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Fossil 'Suggests Plesiosaurs Did Not Lay Eggs'
thebchuckster writes "Scientists say they have found the first evidence that giant sea reptiles — which lived at the same time as dinosaurs — gave birth to live young rather than laying eggs. They say a 78 million-year-old fossil of a pregnant plesiosaur suggests they gave birth to single, large young."
More science, please.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Compare the bodies between Brontosaurii and Geese.
Obviously, the reason why the Brontosauren died-out and the Geesii lived is because despite them diverging away in their genomes it was the Brontosaurus that couldn't float.
Which proves the Geesers are witches, and teh Bronx are innocent of riotin from the wealthy feathery flying bastardss.s...ss..?
Shouldn't be too surprising- livebearing shows up in all sorts of families that typically lay eggs- especially aquatic animals. Everyone is familiar with the humble guppy. You buy one for your daughter despite your better judgement- one week later you're overrun with the gaudy ugly fish as the live young start popping out everywhere. Many species of snail give birth to live young. Or "nearly so". Malaysian Trumpet snails and Quilted Melania two "cloning" species can pop out up to 9 live babies at a time. Even sexually reproducing snails can give live birth- species of Tylomelania from Sulawesi lay a single egg at a time that disolves before your eyes (if you're lucky) to reveal a minature snail. That doesn't mean live-bearing fish or mollusks are common- and if this dino gave live-birth, it doesn't mean that it was common with dinosaurs either.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Very interesting. I suppose it makes logical sense that sea living creature would find it difficult to safeguard eggs, and with its size these would be very noticeable (and nutritious!). I guess it is similar to whale sharks nowadays, which are ovoviviparous in their reproduction (wikipedia link as below): the "embryos develop inside eggs that are retained within the mother's body until they are ready to hatch. Ovoviviparous animals are similar to viviparous species in that there is internal fertilization and the young are born live, but differ in that there is no placental connection and the unborn young are nourished by egg yolk; the mother's body does provide gas exchange (respiration), but that is largely necessary for oviparous animals as well."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_shark
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovoviviparity
However, the comment about single young is even more interesting - as whale sharks are even bearing very many (live) young. Maybe different again? (no expert here, just curious!)
Large compared to what? A human baby? The mother? Henry Kissinger?
All sorts of different sharks seem to differ on laying eggs versus live birth. Why would dinosaurs be pigeonholed into one birth method or another?
Slashdot: Where opinions are just opinions until you have mod points.
It's not good science unless it upsets somebody who dislikes having their gospel (or canon, for the more sociologically correct) challenged. Good science always bruises egos.
I don't personally get it, though. Do the authors of buggy code that gets patched by others also get upset? They should be happy the code finally works.
Still, why on earth would it ever upset someone who didn't discover/propose/create what's being challenged?
Being warm-blooded isn't that much of a surprise- we've known birds descended from warm-blooded dinosaurs for decades.
Yes, but plesiosaurs are not dinosaurs so it means yet another branch of reptiles were warm-blodded. There is also evidence that Pterosaurs were warm blooded. Given how far back these branches had a common ascestor, the question becomes: why are crocodiles not?
There were no eggs yet - OR chickens, so there is no pair of docs fighting about priority of discovery.
airlifted and dropped thousands of feet into the damndest of places, with falling impact so great that other animals feasted where there were craters, or the brontosaurus turned into petrified fossil just from the impact itself to cause self-burrial like a Super Saiyan 4 smack-down.
LORD God of the Spruce Goose even dropped some into already existing craters called volcanoes, and some dormant ones that already had water in them thereby transplanting flora and fauna in the bowels to rupture into an otherwise unreachable ecosystem.
Then thee Queen Mary arrrrived...with Captain Coook.
If memory serves, I recall hearing that sharks run the gamut from plain oviparous through to placental warm-blooded viviparous.
Ah, yep, here's Google to the rescue.
Sometimes I run across news about discoveries where the commentators are all surprised, but in ways that make me think we need to get over ourselves :) as the utmost pinnacle of evolution or some such nonsense and just realise that we are no more than a combination of various biological strategies that had already been "invented" in numerous other branches of life. We're just a happy accident of much larger processes.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
The line keeps getting blurred between dinosaurs, reptiles, birds and mammals. It's hard to justify a warm blooded reptile since cold bloodedness is a large part of being a reptile. Live birth is nothing new. A number of snake species give birth live. A lot of ancient animals that are called reptiles probably weren't. Pterosaurs are still called flying reptiles inspite of the fact that every condition that gave them the title of reptile has been disproven. It's mostly dogma that keeps them reptiles. Ancient mammals are called mammal like reptiles but were they even reptiles at all? There have been a number of feathered lizards found, were they reptiles or ancient bird relatives? I think once a reptile evolves to the point of being warm blooded and live birthed it deserves it's own grouping. No other reptile ever developed warm bloodedness except large extinct ones. There isn't a single living reptile that is warm blooded. The irony is there are some mammals that retain cold blooded characteristics. A small monkey from Madagascar comes to mind. The fact that out of all the thousands of reptiles alive today not one is warm blooded shows that they were a divergent line. Sea Turtles and Monitor Lizards can even get hundreds of pounds in weight yet none are warm blooded. There's a resistance to claims that extinct animals belonged to unique lines that died out. I think it's a deep seated fear that we could be next if we accept that dinosaurs died out as well as a group of large reptile like marine animals. I think it's a large part of why the bird dinosaur connection was embraced so quickly. It became an excuse for dinosaur extinct. They didn't die out they turned into birds even though that's far from the truth it's comforting so people accepted it without looking very closely. By that I mean ALL large dinosaurs did die out and birds probably broke away from dinosaurs a couple of hundred million years ago so T-Rexs didn't turn into parakeets.
like my wife.
at the bottom of the sciencedaily news release is a reference to the original PressRelease, hence the originating organisation and a reference to further information.
...the fact that they're reptiles; and not dinosaurs. IIRC the original skeleton was thought to be a dinosaur and the name stuck.
The evidence for whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded or not has been around for tens to hundreds of millions of years.
The interpretation of that evidence that they, or at least many, were warm-blooded has been around for half a century or so.
Perhaps you only heard about it in the last two years.
By making comparisons with modern animals, such as whales, which give birth to larger, single young and then go on to care for them, Dr O'Keefe and his colleague, Luis Chiappe from the museum, attempt to infer something about plesiosaur behaviour.
... plesiosaurs, the authors suggest, might have been doting parents.
But Dr Smith was less convinced. He said that it was "certainly quite possible... but is very speculative".
Of course it's speculative, but it's still plausible. I would expect any animal who gives birth to one young at a time to spend time with its offspring until the offspring is strong enough to survive on its own.
The more we learn, the more it seems to me that different epochs of life on Earth were in many ways much more familiar than we used to believe. If only we could see into the past...
A little off topic...
When you get right down to it, behaviour doesn't fossilise
True, mostly. But sometimes we get very lucky... Velociraptor vs. Protoceratops. This gave some insight to how velociraptors used their big claws. (For gripping and stabbing, not slashing.)
Seriously, Slashdot. This article has been up for quite a while and not a single high-rated comment mentions Nessy! I'm disappointed.
Here's hoping it's the fault of my comment threshold being mucked with.
He who has no
They totally are, I watched walking with dinosaurs and they were in it.
Your attempt at a humorous comment worked on me, at least. I giggled out loud even. :-)
re: 'IOU'....I used my last mod points on the previous Fine Article, just moments ago.:-(
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I have guppies in my aquarium, they give birth to live babies (they don't lay eggs). And theoretically dinosaurs are more evolved/advanced than mere fish, so it shouldn't be a surprise at all that some of them are livebearers.
A bird died in my garden a couple of weeks ago. It's remained untouched so all that now remains are skeleton and feathers. As there's nothing left to scavenge now, I'd say that time could well bury it just as it is, without ever being scavenged. (Except I will clean up my garden, at some point.)