nandi's blog

Paleontologist’s Paradise in New Mexico

Friday, June 22, 2018

The Bisti Wilderness, about 40 miles south of Farmington, New Mexico, offers 45,000 acres of badlands, some of it eerily unearthly. Sixty-five million years ago, this was a tropical river delta, home to dinosaurs that are unique to this area. Paleontologists say there still are many fossils to be discovered here. Photo by E’Louise Ondash

Paleontologist Sherrie Landon stoops to scoop up a fossil — a small, grayish rock, somewhat smooth on one side, dimpled with identical tiny craters on the other.

“Alligator skin,” she pronounces with certainty — a stunning statement considering we are standing in the Bisti/De-Za-Nin Wilderness in northwest New Mexico, an arid landscape dotted with alien-looking land forms. The nearest civilization is Farmington, New Mexico, about 40 minutes north and ideally located for exploring all that the Four Corners area has to offer.

We had never heard of “the Bisti” until a few weeks ago when planning a trip to the Farmington area. Bisti’s 45,000 acres of other-worldly protected wilderness is managed by the Bureau of Land Management and patrolled largely by ranger Stan Allison, who arrived here a year ago after a 13-year stint at Carlsbad Caverns National Park.

Today Landon and Allison are giving us a crash course in all things Bisti, and I’m mentally debating whether to tell the world about this amazing place or keep it to myself. Apparently, I’m too late for the latter. 

“Visitation is definitely increasing and I think much of it is due to folks seeing beautiful pictures on the internet,” Allison says. “We have only had a traffic counter on the trailhead parking lot for the last two years, so we don’t have hard data, but folks who have been observing visitation over the years have noticed a definite uptick.”

So the secret is out, and as we hike the valley floor, I understand why the news has spread. The colorful layered mounds and crazy formations change with every turn. But where we see arid panoramas, Landon sees former river delta, tropical forest, dinosaurs and cataclysmic wind and wave action that created this 360-degree bizarre panorama. 

We get that the multi-colored layers of earth — lignite, mud, volcanic ash, sandstone, shale and coal — were deposited over time. It’s something else, though, to imagine tropical forests and large creatures roaming this one-time Shangri-La 80 to 65 million years ago, which is to say that Bisti a paleontologist’s paradise.

“We are constantly uncovering different species and a lot of them are unique to this area,” Landon says. “The (Museum of Natural History and Science) in Albuquerque gets 95 percent of the fossils that come from here. They love me.”

One top find three years ago was the skull of a rare pentaceratops — like a triceratops but with five horns. A cast of its head and dinosaur footprints can be seen at the Farmington Museum.

Because “the fossils belong to the people” and there are plenty more to be found, Landon supervises the tedious process of removing these fossils and assures that “the land is left exactly as they found it.” This can involve National Guard helicopters, flatbed trucks, and an excavation process that places the different colored dirt in separate piles to assure that the layers are replaced exactly as they were.

The Bisti is one of the driest places on earth, so we drink liberally from our water bottles as we traverse the freakish terrain. When lunchtime arrives, we sit in a small strip of shade created by a petrified tree trunk.

“I think that people are attracted to the (Bisti) because a badlands environment is so unusual and different than hiking in the mountains or in a canyon,” Allison says. “The badlands offer an uncommon experience to travel somewhere with very little vegetation, no trails and interesting landforms both in terms of shape and color.”

It’s easy to understand how visitors can get into trouble if they aren’t prepared with sturdy shoes, hats, sunscreen, abundant water and a compass or GPS. They also should sign in and out at the parking lot register. There are no trails, signage or amenities. It is, after all, a wilderness.

So how do you check on visitors in this vast, unmarked place?

“I pretty much know where the people are,” Allison explains, probably because most don’t wander too far from the parking lot, and the only way to see the Bisti is on foot. No vehicles allowed, either, not even bicycles — although it sure would be a thrill to careen up and down this other-worldly topography.

Source: www.thecoastnews.com

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom - Every Character Ranked Worst To Best

Monday, June 11, 2018

The Jurassic Park franchise hasn't really served up many compelling or memorable characters since the classic original, and you know what? The recently-released Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom sure is no exception.

To the movie's mild credit, it does let the dinosaurs - many of which are distinct characters themselves by this point - firmly steal the show, even if the original proved it was possible to craft likeable and interesting humans alongside all the dino mayhem.

Compelling people aren't easy to come by in Fallen Kingdom, though in fairness, at least a few of them are intentionally simplistic caricatures quickly set up to die horrible deaths at the hands of the dinos.

Some of the younger characters, meanwhile, are especially problematic, and the protagonists still can't hold a candle to the likes of Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Ellie Satler (Laura Dern).

From human to dino, here's every character in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom ranked from worst to best...

17. Franklin Webb

Long before Fallen Kingdom was even released, Franklin (Justice Smith) was deservedly referred to by many fans as the Jurassic Park franchise's answer to Jar Jar Binks.

The trailers made it abundantly clear that Franklin wouldn't amount to being much more than irritating comic relief, spending most of his screen time shrieking, trembling and dropping cringe-worthy one-liners as he does (before mercifully disappearing for most of act three).

It's nothing against Smith, because few actors could've made Franklin remotely likeable, but it remains a mystery why the script even needed to include a character like this.

Moreover, he's so annoying you might've even started rooting for the dinos to give him an excessively brutal death scene (much like Zara in the previous film). Come on, he totally earned it.

16. Iris

Iris (Geraldine Chaplin) is the housekeeper of the Lockwood estate, Maisie Lockwood's (Isabella Sermon) nanny and one of the few people who knows the secret of her creation.

Aside from appearing in a decades-old photograph with Benjamin Lockwood's (James Cromwell) daughter, Iris does precious little beyond teaching Maisie how to say "bath" with a plummy English twang.

Ultimately she's a pretty pointless character who squanders Chaplin's talents, and the actress was presumably only cast because she's director J.A. Bayona's good luck charm (appearing in all four of his feature films to date).

But at least she's not nails-on-a-chalkboard grating like Franklin, right?

15. Dr. Henry Wu

Dr. Wu (B.D. Wong) is of course the main antagonist of the Jurassic Park franchise after being reintroduced in Jurassic World as an impossibly ambitious, ruthlessly determined geneticist.

Though it seemed like Wu was set to have an expanded role in Fallen Kingdom, he's sadly only around for a few brief scenes, dropping half-baked exposition about the Indoraptor being a sociopathic prototype.

He once again lives to scheme another day, though, after being tranquilised by Franklin during the mayhem of the dinosaur auction. He'll most certainly be back in the next one, where he'll probably finally, hopefully get his comeuppance.

His showing here was a bit of a damp squib, however, and so much more could've clearly been done with the character.

14. Benjamin Lockwood

The brilliant James Cromwell plays the ailing, idealistic former partner of John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) in the movie's first act.

Cromwell appears for just a few scenes, but he exudes an affable warmth and genuine desire to save the dinosaurs, setting the plot in motion if also being tragically doomed to die at the hands of his right-hand man Eli Mills (Rafe Spall).

As a link back to the departed John Hammond, Lockwood's an intriguing character even if he's in the movie only briefly. Plus, as genial as he seems, his decision to clone his dead daughter and raise her as his granddaughter injects adds some compelling shading and moral ambiguity (as absurd as that reveal was).

13. Dr. Ian Malcolm

Fans were jubilant when it was announced that Jeff Goldblum would be reprising his iconic Dr. Ian Malcolm role for the first time since The Lost World, but despite his considerable presence on the press tour for Fallen Kingdom, the acting legend appears for all of around two minutes.

Malcolm's single scene sees him waxing philosophical and delivering a gloomy message for humanity, which is then spliced in half and used to bookend the film. Goldblum kills the scene and Malcolm offers up some of the only sensible character logic in the entire movie, but it really stung to see him featured so little overall.

Sure, nobody was expecting Malcolm to have a physical role, but at least give the guy two or three scenes, no? How disappointing.

12. Maisie Lockwood

There's certainly no character in Jurassic World more baffling than Benjamin Lockwood's "granddaughter" Maisie, that's for sure.

Because every Jurassic Park movie apparently needs at least one token child character, Maisie's thrown into the mix this time, and finds herself ultimately becoming Owen (Chris Pratt) and Claire's (Bryce Dallas Howard) surrogate daughter by the end of the movie.

Young Isabella Sermon deserves a world of credit for delivering a strong performance given the material she had: she defies the Jurassic Park child actor tradition by not being incredibly annoying, and with a better script she probably could've made Maisie a genuinely likeable character.

The clone reveal is a step too silly for its own good, though, and seems intended solely to set-up the braindead climactic moment where Maisie decides to let the dinosaurs loose into the world.

That decision alone makes it hard to like Maisie all that much, as well-cast as Sermon was.

11. Ken Wheatley

Ken Wheatley (Ted Levine) is the head mercenary leading the Isla Nublar rescue operation, and he's basically a bit of an homage to the Robert Muldoon (Bob Peck) and Roland Tembo (Pete Postlethwaite) characters from the earlier Jurassic Park movies.

He's pretty much a walking cliche - making sexist wise-cracks at Zia (Daniella Pineda) and treating the dinosaurs like garbage - but he's also fairly entertaining thanks to Levine's gruff portrayal.

Plus, the guy gets a suitably grim punishment for trying to snag himself an Indoraptor tooth: the new hybrid dino pretends to be tranquilised before tearing Wheatley's arm clean off and devouring him alive. Lovely.

10. Gunnar Eversoll

Gunnar Eversoll (Toby Jones) is the auctioneer who oversees the dinosaur auction at the Lockwood estate, and though he's a pretty inconsequential character all things considered, he's nevertheless brought to amusing life by Toby Jones' knowingly daft performance.

With a Donald Trump-like hairdo, a distracting set of glistening, false teeth and a bizarre accent, Jones does fine work making Eversoll an entertainingly silly quasi-villain rather than a forgettable also-ran.

Especially hilarious is Eversoll's inevitable (and satisfying) demise: when the Indoraptor roars in his face, that ridiculous mop of hair gets violently blown back.

9. Owen Grady

Chris Pratt continues to be a peculiar casting choice for this franchise, especially because his dinosaur trainer Owen is just a bit of a bland bore without much of a personality.

Pratt's not given much to do beyond smile and occasionally crack wise, while Owen inexplicably survives so many insanely dangerous moments - namely outrunning the volcano's pyroclastic flow and leaping through the jaws of the T-Rex - that it's hard to much care for his safety at all.

Considering Pratt's charm, it continues to be disappointing that he's given such a flat character to work with. If the series is going to be this silly, why not make Owen into a fully-blown cartoon character of a hero?

8. Dr. Zia Rodriguez

Zia is the Dinosaur Protection Group's paleoveterinarian and the less-irritating of the two millennial-baiting characters in the movie.

She doesn't shriek or constantly jabber on about how dangerous Isla Nublar is, and she actually proves herself smart and resourceful, being vital in administering the blood transfusion to Blue.

She's also sassy as hell, resulting in a few amusing squabbles with Ken Wheatley, even if it's easy to see why some might find her outspoken attitude verging on obnoxious.

Still, she's miles ahead of Franklin and competent enough that she could probably return in the next movie without too many objections.

7. Eli Mills

Eli Mills is an hilariously one-dimensional, money-grubbing antagonist, and from the second he appears on-screen, it's hilariously obvious what his motivations are.

Credit to Rafe Spall, then, for leaning into the schlock and helping make Mills an amusing caricature of a Bond villain. He over-explains himself, imprisons the heroes when he had the perfect opportunity to kill them, and without any sense of moral ambiguity whatsoever, he's just comically evil for the sake of it.

He also gets the movie's most satisfying and shockingly brutal death, being ripped apart by Rexy and a Carnotaurus as he attempts to escape the Lockwood estate. Gnarly.

6. Claire Dearing

Fallen Kingdom does deserve a small measure of credit for substantially improving the character of Claire, who was a stereotypical Ice Queen in the previous movie, and became infamous for running away from a dinosaur in high heels (successfully, no less).

Well, the high heels are quickly disposed of this time, she's got a less-terrible haircut and she's also undergone a bit of a personality transplant. No longer the soulless corporate robot she was in Jurassic World, Claire instead demonstrates a deep care for the dinosaurs and has a consistent arc throughout the movie.

Bryce Dallas Howard sells the danger of the scenario far more convincingly than Chris Pratt, and though Claire's still hardly a classic Jurassic Park character, she's decidedly easier to like this time around.

5. The Mosasaurus

And now we get to the truly interesting "characters" in these movies: the dinosaurs!

The Mosasaurus was one of the most memorable dinos featured in Jurassic World, what with its iconic, Seaworld-esque feeding show and its epic defeat of the Indominus rex in the movie's finale.

The Mosasaurus doesn't feature much in Fallen Kingdom, but it sure makes its screen time count, attacking the salvage mission in the movie's opening (snacking on a poor sod clinging from a rope ladder) and later attacking a fleet of surfers in the sea.

These moments are both terrific in spite of their brevity, and fingers crossed we'll get to see more of the creature in the third movie, what with it now being free to roam the world's oceans.

4. The Indoraptor

Though by any typical standard the Indoraptor is an incredibly bada** dinosaur, it's a bit of an underwhelming creature for the movie's final antagonist. Basically, it just feels like an unimaginative rehash of the Indominus from the previous movie (to the point that it's literally an Indominus combined with more raptor DNA).

The Indoraptor lacks the statuesque, imposing quality of the Indominus though somewhat compensates for this with its lightning-fast speed. It's also the first dinosaur in the franchise to literally grin at the audience, which is nothing if not an insane sight to see.

Furthermore, it got one of the better dinosaur death scenes in the series, being impaled on a giant Triceratops skull displayed in the Lockwood museum.

3. Rexy

Though Rexy's appearances in the Jurassic World franchise are basically token fan-service cameos at this point, she nevertheless stole the show several times.

Memorably, she chases the salvage crew away from the island at the start of the movie, rescues Owen and co. from another dinosaur during the eruption (before letting out her customary, iconic roar), and finally murders Mills at the end.

It'll be interesting to see what the future holds for Rexy, but she's still going strong, and is still an awesome sight to behold regardless of how nostalgia-baiting it all seems nowadays.

2. Stiggy

Stiggy is the adorable Stygimoloch who kinda-befriends Owen during the Lockwood auction and helps him cause all manner of chaos. She's also one of the movie's few attempts at comic relief that unreservedly works.

Stiggy is convinced by Owen to bash in the brick wall to her cell, allowing her to make a clumsy escape where she careens all over the place. Her true moment to shine, however, comes when she surprises Owen in an elevator later on, and he unleashes her upon the unsuspecting auction party.

Cue weapons traders, gangsters and suited-up businessmen being hurled into the air by Stiggy's rampage in a gloriously goofy moment that actually plays incredibly well.

1. Blue

And finally, we have the glorified mascot of the Jurassic World movies. The fan response to Blue's depiction in Fallen Kingdom has actually been pretty mixed, with many expressing frustration that the dinosaur has been effectively transformed into a cutesy puppy dog, stripping away the sense of threat typically associated with raptors.

True though that is, Blue is nevertheless still the easy highlight of the movie. Her "emotional" bond with Owen doesn't really convince, but she gets some neat action beats and her final battle with the Indoraptor is a barmy delight.

It probably would've made a certain amount of narrative sense to have Blue die at the end of the movie to save Owen and co., but it'll nevertheless be interesting to see how she fares out in the wild in the next movie.

What did you make of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom's characters? Shout it out in the comments!

Source: http://whatculture.com

Jurassic World: 10 Things That Completely Ruined Fallen Kingdom

Saturday, June 9, 2018

While the original made bank at the box office though, Universal have seemingly been intent on taking steps to improve on its lukewarm critical reception, replacing Colin Trevorrow with J.A. Bayona and promising a darker, more horror-inspired ride this time around.

Unfortunately, while the latest movie has solved a lot of the issues fans had with the original, just as many more have popped up in their place. Which is a shame, because it's clear that Bayona in particular is trying his best - often elevating material that could have been unsalvageable - but even his talents aren't enough to stop the movie from completely falling down during its worst stretches.

The end result, then, is a bit of a mess; a sequel which shows flashes of brilliance but completely falls off the deep end into a land of sheer stupidity, and, worst of all, utter boredom. Actually, that doesn't sound too far away from the 2015 film either...

10. A Painfully Unfunny Supporting Cast

Though Fallen Kingdom features a huge number of returning cast members from the last movie, it also features the introduction of three new main characters - each one more annoying than the last. Two, Daniella Pineda's Zia and Justice Smith's Franklin, join Owen and Claire to round off the heroes. Unfortunately, both are designed to be mere comic relief, with the latter in particular having some of the worst lines in the entire film.

Though it lays both newcomers on thick in the first act, the film then proceeds to forget about both towards the climax, leaving you with the feeling that either they were shoehorned into the script at the last minute, or the filmmakers simply got as sick of them as the audience will halfway through editing the movie.

The final new character, Ted Levine's villain Ken, fares no better, hampered by horrible attempts at comedy and quirks that amount to nothing in the long run. The only thing stopping him from being entirely forgettable is one moment that's inevitably going to be turned into a meme once the film is out in the wild.

9. Rafe Spall's Villain

Rafe Spall is one of Britain's most underrated talents, but you wouldn't believe it if the only film you'd seen him in was Fallen Kingdom. Revealed to be the main villain early on in the story, Spall does what he can with the material, but the character's cringe-inducing dialogue and 0-100 villainy results in a cartoonish performance that feels entirely at odds with the rest of the cast.

In fact, at times the character feels like he's in an entirely different movie. Until the very end, he only has a single interaction with either Chris Pratt or Bryce Dallas Howard, and even when the climax is in full swing, the heroes don't actually have any kind of rivalry with him.

He has no real motivations and absolutely zero menace, essentially only being there to give a face to the amorphous corporate businesses the film is really taking aim at.

8. Trailers Spoiled All The Best Moments

Though trailers often reveal way too much about movies before they land in cinemas, Fallen Kingdom's pretty much gave away every major moment in the sequel. Though the first was restricted to action from the first act, the rest have covered the entire movie, spoiling major set-pieces, the best jokes and even the climax.

Even the moments the trailer doesn't directly give away can be used to piece together the way scenes are going to end while you're watching the film. There aren't any surprises, and knowing what happens next in a scene because you've seen footage in the trailer makes watching an already boring and predictable film even more frustrating.

Though criticisms about trailers giving away too much information about a movie is always met with the same old "well don't watch them then" response, in this day and age, it's almost impossible to avoid them. For the biggest movies in particular, you're bound to catch them being screened before other major flicks, unless you leave the theatre for the two minutes they're on.

7. The Second Half's Sole, Drab Location

The first half of Fallen Kingdom returns pretty quickly to the now-destroyed Jurassic World of the last film, and it's pretty damn good. Seeing the park completely overrun, literally about to explode, is exciting, and surprisingly makes you a little nostalgic about a film that only came out three years ago.

Once the island blows up though, the action moves to a single location: a huge mansion out in the middle of nowhere. With a few species of dinosaurs transferred over to be sold off in an illegal auction (really), the entire final third is spent skulking through drab corridors, watching dinos confined in cages and squinting to see what's going on in dimly-lit children's bedrooms.

In theory, swapping out the vast, colourful island of the first film with claustrophobic real-world locations could have been an interesting subversion, but it's way too boring. Whatever spark of creativity the first film had is extinguished entirely, and it feels like you're watching a haughty British period drama rather than a Jurassic Park movie.

6. Jeff Goldblum Being Wasted

Although expectations were already low because all of Jeff Goldblum's footage in the trailers was taken from the same scene, it was still disappointing to learn that the actor had little more than a cameo in the movie. Admittedly though, the way the narrative is set up made it difficult to make space for him, and the overall quality of the flick probably suggests the actor did well to avoid being involved too heavily.

Still, it's a shame the actor wasn't given more to do, and the most frustrating part is just how extraneous he is to the actual events of the narrative. He doesn't interact with any of the main cast, instead spending his time in a courtroom making thematically-resonant speeches that would be just great to use in a trailer.

It all feels incredibly baiting, especially because his characterisation goes entirely against how he was established in the original trilogy.

5. How Boring The Indoraptor Is

After so many Jurassic Park movies, it seems as though Universal no longer have faith in the classic dinosaurs being able to headline the franchise. Instead, they've decided to create their own dinos with each new instalment, the latest being the Indoraptor, a genetic combination of the original Jurassic World's Indominus Rex and a velociraptor.

Not only is the movie once again relying on yet another plot about evil businessmen playing God and creating their own ultimate predator, but the Indoraptor itself feels barely like a footnote on the movie overall. The animal is talked about all the way through the flick, with characters constantly repeating how it's the most sophisticated animal on the planet, yet you never feel the tension you're supposed to.

It's a prime example of the need for movies to show and not tell, as that menace is never actually conveyed by the creature itself, even when it's inevitably let loose.

4. Repeating Moments And Plots From Jurassic World

Although Jurassic World was a solid revitalising of the franchise, it was undoubtedly so successful because it was such a thorough trip down memory lane. The film had a new story, sure, but it directly lifted certain plot elements and scenes from the original Jurassic Park, relying heavily on the nostalgia audiences still have for that iconic blockbuster.

In a way that was exactly what the film needed to be, though, a reminder that viewers love this world for more than just the spectacle of seeing dinosaurs on the big screen. With that already established, then, there was no reason at all for Fallen Kingdom's over-reliance on repeating plots and set-pieces from previous movies.

Most tragically, a lot of them are retreads of beats from Jurassic World. Between the evil geneticists betraying the heroes, the creation of the latest, deadliest dinosaur, and the strained relationship between Claire and Owen, fans have seen it all before, three years ago.

3. A Human Cloning Sub-Plot

Throughout Fallen Kingdom you always get the feeling that you're watching two different films competing to come out on top, and by far the worst one of the two is built on a plot surrounding Lockwood's granddaughter, Masie. A mystery is set up from the get go about her relationship with the rest of the characters, with the implication being that she might be the daughter of Jurassic Park's Lex.

However, it's eventually revealed that she's not really anyone's daughter, and is in fact a human clone. Her existence is apparently what drove Lockwood and Hammond apart years ago, but the fact that she's a clone doesn't really go anywhere. It turns up far too late and is merely an excuse to make the ending choice, to release all of the dinosaurs into the wild rather than killing them, make a lick of sense.

There were ways to make this reveal actually integral to the plot as well, as it's suggested that the Indoraptor has been created by merging a bunch of genetic material to make it receptive to human commands - some of which could have belonged to Masie. Yeah, that all might have been stupid, but it would have at least warranted this plotline being included in the first place.

2. Trying To Send A 'Serious Message'

By far the worst thing about Masie's inclusion though, is that it's part of the film's greater attempt to send a serious message on nature and the animal kingdom. The whole movie is built around the idea of animal preservation and saving the dinosaurs from extinction, rather than continuing to cage them up and sell them on for profit.

It's all very on the nose, but it isn't an inherently bad message. It's just the way it's communicated which sucks all the fun out of the wackiness the filmmakers indulge in otherwise.

The extinction event at Jurassic World, for instance is outstanding, and having to live through the end of these creatures firsthand is genuinely tragic, but it comes just after Chris Pratt does his best PG rendition of the quaaludes overdose form The Wolf of Wall Street and the heroes have jumped a truck off a pier into an escaping helicopter.

Consequently, the 'insightful' moments only feel even more half-baked and laughable, treated with a self-seriousness the rest of the movie lacks.

1. The Ending

The ending of Fallen Kingdom should have been incredible. After saving a few remaining dinosaurs and bringing them over to America, the sequel ends with the animals being let loose into society, forcing humanity to live with their decision to mess with genetics and live alongside their creations.

All of the best scenes shown off in the trailer - the dino about to chow down on some unknowing surfers, the lion roaring with the T-Rex - come from this final montage, and it does genuinely set up the inevitable third film well. Unfortunately, it can only happen after one of the dumbest decisions in cinematic history.

After the Indoraptor is killed, it's revealed that the rest of the dinosaurs are about to be poisoned to death, giving the heroes a dilemma: let them die and reset the natural order, or let them loose and potentially put innocent people at risk of being gobbled up by a T-Rex.

They decide they can't free them, but Masie goes rogue and lets them loose anyway. Consequently, the dinos proceed to do everything we feared they would, immediately killing the first people they come into contact with.

Source: http://whatculture.com

Scientists Discover New Species of Ancient Marine Lizard

Thursday, June 21, 2018

The newly discovered marine lizard, named Primitivus manduriensis, hunted in the shallow waters of what is now Puglia, Italy, 70 to 75 million years ago. (Illustration: Fabio Manucci)

University of Alberta paleontologists discovered a new species of marine lizard that lived 70 to 75 million years ago, with its muscle and skin remarkably well preserved.

The fossil is a dolichosaur, a marine lizard related to snakes and mosasaurs. Called Primitivus manduriensis, it was found in Puglia, Italy, and named after the local Manduria variety of red wine grape primitivo.

The fossil was discovered in what was once a shallow water environment. After it died, the lizard fell to the bottom and was covered in sediment, safe from the moving water that would otherwise have scattered its remains. And with no apparent predators around to feed on the carcass, it remained largely intact.

“(The marine lizards) are essentially small, long-bodied animals that look like regular lizards with longer necks and tails,” explained PhD student Ilaria Paparella, lead author of the study detailing the discovery. “They have paddle-like hands and feet for swimming but could also move on land.”

The fossil is significantly younger than other existing specimens from the group, extending the time range of their existence by about 15 million years.

For Paparella, one of the most interesting things about the specimen was the ability to study the soft tissues, including scales, muscle and skin. She conducted the research as part of her PhD with U of A paleontologist Michael Caldwell, chair of the Department of Biological Sciences.

“There need to be very special conditions for soft tissue to be preserved on a fossil,” she explained. “The location where the Primitivus manduriensis was found has a great deal of potential. We hope to get permits from the Italian authorities to conduct further fieldwork.

“This was the first time I’ve ever had the opportunity to look at the complete picture of a beautifully preserved specimen, right down to the scales,” added Paparella. “For living species, scientists use scale patterns and skin for identification. It was unique to be using these techniques to look at a specimen that died 70 million years ago.”

The paper, “A New Fossil Marine Lizard With Soft Tissues From the Late Cretaceous of Southern Italy,” was published in Royal Society Open Science.

Source: www.folio.ca

Jurassic Park's Iconic T. Rex Tongue Scene Disputed by Paleontologists

Thursday, June 21, 2018

Long before Chris Pratt was a velociraptor-whisperer in Jurassic World, Julianne Moore got licked by a Tyrannosaurus rex in The Lost World. It’s gnarly in the best way — and also extremely wrong, according to a study published in PLOS One.

According to researchers from the University of Texas at Austin and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, depictions of tongue-wagging dinosaurs need a fact-check because dinosaurs couldn’t actually stick out their tongues. Instead of lizard-like tongues that could stretch, dinosaurs had tongues more similar to those of alligators: Fleshy slabs rooted to the bottom of their mouths.

“They’ve been reconstructed the wrong way for a long time,” co-author Julia Clark, Ph.D. said in a statement.

That means that dinosaur tongues looked less like this:

An inaccurate reconstruction of a dinosaur.

And more like this:

That's more like it.

Clark and her team came to this realization by comparing the hyoid bones and muscles of extinct dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and alligators to those of modern birds and alligator specimens. The hyoid bone is a horseshoe-shaped bone between the chin and the thyroid cartilage that supports and serves as an anchor for the tongue in most animals. Because extinct dinosaurs are related to crocodiles, pterosaurs and modern birds, the team theorized, comparing the anatomy of each would reveal similarities and differences in tongue anatomy.

“Tongues are often overlooked,” lead author Zhiheng Li, Ph.D. explained in the statement. “But they offer key insights into the lifestyles of extinct animals.”

The researchers compared high-resolution images of the hyoid muscles and bones from 15 modern specimens — including ostriches and ducks — and compared them to those of preserved fossil specimens found in northeastern China. This comparative analysis revealed that the hyoid bones of most dinosaurs were short, simple, and connected to a relatively immobile tongue, similar to the physiology of alligators and crocodiles.

The blue and green arrows point to the hyoid apparatus in the fossils.

This study serves as yet another recent revision to pop culture’s image of the dreaded dinosaurs. In 2016, scientists revealed that the T. rex didn’t roar, either.

Interestingly, this analysis also revealed insights on bird evolution. In the examination of bird hyoids, the researchers noticed a vast range of bird tongue shapes — a diversity that they hypothesize might be linked to flight. Shifts in tongue function likely happened as birds evolved and became more complex and mobile.

“Birds, in general, elaborate their tongue structure in remarkable ways,” says Clarke. “They are shocking.”

Photos via Spencer WrightWikimedia CommonsLi et. al. Giphy

Source: www.inverse.com

Extinct Gibbon Found in 2,250-Year-Old Tomb of Chinese Noblewoman

Saturday, June 23, 2018

Gibbons at play (c. 1427) by the Xuande Emperor, the fifth emperor of the Ming dynasty of China.

The remains of a previously unknown genus and species of gibbon, Junzi imperialis, have been found in an approximately 2,200-2,300 year-old royal tomb in Shaanxi province, China.

Gibbons (family Hylobatidae) have played an important role in Chinese culture for thousands of years, being present in ancient literature and art.

Their perceived ‘noble’ characteristics made them symbols of scholar-officials, and they became high-status pets from the Zhou dynasty (1046-256 BC).

The tomb in which the remains of Junzi imperialis were found may have belonged to Lady Xia, grandmother of China’s first emperor Qin Shi Huang (259-210 BC), the leader who ordered the building of the Great Wall of China and the Terracotta Warriors.

The tomb, discovered in 2004 at Shenheyuan, Xi’an (formerly the ancient capital Chang’an), was found to contain twelve pits with animal remains.

In one of the pits, archaeologists found skeletons of a leopard, a lynx, an Asiatic black bear, a crane, domestic mammals and birds, and a partial facial skeleton of a gibbon.

Sophisticated computer modeling reveals that the ancient gibbon bones represent an entirely new genus and species.

Junzi imperialis represents the first documented evidence of ape extinction following the last Ice Age,” said Dr. Samuel Turvey of the Zoological Society of London and co-authors.

“Historical accounts describe gibbons being caught near Chang’an into the 10th century and inhabiting Shaanxi province until the 18th century. These accounts may represent other undescribed, now extinct, species”

The findings, published in the journal Science, challenge the notion that ape species haven’t been rendered extinct by humans, throughout time.

“Our discovery and description of Junzi imperialis suggests that we are underestimating the impact of humans on primate diversity,” Dr. Turvey said.

“The findings reveal the importance of using historical archives such as the archaeological record to inform our understanding of conservation and stress the need for greater international collaboration to protect surviving populations of gibbons in the wild.”

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Samuel T. Turvey et al. 2018. New genus of extinct Holocene gibbon associated with humans in Imperial China. Science 360 (6395): 1346-1349; doi: 10.1126/science.aao4903

Source: www.sci-news.com

Mitochondrial DNA of 22,000-Year-Old Giant Panda Reveals Long-Lost Lineage

Thursday, June 21, 2018

A research team led by scientists at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has analyzed mitochondrial DNA isolated from a 22,000-year-old panda specimen found in southern China and found that the ancient bear separated from present-day giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) around 183,000 years ago, suggesting that it belonged to a distinct group not found today.

The skull of an ancient giant panda (radiocarbon dated to 21,910-21,495 years before present) was found in Cizhutuo Cave in Leye county, China’s Guangxi province.

Its age and location in Guangxi province, where no wild giant pandas live today, as well as the difficulty of DNA preservation in a hot and humid region, placed it as a unique specimen to learn about ancient giant pandas from the last Ice Age.

“Using a single complete mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequence, we find a distinct mitochondrial lineage, suggesting that the Cizhutuo panda, while genetically more closely related to present-day pandas than other bears, has a deep, separate history from the common ancestor of present-day pandas,” explained lead author Dr. Qiaomei Fu, a researcher in the Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology.

“This really highlights that we need to sequence more DNA from ancient pandas to really capture how their genetic diversity has changed through time and how that relates to their current, much more restricted and fragmented habitat.”

In the study, Dr. Fu and co-authors used sophisticated methods to extract mtDNA from the ancient cave specimen.

That’s a particular challenge because the specimen comes from a subtropical environment, which makes preservation and recovery of DNA difficult.

To recover the Cizhutuo panda’s complete mitochondrial genome, the researchers sequenced 148,326 DNA fragments and aligned them to the giant panda mitochondrial genome reference sequence.

They then used the new genome along with mitochondrial genomes from 138 present-day bears and 32 ancient bears to construct a family tree.

Their analysis shows that the split between the Cizhutuo panda and the ancestor of present-day pandas goes back about 183,000 years.

The Cizhutuo panda also possesses 18 mutations that would alter the structure of proteins across six mitochondrial genes.

Those amino acid changes may be related to the ancient panda’s distinct habitat in Guangxi province or perhaps climate differences during the last Ice Age.

“The Cizhutuo individual lived in a subtropical environment during the last Ice Age, while present-day pandas live in a temperate environment,” the scientists said.

“That, along with a colder climate across East Asia around 200,000 years ago when their populations likely diverged, might have played a role in the diverging histories observed in their mtDNA lineages.”

“Comparing the Cizhutuo panda’s nuclear DNA to present-day genome-wide data would allow a more thorough analysis of the evolutionary history of the Cizhutuo specimen, as well as its shared history with present-day pandas,” Dr. Fu added.

The study was published in the June 18 edition of the journal Current Biology.

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Albert Min-Shan Ko et al. 2018. Mitochondrial genome of a 22,000-year-old giant panda from southern China reveals a new panda lineage. Current Biology28 (12): R693-R694; doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2018.05.008

Source: www.sci-news.com

How 1925's Silent Classic "The Lost World" Hatched The Age of Dinosaur Movies Long Before Jurassic Park

Thursday, June 21, 2018

It may seem like the animatronic and CGI dinos of the Jurassic Park franchise have been lumbering along for eternity. But long, long before all the running and screaming began, an epic achievement in silent film featured herds of stop-motion dinosaurs for an astounded public.

The Lost World premiered in theaters on February 2, 1925, and carried with it some of the most jaw-dropping visual effects ever displayed on the Silver Screen. It was the first full-length monster movie unleashed in America to integrate live-action and artificial, rampaging dino models. Every single dino-centric movie debuting over the past 93 years owes a colossal debt of gratitude to this seminal Hollywood hatchling.

This silent film adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's classic 1912 novel, The Lost World, was produced by First National Pictures and starred Wallace Beery as Professor Challenger. Upon release, the 106-minute fantasy epic was a bonafide smash, collecting $1.3 million in box office receipts off an estimated $700,000 budget. In 1998, it was declared "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and chosen for restoration preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

Directed by Harry O. Hoyt, it was a showcase for revolutionary stop-motion special effects by Willis O'Brien, who later went on to animate the great ape and Skull Island denizens for directors Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack in the original King Kong (1933).

The film's themes of mankind's blind hubris, science overreaching its grasp, and our responsibility to the myriad living creatures that inhabit the same Earth are at full force here. Its special effects technology might be considered quaint when judged by today's photo-realistic CGI standards, but the messages remain relevant to this day and have since been explored time and time again across genre.

The Lost World's still-engaging story centers around the ambitious scientist Professor Challenger (Wallace Beery), who ventures to a remote South American plateau in the dark heart of the Amazon jungle where primeval creatures still roam.

He foolishly captures a massive Brontosaurus in a bog and hauls it back to the bustling city of London, where the enraged beast predictably escapes and goes on a rampage, knocking down buildings, stampeding frightened citizens, and defiling national monuments. The finale depicts the dinosaur reaching the Tower Bridge, which collapses under its weight, allowing the beast to escape by paddling away down the Thames River toward freedom.

Nothing like this had ever been attempted at such an ambitious level before. Innocent 1920s audiences were astonished by the sight of triceratops, allosauruses, pteranodons, and stegosauruses parading across the theater screen.

Doyle himself screened early test footage of the dinosaurs for an audience at The Society of American Magicians in 1922 without revealing the source of its origin. In attendance that remarkable evening was the legendary escape artist and illusionist Harry Houdini. A notice in The New York Times the following day recounted that "Conan Doyle’s monsters of the ancient world, or of the new world which he has discovered in the ether, were extraordinarily lifelike. If fakes, they were masterpieces.”

Hoyt's mega-hit dinosaur movie also holds the curious distinction of being the first movie ever shown aboard a commercial airplane, in this case, an Imperial Airways flight from London to Paris in April 1925.

The Lost World 1925 - film poster

For you modern purists and cinephiles who want to experience The Lost World in all its original (but remastered for the 21st century) glory, Flicker Alley released an all-new 2K restored edition of The Lost World on Blu-ray last September. It's packed with deleted scenes and extras in a sparkling 110-minute presentation that hasn't been available since the film's original exhibition.

So before you corral the clan in the family truckster and trek over to see any other dinosaur movie in cinemas, pay homage to the past by absorbing the work of silent film-era masters with The Lost World.

Source: www.syfy.com

The Dinosaur Trade: How Celebrity Collectors and Glitzy Auctions Could be Damaging Science

Friday, June 22, 2018

Sue, the most expensive dinosaur ever sold at auction, was bought by the The Field Museum in Chicago for $8.36 million in 1997.  TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA/AFP/Getty Images

Every year, a handful of rare dinosaur skeletons are auctioned into private hands for astronomical sums. But paleontologists fear that the private fossil trade ends up costing science, and the public, a huge amount in lost knowledge.

nside the Eiffel Tower, the atmosphere was tense. The only item up for auction was the skeleton of an unknown carnivorous dinosaur, and the buyers gathered in the room on the first floor of the historic monument, or preparing to bid over the phone, knew that the fossil could easily go for millions of Euros.

“Each bidder was thinking, raising the bid level, calculating, each one holding their breath,” says Eric Mickeler, who oversaw the auction for Augettes, the Parisian auction house that sold the unidentified dinosaur on June 4, 2018. The fossil, excavated in Wyoming in 2013, is thought to be from the Allosaurus genus of dinosaurs but has significant differences from known species, suggesting that it might belong to an as-yet unknown species. After half an hour of bidding, the dinosaur sold to an unknown private buyer for €2.3 million (£1.7m). According to Aguttes, the buyer promised that the skeleton would eventually end up on public display.

Before the auction even started, the scientific world was vocal in its disapproval. After hearing about the planned auction, the body that represents professional vertebrate paleontologists, the Society for Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP), wrote to Aguttes asking for the sale to be cancelled. “Fossil specimens that are sold into private hands are lost to science,” the open letter warned.

“Fossils are not like ordinary art objects,” says David Polly, president of the SVP. “A skeleton like this is potentially a unique and irreplaceable piece of evidence of earth's past, and in that sense it's important to all of us.” But the private fossil trade is thriving, and no one can quite decide whether the industry, which can be a useful source of fossils for public museums, is harming or helping us to understand these ancient creatures.

At the core of this debate is a simple question. Should potentially-significant fossils that have lain underground for tens of millions of years be traded on the private market and potentially removed from the public eye forever, or should museums and public institutions have first dibs on these finds?

Every year, around five dinosaur skeletons pass through glitzy auction houses on their way into the hands of private collectors. In April this year, Parisian auction house Binoche et Giquello fetched just over €1.4 million (£1.2m) each for the skeletons of a Diplodocus and Allosaurus. In March 2017 it sold a Triceratops skull for €177,800 (£155,000) in an auction that included a 35-kilo meteorite fragment and a stuffed tiger. In December 2016, the near-complete skeleton of an Allosaurus was sold by Aguttes in Lyon for €1.1 million (£964,000). Again, the buyer promised the skeleton would be end on up public display, at an unspecified time and place.

But some skeletons sold at auction never even make it that far. In 2009, Samson, one of the most complete T. rex skeletons ever found, failed to meet its reserve price at a Las Vegas auction, but was eventually sold in after-auction negotiations for around $5 million (£3.8m). Its skull – unusual due to its fine condition and the fact that the dinosaur was a young adult – now sits in the lobby of a Californian software firm.

The skeleton of a Tarbosaurus bataar, a close relative of the T. rex, narrowly avoided ending up in a New York office block when it was repatriated to Mongolia after being unlawfully auctioned for $1 million in 2012. In December 2015 the actor Nicholas Cage agreed to return another bataar skull that he bought in 2007, after outbidding Leonardo DiCaprio at an auction in Beverly Hills. A near-complete mammoth skeleton, uncovered from the Siberian permafrost was not so lucky. In 2017 it was sold for €548,000 (£481,000) to a French waterproofing company with a mammoth for a logo.

These are only the specimens we know about. Fossil buyers at auction are not required to publicly disclose their identity or declare what they intend to do with their ancient trinkets, so many of the world’s most complete dinosaur skeletons are simply untraceable. “We've got people holding on to these vitally-important specimens,” says Thomas Carr, a paleontologist at Carthage College in Wisconsin.

No one knows how many skeletons are in the hands of private collectors, but Carr has been keeping tracking of T. rex specimens. He estimates that at least 15 T. rex skeletons are in private hands – several of those are younger dinosaurs that are particularly crucial to his own research into how tyrannosauroids develop as they grow older. “It's a significant number that can really fill in gaps in our knowledge of T. rex,” he says. In his research, Carr has worked on around 40 T. rex skeletons held in public institutions. If he could work on these privately held skeletons, he would suddenly have access to tens of thousands of more precious data points.

As is rumoured to be the case in this month’s auction, private collectors often end up loaning their specimens to museums for public display. Of the 15 T. rex skeletons in private hands Carr estimates that at least four of them – Stan, Tristan, Tinker and TAD – are currently on public display. But for Carr, and many paleontologists, simply being on public display is not good enough.

To start with, dinosaurs in private hands are difficult to keep tabs on. Only a couple of weeks ago TAD, a privately-owned 12-metre long adult T. rex whose nickname is short for “The American Dinosaur”, suddenly popped up in the atrium of a Hong Kong shopping centre. Where it came from, or where it’ll go after the exhibition is torn down at the end of this month, is anyone’s guess.

For paleontologists like Carr, this is a major problem. “The cornerstone of all the sciences is reproducibility of observations,” he says. A T. rex skeleton that’s a permanent part of a university or museum collection can be examined by any paleontologist at any time. If 40 years from now a future paleontologist want to double-check one of Carr's measurements of a T. rex skull – or the technology to examine those skulls improved – those future paleontologists can go back to the same museum that Carr got his fossil from and measure the skull again to interrogate, double-check and improve upon his findings.

With privately-owned fossils there is no such guarantee. Even if a private collector loans a skeleton to a museum, as is the case with Stan, Tristan and Tinker, there’s no telling how long that specimen will remain in place before it’s whisked elsewhere at the whim of its owner. Because of the risk that a specimen might become unavailable in the future, Carr is unequivocal in his insistence that paleontologists should not study any skeleton in private hands, even if it’s on public display.

Carr is not alone in his insistence that paleontologists should draw a clear ethical line that keeps them from studying privately-owned fossils loaned to public collections. “That’s not good enough,” says Kenshu Shimada, a professor of paleobiology at DePaul University in Chicago and the author of a 2014 paper that calls commercial fossil collecting the greatest challenge facing paleontology today. For Shimada, there are also practical concerns about studying privately-held fossils. Many of the best academic journals simply won't publish papers written about fossils held in private hands, so even if he could access a privately-held specimen, there's no guarantee he could publish the results that came from studying it. “I have a paleontologist’s perspective," he says. "Fossils are priceless. It’s a completely different way of viewing that same fossil.”

On the other side of this divide are the private fossil hunters who actually excavate these skeletons. For some academic paleontologists even knowing what to call them is difficult. Some, like Shimada, opt for the term “commercial collectors.” Others prefer “commercial paleontologists,” acknowledging that many of the most stunning dinosaurs in museums today were dug up by private teams who some write off as capitalist hucksters with little regard to science.

“There are some people in academia that think that if you're not a degreed paleontologist, you're not qualified to work on this,” says Mike Triebold, a private fossil collector who usually works in the fossil-rich rock formations of the American West. “That’s absolute hogwash. It’s bullshit.”

Triebold, who has more than 30 years of experience and a long list of scientific papers to his name, says that people who baulk at the high prices some fossils go for just don’t realise the amount of work involved in excavation. A typical elephant-sized dinosaur, he says, takes around 15,000 hours to excavate and get ready for display. “Dinosaurs are pricey because they take so much labour to prepare. If you have to spend $50,000 on a dinosaur you pretty damn well better get some good money for it or you’re gonna go broke.”

But to make a living from digging up long-dead dinosaurs, you have to turn fossil finding into a formula. Triebold specialises in fossils from the late Cretaceous period – the period of time about 66 million years ago, just before the mass extinction that killed off the dinosaurs. Fortunately, the American west – particularly Montana, Kansas and the Dakotas – is littered with rock formations that date from this era. For Triebold, and other private collectors like him, the desolate ranches of the western United States are dinosaur country.

“There’s this public myth that dinosaurs are rare,” Triebold says. “Dinosaurs are most certainly not rare – what is rare are the people who are not only capable of recognising them but also have the skills to properly excavate, bring them back and prepare them.”

When Triebold visits a fossil site, like the Hells Creek formation in Montana, he starts by studying the loose rocks at the base of cliffs, searching for a fragment of tooth or bone hidden amongst the scree dislodged by years of gentle erosion. Occasionally, a sliver of fossil at the foot of a cliff hints at the presence of a fossil further up that might be worth excavating. Since these formations are constantly eroding and disgorging their contents, there’s a good chance that returning to a fossil site from years earlier will yield new finds.

Following this careful formula has led Triebold to some spectacular finds. In 1994 he uncovered a Pachycephalosaurus – a bizarre dinosaur with a large boney plate on the top of its skull. His discovery, which is now in Tokyo’s National Museum of Nature and Science, was the first time a Pachycephalosaurus specimen had been found with both a skull and skeleton intact, and the weedy neck of this find cast doubt on the idea that the creature’s boney skull was used to headbutt other dinosaurs. In 2003 he found the first complete skeleton of a Protosphyraena – a swordfish-like creature from the same time as the dinosaurs that Triebold hasn’t yet found a buyer for.

Most of the time, however, Triebold has already sorted a buyer before he even starts on a dig. About 85 per cent of his work comes from museums who commission him to excavate a specific kind of dinosaur and prepare it for display in their collection. Only a small fraction of his finds, between five and ten per cent, go to private collectors. Sometimes, he says, he goes an entire year without selling a single specimen into private hands.

In the US, all of these fossils are excavated from private land – usually vast cattle ranches that can extend for hundreds of miles. Unlike Mongolia and Brazil, where laws restrict all private fossil collection, any fossil found on private land in the US belongs to the landowner. “In this age it’s really hard for people in agriculture to make a living, so it’s nice of them to have another crop,” says Pete Larson, a private fossil collector and president of the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research.

In paleontological circles, Larson is something of a living legend. He has personally uncovered 10 T. rex skeletons, more than any other fossil hunter. In 1990 he paid ranch owner Maurice Williams $5,000 to excavate Sue, the most complete T. rex skeleton ever found, from his property in western South Dakota. Two years later, the skeleton was seized by the US government and a court eventually concluded that, since the property the skeleton was found in was held in trust by the United States Department of the Interior, Williams could not sell the rights to his fossil, and so retained its ownership. Eventually, the T. rex was bought by The Field Museum in Chicago, with funds donated by Walt Disney Parks and McDonalds, for $8.36 million (£6.34m) – the highest price ever paid for a fossil at auction.

As with Triebold, Larson’s greatest source of fresh fossils are ranchers. Some he pays a yearly fee to work on their land and others he signs per-find contracts for a fixed portion of the final sale price. Usually, he pays the landowner anything upwards of 12.5 per cent of the fixed price that he agrees beforehand with the museum or individual that commissions him to find a specific fossil.

Larson and Triebold both agree that they wouldn’t sell scientifically significant fossils into private hands. But no one can agree what the definition of scientifically significant is. A near-complete T. rex skeleton like Sue is significant, sure, and it only narrowly escaped falling into private hands. But is a Triceratopsskeleton – one of the most commonly-found complete skeletons – as vital to science? What about Mosasaur teeth that are extracted from Moroccan phosphate mines and shipped to small-time fossil sellers in blocks containing 20,000 teeth at a time?

For Carr, every single fossil is significant, and selling any kind of fossil sets a dangerous precedent that they are trinkets and not important scientific artefacts. “Fossils are nothing but information, and that’s vital information for understanding evolution and biology and everything about a species,” he says. “They're like first edition single print books that ought to be secured in a library so that the knowledge that those books contain will forever be accessible.”

But Paul Barrett at London's Natural History Museum takes a more ambivalent view of the private fossil trade. Historically, private collectors have been an important source of specimens for public museums, although that is becoming slightly less common as acquisition budgets have reduced and museums have started to place more emphasis on capturing the contextual information that goes along with fossils. It doesn't help that high-profile auctions push up the price of fossils, particularly the rare dinosaurs that are of most interest to both collectors and palaeontologists.

Sometimes, however, private sales are a useful way for museums to get their hands on stunning specimens. In 2012, Barrett spotted a cast of a near-complete Stegosaurus at Tucson Gem and Mineral Show – the largest gemstone and fossil trade show in the world – and, eventually, the Museum bought the original skeleton from the private collector.

“We buy them specifically to bring them into the public trust and make them available to people,” he says. Nowadays, most fossils come into museums through a combination of private donations, purchases and targeted research programmes that are usually supported by external grants. “Sometimes private collectors buy fossils specifically to donate, or they may decide after a period that they have had enough enjoyment out of it and want to donate it,” he says.

Writing off the private fossil trade altogether could have serious consequences for people whose livelihoods depends on it. In countries like Morocco, where there is a significant legal fossil trade, many people right on the edge of poverty are involved in sorting through rubble to find fossils, extracting them and preparing them for export. “Then it comes down to a moral judgement about whether the purity of this scientific case outweighs the fact that there are people trying to make a living from these objects,” Barrett says.

But there is a darker side to the private fossil trade. Highly publicised auctions like the one in Paris earlier this month might increase the demand for illegally traded fossils, smuggled out of countries like Mongolia, where laws prevent any fossil from leaving the country. “Once you make this public, you’re making the market bigger,” says Bolortsetseg Minjin, a Mongolian paleontologist who works to repatriate the fossils of dinosaurs smuggled out of her country. Between 2013 and 2016 she helped to repatriated 32 dinosaur specimens, among them several near-complete skeletons.

“It's not just random Mongolian poachers that do this – this is organised, there's a trail of fossils going to certain countries, in very targeted places,” she says. Often, these illegal fossils end up in unknown private hands but sometimes they make it all the way to auction. In 2012, the skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus relative that has only ever been found in Mongolia, Tarbosaurus bataar, came to Bolortsetseg's attention when it was offered for sale at a New York auction house. Despite protestations from the Mongolian government, and a last-ditch effort to scrap the auction, the skeleton was sold for $1 million (£760,000).

But Bolortsetseg had her suspicions about the fossil’s origins. In the auction catalogue it was listed as being found in “Central Asia,” a vague label that avoided mentioning China or Mongolia, two countries were fossil export is illegal. After a legal battle, the skeleton was returned to Mongolia, and the fossil smuggler who removed it in the first place was sentenced to three months in prison and three months of community confinement.

For Bolortsetseg, who is currently working on repatriating another bataar skull, treating fossils like works of art misses the real value of these unique objects. She says that we should think about fossils like any living endangered species, as things that should be protected, not sold to the highest bidder. And, if they’re kept in the right hands, she says, they could end up filling in some of the gaping gaps in our knowledge about the Earth, and the strange animals that spent hundreds of millions of years dominating it. “This is an important part of nature that needs to be protected.”

Source: www.wired.co.uk

The Real Science of Bringing Back the Dinosaurs

Thursday, June 21, 2018

Jack Horner, a paleontologist who inspired a character in the original Jurassic Park, says science is ready to resurrect the dinosaurs. But should we?

Twenty five years ago, Jurassic Park roared its way into theaters worldwide. And though the action-packed dino flick would inspire a new generation of paleontologists, director Steven Spielberg packed in more science fiction than actual science.

Since the film's 1993 debut, scientists have discovered that velociraptors were actually feathered, Dilophosauruses definitely didn’t spit poison, and a T. rex’s vision was very much not based on movement. Even the very premise of the film—resurrecting dinosaurs with DNA extracted from ancient mosquitoes—is now considered likely impossible.

But despite these scientific lapses, Jurassic Park did ask one important question: Could dinosaurs one day walk among humans?

“If you don’t have time to wait for evolution to change the way [an animal] looks, modern technology can do that,” says Jack Horner, famed paleontologist and consultant on all five Jurassic Park movies. “We have all kinds of... biological modification tools. The possibility of creating a dinosaur exists right now.”

Jurassic Park was more than a best-selling book and cinematic phenomenon. Spielberg's classic also ushered in a “golden age of dinosaur discovery.

According to NBC News, in the decade prior to the release of Jurassic Park, paleontologists discovered about new 15 species of dinosaurs per year. Over the last decade, that rate of discovery has increased to about one species a week. That list includes a near complete skeleton of a massive plant eater the size of a dozen African elephants and a small, fast, quail-like dinosaur that one paleontologist dubbed a “fluffy feathered poodle from hell.”

Jurassic Park can’t take all the credit. Countries are allowing international access to dig sites and technology is speeding up the search, but the movie certainly helped to light the spark. In 2018 there are nearly four times more active dinosaur paleontologists than there were three decades ago—a result of what’s known as the “Jurassic Park effect.”

“I have a near-photographic memory of the helicopter ride to the island...and [that] first shot of the Brachiosaurus,” says Yale paleontologist Bhart-Anjan Bhullar, who was nine when the movie came out. “I saw it two or three times in the theater.”

The Amber Illusion

But what makes up accurate science and what works at the box office are rarely the same thing, and that includes cloning a dinosaur. Recent findings have shown that DNA sequences long enough to be usable and readable for cloning purposes probably can’t survive more than 1.5 million years with the oldest known DNA sample coming from a 700,000-year-old horse. With dinosaurs exiting the world stage some 65 million years ago, finding useful dino DNA trapped in amber is probably pure science fiction.

“I HAVE A NEAR-PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY OF THE HELICOPTER RIDE TO THE ISLAND...AND [THAT] FIRST SHOT OF THE BRACHIOSAURUS."

“We can find fragments of DNA [in dinosaur fossils], but not enough of a genome to activate it,” says Mark Norell, Chair and Macaulay Curator in the American Museum of Natural History's Division of Paleontology. “The chances of finding a whole genome is nearly impossible.”

More than that, we don’t have the genetic blueprint for cloning a dinosaur.

“In what order are those genes expressed? What chromosomes are they lined upon?,” asks evolutionary biologist Mary Schweitzer, an expert in extracting proteins from dinosaur fossils. “Those are not coded for in the DNA. If you get it wrong, you don’t get a dinosaur. I think [cloning a dinosaur from DNA] is insurtomable with the technology we have anytime in the foreseeable future.”

From Jurassic Park to the Pigeon

Creating a clone from dino DNA maybe a scientific dead-end, but the idea of bringing back dinosaurs is far from extinct.

In 2009, Horner co-wrote a book titled How to Build a Dinosaur, proposing the wild idea of taking a chicken embryo and genetically modifying it so that it hatched with a head, teeth, claws, and tail like its ancient ancestor, a velociraptor. He calls this ancient world hybrid a “dino-chicken.”

“The question in my mind [back then] is, could we back the whole process up?” Horner told Popular Mechanics. “Could we start with a bird and retro engineer a dinosaur out of it? Yeah, I thought it could be done.”

This kind of out-of-the-box thinking would inspire some truly revolutionary research. In 2015, Bhullar and his colleagues showed that it was potentially possible to reverse-engineer evolution by using what we’ve learned over the last two decades and taking advantage of newly developed technologies.

For example, one of the most distinctive features of a bird is its beak, but fossil records show that dinosaurs definitely had snouts with razor sharp teeth. So, how and when in its 65-million-year-long evolutionary chain did those toothed snouts give way to modern beaks?

To figure out the answer, researchers used a technique called “geometric morphometrics,” in which a computer compiles hundreds of skeletal and skull images from numerous ancestral animals—including dino fossils, birds, crocodiles, and lizards—and creates a series of 3D scans of their shape.

These models are compared to one another to determine the precise differences in bone size, shape, and configuration among the specimens. The data narrow the search and can lead to finding exact genes and proteins that over the slow course of evolution created the bird beak of today. With this information, scientists used tiny beads coated with protein inhibitors that blocked protein activity, and which lead to bird-specific gene expressions in the embryonic chicken reverting to its ancestral anatomy.

Two years after this breakthrough research, another study by evolutionary biologists from John Hopkins and Beijing built upon this finding and further cemented the transition from sharp-toothed snouts to pointy beaks, or “the line of evolution from a Tyrannosaurus rex to a pigeon.

Over the last decade, researchers have found that birds still possess the ability to grow razor-sharp teethdevelop dinosaur toes, and still have similar jaws as their ancestors. To Horner, all of this further cements his 2009 theory of manipulating a chicken embryo into having dinosaur characteristics.

Now he wants to hatch a dino-chicken.

Modern Science Meets 65-Million-Year-Old Biology

The way Horner explains it, creating a dino-chicken doesn’t seem complicated at all.

“It’s basically opening up one egg at a time and going in and retrieving RNA,” he says. “And, then, opening up another egg and using a gene switch...and inserting back into each cell something that either turns on a particular gene or turns it off. It’s just gene switching, that’s all it is.”

The process or “turning off” a gene would cause certain parts of the anatomy to revert to its prehistoric state, essentially deleting millions of years of evolution. It closely follows the same method Bhullar used in embryos in 2015, but now Horner believes the technology is ready to handle such a complicated procedure.

The system called CRISPR/Cas9 is the premier tool of the modern genetic engineer. This system of genetic guides and enzymes can find, cut, and edit DNA; it's the most commonly employed of the CRISPR technologies. Wired compares it to the “genetic equivalent of Microsoft Word." CRISPR/Cas9 was first used in the yogurt and cheese industry about a decade ago. In the span of only a few years, this gene-editing system showed such potential that it could alter virtually any living organism, including humans.

Of course, there are risks. CRISPR is still imprecise, sometimes binding to or cutting the wrong gene. But the system remains the best tool for gene targeting methods, and scientists are still figuring out the safest ways to use it. Horner believes CRISPR is the tool scientists have been waiting for to finally bring dinosaurs—or at least a hybrid version—back from extinction.

“This chicken when it hatches out... will have a weird looking head that won’t look like a bird. It will walk a little different than chickens do. And it will have arms and hands and it will have a long, boney tail,” says Horner. “It will look more like a dinosaur than a chicken.”

Echoing Ian Malcolm’s dire warning in Jurassic Park, other paleontologists and evolutionary biologists are not as enthusiastic about hatching a dino-chicken.

Dana Rashid, an evolutionary biologist at Montana State University who worked with Horner and now runs the so-called DinoChicken lab after Horner retired in 2016, says that while it’s “theoretically possible” to hatch a dino-chicken in five years or so, it shouldn’t be a goal.

Instead, Rashid continues studying the tail evolution from dinosaurs to birds over the last 150 million years and has already discovered some amazing things. She’s found that it required far fewer mutations that previously thought to go from the long tails of dinosaurs to the short, fused tails of today’s birds.

While this work can certainly be used in conjunction with Horner’s mission to engineer a dino-chicken, Rashid says this dino-tail study could help treat Ankylosing Spondylitis, a fairly common condition in which vertebrae fuse. Affecting 1 in 140 people, it’s the primary cause of non-injury related back pain in adolescents.

“In trying to understand the biology of the tail in birds, we found a lot of parallels to this disease,” says Rashid, “I... have some evidence to what that [genetic] trigger might be. While we can’t share what that is yet, we’re pretty excited about it.”

Experimenting with gene switching, retro engineering, and growing prehistoric-like tails could also have other fascinating medical implications. “If we can figure out how to extend the tail, there could be applications for people who become paralyzed because of spinal accidents.” She calls Horner a visionary and a genius, but says that we shouldn’t just be “making a dino-chicken for the heck of it.”

Other scientists also disagree with Horner’s dino-chicken research, some more harshly than others. While Norell acknowledges that we know a lot more about gene switching, dinosaur traits, and evolution than we did 25 years ago, he thinks we are still way far off from actually creating a dinosaur. He’s concerned that switching one or two genes will have an unknown effect on other cells in the organism. He also thinks that this “engineering” will not make a dinosaur.

“We can create all kinds of weirdo stuff by modifying a gene here and there,” says Norell, “We could modify humans to have a tail. That doesn’t make us a non-humanoid monkey. That just makes us a human with a tail.”

Schweitzer is a former student of Horner’s, but she wonders about the ethical question of creating such a creature. “You got one chicken with a velociraptor head and tail. We’ve proven we can do it, so we are real cool, but it’s cruel,” says Schweitzer. “Bringing an organism back... just to prove you can, it’s a waste.”

But Horner believes that we are so far along in the process already, that he’d only need an additional “$300,000 to a million dollars” and just one year to physically hatch an animal unlike anything Earth has seen in millions of years.

“I don’t see any difference between a dino-chicken and a chihuahua,” says Horner, “It’s just another genetically modified animal.”

But lab-based genetic modification is natural evolution set to maximum overdrive. Even the English Bulldog, sometimes referred to as a “genetic monstrosity,” took decades to create.

“I think.. it’s hubris,” says Schweitzer, “Humans are amazingly short-sighted and never think about the long term ramifications of messing with a genome of a complex organism. Building something just because we can is going to get us in trouble.”

Buried beneath mounds of disproven dinosaur science and new-age genetic modification, there’s still the issue that was raised on screen 25 years ago by Dr. Malcolm: We are so preoccupied with if we could, we are not stopping to ask if we should.

It's this scientific balance between what's possible and what's ethical that remains Jurassic Park's lasting truth.

Source: www.popularmechanics.com

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