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First Pterosaur Embryo Fossil Discovered

Posted by timothy on from the sounds-like-an-omelet dept.

blamanj writes "A fossil embryo, preserved in an almost complete egg was found in the sediment of a lake in Liaoning in northeastern China. The Liaoning embryo has a wingspan of 10.6 inches, indicating that the embryo would have grown up into a medium-to-large pterosaur."

35 comments

  1. medium to large by pizza_milkshake · · Score: 4, Funny

    it also would have made one hell of an omellete.

    1. Re:medium to large by Lars+T. · · Score: 2, Funny

      An omelette with a huge embryo in it.

      --

      Lars T.

      To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck

    2. Re:medium to large by pizza_milkshake · · Score: 1

      omg, i know this is /., but how could i have so awfully butchered the word 'omelette'? i need to stop drinking while i'm at work... or drink more.

  2. Dinosaurs Among Us? by Ieshan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Interested parties might want to check out the following article from Avian Visual Cognition: Dinosaurs Among Us?

    This article is a discussion of avian evolution from an avian physiology expert and the possible "bird-dinosaur" connection.

    Very interesting stuff.

    1. Re:Dinosaurs Among Us? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Possible? Pretty definite now. Especially after all the feathered dinosaur finds in China.

    2. Re:Dinosaurs Among Us? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That is interesting, but, off-topic.

      Pterosaurs are to birds as seals are to whales.

  3. bird-dinosaur link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Assuming birds are the ancestors of dinosaurs, does anyone here know why the would have been better able to survive the extinction event 65m years ago? I don't imagine they would be able to fly high enough to avoid the dust cover that enveloped the earth.

    1. Re:bird-dinosaur link by pajamacore · · Score: 1

      I think you have it backwards there, friend. Assume dinosaurs are the ancestors of birds.

    2. Re:bird-dinosaur link by Bitsy+Boffin · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Flight allows the animal to increase it's range greatly, more range = more available food sources.

      At a time when food is scarce, small winged animals who don't need much food have a distinct advantage over huge behemoths who eat a truckload with every mouthfull.

      Remember - bigger != better.

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    3. Re:bird-dinosaur link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      True.

    4. Re:bird-dinosaur link by Claire-plus-plus · · Score: 1

      well the problem with determining how birds would have survived the extinction event is that there is no really compelling evidence that exctinction was caused by a meteor as the mainstream media implies. We have to know what caused extinction before we find out how they survived it.

      My vote is on toxins produced by angiosperms (flowering plants) killing off all the large plant eating mammals and overbalancing the ecology.

      --
      99 bottles of beer in 175 characte
    5. Re:bird-dinosaur link by famebait · · Score: 1

      I think a more promising line of attack is to look at what mammals and birds have in common to let them survive what the dinosaurs didn't.

      --
      sudo ergo sum
    6. Re:bird-dinosaur link by barawn · · Score: 3, Informative

      no really compelling evidence that exctinction was caused by a meteor as the mainstream media implies.

      Barring the really gigantic impact crater in the south of Mexico?

      After the Chicxulub crater was found (oddly enough - with a dating of 65 million years) most scientists were pretty convinced that an asteroid (10 km is not a meteorite) killed off the dinosaurs. There may have been other contributing effects, but a 10 km object slamming into the Earth would have done extremely bad things to the planet's biosphere.

    7. Re:bird-dinosaur link by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 1

      FEATHERS?

      After all- the main problem with the dust cover, in theory, is the nuclear winter scenario- plunging temperatures. Insulative feathers would better allow birds to survive than non-flying species.

      --
      SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
    8. Re:bird-dinosaur link by Claire-plus-plus · · Score: 1

      The evidence suggests that all life would have died off not just the big reptiles. The meteor theory gives no compelling explaination as to why some things survived and others didn't, and why those particular survivors?

      --
      99 bottles of beer in 175 characte
    9. Re:bird-dinosaur link by barawn · · Score: 1

      The evidence suggests that all life would have died off not just the big reptiles.

      Woah, it wasn't that big of an impact! It's only a 10 km impact on an object that's 40,000 km around.

      Read the link I posted - the impact itself would've caused large tsunamis, and may have killed off an entire generation of plant life, but their seeds would likely have survived (inert) and begun to grow when sunlight fell on them again.

      The meteor theory gives no compelling explaination as to why some things survived and others didn't, and why those particular survivors?

      Huh? That answer's obvious - large things went extinct. Small things didn't. The population of both dropped significantly, but things that require huge amounts of food have less granularity available - a massive drop in food availability will simply kill off the species, rather than dramatically lowering the population numbers. If you reduce a population of 100 by a factor of 100, they're now a population of 1, and they will go extinct. If you reduce a population of 10,000 by a factor of 100, they're now a population of 100, and they can survive.

      So the small creatures didn't survive the catastrophe - they died off just like everything else when the global energy input dropped by orders of magnitude. But they didn't go extinct, which is the difference.

    10. Re:bird-dinosaur link by barawn · · Score: 1

      Assuming birds are the ancestors of dinosaurs

      s/ancestors/descendants/, I'm assuming.

      does anyone here know why the would have been better able to survive the extinction event 65m years ago?

      Well, they probably didn't survive. They likely died in massive numers, just like everything else, because there was nothing for them to feed on.

      The difference is that smaller dinosaurs wouldn't've gone extinct - there were so many of them that even with their population going down by a few orders of magnitude, they still existed. Imagine trying to kill off all lions in the world. It never would have been hard - they're too high on the food chain, and there's far too few of them. Let's say there are only 1000 lions alive. Now, a virus that kills 99% of all lions might cause the species to go extinct (0.01*1000 = 10). A virus that kills 99% of humans, however, won't kill us off (0.01*6000000000 = 6000000)- it would just suck.

      Scientists were never talking about beings like the Tyrannosaurus Rex evolving into a bird. The T. Rex went extinct, rather abruptly. Smaller dinosaurs may have survived. Flight capable dinosaurs may actually have been selected for, because flight increases the range over which they can feed, and in a food-starved ecosystem, this would be paramount.

    11. Re:bird-dinosaur link by Xilman · · Score: 1
      Assuming birds are the ancestors of dinosaurs, does anyone here know why the would have been better able to survive the extinction event 65m years ago? I don't imagine they would be able to fly high enough to avoid the dust cover that enveloped the earth.

      Nope. They would have been char-grilled if they had been flying. The re-entering material thrown up by the initial impact would have turned the entire sky red hot for a few hours over the entire world.

      The survivors would have been those well-insulated, perhaps by living in caves, under water or buried (as eggs, for example).

      Paul

      --
      Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate
  4. Says who, exactly? by Pi_0's+don't+shower · · Score: 3, Interesting
    The Liaoning embryo has a wingspan of 10.6 inches, indicating that the embryo would have grown up into a medium-to-large pterosaur.
    While I agree that this is one possible conclusion, is there anywhere where it has evidence as to what stage of embryonic development this dinosaur is currently at? For instance, at varying stages of embryonic development, a human fetus has gills, fins, and wings. Someone viewing a gilled human fetus might even go as far as to mis-classify it. My question is, how sure are we that this is actually the dinosaur we think it is, and not some later evolutionary descendent?
    1. Re:Says who, exactly? by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 1

      Wings? I knew about the gills and fins (and tail, you missed tail) but I've NEVER seen anything showing that any primate went through a flight stage.

      --
      SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
    2. Re:Says who, exactly? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Obviously, this is necessary when we evolve into angels.

  5. Any hope of Jurassic Park? by TJ_Phazerhacki · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Interesting thought - the development of dinosaurs has not really been studied to my limited knowledge. Any hope of examining dinosaur "Stem Cells", possibally contributing more to the overall study of Jurassic genetics than has so far been found?

    --
    Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
  6. Sources? by T.Hobbes · · Score: 1

    Can you provide a source or reference? It's news to me that a human foetus has gills, fins and wings at any stage of development.

    1. Re:Sources? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Holy crap.. Are you in 4th grade or something?!

      I don't know about the fins and wings, but gills and a tail definately.

    2. Re:Sources? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Too bad the parent didn't mention a tail

  7. Argh! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No pictures?! This screams for pictures! It's not even worth posting without pictures! Pictures!

    1. Re:Argh! by beeplet · · Score: 2, Informative

      No pictures?! This screams for pictures! It's not even worth posting without pictures! Pictures!

      Nature story with pictures.

  8. RTFAA, smartass by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    "It is bigger than fossils of hatched pterosaurs, which suggests it probably would have hatched soon."

  9. Re:Does anyone remember Dino Eggs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There's a nagging voice in the back of my head saying "cbm-64".. I think i had that game on my Commodore 64, maybe you can find it on one of the emulater sites?

  10. No by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    RTFA.. It's a fossil, not an embryo as the submitter seems to suggest.

  11. No, no, no by barakn · · Score: 3, Informative

    It is an embryo, a fossilized embryo.

    --
    "I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
  12. Bad embryology by yet+another+coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Maybe you are joking.

    Humans have gill slits, not gills, and limb buds, not fins or wings. The old saying is "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." It is not exactly true, though. The embryology of humans resembles that of many mammals. It resembles fish embryology, too, but not for as long. We share similar adult body patterns and similar patterning genes to many animals, and our early embryology can looks similar. It is not as if we grow to be fish really early and then keep going since we are more evolved than fish.

  13. Jurassic Park by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why the hell didn't they try to hatch it?
    Idiots.

  14. Images by mrgrey · · Score: 3, Informative

    Here's a link to the story with images.

    Link

    http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1128 68 4.htm

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