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Fossil of Ant-Eating Dinosaur Discovered In China
thomst writes "Charles Q. Choi of LiveScience reports that a farmer in southern Henan Province in China has dug up the first known ant-eating dinosaur, a half-meter-long theropod (the dinosaur family to which T. Rex belongs), whose fossilized remains were described as 'fairly intact'. The 83- to 89-million-year-old pygmy dinosaur has been named named Xixianykus zhangi by Xig Xu, De-you Wang, Corwin Sullivan, David Hone, Feng-lu Han, Rong-hao Yan, and Fu-ming Du, whose paper on the critter, A basal parvicursorine (Theropoda: Alvarezsauridae) from the Upper Cretaceous of China, was published in the March 29 issue of Zootaxa (the abstract is available in PDF format for free, the full article is paywall-protected.)"
Whoa, I must have missed a whole bit there about how far back insects date than. I always assumed that there was little insect life at that time - clearly I have been misled all this time.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Missing from the summary: A photo of the ant-eating dinosaur.
DATABASE WOW WOW
ant-eating? in the same sense that our modern ant eaters don't eat ants at all?
The Yahoo link appears broken, plz fix it kthxbye
GENERATION O98346: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig and remove a random number from the generation. T
Doesn't believe one single story on any website starting about noon March 31st to April 2nd? Just sayin'
Yeah, right.
They've made an important scientific discovery, which humanity would supposedly benefit from knowing and supposedly they would agree (after all, they chose to be scientists, not the Wall-St (or Chinese equivalent thereof) money-grubbers their intellect would justify). Except, oops, how about that, you can't see their 'science' without paying. An accident? I doubt it. Everyone should assume about these charlatans and others: if you need to go through a paywall to the actual details of someone's evidence and research, it's probably a scam or gross incompetence (in the latter case, why bother reading the rest since incompetence is thus proven.) Results from "real" scientists are accessible from, e.g., Google; it takes active steps to maintain obcurity to avoid this. Whenever someone takes such steps, you should think about why they did so.
However, weren't all insects ridiculously large back then as compared to now? Or am I wrong to base my knowledge of prehistoric times off of time machine chose your own adventure books.
The "paywall" is an http auth? Why use a paywall for an April Fools joke? Oh, so you only have to fake the summary. Brilliant!
Here. Apparently the submitter wanted to provide a link to a print view, but it only works when redirected from an intermediate [Print] link in the article itself :/.
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
This is biology we're talking about, "all" almost never holds. Most insect diversity then (like now) was probably under 1cm in size.
only infrmatn esentil to understandn mst b tranmitd
Does anyone know tf the dinosaur was dead before the ant started eating it, or did it die because the ant was eating it. (must have been one heck of a big ant too.)
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
... it gets covered in Slashdot.
A dinosaur named Xixianykus zhangi, discovered by Xig Xu!
Sorry, I don't have anything to add to this discussion. I just wanted to say Xixianykus zhangi and Xig Xu again.
Xixianykus zhangi!
Xig Xu!
Okay, I think I'm done. Now, to find some way to clean all this spittle off my monitor....
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Does he have fast? Or eats backwards?
You need to go to slashdot preferences -> classic index -> slashboxes and uncheck "Chinese farts". I had it accidentally set and was getting, like 2 billion fart stories a day.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
A half-meter long T-Rex that eats ants? I want one. Get those scientists working on a clone now!
I'd rather you rationally disagree than irrationally agree.
The insects were huge back in the Carboniferous, when earth had a thicker atmosphere and more oxygen, at least according to some theories
Here's my phonetic approximation: "Dickhead"
Is that correct?
quote for the truth
Paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence of a dinosaur that bitches at its mate when he gets home late from work and smelling of beer. The creature apparently has a tongue that's hinged in the middle and designed to wag at both ends simultaneously, and jaw muscles better fitted to an animal three times its size.
I have no intention of attempting to assign a scientific name to this creature.
I want to live.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Read my lips.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"So that's why they died out" I thought. Only 47 comments - this must truly be bigger news. Or... or am I really the only one who made the connection? Dreams of fame, suddenly so close to reality...
I was severely disappointed when re-read it carefully and the imaginary "i" after "Ant" vanished.
Along with IDA, nothing can stand in the way of proof that humans evolved from apes anymore.
I mean given that people often confuse ant-eaters and aardvarks for each other. At least one species of ant-eater is actually quite dangerous. More specifically the giant ant-eater can and has killed people. (Of course being more than 100 lbs and having claws several inches long that it uses to rip into ant mounts that are as hard as concrete that's not that much of a surprise.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_ant_eater
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
The thing between Death's triumphant digits was a fly from the dawn of time. It was the fly in the primordial soup. It had bred on mammoth turds. It wasn't a fly that bangs on window panes, it was a fly that drills through walls.
- from Mort by Terry Pratchett
It's some bizarre skull!.