Discoveries are regularly made, so we'll have a neat thread. (And one day, I'm sure, Pyrrho will rename the sub-forum to Archaeology & Paleontology… )
New Bird-Like Dinosaur Unearthed in Wyoming
A new species of carnivorous bird-like dinosaur being named Hesperornithoides miessleri has been discovered by an international team of paleontologists from the United States and the United Kingdom.
How wrong you are: birds ⊂ dinosaurs, not the other way round.
Recent find:
The two-meter long femur at the Angeac-Charente site is thought to have belonged to a sauropod, herbivorous dinosaurs with long necks and tails which were widespread in the late Jurassic era, over 140 million years ago.
By definition, there can be no such thing as a bird-like dinosaur.
Dinosaurs are birds.
So they found a bird-like bird. Cool.
Feathers Arose 80 Million Years before Birds, Scientists Say
According to a new review paper published in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution, feathers arose 250-230 million years ago, during the Early Triassic, when life was recovering from the devastating end-Permian mass extinction.
It is shocking to realize that feathers originated long before birds because feathers have generally been regarded as the key innovation that drove the success of the avian fauna.
However, thousands of fossils from China have shown that many non-avian dinosaurs also had feathers, including feather types not found in birds today.
Those discoveries extended the origin of feathers minimally back to 175 million years ago — about 25 million years before the first generally acknowledged bird, Archaeopteryx.
Recent discoveries of feathers in ornithischian dinosaurs hinted that they are a character of dinosaurs as a whole.
Another startling discovery showed that even pterosaurs had four kinds of feather, apparently similar in form with those of dinosaurs, their closest relatives.
“The oldest bird is still Archaeopteryx first found in the Late Jurassic of southern Germany in 1861, although some species from China are a little older,” said University of Bristol’s Professor Mike Benton, lead author of the paper.
“Those fossils all show a diversity of feathers: down feathers over the body and long, vaned feathers on the wings. But, since 1994, paleontologists have been contending with the perturbing discovery, based on hundreds of amazing specimens from China, that many dinosaurs also had feathers.”
There is of course no hard transition between non-avian dinosaurs and birds. Remember that Archeopterix himself would have been classified as one more boring small dino if the feathers hadn't left an imprint (in the marvelous Solnhofen limestone, used for lithography). And that the palaeontological record is always lacunar.
An example: Anchiornis ("almost bird", ha ha!)
The small, feathered "dino-birds" dug up in China's Liaoning fossil beds have proved an endless source of confusion. The latest genus to ruffle the feathers of paleontologists is Anchiornis, a tiny dinosaur (not a bird) with unusually long front arms and feathers on its front limbs, hind limbs, and feet. Despite its similarity to Microraptor--another four-winged dino-bird--Anchiornis is believed to have been a troodont dinosaur, and thus a close relative of the much bigger Troodon. Like other feathered dinosaurs of its kind, Anchiornis may have represented an intermediate stage between dinosaurs and modern birds, though it may also have occupied a side branch of avian evolution destined to die out with the dinosaurs.
Recently, a team of scientists analyzed the fossilized melanosomes (pigment cells) of a specimen of Anchiornis, resulting in what may be the first full-color depiction of an extinct dinosaur. It turns out that this dino-bird had an orange, mohawk-like crest of feathers on its head, alternating white- and black-striped feathers running along the width of its wings, and black and red "freckles" spotting its beaked face. This has provided considerable grist for paleo-illustrators, who now have no excuse for depicting Anchiornis with scaly, reptilian skin!
A new pterosaur, or prehistoric flying reptile species, has been discovered in outback Queensland
The pterosaur, a prehistoric flying reptile, lived amongst the dinosaurs which roamed the Winton region around 96 million years ago.
The apex aerial predator had a 4-metre wingspan and walked on all four limbs when on land.
Fossilised pterosaur bones were found by grazier Bob Elliot on Belmont Station outside the tiny town in 2017, the first find of a pterosaur from the Winton Formation.
A two-week dig at the site uncovered the most complete specimen of its kind in Australia.
The well-preserved find includes five partial vertebrae, eight limb bones, a large part of the jaw and skull, and 40 full and partial teeth of a previously unknown pterosaur species, with the findings published in Scientific Reports today.
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"If I turn in a sicko, will I get a reward?"
