Edmontosaurus Ready to Return to Display in Northern Ireland

After an absence of more than three years, one of Ulster Museum’s most popular attractions is ready to go on display again.  A six metre, mounted skeleton of the duck-billed dinosaur Edmontosaurus is out of storage and ready to take its place in the newly reconditioned museum in the Botanic Gardens of Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Edmontosaurus

More work is planned and the hadrosaurine will have to wait until October 22nd before it can meet the public once again, as this is the scheduled date for the grand opening of the newly refurbished museum.  October 22nd will also be a red letter for the whole museum, as October 22nd 2009, marks the 80th anniversary of the museum’s opening.

Commenting on the return of his prize possession, Dr Mike Simms, head of palaeontology for Ulster Museum stated that it was great to have the Edmontosaurus back.

Discovered in South Dakota

The fossilised skeleton was discovered in the Ruth Mason Quarry in South Dakota, USA, and was purchased by the museum in 1984 for around £80,000 at today’s prices it sounds as if the museum got a bargain.  A mounted skeleton of such a specimen would fetch many hundreds of thousand of pounds, even in today’s depressed auction market.

Dr Simms commented:

“This is the only complete dinosaur anywhere in Ireland.  The only places they have ones like this are national museums.”

The return of the Edmontosaurus was part of the major undertaking to transport several thousand artefacts back to the museum ahead of the reopening.  We hope to report on the grand opening in October, in the meantime, let’s hope that the Edmontosaurus is getting used to its new surroundings.

An Edmontosaurus Fossil Skeleton on Display

Duck-billed dinosaur on display. Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Everything Dinosaur stocks a huge range of hadrosaur models and replicas of ornithischian dinosaurs. Take a look at the models section of Everything Dinosaur’s award-winning website: Prehistoric Animal Models and Replicas.

Amazing Insights into Carboniferous Creepy-Crawlies

The Mesozoic may have the dinosaurs but this era was preceded by the Palaeozoic, the era of ancient life when strange and bizarre invertebrates ruled.  One of the most significant periods in terms of the advancement of plant and animal life was the Carboniferous a time when the vast coal measures now used to support much of human activity on the planet were formed.  The Carboniferous saw the advance of the tetrapods and their greater adaptation to a life on land.  Vast forests of ferns dominated the landscape, but the vertebrates did not have these huge tracts of forest to themselves, this was the time of large insects and a new technique being used by a team of British scientists is provided new insights into the lifestyle of some of these amazing invertebrates.

A Typical Carboniferous Swamp Scene

It had been suggested that Arthropleura inhabited swampy environments. Whilst it was probably limited to equatorial regions, this study suggests it preferred open woodland.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

A new 3-D analysis of delicate fossil arthropods and insects has provided new clues as to the habits and lifestyles of some of the first creatures to adapt to a sedentary life.

Fighting for survival in the leaf litter of the primeval forests were two arthropods, ancient creatures that are distantly related to modern spiders. Scientists used 3,000 individual x-rays of these two fossilised animals and then a computer model created remarkable 3-D images that provide much more data than an examination of the original fossil.

The animals were two coin-sized creatures called Cryptomartus hindi and Eophyrneus prestvicii.

Carboniferous

C. hindi and E. prestvicii were two animals that lived in the undergrowth, this new study provides astonishing details of their anatomy and scientists begin how these two particular creatures survived in the flourishing ecosystems of the Carboniferous. The new 3-D computer generated models have revealed new aspects of these ancient creature’s anatomies that has enabled the researchers to draw conclusions about how these animals lived.  For example, the fossil evidence had indicated that E. prestvicii had long legs, probably an adaptation to running through the leaf litter after prey.  However, these digitally dissected spiders have shown more detail, E. prestvicii had rows of spines on its back, possibly an evolved defence against carnivorous amphibians that also roamed around the forest floor.

The study, recently published in the scientific journal Biology Letters also concludes that the front legs of C. hindi were angled forward, presumably so it could grasp prey.  The angle of the leg suggests that this particular ancient arachnid hid in logs or under leaf fronds, waiting to ambush smaller creatures as they came by.  This adaptation is similar to the leg positions of a modern crab spider that ambushes prey in this manner.

New Discoveries

Commenting on the new discoveries, the lead author of this study, Russell Garwood, a PhD student at Imperial College, London stated:

“Our models almost bring these ancient creatures back to life and it’s really exciting to be able to look at them in such detail.  Our study helps build a picture of what was happening during this period early in the history of life on land.  We think one creature could have responded to increasing predation from the amphibians by growing spikes, while the other responded by becoming an ambush predator, hiding away and only exposing itself when it had to come out to eat”.

Garwood and his colleagues are hoping that this new imaging technique will be used to help bring back to life from the Carboniferous more amazing creepy-crawlies.

Everything Dinosaur stocks a range of models of Palaeozoic creatures including many invertebrates. For example, take a look at these models here: CollectA Prehistoric Life Models.

Could our Ancestors have been Cannibals?

Scientists at Oxford University have published a paper on a human arm bone found in a Devon cave that may indicate that our ancestors were cannibals.  The scientists believe the marks on the 9,000-year-old human bone are evidence that flesh was removed from it or that the body was cut up shortly after death.  The bone from Kents Cavern, near Torquay in Devon was spotted amongst a collection of animal bones from the site by Torquay museum curator Barry Chandler.

A closer examination of the bone revealed that it had several cut marks in the bone, evidently these had to have been made by a human using a stone tool of some sort.  The study showed that the bone had also been fractured at or around the time of death.

Other evidence of cannibalistic practices has been found at a number of sites in England, evidence of possible cannibalism has been found at the Cheddar Gorge caves in Somerset and at Eton in Berkshire, human bones were found split open, perhaps to get at the nutritious marrow inside.

Early Britons

The arrow in the diagrams showing the bone is pointing towards a cluster of three, fine vertical marks scored into the bone, other marks can be seen to the left of this group.

Dr Rick Schulting, of the School of Archaeology at Oxford University, sated:

“There are cut marks, and it seems the bone has been intentionally split.  These two together can raise the possibility of cannibalism”.

However, Dr Schulting and his colleagues were quick to point out that cannibalism was just one possible explanation, the markings could be signs of a complex ritual burial.  Perhaps by scoring the bones our ancestors thought that the spirit of the dead person would be more quickly released so that they could join other spirits of the departed.

The bone from Kents Cavern was first discovered by archaeologist and geologist William Pengelly more than 100 years ago.  It had been stored in a collection of miscellaneous animal bones that had been collected from the cave.

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