Meet the mini T-rex .....

[EnglishLady]

Mail Jan 14

Meet the mini T-rex: The tiny 4ft dinosaur with grasping hands that gave rise to the most ferocious predator of all time


It's the dinosaur that spawned the biggest and most ferocious land predator that ever lived.
The remains of a previously unknown species of dinosaur that was an early ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex have been discovered.
Eodromaeus - or 'dawn runner' - was only 4ft-long from nose to tail-tip and weighed a mere 10 to 15lbs when it roamed Earth approximately 230 million years ago.

But the two-legged dinosaur with stabbing canine teeth and sharp-clawed grasping hands gave rise to the T-rex.

In a rare find, fossil bones of two of the creatures were unearthed side-by-side at a desert site known as the Valley of the Moon in northern Argentina.

Researchers pieced together a near-complete skeleton of the new species which they described today in the journal Science.

Study leader Professor Paul Sereno, from the University of Chicago, said: 'It really is the earliest look we have at the long line of meat eaters that would ultimately culminate in Tyrannosaurus rex near the end of the dinosaur era.
'Who could foretell what evolution had in store for the descendants of this pint-sized, fleet-footed predator?'

The site where Eodromaeus was found, in the foothills of the Andes, has already yielded clues about the early origins of the dinosaurs.
In 1991, Professor Sereno found another species in the same valley called Eoraptor. About the same size as Eodromaeus, it was a plant-eater whose descendants would include the giant long-necked sauropods such as Diplodocus.
Although Eodromaeus was armed with sharp canine teeth and claws, it would have been up against strong competition.
At that time other creatures out-numbered and dominated the dinosaurs, including the lizard-like Rhynchosaurs and mammal-like reptiles.

Dr Sereno said: 'The story from this valley suggests that there was no single advantage or lucky break for dinosaurs but rather a long period of evolutionary experimentation in the shadow of other groups.'

Pics
Eodromaeus: Tyrannosaurus rex's tiny 4ft relative discovered in Argentina | Mail Online

 

[layoutshooter]

Mail Jan 14

Meet the mini T-rex: The tiny 4ft dinosaur with grasping hands that gave rise to the most ferocious predator of all time


It's the dinosaur that spawned the biggest and most ferocious land predator that ever lived.
The remains of a previously unknown species of dinosaur that was an early ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex have been discovered.
Eodromaeus - or 'dawn runner' - was only 4ft-long from nose to tail-tip and weighed a mere 10 to 15lbs when it roamed Earth approximately 230 million years ago.

But the two-legged dinosaur with stabbing canine teeth and sharp-clawed grasping hands gave rise to the T-rex.

In a rare find, fossil bones of two of the creatures were unearthed side-by-side at a desert site known as the Valley of the Moon in northern Argentina.

Researchers pieced together a near-complete skeleton of the new species which they described today in the journal Science.

Study leader Professor Paul Sereno, from the University of Chicago, said: 'It really is the earliest look we have at the long line of meat eaters that would ultimately culminate in Tyrannosaurus rex near the end of the dinosaur era.
'Who could foretell what evolution had in store for the descendants of this pint-sized, fleet-footed predator?'

The site where Eodromaeus was found, in the foothills of the Andes, has already yielded clues about the early origins of the dinosaurs.
In 1991, Professor Sereno found another species in the same valley called Eoraptor. About the same size as Eodromaeus, it was a plant-eater whose descendants would include the giant long-necked sauropods such as Diplodocus.
Although Eodromaeus was armed with sharp canine teeth and claws, it would have been up against strong competition.
At that time other creatures out-numbered and dominated the dinosaurs, including the lizard-like Rhynchosaurs and mammal-like reptiles.

Dr Sereno said: 'The story from this valley suggests that there was no single advantage or lucky break for dinosaurs but rather a long period of evolutionary experimentation in the shadow of other groups.'

Pics
Eodromaeus: Tyrannosaurus rex's tiny 4ft relative discovered in Argentina | Mail Online

T-Rex was not so tough!! LOL!!! neither was the "punk" that this story was written about!! Look at the link below, MOVE OVER T-REX the "big dawgs" have arrived!!

Meat-Eating Dinosaur Was Bigger Than T. Rex

 

[EnglishLady]

T-Rex was not so tough!! LOL!!! neither was the "punk" that this story was written about!! Look at the link below, MOVE OVER T-REX the "big dawgs" have arrived!!

Meat-Eating Dinosaur Was Bigger Than T. Rex

and he ends his report with this

""New candidates for the title are expected," he said."

 

[layoutshooter]

and he ends his report with this

""New candidates for the title are expected," he said."

Yep, dinos are not really extinct!! They are living disguised as geese and will soon return to their prior glory!!

 

[EnglishLady]

Meet and even smaller "mini-T Rex"

BBC Jan 24

Two-clawed and parrot-sized: new T.rex cousin unveiled


A tiny distant cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex has been discovered in China with only a single claw on each upper limb.

Linhenykus monodactylus weighed no more than a large parrot and was found in sediments between 84 and 75 million years old.

The dinosaur belongs to a sub-branch of the theropods, the dinosaur group which includes T.rex and Velociraptor, and which gave rise to modern birds.

Details are published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The new species was named after the Chinese city of Linhe, Inner Mongolia, near where its fossilised remains was uncovered in what is called the Upper Cretaceous Wulansuhai Formation.

The international team found a partial skeleton, including bones of the vertebrae, forelimb, hind limbs, and a partial pelvis.

It is part of the Alvarezsauroidia family of theropods, a strange group of small, long-legged running dinosaurs.

Michael Pittman of University College London, who was part of the team, says the animal would have been hardly be intimidating.

"You'd see a very small animal, probably below your hip height, with a very small skull. It's not very threatening because its teeth are very small compared to other carnivorous dinosaurs and there's some evidence it may have been an insectivore," he told the BBC.

What is striking is the animal's unusual claws.

"Non-avian theropods start with five fingers but evolved to have only three fingers in later forms," he says. "Tyrannosaurs were unusual in having just two fingers but the one-fingered Linhenykus shows how extensive and complex theropod hand modifications really were."

Disappearing fingers

The suggestion is that this mono-digit theropod may represent the end of one evolutionary pathway, in which unused digits disappear as part of a process of natural selection.

"Vestigial structures, like legs in whales and snakes, may appear and disappear seemingly randomly in the course of evolution," says Jonah Choiniere of the American Museum of Natural History, who also worked on the find.

"Linhenykus highlights complexity in evolution of these vestigial fingers."

Dr Paul Barrett of London's Natural History Museum said the discovery was a "nice specimen" to add to a sub-group already known for its weirdness.

"Alvarezsauroids are already know to be an unusual group of theropods with very bizarre hands used primarily for digging, and this new find confirms there was some variation in how weird these hands were."

 

[EnglishLady]

Re: Meet the mini T-rex ..... and others

Mail Jan 24

Builders stumble across ice age 'graveyard' filled with fossilised remains of dozens of huge animals

Building contractors have unearthed an ice age graveyard containing the fossilised remains of dozens of giant animals that died up to 150,000 years ago.
Mammoths, mastodons and a giant ground sloth were all discovered at the bottom of a drained reservoir near the Aspen ski resort in Colorado's Rocky Mountains.
The remains are thought to be one of the largest collections of animals from the last ice age to be found in one place, reported the Daily Telegraph

They were found in sediment in October by contractors preparing to build a new dam at the reservoir near Snowmass Village, which is located on a plateau some 8,870ft above sea level.
Palaeontologists have since found more than 600 bones from 25 different animals from seven different species beneath the reservoir's bed.

Heavy snow has forced them to call off their search until the spring, but they fully expect to find more fossils when they return.
Their haul so far still makes for impressive reading - ten American mastodons; four Columbian mammoths; four ice age bison; a Jefferson's ground sloth, an ice age deer and a tiger salamander have all been identified.


Lead scientist Dr Kirk Johnson, from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, told the Telegraph: 'It is an amazing site and is very unusual.
'It is a true treasure trove of ice age fossils.
'Many fossils are pristine as they have been very well preserved. Some of the bones we recovered are still white while we are finding leaves that are still green and tree branches with the bark still on.'
The researchers believe the discovery will enhance our understanding of the prehistoric environment.
As these fossils were found beneath a lake, small invertebrates including fossilised insects and plant matter have been preserved


Scientists believe that so many remains were found there because animals had gravitated towards the lake to drink water.
Other ice age fossil sites have tended to be on the sites of former tar pits, where trapped animals died.
Dr Johnson said: 'Mammoths and mastodons are hardly ever found together on a single site as they lived in very different environments, so here we must have seen a change in the ecosystem around the lake.
'We are seeing two distinct ice age environments - the first was when the lake was fairly deep and had a lot of open water... but then later it seems to have become a marsh and it is in the sediment from this period that we are finding the mammoths.
'It shows this was far from being a frozen ice covered wasteland.'


Pics
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...-ice-age-graveyard-filled-huge-fossils.htmlcs