Scientists Show that Beetles evolved alongside the Dinosaurs

A visitor to Earth 230 million years ago wandering the Middle Triassic landscape may well have marvelled at the small, but swift moving, funny looking reptiles that seemed to becoming more abundant.   These were the first dinosaurs, who along with other fast moving reptiles such as the Ornithosuchia, ancient reptiles from the archosaur group and the mammal-like reptiles and the “dead clades walking” left over from the Permian extinction made up the mega fauna of this period.  However, hopefully such a visitor might have taken time to study a much smaller group of animals, just beginning to make their presence felt in the undergrowth and flying around the horsetails and ferns.

These were the early ancestors of beetles, a group of insects classified as the order Coleoptera and arguably now the most successful group of creatures on the planet, with scientists estimating that beetles make up about 25% of all known animal species.  A conservative estimate of total beetle species (the vast majority yet to be named and described); puts the total number of individual beetle species at around 8 million – 1,000 times as many species of beetle than all the mammal species on Earth.

Early Beetles

Now a British based research project tracing the origin of beetles indicates that these creatures appeared at the time of the first dinosaurs.  The research team, led by Professor Alfried Vogler from Imperial College London and the department of Entomology at the Natural History Museum, put the success of beetles down to their ability to diversify and fill a wide range of ecological niches.  The very large number of beetle species may be due to these animals ability to evolve rapidly to exploit new opportunities within ecosystems as they arise.

Certainly as the Jurassic period came along with its warmer and wetter climate this would have fuelled beetle diversification, just as it did with the dinosaurs.

The team used DNA sequencing from 1,880 beetle species, coupled with a review of the known beetle fossil record, to compile a family tree of Coleoptera, which could then reveal the key moments in the evolution and development of beetles.

Previous scientific research had indicated that the beetle group had diversified due to the emergence of flowering plants in the Cretaceous period.  This new study shows that beetles diversified and evolved into new forms much more quickly than previously thought.

Professor Vogler stated that beetles have displayed an exceptional ability to seize new ecological opportunities and develop a great range of life styles and feeding types.

“Unlike the dinosaurs which dwindled to extinction, beetles survived because of their ecological diversity and adaptability,” he said.

Beetle Evolution

Gaining a better understanding about the evolution of beetles is an important part of learning about the world around us.  Studying such a successful group of insects can help scientists learn more about biodiversity and how ecological niches are filled.

The hard exoskeleton (carapace) of beetles and their abundance makes fossils of them pretty common.  Many pieces of amber contain beetle fossils and members of the Everything Dinosaur team have seen water beetle fossils from late Pleistocene times as they removed samples from tar pits.

Visit Everything Dinosaur’s website: Everything Dinosaur.

Rare Collection of Mesolithic Tools Provide Insight into Hunter/Gatherer Life

A beautifully preserved 14,000 year old sickle part of an ancient hunter/gatherer’s prized possessions has just been put on display at the Faculty of Archaeology and Anthropology at Jordan’s Yarmouk University.  The double bladed sickle, made from two carefully grooved horn pieces fitted with stone bladelets is part of a remarkable set of Mesolithic tools found at a site in Jordan.  The area was inhabited by the Natufian people, early humans that lived in the Mediterranean region, establishing some permanent settlements around water holes but mainly leading a hunter/gatherer existence.

Prehistoric Handbag

Sometime around 14,000 years ago, one of these ancient people left a wicker or leather bag by the side of a stone round house and although the bag itself has long since perished its contents lay untouched awaiting discovery.  Now archaeologists have excavated the area and published their findings in the scientific journal “Antiquity”.

Although a lot of individual stone age tools and items have been discovered, it is very rare to find a collection, one person’s possessions.  The tools show that these people were well equipped for their hunter/gatherer lifestyle.

Hunter/Gatherer Lifestyle

Describing the contents of the bag for journalists, Phillip Edwards, senior lecturer in the Archaeology programme at Melbourne’s La Trobe University (Victoria, Australia); stated that the tools indicate that this person hunted but also used some tools for gathering wild plant food.

The tools consist of a sickle for harvesting the wild cereals that grew in the region (wheat and barley), a cluster of flint spearheads and a larger piece of flint and a big stone (perhaps for striking more spearheads from the large flint).  Also included in the tool kit was a set of small, rounded pebbles, perhaps sling shots, a cluster of gazelle phalanges (toe bones) which were used to make decorative beads and part of a second bone tool.

A Museum Exhibit Showing Stone Tools

A collection of typical Stone Age Tools. Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

A Shoulder Bag

Scientist Phillip Edwards believes that the wicker or leather bag may have had a strap which enabled it to be slung over the shoulder, a bit like a modern handbag or man-bag for that matter.

The discovery, from an archaeological site called Wadi Hammeh 27 in Jordan has yielded a number of finds providing a glimpse into the lives led in this early civilisation.  The bag probably did not have any compartments so to protect these items they were probably wrapped in bark or small pieces of leather to prevent them bashing into each other.

The hunting weapons were used to kill the plentiful game that existed in the area at the time.  These people hunted aurochs (ancient cattle), gazelles, deer, hares as well as tortoises and many different types of bird.  The contents of the bag has led archaeologists to question our understanding of gender roles in early people.  As the bag contains beads and a tool for gathering plant material as well as hunting equipment, the original owner could have been either a man or a woman.

For models and replicas of Stone Age people and Pleistocene mammals: CollectA Prehistoric Animal Figures.

Perhaps the hunting and gathering roles were split up between the genders rather than the more traditional view of women gathering food and the menfolk being the hunters.

Largest meat-eating Dinosaur Known to Date from Thailand

A group of palaeontologists working in the North-east of Thailand close to the village of Ban Saphan Hin in the Muang district have uncovered the fossilised bones of an Allosaurus – the largest carnivore found to date in the country.

Working in layers of sediment estimated to be 100 million years old (late Albian faunal stage), the scientists have uncovered the remains of several prehistoric animals, providing them with a unique insight into the ecosystem.  As well as the partial remains of a member of the allosauroid family, iguanodontids and a duck-billed dinosaur (hadrosaur) have also been discovered.  It is likely that these plant-eaters were the prey of the bigger allosaur.  Without the complete skeleton it is difficult to estimate the size of this meat-eater but an examination of the teeth (some of which are more than 10 cm long) and other material indicates that this animal could have exceeded 10 metres in length.

Allosaurus Fossils

The allosaurs are a very widely distributed group of meat-eating dinosaurs, part of the order Theropoda.  allosaur remains have been ascribed to Western USA, Africa and Portugal.  There has even been evidence of allosaurs found in Australia.

Allosaurus was named and described by the American palaeontologist Othniel Charles Marsh in 1877.  This is the same year that Stegosaurus was named and described.  The terms Allosaurus and Stegosaurus have been used by palaeontologists for 130 years.  An almost complete skeleton of Allosaurus (A. fragilis) was discovered in the United States in 1883.  Many more articulated skeletons have been found and Allosaurus is one of the better known theropods.  Allosaurus got its name “different lizard” as Marsh noted that the back bones (dorsal vertebrae) had cavities in their sides and this had not been seen in other dinosaur fossils at the time.  These cavities (pleurocoels), probably contained air sacs and helped lighten the skeleton whilst retaining bone strength.

A Typical Allosaurus – Picture of Model Taken from the Schleich Series (Dinosaurs)

Schleich Allosaurus dinosaur model.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Models of Allosaurus and other meat-eating dinosaurs: Dinosaur and Prehistoric Animal Models.

Allosaurs were large predatory theropods with relatively deep skulls.   Many had horns in front of the eyes or a row of bumps or hornlets along the tops of the nasal bones. The arms were much larger than in the later tyrannosaurs and they possessed three, sharply clawed fingers on each hand.

Late Jurassic Theropods

Scientists believe that the allosaurs had their hey day in the Late Jurassic but then went into decline during the Cretaceous (possibly due to competition from abelisaurids, spinosaurids and tyrannosaurs), but many genera seem to have survived in Gondwanaland and the southern continents.

A number of dinosaur fossils have so far been discovered, 1,000 fossils have been extracted and are awaiting further study.  Thai scientists are being supported by palaeontologists from China as they bid to classify them all.  The remains of a pterosaur (flying reptile) have also been recovered from the site.

Early Jurassic Dinosaur Found on Antarctic Mountainside

Scientists from the Field Museum in Chicago in co-operation with palaeontologists from Argentina (Museo Paleontologico – Chubut); have named and described a new genus and species of dinosaur that once roamed the Antarctic portion of Gondwanaland 190 million years ago.

Dinosaurs from the Antarctic

The animal was a sauropodomorph, an early long-necked dinosaur, although only partial remains were excavated (a femur and an incomplete ankle plus some foot bones); scientists estimate that this animal was 8 metres long and weighed 4 tonnes.  It has been named Glacialisaurus hammeri (Hammer’s glacial lizard), in honour of Dr William Hammer who led the expedition.  This team’s paper on this new dinosaur has been published in the scientific journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica.  The fossils were found at Mount Kirkpatrick near the Beardmore glacier, extracting them in the extreme cold proved very difficult but the site has yielded more evidence of the climate in the region during this time.  A second more advanced, true sauropod skeleton has been found nearby, it is hoped that these two discoveries will help palaeontologists understand the ecosystem that existed in this near polar environment.  Both fossil sites are at elevations that exceed 10,000 feet, making excavation extremely difficult.

An Illustration of a Typical Sauropodomorph

Early Jurassic aauropodomorph. A typical illustration of a sauropodomorph dinosaur.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

During the Early Jurassic, Antarctica was connected to the other southern land masses.  It was situated further north, having yet to settle over the south pole.  The region served as an important prehistoric animal highway, permitting animals to travel from Australia to South America across this huge land mass.  Although the area was not as cold as Antarctica is today, dinosaurs would have had to endure a period of darkness during the Southern Hemisphere winter and the climate would have been much harsher than further north.

Polar Dinosaurs

A large body mass would have been helpful in cold climate.  Although it would have taken longer to warm up, the large body would have lost body heat slower than smaller creatures around at the time.  Perhaps these animals migrated south feeding on the lush growth that would have been permitted in the short season when there was maximum daylight, it is unknown whether this species was a migrant or a permanent resident of this environment.  The single skeleton provides no evidence of herd behaviour which is what would have been expected had the animal migrated south to feed.  This behaviour is usually seen in herding animals, who gather together on the move to protect themselves from predators.

Determining the Diet

The diet of this animal has yet to be determined.  The lack of skull material makes this difficult.  Other animals of similar size, for example, the prosauropod Massopondylus, had an enlarged thumb claw, an upper jaw that stuck out and  a variety of teeth types within the jaws.  Some palaeontologists claim that this evidence indicates that this animal was a carnivore, certainly the lizard-hipped dinosaurs gave rise to the great carnivorous lineages of dinosaurs, but perhaps Glacialisaurus was an omnivore, eating plants and supplementing this diet by catching smaller creatures.

To view models of sauropodomorphs and polar dinosaurs: Dinosaur and Prehistoric Animal Models.

New species of Carcharodontosaurus Discovered in Niger

For graduate Steve Brusatte, a palaeobiologist at the University of Bristol, England, the long wait for the naming and describing of his 1997 fossil find is finally over.  Elements of the skull, including the premaxilla and cervical vertebrae discovered in an expedition to Niger (Africa) have been described in the scientific publication “The Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology” out this week.

New Carcharodontosaurus Species

Although only fragments of the skeleton have been found the skull material and teeth have enabled scientists to identify this animal as belonging to the Carcharodontosaurus genus.  The animal has been named C. iguidensis and it would have been one of the top predators in the area around 95 million years ago (Cenomanian faunal stage).

The carcharodontosaurids are named after the Great White Shark (C. carcharias), these fierce meat-eaters (the name means shark toothed lizards), roamed North Africa in the Cretaceous and one species C. saharicus is estimated to have rivalled Tyrannosaurus rex and Giganotosaurus as being the biggest theropod discovered so far.  The carcharodontosaurids are members of the allosaur family.  Size estimates for this new species put this animal at around 14 metres in length, but considerably lighter than the likes of T. rex, Giganotosaurus and its close relative from Morocco C. saharicus.  It weighed approximately 3.2 tonnes.

A Scale Drawing of a Carcharodontosaurus

Fearsome “Shark Lizard”.

There were a number of large theropods roaming this part of the Gondwanaland during this stage of the Cretaceous, as well as the carcharodontosaurids, there were the likes of the spinosaurids and the abelisaurs.  However, it seems likely that these massive carnivores did not necessarily compete with each other over food sources.  Studies of jaw material indicates that the spinosaurs may have been mainly fish eaters, whilst the abelisaurs had much more slender and narrow jaws perhaps indicating a different prey than the broader and sturdier jawed carcharodontosaurids.

PNSO have developed a large range of theropod replicas including Carcharodontosaurus: PNSO Dinosaur Models and Figures.

The carcharodontosaurid family are still not well known, the original fossils were described by the famous German palaeontologist Ernst Stromer von Reichenbach.  Several expeditions were sent to North Africa between 1911 and 1914. At first the fossils of carcharodontosaurids were classified as belonging to a megalosaur, the Megalosaurus genus has been used as a dumping ground for unknown theropod remains for many years.  The original fossil bones and teeth were destroyed by bombing in WWII, only later did these fossils get ascribed to their own separate genus. Megalosaurs have been used to place various indeterminate fossils of meat-eaters, a previous web log article discussed this point:

Megalosaur Miscellany

Commenting on the abundance of large meat eaters in North Africa at this particular stage of the Cretaceous, Steve Brusatte stated that during this period sea levels were rising and this may have isolated dinosaur communities, allowing new species of carnivorous dinosaur to evolve.