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Sexual Identification of A Rex Fossil
Rollie Hawk writes "The Tyrannosaurus rex has long been the darling of science fiction dinosaurs and has one of the most well-known skeletal designs among extinct creatures. But while even the most casual dinosaur enthusiast can identify the T. rex, until recently the sex of individual specimens was not discernable. Though dinosaurs are most known for their traits shared with modern reptiles, it is their kinship with birds that has finally revealed the sex of a T. rex fossil. To prepare for egg production, female birds develop a thick layer of medullary bone in their long bones, which acts as an extra source of eggshell calcium. According to Dr. Mary H. Schweitzer of North Carolina State University, the 'tyrant lizard king' appears to do the same thing. She explains that 'dinosaurs produced and shelled their eggs much more like modern birds than like modern crocodiles.'"
They had sex? That would be some funny pr0n!
So, anyone feel like digging through a pile of 1950s dinosaur movies to see just how many legendary T. Rex predators were, in fact, female?
Are "errors" like this even gossip-worthy anymore? Damn bloody female empowerment movement.
Something has to be done.
This could be just me and my will to believe everything in sci-fi movies, but can't the dinos assume either gender and reproduce? (Just like in Jurassic Park.) So why would these findings matter?
...or did that story just take two and a half hours to go live? That's gotta be a new record or something.
Oh yeah: Neat find. Considering that the attribute is supposed to be unique to egg laying birds, I'm surprised they haven't noticed it by now. Of course, knowing the way that most advancements in dinosaur theory get reported, maybe they noticed it ten years ago and we're only hearing about it now.
This is a cool achievement, but it does have limitations: (from the article)
"This discovery will not enable paleontologists to determine the sex of all dinosaurs because medullary bone is present only during the egg-laying cycle. But when present, it at least enables scientists to say that a particular example is female.
Not every museum may want to check the sex of its specimens because it requires cutting a long bone in half, said Horner, a co-author of the paper with Schweitzer.
Even then, finding medullary bone is a long shot, Schweitzer said. First the dinosaur has to be an ovulating female. It also has to die before it has finished laying eggs and has to be fossilized. Finally, that fossil has to be found by humans."
Unfortunately, this only means that a few specimens of them can be identified. It says that it's a damaging procedure, can only be used to determine femaleness and also, only works in a few cases.
It also might be interesting to know that this particular dinosaur specimen was also the first specimen they were able to recover soft tissue from a dinosaur.
"Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write it should be hard to understand."
We need to send Steve Irwin back in time, then we would learn all about dinosaur sex when he tries to molest them and gets eaten, that would have to be the best episode of the croc hunter ever.
This is what makes me worry about science. What is the purpose of knowing this information?
Actually, I'd be more concerned about the media. This find is interesting to scientists because it further solidifies the link between dinosaurs and birds. The fact that we can now determine the gender of a skeleton is just a side effect that the media plays up. Just like that entire "intact tissue found inside T-Rex bone!" nonsense that the media spouted a few months ago.
link is here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story Id=4677825
I heard about it this morning. It sounds better over coffee.
Damn. . .every program I hear on WBUR (NPR) has been showing up on slashdot three days later. . .
I'm still trying to imagine two T-Rex's going at it. I mean, what is there to hold on to/with? It seems like it would be like a little kid trying to get his paws around an enormous beach-ball. Then again, maybe they did it missionary style. Or whatever the dinosaurs called it back then, before there were missionaries.
I can see how this information would be of value, though. For one thing, it might help discern typical behavior differentiated by sex based on where they find the remains.
Then again, if I were a male T-Rex, my DNA would have been all over the place. Nudge nudge.
Honestly, Maxwell! I understand that you're proud of your mathematics here, but this is what makes me worry about science. What is the purpose of knowing your four equations of electromagnetics?
You should concentrate on more practical things, like the development of artillary or that new-fangled internal combustion engine. I hear that George Brayton is working on something that sounds promising. But your equations are only interesting from an academic point of view.
Feh! We'd be better off if all science had a governing body that outlawed this sort of useless research.
Then again, if I were a male T-Rex, my DNA would have been all over the place. Nudge nudge.
That's understandable. They didn't have kleenex tissues back then.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
...is that no one thought of this before now.
Scientists have long known that dinosaurs have a kinship with birds even though they share traits with modern reptiles and many strides have been made in the field as a result of that knowledge.
This news clearly has to be one of the finer examples we have where almost everyone is compelled to say "Damn, why didn't I think of that!"
I've often wondered how big a T-Rex penis would have been. Bigger than an elephant's?
I mean, I haven't often wondered about it. But I've wondered about it at least twice now.
Speaking of T-Tex and bones... Whatever happened to the soft tissue they found inside the T-rex bone they cut open a few months ago?
Wow. That's scary. A governing body to determine what is worth studying and what isn't?! The purpose of expanding knowledge is to expand knowledge.
No, we absolutely wouldn't be. The problem is that nobody knows what is "worthwhile" and what isn't. It's obvious in hindsight, for example, that studying aerodynamics to learn how to make a workable airplane was a productive application of science, but at the time many people thought it was a complete waste of time (i.e. how could anything heavier than air possibly fly?). If science had a "governing body" that ordered the Wright brothers (etc) to work on "something more worthwhile", would the airplane ever have been invented?
On a different topic: shouldn't this specimen properly be called a "T. Regina"?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
This means we can rest easy knowing that there will be NO accidental same sex marriages between Tyrannosaurs!
Call the White House and Tom Delay.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Does that make the T. Rex backwards compatible with modern birds? or modern birds forward compatible with T. Rex eggs? Gaah, I've been following too much news spin on Longhorn.
I know a couple of nice caves you might want to move into. Unless you think that's too modern and you want to go back to the trees.
Exactly what do you consider worthwhile? Strickly that which benefits you personally? Are you saying certain lines of research shouldn't even be allowed? Who makes that determination? In the old days the church did. Are you saying we should return to the good ole days? What does it benefit youy personally studying Mars?
Also the whole exploiting animals. Is the sole purpose of science to learn how best to exploit nature? Exploiting nature has put us in the global warming mess we are in. We should be learning how to live in concert with nature not exploit it.
How big were dinosaur eggs?
uh, did you see those sharp knees?
T.Regina has a T.Vagina! *chuckles like an immature 12-year old*
I thought they were supposed to be studying T-Rex bones, not T-Rex boners.
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
Brilliant.
After all, I am strangely colored.
So having big bones is a valid excuse for an overweight Mrs. T-Rex.
--"It's Bradford Company, slash your last name, dot your first name"
Even then, finding medullary bone is a long shot, Schweitzer said. First the dinosaur has to be an ovulating female. It also has to die before it has finished laying eggs and has to be fossilized. Finally, that fossil has to be found by humans.
That last part is certainly a long shot for any bones lying undiscovered in a museum somewhere.
It's not quite funny to someone who speaks latin, as Regina has one fewer syllables than Vagina. And in latin they sound disimiliar to the english pronunciations.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
It would worry me a lot more if science filtered what it studied by what we have need of today. A great many discoveries of science precede the uses that are found for them. Certainly we didn't have a lot of use for quantum mechanics when it was originally devised, for example.
It may seem that because the dinos are gone, all use for knowledge related to dinos is also gone, but there's no logical reason to assume the former fact necessarily implies the latter conclusion.
Nor does Darwinian evolution imply that everything now dead is dead for things that people might think of as good reasons. You might have a desert-dwelling animal that is perfectly functional but killed off by a great flood because it can't swim. That doesn't mean its systems for dealing with low-water conditions weren't worth knowing about.
We learn from the study of animals how to be inventive and resourceful. Animals, even ones for which we have no DNA, have processes and techniques that we might not have thought of. These might be mimicked mechanically, either to help us or other animals medically, or even just to help us build other kinds of machines. Or they might just expand our imaginations and make us think "gee, there are often more ways to think about something than I had thought".
In fact, just the fact that someone has learned how the life processes of millions of year extinct animals by examining a heap of rocks should tell you something about the value of knowledge that might, on its surface, appear to have little to offer.
Nor does the good that is done have to be direct. Consider that the good that comes from this discovery could be something like someone saying "I want to be an astrophysicist, but at first I thought it was just too hard to conclude anything reliable about things that far away. Then I saw a special on TV about how paleontologists conclude great things from very obscure pieces of information, and I thought--if they can do it, I can do it." Inspiration in life comes from all manner of places.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
This is a very useful tool. Fossils give us vital clues that tell us how animal groups evolved (or how imaginative the Creator was, if you're a Creationist), and how their ecology worked. Knowing their sex gives us information about sex ratios, which can tell us a lot about population dynamics. This is as important to paleontologists as mapping distant galaxies is to astronomers - it's fundamental information (pure science) that doesn't necessarily affect Joe Public before Saturday's big game, but which adds to the database of human knowledge. Applied research simply isn't possible without background knowledge.
Okay, I'll bite...
Some time ago you said that Boy Scouts are all about what's right and honorable. I think I speak for all scientists (and aspiring ones like myself) when I say that we are about knowledge and truth and not about what is immediately useful and practical. We pursue information, regardless of what it is, in the hopes that it'll lead to something eventually, or just for the sake of knowing it. I think it's often been said that if we all had lived in the here and now, that we wouldn't have gotten past sticks, stones, and fleeing from the first signs of danger. As researchers, we add our brick, and hope that what we're building forms the foundations for something else (to paraphrase a colleague of mine).
Sure, we may not get Jurassic Park out of this, but is knowing about dinosaurs who they were and why they disappeared any less laudible of a goal? Historians say that those who learn nothing from the past are doomed to repeat it. Knowing about previous forms of life can help us understand (and deal with or preserve?) those that are here today.
The Greeks eschewed science that *was* applicable because they thought that it wasn't a sufficent exercise of the mind. Clearly, this attitude is a little wrong-headed but Science isn't always obvious, nor its applications. Two hundred years ago, electricity was a curiosity and the mathematics governing it a flight of fancy. Relativity didn't have any obvious applications at the time, and now it helps us move around the globe.
To base all research purely on what's immediately obvious and applicable (while it must be done) will lead to no new ideas and stagnation (or so I think). To some extent though, there is something with a tinge of what you're talking about though: the grant committees that award the money required to do research. However (from my admitedly not direct knowedge) they decide whether or your research has promise, and leads to the greater body of knowledge for humanity as a whole, rather than something strictly utilarian and applicable tomorrow.
Knowledge for its own sake can be a laudable goal. Who's to say that something we learn today (whoever esoteric seeming) may not become useful tomorrow?
Just a little guy, y'know?
I'm too tired for the long answer, the short answer is pick up a good book on the history of science. There's been a long line of "obvious things" that when put to the test proved to be misleading. And doing things soley for the sake of curiosity, well, sometimes they do pan out with practical application. Sometimes not as well, but it's not really possible to ever know one way or another beforehand.
Everything will be taken away from you.
hahaha, its like Vogon poetry
You know in reality we have no idea what they looked like. We just have a bunch of artists studying bones and making a guess at what they looked like. I once read an interview with one of those artists and he said "if you brought me the bones of an elephant I would draw you a giant mouse". It could very well be that these creatures looked nothing like we imagine them to be.
evil is as evil does
I'm from NC State. Here is the link to the original article at North Carolina State University.(including some pictures) http://www.ncsu.edu/news/press_releases/05_06/133. htm
Then I would like to imagine mine as a giant Rosario Dawson T-Rex of Love.
"Dr. Grant, the velociraptors just fed! What could possibly be the reason they continue chasing us?"
[Grant looks into camera with one eyebrow raised as music starts - 'chick-a-chick-a-bow-wow']....
> We would be better off if all science had a governing body that said which studies are worthwhile.
Therein lies the road to Lysenkoism.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
They've already switched to another strategy - there's crapflood posts that are simply comments taken from other slashdot articles reposted into new ones. The posts are obvious in that they are totally offtopic and unrelated to their parents, but still read like a slashdot comment.
You must be a republican or neocon, or both. Of course there's a lot of information that can't necessarily be applied to practical and "useful" purposes.
But the very basis of science is that all kind of information, whether the structure of T. rex bones or the knowledge of how to build a car, is worthwhile and should be studied. It all gives us more information about the world we live in and directly effects the way we look at it and behave in it.
The day when we start to classify scientific information into "necessary" & "useful" and "unnecessary" & "irrelevant", the civilized, intellectual society dies. Unfortunately, we can see there's a tendency towards a version of this scenario in corporate neocon America, in the rest of the world too. Also here in Europe there's increasing economic and social pressure on science that doesn't produce results measurable in $$$ (or, since I'm talking about Europe, ).
I have nothing to add to the subject line... but the lameness filter demands text... and I must sate it's unholy hunger... here is my offering of text, O great lameness filter.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
In fact, talking about it is a waste of time, so the "science" of this discussion board should be eliminated. Shut down Slashdot!
Skeletal design ? I'm guessing the poster was schooled in Kansas :-)
"it is their kinship with birds" Funny usage, as the birds are dinosaurs. Just as rodents are mammals.
Scientists also recently discovered what a female T-Rex's mating call would sound like. It is basically: Cacaw Cacaw Tookie Tookie Tookie. Cacaw Cacaw Tookie Tookie Tookie.
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
"Sexual Identification of A Rex Fossil" would make a great movie title, almost as good as the movie title:
"The Man with the Smallest Penis in Existence and the Electron Microscope Technician Who Loved Him"
Occasionally, large collections of dinosaur bones are found at a single location, all of the same species, indicating that a group of these animals died in a single catastrophe. Sometimes these look like nesting sites. It will now be interesting to see if any of these groups can now be sexed.
Of course, this method can only be used to determine if an individual was female if it was an ovulating female at the time of death; apparently, those that were not ovulating look just like males. Still, if we were to sex all of the individuals at a nesting site in this manner, we might, for example, find that all of them were ovulating females except for one large specimen, quite possibly a male.
However, it sounds like this technique may only apply to members of the theropod group -- those that we believe to be more closely related to birds. In that case, we may never be able to use this method to determine the sexual makeup of, say, a group of brontosaurs, which are sauropods.
Ever read "The Dead Past", by Asimov? You just described it. It doesnt work out so well.
(second post about asimov short stories I've made today!)
The Braying and Neighing of Barnyard Animals Follows.
Breasts
You realize... there are people on this planet who don't believe that birds are evolved from dinosaurs. Showing that both have a similar method for egg production goes a long way in proving this relationship.
Just to be pedantic, I'm fairly sure we only have the faintest idea how to pronounce latin. We know how
Still wasn't funny, though
Well, in portuguese those two words sound very similar. Are you sure they sound disimilar in latin too? (yes, I'm aware that that wasn't what you claimed)
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
This just in: Link between bird's and dinosaurs weighed in today at 0.0000001kg!
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
The Institute for Really Important Shit (tm) has uncovered evidence that dinosaurs produced and shelled their eggs much more like ancient dinosaurs than modern birds or crocodiles.
She explains "dinosaurs produced and shelled their eggs much more like modern birds than like modern crocodiles."
Shouldn't that be:
Modern birds, far more so than crocodiles, produce and shell their eggs like dinosaurs.
-Nano.
You realize... there are people on this planet who don't believe that birds are evolved from dinosaurs. Showing that both have a similar method for egg production goes a long way in proving this relationship.
Ahem.... The vast majority of folks who don't believe birds evolved from dinosaurs are NOT going to be convinced by a bunch of scientist saying "See? They had similar methods for egg production."
In the unlikely event that those folks might possibly be convinced of any such thing, you would first need to tackle the more fundamental issue of convincing them that the world was not created just a few thousand years ago.
Is it still called doggie style if there aren't any dogs yet?
Chip H.
A Tyrannosaurus stud
Said "I don't have cold blood
My kisses aren't mere pecks
So, baby, let's have sex
'Cause when I hear your moans
I want to jump your medullary bones!"
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
So assuming that T Rex has similar mating cycles to modern birds, we probably not only know the gender of these fossils, but what time of year they died.
What does this button do...
I can't wait to eat them!!! Please clone them already!
Regina in latin (which means 'queen') has 3 syllables. Re-gi-na.
Vagina in latin (which means 'sheath') has 4 syllables. V-a-gi-na. V is a vowel in latin. Also the first 'a' and the 'i' in vagina are long vowels in Latin. In Regina, the 'e' and the 'i' are long. They'd sound like 'ew-eh-gee-na' and 'ray-gee-na'.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
Um, no. 'V' is used as both a vowel and a semi-vowel in Classical Latin, just like 'I', and this is a semi-vowel instance. In Classical Latin, the 'V' would sound like the 'u' in 'quit' or in 'suave', and to our ears 'vagina' would sound very like 'wa-gee-na'. It's not technically a consonant, but it's not really a full vowel either, and the Roman poets counted the 'va' as a single syllable.
In Ecclesiastical Latin, the 'v' becomes a full consonant, and the word would be pronounced va-jee'-na.
Nah, it just shows that the Creator ran out of ideas...
The most compelling purpose of this study is probably the fact that it closely links Tyrannosaurus Rex to modern birds. This is one of many things that are helping us understand evolution, which in turn tells us a lot about modern animals, including humans, and medicine.
Having a government body to study studies is a perfect example of a complete waste of money, and of worthless studies. If a study is worthless, no one will report on it, and no one will fund it. It's a self-correcting problem.
Geez, where are my mod points when I need them??!
:-(
This is a really funny post, sorry you didn't get credit.