U.S. Citizen Arrested over Suspected Dinosaur Bone Smuggling

The complicated story of the auctioned Tarbosaurus bataar skeleton took a dramatic turn this week with American officials confirming that a Florida resident had been arrested over the suspected smuggling of dinosaur fossils into the United States.

Tarbosaurus bataar Skeleton

Back in May of this year, team members reported on the auction of an eight-metre-long tyrannosaurid fossil skeleton (Tarbosaurus bataar) that has been sold at Heritage Auctions in New York for more than one million USD.  The ownership of the fossil was disputed and the Mongolian government accused the sellers of the seventy million year old fossil material of smuggling the fossil material illegally out of their country.

To read the original article on the dinosaur fossil auction: T. bataar Bites Back.

Mr Eric Prokopi, of Florida was charged this week with conspiracy to smuggle illegal items into the United States and for selling stolen goods.  If found guilty, Mr Prokopi could be facing a possible jail sentence of twenty years.

For dinosaur toys, prehistoric animal games and models: Dinosaur Toys, Prehistoric Animal Games and Models.

Ancient Marsupial Fossil Suggests Climate Change A Cause of the demise of Megafauna

Scientists at the South Australian museum (Adelaide, Australia) are hoping the discovery of a Diprotodon fossil, the remains of a giant marsupial might be able to provide them with further insights as to what led to the demise of Australia’s megafauna. In the recent past, animals as diverse as hippo-sized wombats, predatory Thylacines, giant koala bears and monitor lizards twice as big as Komodo dragons roamed the Australian landscape.

Diprotodon Fossil

The giant marsupial in question is a Diprotodon, a strange and diverse group of mammals unique to Australia.  Diprotodontids are an extinct family of marsupials, the majority of which were plant-eaters and some evolved into giant forms becoming the largest mammalian herbivores the continent has ever seen.  The first diprotodontid fossils are known from Eocene deposits and they may have persisted until around 45,000 years ago.

Palaeontologists have puzzled over why the Australian megafauna died out.  It has been proposed that hunting and the burning of forests by the first human settlers on the continent hastened the demise of these large animals, however, rapid climate change may also have played a prominent role.

Found at a Remote Sheep Farm

The fossils of the three-metre-long Diprotodon were found at the remote Collinsville Merino Stud, a substantial sheep and cropping station approximately eighty miles north of Adelaide.  The fossils were discovered in mid 2010 when Paul Cousins, a sheep station worker, came across the fossils eroding out of a riverbank whilst on a camping trip with his family.   He took some of the exposed fossilised bones to a local museum knowing that they represented the remains of a prehistoric animal but he was unsure whether or not they had discovered a dinosaur.  Museum staff identified the specimens as diprotodontid fossils and a team from the South Australian museum was dispatched to excavate the rest of the fossil material still embedded in the ground.

Associate Professor Rod Wells of the South Australia museum commented that over 500 man hours had already been spent excavating and preparing this specimen and he asked for more field volunteers to help with the excavation.  The fossils have been dated to around 120,000 years ago, a time when people had yet to reach Australia, according to most palaeoanthropologists.  The fossil matrix, the sediment in which the material was found, may provide clues to the extinction of Australia’s unique megafauna.

Finely Grained Sediment

The sediment in which the bones of this large, plant-eater were deposited are very finely grained.  The fossils were discovered by the Cousins family in a creek bed that was eroded by seasonal flooding and exposed.  The strata in the immediate vicinity of the fossil material, as it is so fine suggests a hot, dry and windy environment.  The Australian scientists have speculated that this large animal may have died in a prolonged drought or fallen into a dried up river channel, the carcase would have been washed down to its final resting place in later, seasonal flooding.

This suggests that the climate may have been more extreme 120,000 years ago with very dry periods followed by intense, seasonal rains which may have caused extensive flooding.  The location of this fossil material adds to the debate as to whether climate change played a significant role in the extinction of a lot of Australia’s unique, native fauna.

Harsh environments and rapidly changing climatic conditions would have affected large animals at the top of the food chain to a greater degree than smaller animals.  The larger species of diprotodontids may have been struggling to survive and then with the advent of the first human settlers, they were finally driven to extinction.

Rod Wells has suggested that the more fossil sites such as the Collinsville location that the scientists explore so they will be able to build up a more complete picture regarding the climate of Australia during the Pleistocene Epoch.  Such data will help them to understand why these huge animals perished along with the other amazing megafauna that once roamed the outback.

To purchase replicas and models of prehistoric animals: Dinosaur and Prehistoric Animal Models and Figures.

Giant Marine Reptile from the Netherlands

Palaeontologists have now recovered parts of the skull, the upper jaw and vertebrae from a thirteen-metre-long mosasaur discovered on the 20th September by cement factory workers.  An extinct part of the Order Squamata (lizards and snakes), these large sea lizards were apex predators in the shallow Late Cretaceous seas that covered much of Europe and North America towards the end of the Mesozoic Era.  Some of these marine reptiles evolved into huge, fifteen-metre-long giants which fed upon fish, turtles, cephalopods and other marine reptiles such as plesiosaurs.  The partial skeleton uncovered in chalk strata at the cement works is the fourth such discovery to be found in the Maastricht area.

A Model of a Mosasaurus

“Ron” the PNSO Mosasaurus replica.  A model of a mossaur.

Mosasaurus Fossils

The skeleton is believed to represent a Mosasaurus hoffmani, the first type of mosasaur to be named and scientifically described.  At least twenty different mosasaur genera and something like seventy species are recognised today.

The chalk deposits in and around the historic Dutch city of Masstricht have been quarried for centuries.  At first the chalk was ignored and flints were mined from the strata, but with the advent of the chemical industry the chalk itself has been excavated for use in lime making and other chemical processes.  Whilst working on a new part of the chalk seam, an excavator uncovered part of a fossilised jawbone.  Work was stopped and experts from the Masstricht Natural History Museum were called in.  Carefully the scientists uncovered parts of the skull, the upper jaws and some back bones, including vertebrae from the animal’s long tail.

Once the specimen has been prepared and cleaned at the museum’s laboratory the palaeontologists hope to be able to put the mosasaur remains on display.

The Masstricht Mosasaur

In the 1770s quarry workers uncovered the disarticulated jawbones of a huge animal in Maastricht.  At the time this discovery caused a sensation as the extinction of species and the concept of deep, geological time was not understood.  The Dutch naturalist Pieter Camper was given the task of identifying the creature and he concluded that it was a whale.

The French scholar Faujas de Saint-Fond disagreed and stated that the fossil bones represented a reptile and he named the animal as an unknown species of crocodile.  In 1800, Pieter Camper’s son (Adriaan), studied the fossils once again and he concluded that this was a sort of giant lizard.  Georges Cuvier, the eminent French palaeontologist was contacted, Cuvier was regarded as the world’s leading expert on such finds and it was Cuvier who named the specimen as a Mosasaurus.  He agreed with Adriaan Camper, the animal was indeed a form of giant lizard.  Cuvier had the opportunity to study the fossils in person as the fossil had been removed to Paris by French troops in 1795.  The tableau of fossil material was nicknamed the “Beast of Maastricht” and Mosasaurus means “Lizard of the River Meuse”.

For many years afterwards, a number of prominent 19th century scientists remained convinced that a living specimen of a mosasaur would soon be caught and brought to the attention of the scientific community.

To view models of mosasaurs and other prehistoric marine reptiles: PNSO Age of Dinosaurs.

“Mammoth of the Century” in Moscow for Study

The fossilised remains of a teenage Woolly Mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) has begun to be examined by Moscow-based scientists after it was transported from the remote Siberian location where the fossilised carcase was discovered.  The late Summer months of August and early September are when a number of Woolly Mammoth and other Ice Age fossils are found in the northernmost parts of Russia.  The spring and summer rains coupled with the seasonally high temperatures permit parts of the permafrost to be thawed out or washed away by the erosion of river banks and this can expose the preserved remains of a number of long-dead prehistoric animals.

Woolly Mammoth Fossil

Some of the Woolly Mammoths have soft tissue preserved and with the publishing of the recent, controversial research into the half-life of DNA, talk inevitably turns to the possibility of obtaining genetic material from these extinct animals with the long-term aim of producing clones and resurrecting a species.

The Mammuthus genus (Mammoths) were members of the Elephantidae sub-family, taxonomically classified with extant elephants.  They were highly successful herbivores that lived across northern latitudes (Asia, Europe and North America) as well as Africa.  A number of species have been identified including the famous Woolly Mammoth (M. primigenius) and the larger species, associated with milder climates, the Columbian Mammoth (M. columbi).

The latest Woolly Mammoth fossil to emerge from the permafrost of northern Siberia was found by a young boy called Yevgeny Salinder, whilst he was walking along the banks of the Yenisei river about six weeks ago.  Mammoth fossils including tusks had been found in this area before, but it was not the sight of an over-sized, curved tusk that indicated to Yevgeny that he had found the remains of a Woolly Mammoth, but rather the smell the carcase gave off.  As the long-dead animal’s corpse is exposed to the air with the erosion of the matrix in which the fossil was buried, so the flesh begins to decompose once again.  It was the smell of putrefying flesh that alerted eleven-year old Yevgeny that a Mammoth’s body was lying nearby.

Models of Woolly Mammoths (CollectA Age of Dinosaurs Popular Models and Deluxe)

The CollectA Deluxe Woolly Mammoth model in 1:20 scale and the CollectA Prehistoric Life Woolly Mammoth calf. Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

To view models and figures of Woolly Mammoths and other extinct animals: CollectA Deluxe – Figures and Models (Prehistoric Animals).

Exposing the Carcase

The back quarters and the legs were the parts of the carcase first exposed, local officials were contacted and the International Mammoth Committee alerted so that an excavation could begin to remove the Woolly Mammoth.  Scientists rushed out to the remote location and began the work of digging out the Mammoth remains.  Alexei Tikhonov, of the St. Petersburg-based Zoological Museum, and an expert of Siberian Mammoths was one of the scientists dispatched to excavate the carcase.  He has described this particular specimen as the best preserved and most complete Mammoth found in Russia for more than 100 years.

Nicknamed the “Mammoth of the Century”, the specimen is that of a teenage Woolly Mammoth, a male that died around 30,000 years ago.  Although the elephant’s trunk has rotted away, scientists have found samples of fur intact and one 1.5 metre long tusk, along with the remains of an eye and a small, Mammoth ear.  Mammoths had much smaller ear flaps than their modern elephant counterparts.  Small ears would not have lost as much heat as a large ear flap and there was no need for large ears to help cool the animal down, temperatures in this part of the world during the Pleistocene Epoch when this animal lived, would have rarely climbed into double figures (Celsius).

With the aid of local volunteers the Mammoth fossil was carefully excavated out of its Siberian grave, the process taking more than a week to complete.  Once the remains had been stabilised (kept at a constant, low temperature to preserve soft tissue), the fossil has been transported back to Moscow for detailed study.  Parts of the specimen will also be examined by Russian palaeontologists in St. Petersburg.

Preserving an Ancient Elephant

Spider Attack Preserved in Amber

Researchers from Oregon State University (College of Science) have discovered a remarkable, 100-million-year-old spider fossil showing the moment when an orb spider approached its victim ensnared in its web.  The fossil consists of the remains of the spider and a parasitic wasp, preserved in amber just as the spider was about to pounce upon the insect, as it was held fast by the silken threads of the spider’s web.  Amber is the hardened remains of sticky, often scented resin that is produced by certain types of trees as protection against damage to bark and in order to help protect against disease and fungal attacks.  Insects and other organisms can become trapped in the sticky resin as it flows down the trunk or branches and when fossilised and preserved as amber, these organic remains can be studied by scientists.

Trees first evolved the ability to produce resin of this nature in the Jurassic, but this piece of amber, discovered in the Hukawng Valley (also known as the Hukaung Valley), in northern Burma dates from the later Cretaceous geological period.

100-million-year-old Spider Fossil

The Hukaung Valley has been mined for amber and gold for many years, it has already produced a number of amber fossils containing insect remains.   About ten years ago, the fossilised remains of the world’s oldest bee was discovered in an amber nodule from a mine in the Hukaung Valley.  However, this is the first discovery of a predator/prey interaction concerning a spider and an insect trapped in a web.  The amber nodule containing the fossilised remains has been dated to approximately 97-100 million years ago (Albian faunal stage of the Cretaceous) – a time when the dinosaurs ruled the Earth.

In addition to the first spider, the silk and the remains of the spider’s attempted meal, the wasp, the amber nodule also contained the remains of a second male spider.  Scientists at the Oregon State University have interpreted this as evidence of social behaviour amongst arachnids.  Most extant species of spider are solitary hunters, often they are cannibalistic towards their own kind, mature males and females will attack immature members of their own species.  A number of species today show signs of social behaviour, living in colonies or aggregations.

The Oregon based team postulate that this fossil is evidence of such social, colonial activity in spiders back in the Cretaceous, the first evidence found of tolerance of other members of their own species by a spider.

The Spider About to Attack the Parasitic Wasp

100-million-year-old spider and wasp fossil.

Picture credit: Oregon State University.

Professor Emeritus of Zoology at Oregon State University, George Poiner Junior, a recognised authority on invertebrate fossils stated that:

“This juvenile spider was going to make a meal out of a tiny parasitic wasp, but never quite got to it.  This was a male wasp that suddenly found itself trapped in a spider web.  This was the wasp’s worst nightmare, and it never ended. The wasp was watching the spider just as it was about to be attacked, when tree resin flowed over and captured both of them.”

Over recent years, palaeontologists have discovered some amazing fossil specimens preserved in amber, from ancient Arthropods, to numerous types of insect, pollen, plant debris, even a frog, hairs from mammal and feathers from either an ancient bird or a dinosaur.  Such fossils provide an insight into deep time, a micro world which helps scientists to understand more about ecosystems and habitats.

To read about the discovery of ancient spider silk: World’s Oldest Spiders Web Discovered Entombed in Amber.

To read an article about feathers preserved in amber: Canadian Palaeontologists in a Flap over Feathers.

The wasp has been identified as an ancestor of today’s parasitic wasps that attack and disable spiders and insects and lay their own eggs into the paralysed body of their victim or instead, parasitise the eggs of such creatures.  The kind of spider preserved in the amber, a relative of today’s tropical orb spiders, but a member of an extinct genus would probably have been the sort of creature the wasp would have liked to attack.

As the research team members have stated in their press conferences, this fossil preserves the moment when a spider was able to turn the tables on a parasitic wasp.  There were at least fifteen silken threads preserved in the amber nodule, evidence of the spider’s web.  Some of these threads had trapped the wasp.

Both the spider and the wasp are scientifically described in an academic paper published in the journal “Historical Biology”.

For models and replicas of ancient invertebrates: CollectA Age of Dinosaurs Models (Popular).

Research into Hadrosaur Dentition Provides Clue to the Group’s Success

One of the most successful groups of large, land animals known to science are the Hadrosauridae, a group of ornithischian (bird-hipped), plant-eating dinosaurs that evolved from the iguanodontids during the Cretaceous geological period.  These animals evolved into many families and genera, some species grew up to twelve metres in length or more and they dominated terrestrial ecosystems across the Northern Hemisphere up until the demise of the Dinosauria 66 million years ago.  A new study examining the dentition of hadrosaurs, suggests their teeth were one of the reasons for their evolutionary success.

Dentition of Hadrosaurs

This type of dinosaur, commonly called “duck-billed” dinosaurs as they all had horny beaks is classified into two major taxons – the Lambeosaurinae and the Hadrosaurinae.  Lambeosaurs, dinosaurs such as Parasaurolophus, Corythosaurus and Olorotitan had hollow, ornate head crests.  The Hadrosaurinae, animals such as Gryposaurus, Maiasaura and Edmontosaurus lacked the often flamboyant crest.  Instead, these dinosaurs had flat, crestless heads or their snouts were ornamented with bony lumps or solid crests.

Taxonomic Relationships in the Hadrosauridae

Diversifying ornithischian dinosaurs.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Differences Between the Clades

There are other differences between these two clades of dinosaurs.  For example, the Hadrosaurinae generally had broader jaws and wider beaks than their Lambeosaurinae cousins.  This suggests different feeding habits with the narrow-beaked lambeosaurs being more selective feeders.  Both types of hadrosaur had many hundreds of closely packed, diamond shaped teeth in their jaws, some specimens had over 1,400 individual teeth in their mouths.  These teeth formed a “dental battery”, interlocked teeth to form a very efficient grinding surface to help these animals tackle tough plant material.  The upper and lower tooth batteries were angled so that when the mouth was closed the teeth formed a natural grinding surface.   For many years palaeontologists had known that these animals were very efficient processors of plant food, perhaps a clue to this groups’s success but new research proposes that the structure of the teeth themselves made these dinosaurs much more effective consumers of plants than most of today’s grazers.

To view models and replicas of hadrosaurs (lambeosaurines and Saurolophinae): Ornithischian Dinosaur Models (Safari Ltd).

Super Efficient Plant-Eaters

A typical crested hadrosaur (Lambeosaurinae).

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

A team of American scientists led by biologist Gregory Erickson of Florida State University (Tallahassee), have been testing the grinding capabilities of eighty-five-million-year-old duck-billed dinosaur teeth and examining their internal structure.  Their research shows that the hadrosaurs evolved extremely sophisticated teeth, more sophisticated than modern mammalian herbivores such as bison, horses and elephants.

Using teeth supplied by the American Museum of Natural History (New York), the research team created models of the jaws of these types of dinosaurs and subjected the teeth to diamond abrasion to simulate wear on the tooth surface as a result of grinding up plant material.  The teeth were then examined under light and electron microscopes and the degree of wear calculated.

Hadrosaur Dentition

These teeth were made for grinding.

Picture credit: D. Gregory Erickson

The study demonstrates that unlike most mammalian molars and pre-molars which are composed of four major tissues that wear at different rates, creating coarse, roughened surfaces to help break down tough plants, the duck-bills evolved a six tissue dental composition which improved the teeth’s ability to grind up food.

Tough, strong teeth designed to tackle plants has evolved repeatedly in the ungulates and other mammal groups.  However, a similar innovation in dental complexity occurred much earlier in the history of life on Earth, with the hadrosaurs.  Most reptilian teeth are not as complex, it seems that as the iguanodontids gave rise to the hadrosaurs so the teeth of these animals evolved into extremely efficient grinders.  The external layer of enamel being supported by layers of other tissue such as dentine.  Importantly, the researchers also discovered that the way tissues were distributed varied substantially within each individual tooth.   Each tooth in the dental battery would assume a different function as the morphology and the grinding surface of the tooth changed as it became worn.   Different surfaces would be exposed as the teeth migrated across the grinding and chewing surface of the jaw, before eventually falling out to be replaced with new teeth that emerged from the jawline.

The morphology and structure of the teeth would have enabled these herbivores to grind up tough plants such as horsetails, ferns, conifer needles and the newly evolved flowering plants.  Most reptiles have much more simple teeth structures and the scientists are not sure how such dentition evolved.  The lack of transitional fossils between iguanodontids and hadrosaurs is hindering the team’s progress as they search for answers in the fossil record.

Referring to hadrosaurs as “walking pulp mills“, Gregory Erickson and his research colleagues have declared the duck-billed teeth lined jaws as one of the most sophisticated grazing and grinding mechanisms ever to evolve in terrestrial mega herbivores.  Their teeth are more complex and better adapted to grinding than most of the large plant-eating mammals found today.

New Dinosaur Fossil Provides Evidence of the Evolution of Bird-hipped Dinosaurs

A new type of primitive, bird-hipped dinosaur has been scientifically described nearly thirty years after the fossils were first examined.  The tiny biped, perhaps no bigger than a domestic cat was a fleet-footed herbivore that roamed what was South Africa approximately 190 million years ago.  Named as Pegomastax africanus (the name means thick jaw from Africa), this new genus of dinosaur has been described as a cross between a bird, a porcupine and Dracula as this little reptile had a light skeleton, bristles running along its neck and back and fang-like teeth.  Despite its sharp teeth, located at the front of the jaw, Pegomastax has been placed amongst the Heterodontidae, a group of primitive ornithopods (bird-hipped dinosaurs), whose fossils have been found in southern Africa, the United States and Asia.

Pegomastax africanus

A Reconstruction of Pegomastax africanus

A dinosaur with fangs!

Picture credit: Tyler Keillor

The fossils of this dinosaur were recovered from sandstone deposits that were laid down in a desert environment.  Note the large orbit (eye-socket) which indicates that this little herbivore had large eyes.  Perhaps this animal was nocturnal.

Professor Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago and an acknowledged expert on African dinosaurs, published details of this new dinosaur in the on line journal “ZooKeys”, which also contains a review of other heterodontosaurid dinosaurs including discoveries made in southern England in the 19th Century.  Paul first came across the fossil specimens back in 1983 when he was a graduate student doing research at Harvard University.  The fossils had originally been discovered after an expedition to the Elliott Formation of Cape Province (South Africa) in the mid 1960s.  Recalling the moment when he first saw the fossils, Professor Sereno stated:

“I said, whoa!  I realised it was a new species from the moment I set eyes on it.”

However, Paul was distracted by other projects and he did not have the time to describe the specimen scientifically until very recently.

Professor Sereno went on to add:

“I describe it as a bird, a vampire and a porcupine.  It had the weight of a small house cat and stood less than a foot off of the ground.”

Heterodontosaurid Dinosaur

The heterodontosaurids are an important group of herbivores which first evolved in the Triassic and persisted into the Cretaceous.  Unlike most other dinosaurs, heterodontosaurids had different shaped teeth in their jaws.  Some of the teeth at the front of the jaws were sharp and pointed like fangs.  The teeth towards the back of the jaw were more square in shape and adapted to crushing plant material.  At the front of the jaw there was a thick, blunt beak.  The fang-like teeth may have been used to help dig up roots and tubers or perhaps they were used in displays to deter attacks from predators or to settle dispute amongst pack members.  Most of the heterodontosaurids discovered to date were relatively small, measuring no more than a metre in length and most of this length being made up by a  long tail.

However, this group is related to much larger, herbivorous dinosaurs that evolved later – the iguanodontids, hadrosaurs and the hypsilophodontids.

To view models and replicas of ornithischian dinosaurs such as hypsilophodonts, hadrosaurs and iguanodontids: CollectA Age of Dinosaurs (Popular Models).

An Illustration of Pegomastax africanus

A line drawing of Pegomastax.

Picture credit: Todd Marshall

This new dinosaur discovery represents one of the smallest genera of dinosaur known, to read about a relative of Pegomastax, Fruitadens discovered in the United States: Fruitadens, a tiny Ornithischian dinosaur.