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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.
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
http://www.news24.com/News24/Technology/News/0,,2- 13-1443_1745931,00.html
Who's modding this guy up? We'll be inundated with awful puns if you egg him on!
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?
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.