Dinosaurs - Science topic

Evolutionary fitness is based on an organism’s ability to adapt rapidly to changing environmental circumstances. Large-bodied mammals have been equipped with large brains (and hence a high information storage and transfer capacity, Tehovnik and Chen 2015), so that they can readily adjust their behavior to change. Now that the planet is heating up because of CO2 emissions caused by that large-brained species, Homo sapiens (Hansen et al. 1981), it is up to them to adjust their behavior from an economic growth-to-bust model (which is the model used by ant colonies, Wilson 2012) to a sustainability model which is in keeping with the way the indigenous tribes of the Amazon, for example, have subsisted for millennia (Everett 2016). Most who are in love with the HBO series ‘Succession’ and who have been indoctrinated by Milton Friedman and the Austrian School of Economics consider ‘Sustainability’ a code word for ‘Communism’. But nature does not care what one calls it (see Jeffrey Sachs 2024 on sustainability/YouTube).

Here are some facts about fitness according to the evolutionary behaviorist, Barbara Finlay, summarized. The smallest and largest primates differ by a thousand-fold in body size. This translates from three to nine orders of magnitude in potential population growth rate: “A female mouse lemur (Microcebus murinus) born at the same time as a female gorilla (Gorillas gorilla) could leave 10 million descendants before the gorilla becomes sexually mature.” (Harvey, Finlay et al. 1989, p. 14) Nevertheless (despite the reduced fecundity), large animals typically have fewer predators thereby increasing the chances of survival; but on the other hand, an natural disaster that damages the food chain will be most devastating to large animals as happened to the dinosaurs 65 million years ago (Alverez et al. 1979). The longest a human can live without food and water is about one week, which means that being confronted with such a condition it is impossible for a newborn human to reach sexual maturity. In short, the larger the organism the more devastating a natural disaster (note the infant deaths in current-day Gaza). Animals with a short reproductive cycle have an advantage here, and it is this advantage that allowed small mammals to replace dinosaurs (and evolve into large-brain mammals), as the earth recovered from its fifth extinction.

1)Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Poseidon". Encyclopedia Britannica, 29 Mar. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Poseidon. Accessed 2 June 2024.

2)"But we humans, along with bears, lizards, hummingbirds and Tyrannosaurus rex, are actually lobe-finned fish" ( https://research.reading.ac.uk/research-blog/how-fish-evolved-to-walk-and-in-one-case-turned-into-humans/ ).

Birds evolved from terrestrial dinosaurs. Ostriches are genetically closest birds to alligators and crocodiles.

1) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/373103103_Process_of_Elimination_is_Deductive_Reasoning

2) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/374152730_El_Monstruo_del_Lago_Ness

Is the closest known living relative to a plesiosaur a sea turtle?

Are there any stanards for identifying posterior cervicals and anterior dorsalsin dinosaurs, especially in theropods,could the position of the parapophysis and the presence of ventral keel be such criterion？

Maybe impossible to discern yet, an Egyptian plover can maybe clean a Crocodile's mouth without getting eaten.

This little piece of bone has been found in the Hasle Formation of Bornholm, Denmark

The formation is lower Jurassic (Pliensbachian) of age and contains a rich chondrichthyan fauna, fish, and plesiosaurs. Recently also teeth and bone fragmenst of dinosaurs and a mammal has been found.

The bone piece measures 5 mm in lenght, see picture.

Can anybody help me identify it?

In my current work on the theory of hyperbolic functions, I, as a completely extraneous observer of the turbulent debates relating to the subtlest intricacies of the Special Theory of Relativity (SRT), have drawn attention to the fact that hyperbolic functions are most used not in constructing bridges, aqueduct arches or describing complex cases of X-ray diffraction, but in those sections of the SRT that are related to the name of Professor Minkowski. Since my personal interest in SRT is essentially limited to the correct application of hyperbolic functions when describing moving physical realities, I would be grateful to the experts in the field of SRT for the most concise explanation of the deep essence of the theory of space-time patterns of surrounding me reality.

Naturally, my question in no way implies the translation into human language of the lecture of the Creator of the Theory, the honour of acquaintance with which in 1907 belongs to the academic/medical community of the city of Cologne and its surroundings. My level of development and my agreeableness have ensured that I not only managed to read independently the text underlying the concept of « Minkowski four-dimensional continuum », but also to formulate my question as follows:

Which of the options I propose is the most concise (i.e. non-emotional-linguistic) explanation of the essence of Minkowski’s theory:

1. The consequence of any relative movement of massive physical objects is that we are all bound to suffer the same fate as the dinosaurs and mammoths, i.e. extinction.

2. Understanding/describing the spatial movements of physical objects described by a^2-b^2=const type mathematical expression implies acquiring practical skills of constructing second-order curves called «hyperbolas».

3. All of us, including those who are in a state of careless ignorance, are compelled to exist in curved space.

4. Everything in our lives is relative, and only the interval between physical events is constant.

5. The products of the form ct (or zct), where c is the speed of light and z is some dimensionless mathematical quantity/number symbolizes not a segment of three-dimensional space, but a time interval (or time?) t between uniquely defined events.

6. The electromagnetic radiation generated by a moving massive object always propagates in a direction orthogonal to the velocity vector of the moving object.

Of course, I will be grateful for any adjustments to my options, or expert’s own formulations that have either eluded my attention or whose substance is far beyond my level of mathematical or general development.

Most respectfully

Sergey Sheludko

I have to explore the genome of the dinosaurs prevalent in india

Age : Middle Jurassic (Bathonian)

Formation : Continental green marls

I bring to your attention that the site is very rich in other dinosaur bones (Cetiosaurs, Stegosaurus and Ankylosaurs).

Yesterday I have read a news stating that The embryo fossil, nicknamed “Baby Yingliang,” was discovered in Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province in southern China, and is believed to be at least 66 million years old. Researcher Dr. Fion Waisum Ma told the AFP news agency that the discovery is “the best dinosaur embryo ever found in history” (globalnews, 2021).

Although there were several discoveries of Dinosaur components such as:

Eggs

DNAs from thier remains

are frequently being discovered, Since the biotechnology development is in its Zenith at 2022, Why nobody has attempted to create a dinosaur?

So I have a data set of around 100 specimens of dinosaur species which have been seperated by clade (therapod, saurapodamorph, dinosauromorph and ornithischian), the data set includes the name and code of the specimen e.g. Apatosaurus_CM3018 and finally all specimens have 5 measurements taken from section of the caudal vertebrae (where there is an increase in size the length is positive and where there is a decrease in size the length is made negative). Using mequite or R or any software, how can i essentially create a phylogenetic tree taking into account the clade, the time period of that dinosaur and of course the 5 length data's. Any help would be appreciated, furthermore is there a way to run a hierarchical.

The split data consists of the length measurements and

The research of Michael Clark strongly suggests correlation between the strength of Earth's and Earth-Sun's gravitational force(s) and maximal growth development that is scientifically observed in populations of elephants and dinosaurs. Can these scientific findings constitute a theory hypothesizing principles or laws that express relationships and patterns, including sets of ratios to describe phenomenal linkage of gravity to growth?

Dear colleagues.

Fragments of this species are very rare from a terrestrial Lower Cretaceous locality from Germany. Up to now from this locality sauropods could not be proved with certainty. Other vertebrates (sharks, bony fish, amphibians, small reptiles, turtles, crocodiles, dinosaurs, pterosaurs, mammals) are represented by partly numerous remains. Sauropod remains would be plausible.

I would therefore like to ask the following questions: Can a sauropod tooth be uniquely identified from a fragment?

What other taxa might be possible for this fragment?

I am curious about your suggestions and hints.

Achim

Allosaurus fragilis "Big Al" (MOR 693) is one of the most complete theropod skeletons. Rebecca Hanna has written articles describing the injuries suffered during its life but I can only find the length of the femur, not its circumference. A note of its circumference would be appreciated.

In the past years, in China they have discovered small dinosaurs with what looks like feathers

Scientists always involve in research and even they are pioneered,but didn't lead nations ,not in all world ,not in America,but in China,

ina has even more scientists in key positions in the government. President Hu Jintao was trained as a hydraulic engineer and Premier Wen Jiabao as a geomechanical engineer. In fact, eight out of the nine top government officials in China have scientific backgrounds. There is a scattering of scientist-politicians in high government positions in other countries as well. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has a doctorate in physical chemistry, and, going back a bit, Margaret Thatcher earned a degree in chemistry.

One needn’t endorse the politics of these people or countries to feel that given the complexities of an ever more technologically sophisticated world, the United States could benefit from the participation and example of more scientists in government. This is obviously no panacea — Herbert Hoover was an engineer, after all — but more people with scientific backgrounds would be a welcome counterweight to the vast majority of legislators and other officials in this country who are lawyers.

Among the 435 members of the House, for example, there are one physicist, one chemist, one microbiologist, six engineers and nearly two dozen representatives with medical training. The case of doctors and the body politic is telling. Everyone knows roughly what doctors do, and so those with medical backgrounds escape the anti-intellectual charge of irrelevance often thrown at those in the hard sciences. Witness Senator Bill Frist, Gov. Howard Dean and even Ron Paul.

This showing is sparse even with the inclusion of the doctors, but it shouldn’t be too surprising. For complex historical reasons, Americans have long privately dismissed scientists and mathematicians as impractical and elitist, even while publicly paying lip service to them.

One reason is that an abstract, scientific approach to problems and issues often leads to conclusions that are at odds with religious and cultural beliefs and scientists are sometimes tone-deaf to the social environment in which they state their conclusions. A more politically sensitive approach to problems and issues, on the other hand, often leads to positions that simply don’t jibe with the facts, no matter how delicately phrased. Examples as diverse as stem cell research and the economic stimulus abound.

Politicians, whose job is in many ways more difficult than that of scientists, naturally try to sway their disparate constituencies, but the prevailing celebrity-infatuated, money-driven culture and their personal ambitions often lead them to employ rhetorical tricks rather than logical arguments. Both Republicans and Democrats massage statistics, use numbers to provide decoration rather than information, dismiss, or at least distort, the opinions of experts, torture the law of the excluded middle (i.e., flip-flop), equivocate, derogate and obfuscate.

Dinosaurs cavorting with humans, climate scientists cooking up the global warming “hoax,” the health establishment using vaccines to bring about socialism – it’s hard to imagine mainstream leaders in other advanced economies not laughing at such claims.

Often too interested in politics as entertainment, the media is complicit in keeping such “controversies” running. Doing so isn’t hard since vivid, just-so stories and anecdotes usually trump (or should that be Trump) dry, sometimes counterintuitive facts and statistics.

Skepticism enjoins scientists — in fact all of us — to suspend belief until strong evidence is forthcoming, but this tentativeness is no match for the certainty of ideologues and seems to suggest to many the absurd idea that all opinions are equally valid. The chimera of the fiercely independent everyman reigns. What else explains the seemingly equal weight accorded to the statements of entertainers and biological researchers on childhood vaccines? Or to pronouncements of industry lobbyists and climate scientists? Or to economic prescriptions like 9-9-9 and those of Nobel-prize winning economists?

Americans’ grandiose (to use Newt Gingrich’s malapropism) egalitarianism also helps explain why the eight or nine original Republican presidential candidates suffered little for espousing, or at least not clearly opposing, scientifically untenable positions. Jon Huntsman, the only exception, received excessive kudos for what seems a rather lukewarm acceptance of climate change.

To avoid receiving the candidates’ canned responses on these and other issues, I sometimes wish that a debate moderator would forgo a standard question about immigration or jobs and instead ask the candidates to solve a simple puzzle, make an elementary estimate, perform a basic calculation.

Of course, the other side of the “two cultures” chasm should bear some of the onus for this lack of communication between politicians and scientists. Too few scientists are willing to engage in public debates, to explain the relevance of their fields clearly and without jargon, and, in the process, to risk some jeering from a few colleagues. Nevertheless, American scientists do more on this front than those in most other countries.

Perhaps because the words rhyme, it’s sometimes said that attitude is more important than aptitude in helping to bring about innovation, economic progress and social change. The dubious corollary is that freewheeling Americans who question authority and think outside the box have an abundance of attitude that helps make up for a declining performance in science and technology.

Maybe so, but attitude can only go so far. There is certainly no requirement for a Singaporean science background, but scientifically literate government leaders who push for evidence-based policies and demonstrate a scientific outlook are needed more than glib panderers with attitude.s o why not let scientists lead pollitics?

We found the dinosaur footprints on a sandstone layer of the Lower Cretaceous in Southwest China. We would like to know what kind of the dinosaur produced the footprint? i.e., was the dinosaur a carnivore or a herbivore? What is the environment and climate it prefered at the time?

I must do it myself, in paper, I mean, no drones or anything like that. Thanks a lot.

The Deccan Trap eruption covers an area of 0.4 million square kilometers. These eruptions are responsible for the extinctions of dinosaurs in India. I am eagerly waiting to know the sources of these vast eruptions.

I'm curious to know, because children are fascinated by dinosaurs?

Does anybody have an idea

Will the concept of science-fiction genetic experiments to recreate the long-extinct dinosaur species used in the plot of the film "Jurassic Park" ever be possible?

The plot of the film "Jurassic Park" directed by Steven Spielberg is based on a simple, but currently unrealistic concept of laboratory testing of the reproduction of long-extinct dinosaur species.

The collected genetic material of dinosaurs from the blood of a mosquito sunken for millions of years in amber is the main material on the basis of which extinct dinosaur species are recreated.

The genetic material obtained in this way introduced into the germ cell of modern reptiles in the film gives the possibility of reproduction of extinct reptile species.

This idea is based on modern research and genetic experiments carried out in laboratories, whose aim is to create, for example, new crop varieties or produce drugs for specific diseases.

However, the reproduction of long-extinct species such as dinosaurs is still not possible because the genetic material undergoes deep fragmentation over millions of years.

The genetic chain of chromosomes breaks down into very short fragments. So short that there is no information on how to assemble them into whole chromosomes and the lack of enzymes that would be able to fragment these fragmented dinosaur DNA pieces into whole chromosomes.

But the technology of genetic research is developing. The whole genomes of various species of animals, plants and other life forms are studied. The knowledge base of genotypes and related species is successively growing in the Big Data resources created for this purpose.

Therefore, the question arises: Will the fantastic research concept applied in the plot of the film "Jurassic Park" ever be possible? Will it be possible to recreate long-extinct animal and plant species with the help of subsequent generations of research in the field of genetics in the future?

Will it be possible to create a real Jurassic Park in the future, within which dinosaurs will run among the vegetation composed, among others, of flowering and woody ferns, horsetail and ferns, or the restoration of the ecosystem from millions of years ago?

Or maybe a man should not even try this type of other than present ecosystems to play?

Is this also a matter of ethics? Is it not threatening modern ecosystems to restore ecosystems over millions of years, ie consisting of many long-extinct species of plants and animals?

Please, answer, comments. I invite you to the discussion.

Will ecological innovations protect the Earth's nature from the progressive devastation of natural environments and increasing environmental pollution?

If the pace of devastation and pollution of the natural environment continues to increase, the nature of Earth and humanity may be threatened with grave dangers on the scale of several decades.

Some researchers suggest the possibility of a total annihilation of most species of flora and fauna on Earth in the 21st century.

Will humanity manage to develop and implement new ecological innovations as part of renewable sources of energy, green economy, restoring balance in natural ecosystems to prevent the growing risk of global annihilation?

If the majority of species of flora and fauna come to this destruction, it may be comparable to the cataclysm of dinosaur destruction that occurred on Earth millions of years ago.

But then it was a random cosmic accident because then the comet hit Earth, which caused global cataclysms that lasted for months.

This random case in space happens once in many millions of years.

However, the destruction of a large part of the biosphere, ecosystems, species of flora and fauna on Earth, which humans can lead to, is not a random event.

Unless we assume that the creation of an intelligent thinking being on one of the millions of planets is a kind of cosmic random event, then this whole analysis changes its interpretation.

For example:dinosaurs.

As the skeleton of the dinosaurs was available and as each bone cell contain DNA, can we extract DNA from the bones or soft tissues and proceed with cloning process to re-generate the extint dinosaurs?

I'm in the midst of a concentrated period of marking the work of undergraduate Education students - around a 100 mainly on-line but some face-to-face students to feed back to. It's approximately 25 minutes per script to read, reflect upon, and gather a mix of encouraging and constructively critical thoughts - so I know that I am in for the long haul in terms of the time commitment to this task.

I take my teaching seriously - designing professionally valuable and purposeful tasks, creating clear rubrics and applying assessment for learning principles to assessment design (for example being clear about learning objectives, embedding peer assessment, and providing examples to students of what success looks like).

I also try to model the feedback and commenting processes in my marking that we are looking to encourage in prospective teachers. Most feedback runs to six or seven lines and conforms to the feedback sandwich structure - or 'Two Stars and a wish' in simpler parlance. I highlight a rubric to show where students have achieved the various assessment criteria. I try to provide a comment as to how to improve next time.

Some colleagues say that we are wasting our time in this endeavour and boast of their achievement in reducing marking time so that they can get on and spend more time devoted to their research. And there is evidence that most students pocket the mark that they receive, pay little attention to the comments on their work and move on to the next unit's assessment task.

I try to maintain a line of professionalism that feedback matters; helping students progress and think matters; and that therefore a commitment to the formative components of assessment is essential. But are my more pragmatic colleagues right? Am I becoming a dinosaur in my thinking about assessment ideals in a mass-production world of higher education? Back to the marking...another 50 to go!

6700 km away from impact, rayleigh waves (rolling ground waves similar to ones created during earthquakes) from the K/pG impactor are said to have been 2 meters in height (Boslough et al., 1996).

At super-sonic speeds, objects of such mass, in this case, a rolling mass of ground and rock, create atmospheric 'pile' in front of them resulting in a high density shock-wave preceding the groundwaves.

This shock-wave would have been somewhat similar to the bow shock created by a super-sonic bolide traveling through our atmosphere, but would be a a continuous shock-wave front traveling in front of the rayleigh waves along the ground.

Although the speed of rayleigh waves are less than the 50,000+ km/hr of an atmosphere entering bolide, traveling along, above, and through the ground at speeds from 7000 to 20000 km/hour the massive face of the ground waves would easily be sufficient to create a high-density destructive shock-wave preceding the wave front.

According to atmospheric dynamics and the properties of these ground waves, this shock-wave exists. It is solid science, just overlooked as scientists that study these waves look at them as a train of waves that function like an earthquake. When earthquake rayleigh waves are scaled up to target (large impact) size their mass and height traveling through the lowest part our atmosphere becomes an atmospheric and particle dynamics issue which is virtually unconsidered at this point in time.

Any and all criticism and/or questions about 'Rayleigh Shock' are Warmly welcomed.

John Marshall Sullivan

Recently I went to field work, and visit some presumably dinosaur eggs. But many questions have been raised regarding, preservation mechanisms, hatches periods of dinosaur eggs, weathering effect on these eggs, rate of sedimentation !!!!!!!!!

Does climate change happening in the present era can not be part of the natural evolution of the planet?

  For example: ice age and the elimination of dinosaurs? ....

Perhaps this is also the removal of humans

And the emergence of other groups?

I look for this article, but is so old for be uploaded: E. Bölau. 1954. The first finds of dinosaurian skeletal remains in the Rhaetic-Liassic of N.W. Scania. Geologiska Föreningens i Stockholm Förhandlingar 76(3):501-502

The questions are: the collected are exposed? any affiliation? any new study?

Laminated Siltstones and Mudstones of Cretaceous lacustrine deposits of Korea display these trace fossils apparently made by some crawling insect. Laterally there are large footprints of Dinosaurs..

I'm actually working on an exhibition about footprints and a text without illustration is worthless.

.. but not as size variation in identical dental formulae (as in several mammal species), but to differences in number of teeth...

I´m working with heterodontosaurids, a lineage in which several hypotheses of sexual dimorphism were made... but in this case, no examples of sexual dimorphism sustained by different dentitions in dinosaur lineages exists...  so I´m looking for examples in other lineages...

I am just curious about what would happen if dinosaurs were present in our time. How would they react to the climate? Would they feed on the current flora and fauna? And if the humans (if there are still humans that managed to survive) would make an effort to subdue them, what possible ecological factors could be modified to stop them from thriving?

On a recent trip, while walking over rock along a shore in the Mediterranean, I noticed a pattern of depressions in the rock.

I would be interested to know, if these are dinosaur footprints.

The layer which the depressions are in question is below a quartz seam.

I would be happy to share further information if this is of interest.

Thankyou

Just some theoretical thougts:

Stock (2014) theoretically represents scenario in: “What if, 65 million years ago, the asteroid didn't hit Earth and the dinosaur extinction didn't happen?”. But imagine that the progressive group of raptors did survive and evolve… (see the famous sculpture by Dale Russell and Ron Seguin of the Canadian Museum of Nature, Ottawa). I have never found in internet any connection of the crazy conspiracy theory about the “Reptilians rule the world” and the possibility that these creatures has aborigine, Earth origin.

I have heard several authors and seen several reconstructions that have portrayed some ornithischians, particularly heterodontosaurids and basal ceratopsians, as omnivorous. I was wondering, is there any positive evidence in support of this hypothesis? That is, beyond "well its possible that they could have been omnivorous based on their anatomy and the fact that a lot of living herbivorous animals have been documented occasionally eating meat" and more along the lines that "this evidence suggests these animals were most likely including some amount of animal matter in their diet". The only evidence I have been able to find so far is Farke's mention of how heterodontosaurid canines do not vary with sex or sexual maturity.

The cycads were the principals food  of some of the cycads and were vital to the evolution of the cycads.

This was found in the spongy bone of a Hell Creek dinosaur. Note the scale bar. Does anyone know what it is?

Thanks in advance,

Tom Kaye

I've read about dinosaur remains being discovered in African countries like Lesotho and Mali. However apart from these two countries, i don't know that of any other African country's. Is there any African country apart from the aforementioned ones where dinosaurs have been found? And will more remains be found on the African continent?

Can anyone give me any information on Mongolian dinosaurs? Where they originated there or migrated from somewhere else? It was asked in an interview.

I'd like to identify deinonychosaurian theropod specimens that perfectly preserve the articulated distal end of the gastral basket in lateral view for comparative purposes. Any suggestions?

I have dissolved several kilograms of dinosaur bone in HCl. The bone is mostly apatite (hydroxyapatite-fluorapatite  with substantial amounts of U, Th and REEs substituted for Ca), with smaller amounts of iron and silicate minerals. From the fraction that dissolves in HCl I want to remove the phosphate, so that I can do further separations of the other elements. And I want to do it as cheaply as possible, so ion exchange resin is not an option. What I’m really after is the alkali earth metals, so if I lose other elements with the phosphate it’s fine.

My best guess is that if I add ammonium sulfate, I will raise the pH of the solution and get insoluble alkali earth sulfates and soluble ammonium phosphate.  But that IS just a guess. Will it work? Is there a better way?

Hi everyone,

I am trying to understand if there is in fact a homology between the sphenethmoid and the orbitosphenoid and presphenoid of mammals. 

Does anyone know a reference that could help me?

The plant-eating dinosaurs over the time they existed should have developed a system for dealing with a readily available plant source,that was toxic i.e. the cycads.

Mesozoic era was age of reptiles. In mathematical terms, a larger animal has more volume in relation to its area. Volume is meant for heat retention, the area determines heat dissipation. What factors actually led to the giant size of dinosaurs both in the high and low latitudes with variable climatic conditions? How the giant size of both herbivorous and carnivorous dinosaurs was related to the ideal resource exploitation?  

We all know there was a variety of plants living at the time of the dinosaurs. However, which plant-eating dinosaurs where eating which plants.

It is known that both dinosaurs and crocodiles occur in the same stratigraphic sequence so that has to mean that they probably shared the same paleoenvioornment. Appreciate your thoughts on this question.

Present evidence to show that this is or  is not true.

Have been described foramina on the lateral surface of the jugal bone in any ornithopod or other dinosaur taxa? Thanks in advance!

I understand that Gregory S. Paul was the one that began the incorrect sizing of Velociraptor with the book "Predatory Dinosaurs of the World," as it should have been Deinonychus depicted in the Jurassic films, not Velociraptor. But a recent paper (Parsons & Parsons, 2015: Morphological variations within the ontogeny of Deinonychus antirrhopus (theropoda, dromaeosauridae)) indicate Deinonychus was only 1.09 meters tall, about 60 – 80 cm shorter than an average person, with other papers showing around the same height.

I stumbled upon this picture when trying to figure out the size of Utahraptor (attached). There was only one specimen of Utahraptor ever found, which described it as 7 m long and 500 kg in weight (Kirkland et al., 1993: A large dromaeosaur (theropoda) from the Lower Cretaceous of Eastern Utah)) and 1.8 m at the hip (Levitt, 2012: Utahraptor ostrommaysorum, from NHMU website). The image I found doesn't look like Utahraptor is 2 meters at the hip, and I was wondering if there were other references that described the size of Utahraptor rather than the one by Kirkland et al. (1993).

Many extant birds use mechanical sounds, or sonations, intentionally as communicative signals; most often in the context of courtship, and usually made by the wings or other feathers.  

Behaviour does not fossilize particularly well, so we are pretty clueless about what the courtship displays of avian ancestors and primitive birds may have sounded like, or been produced by. But for fun, does anyone think that wings (and other feathers) could have been used to produce acoustic signals during courtship?  What might they have sounded like? What might this tell us about the use of sonations, and evolution of vocalization and vocal learning among other reptiles and birds respectively? 

Especially from C20 onward. Involves an exostoseal growth displaying very little to no subcortical alterations.  

Could anyone recommend me a bibliography on vertebrates of the early Paleocene (especially Danian) in Europe?

I'm interested in citations on crocodylomorphs, but the other faunas are also ok for me.

I am currently working on Bathonian aged dinosaur footprints form the Long Nab Member of Scarborough, Yorkshire. As part of my study I am looking into the local museum collections isolated footprints. 

They are all tridactyl (some are broken however) but I am not sure how to assign left and right digits. I have read Thulborn (1990) and several other papers but not sure how to spot these nodes and the basic consensus on determining left from right from the curvature of the digits.

I have attached a few images of the prints I am working with to clarify.

Thank you!

I know that in years past, it has often been suggested that predatory maniraptoran dinosaurs (mainly troodontids and dromaeosaurids) used their forelimbs to catch food. Indeed, Ostrom originally suggested that flapping behavior began as an extrapolation of the prey catching stroke. However, now that we know more about the anatomy of these predatory dinosaurs, specifically that many forms had large secondary and primary feathers on their arms and were incapable of pronating their hands, I am having a hard time seeing how the forelimbs could have been of any use in predatory behavior. There doesn't seem to be any way that they could have been rotated to grab prey, nor slash at conspecifics or larger prey items. Yet there has to have been some function for having flexible clawed digits in maniraptorans, as nearly all maniraptorans have well-developed hands, and indeed many early birds still had well-developed digits.

I am confused as to how to interpret and use this equation. Is the bracketed equation (SL/1.8)h or SL/(1.8h)?

I have used the units 1.36 for h and 2.53 for SL and have results of:8.371m/s

Does this seem logical given the maths?

Hope this makes sense

Thank you!

I'm trying to estimate the speeds of dinosaur footprints using Alexander's 1976 formula (speed (m/s) = 0.25 x gravitational constant^0.5 x Stride length^1.67 x hip height^-1.17

I'm using Microsoft Excel to produce a calculated table but I'm not sure how to input the data and equation.

I currently am using the gravitational constant at 6.673 then inputting this into my spreadsheet with the term

=6.673(0.5)*248(1.67)*2.48(-1.17) and the results do not seem correct (I got -4009.56

Does anyone know where I am going wrong and how to fix this?

Thank you in advance

Hi,

I'm currently using Alexander's 1976 formulae to determine dinosaur speeds from trackways.

The trackway I have in question is 11 tracks long. To determine the speed, do I use the formula on each set of prints and their stride, or just the one set?

Thank you,

Danny.

Premaxillary teeth with D-shaped contour are present in tyrannosaurids (Brochu, 2002; Choinere et al., 2012) and megaraptorans (Porfiri et al., 2014), but are they the only theropod dinosaurs to have these teeth? Thanks in advance for your opinion

I want to study specific protein sequences to better understand their functional properties. I think that such information from this group of animals may help in this understanding.

The other day on the History Channel, it was said that the idea that an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs millions of years ago was only just recently being seriously considered as possible. If anyone brought this idea up 25 years ago, it would've been scoffed at. This disturbed me, because I have only ever been told that this was scientific fact. I remember it presented this way as far back as 15 years ago. Is there someone who could explain if History Channel is correct?

Recent works stablished Neovenatoridae as a clade of theropod carcharondontosaurians (Brusatte et al. 2010) and confirmed its monophily in subsequent phylogenetic analyses (Carrano et al 2012, Zanno and Makovicky 2013), On the contrary, other recent proposal (Novas et al 2013) places megaraptoran neovenatorids out of Allosauroidea but they are nested within Coelurosauria. To settle the question is important for its paleogeographic implications (see Zanno and Makovicky 2013, Novas et al 2013, Ezcurra and Agnolin 2012). I would love to hear views on this matter

I realize that this question basically boils down to "which species had the brain that was least small", but given the amount of geological time and diversity present in these animals, one would think that there would be at least some variation in the group. More specifically, I have been trying to see if the size and shape of the braincase have any effect on the morphology of the sauropod skull (i.e., in the position of the eyes, etc.). Hence brain-to-skull size, rather than "largest brain relative to body size" If anyone knows which diplodocoid taxa is known to have the largest brain relative to its skull size, that would be a huge help too.

Have you thought about watching David Norman talk about the dinosaur Iguanodon at Universidad de los Andes live at: http://dsit.uniandes.edu.co/streaming

Specifically, a feather that shows or appears to show interlocking barbules (containing fully or partially evolved barbicels)? How is the example preserved (in rock, amber, etc.)? Curious to know about any Jurassic or Cretaceous examples

Just wonder when the medullary bone first shows up in female bird and dino in their life time. If this formed, will it disappear when it's not in reproduction phase?