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Science

Dinosaur Mummy Found 226

Posted by michael from the daddy-still-missing dept.
sckienle writes "Although the dig was a year ago, MSNBC has an article about a very rare dinosaur find. It starts off with "A mummified dinosaur, unwrapped from the rocks of Montana, has revealed how the creature looked and how it lived 77 million years ago -- down to the texture of its skin and the contents of its stomach, scientists say." Unfortunately, the details are mostly missing in the article. This isn't the first mummified dinosaur found but it is the first in a long time."
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Dinosaur Mummy Found More

Dinosaur Mummy Found

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  • Rare dinosaur? (Score:2, Funny)

    by flynt ( 248848 )
    Kind of like the Stego in Animal Crossing!

  • Brains (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11, 2002 @12:32PM (#4433423)
    Well with a dinosaurs tiny brain, at least the imbalmers didnt have to spend too much time taking the brain out through the nose.

  • Hey (Score:1, Funny)

    by PaddyM ( 45763 )
    I'm not dead yet.
    I'm getting better.

  • Finally! (Score:2, Funny)

    by einstein ( 10761 )
    Now they can finally have the cross-over movie where Brandon Fraiser has to kick the crap out of old dinosaurs that have been cloned and are taking over a tropical island in egypt.

    just you wait and see...
    --

    • Re:Finally! (Score:4, Funny)

      by fireboy1919 ( 257783 ) <{rustyp} {at} {freeshell.org}> on Friday October 11, 2002 @01:11PM (#4433764) Homepage Journal
      Even better, he's the only one who can HUNT them (being that he was frozen in ice for a couple thousand years). Also, somewhere during the movie, Pauly Shore, who tried to bring him up to speed on the modern world, gets eaten by Raptors.

      So we've got Encino Man, The Mummy, and Jurassic Park all in one movie. Outstanding!
      • "Blast from the Past" and "George of the Jungle".

        Where Brendan plays a guy suddenly dragged into modern civilisation with a permanently bemused/dopey expression on his face.

        Wait a minute, that's Encino Man.

        Never mind :).

  • Lawyer (Score:4, Funny)

    by Dugsmyname ( 451987 ) <thegenericgeekNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday October 11, 2002 @12:33PM (#4433442) Homepage
    I wonder if they'll find that lawyer from Jurrasic Park in it's stomach?

    • Re:Lawyer (Score:3, Funny)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )
      I wonder if they'll find that lawyer from Jurrasic Park in it's stomach?

      You triggered thoughts about all the stupid B movies that this will generate. There are enough dumb dino and dumb mummy/egypt movies already. Now they will combine the idiocracy for double the crap.

      "Don't worry honey, its just a dead fosil mummy......Zzzzoooooorrrrrch!"

  • Dinosaur Found (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Interesting... I always wanted to be an archaeologist/paleontologist. We are learning so much about our past, but is anyone paying attention to how it might affect us in the future?

  • On Art Bell Tonight (Score:5, Funny)

    by Henry V .009 ( 518000 ) on Friday October 11, 2002 @12:34PM (#4433457) Journal
    Are you saying that the aliens who built the pyramids were actually DINOSAURS?

  • The sanity... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by naNoox ( 223207 ) on Friday October 11, 2002 @12:36PM (#4433473)
    So much for all those who were postulating about dinosaurs in Day-Glo colors... /Nanoox.

    • Re:The sanity... (Score:2, Informative)

      by JonWan ( 456212 )
      I don't think the colors of the "mummy" will be that of the live dinosaur. All of the animal's body has been replaced with minerals. So the color will be that of the mineral. However they should get a better idea of what the animal looked like when it was a live.

  • I guess Egyptians can't patent mummification (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11, 2002 @12:37PM (#4433481)
    Dinosaurs had prior art.

  • 77 Million Years? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by killmenow ( 184444 )
    Ok, I don't want to spark any big philosophical or religious debate on the origin of the universe and its age (although unfortunately one will probably ensue anyway)...BUT nowhere in the article does it say how they know it's 77 million years old. So how do they?

    I'm assuming they go by some sort of carbon dating. What I'm asking all the geeks here is this: when scientists spout off numbers like this, what scientific means are they utilizing to back them up and how accurate are they?

    I don't doubt the thing could very well *be* that old. I just wonder: how do they know?

    • Re:77 Million Years? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      the type of dinosaur that it was. they know that type lived during a certain set of years.

      it could be found out later that this particular dinosaur was from a seperate period, which would be a suprise. but its not a hard fact yet for this specimen
      • type of dinosaur that it was. they know that type lived during a certain set of years.

        This point is valid, but of course all dinosaurs can't be dated by this method - that would be circular!

        Rather, they use dating based on geological layers. I would pressume that for some finds this is easier than for others, and then for the trickier ones they can use the method you suggest.

        Tor

        • Re:77 Million Years? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          And how do you know it's 77 million years old?
          Look at the rocks! Those rocks are 77 million years old!

          And how do you know those rocks are 77 million years old?

          Because the dinosaurs we found in them were 77 million years old!

          And how do you... [repeat ad infinitum]
    • Most likely its from some form of radio-carbon dating. While I've heard that its not increadably accutare for short periods of time, its probably good enough for fossils that are in the range of millions of years old. Sure it won't tell us exactly when it died, but we can be reasonably certain that it was within a few thousand years of the number the radio carbon dating came up with.

      • Absolutely not... (Score:5, Informative)

        by tgd ( 2822 ) on Friday October 11, 2002 @12:46PM (#4433571)
        You have it backwards. Radio carbon dating is good for maybe 40,000 or 50,000 years, nothing older than that. The closer we are to when it died, by a long shot the more accurate the dating is.

        This would've been done by dating the strata they were found in. Dating rock strata is a very accurate method of determining age.
        • I'm a bit too lazy to look it up at the moment, but I seem to recall a study some time back where they tried to radio carbon date a reacently dead (i.e. year or two at most) sea lion and got some wacky results. Thus my comment about not working for recent stuff. As for the 40k-50k max, I'll take your word on it. I know there are other radio isotopes they look at now (which are pulled from the surrounding rock), just didn't feel like delving into it in my post.

          • Carbon Dating (Score:3, Insightful)

            by keyslammer ( 240231 )
            According to my college chemistry professor, carbon dating (and radioactive dating in general) is based on determining the current percentage of the isotope relative to the percentage of the non-radioactive element. This percentage is then compared to the original percentage and the half-life of the isotope - about 5K years for carbon.

            Therefore, radioactive dating works best for time periods where the value of n in half_life * 2^n (^ = to the power of) is closest to 0. Very accurate for 5K years, 2.5K years, 1.25K years,10K years, 20K years. Very inaccurate for 1 year or 1 million years.

            [btw, I'm no expert - just sayin' what I heard to the best of my recollection]
          • Yeah unless carbon dating is far enough in the past and properly calibrated by figuring out the amount of radioactive carbon in the environment at the time you can get some pretty wild and useless values.
          • I think that it was a shell fish.

            However, that being said, radiocarbon dating relies on atmospheric carbon to get a measurement. Land dwelling creatures are fine to radio carbon date (plant breaths CO2 in, animal eats plant, thus gets his 14C fix), it is much more unreliable on marine life (who have other sources of CO2).
        • "The closer we are to when it died, by a long shot the more accurate the dating is."

          Lay off the Yoda-ese you should.
        • Long shot? I think you mean landslide.

        • Re:Absolutely not... (Score:4, Informative)

          by KalvinB ( 205500 ) on Friday October 11, 2002 @06:59PM (#4434835) Homepage
          "Dating rock strata is a very accurate method of determining age."

          That requires a constant rate of deposit to call it accurate. It's only accurate in the ideal environment where everything is constant for infinity. At 77 million years it's quite a stretch to say it was a constant rate of deposit.

          It's a guess. And a highly unreliable one at that. Were any scientists around 77 million or even 10 million years ago to verify the rate of deposit?

          Didn't think so. The world is a constantly and unpredictably changing place. When science can predict the worlds weather precicely even just 50 years in advance, then maybe I'll start to take their assumption seriously on the millions of years.

          How many factors change the rate of decay of any given element?

          In 77 million years you have X volcanos, X earthquakes, X storms, X shifting water flows, ect ect ect. It's only 77 million years old in the labratory environment where there exist only a few predictable variables. In the real world there exist dozens if not thousands of unpredictable variables. Many of which may have had a significant impact but will never be known.

          It's old. That's about all they know with any certainty.

          Ben
          • There are some mistakes in your post.

            Radiodating relies on knowledge of what has happened to the radioisotopes in a rock. Not on the rate of deposit. For example, if one isotope is more likely to leach out of a rock than another isotope, the radiodates will be mucked up. The rate of deposit can effect the radioisotope composition, it a perpherial course.

            Your coment about it being a guess is very wrong. It is possible to calibrate radiodates, by measueing a sample with multiple techniques. If there is something effecting the history of the rock, then the dates will be all other the place, and one can place the rock in the undatable bin (there are a lot of rocks here).

            Unfortunally, radiodating is pretty complex, which allows certain peusdioscientists to abuse it, which leads to all sorts of misinformation about the technique floating around.

          • Ehm, they dont use the rate of deposit. Rather they use telltale signs, like results from vulcanoes, certain whether at the time, etc.

            So there is no assumption of a constant rate of deposit, just examination the rock to find what time-period it is from.

      • Carbon dating??? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Black Copter Control ( 464012 ) <[samuel-local] [at] [bcgreen.com]> on Friday October 11, 2002 @01:31PM (#4433928) Homepage Journal
        Most likely its from some form of radio-carbon dating.

        It wouldn't be carbon dating. Carbon 14 has a half life of about 5700 years, so after ~6000 years, it's got about 1/1000th of what was originally there (which is rather low to begin with). After that, I'm guessing that there's just too little to get reliable statistics from (perhaps noise from other decay sequences??).
        Besides the problem of the (relatively) short half-life of Carbon14, the fossilization process leaches most of the carbon out of the body anyways-- so there is (almost) no carbon to date. Even if it didn't 1/2^(77million/5700) => 1/(2e4066). In other words, if you started with a chunk of carbon14 the size of Jupiter, you'd be lucky to find 2 atoms of carbon14 after 60million years of radioactive decay)

        There's a nice intro to carbon dating at howstuffworks.com [howstuffworks.com], with even more data at c14dating.com [c14dating.com]. They mention that you can use carbon-14 style radioisotape dating with isotopes that have a longer halflife than carbon 14. These are the methods are what are used to date older rocks.

        The reason why carbon 14 isn't useful for recent items is the nuclear age. In the early years of the nuclear age, the US and later 'nuclear club' members did atmospheric nuke tests that completely messed up (read: randomized) the isotope ratios for everything that's died since the late '40s. Cherbonyl didn't help much, either. Anything earlier than that (and recent enough that there's a statistically valid percentage of C14 left in the body) is a good candidate for Carbon dating.

        Prior to nuclear fallout, the primary source of Carbon14 was atmospheric Nitrogen being bombarded by cosmic rays.

    • Oods are they looked at the rock the thing was stuck in. Rocks are very easy to date.

    • They also mention a 23-foot-long fossil (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11, 2002 @12:43PM (#4433545)
      Nowhere in the article does it say how they know it's 23 foot long.

      I'm assuming they go by some sort of measuring tape. What I'm asking all the geeks here is this: when scientists spout off numbers like this, what scientific means are they utilizing to back them up and how accurate are they?

      I don't doubt the thing could very well *be* that long. I just wonder: how do they know?

      • Re:They also mention a 23-foot-long fossil (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Nowhere in the article does it say how they know it was uncovered in the year 2000.

        I'm assuming they go by some sort chron daemon. What I'm asking all the geeks here is this: when scientists spout off numbers like this, what scientific means are they utilizing to back them up and how accurate are they?

        I don't doubt the thing could very well *have been* discovered then. I just wonder: how do they know?
    • I don't think carbon dating can be used for finds that are so old.

      Rather, dating can involve studying the geological layer in which the dino is found. These layers can be dated with other methods. I think some of these methods involve radioactive dating, but not of C14.

      If it was a scientist that said $77 million, then it the accuracy is of $1 million years. If accuracy had been higher,then it would have said '77.0'. If accuracy had been lower, it would have said '75-80'.

      Tor

    • Re:77 Million Years? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Chaltek ( 610920 ) on Friday October 11, 2002 @12:49PM (#4433598) Homepage
      There's a lot of assumptions involved in radiometric dating (of which carbon dating is a type).
      First, you pick an isotope of an element which has a nice long half-life. Then, you guess at how much of that isotope was in the environment (and therefore the object you are dating as well) at the time period you assume the object was made.
      The other assumptions are that there is a constant decay rate of the isotope and that the object being dated becomes a closed system, not seeping or leeching any of that isotope from its surroundings.

      So what you really have with dates like the 77 million years is a best guess from a bunch of scientists who want it to be around 100 million and then crunch the numbers to get a more precise answer.

      Let the rebuttals begin... =)

      ~Chaltek
      • Then, you guess at how much of that isotope was in the environment (and therefore the object you are dating as well) at the time period you assume the object was made

        This is essentially true, but at the same time very misleading.

        For example for carbon dating (which was not used in this case) you 'guess' that the the sun was shining on CO2 in the athmosphere at the orginal time - not a very risque suggestion.

        For dating of older finds, the 'guess' involves modeling the formation of sun and earth. It turns out that these models predict very well what combinations of isotopes we find today.

        /Tor

      • Re:77 Million Years? (Score:3, Informative)

        by puppet10 ( 84610 )
        Except that many different methods yield the same result for a single time event within their stated uncertainties.

        Here [colorado.edu] is a comparison of different radiometric and non-radiometric methods used to date a string of craters formed in the Triassic Period.

        Of course the methods of radioactive dating for objects that old have uncertainties of +/- a few million years but that's only a few percent of the total age.

      • Re:77 Million Years? (Score:2, Informative)

        by f97tosc ( 578893 )
        The other assumptions are that there is a constant decay rate of the isotope...

        Well, yes, or rather in proportion to the number of isotopes around. Anyway, do you suggest that this might not be the case here?

        I can think of few scientific findings that are as well established as this one. This pattern has been observed in all radioactive decays - involving 100s of isotopes with decay rates spanning from nanoseconds to millenia.

        Tor
      • There are ways of testing the accuracy of at least some of these methods. Carbon-14 dating, for example, has been compared with tree ring dating methods going back 10K (IIRC) or so years. There have probably been similar attempts with other isotope based methods.

        Primar on archeological dating methods [msus.edu]

        Archeologists date flakes.

      • Re:77 Million Years? (Score:5, Informative)

        by LMCBoy ( 185365 ) on Friday October 11, 2002 @01:22PM (#4433862) Homepage Journal
        (1) the decay rate is exponential, not linear. You don't have to "guess" about this, it's simply the result of a stochastic radioactive decay process, with a fixed probability per parent atom present in the sample. The rate cannot be other than exponential, with a decay constant determined by the atomic physics, which we can safely presume is invariant.

        (2) You are correct that radiocarbon dating suffers from the systematic uncertainty that we cannot know what the atmospheric C14/C12 ratio was at the time the sample died. Unfortunately (for your argument), carbon dating has nothing to do with measuring truly geologic timescales of millions or billions of years. For that, we rely on other radiometric processes like Potassium-argon or Uranium-Lead. These methods do not suffer from the same systematic error that radiocarbon dating does.

        For example, radioactive Uranium crystallizes with other atoms in a way that is impossible to create with Lead atoms instead of Uranium. However, the Uranium then begins to decay into Lead. So, you find these crystals in rock. You know that when the rock cooled from magma, it formed these crystals with all Uranium and no Lead. Now, some fraction of it has decayed to Lead. Measure the fraction of Lead to Uranium, apply the known exponential-decay rate, and you can very accurately determine how long ago the rock was molten.

        Hope that helps.

      • Re:77 Million Years? (Score:3, Informative)

        by ShavenYak ( 252902 )
        First, you pick an isotope of an element which has a nice long half-life. Then, you guess at how much of that isotope was in the environment (and therefore the object you are dating as well) at the time period you assume the object was made.

        Not exactly. Isochron dating [talkorigins.org] takes a set of samples which formed at the same time from a common pool of materials (such as a rock including several minerals) and plotting points on a graph. Three things are measured - the abundance of a radioactive element (the parent) , one of its decay products (the daughter), and a different non-radioactive isotope of the same element as the decay product (the control). A graph is plotted, with the X axis being the ratio of parent to control, and the Y axis being the ratio of daughter to control. The correlation of the plotted points to a line indicate the accuracy of the date, which can be determined from the slope of the line. How it works is described in better detail at the link I gave.

        The other assumptions are that there is a constant decay rate of the isotope

        A fair assumption, since no counterexample has ever been shown.

        and that the object being dated becomes a closed system, not seeping or leeching any of that isotope from its surroundings.

        Changes in composition of the object will cause the points on the isochron plot to not be correlated to a line, and thus the contamination will be noticed and either the object will be declared unsuitable for dating, or a date can be given with big error bars.

    • Talk Origins (Score:4, Informative)

      by MichaelPenne ( 605299 ) on Friday October 11, 2002 @12:53PM (#4433621) Homepage
      This question and many more about dating are answered at Talk-Origins,

      See

      General dating:
      http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dating.ht ml#other

      Specific theory & technique:
      http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/isochr on-dating.ht ml

      (now how many geeks will read these dating articles thinking it might help this weekend with the GF problem?:-)...

    • Re:77 Million Years? (Score:5, Informative)

      by puppet10 ( 84610 ) on Friday October 11, 2002 @01:01PM (#4433682)
      No not carbon, the half-life is too short.

      Here are two articles on how dinosaur finds ages are determined, the first in general, the second on radiometric dating specifically.

      Dating Fossils [suite101.com]

      Radiometric Dating [suite101.com]
    • The atoms in your body are older than 77 million years. So are all the other atoms you will encounter.

      Carbon dating is, like all other measurements, approximate. Journalists don't care about the accuracy of most measurements, so we don't hear "77 million years old, plus or minus 10 million years" Plus carbon dating makes many assumptions about the distrobution and decay of carbon that seem reasonable, but cannot be verifyied by prehistoric scientists. 77 million years is the best reasonable estimate that we can make at this time. Needless to say, this find is "damn old", and that's conclusive!

    • Re:77 Million Years? (Score:5, Informative)

      by LMCBoy ( 185365 ) on Friday October 11, 2002 @01:08PM (#4433746) Homepage Journal
      Contrary to FUD coming from young-Earth wackos, carbon dating has absolutely nothing to do with determining ages of dinosaur fossils. Carbon dating cannot be used to measure ages older than 10,000 years or so. It is totally inadequate for determining geological timescales. That's why other radiometric methods are used, such as potassium-argon dating or uranium-lead dating.

      Scientists probably don't mention how they know the age of every fossil they find because it would get old really quickly. Hell, they'd probably be happy to explain it over and over again; but do you think the reporter's going to put it in the article every time? Not likely.

      I'll tell you the basics; to learn more grab any Geology 101 textbook. The Earth's continental crust is stratified: it has many layers like an onion. Unlike an onion, the layers aren't uniform, but basically, there are easily discernible stratigraphic layers in the earth's crust, which you can see in cliff faces, canyons, or where rock has been cut away for a highway. The layers are caused by deposits made over the eons, so deeper layers are from epochs further in the past. Samples can be taken from different layers, and a variety of techniques can be used to calibrate how long ago that layer was deposited at the surface of the Earth (including potassium-argon dating and uranium dating, paleomagnetism, etc.).

      Now, because of erosion and tectonic movement, the rocks that are currently exposed at some locations can be from very old layers, that are probably deep underground in most other places. For example, the surface rock in the US state of Montana is largely composed of layers of sedimentary rock that were deposited during the Age of Dinosaurs. That's why lots of dinosaur fossils are found there.

      So, a paleontologist finds a fossil in rocks from layer X. He looks up the radiometric age for that layer (or a nearby layer), and associates its age with the fossil. He can also look for smaller fossils in the same rock layer as secondary age indicators (i.e., plant A lived between 100 Mya to 50 Mya, insect B lived between 70 Mya and 20 Mya; if both are found in the same layer as the dinosaur fossil, it probably lived between 70 and 50 Mya).

      Or you could type your question into google [google.com], and follow the first link that it gives you [sdnhm.org].

      • Re:77 Million Years? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Tyreth ( 523822 )
        Contrary to FUD coming from young-Earth wackos, carbon dating has absolutely nothing to do with determining ages of dinosaur fossils. Carbon dating cannot be used to measure ages older than 10,000 years or so. It is totally inadequate for determining geological timescales. That's why other radiometric methods are used, such as potassium-argon dating or uranium-lead dating.

        And you likewise propogate evolutionist FUD. Carbon dating has everything to do with fossils. Do you know why carbon dating is not used on old fossils? Because, presumably, there should be not enough C14 left to make any reasonable date. So the creationist says "This fossil is dated millions of years old, and should therefore contain no C14 that could produce a relevant date". So the creationist tests this fossil and finds out that it dates a lot younger than 10,000, meaning that it has quite enough C14 to say that it is a young fossil. This, for the creationist, demonstrates clearly that there are MAJOR problems and contradictions in modern day dating techniques. This is why a creationist thinks carbon dating is relevant for fossil dating...it provides a good way of testing whether the original age that a fossil is placed in is accurate, and quite often it isn't.

        Likewise, I'm sure you could find plenty examples of such inconsistencies by a google search.

    • Re:77 Million Years? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Xeriar ( 456730 )
      Radiocarbon dating is four orders of magnitude too short, and needs atmospheric correlation anyway.

      Potassium-Argon dating, probably. Since argon is a noble gas, it doesn't really bond with anything, or get trapped in something's liquid or gaseous form. So, when the creature dies, as it fossilizes its radioactive potassium starts slowly decaying into argon. As we know of no other way for the argon to show up, we can be fairly certain about the date that pops out (I'm not sure if 77 million years is so accurate on the dot, but, say, I would be pretty confident that it's 70-85, for example.)
    • One method of dating the fossil is by using isotopic dating. However, you can really only use isotopic dating if there is a layer of volcanic ash or a lava flow near the fossil. Otherwise at that age there are no other methods to date a fossil of that age and environment. At those ages what is done generally is that the ashfall below the fossil is dated and the ashfall above the fossil is dated. You then have range of ages and when it comes to getting a chronological age that is about the best you can do with isotopic dating. Otherwise at that timeframe and environment you can use biozones of pollen to narrow it down further. In which you identify the shape of the individual pollen grains and when the pollen shows up in the fossil record you can get a relative date, but not an exact date. I'm not totally sure, but since this fossil is from the late Cretaceous and in the Western US ashfalls from volcanoes were not uncommon and you can probably narrow it down to within a million years pretty easily using ashfalls.

    • Re:77 Million Years? (Score:5, Funny)

      by cachorro ( 576097 ) on Friday October 11, 2002 @01:27PM (#4433903)
      What I'm asking all the geeks here...

      Don't you realize that (we) geeks are largely unsuccessful at dating.

  • Found 2 years ago (Score:3, Interesting)

    by loomis ( 141922 ) on Friday October 11, 2002 @12:39PM (#4433504)
    This item was found in the summer of 2000.

    This article is very very vague. It states that the creature died when it was just 3 years old; I wonder why. The article doesn't say.

    Loomis
  • is it me, or are most dino remains, tracks, etc. found in the western hemisphere?

    Is no one else looking, or were they predominantly here?

    • Re:geography (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Sylver Dragon ( 445237 )
      Probably just the current political situation. I wouldn't exactly want to go looking around Kashmir for fossils right now, would you?

    • No, tonnes of finds in asia and africa.
      Just happens that we have a couple of ideal fossile hotbeds in north america, an unsatiating interest in dinosaurs, and lots of cash (relatively) to put into looking.
    • They are found all over the world, just watch a few documentaries on the Discovery Channel. There seem to be big finds in Mongolia and also South America.

    • It's you (Score:3, Informative)

      by jcsehak ( 559709 )
      Paul Sereno [uchicago.edu], for instance, has led expeditions into places like Niger, Morocco and Patagonia. The politics add an extra variable which makes it a pain in the ass to dig in another country, some countries more than others, so most American palentologists stay here. Also, it's a bitch to transport the fossils long distances after they're dug up. There's plenty of stuff to find here, so it's not really a problem.

      They were definitely not predominantly here.
  • that the dinosaur ate pringles and drank bawls for energy for those long nights of arguing on slashdot. :)
  • We've always known that paleontologists were mostly just guessing at things, but how the heck are they going to figure out "how such dinosaurs were built and how they moved" from a stomach full of "ferns, conifers and a magnolia-type plant"???

    ~Chaltek
    • Maybe from the fossilized muscle tissue found in the shoulder and other areas?
    • What they eat says volumes about how a dinosaur is built. A dinosaur that can stoop to get ferns and reach the leaves of conifers obviously has a certain length of neck and articulation of the spine. One that eats plants may not be as muscled or quick as one that eats other dinosaurs or carrion, mostly because it doesn't need to be.

      Just from stomach contents we can tell what it was fast enough to catch, what it was tall enough to reach, what it could bend down to reach, and how much energy it had to work with. The condition of the contents tells us if it had blunted teeth or sharp ones. We have some clues from a skeleton, but we have a lot more information with some extra context: "Oh. That's why that neck was built like that."

  • Other site (Score:5, Informative)

    by Shadow Wrought ( 586631 ) <shadow.wrought@nOSPAM.gmail.com> on Friday October 11, 2002 @12:48PM (#4433582) Homepage Journal
    There is also a story at National Geographic (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/10/1 010_021010_dinomummy.html) which reads a bit better I think.

    It talks as well about the size of the scales. Pretty cool stuff.

  • Some decent images (Score:5, Informative)

    by Kid Charlemagne ( 310258 ) on Friday October 11, 2002 @12:48PM (#4433585)
    ...can be found here: http://www.montanadinodigs.com/brachleo.htm

  • I wonder.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Marco_polo ( 160898 ) on Friday October 11, 2002 @12:53PM (#4433622) Homepage
    was it a Cheopsoraptor? A pharaohsauras-rex? How about a Tricetera-tuts?

    Today's Puns brought to you by the letter Q

  • Imagine, this could be the trigger to create a whole new era of film by combining the old but true mummy genre with the often done dinosaur film.

    "Revenge of the Mummy Brachiosaur"

    It's only a matter of time before the film executives hear of this rotten stinker and throw 30 million into production and special effects for the next summer blockbuster!
  • I wonder if we could recreate the conditions that led the dinosaur to be reasonably well-preserved for so many million years? We could leave extremely long-term organic time capsules, for even longer periods than the new york [nytimes.com] times capsule [amnh.org].
  • Who cares about the stomach content?! A MUMMIFIED DInosaur has valuable DNA! CLone em!
    • Just because the physical structure of the animal is preserved through mummification doesn't mean the chemical composition is preserved. DNA is still going to break down, and after 77my there probably isn't any left.

  • Is this reallly a mummy? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by let_freedom_ring ( 523304 ) on Friday October 11, 2002 @01:01PM (#4433684)
    If this is really a mummy then wouldn't that imply that the actual skin and possibly the flesh was preserved in a dry state? According to the article its skin was replaced by minerals so this is not a mummy but just a rather good conventional fossil. This sounds like a misleading article. If this was an actual mummy then we could so something interesting like possibly extract its DNA from the skin.

    • Re:Is this reallly a mummy? (Score:5, Informative)

      by jcsehak ( 559709 ) on Friday October 11, 2002 @01:23PM (#4433869) Homepage
      You can have mummies in states other than dry. Look at the bog mummies, whose flesh is intact because of all the tannins it soaked up, or ice mummies, whose flesh is crystalized. All you need is an environment which prevents bacteria from decomposing the corpse. i.e. too dry, cold, or acidic. But I think you're right about it not being technically a mummy. I think it's probably a mummy fossil, since it was mummified, then fossilized.

  • Another mummified dinosaur discovery! (Score:5, Funny)

    by crawdaddy ( 344241 ) on Friday October 11, 2002 @01:04PM (#4433721)
    In related news, Strom Thurman is still alive. He is expected to appear in the next sequel to The Mummy.

  • It's a lie! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Svenne ( 117693 ) on Friday October 11, 2002 @01:12PM (#4433775) Homepage
    It's all a lie! Don't listen to them! Everybody knows [answersingenesis.org] that the dinosaurs aren't more than 6000 years old!
    • Heh [theonion.com].

  • Update! (Score:5, Funny)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Friday October 11, 2002 @01:14PM (#4433794) Homepage Journal
    "...the dinsoaurs remains included long hair, an unwashed shirt, no shoes, and a picket sign saying "Boycott Fossil Fuels!"

  • Prehistoric plants? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by phorm ( 591458 ) on Friday October 11, 2002 @01:31PM (#4433936) Journal
    The cool thing is, if the stomach contents are intact enough, we may have access to some plant-life that was not previously available. This appears to be a duckbilled dinosaur, so it's likely a herbivore. Too bad, if it were a big-bad t-rex we may have gotten a 2-for-1 with anything else inside its stomach, depending on the state of digestion at death.
    Personally, I'd be quite interested in the breathing and circulatory apparati of dinosaurs. Getting blood and oxygen around the systems of these big guys may have required organs a little different than current-day creatures (I don't think there are any reptiles this large alive to-date). Perhaps they're able to breathe through their skin, although I believe that is generally characteristic of amphibians and not reptiles.

    Hmmm... tastes like million-year-old chicken - phorm
    • Keep in mind that some theorists believe that, at the time of the dinosaurs, the atmosphere was richer in oxygen, meaning the respiratory system wouldn't need to be as powerful as that of a dinosaur evolved in today's environment.
  • Using my scientific skepticism: How exactly does a mummy stay preserved without being fractured and destroyed for 77 million years? That's a very, very, very long time. I'm really curious because that doesn't really make sense to me.

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