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Scientists Examine Dinosaur Skin
jd writes "Fossilized skin from a dinosaur in China is allowing paleontologists a better understanding of what dinosaur skin was like. A tear, caused by a predator, shows that below the scales of the Psittacosaurus was a thick hide comprised of 25 layers of collagen. Other than the multitude of layers, this is very similar in nature to modern shark skin. The gash caused by a predator allowed the skin and the soft interior to be fossilized along with the bones. This is not the same dinosaur that had been reported previously on Slashdot, which was found in South Dakota, although the process and extent of fossilization is very similar."
Well, evolution isn't really all that good at creating new things, but is very good at retaining good designs.
Seagoon: Shut up Eccles!
Eccles: Shut up Eccles!
Imagine the amount of gelatin dinosaur stock would contain, it'd put veal shanks to shame.
How was the flesh preserved, and not eaten by microbes?
Suddenly covered by sediment seems like odd explanation.
Like there was all of a sudden a large amount of water full of particulates put on top of this land dwelling animal. Then allowed to settle.
Weird
This is not the same dinosaur that had been reported previously on Slashdot
;-)
Somebody's a bit sensitive about dupes
Table-ized A.I.
Reading the 'Origin of Species' gives great insight into those ideas. It's gives pretty interesting explanations (though a bit outdated) on why some species seem to revert to old forms (such as why whales look like fish), and why some useful features stay the same through the ages seemingly unchanged. Go on, get it and take it one idea at a time. It's available to everyone as a free audiobook or free text
Give Kashyyyk back to the Wookies
Great, thanks! Cause every time someone jokes about creationism, God goes back to the Jurassic and kills a dinosaur!
You just got troll'd!
If only they'd built them with 26 layers!
Well put - This is certainly interesting, but it would have been more surprising to learn that they had some completely different and unique skin structure. Sharks and many reptiles have been around a helluva long time because they're very well adapted to their niches.
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On a side note, I find it pleasantly surprising that Firefox's spell-check happily accepted 'helluva'.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
You mean we can mount a frikking laser on them?
A tear, caused by a predator, shows that below the scales of the Psittacosaurus was a thick hide comprised of 25 layers of collagen.
It's like I always say, 25 layers of collagen just isn't enough if you can't outrun your predators.
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
What do you think God was doing when dinosaurs are joking about creationism?
Right... and we're clever indeed...
First, life has gone through BILLIONS of years, not just million. Secondly, mammals and reptiles are very closely related. And finaly, (almost ?) all multicellular species that existed in the last 2 billion years use collagen to make their cells stick together.
More interesting is a question how much earlier than europeans chinese began fossilizing their dinosaurs
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
How wonderful to consider that this animal's descendants walk among us to this very day. Chubby, piggish little creatures. Omnivorous. Voracious. Almost invulnerable due to their incredibly tough skin. Scavenging when they must, picking off a vulnerable or unwary victim when they can.
We call them "lawyers".
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
100 million years is the recent past, in evolutionary terms. See the Timeline of evolution.
Single-celled life evolved about 4 billion years ago. The even bigger leap to multi-celled life was 1 billion years ago. By 100 million years ago, we already had all the big developments except human brains: plants, fish, insects, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, birds, and flowers. So 100 million years ago isn't that old, in evolutionary terms.
Mmm.. spicy Psittacosaurus rinds.
Well, thanks to the Internet, I'm now bored with sex.
Additionaly "Climbing Mount Improbable" by Richard Dawkins gives a great overview of the various eye in the animal kingdom. Interesting bits are how the eye apparently developed along several lines, and how a choice made early in evolution can hardly be undone, such as the blood vessels being in front of the retina in the eyes of vertrebrates. (Or wait, God did that to protect the retina.)
Not surprising if you've ever been to a market in chinatown. They are very much into preserving animals of all kinds in as many ways as possible.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
If only they'd built them with 26 layers!
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
...which was found in South Dakota. North Dakota. The article previously covered was found in North Dakota. For those of you who have never been there before, there is a difference - not just geographically either.No it's like saying I'm only days old.
10,585 days to be exact.
That's a little misleading. Yes life has been around for billions of years but only primitive celled organisms and bacteria. Thefirst complex life including the first fishes, corals, trilobites and shellfish only appeared in the Cabrian period which started about 570 million years ago. Mammals and dinosaurs came much later.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Creationist nonsense...marked interesting???
This is incorrect. The first complex multicellular life (excluding various colonial bacteria and the like, which have been around a lot longer) appear in the Ediacaran period about 600-610 million years ago. It's an all-too-common myth that the Cambrian Explosion represents the origins of such life.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.