, Lecturer in Ocean and Earth Science, University of SouthamptonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/361652015-01-12T13:59:37Z2015-01-12T13:59:37ZHow we found Scotland’s first Jurassic sea reptile (and no, she’s not related to Nessie)<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68694/original/image-20150112-23812-1nvbb4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Introducing Dearcmhara shawcrossi, the dino-fish that all the fuss is about</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Todd Marshall</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>My colleagues and I recently had the great privilege to announce a remarkable new discovery: a dolphin-like reptile that prowled the Middle Jurassic waters 170 million years ago. </p>
<p>When you think of scientists digging up prehistoric reptiles like this, odds are a certain image comes to mind. An intrepid Indiana Jones character, cowboy hat perched at just the right angle to block out the desert sun, brushing sand off of a perfect series of bones emerging from the ground, maybe in the western US, or the Sahara, or the Gobi.</p>
<p>Odds are you don’t think of Scotland, but that’s exactly where we found our beast.</p>
<p>And at the risk of using a cliché that will only become more tiresome over the next few months, in the run-up to the fourth instalment of the popular film series due out in June, Scotland was a real Jurassic Park.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RFinNxS5KN4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Introducing Dearcmhara shawcrossi</h2>
<p>The new creature, which we named <em>Dearcmhara shawcrossi</em>, is an <em><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Ichthyosaur">ichthyosaur</a></em>, a group of extinct reptiles that were top dogs in the oceans when dinosaurs ruled the land. They weren’t quite dinosaurs, but close relatives. </p>
<p>The difference between <em>Dearcmhara shawcrossi</em> and other <em>ichthyosaurs</em> comes down to several very distinctive features of the upper arm bone of the flipper. One is a big triangular muscle attachment scar, the other a deep ligament pit. We’re not totally sure what function these had, other than they supported a different system of muscles and ligaments from other ichthyosaurs.</p>
<p>No, we have not found the ancestor of the Loch Ness Monster, as <a href="http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/551424/Scientists-discover-relative-Loch-Ness-Monster-Isle-Skye">many headlines</a> have trumpeted in the most predictable fashion. How else would you expect tabloid journalists to describe a giant water-living reptile from Scotland? What we have found is much more interesting: a four-metre-long, fish-eating, top-of-the-food-chain predator that lived more than 100 million years before <em>Tyrannosaurus rex</em>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68685/original/image-20150112-23795-1n7426v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68685/original/image-20150112-23795-1n7426v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68685/original/image-20150112-23795-1n7426v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=280&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68685/original/image-20150112-23795-1n7426v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=280&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68685/original/image-20150112-23795-1n7426v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=280&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68685/original/image-20150112-23795-1n7426v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68685/original/image-20150112-23795-1n7426v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68685/original/image-20150112-23795-1n7426v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nessie is not invited to the photoshoot.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&searchterm=Loch%20Ness%20Monster&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=101737288">dedMazay</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The new fossil isn’t the most beautiful specimen. It’s a handful of bones—including part of the flipper, back and tail, all of which you can hold in your two hands. But this is a big deal for Scotland, because it’s the first uniquely Scottish marine reptile that has ever been discovered, studied and named.</p>
<h2>How the dino-fish was reeled in</h2>
<p>The story behind <em>Dearcmhara</em> is a feel-good tale, and would perhaps make a better film than some of the dinosaur-related drivel on cable television.</p>
<p>Scotland is one of the best places in the world for finding <a href="http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/dinosaurs/mesozoic/jurassic/mj.shtml">Middle-Jurassic</a> fossils, yet more than 95% of this material has just disappeared, collected by beachcombers and forgotten about. Some of it has been sold to the highest bidder, a sad state of affairs that holds back our scientific understanding of Scotland’s fossil history.</p>
<p>Not <em>Dearcmhara</em>. The fossil was collected in 1959 by an amateur collector named Brian Shawcross, along a beach called Bearreraig Bay in the northern part of the Isle of Skye. Instead of putting it on his mantle or flogging it in a car-boot sale, Brian donated the bones to the <a href="http://www.gla.ac.uk/hunterian/">Hunterian museum in Glasgow</a>, where they could be conserved, preserved for posterity and studied by scientists.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68704/original/image-20150112-23807-lptshd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68704/original/image-20150112-23807-lptshd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68704/original/image-20150112-23807-lptshd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68704/original/image-20150112-23807-lptshd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68704/original/image-20150112-23807-lptshd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68704/original/image-20150112-23807-lptshd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68704/original/image-20150112-23807-lptshd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68704/original/image-20150112-23807-lptshd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Where the fossil was found.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@57.5005923,-6.1439646,9z?hl=en">Google Maps</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As a token of thanks for Brian’s generosity, we coined the species name of the new beastie “shawcrossi” in his honour.</p>
<p>It took us a while to study <em>Dearcmhara</em>. At the time when Brian found the specimen, there wasn’t a critical mass of palaeontologists in Scotland to study new vertebrate fossil discoveries. Half century later there are researchers studying dinosaurs and other reptile fossils across the country, at the University of Edinburgh where I’m based, the National Museum of Scotland, the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, and the Staffin Museum in Skye.</p>
<p>A little over a year ago, many of us came together to form a new consortium of Scottish palaeontologists, called the PalAlba group, and made it our mission to track down as many dinosaur and reptile fossils from Scotland as possible.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68695/original/image-20150112-23807-spcg0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68695/original/image-20150112-23807-spcg0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68695/original/image-20150112-23807-spcg0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68695/original/image-20150112-23807-spcg0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68695/original/image-20150112-23807-spcg0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68695/original/image-20150112-23807-spcg0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68695/original/image-20150112-23807-spcg0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68695/original/image-20150112-23807-spcg0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Pal-Alba group behind the find.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bill Crighton</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What we need to know now</h2>
<p>We want to figure out what Scotland was like during the Middle Jurassic, this mysterious interval of time from which so few fossils are known around the world. What animals lived here? What were their ecosystems like? How did they evolve over time?</p>
<p>And to accomplish this we need, and want, to work with amateur collectors. Academics can’t be out scouring the beaches 365 days a year looking for fossils. And most amateurs don’t have the training to preserve and study fossils. We hope the story of Brian Shawcross resonates across Scotland: there are fossil beasts to be found, so get up and go outside, and if you find something and it’s new, please donate it to a museum and work with us to get it identified and studied.</p>
<p>After all, I think that having a unique new 170-million-year old fossil named after you is much better than making a few quid on eBay.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36165/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Brusatte does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>My colleagues and I recently had the great privilege to announce a remarkable new discovery: a dolphin-like reptile that prowled the Middle Jurassic waters 170 million years ago. When you think of scientists…Stephen Brusatte, Chancellor's Fellow in Vertebrate Palaeontology, The University of EdinburghLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/239972014-03-05T22:08:51Z2014-03-05T22:08:51ZNew dinosaur competes to be Europe’s largest land predator<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43198/original/qbdrd8cw-1394032596.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Don't mess with the Torvosaurus family.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Torvosaurus_tanner_DBi.jpg"> ДиБгд</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Say hello to <em>Torvosaurus gurneyi</em>, the newly discovered theropod dinosaur that lived in Europe around 157-145 million years ago. It is potentially the largest land predator discovered in Europe and one of the largest carnivorous dinosaurs from the late Jurassic period. The <a href="http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0088905">identification of this new species</a> plays an important role in developing our understanding of how different dinosaur species were distributed across the globe, as well as the ecology of large European predators at this time.</p>
<p>Similar in appearance to the North American species <em>Torvosaurus tanneri</em>, the remains found in Portugal were initially regarded as near-identical to them. But closer scrutiny and greater knowledge of the anatomy of theropod dinosaurs has led to several key features being identified in the new species.</p>
<h2>Key differences</h2>
<p>Although the remains assigned to <em>T. gurneyi</em> are quite fragmentary – usually not enough to confidently announce an entirely new species – the cheek bones of theropods have a strong track record of identifying new species. In this regard, <em>T. gurneyi</em> has three features that distinguish it from its sister, <em>T. tanneri</em>. While these have been classified as sufficient to distinguish a new species, it is likely that there will be a few eyebrows raised from other palaeontologists about the strength of this diagnosis.</p>
<p>One of the most important of these features is the number of teeth. <em>T. tanneri</em> is known to have had up to 12 teeth, whereas <em>T. gurneyi</em> only had a maximum of ten, according to the number of holes preserved where the teeth would have fitted into the bone. The number of cheek teeth can vary as a dinosaur grows up, however, and can even change between the maxillae of the same animal. This means that a third of the diagnosis of this new species is questionable. One explanation is that it could be a specimen that died before coming of age.</p>
<p>Christophe Hendrickx, the lead author of this new study, remarked: “I highly doubt that an estimated 10 metre <em>Torvosaurus</em> with a 60 centimetre maxilla (cheek bone) could be an immature individual”. He is, of course, correct.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43196/original/6j3dhjq7-1394030944.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43196/original/6j3dhjq7-1394030944.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43196/original/6j3dhjq7-1394030944.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=173&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43196/original/6j3dhjq7-1394030944.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=173&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43196/original/6j3dhjq7-1394030944.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=173&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43196/original/6j3dhjq7-1394030944.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=217&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43196/original/6j3dhjq7-1394030944.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=217&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43196/original/6j3dhjq7-1394030944.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=217&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Reconstruction of the Torvosaurus gurneyi.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0088905">Hendrickx, Mateus</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The evolutionary evidence for differentiating two species of <em>Torvosaurus</em> is also weak. The Bremer support value – a method of identifying how stable the relationships between species are – is very low. This means that the observational and statistical support for identifying these remains as a new species is rather weak, based on the material currently known. What is clear, however, is that it undoubtedly represents a specimen of <em>Torvosaurus</em>, and is geographically distinct from its North American cousins.</p>
<h2>Biogeographical implications</h2>
<p>Many links between the animal life of the Iberian Peninsula and North America during the Late Jurassic period have been known with <a href="http://bit.ly/1ky7pmh">fossils of similar species found on each</a>. Shared species include allosaurs, stegosaurs, and the giant sauropods, all of which may have close cousins in Tanzania too. The implication is that there were exchanges of species between the two areas, despite thousands of kilometres of the Atlantic Ocean’s precursor separating them. </p>
<p>The Portuguese specimens are geologically older than the North American ones and it is possible that they made the journey across on temporary bridges of land, created during a period of relatively low sea-level around 163.5 million years ago. With the discovery of this new <em>Torvosaurus gurneyi</em> species in Portugal, there is more evidence for this theory.</p>
<h2>Predator among predators</h2>
<p>The Late Jurassic of Portugal must have been a quite terrifying place to live, no matter which species you happened to belong to. No less than four super-predator theropods are now known to have lived alongside each other there: <em>Allosaurus</em>, <em>Ceratosaurus</em>, <em>Lourinhanosaurus</em> and now <em>Torvosaurus gurneyi</em>.</p>
<p><em>Torvosaurus</em> may have been the largest of all these fearsome beasts, but the material is quite incomplete. This assertion may not hold if more complete specimens are found. But, if estimations from these remains are correct, with a skull more than a metre long, it would have been comparable in size to giant Cretaceous period super-predators like the <em>Gorgosaurus</em> and <em>Tarbosaurus</em>.</p>
<p>Exactly how all these large predators co-existed with one another is another matter. As Hendrickx said to me: “Only time, with the discovery of new material of <em>Torvosaurus</em> from Portugal and the US, will give an answer to these questions.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/23997/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jon Tennant receives funding from the National Environmental Research Council (NERC). He is affiliated with Imperial College London.</span></em></p>Say hello to Torvosaurus gurneyi, the newly discovered theropod dinosaur that lived in Europe around 157-145 million years ago. It is potentially the largest land predator discovered in Europe and one…Jon Tennant, PhD student, Imperial College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/201752013-11-13T06:12:48Z2013-11-13T06:12:48ZHead-butting did not lure mates for horny-domed dinosaur<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/35035/original/czhqvqd6-1384268794.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">For glory, not sex.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">PLOS</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Pachycephalosaurus is famous for its appearance in the movie Jurassic Park: The Lost World, where one is shown battering a man and his car. To achieve the feat the dinosaur used its greatly-thickened skull, which is one of its unique features. But for many years there has been a feud between researchers about the real-life role of this skull.</p>
<p>The dome-shaped skull is often decorated with knobs and spikes, which made some researchers think that the skull of pachycephalosaurs was for some sort of sexual display. But now, in a new study published in <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0068620">PLOS ONE</a>, researchers have shown that pachycephalosaurs were into head-butting far before Zinedine Zidane. They used it as a weapon against rivals.</p>
<p>To work out whether pachycephalosaur skulls were for lovers or fighters, Joseph Peterson of the University of Wisconsin looked at the “wounds” of specimens recovered from palaeontological digsites. He found that more than 20% showed signs of having suffered from combat. More interestingly, most of the wounds appeared at the top of the skull. This bit of the skull could only have been used so often if it was used as a weapon. This pattern is seen across most of the 14 analysed species in a decent sample-size of 109 skulls.</p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Using that head for good.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">PLOS</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is a possibility that these “wound marks” were caused after the animal had died, for example by getting hit by pebbles in a river. But Peterson published <a href="http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.2110/palo.2013.p13-003r">another study</a> testing this hyphothesis using a method called “experimental taphonomy”. The idea is to reconstruct the post-mortem activities that might have influenced an animals’ transformation into a fossil. This also involves factoring processes like tissue degradation.</p>
<p>Peterson created several casts of pachycephalosaur skulls of almost identical density and consistency as bone. He then plopped them in a flume which can mimic the flow of water and sediments within a stream. They found that the skull domes landed either on their top or bottom surfaces. If erosional damage did leave marks, you would expect to find scars on both sides of the skull. But that wasn’t the case with the skulls Peterson used for the analysis.</p>
<p>Such traumatic scars are arguably more value than the fossils they are scorched onto. Whereas a standard bone tells us about when an animal died, the traces left behind on these, such as bite marks or other combat wounds, give us an insight into the behaviour of animals that have been dead for 66 million years.</p>
<p>It also shows that palaeontology is a lot like trying to solve a rubik’s cube – we have a jumble of information, which needs to be solved to give us the story. In the process we are led down different paths or interpretations of that data – and sometimes we need to go backwards. But there are times when exquisite and rare fossils, and their accompanying studies such as this, give us a completed face to continue forward and discover ever more. Maybe one day we’ll be able to solve the cube.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/20175/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jon Tennant receives funding from NERC</span></em></p>Pachycephalosaurus is famous for its appearance in the movie Jurassic Park: The Lost World, where one is shown battering a man and his car. To achieve the feat the dinosaur used its greatly-thickened skull…Jon Tennant, PhD student, Imperial College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.