Dinosaurs Died Agonizing Deaths

LiveScience Staff

LiveScience.comSat Jun 9, 10:15 AM ET

Fossilized dinosaurs often have wide-open mouths, heads thrown back and tails that curve toward the head. Paleontologists have long assumed the dinosaurs died in water and the currents drifted the bones into that position, or that rigor mortis or drying muscles, tendons and ligaments contorted the limbs.

“I’m reading this in the literature and thinking, ‘This doesn’t make any sense to me as a veterinarian,’” said Cynthia Marshall Faux, a veterinarian-turned-paleontologist at the Museum of the Rockies.

Faux and a colleague say brain damage and asphyxiation are the more likely culprits.

A classic example of the posture, which has puzzled paleontologists for ages, is the 150-million-year-old Archaeopteryx, the first-known example of a feathered dinosaur and the proposed link between dinosaurs and present-day birds.

“Virtually all articulated specimens of Archaeopteryx are in this posture, exhibiting a classic pose of head thrown back, jaws open, back and tail reflexed backward and limbs contracted,” said Kevin Padian, professor of integrative biology and curator in the Museum of Paleontology at the University of California, Berkeley. He Faux (pronounced “Fox”) published their findings this week in the journal Paleobiology.

Some animals found in this posture may have suffocated in ash during a volcanic eruption, consistent with the fact that many fossils are found in ash deposits, Faux and Padian said. But many other possibilities exist, including disease, brain trauma, severe bleeding, thiamine deficiency or poisoning.

“This puts a whole new light on the mode of death of these animals, and interpretation of the places they died in,” Padian said. “This explanation gives us clues to interpreting a great many fossil horizons we didn’t understand before and tells us something dinosaurs experienced while dying, not after dying.”

Also, because the posture has been seen only in dinosaurs, pterosaurs and mammals, which are known or suspected to have had high metabolic rates, it appears to be a good indicator that the animal was warm blooded, as other research has suggested. Animals with lower metabolic rates, such as crocodiles and lizards, use less oxygen and so might have been less traumatically affected by hypoxia during death throes, Padian said.

Padian acknowledged that many dinosaur fossils show signs that the animal died in water and the current tugged the body into an arched position, but currents cannot explain all the characteristics of an opisthotonic pose.

This is a VERY old idea that was pretty much discounted ages ago. Even their own reasoning doesn’t make sense. “Virtually all articulated specimens of Archaeopteryx are in this posture” - yeah, I wonder why? It couldn’t be at all similar to how dead birds today look much the same after sitting out in the sun for a few hours/days. It must be the case that all these fossils are from brain damaged critters than died in agony! Way to set us back in the 1700s, guys.

And while we’re at it, let’s just ignore the fact that most fossils aren’t found in areas of volcanic ash, but in sedimentary deposits consistent with stream, lake, or oceanic environments!

Idiots.

The driver of an SUV waiting at the light yelled, “Hell yeah! Get that crack dealer!” As I passed them in the crosswalk, I could hear 2 or 3 other guys in the truck cheering. One yelled “GO TREMPER” which totally puzzled me at first. Tremper is the high school for this part of town, and my shirt happened to be the same blue as the Trojan mascot. I couldn’t stop myself from yelling back, “Sorry, Bradford!” Bradford being the north side rival high school that Joy and I went to. “Whatever, it’s all good, whoo!” was the response.

Then I had a total mind flip as a realized that these guys had mistaken me for a high school student. My ten year reunion is this June, and I still can’t pass muster for an alomst-30-year-old in the general public. I thought about this as I ran on; how does 27-year-old me compare to 17-year-old me? Most of the overly philosophical ideas slipped out of my head faster than the sidewalk slipped under my feet, and that was what I focused on.

I ran track and cross country in high school. I wasn’t particularly exceptional at either, but I thought of myself as pretty athletic. For the last year and a half I’ve been training for the eventual BIG RACE and all this time I’ve been comparing myself to what I could do in 1996. Back then I could run a 5K in 19:03. Last fall, I felt a small sense of accomplishment when I ran it in 19:31. But tonight I realized something. There would be no competition between the two Eds. Sure, high school Ed might finish a short race a minute faster, but today Ed would dominate in anything more than three and a half miles.

I was so undisciplined then. If the weather was rainy, or cold, or hot, or no one was watching, my friends and I would run just out of view and then go to someone’s house, or go goof off in the woods. These days, it has to be colder than 15 degrees Farenheit (regardless of wind chill), or raining *and* more than a five mile run. I’m upset when I have to miss a run (though occasionally I relish the small injuries that force a recovery day).

I realize it’s been like forever since I updated my training records, so here goes. I got a new watch a couple weeks ago, so I have times again! Yay!
March 19 (last post):5 / March 20: 3 / March 21: skip / March 24: 12 / Total = 20 miles

March 26: 2 / March 28: skip / March 31: 7 (was suppsed to be 14, but injured) / Total = 9 miles

April 2: 2 / April 5: 6, 49:56 / April 6: 16, 2:25:27 / Total = 24 miles

April 9: 7, 61:58 / April 13: 6, 49:18 (fastest mile so far this year, mile 6 @ 7:29) / April 15: 6 / Total = 19 miles

Okay, so I future posted this weekend’s run. Next Saturday I’m doing 18. AHH

And now, dinosaurs! Remember this article (mostly me talking about how I hate Jack Horner)? Here’s a follow up:

T. rex thigh reveals chicken family ties
POSTED: 5:54 p.m. EDT, April 12, 2007

CHICAGO, Illinois (Reuters) — Tiny bits of protein extracted from a 68-million-year-old dinosaur bone have given scientists the first genetic proof that the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex is a distant cousin to the modern chicken.

“It’s the first molecular evidence of this link between birds and dinosaurs,” said John Asara, a Harvard Medical School researcher, whose results were published in Friday’s edition of the journal Science.

Scientists have long suspected that birds evolved from dinosaurs based on a study of dinosaur bones, but until recently, no soft tissue had survived to confirm the link.

That all changed in 2005 when Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina State University reported finding soft tissue, including blood vessels and cells, in a T. rex bone dug out of sandstone from the fossil-rich Hell Creek Formation in Montana.

Schweitzer, in another study appearing in this week’s issue of Science, found that extracts of T. rex bone reacted with antibodies to chicken collagen, further suggesting the presence of birdlike protein in dinosaur bones.

For his study, Asara used a highly sensitive technology called mass spectrometry to determine the chemical makeup of bone fragments provided by Schweitzer and her team.

He first had to purify the bone extract, which came in the form of a gritty brown powder that remained after minerals were extracted. Asara then broke it down into peptide fragments, little bits of proteins, isolated into the amino acid sequences that make them up.

“It was very tough to get anything,” he said in a telephone interview. He wound up with seven separate strands of amino acid, five of which were a particular class of collagen, a fibrous protein found in bone.

Next, Asara had to interpret the sequences. He compared his results to collagen data from living animals. Most matched collagen from chickens, while others matched a newt and frog.

“Based on all of the genomic information we have available today, it appears these sequences are closer to birds or chickens than anything else,” Asara said.

Ultimately, scientists had hoped to find genetic material that was unique to the T. rex. That was not possible with the tiny T. rex sample.

“We never found unique T. rex tags,” he said.

In a similar study of mastodon bones supplied by Schweitzer, Asara had more luck.

He compared the samples to a database of existing amino acid sequences and against a theoretical set of mastodon sequences and found a total of 78 peptides, including four unique sequences.

Still, Asara said the T. rex protein sequence was useful in providing clues about the evolution of the species.

The researchers said the results may change the way that people think about fossil preservation.

“The fact that we are getting proteins is very exciting,” said paleontologist Jack Horner, who dug up the T. rex in 2003 and is co-author of the paper with Schweitzer.

Horner said paleontologists will need to dig deeper for specimens that have not been corrupted by ground water and bacteria.

“I think we are going to find that many specimens are like it. It will be a matter of paleontologists getting into sites that are not necessarily easy,” he told reporters in a telephone briefing.

Copyright 2007 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

The news is still reporting that they found “soft tissue,” but they really just found fossilized residue, for lack of a better description. Still cool that they were able to do some protein analysis. I got a giggle out of the “highly sensitive technology called mass spectrometry” comment. OOOH, a mass spectrometer!

PLEASE STOP.

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Scientists recover T. rex soft tissue
70-million-year-old fossil yields preserved blood vessels
Reuters
Updated: 2:05 p.m. ET March 24, 2005WASHINGTON - A 70-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex fossil dug out of a hunk of sandstone has yielded soft tissue, including blood vessels and perhaps even whole cells, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.Paleontologists forced to break the creature’s massive thighbone to get it on a helicopter found not a solid piece of fossilized bone, but instead something looking a bit less like a rock.When they got it into a lab and chemically removed the hard minerals, they found what looked like blood vessels, bone cells and perhaps even blood cells.”They are transparent, they are flexible,” said Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina State University and Montana State University, who conducted the study.

She said the vessels were flexible and in some cases their contents could be squeezed out.

“The microstructures that look like cells are preserved in every way,” added Schweitzer, whose findings were published in the journal Science.

“Preservation of this extent, where you still have this flexibility and transparency, has never been seen in a dinosaur before.” Feathers, hair and fossilized egg contents yes, but not truly soft tissue.

Studying the soft tissues may help answer many questions about dinosaurs. Were they cold-blooded like reptiles, warm-blooded like mammals, or somewhere in-between? How are they related to living animals?

“If we can isolate certain proteins, then perhaps we can address the issue of the physiology of the dinosaur,” Schweitzer said.

Of course, the big question is whether it will be possible to see dinosaur DNA. “We don’t know yet. We are doing a lot in the lab now that looks promising,” Schweitzer said.

To make sure she was seeing what she thought she was seeing, Schweitzer, a biologist by training, compared the Tyrannosaur samples with bone taken from a dead ostrich. She chose an ostrich because birds are thought to be the closest living relatives of dinosaurs and ostriches are big birds.

Both the dinosaur and ostrich blood vessels contained small, reddish brown dots that could be the nuclei of the endothelial cells that line blood vessels.

Taking the minerals out of both ostrich bone and the Tyrannosaur bone a simple experiment that can be duplicated by anyone using a chicken bone, for example, and vinegar yielded flexible fibers. Microscopic examination showed what look like bone cells called osteocytes in both.

The finding certainly shows fossilization does not proceed as science had assumed, Schweitzer said. Since the discovery, she has found similar samples of soft tissue in two other Tyrannosaur fossils and a hadrosaur.

The fossil was dug up out of Montana’s Hell Creek Formation, a rich source of fossils.

Paleontologist Jack Horner said it was encased in 1,000 cubic yards (metres) of sandstone. “It’s a fantastic specimen,” he told the briefing.

“The specimen was very far away from road, (so) everything had to be done with a helicopter.” The field team used standard procedure as they excavated the bones, wrapping them in plaster jackets before transporting them..

This particular dinosaur fossil was too big to lift and they reluctantly cracked a thighbone.

Usually paleontologists put preservatives on fossils right away, but Schweitzer has been trying to find soft tissue in dinosaur fossils, so this one was left alone.

Horner said he hoped museums around the world would start cracking open bones and looking for soft tissue in their fossils.

“Dinosaurs are relatively rare and we certainly think of Tyrannosaurus rex as being really rare although it really isn’t so people tend not to want to cut holes into the bone or cut them in half,” he said.

“But to study the cellular and molecular structures of these things you have to do that.” The “good stuff,” he said, is on the inside.
Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7285683/

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Jack Horner is a lousy scientist. He’s a big fan of annoucing some great discovery “he” has made, except that they rarely hold up. For instance, about five years ago, Horner was all over the news - and especially Young Earth websites - when he found a “heart” in the ribcage of a dinosaur. Wowee zowee! Fossilized soft tissue! But wait, said the scientific community. Soft tissue doesn’t really fossilize that way, and a heart certainly would not stick around long enough.

And then, Horner had the balls to come out (and this really drove the fundies wild) and say that not only did they find a heart, but they had LIQUID BLOOD.

Let me state that again, just in case you missed it: He claimed to have found liquid dinosaur blood. He was even quoted as saying that this could be some sort of proof that the whole geologic timetable was wrong and that dinosaurs lived only a few thousand years ago.

Uh. Not even close. “Liquid” blood would not survive that long. Ever.

Horner is basically a showboater. Before his highly scientifical papers make it into journals, he likes to scream out “LOOK WHAT I FOUND! THIS TOTALLY REVOLUTIONIZES EVERYTHING!” The public gets all excited. Then the real scientists get to look at his research and basically tell him that he’s a retarded asshole and he really should just knock it off. But the public never hears about that part, since the media really doesn’t cover it with the sensationalism of the initial “finding.” Everyone just goes on assuming that Horner is some awesome paleontologist.

Kinda like how few people know that the famous Tyrannosaur “Sue” was confiscated in an FBI raid on its legitimate owner. And then auctioned off the the highest bidder. Thanks a lot, news people, for forgetting to mention that part.

Remember that heart? Horner’s team provided photos, X-rays, and CAT scans, all purporting to show ventricles and what not. When someone legit actually took the time to look at the “heart,” they found that it was an iron concretion. This amazing discovery was nothing more that some sand with some concentrated iron.

Reading through the article again, you’ll see that this Schweitzer has found “several more” of these samples. So, you’re telling me, that in over 200 years of fossil collecting, this lady is the first one to find this soft tissue - and on top of that - has found SEVERAL instances? Not a chance.

It all boils down to a long string of terrible practices and dishonest science. This all serves to damage the credibility of the field as a whole. We’re fighting a battle against creationism myths in our schools, in our IMAX theaters, and in our very government, and jerkofss like Horner just keep chipping away at the wall of real science.