nandi's blog

Everything You Need to Know Before Buying Jurassic World Evolution on Switch

Saturday, October 31, 2020

Jurassic World Evolution is coming to the Nintendo Switch soon, and here's everything players should know before purchasing the game.

Back in 2018, Frontier Developments released Jurassic World Evolution, which is a park simulator game based on the 2015 film Jurassic World, to the PC, PS4, and Xbox One. Similar to the 2003 game, Jurassic Park: Operation GenesisEvolution puts players in the role of a park manager, who must successfully open a theme-park featuring real-life dinosaurs, entertain guests, and transform the park into a five-star tourist destination.

Frontier Developments confirmed at Gamescom 2020 that Jurassic World Evolution is headed to the Switch, allowing players on Nintendo's hybrid console to "bring the wonder, majesty, and danger of dinosaurs to life." Now, for those who are interested in purchasing the game on the Switch, here's everything players need to know about Jurassic World: Evolution Complete Edition.

During its announcement at Gamescom 2020, Frontier Developments revealed that Jurassic World Evolution: Complete Edition will be available to the Switch on November 3. As of the moment, it doesn't appear that the Switch version will have exclusive features that are not included in the PC, PS4, and Xbox One counterparts. However, players can expect everything in the other versions to be included in the Switch which means that players should expect to build a fully-working Jurassic World theme park, bioengineer over 60 dinosaurs with unique behaviors, traits, and appearances, and build amenities to entertain guests. The game retails for $59.99, and while some may question why Frontier is asking full price for a 2-year old game, it's worth noting that the Switch version will include much more than the base game.

What's Included In The Switch Version?

Luckily for Switch players, Frontier Developments is bringing the full Jurassic World Evolution Experience with the release of the Complete Edition on the Switch. This includes every single DLC pack such as The Herbivore Dinosaur Pack, Carnivore Dinosaur Pack, Cretaceous Dinosaur Pack, and DLC Deluxe Dinosaur Pack. Moreover, Frontier is also including all three major expansions in the game, which players can see below:

Jurassic World Evolution: Return to Jurassic Park - in this expansion, players can relive the memorable events of the 1993 film Jurassic Park, by filling their parks with unique decorations and themes based on the iconic movie. The expansion challenges players to return to the island that started it all and reclaim the park from the dinosaurs after its demise in the movie. The DLC will also challenge players to rebuild beloved locations and ensure that the tragedy from the past does not happen again. What's even more exciting is that Dr. Alan Grant, Dr. Ellie Sattler, and Dr. Ian Malcom are all returning to the game voiced by the same actors who portrayed them.

Jurassic World Evolution: Claire's Sanctuary - in this DLC, players are faced with a new threat, which is the impending explosion of Mt. Sibo that is expected to erupt at any moment and threatens to send the dinosaurs on the island back to extinction. In an effort to save the animals, players must team up with Jurassic World Operations Manager, Claire Dearing, to rescue the dinosaurs and save them from impending danger.

Jurassic World Evolution: Secrets of Dr. Wu - the first-ever paid DLC in the game, Secrets of Dr. Wu puts players on the challenging island of Las Cinco Muertes with a new storyline that features various campaign missions from Dr. Henry Wu. As the story unfolds, players learn that Dr. Wu has access to previously unknown locations that are kept secret from the Hammond Foundation. While working for the Divisions, players will also secretly work with Dr. Wu and earn his trust to get access to new dig sites and bring five new dinosaurs to the island. Players should note that three of these dinosaurs are hybrids created by Dr. Wu himself, so expect to see chaos unfolds caused by conflicts of interest, sabotage, and more.

Jurassic World Evolution is available now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One, and will release to the Nintendo Switch on November 3, 2020.

Source: https://gamerant.com/

Plankton Turn Hunters to Survive Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Impact

Saturday, October 31, 2020

Graphic explaining the research method and findings. CREDIT: Gibbs et al

New research by an international team of scientists shows how marine organisms were forced to 'reboot' to survive following the asteroid impact 66 million years ago which killed three quarters of life on earth.

Researchers from the University of Southampton and UCL, along with colleagues in Paris, California, Bristol and Edinburgh used an exceptional record of plankton fossils and eco-evolutionary modelling techniques to examine how organisms behaved before and after this extinction event - and why some survived and some didn't.

The team found that prior to the asteroid impact, species of nannoplankton - microscopic algae - were exclusively reliant on harnessing energy from sunlight (photoautotrophs), but those living afterwards were capable of capturing food and eating it in addition to using photosynthesis to feed (mixotrophs). This suggests the blocking of light from the sun played an important role in killing off some species and over time, encouraging others to evolve and adapt.

Findings are published in the journal Science Advances.

The research team's breakthrough came when they found that many of the nannoplankton skeletons (coccospheres) post mass-extinction included a large hole, indicating the position of flagella - tiny tail like structures used by the algae for movement and feeding. This indicates these microscopic organisms, which survived the asteroid strike, were capable of hunting and ingesting food.

"Those species that were lost at the mass extinction show no evidence of a mixotrophic lifestyle and were likely to be completely reliant on sunlight and photosynthesis," explains Dr Samantha Gibbs of the University of Southampton. "Fossils following the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction show that mixotrophy dominated and our model indicates this is because of the exceptional abundance of small prey cells - most likely surviving bacteria - and reduced numbers of larger 'grazers' in the post-extinction oceans."

Opposing evolutionary forces led to the emergence of more diverse feeding strategies and eventually a return to greater reliance on photosynthesis in open ocean nannoplankton. Most nannoplankton today only photosynthesise.

So, what caused this devastating mass extinction of photoautotrophs and other species?

The simple answer is a lack of light. The K/Pg event was triggered by an asteroid impact that formed the Chicxulub crater in Mexico, and is well known for the extinction of dinosaurs, plesiosaurs, ammonites and many other groups.

"This huge impact flung vast amounts of debris, aerosols and soot into the atmosphere, causing darkness, cooling and acidification over days and years," says Paul Bown, Professor of Micropalaeontology at UCL. "The significant bias found in the nannoplankton extinctions - removal of open-ocean photoautotrophs but survival of mixotrophs that could hunt and feed - can only be fully explained by the darkness caused by the asteroid impact acting as a kill mechanism."

Samantha Gibbs adds: "This 'blackout' or shutdown of primary productivity would have been felt across all of Earth's ecosystems and reveals that the K/Pg event is distinct from all other mass extinctions that have shaped the history of life, both in its rapidity, related to an instantaneous impact event, and its darkness kill mechanism, which shook the foundations of the food chains.

"The K/Pg boundary event likely represents the only truly geologically instantaneous mass extinction event."

Source: www.eurekalert.org/

Indonesian Activists Slam 'Jurassic Park' Plan for Komodo Dragon Habitat

Friday, October 30, 2020

Nearly 3,000 of the world's biggest lizard species live on a cluster of islands east of Bali, where they grow to around three metres in length

Indonesian conservationists have slammed plans to turn the home of endangered Komodo dragons into a Jurassic Park-style attraction, after a viral photo showing one of the giant reptiles sparked an online backlash over the development.

Nearly 3,000 of the world's biggest lizard species live on a cluster of islands east of Bali, where they grow to around three metres (10 feet) in length and weigh up to 90 kilograms (200 pounds).

Authorities last month unveiled a proposal to build a tourist development on one of the islands, dubbed "Jurassic Park" after architects published a promotional video of the project set to music from the film franchise.

But environmentalists warned then that it would threaten the already at-risk species.

This week a picture of a Komodo dragon in the path of a truck carrying construction supplies renewed debate over the project, after it was shared widely online.

"The idea to build a Jurassic Park is honestly embarrassing," said Gregorius Afioma, an activist at local social justice NGO Sunspirit.

"People come here to see komodos in their natural habitat... these people are selling a concept where (visitors) can walk around indoors to see komodo dragons, which to me is no different than a zoo," he added.

Rima Melani Bilaut of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment, added that the development would further threaten the dragons by reducing the size of their habitat.

The government said the truck in the now-viral photo wasn't linked to the controversial development, which has been put on ice until mid-2021 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

"If we control it well and minimise contact with wildlife, the current tourism development will not endanger the komodo population," said an environment ministry official in a statement this week.

Conservationists have long feared that mass tourism, trafficking and a lack of natural prey threaten the survival of Komodo dragons.

Last year, Indonesia scrapped plans to ban tourists from the conservation area and said it would instead limit visitor numbers and raise entry prices to create a "premium destination".



© 2020 AFP / https://phys.org/

Researchers Unlocking Secrets of Dinosaur Eggshells

Saturday, October 31, 2020

Elejalde-Cadena et al. present a detailed structural and morphological analysis of different dinosaur eggshells such as Spheroolithus, lambeosaurinae, Prismatoolithus, and one unidentified eggshell performed by high-resolution scanning electron microscopy. Image credit: Elejalde-Cadena et al., doi: 10.1021/acsomega.0c03334.

Scientists have studied the morphology and structure of Cretaceous-period dinosaur eggshells collected from the El Gallo Formation of Baja California, Mexico.

Dinosaurs were one of the most enigmatic and interesting species of animals that have existed on Earth. They lived in a variety of environments that ranged from forest to arid land, including the coast around the oceans.

Non-avian dinosaurs faced a period of extinction along the Earth, with the fossils found in different parts of the world being the only evidences of their existence.

Since the sensational discovery of dinosaur eggs in Gobi Desert in the early 1920s, the remains of fossil eggshells, eggs, and nests have been found in the Mesozoic deposits — mostly from the Late Cretaceous epoch — on all continents.

Just in North America alone, there exist at least 40 paleontological sites with fossilized dinosaur eggs and eggshells in Canada, the United States, and Mexico.

“Most of the works on the classification of fossil eggshells are based on their different characteristics such as the general morphology, pore shape, and thickness, but mainly the crystalline arrangement,” said lead author Dr. Abel Moreno from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and colleagues.

“A few works focus on the element and the isotopic analysis that we carried out.”

“These were done to find information about the possible body temperature of some of the dinosaur groups, but above all, we wanted to infer their paleoenvironmental conditions.”

In the study, the researchers examined five dinosaur eggshells found in the coastal area of El Rosario, Baja California.

“The three of the five eggs were laid by ornithopods of the hadrosaur family (duck-billed dinosaurs) and one by a theropod of the troodontidae family (small, bird-like dinosaurs),” they said.

“The remaining sample was too damaged to classify by the naked eye.”

Using high-resolution scanning electron microscopy, the scientists analyzed the external and internal surfaces and a cross-section of each eggshell.

“In contrast to the smooth outer surface of the theropod shell, the shells from the ornithopods and the unknown sample had nodes at different distances across the shell,” they said.

“Images of shell cross-sections from the ornithopods revealed that mammillary cones — calcite crystals on the inner surface of the shell — formed thin, elongated columns arranged in parallel, with irregular pores.”

“In contrast, the eggshell from the theropod showed thicker, shorter cones arranged in a bilayer, with wider pores.”

The unknown sample more closely resembled the ornithopod eggshells, leading the authors to hypothesize that it was probably also from the hadrosaur family.

“In addition, we conducted an elemental composition analysis, which is the first such analysis on dinosaur eggshells collected in Mexico,” they said.

“Our findings might help reveal how the fossilization process varied among species and localities.”

The results were published in the journal ACS Omega.

_____

Nerith R. Elejalde-Cadena et al. 2020. Searching for a Clue to Characterize a Crystalline Dinosaur’s Eggshell of Baja California, Mexico. ACS Omega 5 (40): 25936-25946; doi: 10.1021/acsomega.0c03334

Source: www.sci-news.com/

Pterosaurs Evolved Their Flight Ability over Millions of Years: Study

Friday, October 30, 2020

A reconstruction of the giant pterosaur Hatzegopteryx launching into the air, just after the forelimbs have left the ground. Image credit: Mark Witton.

In a new study published this week in the journal Nature, a team of researchers from the United Kingdom combined fossil records with a new model of flight to measure flight efficiency in pterosaurs and fill in gaps in our knowledge of their evolutionary story. The scientists were able to track the gradual evolution of pterosaurs and demonstrate they became twice as good at flying over their 150 million-year existence. The authors also showed their evolution was caused by consistent small improvements over a long period, rather than sudden evolutionary bursts as had been previously suggested.

Pterosaurs were Earth’s first winged vertebrates, with birds and bats making their appearances much later.

They thrived from about 210 to 65 million years ago, when they were wiped out by the asteroid that also doomed the non-avian dinosaurs.

Some pterosaurs, such as the giant azhdarchids, were the largest flying animals of all time, with wingspans exceeding 9.1 m (30 feet) and standing heights comparable to modern giraffes.

Pterosaurs diverged from dinosaur ancestors in the Early Triassic period (around 245 million years ago). However, the first fossils of pterosaurs are dated to 25 million years later, in the Late Triassic period.

Therefore, in the absence of proto-pterosaur fossils, it is difficult to study how flight first evolved in this group.

“Despite their eventual prowess in the air being well-known, the question of whether pterosaurs got better at flying, and whether this gave them an advantage over their ancestors, has puzzled scientists for decades,” said Professor Chris Venditti, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading.

“There are many examples of how natural selection works on relatively short time scales but, until now, it has been very difficult to demonstrate whether plants or animals adapt to become more efficient over a long period.”

“Our new method has allowed us to study long-term evolution in a completely new way and answer this question at last by comparing the creatures at different stages of their evolutionary sequence over many millions of years.”

Life restoration of a group of giant azhdarchids, Quetzalcoatlus northropi, foraging on a Cretaceous fern prairie. Image credit: Mark Witton / Darren Naish.

Professor Venditti and colleagues monitored changes to pterosaur flight efficiency by using fossils to measure their wingspan and body size at different stages.

Their new model based on living birds was applied to the data for 75 pterosaur species, which showed that pterosaurs gradually got better at flying over millions of years.

The models showed that pterosaurs adapted their body shape and size, so they used 50% less energy when flying, over their 150 million-year history.

They showed the creatures increased in mass ten fold, with some eventually weighing more than 300 kg.

The new method also revealed that the azhdarchoid pterosaurs were an exception to the rule.

Paleontologists have disagreed over how well these animals flew, but the new study showed that they did not get any better throughout their existence.

The enlarged size of azhdarchoids appeared to provide their survival advantage instead, with one animal, Quetzalcoatlus, growing to the height of a giraffe.

“This is unique evidence that although these animals were competent fliers, they probably spent much of their time on the ground,” said Dr. Joanna Baker, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading.

“Highly efficient flight probably didn’t offer them much of an advantage, and our finding that they had smaller wings for their body size is in line with fossil evidence for their reduced reliance on flight.”

“Among the few things that haven’t changed over the last 300 million years are the laws of physics, so it has been great to use those laws to understand the evolution of flight in these amazing animals,” said Professor Stuart Humphries, a biophysicist at the University of Lincoln.

“Until recently, paleontologists could describe the anatomy of creatures based on their fossils and work out their functions,” said Professor Mike Benton, a paleontologist at the University of Bristol.

“It’s really exciting now to be able to calculate the operational efficiency of extinct animals, and then to compare them through their evolution to see how efficiency has changed.”

“We don’t just have to look at the fossils with amazement, but can really get to grips with what they tell us.”

_____

C. Venditti et al. 150 million years of sustained increase in pterosaur flight efficiency. Nature, published online October 28, 2020; doi: 10.1038/s41586-020-2858-8

Source: www.sci-news.com/

Brevicaudosaurus jiyangshanensis: Middle Triassic Nothosaur Had Built-In Float

Friday, October 30, 2020

An artist’s reconstruction of Brevicaudosaurus jiyangshanensis. Image credit: Tyler Stone, tylerstoneart.wordpress.com.

Paleontologists have found two nearly complete skeletons from a new genus and species of nothosauroid marine reptile that lived during the Middle Triassic in what is now China. Dubbed Brevicaudosaurus jiyangshanensis, the ancient creature used its short and flat tail for balance and floated near the bottom of the edges in shallow water, picking off prey with fang-like teeth.

Brevicaudosaurus jiyangshanensis lived during the Triassic period, approximately 240 million years ago.

The extinct reptile had a small head, fangs, flipper-like limbs, a long neck, and a short and flat tail.

The two nearly complete skeletons of Brevicaudosaurus jiyangshanensis were collected from a thin layer of limestone in two quarries in Fuyuan County, southwest China.

The specimens were examined by Dr. Qing-Hua Shang from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and colleagues.

“Our analysis of two well-preserved skeletons reveals a reptile with a broad, pachyostotic body (denser boned) and a very short, flattened tail,” they said.

“A long tail can be used to flick through the water, generating thrust, but the new species was probably better suited to hanging out near the bottom in shallow sea, using its short, flattened tail for balance, like an underwater float, allowing it to preserve energy while searching for prey.”

The forelimbs of Brevicaudosaurus jiyangshanensis are more strongly developed than its hind limbs, suggesting they played a role in helping the reptile to swim.

However, the bones in the front feet are short compared to other species, limiting the power with which it could pull through the water.

Most of the reptile’s bones, including the vertebrae and ribs, are thick and dense, further contributing to the stocky, stout appearance and limiting its ability to swim quickly but increasing stability underwater.

However, thick, high-mass bones act as ballast. What Brevicaudosaurus jiyangshanensis lost in speed, it gained in stability.

Dense bones, known as pachyostosis, may have made it neutrally buoyant in shallow water.

Together with the flat tail, this would have helped the predator to float motionless underwater, requiring little energy to stay horizontal.

Neutral buoyancy should also have enabled it to walk on the seabed searching for slow-moving prey.

Brevicaudosaurus jiyangshanensis skeletons in dorsal view. Image credit: Shang et al., doi: 10.1080/02724634.2020.1789651.

Highly dense ribs of Brevicaudosaurus jiyangshanensis may also suggest the reptile had large lungs.

As suggested by the lack of firm support of the body weight, nothosaurs were oceanic nut they needed to come to the water surface for oxygen.

They have nostrils on the snout through which they breathed. Large lungs would have increased the time the species could spend under water.

Brevicaudosaurus jiyangshanensis features a bar-shaped bone in the middle ear called the stapes, used for sound transmission.

The stapes was generally lost in other nothosaurs or marine reptiles during preservation.

Paleontologists had predicted that if a stapes was found in a nothosaur, it would be thin and slender like in other species of this branch of the reptilian family tree.

However, in Brevicaudosaurus jiyangshanensis it is thick and elongate, suggesting it had good hearing underwater.

“Perhaps this small, slow-swimming marine reptile had to be vigilante for large predators as it floated in the shallows, as well as being a predator itself,” said Dr. Xiao-Chun Wu, a researcher at the Canadian Museum of Nature.

The discovery is reported in a paper published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

_____

Qing-Hua Shang et al. A New Ladinian Nothosauroid (Sauropterygia) from Fuyuan, Yunnan Province, China. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, published online October 29, 2020; doi: 10.1080/02724634.2020.1789651

Source: www.sci-news.com/

Sue The T. Rex Had a Terribly Painful Infection When She Died

Friday, October 30, 2020

Sue the T. rex suffered from a big toothache due to three tiny, weird-looking teeth. (Image: © Kirstin Brink)

Sue, the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex whose skeleton is one of the most complete ever found, likely suffered from a big toothache due to three tiny, weird-looking teeth. 

"Two of these teeth are actually fused together," said study lead researcher Kirstin Brink, an assistant professor in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. "One of the teeth has some extra serrations on the side of the tooth, not in the normal place on the front or back edges of the tooth."

Her research, which is not yet published in a peer-reviewed journal, was presented online Oct. 13 at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology annual conference, held online this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Like other T. rexes, Sue, whose skeleton is on display at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, had knifelike serrated teeth, some the size of bananas. When alive, T. rexes would constantly grow new teeth, likely replacing each tooth every one to two years.

While dental problems were common in theropods, the group of bipedal, mostly-meat eating dinosaurs that includes T. rex, most of those tooth troubles were likely genetic, Brink said. In contrast, Sue's three developing teeth are weirdly misshapen, "squished and bent with a strange, almost wave-like texture running down the sides, almost as if they were like icing being squeezed through a piping bag," Brink said.

Previously, researchers examining strange holes in Sue's jaw diagnosed the dinosaur king with trichomonosis (also called trichomoniasis), an oral infection caused by a parasite, according to a 2009 study published in the journal PLOS One. Now, Brink's research suggests that this condition may have changed the shape of Sue's teeth; this would be the first record of an infection causing misshapen teeth in a theropod, she said.

Brink came to that conclusion after looking at digital 3D images from CT (computed tomography) scans of the teeth. Because this weird, fused-tooth formation wasn't seen elsewhere in Sue's chompers — "Sue's teeth are all normal except for the three odd ones" — this deformity likely isn't a genetic blip, Brink said.

She noted that when modern birds, the descendants of theropod dinosaurs, get trichomonosis, "they grow large, waxy growths in their throats. The infection can also spread through the skull and through the skin, so a lot of tissues in the head can be affected." Modern birds don't have teeth, however, so it's hard to know how this infection would affect teeth. However, "my working hypothesis at this point is that the waxy growths got so big or the infection got so bad that normal tooth development was disrupted in one spot in the jaw," of Sue, she said.

This type of tooth malformation is also seen in teeth of the Megalodon shark, another prehistoric creature that also constantly regrew its teeth, said Ashley Poust, a postdoctoral researcher at the San Diego Natural History Museum, who wasn't involved with the research. 

Kirstin Brink photographs Sue's jaws. (Image credit: Christopher McGarrity)

T. rexes wouldn't have minded malformed teeth too much — after all, they were always growing new teeth. "If the tissues that grow the teeth were damaged though, then the T. rex might have been in a world of hurt," Poust told Live Science in an email. "An impacted or malformed tooth could have been a source of real misery."

Evan Johnson-Ransom, a master's student at Oklahoma State University specializing in the feeding behavior of theropod dinosaurs, remembers how, when he would give tours as a docent at the Field Museum, "I always talked about the holes in Sue's jaw being the result of an infection, and how difficult it was for Sue to eat and drink." 

"Upon hearing Dr. Kirstin Bink's research on Sue's infection, I was both fascinated and terrified at how far the infection could spread and the effect it had on its teeth generation," Johnson-Ransom, who wasn't involved in the research, but saw the presentation at the conference, told Live Science. "Research like this shows us not only how prehistoric animals lived, but also the injuries they sustained and how much … it affected them."

Originally published on Live Science.

Australian Age of Dinosaurs unveils 13 new bronze models

Friday, October 30, 2020

 Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum executive chairman David Elliott with two of the bronze dinosaurs. Photo: John Elliott

The award winning Australian Age of Dinosaurs museum in Winton has a stunning new attraction.

The museum now has 13 life-size bronze dinosaurs including two long-necked sauropod dinosaurs, a 10 metre-long sub-adult sauropod, emu-sized ornithopod dinosaurs and chicken-sized carnivorous theropods.

Digitally sculpted by palaeo-artist Travis Tischler, the bronze models were cast at a foundry in Thailand and took nearly a year to complete.

The new dinosaurs were made using modern 'lost-plastic' technology that involves 3D printing of digital models in meltable plastic, instead of the 'lost-wax' method traditionally used in bronze casting.

At 17m long and nearly 4m high, the largest sauropod was too big to fit in a standard open-top 40-foot-long container and had to be transported with its neck and tail removed.

After a month at sea the dinosaurs arrived at Townsville and finished their journey to Winton by semi-trailer. The immense size of the sauropods needed a crane to lift them out of their containers and place them into position at their new home at Dinosaur Canyon.

 Trish Sloan with the new sculptures at the Australian Age of Dinosaurs museum. Photo: John Elliott

The dinosaurs will become part of the future March of the Titanosaurs exhibition, centred on a newly discovered 60m-long sauropod trackway being relocated from a creek bed on a property west of Winton.

The trackway, which contains the best-preserved sauropod tracks in Australia, will be enclosed in a 900 square metre solar-powered, air-conditioned building at Dinosaur Canyon.

The March of the Titanosaurs exhibition forms part of the museum's Dynamic Destination project funded by the Queensland government's Growing Tourism Infrastructure Fund and is due for completion by mid-2021.

 One of the dinosaurs being loaded into place. Photo: John Elliott.

Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum executive chairman David Elliott, who is overseeing the sauropod trackway relocation and Dynamic Destination project, said the safe arrival of the dinosaurs was very exciting.

"The logistics in getting these models built and transported all the way to Winton from Thailand has been very intense, so having them finally arrive without a scratch is a huge relief," Mr Elliott said.

The story Gigantic bronze dinosaurs arrive at Winton first appeared on The North West Star.

Source: www.northqueenslandregister.com.au/

Jurassic World 3: BioSyn's Plans Mean We All Lose If They Beat InGen

Wednesday, October 28, 2020

With Dodgson and BioSyn coming back for Jurassic World: Dominion, their evil plans will likely make InGen's transgressions look quaint.

With Dodgson and BioSyn coming back for Jurassic World: Dominion, their evil plans will likely make InGen's transgressions look quaint. It's safe to say many fans were surprised by Lewis Dodgson's upcoming reemergence in Jurassic World 3, after not being seen since the original Jurassic Park film. Even in that film, his appearance was confined to one scene, albeit a memorable one, thanks to the meme-worthy antics of Wayne Knight as Dennis Nedry. We've got Dodgson here, indeed. Yet it seemed the producers of Dominion cared.

Dodgson played a much larger role in Michael Crichton's original Jurassic Park book, and its sequel The Lost World, although the character didn't make it into The Lost World's film adaptation at all. That's not entirely surprising though, as the book and film ended up very different overall. Not mentioned directly at all in any of the films so far has been BioSyn, the company sponsoring Dodgson and Nedry's shady embryo-stealing deal in the book.

Dodgson and BioSyn are now back for Jurassic World: Dominion, and considering where Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom left the story, that's not good news for anyone. Now at the head of BioSyn, Dodgson could prove a scarier foe than either Peter Ludlow or Eli Mills.

Despite InGen's numerous faults as a corporation, BioSyn, at least as depicted in the Jurassic Park books, is much worse. BioSyn is a genetic technology company, much like InGen, but with every ounce of moral rectitude removed. BioSyn are essentially pirates, seeking to steal the intellectual property of others and use it for their own gain. They accomplish this by changing the stolen material enough to try and claim it's original, and employ just as many shady lawyers as they do shady scientists. While the plot of Jurassic World: Dominion is still mostly under wraps, one can bet Dodgson and BioSyn are out to capture dinosaurs that escaped into the wild at the end of Fallen Kingdom, and use them for their own ends.

It's unclear what happened to InGen after the death of Simon Masrani, whose company Masrani Global had absorbed them prior to Jurassic World. But if there are any leftover bits of them remaining, now would be the time to resurface. For all their questionable dealings, their goal was still entertainment, at least with John Hammond and Masrani at the helm. BioSyn have immense resources and will do any immoral thing they can to get the most money possible, which - if they manage to hook up with Dr. Henry Wu - could lead to terrifying weaponized dinosaurs that make the Indominus Rex and Indoraptor look like pushovers. Dodgson may have been a joke in Jurassic Park, but now he's a threat.

6 Best Lego Jurassic World Sets

Source: https://screenrant.com/

New Fossils of Giant Bony-Toothed Birds Found in Antarctica

Thursday, October 29, 2020

An artist’s depiction of ancient albatrosses harassing a pelagornithid as penguins frolic in the oceans around Antarctica 50 million years ago. Image credit: Brian Choo.

Paleontologists have described new fossils of pelagornithid birds from the middle Eocene Submeseta Formation on Seymour Island, Antarctica.

Pelagornithids are an extinct group of large flying birds with a fossil record spanning from the late Paleocene to the late Pliocene and a global distribution.

Also known as bony-toothed birds, they had bony projections, or struts, on their jaws that resemble sharp-pointed teeth, though they are not true teeth.

Called pseudoteeth, the struts helped the birds snag squid and fish from the sea as they soared for perhaps weeks at a time over much of Earth’s oceans.

Though a much smaller pelagornithid fossil dates from 62 million years ago, one of the newly-described specimens — a 50 million-year-old portion of a bird’s foot (tarsometatarsus) — shows that the larger pelagornithids arose just after life rebounded from the end-Cretaceous mass extinction 66 million years ago, when non-avian dinosaurs went extinct.

The second pelagornithid fossil from Seymour Island, part of a jaw bone, dates from about 40 million years ago.

“Our fossil discovery, with its estimate of a 5-6-m (16-20-foot) wingspan shows that birds evolved to a truly gigantic size relatively quickly after the extinction of the dinosaurs and ruled over the oceans for millions of years,” said lead author Peter Kloess, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley.

The fossils that Kloess and colleagues described are among many collected in the mid-1980s on Seymour Island, off the northernmost tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.

They examined the pelagornithid tarsometatarsus and realized that it came from an older geological formation than originally thought.

That meant that the fossil was about 50 million years old instead of 40 million years old. It is the largest specimen known for the entire extinct group of pelagornithids.

The other rediscovered fossil, the middle portion of the lower jaw, has parts of its pseudoteeth preserved. They would have been up to 3 cm (1 inch) tall when the bird was alive.

The approximately 12-cm (5-inch-) long preserved section of jaw came from a very large skull that would have been up to 60 cm (2 feet) long.

Using measurements of the size and spacing of those teeth and analytical comparisons to other fossils of pelagornithids, the paleontologists were able to show that this fragment came from an individual bird as big, if not bigger, than the largest known skeletons of the bony-toothed bird group.

“These Antarctic fossils demonstrate the early evolution of giant body size in this clade (by 50 million years ago),” the researchers said.

“They likely represent not only the largest flying birds of the Eocene period but also some of the largest flying birds that ever lived.”

“Furthermore, the distribution of giant-sized pelagornithid fossils across more than 10 million years of Antarctic geological deposits points to a prolonged survival of giant-sized pelagornithids within the southern seas, and their success as a pelagic predatory component of marine and coastal ecosystems alongside early penguins.”

The team’s paper was published in the journal Scientific Reports.

_____

P.A. Kloess et al. 2020. Earliest fossils of giant-sized bony-toothed birds (Aves: Pelagornithidae) from the Eocene of Seymour Island, Antarctica. Sci Rep 10, 18286; doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-75248-6

Source: www.sci-news.com/

Pages