Two Tonnes of Dinosaur Bones likely to yield a new Species

Australian palaeontologists are confident that two tonnes of recently excavated dinosaur bones may lead to the identification of a new species of Australian dinosaur.  Australia is proving to be one of the “hot-spots” for new dinosaur discoveries with 2008 being a particularly fruitful year for the excavation of dinosaur fossils from this vast country – as predicted in Everything Dinosaur’s 2008 palaeontology prediction list for 2008.

To view the article on Everything Dinosaur predictions: New Year Predictions for 2008.

A recent expedition to a remote dig site in the west of Queensland led to the discovery of the new fossils, dated to the mid Cretaceous period.  The area the team were exploring has proved to be a successful dinosaur hunting ground in the past with the fossilised remains of a large sauropod dinosaur having been found.

Amateur paleontologist David Elliott, from the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Institute which organised the expedition, said the new bones were considered as too small to belong to a sauropod (large long-necked dinosaur).

He went onto comment on the chances of these fossils representing a species new to science as being “very, very likely simply because of the rarity of Australian dinosaurs”.

“There is very little in the way of Australian dinosaurs that have been scientifically described and because of the isolation of Australia… most Australian fauna are very different to others around the world,” he added.

For much of pre-history the land masses that were to make up the southern continents were joined together to form a single super-continent called Gondwanaland.  By the middle of the Cretaceous period this land mass had begun to break up.  South America, India and Africa were separated and Australia was joined to Antarctica by a series of tenuous and temporary land bridges that may have been severed during periods of rising sea levels, isolating the fauna and flora of Australia.  The formation of the South-east Indian ridge (a mid-ocean spreading ridge, formed at the edge of a tectonic plate), began the opening up of a sea channel between Australia and Antarctica.  Australia was slowly pushed northwards as new ocean floor was created by undersea volcanic activity and this floor spread out on either side of the ridge.

Australia is still continuing its northward progress today, and in millions of years time will collide with New Guinea.  The isolating of Australia during the mid Cretaceous permitted many unique types of dinosaurs and other animals to evolve.

It is for this reason that the Australian scientists are confident that the new fossils will prove to be a new species.  The expedition leaders estimate that there is a further eight months preparation work in the laboratory ahead of them before they can come to a clear conclusion as to just what they have dug up.

Everything Dinosaur stocks a large range of prehistoric animal models including lots of models of dinosaurs, fossils of which come from Australia: Dinosaur and Prehistoric Animal Models.

Australopithecus africanus – Stone Making Ancient Hunters

Although no stone tools have been found in the same sediments as Australopithecus africanus fossils, for a long time scientists believed A. africanus was a hunter (the habitat in which this species lived is believed to have been a mixed savannah-forested environment).  Precisely, when early hominins started to use tools is difficult to determine.  While working in the Afar Region of  Ethiopia (northern Ethiopia), a research project team (the Dikika Research Project), found fossilised bones bearing unambiguous evidence of stone tool use – cut marks inflicted whilst removing meat from the bone and percussion marks made when bones were deliberately broken to extract the highly nutritious marrow.

Australopithecus

Whilst it has been speculated that the Australopithecines at Dikika were using sharp-edged stones to carve meat from the bones of animals, it is not possible to determine from the marks themselves whether the stones used were simply found or shaped deliberately.  However, the bones are most definitely marked by scratches and percussion impressions.  Analysis has demonstrated that these marks were created before the bones were fossilised, eliminating the possibility that the marks could have been made more recently.

At home on the plains.

The model (above) is a retired Bullyland Australopithecus figure.  To view the range of Bullyland dinosaur and prehistoric animal models in stock: Bullyland Prehistoric Animal Models and Figures.

No flaked stone tools were found at the Dikika sites, this could indicate that the Dikika residents were simply opportunistic, just finding and using sharp-edged stones where they happened to be.  Most of the marks on the bones at Dikika do have features that indicate that they were made by stone tools.  Intriguingly, regardless of whether or not the stone tools were being made, the fact that they were being used to access the very nutritious bone marrow would have had significant implications for early hominin development and ultimately our own evolution.