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Posts tagged with "fossils"

Danish Blue

Hopefully you associate “Danish Blue” with delicious Danish cheese - a bit in the style of Roquefort and Stilton. This post is, however, about a parrot, bereft of life.

In the journal Palaeontology of May 2008 Waterhouse et al. describe two fossil parrots found in Denmark. They are so far the oldest fossil parrots, the most northerly found fossil parrots and one of them is the largest fossil parrot yet known. In fact all that remains of this early Danish parrot is a single upper wing bone (humerus). But, this small bone contains characteristic features that show that it is clearly from a member of the parrot family, about the size of a Yellow-crested Cockatoo. The bone, which is 6.5 cm long, was found on the island Mors in 2003, it is on display in a museum on Mors, the Molermuseum, and has now been determined by a team of palaeontologists. Image of bone in this Danish Article. With the present day climate there are no wild parrots (Psittacidae) in Denmark (although a small population of parakeets has established itself recently). Today parrots only live in the tropics and the southern hemisphere.

The new species, officially named 'Mopsitta tanta', has got the nick-name 'Danish Blue Parrot,' derived from a famous comedy sketch about a 'Norwegian Blue Parrot' in the 1970s BBC television programme 'Monty Python.' The Scandinavian connection makes links to Monty Python's notoriously demised bird irresistible, but the parallels go further. The famous sketch revolves around establishing that a bird purchased by John Cleese is a dead parrot, and these fossils are certainly dead.
The scientifique name Mopsitta tanta is derived from mo after moler (see below), psitta and tanta are latin for respectively 'parrot' and 'large' - the large ‘mo clay’ parrot. When Mopsitta was alive, which was only 10 million years after the dinosaurs were wiped out, most of Northern Europe was experiencing a warm period, with a large shallow tropical lagoon covering much of Germany, South East England and Denmark. (See map. Green = land, white = sea, All of the present Denmark was covered by sea). Denmark was closer to the equator at that time, and the poles were not covered with ice as now.

The fossils were found in a sort of diatomite, locally called moler, meaning whitish clay. Moler consists of cirka 45-65 % silica and silica shells of algae (diatoms - see image below of modern marine diatoms under microscope), 30-45 % clay and 10 % volcanic ashes. The sea bottom was depleted of oxygen, and the thick moler deposits are rich in fossils, including fossils of some 30 different bird species. Most of these would together with flying insects, also fossilised, have flown in from the exposed land areas in what is now Norway and Sweden.

The Danish moler deposit is up to 60 m thick. In other parts of the world there are no known deposits above 10 m thick.

Apart from the Molermuseum on Mors there is another interesting little geological museum on the island of fur, with fossils found in the local moler cliffs.

Reference:
Waterhouse et al.
Two New Parrots (Psittaciformes) From the Lower Eocene Fur Formation of Denmark
Palaeontology, Volume 51 Issue 3 Page 575-582, May 2008

English links
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1475-4983.2008.00777.x
http://www.ucd.ie/news/2008/05MAY08/150508_parrot.html
http://www.sciencecentric.com/news/08051531.htm
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/topstories/2008/05/16/video-monty-python-s-norwegian-blue-parrot-did-exist-89520-20419112/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=566600&in_page_id=1770

Danish links
http://politiken.dk/videnskab/article509541.ece
http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Indland/2008/05/15/220046.htm?rss=true
http://ing.dk/artikel/88153?rss
http://stenfugle.blogs.ku.dk/
http://geologi.snm.ku.dk/nyheder_gm/nyhed160508/
http://nyhederne.tv2.dk/article.php/id-11591242.html?ss




Molecular Palaeontology - Dinosaurs & Birds

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Julia (The Ethical Palaeontologist) has already commented on the Science article Molecular Phylogenetics of Mastodon and Tyrannosaurus rex here and here.

There is not much meat on the article itself, it is just one single page, so it may be no surprise, that the media add lots of feathers. Never the less I found the article quite interesting because of the method used to confirm the relationship between dinosaurs and birds.

Evidence of close evolutionary relationships among birds and non-avian dinosaurs have been accumulating for a long time. See a.o. my post on the Archaeopteryx - probably the most famous fossil, and considered an important link between dinosaurs and birds.

In 2005 it became known that a group of dinosaur researchers had discovered soft tissues in fossil Tyrannosaurus rex bone unearthed in 2003 by Jack Horner in the Hell Creek Formation in Montana, USA. As the bone was 68 million years old it is surprising to have found still elastic soft tissues looking like blood vessels and cells. We are not talking Jurassic park and no DNA could be analysed. By using mass spectrometry protein sequenced from collagen were however detected. Collagen is a protein that is the basic building block of connective tissues.

Phylogenetics is the classification of organisms based on how closely they are related in terms of evolutionary differences - or in other words the construction of a (phylogenetic) tree structure, a diagram that represent the evolutionary tree of life. A tree of life for the 22 organisms compared in the study is shown in figure 1 of the article. For those of you who do not have access to Science I can refer to this account - NB in Norwegian - of the article, where the figure is shown. Please do note that this tree does not indicate that chicken “descended from the fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex” as mentioned in the heading of Sun here, but merely that Tyrannosaurus, Ostrich (Struthio) and Chicken (Gallus gallus) are related (within the taxon Archosauria). I have redrawn the Archosauria bit from the figure.

A serious problem with using molecular methods, be it on DNA or collagen, is that the samples are extremely easily contaminated (from other organisms, including living species). Furthermore fossil material is destroyed by the analysis, and the analysis is expensive. Of course nondestructive examination of unique fossils are preferred if possible.

Molecular palaeontology in the modern sense probably began with a report by Abelson in 1956 of the recovery of proteinaceous components of fossils. As technology expanded and increased in accuracy, sensitivity, and reliability, new analytical methods began to be applied to fossil material. A piece on the future of molecular paleontology by Mary Highby Schweitzer is found here.

http://www.livescience.com//animals/080424-dino-birds.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24297066/
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-04/hu-mac041808.php
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1087903.ece
http://palaeo-electronica.org/2002_2/editor/r_and_p.htm



Dino-Day

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Monday I went to Maastricht (in the Netherlands) to see some Chinese dinosaurs. For the time being (9 February 2008 - 27 April 2008) four giant, original dinosaur skeletons from the collections of the Beijing Natural History History Museum are on display in Western Europe for the very first time. I am by no means a dino fanatical, but they are intriguing beasts after all. The four main attractions were indeed Mamenchisaurus jingyanensis, Yangchuanosaurus shangyouensis, Lufengosaurus huenei, and Tsintaosaurus spinorhinus, but there were other interesting items as well, such as dinosaur eggs and a dinosaur nest plus a Psittacosaurus (of ONLY one metre length and a weight of around 20 kg).

Here I shall concentrate on the Tsintaosaurus. It seems appropriate to me because Maastricht gave name to the Maastrichtian, the last stage of the Cretaceous period, and therefore of the Mesozoic era (the era of the Dinosaurs). It spanned from 70.6 ± 0.6 to 65.5 ± 0.3 million years ago. The age of the Tsintaosaurus is about 80 million years, and thereby late Cretaceous.

Tsintaosaurus is a genus of hadrosaurid dinosaur from China. This specimen is 8 m long and weighs 3 tons. Tsintaosaurus spinorhinus is the type species and was first described by Young Chung Chien in 1958.

Tsintaosaurus is one of the more interesting looking hadrosaurs. The hadrosaurs are known as the duck-billed dinosaurs due to the similarity of their head to that of modern ducks. This is better seen on the nice reconstruction shown on this page. These plant-eating dinosaurs had toothless beaks, strong jaws and a massive battery of grinding teeth that would have let them efficiently eat tough foliage. It could have easily eaten pine needles. It's teeth were self-sharpening. Like other lambeosaurines, Tsintaosaurus had a species-specific crest or horn adorning its head. In this case, there had been controversy over whether or not Tsintaosaurus' unicorn-like horn was actually just a misplaced nasal bone. The discovery of other specimens with the bone in the same position seems to confirm that it was in fact a horn. No one is sure of the exact shape of the horn that developed around the fossilised bone. It may have been fat or thin. Some scientist have speculated that it had a sail, but there is no proof of that theory. No one knows what the horn was used for. It may have provided a visual signal in combat or courtship; it may have been used to make sounds, or it may even have enhanced its sense of smell. Because the horn was projecting forward, unlike a crest it is often being called, "the Unicorn Dinosaur". Tsintaosaurus spinorhinus had four-fingered hands. It lived in lakes.

Tsintaosaurus was named after the city of Tsingtao in Shandong Province, where the fossil was found. The species name spinorhinus refers to the spine-like crest on its head. Tsintaosaurus may be the same as Tanius (which was named earlier and therefore retains its name), which was a crestless Hadrosaurid from China. Tanius was named by Carl Wiman in 1929.

http://www.nhmmaastricht.nl/engels/exposities/china_dino/index.html
http://www.dinosaur-world.com/weird_dinosaurs/tsintaosaurus_spinorhinus.htm
http://www.amonline.net.au/chinese_dinosaurs/factsheets/08.htm
http://www.azhdarcho.com/Art/Paleoart/tsintaosaurus.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsintaosaurus



Ichthyosaur

I have another large fossil for you today. An Ichtyosaur, which is neither fish nor dinosaur.



Wikipedia has more information about such creatures at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichthyosaur



Most Famous Fossil?

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I was in Berlin all last week. The timing was not optimal. The weather was bad and public transports were striking. Fortunately the natural history museum - Museum für Naturkunde - is in walking distance from the main station, indoors, and well worth a visit. The exhibitions include the famous Berlin specimen of the Archaeopteryx, which may well be the most famous fossil in the world. It is well worth mentioning that they exhibit the original, and not just a mould (or cast or replica or whatever they are called).

My photo here is of such a mould exhibited in a museum at Solnhofen, and thus not far from where the fossil was discovered in 1876 or 1877. Archaeopteryx lived in the late Jurassic Period around 155–150 million years ago. It is considered an important link between dinosaurs and birds, and has been called things like “a flying dinosaur” or “the first bird”. Similar in size and shape to a European Magpie, Archaeopteryx could grow to about 50 centimetres in length. Despite its small size, broad wings, and ability to fly, Archaeopteryx has more in common with small theropod dinosaurs than it does with modern birds.

This next image shows a model of Archaeopteryx lithographica on display at the Oxford University Museum.

I find it interesting to follow the evolution from feet to wings, and of course from hair to feather - two important steps towards flying. In fact the name Archaeopteryx is derived from the Ancient Greek archaios meaning 'ancient' and pteryx meaning 'feather' or 'wing'. Three fingers still had claws.

In the year 2000 palaeontologists found tiny feathers encased in a lump of amber in a quarry in the Poitou-Charentes region of France. The seven feathers are ca. a hundred million years old (Early Cretaceous, Late Albian) and have features of both feather-like fibers found with some two-legged dinosaurs known as theropods and of modern bird feathers. This is yet another link in or proof of the gradual evolution of feathers from the primitive filaments of some theropod dinosaurs to the modern feathers of Archaeopteryx and Cretaceous birds.

The work is reported in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, Biological Sciences, of 7 March 2008 under the title
“The early evolution of feathers: fossil evidence from Cretaceous amber of France”.

And finally below an image of a reconstruction of the Archaeopteryx skeleton from the Berlin museum.


My earlier post on the Berlin Museum für Naturkunde is here and on the Archaeopteryx here.

http://journals.royalsociety.org/content/102024/?k=Perrichot+feathers
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18285280
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/02/20/scidino120.xml
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/03/080311-amber-feathers.html




Tallest Dinosaur Skeleton

On 13 July 2007 the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin reopened four exhibition halls, renovated during the last two years.

The museum’s main hall takes you back to the Upper Jurassic. Five skeletons from the museum’s collection of dinosaurs from Mount Tendaguru in Tanzania is on display, including Brachiosaurus brancai, the tallest dinosaur ever mounted in a museum.



A team of Canadian specialists have reconstructed the Brachiosaurus after the giant herbivore was dismantled three years ago while the museum building was refurbished (the picture above is earlier). The dinosaur has undergone a total makeover, with numerous sections of the skeleton recast in carbon fiber, a material experts working on the project said was about 100 times lighter than the original fossils.

The skeleton measures 13.27 m from toe to head and is about 23 - 25 m long. It was found by a German expedition in the early 1900s at a time when the area was a German colony (1885 to 1918).



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