Dinosaurs Show their True Colors

Two articles came out recently in National Geographic that describe colors discovered by x-ray techniques of dinosaur fossils.

Archeopteryx, dinosaur that first solidified the genetic similarity between dinosaurs and birds, was not black as originally thought. It had a combination of black and white-- black on the outside of the feathers and white on the inside. Today's National Geographic article on the subject may be found here.

Depiction of Anchiornis huxleyi from National Geographic, 4 February 2010.

Scientists have been able to discern even more information-- a possible fully colored picture-- of the dinosaur Anchiornis huxleyi. According to National Geographic, it "looked something like a woodpecker the size of a chicken, with black-and-white spangled wings and a rusty red crown."

Fixing the Chicken

Since I've been on vacation, I've been watching dinosaur specials. I know, it's really nerdy, but to compound it I've been doing this while making my Greek Principal Parts list.

So by now, I've run out of most of the various dinosaur specials that are around (sad!), and because all of my paleontology lectures from the "Prehistoric Creatures" series by National Geographic lectures on iTunes have stopped (do you hear that, National Geographic? Get your act together!), I've been seeking paleontology lectures elsewhere. I came across this TED Talk that totally cracked me up.

As it is, so far as we know, impossible to extract DNA from a dinosaur, Jack Horner talks about reconstructing a dinosaur from their closest living relatives, the birds (which are in fact classified as avian dinosaurs). He talks about reactivating genes in a chicken to create a living (non-avian) dinosaur. Pretty cool, and he's also quite funny.

Paleontology Geek: Hominin Evolution

In some form, all mammals require exogamous (literally, from the Greek, marriage-outside) mating patterns. Apparently, most mammals send the males to mate outside the local group, and the group is continued by females. For chimpanzees and early hominins, this functioned the opposite way. According to chemical composites in the teeth that scientists analyzed, all the males in the area were local while at least half the female skeletons apparently came from father afield. The article on australopithecines I read came from the New York Times.

Note: I thought originally that hominin was a typo for hominid. Apparently hominid has been expanded as a wider definition and hominin now refers to human ancestors. For reference, see this article from the Australian Museam.

Paleontology: Whales in Egypt?

Egyptology News just posted this piece about how the largest whale skeleton in the world has been found-- in Egypt. I had no idea that Egypt used to be an ocean, but apparently palaeontologists have discovered 37 million old mangroves and whale and shark skeletons. Very cool. I have been reading The Alchemist at a pace of about 5 pages per day when I need to relax for a few moments. Just outside of the oasis in Egypt the main character finds a shell and realizes there must have once been an ocean there. It's very cool that the same ay as I read that moment in the story such a massive find has once again confirmed this fact.

As a note, I made a pate fermente for Pain de Campagne tonight. I am hoping that it turns out the way that I remembed from baking it at my alma mater. I will post results.

Paleoblogology: Feathered Theropods Part #2

I confess: I spent a lot of last night reading dinosaur blogs. Seriously.

The reason that I spend a large portion of last night reading dinosaur blogs is because they are both interesting-- for someone who enjoys general science and paleontology-- and often very funny. It seems to me that the paleobiologists and the paleontologists of the blogosphere have the acerbic scholarly opinions and bizarre and biting sense of humor that I find characterizes classicists in general, so I felt oddly at home reading about taxons and morphology.

One of the things that I thoroughly enjoyed was a series of commentaries on a television show called Jurassic Fight Club created and/or financed by a guy named "Dinosaur" George and shown on the History Channel. The show used dinosaur fights hypothesized from bite marks and other signs of distress on bones, and employ CG to recreate dinosaur fights, and then has paleontologists comment on these recreations. I came upon the show while reading Nick Gardner's Blog. This entry pointed me to Sean Craven's blog Renaissance Oaf, which provided a hilarious three part commentary on the TV show: Part #1, Part #2, Part #3.

I have no idea whether ever responded to Craven's incisive attacks, but an earlier criticism by another dinosaur blog apparently raised an extreme response from "Dinosaur" George.

If you're interested in this ridiculously melodramatic and scientifically quetionable [1] but enjoyable show, you can watch the first episode here:





Endnotes

1. Even with my limited knowledge, I can tell that some of the assumptions are treated as fact and that the fact that all the scientists are portrayed as being in agreement is bogus (scientists rarely agree this strongly on anything, even Time Team acknowledges that).