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."

Comments

stomach?

[Ashish Kulkarni]

does it have the contents of the stomach? I'd sure like to know how the dinosaurs managed to balance their food diet considering their weight...

Dinosaur Found

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting... I always wanted to be an archaeologist/paleontologist. We are learning so much about our past, but is anyone paying attention to how it might affect us in the future?

77 Million Years?

[killmenow]

Ok, I don't want to spark any big philosophical or religious debate on the origin of the universe and its age (although unfortunately one will probably ensue anyway)...BUT nowhere in the article does it say how they know it's 77 million years old. So how do they?

I'm assuming they go by some sort of carbon dating. What I'm asking all the geeks here is this: when scientists spout off numbers like this, what scientific means are they utilizing to back them up and how accurate are they?

I don't doubt the thing could very well *be* that old. I just wonder: how do they know?

Re:77 Million Years?

[Xeriar]

Radiocarbon dating is four orders of magnitude too short, and needs atmospheric correlation anyway.

Potassium-Argon dating, probably. Since argon is a noble gas, it doesn't really bond with anything, or get trapped in something's liquid or gaseous form. So, when the creature dies, as it fossilizes its radioactive potassium starts slowly decaying into argon. As we know of no other way for the argon to show up, we can be fairly certain about the date that pops out (I'm not sure if 77 million years is so accurate on the dot, but, say, I would be pretty confident that it's 70-85, for example.)

Re:77 Million Years?

[Tyreth]

Contrary to FUD coming from young-Earth wackos, carbon dating has absolutely nothing to do with determining ages of dinosaur fossils. Carbon dating cannot be used to measure ages older than 10,000 years or so. It is totally inadequate for determining geological timescales. That's why other radiometric methods are used, such as potassium-argon dating or uranium-lead dating.

And you likewise propogate evolutionist FUD. Carbon dating has everything to do with fossils. Do you know why carbon dating is not used on old fossils? Because, presumably, there should be not enough C14 left to make any reasonable date. So the creationist says "This fossil is dated millions of years old, and should therefore contain no C14 that could produce a relevant date". So the creationist tests this fossil and finds out that it dates a lot younger than 10,000, meaning that it has quite enough C14 to say that it is a young fossil. This, for the creationist, demonstrates clearly that there are MAJOR problems and contradictions in modern day dating techniques. This is why a creationist thinks carbon dating is relevant for fossil dating...it provides a good way of testing whether the original age that a fossil is placed in is accurate, and quite often it isn't.

Likewise, I'm sure you could find plenty examples of such inconsistencies by a google search.

Found 2 years ago

[loomis]

This item was found in the summer of 2000.

This article is very very vague. It states that the creature died when it was just 3 years old; I wonder why. The article doesn't say.

Loomis

Re:Found 2 years ago

[mustangdavis]

This article is very very vague. It states that the creature died when it was just 3 years old; I wonder why. The article doesn't say.

What I want to know is how the scintists know that this dinosaur died when it was three years old! The "mummy" is 77 million years old, so how can they post a number like that? Are they sure it wasn't 2.5, 4, or 5 years old ....

Lets face it, they dont't have anything that was living during any of our life times to compare it to ... so how do they know this?

Some food for thought ...

Re:Absolutely not...

[Sylver Dragon]

I'm a bit too lazy to look it up at the moment, but I seem to recall a study some time back where they tried to radio carbon date a reacently dead (i.e. year or two at most) sea lion and got some wacky results. Thus my comment about not working for recent stuff. As for the 40k-50k max, I'll take your word on it. I know there are other radio isotopes they look at now (which are pulled from the surrounding rock), just didn't feel like delving into it in my post.

Re:Mummified?

[f97tosc]

getting mummified (a very technical process performed by Man?)

Mummyfied is simply a term for extraordinary well preserved. This can happen because a human pulls out the brains and applies the right ointments, or because the specimen dies under extraordinary conditions - like the dry-freezed dude they found in the alps a couple of years ago.

There were some tracks discovered in the Paluxy River bed that had man tracks and dinosaur tracks side by side, ...

Could you perhaps elaborate a bit? What is your source? I would love to read more about it.

Tor

Re:Prehistoric plants?

[Abcd1234]

Keep in mind that some theorists believe that, at the time of the dinosaurs, the atmosphere was richer in oxygen, meaning the respiratory system wouldn't need to be as powerful as that of a dinosaur evolved in today's environment.

A scientific question....

[hanenkamp]

Using my scientific skepticism: How exactly does a mummy stay preserved without being fractured and destroyed for 77 million years? That's a very, very, very long time. I'm really curious because that doesn't really make sense to me.