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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."
Pah. This is old news.
no really...it is.
...they have cracked the mystery of Dinosaur development.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Well, we know the earth is no more than 6,000 years old, so any measure that veers too far off that is bound to be inaccurate. The most accurate known dating method is counting backwards through the geneologies in the book of Genesis. Unfortunately, this egg is not mentioned there, so we'll probably never know its true age.
You had me at "dicks fuck assholes".
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.
from the NY Times
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. In any case, while I don't buy into evolution personally*, 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? Even the 6000 year crowd must surely be interested in knowing how these dinosaurs lived.
Any thoughts?
* I am origin agnostic, I haven't seen a good scientific theory yet for how things got here.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
http://www.news24.com/News24/Technology/News/0,,2- 13-1443_1745931,00.html
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 can't help but wonder why I don't ever see ID or creationist fossil research publications.
Waiting for this kind of reasearch is like waiting for Duke Nukem Forever to be released. Need I say more?
Beware the Wrath of God!
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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.
Even if scientists cannot extract the entire genetic code of dinosaurs from the blood samples, the scientists could make educated guesses. They then complete what, in their opinion, is the genetic code of a particular dinosaur. They then inject this code into a de-nuclearized egg of, say, a Komodo lizard to create a cloned embryo. Scientists can then use the embryonic fossilized bones to verify whether their guess is accurate. The scientists simply compare the fossilized bones with the bones of the developing embryo. If they are an exact match, then the scientists have likely cloned the genetic code of a particular dinosaur specimen.
I had the opportunity to actually take several courses with Dr. Reisz several years ago at UTM, including my first introduction to human anatomy and physiology course. At the time, I was certainly surprised to learn about the homology that musculoskeletal systems had across species, even those separated by millions of years of evolution.
I was also farily surprised to learn about some of the more optimal "solutions" that evolution came up with, including things such as the development of the cardiovascular systems ranging from say two-chambered hearts, to four-chambered hearts.
It's also very sensible to presume that quadrapeds eventually evolved into bipeds in some dinosaur species. Of course, all we needed was proof for that assumption, and that's what this discovery was all about.
Is it possible that the species found in the egg had congenital defects or was simply too small for its developmental age? Highly unlikely in my opinion. Too many other morphological factors involved.
From the article: 'The third area, he said, is the most speculative. Some of the embryos were clearly ready to hatch, he said, but they have no teeth, "and that suggests to us that some form of parental care was required ... not just protecting but active feeding." '
Speculating on whether hatchlngs were precocial or altricial based on absence of teeth is quite a stretch.
Among birds, most birds that spend most of their time on the ground walking are born precocial (feathered, able to walk and feed minutes after hatching). Birds that spend most of their time in trees and flying are altricial (naked, unable to fly, walk, or feed themselves and hence need parental nurturing fore some time).
However, coupled with other clues from the article, the altricial speculation seems more credible: "...the proportions of the limbs, neck and head suggest that as a baby and young animal this species walked on four legs, but as an adult it was able to walk on two legs some of the time." And, "...Mr. Reisz and colleagues reported that the Massospondylus hatchling was born four-legged with a relatively short tail, a horizontally held neck, long forelimbs and a huge head. As the animal matured, the neck grew faster than the rest of the body, but the forelimbs and head grew more slowly. The end result was a two-legged animal that looked very different from the four-legged embryo. Mr. Reisz suggested that the change from four- to two-legged could be a matter of balance related to the development of the animal's neck."
The long neck suggests adult animals were browsers rather than grazers. As such, young clearly could not feed except on very low-growing shrubs. On the other hand, perhaps the young grazed during development and gradually adapted to browsing. If so, it further erodes the altricial speculation.
Altricial young usually lack an ability critical to survival (e.g. flight among birds, foraging/hunting among mamallian carnivores and omnivores such as bears and chimpanzees) that involves both post-natal development and learning by minicry of the parents.
Precocial young (common in most mammalian herbivores) have essential abilities (feeding, mobility--to feed, keep up with herd, escape predators) from birth often as an adaptation to allow "following the food." It therefore seems unlikely that an herbivorous species would bear altricial young because it would tie parents to a location during post-natal development, and the copious quantities of vegetation required by such large animals would deplete immediate-area resources rather quickly.
Lack of teeth does not preclude suckling, another trait common among precocial herbivores.
My vote therefore goes for precocial.
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.