nandi's blog

Royal Gorge Dinosaur Experience to Unveil New Exhibit, Replace T. rex After Fire

Thursday, May 3, 2018

The T-Rex at the Royal Gorge Dinosaur Experience was destroyed by a fire that was ignited by an electrical issue in March. The museum plans to replace the animatronic. (Zach Reynolds / Royal Gorge Dinosaur Experience)

Stego Mania event set for May 19 to welcome new member of cast skeleton collection.

The Royal Gorge Dinosaur Experience is ready to roar this spring with a new event after rebounding from a fluke electrical fire in late March.

The fire, with its 30-foot wall of flames destroyed the animatronic T. rex. Video footage and photos taken of the fire by director Zach Reynolds was viewed by tens of millions of people across the world on television news programs, newspapers and other media websites.

In a press release on Wednesday, the museum said the fire incident wasn't the type of national attention it was seeking when it opened its doors in July 2016, but it is back after a two-month hiatus with upgrades and improvements to its 10-acre grounds and 16,500 square-foot museum.

The museum will host a Stego Mania event from 1 to 3 p.m. May 19 to welcome the newest and most high-tech member of the museum's cast skeleton collection. In the press release, the museum states the event is in line with its official mission statement of providing affordable, dynamic and high-value educational opportunities for children of all ages.

The Stego Mania will celebrate the arrival of the brand-new Stegosaurus display, which was custom-built by Mike Triebold of Triebold Paleontology, Inc., a world leader in dinosaur casts and the builder of the RGDE's entire cast-skeleton collection — this one using cutting-edge scanning and printing technologies.

Triebold was granted permission from the federal government to create a three-dimensional digital scan of the physical bones of Denver Museum of Nature and Science's Stegosaurus, which was discovered by famed paleontologist Fred Kessler in Colorado's Garden Park Fossil Area in 1936, not far from the museum.

"I believe that this is the first dinosaur skeleton in the world to have been completely made from 3-D scanning and printing," said Triebold of the life-sized casting.

The project took two years to complete. Once unveiled, the unique Stegosaurus casting will reside on its own custom-built permanent display on the southwestern corner of the Main Museum Exhibit Hall.

Stego Mania festivities will kick-off at 1 p.m. May 19 with the official unveiling of the new Stegosaurus cast, followed by a presentation about the skeleton's high-tech creation process from Triebold.

Diana Biggs, one of the RGDE's Adventure Guides and resident dinosaur experts, will present "Stego 101" for children (ages 4 and up) in the museum's Kids Interactive Area. The museum also will make Stegosaurus-themed crafts on the patio with younger guests (ages 4-12), and provide light refreshments for everyone. Additionally, food trucks will be available, and all Stegosaurus-related items in the gift shop will be 15 percent off during regular business hours of 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The museum also will hand out giveaways during the event.

In the release, the museum states it has ordered a replacement animatronic T. rex, and the nearby Ropes Course was thoroughly inspected, re-certified and re-opened a week after the fire. The now-iconic photograph of the fire will grace the cover of an upcoming rock-n'-roll album, and the museum plans to make the image available on official RGDE gift-shop merchandise.

The museum will offer half-off admission for all moms May 13, Mother's Day. Also, all gift shop items will be 15 percent off May 18 in celebration of International Museum Day. Beginning May 24, the RGDE will expand its days and hours to 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday through Sunday.

Aource: www.canoncitydailyrecord.com

Fossils Reveal How Ancient Birds Got Their Beaks

Thursday, May 3, 2018

BIRD BEAK  Using fossils of an ancient toothed bird (illustrated at right), scientists made a 3-D reconstruction of the bird’s skull (left), revealing the animal had a small, pincerlike beak at the tip of its snout.

New fossil leads to the most detailed 3-D reconstruction of Ichthyornis dispar’s skull.

A bird that lived alongside dinosaurs may have preened its feathers like modern birds — despite a full mouth of teeth that also let it chomp like a dino.

A new 3-D reconstruction of the skull of Ichthyornis dispar, which lived during the Late Cretaceous period between 87 million and 82 million years ago, reveals that the ancient fowl had a small, primitive beak and a mobile upper jaw. That mobility allowed the bird to use its beak with precision to groom itself and grab objects, similar to how modern birds employ their beaks, researchers report in the May 3 Nature. But I. dispar also retained some features from its nonavian dinosaur ancestors, including strong jaw muscles in addition to the teeth.

I. dispar holds a special place because it was for the longest time one of the only known toothed birds,” says Lawrence Witmer, a vertebrate paleontologist at Ohio University in Athens, who was not involved in the new study. By providing the first in-depth look at the bird’s skull, the study provides important new details on the transition from the skin-covered, toothy jaws of dinosaurs into the keratin-covered, toothless beaks of modern birds, Witmer says.

Indeed, I. dispar is a paleontology textbook staple. About 150 years ago, paleontologist Othniel C. Marsh described a ternlike water bird that had a wingspan of about 60 centimeters. The fossil revealed that the extinct bird shared some traits with nonavian dinosaurs, such as a full mouth of teeth. However, its wings and breastbone strongly resembled those of modern birds, suggesting the bird could fly.

Unlike the rather reptilian skull of the dino-bird Archaeopteryx (SN: 4/14/18, p. 9), I. dispar’s skull looks much more like that of modern birds, with a beak and relatively large head, says study coauthor Bhart-Anjan Bhullar, a vertebrate paleontologist at Yale University. But details on these structures have been lacking; the skulls of fossils dug up in the 19th century were smashed flat in places, Bhullar says. “A lot of important anatomy is obscured because of that.”

Then, in 2014, researchers unearthed a new I. dispar fossil with a nearly perfectly preserved skull. From that fossil, three other partial skulls from different museum collections, and a reanalysis of the skull discovered 150 years ago, the researchers created a mosaic of the complete ancient bird’s head in 3-D.

The reconstruction revealed that I. dispar had a mobile upper jaw that the bird could raise independently of the lower jaw, as modern birds do. That range of motion allowed the animal to use its tiny beak like tweezers to peck or preen or grasp objects. But the bird also had large holes in the sides of the skull, representing regions where jaw muscles were attached. The size of these holes suggests that I. dispar had strong jaw muscles, which allowed it to chomp with its teeth to hold food, like nonavian dinosaurs did. “It was pecking like a bird and biting down like a dino,” Bhullar says.

By measuring the detailed structures of the braincase, the team also determined that I. dispar’s brain resembled that of modern birds in many ways, including its large forebrain – related to cognitive abilities – and its big optic lobes, which process images sent from the eyes. “This thing was thinking like a bird, and had sensitive vision and motor coordination,” Bhullar adds, suggesting that these adaptations are related to the intense physical requirements for complex flight.

Vertebrate paleontologist Luis Chiappe of the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles commends the careful anatomical study of this important historical fossil. But he is not convinced that the size of the braincase is necessarily related to capability for flight, or that the transitional features observed in this species are representative of the dino-to-bird transition in general. “We have big questions about what was happening with birds in the Late Cretaceous — there is very little known about their skull morphology,” Chiappe says. “It could be that what we see in Ichthyornis might not be representative of an evolutionary trend.”

Citations
D. J. Field et al. Complete Ichthyornis skull illuminates mosaic assembly of the avian head. Nature. Vol. 557, May 3, 2018, p. 96. doi: 10.1038/s41586-018-0053-y.

K. Padian. Evolutionary insights from an ancient bird. Nature. Vol. 557, May 3, 2018, p. 36. doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-04780-3.

Source: www.sciencenews.org

Scotland's Top 10 Dinosaur and Fossil Discoveries

Thursday, May 3, 2018

Skye Ichthyosaur. Picture: Todd Marshall

Scotland's Top 10 Dinosaur and Fossil Discoveries.

A FEW weeks ago my team at the University of Edinburgh announced the newest dinosaur discovery in Scotland: a site on Skye that preserves about 50 footprints made by plant-eating and meat-eating species that lived 170 million years ago.

But this is merely the latest in a long line of fossil discoveries that have made Scotland one of the world's great hunting grounds for palaeontologists.

I chronicle some of these discoveries in my new book, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, an adult pop science tome that tells the story of dinosaur history: their origins, rise to dominance, development into colossal species and feathered ancestors of today's birds, and ultimate extinction.

Here is a list of what I consider the top 10 Scottish fossil discoveries:

Dinosaur footprints on Skye

The first clue that dinosaurs once lived in Scotland was a single footprint of a beaked, plant-eating species, found in the 1980s on a block of limestone that had fallen from a cliff on the Trotternish Peninsula of north-eastern Skye and described by geologists Julian Andrews and John Hudson.

Since that time, hundreds (or perhaps thousands) of other dinosaur tracks have been discovered across Skye, including a collection of over 100 prints discovered by Tom Challands and me in 2015 near Duntulm Castle. These tracks were made in an ancient lagoon by sauropods, members of that group of long-necked, pot-bellied plant-eating behemoths that includes Brontosaurus and Diplodocus.

Tracks of meat-eating theropods – early cousins of T. rex – can be seen on location at Staffin Slipway, and tiny theropod tracks (some of the smallest dinosaur footprints ever found) can be seen on exhibit at the charming Staffin Museum, built by Skye native and palaeontology enthusiast Dugald Ross from the ruins of a one-room schoolhouse.

The footprints announced a few weeks ago are located not too far from the museum, along the coast near the dramatic headland of Brothers' Point. They were discovered in 2016 by my PhD student Davide Foffa and mapped using drones by my Master's student Paige dePolo.

Dinosaur bones on Skye

There are other types of dinosaur fossils found on Skye: the bones and teeth of the animals themselves. The first two bones from Skye were announced in 1995: a small hindlimb bone of a fast-running meat-eater and a huge, stocky limb bone from one of the lagoon-dwelling sauropods.

Many other dinosaur bones have turned up since then, many of which have been studied by Neil Clark at the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow and Dugald Ross of the Staffin Museum, who over the last five years have been collaborating with my Edinburgh team and colleagues from National Museums Scotland on new fieldwork expeditions.

These bones include the teeth and tail bones of sauropods, the arm bones of one of the oldest armoured dinosaurs from anywhere in the world, and several serrated, razor-sharp teeth of meat-eaters.

Together the bones, teeth and footprints tell us that a diverse community of dinosaurs thrived on Skye about 170 million years ago, during the middle part of the Jurassic Period, at a time when the Earth was much warmer and Scotland was located closer to the equator, with a subtropical climate.

While the dinosaurs were dominating the land, a menagerie of swimming reptiles ruled the oceans. Chief among these were the ichthyosaurs, fast-swimmers with flippers and long snouts that looked like dolphins. In 2015, my team and I named the first ichthyosaur from Scotland, giving it the Gaelic name Dearcmhara.

Dob's Linn graptolites

Dinosaurs get most of the attention, but there are many other globally famous fossils that come from Scotland, many of which are much older than the dinosaurs. A prime example are the specimens found at Dob's Linn in the Borders, a gorgeous and well-hidden waterfall that courses over dark rocks that were deposited in the ocean some 445 million years ago.

These small fossils can fit in the palm of your hand, and look like pencil scratchings on the black rock. But they are graptolites: colonial animals with a fleshy skeleton that floated around in the oceans. The Dob's Linn graptolites were studied by the pioneering palaeontologist Charles Lapworth and are among the best examples of these animals from anywhere in the world.

Rhynie Chert

The first living things evolved in the ocean, and that's where life stayed for hundreds of millions of years. Then some plants gained a foothold on land, and bugs followed, and life was set on a radical new course. The oldest fossil record of a land ecosystem comes from the 410-million-year-old Rhynie Chert, a rock deposit formed in a hot spring and today exposed in Aberdeenshire.

The Rhynie plants were bizarre twig-like growths that rarely grew more than a metre tall, and lacked any of the flowers or leaves so common on plants today.

Devonian fishes

A thick sequence of red and brown rocks called the Old Red Sandstone stretches across patches of the Highlands, recording a series of river and lake environments that covered much of Scotland during the Devonian Period, some 419-358 million years ago.

These lakes were teeming with fishes – but not the sharks, salmon, tunas, and other species we're so familiar with today. Some of them were early members of the major groups of modern fishes, but others were weird critters called placoderms, whose heads were covered with plates of bone that looked like a helmet.

These fishes can be found in the flagstones once quarried for roofing slates, particularly near Caithness. They were first studied in detail by the famous Scottish preacher, poet, and palaeontologist Hugh Miller.

Granton conodont animal

For well over a century, palaeontologists had been finding a variety of tiny, pointy, tooth-like scraps around the world, in rocks that formed between about 540 and 200 million years ago. These so-called "conodonts" became important fossils for dating rocks and finding oil reservoirs, but nobody knew what type of animal they belonged to ... until a chance discovery in a museum drawer in the 1980s.

On a slab of rock pried out of Granton Harbour in Edinburgh, scientists found the remnants of a small, eel-like animal with a tail fin and a short head, with conodonts inside the mouth. This was the long-awaited conodont animal.

Wardie coprolites

Down the shore from Granton Harbour is another stretch of Forth coast in Edinburgh, called Wardie. A series of rock layers pokes out from the shore during low tide, stacked one on top of each other like the pages in a novel. They are cyclothems: repeated cycles of ocean rocks, coals, and rocks formed on land, during the Carboniferous Period (359-299 million years ago).

Fishes can be found in the ocean rocks, along with another type of much less glamorous fossil: coprolites, fossilised poo. In fact, the Wardie coprolites are celebrated as some of the finest petrified dung from anywhere in the world!

Bearsden shark

The animals that left the Wardie coprolites were most likely sharks. Back in the Carboniferous Period, sharks were not the enormous, great white terrors that inspire horror films. They were smaller and more primitive, and some were quite weird.

The best fossil of one of these sharks was discovered by Stan Wood in the 1980s at Bearsden, north of Glasgow. It is called Akmonistion, and it was about one metre long, had a skeleton made of cartilage, and had a spiky, anvil-shaped fin jutting upwards from its back.

Stan Wood's tetrapods

Stan Wood was probably the best fossil hunter Scotland has ever known. He had no formal training in science, but served a series of jobs (shipbuilder, navy officer, engineer, insurance salesman). In his thirties, he became smitten with fossils and for the next 40 years he scoured Scotland for whatever he could find, from sharks to reptiles and everything in between.

Some of his most important discoveries were early tetrapods: some of the first fishes that developed arms and legs, and fingers and toes, and moved onto the land.

A few months before his death in 2012, Stan and colleagues (including Jenny Clack, one of England's pre-eminent palaeontologists) announced the discovery of several new tetrapod fossils from the Borders, which dated from the very beginning of the Carboniferous Period, some 350+ million years old.

Elgin Reptiles

Once tetrapods moved onto land, they found a new environment ripe for the taking. During the remainder of the Carboniferous Period they diversified, and split into the lines leading to reptiles and mammals. In the following two intervals of geological time, the Permian and Triassic Periods, tetrapods lived across Scotland, and their fossils are found today as decayed voids in the sandstones of Elgin, slightly inland from the Moray Firth.

Among the so-called "Elgin reptiles" is Saltopus, a svelte, cat-sized reptile that raced around on its stilty hind legs, sometime around 230 million years ago.

Saltopus is what scientists call a dinosauromorph: one of the very closest cousins of dinosaurs, and the type of animal that eventually evolved into the great T. rex, Triceratops, Brontosaurus, and those long-necked and sharp-tooth species splashing around in the lagoons of Jurassic Skye.

Dr Steve Brusatte is reader in vertebrate palaeontology on the faculty of School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh. His new book The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs is published by Macmillan, priced £20, on May 3.

Source: www.heraldscotland.com

Mesa Museum Goes Jurassic With Dinosaur Replica Bursting Through Wall

Thursday, May 3, 2018

Arizona Museum of Natural History Dinosaur Sculpture

A Mesa museum unveiled an eye-catching addition to its exterior Tuesday, a fierce dinosaur that appears to be breaking through the wall.

An imposing, authentic replica of a Acrocanthosaurus now greets visitors to the Arizona Museum of Natural History.

“The new dinosaur bursting from the building is a great photo op for our visitors to commemorate their time here,” Mesa Mayor John Giles said. “I’m sure she’ll be a regular on social media feeds.”

Acrocanthosaurus was a 38-foot long, 7-ton carnivorous predator that lived in North America 100 to 120 million years ago.

The museum worked with a Kansas design firm, Dimensional Innovations, to build the dinosaur to accurate full-scale proportions and appearance.

“It truly takes a village, or perhaps a city, to create a scientifically accurate life-size Acrocanthosaurus,” museum director Tom Wilson said.

“There are so many people to thank, from our museum staff and volunteers to other city of Mesa employees, especially the Engineering Department, to Dimensional Innovations to our wonderful donors who have made this unique sculpture a reality.”

The Arizona Museum of Natural History has attracted more than 3 million visitors since it opened in 1990. It was located at 53 N. Macdonald.

The museum is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays. It was closed Mondays and and all federal and city holidays.

Source: http://ktar.com

University of Kansas Displays New Dinosaur Exhibit in Museum

Tuesday, May 1, 2018

Silvisaurus condrayi

Fossil was discovered in 1955.

The University of Kansas says the only known dinosaur that inhabited Kansas is now on display in the school's Natural History Museum.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reports that experts believe the Silvisaurus condrayi roamed the state 100 million years ago. The dinosaur was short but relatively long, measuring about 3 feet tall and 10 feet long.

The museum's exhibit features the dinosaur fossil discovered in 1955 by Warren Condray, who found the bone fragments embedded in rock on his Ottawa County ranch. It also includes a display where visitors can feel the texture of the Silvisaurus' armor plating.

The university says that part of the dinosaur had been exhibited but it was removed several years ago. University scientists collected fossils including the dinosaur's skull, lower jaw, teeth, neck bones, ribs, shoulder spikes and backbones from Condray's property.

Source: www.knssradio.com

When Dinomania Swept The 1850s

Wednesday, May 2, 2018

Lithograph by Joseph Nash depicting the official opening of Crystal Palace.

Already, the first day of the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations was a great success. Half a million people visited the official opening of the first World's Fair on May 1st, 1851 hosted in Crystal Palace, a twenty acres large greenhouse located in the Hyde Park of central London.

 

Inside the Crystal Palace, the "very best that human ingenuity and cultivated art and science could inspire" was displayed to the curious public. One of the organizers and judges of the spectacle was the famous Victorian palaeontologist Richard Owen, who supervised the zoological and botanical exhibitions, entertained guests and awarded medals to the most spectacular curiosities.

Hiding in the crowd was self-educated paleontologist Gideon Mantell, who had made his way to London despite a severe and very painful injury to the spine. He remembers in his diary that "The effect is indescribably overpowering. I cannot express the effect it has left upon my mind; nothing can prepare you for this." Mantel was enthusiastic about the new presented scientific tools, like telescopes, mechanical clocks and microscopes, but also admired the collection of rocks and minerals: "I managed to squeeze into the back and least crowded compartments of minerals and with some difficulty ascended the gallery overlooking the transept to look down on the sea of heads underneath." The World's Fair closed October of the same year.

It was later decided to relocate the Crystal Palace on Sydenham Hill, in suburb southern London, and part of the permanent park should be devoted to geology and paleontology. In the summer of 1852, Mantell, who'd discovered many fossil bones of prehistoric reptiles, was contacted by the Crystal Palace Company to discuss an ambitious project. A "Geological Court [to] be constructed, containing a collection of full-sized models of the animals and plants of certain geological periods, and that Dr. Mantell be requested to superintend the formation of that collection."

Here was finally a chance for Mantell to present his discoveries to a larger public. Unfortunately, he realized that his bad health would prevent him from finishing the project and so he refused. Just some months later Mantell died from an overdose of opiates used at the time as painkillers. So under the severe examination of Richard Owen, the first models of all known giant lizards of the time, the Ichthyosaurus, the Plesiosaurus, the Pterodactyls and the dinosaurs Megalosaurus, Iguanodon and Hylacosaurus (today referred as Hylaeosaurus) were completed.

An illustration by artist Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, published in 1854 in an article titled "On visual education as applied to geology" and dedicated to the reconstructions of Crystal Park. - B.W. Hawkins

Owen reconstructed the Iguanodon and the other dinosaurs as large, quadruped beasts, ignoring the observations of Mantell. Mantell noted that the forelegs of the Iguanodon are smaller than the hind-legs and the animal was more likely a biped reptile. But for the time the models of Crystal Palace were the most ambitious and accurate reconstructions of extinct animals ever realized.

The life-sized models inspired the very first Dinomania. Thousands of people visited the Crystal Palace creatures, dinosaurs were discussed in popular magazines and models, posters, poems and novels of prehistoric beasts were widely published and distributed. A cartoon published in the magazine Punch in 1855 shows the unpleasant effects of all this dino-hype. An unsuspecting visitor of the Crystal Palace exhibition was haunted even in his sleep by the monstrosities emerging from the distant geological past.

"The Effects of a Hearty Dinner after Visiting the Antediluvian Department at the Crystal Palace." - Punch Magazine

Source: www.forbes.com

Update: Missing Velociraptor Has Been Found

Tuesday, May 1, 2018

A missing velociraptor was found near a canal in a St. Martin Parish sugar cane field. (Photo: Henderson Police Department)

UPDATE: We can all rest a little easier. Overnight, the Prehistoric Dinosaur Park in Henderson posted on its Facebook page: "We are happy to announce the dinosaur has been found. We would like to thank everyone for their love and support."

Someone found the 75-pound statue in a deep canal in the middle of a sugar cane field in St. Martin Parish between and notified the business, according to KATC.

St. Martin Parish Sheriff's Office assisted with recovering the 5-foot-tall statue. 

They said the investigation is ongoing.

ORIGINAL STORY:

A dinosaur velociraptor was stolen from the Prehistoric Dinosaur Park in Henderson.

Owners of the park have issued a message urging those who are responsible to come forward with their property or otherwise face criminal charges.

The following statement was issued via Facebook: 

"We are asking for as much information as possible to help us to find the person or persons involved in breaking into the dinosaur exhibit (Prehistoric Park). The velociraptor is valued at a price that will make it a felony charge.

We are willing to accept the undamaged items before noon tomorrow without pressing criminal charges.

Please help!

Not only is this a business but it is a place for children to learn. Lots of children enjoy our exhibit and lots of schools come here for field trips." 

Source: www.theadvertiser.com

Rare Ancient Tapir Fossil Discovered Near Kemmerer

Saturday, April 28, 2018

A fossil discovered near Kemmerer, Wyoming, may be the first of its kind and is the largest mammal found to date in the 50-million-year-old Green River Formation.

The discovery of this ancient tapiromorph may support a North American origin of tapirs that in modern times typically inhabit jungles and forests in South and Central America and Southeastern Asia.

Due to its potential significance, the specimen is being prepared for scientific purposes.

“Properly preparing the specimen with special attention to keeping soft tissue fossilization intact is important for future research,” says Andrea Loveland, geologist at the Wyoming State Geological Survey (WSGS).

Rick Hebdon, owner of Warfield Fossil Quarries, collected the fossil in summer 2016 from the Fossil Butte Member of the Green River Formation.

The specimen was found in several pieces and damaged by weathering and roots. The majority of the animal’s teeth are missing, and its skull is damaged.

The fossil was first identified as Heptodon calciculus by the late Dr. Gregg Gunnell, paleontologist and former director of the Duke (University) Lemur Center.

Gunnell’s initial identification comes with a few caveats, as some characteristics of the specimen deviate from what is typical of a standard Heptodon.

The specimen may be an early occurrence of Hyrachyus or Helaletes, both tapiromorphs that more closely align with rhinoceroses and true tapirs, respectively. The specimen may also be a new genus of ceratomorph or tapiroid.

“My understanding is that this is definitely the first occurrence of this fossil in the Green River Formation and, depending on which of the three identifications listed above is correct, could be the first of its kind ever. More work on this specimen is needed after it has been prepared,” says Dr. Mark Clementz of the University of Wyoming Department of Geology and Geophysics.

Researcher Mike Eklund will prepare the specimen under a microscope with time-lapse photography. Still photography under different angles of visible light and ultraviolet light will help detect detail and soft tissue fossilization.

Prior to starting the preparation process, the rock slabs were CT scanned and X-rayed at Ivinson Memorial Hospital in Laramie, Wyoming, so that geologists could view and identify fossilized material encased in the rock.

Stitches Acute Care Center, also in Laramie, conducted X-rays on a fourth large rock slab and several smaller pieces.

The specimen was found on a state-leased quarry and surrendered to state custody due to its distinction as a rare specimen per the Office of State Lands and Investments fossil permit regulations.

After the preparation process is complete, the fossil will be housed at the WSGS and available for scientific research and display at museums. The WSGS serves as a repository for state-owned fossils.

“We are following the preparation of the fossil with great interest,” says WSGS Director, Dr. Erin Campbell. “This fossil has potential to be a significant scientific find, and we applaud Mr. Hebdon for bringing this state treasure to our attention.”

The fossil is being prepared at the recommendation of the Fossil Advisory Board, which advises the State Geologist/WSGS Director on specimens turned over to the State of Wyoming.

Members of the Fossil Advisory Board are Seth Wittke and Andrea Loveland (WSGS), Mark Clementz and Laura Vietti (University of Wyoming Department of Geology and Geophysics), J.P. Cavigelli (Tate Geological Museum), and Kelli Trujillo (Uinta Paleo).

“The discovery of the Green River Formation fossil is exciting for the state of Wyoming,” says Vietti. “Not only is it an important fossil discovery for science, it also represents a unique collaboration between private collectors, Wyoming agencies, and the University of Wyoming.”

Source: www.sweetwaternow.com

‘Not Science Fiction Any More’: The Tasmanian Tiger Could Soon Be Back From Extinction

Monday, April 30, 2018

A taxidermy mount of a Tasmanian tiger (thylacine), which was declared extinct in 1936, is displayed at the Australian Museum in Sydney in 2002. TORSTEN BLACKWOOD/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

The Tasmanian tiger has been extinct for more than 80 years — but that could be about to change.

We once thought this was impossible, like something made up for a movie like Jurassic Park, but it is now absolutely possible that we’ll see the Tasmanian tiger and other extinct species alive again.

Advances in science, especially in a type of science called genetics, means that we are getting ever closer to bringing this Australian marsupial, also known as thylacine, back to life.

Andrew Pask, a scientist from the University of Melbourne, was part of a team who worked for 10 years to discover all the genetic information of the thylacine. They did this with the help of a four-week-old thylacine joey that had been preserved in a liquid chemical when it died a long time ago. This joey is preserved in a different chemical to other thylacines and is in a better condition than others.

Prof Pask said the well-preserved joey they used allowed researchers to piece together the full picture of the marsupial’s DNA, or genetic information.

The researchers completed this genetic map in December last year.

“It gave us so much information about what was unique about the thylacine. We learned more about its biology, we learned about its population structure over time, we also learned more about where it sits and how it related (biologically) to other marsupials” he said.

William T. Cooper's 2006 painting, Thylacine.

“It was a very, very unique marsupial species. The last one of its kind.”

That uniqueness is exactly why we might want to bring it back to life — but it’s a quality that also makes the process extra difficult.

A cloning technique first tried by Harvard geneticist George Church, which is quite similar to that imagined in the movie Jurassic Park is leading the way.

His team is trying to bring back the mammoth by using the DNA, or genetic map or code, of its closest living relative, the Asian elephant, to fill in the gaps of the mammoth’s DNA.

It’s like the scientists are writing a recipe for building a new animal.

“That’s something that’s not science fiction any more, it’s science fact,” Prof Pask said. “They will be able to bring something mammoth-like back to life.

“The thing with the mammoth is, there is a very closely related living species around still — the elephant — which makes the task much easier,” Prof Pask said.

“What you have to do is take that elephant DNA and make all the changes you see in the mammoth genome on the elephant’s genetic blueprint. Basically you’re just editing the (elephant) DNA to make it look like a mammoth.”

The fewer changes you have to make, the easier it is.

However when it comes to the thylacine, there’s nothing really that closely related any more. The closest living relative is the numbat but it’s still quite different.

“You would have to make a lot more changes to make the numbat DNA look like a thylacine,” Prof Pask said. And though there would be about 10 times the number of changes to make a thylacine to the number of changes needed to make a mammoth, the process is much easier now than five years ago because of the work on mammoths.

It’s possible, as the technology improves, it would be able to be applied to bringing back the thylacine that would be a mixture of a numbat and a thylacine.

Scientists will now wait to see the results of the mammoth project before they start working on bringing back other animals, such as the thylacine.

“We’ll wait and see what it looks like, how it behaves and all of those things and whether we could apply that same technology,” Prof Pask said.

But if it does come to pass, our continent could once again be host to one of Australia’s most well-known lost species.

The thylacine vanished from the Australian mainland about 3000 years ago. A thylacine population survived in Tasmania long after they died out on the mainland. But the government paid people to kill thylacines in Tasmania in the 1800s because of fears they killed sheep.

So many thylacines died the Tasmanian government made laws to protect them in 1936, but it was too late. Just two months later, the last known thylacine died in a zoo in Tasmania.

Searches for the thylacine have continued ever since, with some people sure they have seen living thylacines in recent years but that hasn’t been proved.

Source: www.heraldsun.com.au

Utah Family Digs up Ancient Bones in Their Backyard

Friday, April 27, 2018

LEHI, Utah (KSL) - The bones of a horse that date back to the Ice Age have been discovered in the backyard of a Utah family. 

What started with a little landscaping, turned into an all-out excavation project with local paleontologists gathering and removing the 16,000-year-old bones.

The scientists are from Thanksgiving Point's Museum of Ancient Life Paleo Lab. 

That's where they'll take the bones to reconstruct the skeleton and to see what species they have.

Source: www.kxan.com

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