The Chinese New Year – Year of the Tiger

The Chinese New Year, otherwise known as the lunar spring year started yesterday (February 14th).  As the Chinese traditional calendar is influenced by both the Gregorian calendar and the lunar cycle, the new year can start anytime between late January and mid February.  However, yesterday with the new moon cycle we moved from the Chinese year of the Ox into the new year of the Tiger (Geng Yin).

This is the biggest holiday in the Chinese calendar involving families getting together, parades the exchange of gifts and of course lots of noisy and spectacular fireworks.  Naturally, our interest in Chinese calendars has more to do with production schedules in factories these days but as it is the year of the Tiger it is an opportune moment to remind ourselves that the commonly used term for a Smilodon – Sabre-tooth tiger is not accurate.

Sabre-toothed cats are not closely related to modern Tigers, although they are members of the cat family (Felidae).  Sabre-toothed cats are members of a sub-family of cats called the Machairondontinae and the Smilodon genus had four species, although there is conjecture whether Smilodon californicus made famous by the fossil finds at La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles, is a true species or a sub-species of Smilodon fatalis.

To view a Sabre-toothed tiger model and other figures in the Papo model range: Papo Dinosaur and Prehistoric Animal Figures.

A Model of a Sabre-toothed Cat (Papo Smilodon Model)

Papo Smilodon from Everything Dinosaur, part of the Papo “Les Dinosaures” model range.

Smilodon has also inspired a range of prehistoric plush and soft toys over the years.  It seems that fans of the movie “Ice Age” would like their own soft toy version of a Smilodon.

To view the range of prehistoric plush and soft toys available from Everything Dinosaur: Soft Toy Prehistoric Animals.

Named by the German paleontologist Plieninger in 1846, the moniker of Sabre-Tooth Tiger seems to have become associated with Smilodon through films and television documentaries.  We still use the “Tiger” term ourselves from time to time, to help customers find what they are looking for on our website: Everything Dinosaur, however, this term is not scientifically correct.

Wishing you all a happy and lucky Chinese new year.  Wishing all our customers and blog readers a very happy and prosperous Chinese new year.

The Evolution of Laughter – The Development of the Ability to Mock

Tickle a Gorilla, a Bonobo chimp (our closest extant relative); or an Orangutan and they will express pleasure with laughter but to use laughter to mock, or scorn such as you might hear in the Palace of Westminster at Prime Minister’s Question Time, that is a distinctly human trait.

A team of researchers from the University of Portsmouth (UK) have carried out research into the origin and characteristics of the ability to laugh in higher apes.  They conclude that only our species H. sapiens uses laughter to convey negative emotions such as sneering and mocking.  Our ancestors, and the vast majority of their descendants, laugh to convey positive emotions.  They laugh as they are enjoying themselves, according to this new study.

The Evolution of Laughter

However, over the millions of years of hominid evolution, more advanced human species developed laughter to scorn or ridicule others.  There is no fossil evidence to indicate a sense of humour or sense of sarcasm, however, at some point in our evolutionary line the role of laughter in a social context changed.

It is thought that the apes that roamed the primeval forests of some 16 million years ago were the first creatures to develop the ability to laugh.  This research led by Dr Marina Davila Ross (University of Portsmouth) shows that the extant species of ape use laughter slightly differently from each other.

In the complex research programme, which involved tickling various ape species and then gauging/recording their reactions, it was discovered that the Orangutan laughs when it is having fun.  This Asian ape projects a laughing sound that consists of a series of squeaks, to express delight and joy.  The African apes, such as Gorillas and the Chimpanzees have perhaps, a more sophisticated vocalisation of laughter.  These apes have learnt to use the sound to influence others as well as to express pleasure.  Chimps may laugh to encourage others to joy in their rough and tumble games, laughter in chimp society, according to this new study, can be used to influence other troop members or is the collective noun for chimpanzees a cartload?

Our species, has taken the sound and use of laughter further.  We use laughter to express negative emotions such as ridicule and sarcasm.  You only have to listen to our members of Parliament for plenty of examples.  Somewhere on our evolutionary line the role of laughter and its expression became more sophisticated.  Who knows, perhaps H. Heidelbergensis shared a joke at another person’s expense or do we have to go further back in the fossil record to find the origins of the use of laughter for an expression of negative emotions?

Did Homo habilis wandering the African plains 2 million years ago, use laughter to mock a troop member?  It may be fascinating to consider these points but given the virtually impossible task of uncovering fossil evidence to substantiate such claims, much of this will have to remain as conjecture.  The lack of extant human species to work with precludes conclusive results.

Commenting on her research, Dr Ross stated:

“Humans and the African ape developed laughter further than the Asian great ape to have an effect on others.  Something happened in the last five million years which means humans use laughter for a much wider range of situations than our primate ancestors.

Our species, uses laughter to convey a range of feelings and emotions, as Dr Ross states:

“Laughter occurs in close to every imaginable form of human social interaction, including to mock others.”

These findings, which are due to be published in the scientific journal of Communicative and Integrative Biology, show the differences in the use of laughter amongst extant species of great ape.  As hominids developed it seems that laughter as well as other vocalisations became more sophisticated and complex.  The common ancestor of humans and chimps may have laughed but it was a sound with a limited meaning, as Dr Ross comments:

“It [the sound of laughter] probably had little effect on the way others behaved.”

The research team also discovered that other animals made different sounds when they were tickled, but these may not be the same as laughter.  Anyone who has tickled their pet dog will tell you that the animal is able to express delight and pleasure at the sensation but this is not thought to be laughter in the strictly “human” understanding of the term.

Visit Everything Dinosaur’s website: Everything Dinosaur.

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.