Thursday Dinosaur Blogging
Exciting developments in the dinosaur world as researchers discover a creature that’s a lot like Tyrannosaurus Rex, but much smaller:
Apparently this upends our understanding of how T Rex evolved:
But this scaled-down version, which was about nine feet long and weighed only 150 pounds, lived 125 million years ago, about 35 million years before giant Tyrannosaurs roamed the earth. So the discovery calls into question theories about the evolution of T. rex, which was about 5 times longer and almost 100 times heavier.
“The thought was these signature Tyrannosaur features evolved as a consequence of large body size,” Stephen L. Brusatte of the American Museum of National History, an author of a paper describing the dinosaur published online by the journal Science, said at a news conference. “They needed to modify their entire skeleton so they could function as a predator at such colossal size.”
Naturally, this demonstrates that dinosaurs are fun all my political opinions are correct.
28 Responses to “Thursday Dinosaur Blogging”
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September 17th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Nauseatingly adorable.
“Whose the cutest little Tyrannosaur in all the Cretaceous Period? You are! You are! nom nom nom”-type adorable.
September 17th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
It just demonstrates that you failed God’s test, and will burn in hell.
September 17th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
We told you evolution was just a theory and a very flawed one at that.
September 17th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
Scientific research adapts to new evidence, which confuses the hell out of people who grew up thinking you’re supposed to get your world view right the first time.
September 17th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Paul Sereno still doing his best, even though its a given that Obama is the coolest University of Chicago professor around. I say Bill Curtis needs to do a special on this.
September 17th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
I’ve never been to Dinosaur World and but I have visited Dinosaur Land.
September 17th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Well, at least this one is small enough to fit on Noah’s Ark.
September 17th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
Of course most Americans think that the samll T-Rex was so that it could fit on Noah’s arc.
September 17th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
Suppose dinosaur A has the same shape as dinosaur B but is twice as tall. Then A weighs 8 times as much as B and will therefore be a much slower runner. The producers of Jurassic Park greatly overestimated the maximum speed of a Tyrannosaurus but that made for a more exciting movie. Now replace the word dinosaur by government, and everyone can get back to the subject of this blog.
September 17th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
Dinosaurs are only fun when you acknowledge that none of them are more than 6000 years old…
September 17th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
@ Craig
Actually, there’s an entire book devoted to the “plausibility” of Noah’s Ark. The idea is that Moses took baby dinos aboard with him on the trip so they could fit.
I can’t wait until technology progresses to the point where we can have nine feet long T-Rexes as pets.
September 17th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
I wonder how they know the little T. Rex isn’t an adolescent. And how they know the little one didn’t actually evolve from the big one, perhaps from being isolated on an island.
September 17th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
Usain Bolt is so fast because he’s only 6′5″, unlike most humans who are over 8 feet tall.
September 17th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
This also explains American Obesity. We’re just 35 million years more evolved than the rest of the world.
September 17th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Don’t forget how faster mice are than cheetahs.
September 17th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
House cats and lions/tigers have a similar or greater degree of size difference, and yet their anatomies are remarkably similar. Why should this be so astonishing in dinosaurs when it is unremakable in mammalian carnivores?
September 17th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
Nine feet long and 150 pounds? That’s a skinny-ass dinosaur.
September 17th, 2009 at 8:35 pm
And how they know the little one didn’t actually evolve from the big one, perhaps from being isolated on an island.
That’s answered in the quote from the article in Matt’s post: “But this scaled-down version, which was about nine feet long and weighed only 150 pounds, lived 125 million years ago, about 35 million years before giant Tyrannosaurs roamed the earth.”
September 17th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
The upright dinosaurs tended to be light for their height. Those nasty raptors from “Jurassic Park” were probably about 50-60 pounds.
September 17th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
@Strawberry Runner
In Kentucky there is a 27 million dollar museum devoted to creationism. They went the baby dinosaurs route. Even funnier velociraptors apparently were vegitarians before the whole tree of knowledge incident. You can’t have any death in the garden of eden.
September 17th, 2009 at 10:05 pm
“In Kentucky there is a 27 million dollar museum devoted to creationism.”
So do they describe Noah’s global journey to collect these animals? The Bible fails to mention it, but he had to have already traveled to every corner of the globe to pick these animals up. Hell, just picking up all the penguins (17 species) would have been quite the voyage in those days. You’d think such a miraculous feat would have made it into the Bible. And given Noah’s remarkable naval engineering and nautical skills, why did he forget it all afterward? He lived for a long time after the Flood, so why didn’t he teach any of his sons this extraordinary knowledge? Think about it, the HVAC system on the Ark must have been way beyond any current technology. Keeping polar bears and gila monsters alive on the same boat takes a sophisticated system. Add in the Barton Springs salamander, which requires water between 67 and 69 degrees, and that quite a feat. Why does ancient Israel show no evidence of this extremely advanced HVAC technology?
September 17th, 2009 at 10:48 pm
Nine feet long and 150 pounds? That’s a skinny-ass dinosaur.
Like Keira Knightly, it’s mostly neck and tail.
September 17th, 2009 at 10:50 pm
I wonder how they know the little T. Rex isn’t an adolescent.
One of the first things they tech in forensics classes is how to tell an adult from an adolescent, even from the bones. Watch a few more TV crime shows and you’ll learn these things.
September 17th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
This is clear evidence that steroid abuse is a lot older than we thought. T. Rex is obviously the result of little dinos using performance enhancing drugs.
September 17th, 2009 at 11:52 pm
“Nine feet long and 150 pounds? That’s a skinny-ass dinosaur.”
I’ve seen a monitor lizard that big. And not in a zoo, in a road side village restaurant in Vietnam. And the owner was not happy. Which surprised the two guys who brought it in. This monitor had been eating everyone’s chickens. Understand, the hens run wild there, only the the roosters are captive. So, catching the monitor was something the whole village was happy about. So they paraded it around. But you don’t bring a nine foot long lizard into someone’s restaurant. That ain’t cool even in Vietnam. I had no idea what she was saying, but I could tell she was really angry. My driver translated it as “if you don’t get this fucking overgrown gecko out of my place now, I’ll shove this fucking broomstick right up your fucking ass.” And I questioned him on whether she was really being that vulgar, and he assured me she was. If I learned anything about Vietnam by going there it’s this: don’t mess with Vietnamese women. Ever. They put biker chicks at Sturgis to shame.
September 18th, 2009 at 12:13 am
I should add that no monitor lizards were killed in the telling of this story. And none in reality, either. The lizard in question was larger than any monitor in any of the zoos in Vietnam. It was donated to the Hanoi Zoo. But the two guys insisted that the zoo understand that it needs a lot of chickens to survive. I’m guessing the zoo had already figured that out. But what was weird is that the guys that caught it were from the village that this lizard had rampaged, and they wanted it kept well fed and healthy. Never know what to expect from the Vietnamese. Although, there is one thing to expect: sensibility. Now that the village is prosperous, people really don’t want monitor meat. The zoo will pay more for it. But if it’s kept alive, they wanted it to be treated well.
September 18th, 2009 at 9:19 am
@21
Joseph: Hey. I just had a particular thought. What if we go all the way to the zoo, and the monkeys ain’t in the mood?
Joey: What, for doin’ it?
Joseph: Yeah, for doing it, the monkeys.
Joey: That’s okay. We’ll just watch the penguins do it.
Tony: Ahh..that’s disgusting. You’re like a perverted individual!
Joseph: What? Why is that disgusting, and watching the monkeys doin’ it ain’t?
Tony: Because monkeys is natural with humans, penguins, they ain’t natural like that.
Joey: What are you talking about? Penguins is natural.
Anthony: Penguins ain’t natural, they was chemically man-made like The Incredible Hulk.
Joseph: Anthony, How do you know this about the penguins?
Anthony: It’s in the Bible.
J+J: It ain’t in the Bible.
Anthony: It’s in the Bible wit’ Noah! Noah didn’t take no penguins wit’ ‘em on the ark, so therefore penguins ain’t natural. Read your Bible. There’s
no mention of penguins whatsoever.
Joey: Okay.
September 18th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Come on. Can’t we get even one creationist troll here?