Possibly the Oldest Snake Fossil Found to Date

A team of researchers from the Geological Survey of India working in western India have discovered a beautifully preserved fossilised snake.  This specimen is perhaps the earliest fossil evidence of this specialised group of animals within the order Squamata.

Snake Fossil

The fossil was recovered from the Lameta Formation of the Kheda district in Gujarat.  The sediments represent Upper Cretaceous deposits traversing the Campanian and Maastrichtian stages. The snake has been dated to 70 million years ago.

Gujarat is the most western state of India, it borders Pakistan and many expeditions have been hampered because of the tensions between these two countries.  The geology of this district has yet to be fully explored, so there may be other amazing discoveries about life in the Late Cretaceous to be made.

Found in Association with a Sauropod Nest

The snake was found in association with a sauropod nest and some hatchlings,  in itself an important find.  Scientists are debating whether the snake was in the process of raiding the nest when it and the nest were buried.  Certainly, many species of snake today prey on eggs and the young of other animals, could the rise of the snakes raiding nests have been another factor leading to the demise of the dinosaurs as their dynasty came to an end 66 million years ago.

Whether the snake had a forked tongue and a Jacobson’s organ in the roof of its mouth to help it detect particles and make sense of its environment is not known at this stage.  The jaws show the adaptations for swallowing large prey, but a sauropod egg would still have been a bit of a mouthful even for the most persistent of serpents.

To view models and replicas of Late Cretaceous prehistoric animals: Papo Prehistoric Animals and Replicas.

New Dinosaur Fossil highlights links between Asian and N. American Dinosaur Faunas

A dinosaur skeleton found nearly a quarter of a century ago has been identified as a new species, linking the evolutionary line of dinosaurs such as Triceratops in North America with ancestral horned dinosaurs in Asia.  This new dinosaur named Cerasinops (C. hodgskissi – after the land owner who gave permission for the researchers to excavate), is a primitive member of the Neo-ceratopsia and provides evidence of a link between Asian and North American horned dinosaurs.

Cerasinops weighed about 15 kilogrammes, was primarily bipedal standing just 3 feet tall.  It had no distinguishing horns or epoccipitals typical of more advanced Ceratopsidae, but it closely resembles other Neo-ceratopsia recovered from similarly aged rocks in Asia.  This indicates that ceratopsians may have evolved either in North America and quickly spread to Asia or vice versa.  An alternative theory is that they evolved in the Northern Hemisphere, prior to the substantial break up of Laurasia and spread quickly over land bridges as sea levels changed.  This may make the Ceratopsidae a much older group of dinosaurs than previously accepted.

This fossil found 24 years ago near Choteau in Teton County, Montana is going to be put on display for public viewing, at the Montana State University Museum of the Rockies, once preparation has been completed.  The specimen has taken so long to prepare as the matrix surrounding it was extremely hard and difficult to remove and the researchers required the assistance of Brenda Chinnery (University of Texas), a specialist in Neo-ceratopsia to confirm that it was indeed a new species.

An Illustration of Cerasinops hodgskissi

A family group of horned dinosaurs.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Everything Dinosaur stocks a wide range of horned dinosaur models: Dinosaur and Prehistoric Animal Models and Figures.

No Evidence to suggest that Gamma Rays led to Mass Extinction

Research from astrobiologists at the University of Kansas has concluded that bursts of intense gamma radiation or other cosmic rays are unlikely to have led to the mass extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous.

Although, many palaeontologists accept that the Earth was hit by a giant extra terrestrial object 66 million years ago (mya), a theory first put forward by physicist Luis Alvarez and his son (a geologist) in 1980 and corroborated to a considerable extent with the discovery ten years later of the Chicxulub impact crater.  Debate still rages amongst the scientific community over the evidence of an asteroid impact actually leading to the mass extinction.

Dinosaurs

A number of other extinction theories have been postulated, many of them linked to other dangers in outer space.  Intense solar flare activity from the sun could have affected the Earth’s climate and bombarded the planet with harmful rays.  The explosion of a super-nova could have led to a dramatic increase in gamma radiation, these if they did happen, would have had devastating consequences for life on Earth.

To read more about the asteroid impact theory, click link below:

End of the Dinosaurs set in motion in Jurassic.

If the Earth had been subjected to intense cosmic rays, this would have had a number of serious consequences for life, food chains would have collapsed and animals would have suffered from birth deformities, sterility, mutations and cancers caused by the radiation. Evidence of heavy doses of radiation in pre-history is difficult to identify but cancers and other abnormalities caused by the increased radiation could be detected in the fossil record.  Dr Adrian Melott assisted by his colleague Bruce Rothschild carried out a study of 708 fossilised dinosaur bones from late Maastrichtian stage sediments (70-65 mya) to see if they could find evidence of increased bone cancers amongst the last dinosaurs.

Studying Close Relatives of Dinosaurs

When they compared the incidence of bone cancer with living, close relatives of dinosaurs (birds and reptiles), the team found no evidence for elevated cancer rates in dinosaurs.

However, Dr Melott is going to keep looking, his work is on-going.  The results for hadrosaurs (duck-billed dinosaurs such as Edmontosaurus and Anatotitan, which lived during the final 5 million years of the dinosaurs’ reign, are intriguing. Hadrosaurs had the only case of bone cancer and the only cases of benign abnormalities called haemangiomas.

Haemangiomas

Haemangiomas are an abnormal build up of blood vessels on the skin or internal organs – sometimes called “strawberry marks”, they are found frequently in Caucasian races and are more prevalent amongst females.  Evidence from hadrosaur bones show signs of haemangiomas, could this be evidence of cosmic rays or are the results of this initial stud not statistically valid.  Perhaps the migratory lifestyle of these animals made them more susceptible to such conditions, or could it simple be that there are so much more Hadrosaur fossils to study that it was practically guaranteed to find bone cancer and other abnormalities in this group as they represent such a large proportion of the Late Cretaceous fossil record.

Young Psittacosaurus Fossils Demonstrate Herding Behaviour

A joint research team from the Royal Tyrrell museum of Alberta, Canada and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have found the fossils of six juvenile psittacosaurs in what may be a dinosaur crèche.

The extremely well preserved, and almost complete skeletons show six individuals ranging in age from approximately 18-months to 3-years old.  These unfortunate youngsters were buried in a volcanic mudflow as it engulfed a hillside 123 million years ago – (Aptian stage, Lower Cretaceous).

These fossils are yet another remarkable find from the Liaoning province of China, famous for the discovery of a number of feathered theropod dinosaurs such as Microraptor, Protarchaeopteryx and Caudipteryx, they may provide evidence of social behaviour in dinosaurs.

Dinosaur Nursery

The different age ranges of the animals show that these creatures were not from the same brood, they are not siblings and as they were buried relatively quickly this indicates that they were together living as a group.  If the animals had perished in a drought it is likely that different age groups would congregate together around the remaining water sources and any remains preserved would provide relatively unreliable evidence of any social behaviour.  However, these animals were buried in a volcanic mudflow, a sudden event and this does provide strong evidence that these young dinosaurs lived together.  Whether they were part of a much larger herd with older individuals and adults who were able to avoid the mudflow is unknown.  Perhaps young psittacosaurs lived in groups apart from the adults, only joining the adults when they reached sexual maturity.

Herding Behaviour

Herding behaviour has been established for a number of dinosaur genera including other Marginocephalia such as Centrosaurus and Protoceratops.  However, Psittacosaurus lived earlier than these other Marginocephalians and their lack of horns and skull adornments led palaeontologists to question whether animals such as Psittacosaurus lived in social groups.

Could this new discovery shed some light on the evolution of herding behaviour and social hierarchy amongst dinosaurs?  Scientists had thought that dinosaurs with horns and elaborate frills evolved to help them stand out as individuals within a herd structure, helping them obtain social status, find mates and warn off rivals.  Now this find reveals that social groups of dinosaurs had formed long before the evolution of horns, frills and other facial adornments.

Dr Paul Barrett, of the Natural History Museum in London, one of the researchers, said that the fossilised juveniles appeared to have formed a crèche but it was impossible to be sure if they were part of a larger herd or if they grouped together for protection.

“This is the first time we’ve found a group of these dinosaurs together. For at least the first few years of life it looks like they stuck together. It answers the chicken-or-egg question of whether the social behaviour or the horns and frills came first,” he said.  Dr Barrett is one of the consultants on the Natural History museum range of  model dinosaurs.  This scale model series is currently being reviewed and we are working on a few changes, more will be revealed next year.

To view Natural History museum models (no Psittacosaurus but a relative – Triceratops in the collection) and to see the rest of the prehistoric animal models in stock at Everything Dinosaur: Dinosaur and Prehistoric Animal Models.

“Parrot Lizard”

Psittacosaurus (means parrot lizard after the animal’s parrot like beak), was a small herbivorous dinosaur of the Early Cretaceous.  At least 12 different species are known with remains having been found in China, Mongolia, Russia and possibly Thailand.  It is one of the best known dinosaur genera with over 420 individual fossils having been found from hatchlings right up to fully grown adults.  Not a large dinosaur by any means, some species could grow up to 2 metres long, perhaps these animals lived in groups for mutual protection against predators, just as small antelope do today.  Psittacosaurus is a favourite amongst palaeontologists because of the wealth of material that has been recovered.  Psittacosaur fossils are so numerous that they have been used as an index fossil to help date the Lower Cretaceous strata of South East Asia.

Psittacosaurus proves that three into one does go. Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur.

Psittacosaurus is classified as a Marginocephalian, perhaps a descendant of the great horned ceratopsians of the later Cretaceous.  Quite how Psittacosaurus is related to these elephant sized later dinosaurs is a mystery.  Large ceratopsians from the Campanian and Maastrichtian stages of the Late Cretaceous retain a fifth digit on the front feet.  This fifth finger is supposed to be a primitive feature, perhaps retained to help bare the weight of these heavy animals.  However, all psittacosaurs only have four fingers on their hands, having lost the fifth digit already.  Psittacosaurs were relatively swift runners, capable of adopting a bipedal stance so perhaps the fifth digit re-evolved in later ceratopsians as a result of their more quadrupedal lifestyle.  This theory is controversial as once an element such as a digit is lost from an order of animals it is not likely to re-evolve in later descendants.

So despite having a vast collection of psittacosaurs to study, we do not know how they fit into the dinosaur family tree.  What we may be able to surmise from this remarkable find from Liaoning, is that they lived in “family” groups and demonstrated social behaviour.