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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.'"
So, umm, I'd hit it!
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 what makes me worry about science. What is the purpose of knowing this information? It is good if it is in modern reptiles and birds, ones we have to deal with now.
Ones we might be able to exploit now, and use the attributes of. But dinosaurs are gone. It's been proven time and time again they have no DNA to bring them back.
I think this is a sidetrack issue. Like the recent slashdot article talking about research stating the bleeding obvious, why is this necessary?
We would be better off if all science had a governing body that said which studies are worthwhile.
Not just which ones can be done for the sake of being done.
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.
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. . .
...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!"
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?
Lookie at my G5 rig
These medical techniques should be able to confirm whether this theory is valid.
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?
I thought they were supposed to be studying T-Rex bones, not T-Rex boners.
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
There's a guy currently flooding Slashdot with randomly generated crap messages with the intent of disrupting normal discussion. Click on one of the links below to see what I mean. If you have mod points left and aren't sure what to use them for, plase mod him down so we can get his network banned.
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Your help would be very much appreciated. Thanks!
If you actually HAVE a different use for your mod points, just use them elsewhere and don't reply. But keep in mind that crapflooding WILL come to one of your discussions sooner or later.
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.
and its lon6 term and the Bazaar
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
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
"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']....
providE 5odas,
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.
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.
Breasts
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.
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!
Geez, where are my mod points when I need them??!
:-(
This is a really funny post, sorry you didn't get credit.