T. Rex Declared Faster

Live Science has an article on an interesting new finding about T. Rex!

The tails of both T. rex and modern reptiles are equipped with rib bones that are attached to vertebrae. Those ribs are located much higher on T. rex’s tail, leaving much more room along the lower end of the tail for the caudofemoralis muscles to bulk up and expand. Without rib bones to limit the size of the tail-locomotive muscles, they turned into robust powerhouses enabling T.rex to run … fast.

“It looks like T. rex was suited to outrun all the other dinosaurs in its environment,” Persons said, including duckbills, sauropods, horned dinosaurs and ankylosaurs.

The new, bulkier tail painted by this study also suggests T. rex was more stable overall, because the bigger tail muscles would’ve shifted the dinosaur’s center of mass back slightly, Persons said. That means the dinosaur didn’t have to use as much energy to support its heft, and instead could focus that energy on running.

Read the rest of the article here!

Posted on November 18, 2010 @ 5:56 PM. Leave a comment?

Oldest Known Dinosaur Embryos Found

Palaeontologists have identified the oldest known dinosaur embryos. The embryos were in Massospondylus eggs that were unearthed in South Africa in 1976. Here’s some more info:

Massospondylus belonged to a group of dinosaurs known as prosauropods, the ancestors of sauropods—huge, four-legged dinosaurs with long necks.

Having studied the tiny (20cm-long) skeletons, the researchers noted that the embryos were almost about to hatch—but never had the chance.

Interestingly, the report says, the embryos looked quite different compared to the adult animals.

Once hatched, the babies would have had rather long front legs, meaning that they would have been walking on all fours rather than on two legs like the adults.

The embryos’ heads were also disproportionally big, but it is believed the adult Massospondylus, which were about five metres in length, had relatively tiny heads and long necks.

The little ones’ anatomy would have changed with age.

Learn more here!

Posted on November 15, 2010 @ 1:24 AM. Leave a comment?

How Many Types Of Dinosaur Are There?

Independent.co.uk has an interesting article on the amount of newly discovered dinosaur and why discoveries are being made so frequently. The full article can be read here. An excerpt is below:

The reason there has been a high rate of discovery over the past couple of decades is two-fold. One, there have been a lot more palaeontologists active across the world. Two, there are many parts of the world that were rarely explored but which are now being opened up.

There has also been greater political openness; when I started, the idea of communicating with Chinese palaeontologists was unthinkable. What we have found is that really it is new territory that is the key to finding genuinely new discoveries. More people working will get you more new dinosaurs, but more new localities will get you genuinely new dinosaurian species.

Posted on October 07, 2010 @ 6:33 PM. Leave a comment?