2008 | Everything Dinosaur Blog

26 03, 2008

Dinosaur Jawbone found on Bus in Peru

By Mike|2023-02-25T06:30:16+00:00March 26th, 2008|Dinosaur and Prehistoric Animal News Stories, Main Page|1 Comment

Dinosaur Jawbone found on Bus in Peru – Evidence of more Fossil Smuggling

Peruvian officials got a bit of a surprise when they opened a suspicious package that had been stored in the cargo compartment of a bus on route to Lima. Inside the well wrapped parcel they discovered the fossilised jawbone of a large prehistoric herbivore.

Dinosaur Jawbone

The fossil is part of the lower jaw (left and right dentary) and it has been tentatively ascribed to belonging to a large ceratopsian (horned dinosaur), although more work and analysis is needed to confirm the age of the fossil and to definitively place this unusual cargo within the Ornithischia. We at Everything Dinosaur strongly doubt that this fossil represents a member of the Ceratopsia, it is probably from a large mammal.

Pictures show a Peruvian police official displaying the fossil specimen at a news conference. The large grinding teeth can clearly be seen indicating a herbivorous diet but further study is required to identify the family to which this animal belonged to.

The fossil, which weighs 8.5 kilogrammes, was found in the cargo hold of the bus. The bus was on route to the Peruvian capital Lima, the fossil was in an unmarked parcel that had been sent on the bus company’s package service.

“They began to check the package because it didn’t have anything to indicate what was inside. They were worried about its weight, opened it and found the fossil,” said Kleber Jimenez, a local police officer.

Fossil Trafficking

Peru has struggled for years to combat trafficking of fossils and artifacts. Recently Yale University in the United States agreed to return thousands of pieces taken from the ancient Inca citadel of Machu Picchu to Peru. Raiding archaeological and palaeontological sites is quite common as locals try to make money out of the area’s prehistory.

“The jawbone that was found could be from a Triceratops, even though dinosaurs like that have never been found in southern Peru,” Pablo de la Vera Cruz, an archaeologist at the National University in Arequipa in southern Peru. However, this identification is only based on an examination of the police photographs, much more study is required before a more certain diagnosis can be made.

Ceratopsians such as Triceratops, Styracosaurus and Torosaurus are known from the Northern Hemisphere, the Cretaceous landscape of Laurasia. Some fossil evidence has been produced to support the theory that horned dinosaurs existed in South America, on the super-continent of Gondwana, most notably the material associated with the ceratopsian Notoceratops bonarelli but this remains controversial.

If ceratopsian fossils are found in South America then this has implications for scientist’s understanding of plate tectonics, the movement of the continents and land masses over time. It had been thought that the super-continent of Pangaea had begun to break up separating the southern continents from their northern counterparts long before the evolution of the ceratopsians. Fossils of horned dinosaurs found in South America would force geologists to reconsider the dating of the Pangaea break up.

If the fossil turns out to be ceratopsian (although, we are highly sceptical about the dinosaur fossil interpretation), then this does not confirm the existence of such animals in Peru. The fossil could have been excavated from the Western USA (the more usual home of these dinosaurs) and found its way to a collector in Peru.

Fossil in Police Custody

For the moment, the fossil is residing in police custody, given the strict rules for exporting artifacts from countries, coupled with the allegations of smuggling, the sender of the parcel may be reluctant to come forward to claim it, so it will probably remain a bit of mystery as to how such an unusual specimen came to heading to Lima in the luggage hold of a bus.

Extract taken from a report by Miguel Zegarra and Marco Aquino

The jawbone is certainly large and robust, indicating a substantial herbivorous animal. Whether it is finally identified as Ceratopsian or even belonging to a member of the Dinosauria is uncertain. After a more complete examination the fossil may turn out to be much younger than Cretaceous, perhaps belonging to one of the large Cenozoic marsupial or placental mammals known from the area.

To see a scale model of a Triceratops and other horned dinosaurs: Dinosaur and Prehistoric Animal Models.

25 03, 2008

10,000 B.C. Movie Review – A New Prehistoric Movie

By Mike|2024-04-12T08:27:39+01:00March 25th, 2008|Main Page, Movie Reviews and Movie News|0 Comments

10,000 B. C. Movie Review

Director Roland Emmerich is well known for big, block buster type movies such as “Independence Day” and “The Day After Tomorrow” but on this occasion he takes the viewer back in time, in a bid to tell a tale from prehistory.

10,000 B.C.

A fur adorned mountain tribe, happily living out their lives believing that the Woolly Mammoth herds are the centre of the universe, is raided by brutal warlords looking for slaves to help them build a temple to their God. Our hero, a young hunter called D’Leh (played by American actor Steven Strait) sees his love Evolet (Camilla Belle) carried away and so he sets out to rescue her.

Along the way he encounters all manner of strange tribes, most of which have a grudge against the slave warlords as they too have been raided. What starts off as one man’s quest to find his girl ends up being a sort of crusade against the tyranny of the evil warlord empire and their pyramid temples. As D’Leh wanders through strange deserts and jungles in search of Evolet his small band of followers swells and grows to become an army – just what you need if you are going to have a final showdown with the bad guys.

If you put aside for one moment the historical inaccuracies, the absurd geography (we think much of the film was shot in Namibia as well as New Zealand so in essence our heroes were heading in the wrong direction), and the out of proportion prehistoric animals depicted, then this is a fairly pleasant way to spend an afternoon.

The story is not exactly subtle or complicated (unless you count the bizarre ancient prophesies) but as this film is aimed at a pre-teen audience then it hits all the right buttons. Plenty of action, not a lot of dialogue or plot and some interesting special effects. Any film with CGI Mammoths can’t be all that bad, and the 12A rating permits youngsters to watch (accompanied by an adult). The narration got a little iritating at times, what was Omar Sharif thinking!

Absolute hokum, but if you have nothing better to do on a wet March afternoon…

Some points about the prehistoric animals – the Terror Birds (Phorusrhacidae) survived in South America until about 5,000 years ago but we are not sure what evidence there is for these large, flightless birds surviving in the Old World into the Pleistocene/Holocene (we think there is none).

The Sabre-tooth cat has been given the typical markings of an ambush killer and these animals although associated with the Americas (where the last Sabre-tooths lived), they were more widespread in earlier times. Our allegedly Palaeolithic hunter might have encountered big cats, but it is highly unlikely that one of them would have been a Smilodon.

A Smilodon Makes an Appearance in the Film

Rebor Smilodon model in the Ice Age colour scheme.

A close-up of the head of the Rebor Smilodon populator figure (mouth open head attachment). The exquisite detailing or the teeth and the inside of the mouth can be clearly seen. Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

The picture (above) shows a Rebor Smilodon 1:11 scale figure.

To view the Rebor range of models and figures: Rebor Models and Figures.

Sabre-Toothed Cat

The Sabre-tooth cat depicted in the film is truly huge, far larger than the Pleistocene Sabre-tooths. Most of the large Sabre-tooth cats were about the size of a modern lion (P. leo) although much more stocky and heavy set. The largest of the last Smilodon species was S. populator of South America. It would have stood about 1.2 metres high at the shoulder. We think the CGI operators have used a little bit of licence when it comes to the scale of some of these people.

It might be that the people depicted in the film are actually very small, this could be why some of these animals look so big. If that is the case then this too is historically inaccurate, there is some evidence to suggest that Stone Age people were actually a fraction taller than their modern counterparts.

24 03, 2008

Mass Extinctions – Putting the “Big Five” into Perspective

By Mike|2023-02-25T06:39:44+00:00March 24th, 2008|Dinosaur and Prehistoric Animal News Stories, Geology, Main Page, Palaeontological articles|0 Comments

Extinction Events are happening all the Time

The mass extinction event that marked the end of the Cretaceous (end of the Mesozoic Era), is perhaps the best known of all the mass extinction events (primarily as this event saw the demise of the dinosaurs); it was not the most severe in terms of the loss of families of organisms, genera and individual species.

The extinction event that marked the end of the Permian (also the end of the Palaeozoic Era), had a far bigger impact on animal life than the extinction event that marked the end of the Cretaceous.

Percentage Marine Invertebrate Extinction (Genera level of Taxon)

Source: Everything Dinosaur

From the graph shown above it can be seen that the extinction event at the end of the Permian resulted in the loss of approximately 68% of all the marine invertebrate genera, whilst the Cretaceous extinction event marked the loss of 43% of marine invertebrate genera.

Mass Extinctions

From time to time major groups of fossils disappear from the geological record. Many groups of fossils disappear more or less together (roughly at the same point in geological time), the fossils never to be found again in younger strata. It was partly for this reason that many of the boundaries between geological periods and eras were created by scientists, as they are appropriate points to delineate time.

Species are becoming extinct all the time (this is referred to as background extinction), new species are evolving (speciation), to take advantage of new environmental and climatic circumstances. There have been a number of major extinctions throughout geological time. Although, evidence is extremely scarce for extinction events during the Cryptozoic (hidden life Eon – 4.6 bn years to 545 million years ago), it is almost certain that as Precambrian life forms evolved some elements were subjected to extinction events.

The major mass extinctions, known as the “Big Five” have all taken place in the Phanerozoic (visible life Eon). None of them seemed to have been instantaneous, in most cases it seems to have taken between 500,000 and one million years for the losses to occur. However, recent evidence regarding the Permian extinction event is that it may have taken place quite rapidly (at least in geological time terms), perhaps taking place over a period of around 100,000 years.

To read more about the mass extinction at the end of the Permian: Can Snails and Oysters provide a clue to Mass Extinctions.

Naturally, the collision with a large extra-terrestrial object such as a comet or an asteroid around 65 million years ago would have had a catastrophic impact on life on Earth but there is evidence to suggest that many land and marine animals were already suffering considerable stress before the Chicxulub event.

To review recent articles published on the Cretaceous mass extinction:

Sulphur linked to Cretaceous extinction event: Sulphur in the Sky linked to Dinosaur Extinction.

To read more about the Chicxulub impact: Geologists get to the Bottom of the Chicxulub Crater.

More information about Chicxulub: End of Dinosaurs set in Motion by Asteroid Collision in Mid Jurassic.

The major extinction events, known as the “Big Five” led to the demise of a number of key animal groups, some went completely extinct such as the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous, some such as the Brachiopods were subjected to a number of mass extinction events. Although Brachiopods still exist today, they do not have the diversity or abundance as during their Palaeozoic heyday.

A Table Summarising the Main Groups of Animals Affected by Mass Extinctions

Table: Everything Dinosaur

A lot of information is available about current climate and environmental change. It is difficult to interpret this data sufficiently to estimate the current extinction rate. Many biologists believe that over the last 200 years or so the extinction rate has been much higher than the normal background rate of extinction. Conservative estimates of current total extinction rates are 5-50 species of animals and plants per day. This is an alarming figure, taking the mid range point (25) this would suggest that 600 species have gone extinct so far in March 2008.

Such is the loss of fauna and flora that many scientists have labelled this time as “The Sixth Extinction”. The fossil record indicates that it takes millions of years for the Earth to regenerate biodiversity and establish rich, robust ecosystems. Mass extinction events seem to have serious implications for larger animals, particularly those at the top of the food-chain, perhaps it is time for H. sapiens to take note.

Visit Everything Dinosaur’s website: Everything Dinosaur.

23 03, 2008

Exciting Frog Blog Week 2 Update – The Tiny Black Dots

By Mike|2024-04-12T08:33:01+01:00March 23rd, 2008|Animal News Stories, Educational Activities, Everything Dinosaur News and Updates, Main Page|0 Comments

Frog Blog Week 2 – Tiny Black Dots – no movement yet

We have been keeping a careful watch on the frog spawn in the office pond. The frogs spawned for the first time in our pond last Sunday, so we have decided to keep an observational record of how the tadpoles get on. Four frogs were in the pond, we suspect one female and three males. Identifying males and female frogs is not our strong suit, but we estimated the ratio of boys to girls based on the fact that one frog was bigger than all the rest, so we speculated that this was the female.

During the breeding season, the male frogs develop pronounced dark pads on their first digits of the hand. These pads are present all year round but swell up in the breeding season and help permit males to grip the usually larger females during mating.

Also, the smaller frogs croaked and we think that only the males do this. The sound does not carry very far, it is certainly not the loudest frog croaking we have heard, many tropical frogs would easier drown out the noise made by these Common Frogs as these animals lack a vocal sac to help the sound resonate.

By Monday the pond was empty and the adult frogs had left, perhaps to hunt in the surrounding rockery, we did not expect to see all four of them together again, but surprisingly on Wednesday all four frogs (one big one and three smaller ones) returned to the pond and there was a lot of activity again but no further spawning.

Frog Blog – Week 2

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

The weather in the north-west of England has been particularly cold over the last few days. We have experienced strong gales, hail storms and even some snow. This is the earliest Easter for 95 years, we suspect that the development of the eggs will be dependent on the water temperature, so it may take a while for the embryos to start to develop. The jelly surrounding the tiny black dots (each no more than about 2mm across), has swollen and this helps the spawn stay afloat and close to the surface of the pond. In this way the spawn can be warmed by sunlight to the greatest extent (surface water of ponds tends to be warmest).

We have been concerned this week, as there has been a lot building work going on around us and the construction teams have lit several bonfires. This has led to large deposits of ash and other debris getting blown into the pond. The silvery “scum” surrounding some of the spawn that can be seen in the picture, is ash that has drifted into the pond, we are not sure what effect this pollution will have on the spawn’s development.

We will have to keep you posted on the spawn’s progress…

Science Bit

Amphibians were the first truly semi-terrestrial animals, evolving in the late Devonian and becoming more numerous and diverse during the Carboniferous and Permian periods before suffering in the Late Permian mass extinction. At the end of the Permian there were about 35 known families of amphibians, many of them considerably larger than their modern counterparts. After the mass extinction event, at the beginning of the Triassic (248 million years ago), there were about 10 families remaining.

About 70 percent of all the types of amphibians around at the time of the Late Permian went extinct. Today, there are about 4,300 species of amphibians in the world (mostly frogs), but the amphibian class has never fully recovered from the Permian mass extinction. Amphibians were at their most diverse (in terms of families) and spectacular something like 50 million years before our ancestors (the first mammals) evolved.

22 03, 2008

Sulphureous Skies Marked the Downfall of the Dinosaurs

By Mike|2023-02-25T06:54:41+00:00March 22nd, 2008|Dinosaur and Prehistoric Animal News Stories, Geology, Main Page|0 Comments

Evidence links Cretaceous Mass Extinction to Deccan Traps Eruptions

Disastrous amounts of sulphur dioxide pumped high into the Earth’s atmosphere by the enormous volcanic eruptions taking place in what was to become western India led to the Cretaceous mass extinction according to new research.

New evidence from a team of geologists studying the basaltic lava flows of the region known as the Deccan Traps, suggests that the millions and millions of tonnes of sulphur dioxide thrown up into the atmosphere as a result of huge volcanic eruptions led to dramatic climate change.

Sulphur Dioxide

Discharging of hundreds to thousands of teragrammes* of sulphur dioxide per year, would have led to global climatic cooling, seriously damaging ecosystems and leading to the collapse of food chains and mass extinction.

Teragrammes* – a measure of weight equivalent to 1 million metric tonnes

Extinction of the Dinosaurs

The research team has speculated that this was the real cause behind the death of the dinosaurs, marine reptiles, pterosaurs and a number of other animal and plant families 66 million years ago. The meteor/asteroid impact (Chicxulub) in the Yucatan peninsula in the Gulf of Mexico may have played only a secondary role in the mass extinction event.

For models, replicas and dinosaur toys: Everything Dinosaur.

Ironically, the strata within the Yucatan region are heavily laden with sulphur, a huge impact such as the Chicxulub event would probably have thrown vast amounts of sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere, contributing to this “overdose of sulphur” and consequent environmental instability.

To read more about the Deccan Traps: Blame the Deccan Traps.

Research team member, geologist Stephen Self of the Open University (United Kingdom), commenting on the mass release of poisonous gases due to the volcanic activity stated:

“A semi-persistent gas release of hundreds to thousands of teragrammes of (sulphur dioxide) per year can be envisaged for each Deccan eruption. There’s plenty of it, and it would be pumped into the atmosphere.”

Yet today, with all the research into global climate change, scientists have little knowledge regarding the behaviour of sulphur dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere. Whilst carbon dioxide (one of the main so called greenhouse gases); tends to persist for many years, acting as a climate blanket warming the Earth, sulphur dioxide in massive amounts may behave differently.

Reflecting Sunlight Back into Space

The sulphureous gas could reflect sunlight back into space, this would lead to global cooling. Sulphur compounds tend to be less persistent than carbon compounds in an atmosphere so the effect would not have been sustained.

An additional problem caused by the excessive amounts of sulphur in the atmosphere could be acid rain. The sulphur particles would combine with moisture in the atmosphere and fall back down to earth as dilute sulphuric acid. This would have had a devastating effect on vegetation which could have led to the collapse of terrestrial food chains. Acid rain falling on the oceans could have acidified the seas, leading to the collapse of coral based ecosystems and other calciferous based life forms such as zoo-plankton populations and shelled animals such as the ammonites.

In this way, the ecosystems in the oceans would also have been seriously disrupted.

The largest of the Deccan Traps volcano’s spewed basalt lava east across the continent and into the sea. The volcanic activity at the end of the Cretaceous was extremely intense. To gain an idea of the strength of the massive volcano, the 1991 Mount Pinatubo volcano on the Philippines was 1000 times less powerful commented Self.

To read more about the Chicxulub impact: Geologists get to the Bottom of the Chicxulub Crater.

More information about Chicxulub: End of Dinosaurs set in Motion by Asteroid Collision in Mid Jurassic.

21 03, 2008

Dinosaur Home – A Unique Blog for Dino-people

By Mike|2024-04-12T08:29:35+01:00March 21st, 2008|Dinosaur and Prehistoric Animal News Stories, Dinosaur Fans, Main Page|0 Comments

Dinosaur Home – a Blog for Dinosaur Enthusiasts

One of the great benefits of having such a large on-line presence these days is that Everything Dinosaur team members get contacted by dinosaur enthusiasts from all over the world. A couple of weeks ago, we were contacted by Lucille, a dinosaur fan who heralds from Los Angeles, California.

Everything Dinosaur

Lucille commented on one of our recently published articles about dinosaur excavations taking place in Australia (certainly a hot bed of palaeontological activity at the moment); she then drew our attention to her own blog site – “Dinosaur Home”. This particular site provides updates on dinosaur excavations and research, photos, discussion groups and forums.

To visit Dinosaur Home: Dinosaur Home – Home Page

Lots of information and pictures related to palaeontology posted on this site. It reflects how universally popular the science of palaeontology and fossil hunting is.

Palaeontology is truly a global science, but you don’t necessarily have to be a highly qualified scientist to contribute. By going for a walk on a fossiliferous beach or taking a look at a cutting at the side of the road or just simply turning over some stones you might find something that could change the way the world views itself. The science of palaeontology has been enriched on numerous occasions thanks to some amazing finds and discoveries such as the finding of huge sauropod vertebrae by two hikers touring New Mexico in 1979.

Seismosaurus

Over the next two decades or so the mesa, in which theses fossils were entombed was slowly excavated by a team from the New Mexico Museum of Natural History. Early papers ascribed this dinosaur to a new genus aptly named Seismosaurus “earth-quake lizard”, a good name for an animal with an estimated length in excess of 52 metres. The fossils proved extremely difficult to excavate, the surrounding matrix was as hard as concrete and unfortunately coloured the same as the fossils.

Gradually as more parts of this huge animal were exposed and studied earlier interpretations of the fossil evidence were revised and it is now believed that this specimen may actually represent a species of Diplodocus. It was certainly a large animal, one of the longest land animals on record, with a revised estimated length of 33 metres, considerably bigger than Diplodocus longus for example.

Thanks to these two hikers and the many members of the research team, our knowledge of Jurassic sauropods has been enriched.

Thanks to bloggers and forum hosts like Lucille, dinosaur enthusiasts can be kept up to date with the latest developments.

Keep up the good work Lucille.

Visit Everything Dinosaur’s award-winning website: Everything Dinosaur.

21 03, 2008

Plesiosaur named in honour of Dr Elizabeth “Betsy” Nicholls

By Mike|2023-02-25T07:08:19+00:00March 21st, 2008|Dinosaur and Prehistoric Animal News Stories, Famous Figures, Main Page|0 Comments

New Plesiosaur Genus named in honour of Dr Elizabeth “Betsy” Nicholls

A new plesiosaur discovered in Alberta, Canada has been named Nichollsia borealis in honour of Dr Elizabeth Nicholls who sadly passed away in 2004. Dr Nicholls was a member of the Royal Tyrrell museum research team staff for 14 years and much admired by her fellow palaeontologists and researchers. Her energy, enthusiasm and fascination for palaeontology was the stuff of legend, regularly commuting long distances to work at the museum and journeying to some of the most remote and inhospitable parts of the Canadian wilderness in her search for fossils.

Dr Elizabeth Nicholls

The book “Dinosaur Provincial Park – A Spectacular Ancient Ecosystem Revealed”; edited by Phillip Currie and Eva Koppelhus is dedicated to her memory.

This new genus of Plesiosaur (marine reptile) was discovered in 1994 by machine operators working underground digging through a sandstone deposit at Syncrude’s Base mine, near Fort McMurray, Alberta. Despite the near completeness of the specimen (left forelimb and scapula missing), the fossil was not named and described until recently. The paper on this new animal has just been published in the German scientific journal Palaeontographica Abteilung A.

The Alberta Oil Sands

The mines in this part of Alberta have attracted a lot of controversy, the sediments being mined, known as the Alberta oil sands are producing crude oil, part of a global trend to search for oil and natural gas from oil sands, oil shales and deep ocean deposits, reserves that are more and more difficult to reach. More oil companies are turning to these unconventional sources of fossil fuels as demand for them begins to outstrip supply.

Environmentalists have lobbied against such activity, the sites tend to be very polluting and there is a higher cost of extraction. Those in favour of such mining argue that with dwindling reserves in the Middle East there is a need to utilise existing technology to explore and exploit new sources of oil and natural gas.

Just occasionally, these miners discover fossils that shed light on the fauna and flora of the Cretaceous.

Plesiosaur Specimen

This specimen measures just under 3 metres in length and dates from approximately 112 million years ago (Aptian/Albian faunal stages). During this period the eastern part of the super-continent Laurasia, effectively the land mass that was to become North America, was split into as sea levels rose. A warm, shallow, tropical sea was eventually formed; this is called the Western Interior Seaway, at its greatest extent it covered Mexico, much of the mid USA and a huge central swathe of what was to become Canada.

A Plesiosaur Exhibit on Display at a Museum

Oxford University Museum of Natural History plesiosaur.

A replica of a long-necked plesiosaur swims into view. Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Nichollsia borealis was probably an active swimmer, an open water predator chasing down fish in the waters. Close examination of the sharp, needle-like, overlapping teeth indicate that they would have been ideally suited for catching and holding slippery fish.

The relatively large orbits are perhaps an adaptation for hunting in low light levels and their position in the skull indicate that this animal would have been good at judging distances, an important skill if you are going to hunt by striking at swiftly moving fish. The fossil provides important information on the evolution of plesiosaurs as the fossil record for these marine reptiles is relatively poor from the mid Cretaceous.

On Display at the Royal Tyrrell Museum

The fossil has just been placed on display at the Royal Tyrrell Museum, Drumheller, Alberta, Canada. We are sure Dr Nicholls would have felt immensely proud to have a marine reptile named after her on display at the Royal Tyrrell, an institution where she spent so much of her working life.

A former student of the University of Calgary, Dr Nicholls is perhaps most well known for her work on marine vertebrates. She conducted an extensive study and review of marine vertebrate fossils from Manitoba, Canada in the 1970s and went on to help in the discovery and excavation of the largest ichthyosaur fossil known to date.

A Giant Ichthyosaur

Discovered in a remote part of British Columbia in the late 1990s, Dr Nicholls and her colleagues over the period 1999-2001 gradually removed the huge beast from its surrounding matrix. The ichthyosaur is estimated to have measured 23 metres in length, it has been dated to the Triassic and has been ascribed to the genus Shonisaurus. The animal had no teeth in its elongated snout. It was a filter feeder, feeding on phytoplankton and zooplankton, plus other small free swimming marine organisms, like a modern baleen whale or a bashing shark. Much of this specimen is now stored in the vast warehouse area of the Royal Tyrrell museum.

For models and replicas of prehistoric marine creatures: CollectA Prehistoric Life Models.

Betsy Nicholls first decided that she wanted to be a palaeontologist when aged nine she visited the offices of Sam Wells, a university classmate of her father’s. Later she wrote a letter to Roy Chapman Andrews of the American Museum of Natural History (the discover of the first dinosaur nests amongst other things). She wrote asking how a girl could become a palaeontologist. She kept Andrew’s encouraging letter as a treasured memento.

Although Dr Nicholls worked on a number of dinosaur discoveries within the Dinosaur Provincial Park, her first love was marine reptiles. It is only fitting that a newly discovered plesiosaur should be named in her honour.

Nichollssaura borealis

Update

The genus name had to be changed, as Nichollsia was already in use, it described a genus of isopods (marine crustaceans). In 2009, the scientific name for this plesiosaur was changed to Nichollssaura borealis.

20 03, 2008

Updating the Unique Everything Dinosaur Web Log

By Mike|2024-04-12T08:30:48+01:00March 20th, 2008|Everything Dinosaur News and Updates|0 Comments

Updating the Everything Dinosaur Blog

The Everything Dinosaur blog site is nearly twelve months old. It was started back in May 2007 and thus far our team members have posted up nearly three hundred on line articles, reviews , pictures, news stories and updates on fossil finds. It has certainly kept us busy, we have been buoyed up by all the kind messages of support and comments received. A special thanks to all our contributors and blog readers.

The Everything Dinosaur company is made up of parents, teachers and dinosaur enthusiasts and we spend our time helping to motivate young people to learn more about science as well as helping collectors source models, providing information, quizzes and all kinds of stuff to do with dinosaurs.

Everything Dinosaur Blog

When we set up this blog site we set out a number of aims and objectives:

To provide a diary of our day-to-day activities – what we get up to running our unusual company.

To act as a source for more information and a forum on dinosaurs/prehistoric animals for our visitors, customers and such like.

To discuss/review new dinosaur models, dinosaur toys and other items being added to our product range.

To perhaps, through our scribblings and notes here to help encourage others to set up their own little businesses doing things that they enjoy too.

Nearly one year on, we are staying true to these aims and we shall continue to publish dinosaur, prehistoric animal and fossil themed articles on our web log. Hope you like them.

To visit Everything Dinosaur’s shop: Everything Dinosaur’s Shop.

19 03, 2008

The Amazing Sir Arthur C. Clarke 1917 – 2008

By Mike|2024-04-12T08:29:02+01:00March 19th, 2008|Everything Dinosaur News and Updates, Famous Figures, Main Page|0 Comments

Sir Arthur C. Clarke 1917-2008

Science fiction writer, futurist and visionary Sir Arthur C. Clarke died in hospital in Sri Lanka today. Already, a number of tributes have been paid to him by fellow writers, politicians and scientists. Sir Arthur, who turned 90 just a few weeks ago, passed away at the Apollo hospital, he had been in and out of hospital for several weeks suffering from breathing difficulties.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke

Born in Minehead, Kent, Sir Arthur made Sri Lanka his adopted home in 1956, he was knighted in 1998. Clarke, who in 1945 predicted the creation of communication satellites, wrote more than 80 books. He was Sri Lanka’s best-known resident guest and has a scientific academy named after him, as well as an asteroid and a joint European/Russian satellite.

British astronomer Sir Patrick Moore, who had worked with Clarke on several writing projects, paid tribute to his “dear friend” and said his death was a “great loss.”

“He was ahead of his time in so many ways,” Moore told the BBC. “Quite apart from artificial satellites there were other things too. A great science fiction writer, a very good scientist, a great prophet and a very dear friend, I’m very, very sad that he’s gone.”

“2001: A Space Odyssey”

Sir Arthur was perhaps best known for his work on the Stanley Kubrick film “2001: A Space Odyssey”. The story was loosely based on and developed by Sir Arthur and Stanley Kubrick from Clarke’s short story ‘The Sentinel’, first printed in 1951.

A quotation attributed to Stanley Kubrick on the release of the film helps to sum up the life and times of Sir Arthur:

“He (Sir Arthur) has the kind of mind of which the world can never have enough, an array of imagination, intelligence, knowledge and a quirkish curiosity, which often uncovers more than the first three qualities.”

Source: Fiona Harrison/Associated Press

Sir Arthur worked on a ground breaking television series in the early 1980s. It was called “Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World”. This thirteen part series covered the paranormal and explored strange mysterious such as UFOs, monsters of the deep, apeman and other phenomenon. In one of the later episodes (episode 11), entitled “Dragons, Dinosaurs and Giant Snakes” – Sir Arthur explored the then, current myths and stories about unknown animals lurking in explored parts of the world.

Exploring Myths and Legends

Each programme was written in a documentary style with an introduction and conclusion filmed with the great man from his residence in Sri Lanka. An earlier episode had focused on the strange stories from around the world of lake monsters such as Nessie and Champ. A book was published in 1981 to accompany the series.

To read more about Sir Arthur: Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s 90th Birthday.

Sir Arthur’s enquiring mind and curiosity was an inspiration to many scientists and writers, he will be sadly missed, perhaps it is fitting to finish with a brief quotation from the man himself, it pointedly sums up why many people are inspired to become palaeontologists:

“The truth as always will be far stranger”.

18 03, 2008

Update on “Dakota” the recently found Hadrosaurine Mummy

By Mike|2023-02-25T07:20:13+00:00March 18th, 2008|Dinosaur and Prehistoric Animal News Stories, Main Page|1 Comment

“Dakota” Slowly but Surely Reveals Hadrosaur Secrets

Dakota, the nick-name given to the fossil hadrosaur mummy found in Late Maastrichtian (67 million years ago), sediments is slowly but surely being excavated out of the sandstone tomb that encases this amazing dinosaur fossil.

Fossil Hadrosaur

The process is extremely methodical, using tiny brushes and dental picks to remove the surrounding matrix revealing this beautifully preserved animal, complete with much of the skin left on the carcase, hence the mummified appearance of the fossil.

Members of the international team, responsible for this work, expect to spend many thousands of man hours meticulously removing the surrounding rock, often grain by grain as they bring Dakota back from the dead.

An Edmontosaurus

The large sandstone slabs that contain the fossil are now safely secured in the basement of the local museum, being stored and studied under controlled conditions. The dinosaur has been classified as an Edmontosaurus (a Late Cretaceous, hadrosaurine).

Speaking on behalf of his fellow researchers; Dr Phil Manning of the Manchester University said:

“This is the closest many people will ever get to seeing what large parts of a dinosaur actually looked like, in the flesh”.

“This is not the usual disjointed sentence or fragment of a word that the fossil records offer up as evidence of past life. This is a full chapter.”

Animal tissue usually decomposes or is scavenged quickly after death. Researchers say that this particular specimen must have been buried extremely rapidly and in just the right environment to permit the texture of the skin to be preserved.

An Example of a Fossil Hadrosaur Mummy (Edmontosaurus)

The Edmontosaurus exhibit at the Frankfurt Natural History Museum. Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

“The process of decay was overtaken by that of fossilisation, preserving many of the soft-tissue structures,” Dr Manning commentated.

Hadrosaur Mummy

For Tyler Lyson, the young palaeontology student who discovered the fossil, these are exciting times. Preserved skin is exceptionally rare in the fossil record and it is hoped that Dakota will shed new light on dinosaur appearance, skin structure and internal organ morphology.

The horse hair paint brush is typical of the tools used by palaeontologists to carefully remove the surround matrix, revealing the fossil impression of the hadrosaurine skin.

It is hoped that part of this amazing fossil will be able to put on display shortly at the North Dakota Heritage Centre. The team certainly have their work cut out, the fossil is effectively encased in two huge blocks of sandstone, the total weight of the specimen is approaching 5,000 KG, perhaps about as much as an adult Edmontosaurus would have weighed when they were alive.

To read more about the discovery of this fantastic fossil:

Dinosaur Mummy unlocks Duck-Billed Dinosaur Secrets.

“Dakota” was named after the U.S. state where the specimen was found.

Everything Dinosaur stocks a wide range of duck-billed dinosaur models including replicas of Edmontosaurus. To view the range of prehistoric animal models available: Dinosaur and Prehistoric Animal Models.