Hello, this is Raptor chatter and today
we're gonna be looking at 2017
paleontology in review. To start we're
gonna look at public perception.
Feathered dinosaurs were brought to the
public eye again this time by Wizards of
the coast who used art featuring for
their dinosaurs for their game Magic the
Gathering
however after the most recent Jurassic
world trailer and a paper which
suggested t-rex may not have had
feathers based on skin impressions it
seems as though the idea of a fluffy
t-rex is still going to be debated in
2018 both publicly and scientifically.
A  close relative of t-rex very likely had
scales ran across his face though.
A study published in Nature looked at the
very well preserved skull of a Dasplateosaurus Hornerii
a very closely related species to Dasplateosaurus Torosus
which is better known and was named
in 1970. The texture on the bones was
almost identical to what we see in
modern-day crocodiles and so based on
that would have had a very similar set
of scales running across its head based
on the modern-day analog.
Zul an Ankylosaur
got the spotlight after being named for
the demon from ghostbusters. Zuul also
represents the best preserved North
American species Ankylosaur with
both the tail club and the entire skull
being preserved
however Zuul was largely overshadowed by
the announcement of Borealopelta
a closely related Nodosaur.
Borealopelta has been analyzed using
melanosome analysis, that is taking an electron
microscope and scanning across the skin
to find fossilized pigment cells, and
from this we can learn about dinosaurs color.
The analysis showed Borealopelta
was darkly counter shaded which is
in contrast what you see in modern-day
species which are similarly sized such
as elephants and rhinoceros. This shows
that Borealopelta and similar Nodosaurs
needed to remain cautious in
their environments under threat of
predation. A further study showed that
the spines and spikes on its side were
likely used for interspecies competition
rather than for fighting off predators
with skin impressions also intact this
is one of the greatest finds in all of
paleontology let alone 2017.
Sinosauropteryx the first feathered
dinosaur found of 1995 also got an
updated look this year. Melanosome analysis
showed that it had a bandit like
mask across it's eyes much like a
raccoon or a coatimundi. Like these
species it also had a long banded tail
leading us to believe that these can be
modern analogues for its behavior as a
small opportunistic predator.
An African abeilisaur named Chenanisaurus was also
discovered dating from about 66 million
years ago this fossil shows that the
abielisaurs were not out competed by the
larger carchardontosaurs and persisted
until the end of the KPG extinction.
Additionally it's one of the only known
species from the very end cretaceous in
Africa.
Halzkaraptor, a dromeosaur related to Velociraptor and Dienonychus was also
formally described this year. However,
unlike the other two species which were
adapted for lives on land, Halzkaraptor
seems specially adopted for an aquatic
lifestyle. Adapted to water with a wide
mouth and short flipper like arms,
Halzkaraptor was a duck sized predator of
ancient Mongolia and likely filled a
similar niche to our present day
waterfowl.
With broader dinosaur families
there was a suggestion that the
traditional idea we've had of their
sorting may not be correct. This may reverse
what we once thought
with orniscians being their own group
whereas now they may be grouped with
theropoda making sauropods the outlier
however this has yet to be seen and is
still up for debate.
A fossilized tick
was found holding on to a dinosaur
feather which had gotten stuck in amber
so that's gonna lead to nothing... Despite
what Jurassic Park might tell you DNA
doesn't last that long
at best we might find a few proteins and
even if those proteins are found their
only use would be to say if there was
DNA here once and even if we get that
it's gonna be so hard to tell whether
those proteins came from the tick, the
dinosaur, or even just contamination as
has happened before in other experiments with amber.
A piece of Burmese amber
turned up with almost an entire bird
captured inside of it. The currently
unnamed species belonged to the Enantiornithes, rather than the Neorthines, which
would lead to our modern birds. Through
this, scientists hope to understand why
only some of the birds were able to
actually survive the KPG extinction 66
million years ago
A study showed that
some dinosaurs such as protoceratops
may have taken as long as
six months to finish incubating their
eggs and this is in contrast  to what we
see in modern species of bird where they
have much shorter incubation times. And
this just shows potential reasons that
the non-avian dinosaurs may have gone
extinct at the end of the Cretaceous
A 58 million (*48 million) year old bird was also
discovered with preserved uropygial
glands. In modern birds, these glands
help to maintain feathers by producing
waxes and oils that help to protect the
feathers from the elements
now some modern species such as
ostriches and woodpeckers don't actually
have these glands and so this find helps
to determine the propagation and spread
of different species after the
extinction at the end of the Cretaceous
In amphibians a study of South American
horn frogs led to estimations that the late
cretaceous, Beezlebufo Aminga, one of the
largest frogs known, could bite with a
force between 500 and 2,200 Newtons
so somewhere between a domestic dog and
a lion. All this from a body about 16
inches long.
The first icthyosaur was
found in India this year as well. In
addition being the first from India it's
also one of the southernmost icthyosaurs ever found. With its discovery
scientists are hoping to learn about the
propagation of aquatic species
throughout the Mesozoic.
A study of permian tree rings has shown evidence of an eleven-year sun cycle
Now we still see this cycle today with solar
radiation, solar flares, and sunspots all
moving in an 11-year cycle. According to
NASA, the 25th human observed cycle is
expected to peak in 2022. However, the
discovery of this in permian trees also
leads us to understand more how the Sun
influenced life throughout all of history.
Eekaulostomus was voted as the top open
source fossil by the PLOS paleo
community in 2017. The fish is the
earliest known of the Aulostomoidea fish,
a group containing many species alive
today. This armored species helps to show
the evolution of many other species as
its descendants do not have the hard bony
scales that it has, but close relatives
to the family such as seahorses maintain.
Over 200 pterosaur eggs were found in
China this year, all coming from a single
site. The find lends credence the idea
that communal roostings and rookeries
were used by pterosaurs as are used in
modern-day seabirds. As the find was only
announced on December 1st 2017 it's
important to look towards 2018 to find
out more information about this find
Similarly, a find was announced on
December 31st of 2017 of well-preserved
dinosaur eggs also coming from China. Now
the eggs seems similar to already
well-known Oviraptor eggs and we should
expect
from this find in 2018 as well.
Some researchers have suggested that the
Azdarchids, who have previously only been
found in a few spots around the world
might be able to fly globally. This year
there is more support for that as three
new species seem to have been unearthed.
Argentinadraco from Argentina an
unnamed species which was unearthed in
Mongolia and a pelvic girdle which has
been tentatively assigned to Azdarchidae. And so it seems to be that these
species could fly globally.
Ancestor to mammals, Lystrosaurus was shown to be a
burrower this year as well after fossils
of Lystrosaurus were found inside of a
fossilized burrow in South Africa's Karroo
Basin. While it had often been
theorized that it had burrowed and that
helped it to survive the Permian
extinction which killed between 85 and
90 percent of life on Earth, it is the first
time we have substantial evidence that
that is how mammal ancestors survived
the extinction
According to a paper in
Nature, humans rather than climate change
killed off the megafauna of ancient
Australia which is shocking I know that
humans are making things go extinct. The
paper specifically looked at fossilized
fungus from a core sample that they had.
Now this fungus is often found on the
dung of large herbivores and they saw
the largest decrease in that fungus
between forty five thousand and forty
three point one thousand years ago which
coincides with human settlement and
colonization of Australia rather than
with major climate change.
Finally we
have a study on the Siberian traps, a
series of volcanoes thousands of
kilometres wide which erupted around 260
million years ago. The study suggests
that volcanic traps such as the Siberian
traps could have led to volatile
extinction events such as the one at the
permian-triassic boundary also 260
million years ago. The study also notes
that the Deccan traps from India which
were erupting 66 million years ago near
the end of a dinosaur's reign, would not
have been able to provide for that
extinction as it did not provide enough
lava to sustain such an extinction. This
shifts the burden of evidence to the
Chicxulub impact crater where an
asteroid or meteor struck the earth
approximately 66 million years ago in
addition a study that looked at mass
extinctions across all of time showed
that extinctions are not normally caused
from impacts from space but rather they
normally have
earth-born causes. Let's hope that we are not
going to be the cause of the next
extinction.
Thanks for watching there
were loads more discoveries that I
didn't mention and each of these
that I did mention could obviously be
talked about for much longer. If you feel
I missed something, you can feel free to
comment below or contact me on my
twitter @raptor_chatter. Be
safe. Take care.
