Girls in Bikinis Dance on Top of Crocodile Trap

Austrialian authorities express concerns after two girls were photographed dancing on top of a crocodile trap.

It was not Darwin who coined the phrase “Survival of the Fittest” but a contemporary of his Herbert Spencer, a philosopher born in the English city of Derby in 1820.  We wonder what Darwin and Spencer would make of the antics of two bikini clad girls as they dance away using the top of a crocodile trap as their stage.

Drinking Champagne

The girls were photographed drinking champagne and using the bottles as microphones as they danced on top of a crocodile trap that had been set close to the coastal town of Manigrida in Australia’s Northern Territory.  As the rain poured down, the girls seemingly unaware of any danger or simply oblivious to it, danced on top of the croc trap, that had been placed there to catch a deadly Saltwater crocodile, the largest reptile on Earth.

The image was taken last weekend, and has been published just a day after a picture of two male tourists tempting fate by doing a similar thing at the Jim Jim Falls in Kakadu National Park.

The image, taken at the weekend, surfaced a day after the paper published a picture of two male tourists tempting fate by doing a similar thing at Jim Jim Falls in Kakadu National Park, also in the Northern Territory.

Crocodile Trap

The Saltwater or Estuarine crocodile is known to be a man-eater, or in this case a bikini clad girl-eater.  Growing to lengths in excess of 8 metres long in the remote Australian outback.  Large males can weigh over a tonne and they are the apex predators in the area.

Recently, there have been calls from local residents to curb the crocodile population by having a cull, after a number of people and domestic animals were attacked by these fearsome, prehistoric reptiles.

To read an article on the problems with the growing Saltwater crocodile population in Australia: Invasion of the Crocodiles.

Commenting on the actions of these men, park ranger and crocodile expert Garry Lindner said this sort of behaviour was “absurd”.

He went on to add:

“Crocs are attracted to the bait in the traps, so it is extremely dangerous to fool around like this.”

These Aussie “Sheilas” are perhaps trying to prove Herbert Spencer’s phrase “Survival of the Fittest” as you would certainly have to question their common sense in choosing a crocodile trap as a dance floor.  Let’s hope the only “snaps” they encounter are the photos taken by the photographer.

Even the Saltwater crocodile would be dwarfed by the giant crocs of the Mesozoic, for example Sarcosuchus (the name means “flesh crocodile”) was over 12 metres long and palaeontologists estimate it would have weighed as much as two Indian elephants.

Sarcosuchus Scale Drawing

Everything Dinosaur’s scale drawing of Sarcosuchus.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

To view a model of Sarcosuchus and other prehistoric crocodiles, we suggest you take a look at the models section of the Everything Dinosaur website: Dinosaur and Prehistoric Animal Models.

Ancient Goat Species Lived like a Reptile

An ancient mammal lived in the slow lane, scientists studying Myotragus goat fossils suggest that this island-living animal may have had a metabolic rate similar to an extant reptile.

The island of Majorca in the Spanish Balearics may be regarded as a holiday retreat for many.  Indeed, this group of islands, of which Majorca is the largest, attract many millions of holidaymakers each year.  However, the geology of Majorca is truly fascinating and a study of a type of goat that once lived on this island has revealed a remarkable adaptation to a resource poor environment.  For one type of prehistoric mammal, the key to survival in a harsh environment was to live like a reptile.

Amongst all this recent debate over whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded or cold-blooded (ectothermic v endothermic) comes a research paper published in the scientific journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggesting that goats adapted to a resource-poor environment by changing their growth rate and metabolism to match the available food supply.  A mammal living in the slow lane, developing a metabolism and growth rate more like a reptile’s than other mammals.

This discovery is the first time scientists have seen this ectothermic survival strategy in Mammalia.  Unfortunately, for the species of goats concerned, their adaptations may have eventually led to their extinction, once skilled human predators came to the Majorca.

Co-author of this study into the prehistoric goats of Majorca, Meike Köhler, a palaeobiologist at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain noted that the energy saving adaptations made these animals small, slow and easy prey for sophisticated human hunters when modern people came to live on the island approximately 3,000 years ago.

Myotragus Goat Fossils

A study of the fossilised bones of this prehistoric goat (Myotragus) were first found on the island in the early part of the 20th Century.  The fossils show that this species lived, isolated on this island for more than 5 million years, with virtually no natural predators.  In most large mammals, constant high growth rates and fast metabolisms require lots and lots of food to sustain them.  Cold-blooded reptiles, relying on the sun to warm their bodies do not require anything like as much food as an equivalent sized mammal would.  Since resources can fluctuate wildly on isolated islands, reptiles often displace mammals in such environments as the mega fauna.

However, this new research, which analysed the ontogeny of several Myotragus specimens revealed that the goats may have adapted their growth and metabolic rates seasonally to cope with the limited amounts of food that was available – just like reptiles do.

Commenting on the research findings Meike Köhler stated:

“This way, it burned only the energy that was available from the environment, slowing down the ‘fire of life’ in times when resources became scarce”.

The reptile-like lifestyle, however, meant that the newborn of this particular goat were extremely small, about the size of rats and the young would have taken many years to reach breeding age and adulthood.  The goat may have saved a lot of energy by developing a brain only half the size of similar-sized ungulates and eyes only a third as large as other species of goat that existed on the mainland of Europe.  The small eyes can clearly be seen in the picture above.

Detailed Bone Analysis

The bone analysis indicated that the ontogeny (growth rates) was very slow for this particular species and these goats probably had a sluggish appearance.

“Like modern-day reptiles, the goats probably “saved as much energy as possible just lying around and basking in the sun,” Köhler said.

“The postcranial skeleton indicates that this animal was not able to run, jump, or move fast around, and [would have been] easy prey, ” added Köhler.

A number of remote, isolated islands have provide evidence of the enormous ability of organisms to adapt to their constrained environments.  Examples include giant flightless birds such as the New Zealand Moa, pygmy elephants and humans on the Indonesian island of Flores, and now a goat that adapted to limited resources by taking on the metabolism of a cold-blooded reptile.

Visit Everything Dinosaur’s website: Everything Dinosaur.

Ancient Spider’s Web Preserved In Amber

Fossils in amber provide a window for palaeontologists into ancient ecoystems.

An amateur fossil hunter looking for dinosaur fossils along the Sussex coast (England), has found a 140 million-year-old piece of amber (fossilised tree resin), which contains the remains of a spider’s web.  This discovery is being claimed by scientists as the oldest spider’s web evidence ever found in the fossil record.

Spider Fossil

The amber and the tiny, tangled fragments of web have been dated to the Early Cretaceous (Berriasian/Valanginian faunal stages), a time when the Earth was much warmer and dinosaurs dominated the Earth.  The web’s structure seems similar to those webs woven by modern orb spiders.  Orb spiders weave a spiral of silk, many with sticky droplets on them to help trap insects.

The amber, which was found on a Sussex beach (near Bexhill) was handed over to palaeobiologist Professor Martin Brasier who analysed the contents of the amber nodule.  His findings are reported in the Journal of the Geological Society.  The minute threads of spider silk are about 1 millimetre long and suspended in the amber nodule along with bits of burnt tree sap, insect droppings, microbes and fossilised vegetable matter.  The amber nodule was found by amateur fossil hunter Jamie Hiscocks.

Prof. Brasier, a member of the faculty at the University of Oxford commentated:

“This amber is very rare. It comes from the very base of the Cretaceous period, which makes it one of the oldest ambers anywhere to have inclusions in it.”

Earliest Evidence of Actinobacteria

Professor Brasier and his colleagues have also found the earliest evidence of Actinobacteria a tiny group of organisms that break down wood and resins into soil particles, potentially rewriting the history of soil evolution.  An examination of the threads contained in the amber indicate that they were spun by spiders closely related to modern day Orb spiders, or Garden spiders.  Spiders are members of the Phylum Arthropoda, the largest phylum of animals.  Fossils of spiders are extremely rare in the fossil record, although palaeontologists believe that spiders evolved during the Devonian (410-355 million-years-ago).

Professor Brasier stated:

“We actually have the sticky droplets preserved within the amber.  These turn out to be the earliest webs that have ever been incorporated in the fossil record to our knowledge.  You can match the details of the spider’s web with the spider’s web in my garden.”

Spider Silk Trapped in Sticky Resin

The spider silk became trapped in sticky resin (most probably from a conifer), the resin may have been produced by the tree to help heal a wound in the tree bark, perhaps as a response to fire damage.  There is evidence of a fire event, this is indicated by the burnt sap contained within the amber nodule.

The arrow in the diagrams released to the media is pointing at a tiny strand of spider silk.  These remains were identified by Professor Brasier and his team when they viewed the amber as different sections and studied these slices using microscopic imaging, a technique known as confocal microscopy.  The large, dark blobs are pieces of burnt tree sap.

Experiments using modern cherry trees have demonstrated that very similar threads can be obtained by trapping modern spider webs in resin.

More Amber Nodules to Study

Just a tiny proportion of the deposits have so far been examined, and Professor Brasier and his colleagues believe that amber nodules such as this one have the potential to yield many more exciting finds, largely due to the development of increasingly powerful imaging techniques.

He said:

“It is a very exciting time to be a palaeontologist, because of all these wonderful techniques being developed.  We are able to view things and see detail in ways that we’ve never been able to before.”

The discovery suggests that orb web spinning spiders existed far earlier than had been previously thought, at a time before flowering plants appeared on the planet and triggered an explosion in flying insects.  The Bexhill site has revealed a number of other finds, including charcoal indicating that forest fires were common in the area during this time in Earth’s history.

Amber from the North Sea

The amber deposit, which is hidden beneath the tide for much of the time, is also believed to be the first significant amber deposit in Britain.  Most famous amber deposits have been found in France, Germany, the Caribbean and Lebanon.  A lot of jewellery is made from Baltic amber, this dates from the Palaeogene period, so it is approximately 90 million years younger than the Bexhill find.  Occasionally, pieces of Baltic amber are found on the Norfolk coast, having floated across the North Sea.  Amber, as it is a natural substance filled with air spaces, is buoyant and can float in sea water.

Despite the intense interest in the newly discovered spider silk, questions have been asked by members of the press about whether dinosaur DNA could ever be extracted from amber, thus leading to a real-life Jurassic Park.  For the time being let us marvel at the miraculous way in which this ancient evidence of a spider’s activity has been preserved.

For replicas of iconic invertebrates from the fossil record: Replicas of Fossil Animals.