More Antarctic Dinosaurs

RockDoctor writes "The highly respected palaeontology journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica has published its December number for free access on the Web, with the headline paper concerning new discoveries of dinosaurs from Antarctica. (Paper here, PDF.) The first major part of these discoveries was made in 1991, when isolated bones of a sauropod (a relative of the Apatosaurus, formerly known as Brontosaurus) were found associated with a theropod (ancestor or cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex). The sauropod has been named Glacialisaurus hammeri (the reason for the genus name is obvious, and Professor Hammer led the field expeditions under 'extremely difficult conditions'). The herbivore was some 25 ft. long and weighed 4 to 6 tons; at the time of life, the area was between 55 and 65 degrees south, suggesting a climate similar to the Falkland Islands or Tierra del Fuego."

brontosaurus

[icebones]

Why did they change the name of the brontosaurus? I liked that name better.

Re:brontosaurus

[eviloverlordx]

Because Apatosaurus was described first. According to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN), the first name has priority. There are occasional exceptions to the rules (Boa constrictor comes to mind), but for the vast majority of cases, the ICZN is 'The Rule Book'.

Global Warming

[phrostie]

so there were herbivores in the Antarctic.

did Al Gore predict this?

Re:Brontosaurus, thank you

[z-man]

Apatosaurus sounds like it should be serving you tea cakes.

To me, apatosaurus sounds like the dino version of an apathetic unemployed couch potato.

Re:"climates were more equitable across latitudes"

[pokerdad]

By what mechanism?

The same mechanisms that are said to cause globabl warming today; CO2 levels for earth peaked in the triassic period at about 3000ppm (currently at 381ppm, under 300ppm pre-industrial revolution). The higher CO2 levels led to higher levels of water vapor, and the two together made earth a big greenhouse.

Reference [bris.ac.uk]

On a bit of a tangent, I saw an interesting documentary about four years ago where a group of scientists tried to deduce of all the things needed for life on earth, what would run out first. They came to the conclusion that CO2 levels would continue to fall, till Earth became incapable of supporting plant life, and as a result any higher life form.

Re:"climates were more equitable across latitudes"

[pnewhook]

then surely the global climate would have been similar to todays and the polar bits (that have moved out of the way now) would have been frozen, as they are today.

Actually no. The only reason we have ice at the poles is because we are coming out of an ice age. There have only been four known ice ages in the planets history and outside of these (which is the vast majority of the time) the planet, even at the poles and highest latitudes has been ice free.

The planet has ben changing from completely ice covered to completely ice free long before people ever showed up.

C - none of the above

[patiodragon]

The earth is what? Like hundreds of millions of years old? Only 10 million, okay, whatever...

The point is the same. Many upon many catastrophic events (HUGE earthquakes, volcanic events, great floods even, recorded by every civilization of the world) change lots of stuff. Plates in the earth move. Sometimes a lot. Antarctica is a moving target on a geological time scale.

Re:brontosaurus

[nephridium]

Basically Brontosaurus was an Apatosaurus with a Camarasaurus skull wrongly assigned to it. Camarasaurus has a relatively short neck with a round skull; Apatosaurus has a long neck with a flat skull. So whenever you see a picture of a sauropod with a really long neck and round skull it's probably an old reconstruction of a Brontosaurus which never existed. It was a cool name though, it means "thunder lizard".

Btw what's with all these obsessing about sources (at least with topics such as these); I don't have any sources handy right now either, but I'm pretty sure I'd be able to find adequate sources for this within minutes in a public library. Or even google.

Re:brontosaurus

[RockDoctor]

There are occasional exceptions to the rules (Boa constrictor comes to mind), but for the vast majority of cases, the ICZN is 'The Rule Book'.

FYI, there is another "grand renaming" in the pipeline, due to the description and naming of a partial leg in about 1880. Tyrannosaurus appears to have been described (partially) from a handful of bones over 20 years before Barnum Brown found, described and named the iconic near-complete skeleton.

ICZN does have rules to cover this situation now - if the taxon with the invalid name (in this case, Tyrannosaurus) haas been used in more than 50 publications over a period of more than 25 years prior to the recognition of synonymy, then the original name may be suppressed and the seemingly invalid junior synonym remain as the recognised synonym. In short, if it'll cause too much disruption to the literature then there's no need to accept the change. So it seems that the name Tyrannosaurus is safe, unless something else turns up out of the nomenclatural woodwork.