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Dinosaur Mummy Found
sckienle writes "Although the dig was a year ago, MSNBC has an article about a very rare dinosaur find. It starts off with "A mummified dinosaur, unwrapped from the rocks of Montana, has revealed how the creature looked and how it lived 77 million years ago -- down to the texture of its skin and the contents of its stomach, scientists say." Unfortunately, the details are mostly missing in the article. This isn't the first mummified dinosaur found but it is the first in a long time."
So much for all those who were postulating about dinosaurs in Day-Glo colors... /Nanoox.
the type of dinosaur that it was. they know that type lived during a certain set of years.
it could be found out later that this particular dinosaur was from a seperate period, which would be a suprise. but its not a hard fact yet for this specimen
Probably just the current political situation. I wouldn't exactly want to go looking around Kashmir for fossils right now, would you?
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
From what I understand after actually reading the article, this "mummy" is actually a complex fossil. Most of the tissues have been replaced with minerals.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
According to my college chemistry professor, carbon dating (and radioactive dating in general) is based on determining the current percentage of the isotope relative to the percentage of the non-radioactive element. This percentage is then compared to the original percentage and the half-life of the isotope - about 5K years for carbon.
Therefore, radioactive dating works best for time periods where the value of n in half_life * 2^n (^ = to the power of) is closest to 0. Very accurate for 5K years, 2.5K years, 1.25K years,10K years, 20K years. Very inaccurate for 1 year or 1 million years.
[btw, I'm no expert - just sayin' what I heard to the best of my recollection]
The cool thing is, if the stomach contents are intact enough, we may have access to some plant-life that was not previously available. This appears to be a duckbilled dinosaur, so it's likely a herbivore. Too bad, if it were a big-bad t-rex we may have gotten a 2-for-1 with anything else inside its stomach, depending on the state of digestion at death.
Personally, I'd be quite interested in the breathing and circulatory apparati of dinosaurs. Getting blood and oxygen around the systems of these big guys may have required organs a little different than current-day creatures (I don't think there are any reptiles this large alive to-date). Perhaps they're able to breathe through their skin, although I believe that is generally characteristic of amphibians and not reptiles.
Hmmm... tastes like million-year-old chicken - phorm
And how do you know it's 77 million years old?
Look at the rocks! Those rocks are 77 million years old!
And how do you know those rocks are 77 million years old?
Because the dinosaurs we found in them were 77 million years old!
And how do you... [repeat ad infinitum]