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190 Million Year Old Dinosaur Embyro
leprasmurf writes "Sci Tech Today is reporting that scientists have cracked open a 190-million-year-old egg to reveal the oldest known dinosaur embryo. Examination of the fetal skeleton suggests the hatchling would have required parental care to survive. This would be the earliest evidence of nurturant behavior, more than 100 million years earlier than previous examples." The University of Toronto has a release about this as well. From the article: "According to Reisz, what makes this discovery particularly significant is the ability to put the embryos into a growth series and work out for the first time how these animals grew from a tiny, 15 centimetre embryo into a five metre adult. 'This has never been done for a dinosaur. Only Massospondylus is represented by embryos as well as by numerous articulated skeletons of juveniles and adults. The results have major implications for our understanding of how these animals grew and evolved,' he says."
Does anyone have a screenshot?
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Seriously though, a picture would be nice.
You had me at "dicks fuck assholes".
Elephants grow from tiny embryos into huge animals, too...
Considering that modern birds are almost all nurturers of their young, it stands to reason that dinosaurs, the precursors to birds, would also have exhibited nurturing behaviors towards their hatchlings. On the other hand, reptiles, the other modern descendant of the dinosaurs by and large do not nurture their young, some, like the green sea turtle, lay their eggs in the sand and never see the babies again.
I wonder how much nurturing had a part in the evolution of birds and reptiles. Whether the nurturing behavior in early birdlike dinosaurs led to the modern birds of today. And whether the non-nurturing behavior of other dinosaurs led to the separate branch which is populated by modern-day reptiles.
But the question on everyone's mind is, how tasty are those embryos?
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
per dolorem ad astra
Umm, evolution is origin agnostic. It doesn't explain how life started, just what happened once it did.
> To be fair, not all biblical literalists think this 6000 year number is anywhere near accurate. Many accept values between 10 and 30 thousand years.
Wow, that means they're only... well, still 4.5 billion years off.
> In any case, while I don't buy into evolution personally
Why don't you buy into evolution? And when you mention "how things got here" are you talking about biology, or cosmology?
> I can't help but wonder why I don't ever see ID or creationist fossil research publications.
ID isn't interested in any kind of research. They just want you to hear their "proofs" that God^w some incredibly powerful intelligent being created us - no questions from the audience, please. (Though they have been stung enough by our pointing out that real scientists publish in the peer reviewed literature that they're trying to make some end runs on peer review so they can claim that they've published in it.)
As for other kinds of creationists, some do take interest in explaining dinosaurs. Everything from carving fake human footprints among the Paluxy dinosaur tracks to having clueless amateurs excavate priceless specimens. And I think Ken Ham has a dino museum now.
Though their notion of research publications is - hard to imagine - even worse than the IDists'.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I don't buy into evolution for the litany of reasons that creationists give to "prove" creation.
Those reasons are bogus. Even the Pope has given up and accepted that the fossil record is pretty conclusive and hence evolution is true. Only a few misguided fundementalists in America stick to this ridiculous literal interpretation of the bible.
How would you feel to be the guy (or gal) who opened the egg? "Err, Hi, I'm Bob. This egg is 190 million years old. And I'm going to crack it open now."
i wasn't aware there was a popular theory regarding life origins. i know there are several untested hypotheses. since these hypotheses often also talk about such things as historical global floods and demons, i personally doubt their scientific veracity.
"To be fair, not all biblical literalists think this 6000 year number is anywhere near accurate. Many accept values between 10 and 30 thousand years."
I don't know wether one would consider me a literalist or fundamentalist or not. I, personally, consider myself a pretty hardline Christian that doesn't particularly prescribe to any one denomination (all I know of are corrupt). I prefer to read the Bible and make up my own damn mind, plus I like to read other religious text and make up my own damn mind if they are right or wrong (the whole religion thing being between me and God thing, no one else can tell me how to live my life). It depends on your definition of fundi or literalist - some mean that to mean the "crazies", some mean it to be me.
Anyway, the Bible isn't clear on time tables - any attempt to make it so will not be verifiable, and likely not correct. We know some about the language, we know some about how the stories are written (say, taking 40 days and 40 nights literally is like taking "It's raining cats and dogs" literal today), and given that one can not be conclusive. In fact, God is very explicit that his version of time is not anything like ours. To paraphrase - "your life is but a blink of my eye". Some take that to mean the equivilent of as you get older 10 years is less signifigant, for an immortal hundreds is a flash. It could also be easily read as a true literal - time doesn't mean the same, literally that our life goes in a blink of his eye so what was "seven days"? It could also mean an amalgam of those (my personaly beliefe, along with the general idea that the Bible is a collection of oral stories told through the generations and has creep inherrent in it). Of course, you can find any number of beliefes on this.
"In any case, while I don't buy into evolution personally*,"
What is commonly meant by evolution I support fully (however, evolution as a concrete thing has been shown to be wrong, there are more modern theories that better fit the data set. But that is for Biologist nitpickers to argue over). I just do not see them as being mutually exclusive - why can God not act through natural events? Seems to me that the all powerful creator of the universe can do whatever the hell he wants even if it isn't what I would do. Not to mention I like the Futurama episode where Bender meets God, I really like that idea. That do too much and they become to dependant, not enough and they loose hope, the perfect balance is to not be sure someone/something is out there. There is just too many coincidences out there for me to think "nothing but random chance".
"I can't help but wonder why I don't ever see ID or creationist fossil research publications. Don't church-supported universities also engage in this kind of research?"
There is some, but it is hard to find. Nor do I find it particularly interesting. For one thing religion and science seem to ask different questions - one is how, one is why. I can perfectly believe that a rose is red because God wanted it so, I can also be interested in pigments and genetic research. Personally I can seperate the two - "because God wanted it so" is not a sufficient, or even relevant, answer to any question with regards to science.
"Even the 6000 year crowd must surely be interested in knowing how these dinosaurs lived."
No, they are not. That is the "crazy" group. Like any person who holds truth in the face of all opposition or without any evidence (this goes for believing that there is no Creator - something one can not show and may be true) there is nothing past the idea. They generally think that it is a test and can be safely ignored. Or that it was a smiting God bestowed on the animals. One should never exclude any idea that *may* be true (I'll even accept that "random chance" is true - it could work, though I will need proof that mine is wrong - or proof yours is right - before I change), once you go over that line you move into total and complete faith ragardless of reality.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
while i find your overall post to be overall quite worthwhile, BM Luethke , i find the line about disbelief and and belief in a creator being equal despite evidence to be rather humorous. if one is going to take a rational, scientific approach to analysing the material world, the default state must be skepticsm. there is no concrete evidence of a creator, so disbelief is the only rational position. while it is correct that the statement "there is no god" is no more valid than the statement "there is a god", the statement "i do not believe in a god due to the paucity of evidence" is more valid than the statement "i believe in a god despite the paucity of evidence". to say otherwise is to merely rationalize away cognitive dissonance. forgive me if i misinterpreted what you meant.