Mysterious mountain dino may be a new species

A partial dinosaur skeleton unearthed in 1971 from a remote British Columbia site is the first ever found in Canadian mountains and may represent a new species, according to a recent examination by a University of Alberta researcher.

Discovered by a geologist in the Sustut Basin of north-central British Columbia 37 years ago, the bones, which are about 70 million years old, were tucked away until being donated to Dalhousie University in 2004 and assigned to then-undergraduate student Victoria Arbour to research as an honours project. She soon realized that the bones were a rare find: they are very well-preserved and are the most complete dinosaur specimen found in B.C. to date. They are also the first bones found in B.C.'s Skeena mountain range.

"There are similarities with two other kinds of dinosaurs, although there's also an arm bone we've never seen before. The Sustut dinosaur may be a new species, but we won't know for sure until more fossils can be found," said Arbour, who finished researching the bones while studying for her master's degree at the University of Alberta. "It's very distinct from other dinosaurs that were found at the same time in southern Alberta."

The seven shin, arm, toe and possible skull bones were found nestled in a dip between mountains in the Skeena range, and while the fragments resemble those from a small two-legged, plant-eating dinosaur, the rest of the creature's identity is a mystery, Arbour says.

The fossils are currently in the collection of the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria and Arbour hopes to lead a U of A team to the site for future investigation.

Arbour's findings were published recently in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences.

Source: University of Alberta

Aussie scientists discover oldest proof of live birth

Australian scientists have discovered the oldest evidence of live birth on the planet, thanks to a fossil fish from Western Australia with a well-preserved embryo inside the body cavity.

The fish comes from Gogo, a world-famous fossil deposit in the Kimberley about 375 million years old, making it the oldest example of live birth known amongst the vertebrates (animals with backbones).

Researchers from Museum Victoria, the University of Western Australia and The Australian National University have collaborated in documenting this remarkable fossil – a new genus and species named Materpiscis attenboroughi after Sir David Attenborough – in Nature today.

The Materpiscis (‘mother-fish’ in Latin) was collected during a research trip to Western Australia in 2005 under an Australian Research Council Discovery Project based at ANU. Dr John Long, Head of Science at Museum Victoria (and Adjunct Professor, ANU), discovered the partly developed small skeleton inside the mother’s body cavity when he extracted the specimen from limestone using acetic acid.

The specimen was X-rayed by Dr Tim Senden from the Department of Applied Mathematics at ANU using a special 3D CT scanner built and housed at the University. The fossil has revealed details of the umbilical cord and recrystallised yolk sac, soft tissue structures very rarely preserved as fossils.

“We never know, even in well-studied specimens, what additional information may be revealed by new techniques like XCT scanning - the embryo is a terrific start, but what other secrets these uniquely preserved specimens hold is even more exciting,” Dr Senden said.

Materpiscis belongs to the extinct armoured fish group called the Placodermi. Dr Kate Trinajstic from the University of Western Australia re-examined specimens in the museum collection in Perth and found three small embryos inside an adult female of a closely related form, Austroptyctodus. Previous descriptions of male Austroptyctodus by Dr Gavin Young (Research School of Earth Sciences, ANU) had already indicated an advanced reproductive biology involving copulation and internal fertilisation, as in modern sharks.

The preserved Materpiscis embryos now demonstrate that these placoderms did not lay eggs, but produced live young, a remarkably advanced reproductive strategy to have evolved in such an ancient fish.

“We hold a very significant Gogo fossil collection at ANU - perfect skeletons of ancient skulls and braincases. Recent research has revealed the oldest preserved vertebrate muscle tissue and nerve fibres, and now we have the oldest evidence of the umbilical cord and yolk sac” Dr Young said.

Source: Australian National University

Chocolate beer 3000 years old

People in Central America were drinking beverages made from cacao before 1000 BC, hundreds of years earlier than once thought, a new study shows.

These early cacao beverages were probably alcoholic brews, or beers, made from the fermented pulp of the cacao fruit.

These beverages were around 500 years earlier than the frothy chocolate-flavored drink made from the seed of the cacao tree that was such an important feature of later Mesoamerican culture.

But in brewing this primitive beer, or chicha, the ancient Mesoamericans may have stumbled on the secret to making chocolate-flavoured drinks, the paper says.

"In the course of beer brewing, you discover that if you ferment the seeds of the plant you get this chocolate taste," says John Henderson, a professor of anthropology at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and lead author of the paper.

"It may be that the roots of the modern chocolate industry can be traced back to this primitive fermented drink."

The cacao bean played an important role in Mesoamerican civilisation, the native civilisation in parts of Mexico and Central America prior to the Spanish exploration and conquest of the 16th century.

The bean was a form of currency in Aztec society, and the frothed chocolate drink made from fermented beans or seeds was central to social and ritual life throughout Mesoamerica.

In the 16th century, invading Europeans acquired a taste for the beverage and brought it back to Europe, which led to the rise of the modern chocolate industry.

An elite drink

The archaeological evidence recovered by Henderson and colleagues from a site in Puerto Escondido in modern-day Honduras suggests that the beer that probably preceded the chocolate beverage was popular among wealthy people at least as early as 1100 BC.

Chemical analysis of residues found on fragments of pottery vessels recovered from the site tested positive for theobromine, a compound found in cacao trees that were limited to Central America.

The vessels were found in the "fancier, bigger houses" in the village of Puerto Escondido in the Ulua Valley in northern Honduras, says Henderson.

He suggests the elite members of society would have drunk the beverage to mark special occasions such as births and marriages.

AFP

NEWLY DISCOVERED DINOSAUR : Gryposaurus Monumentensis

NEW DINOSAUR:
An undated artist's rendering of the duck-billed dinosaur Gryposaurus monumentensis, which roamed southern Utah 75 million years ago, shows the robust jaws that allowed this creature to eat just about any vegetation it came across.

"It was one of the most robust duck-billed dinosaurs ever," said museum paleontologist Terry Gates, who is also with the U.'s Department of Geology and Geophysics. "It was a monster."

Researchers from the Utah museum, the national monument and California's Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology unearthed fossils of this ancient plant-eater from the rocks of the Kaiparowits Formation. Researchers announced the name of the creature -- Gryposaurus monumentensis. (Gryposaurus means "hook-beaked lizard" and monumentensis honors the monument where the fossils were found.)

This duck-billed dinosaur dates to the Late Cretaceous Period 75 million years ago. "Gryposaurus monumentensis is probably the largest dinosaur in the 75-million-year-old Kaiparowits fossil ecosystem," said Alan Titus, paleontologist for the national monument.

Gates, lead author on the study, explained that this creature could have eaten just about any vegetation it stumbled across. "With its robust jaws, no plant stood a chance against G. monumentensis," he said.

Scott Sampson, another paleontologist with the Utah museum who was involved with the project, emphasized the massively-built skull and skeleton, referring to the animal as the "Arnold Schwarzenegger of duck-billed dinosaurs."

Finding the skull

In 2002, a team from the Alf Museum, in Claremont, Calif., located at the Webb School, discovered the site that contained the skull used to describe the new creature. Every summer, the California institution, the only nationally-accredited paleontology museum on a high school campus, gives Webb students and volunteers the chance to participate in scientific field work.

The California team was working a stretch of Grand Staircase that Utah researchers had not examined. Duncan Everhart, a Pennsylvania furniture maker, is credited with finding the skull.

Don Lofgren, curator of the Alf Museum, said the team received permission from the monument to dig deeper in 2003.

"We determined it was a skull sitting upside down with the jaw on top," he said.

Once Gates went out to take a look in 2004, he quickly realized the California team had a potentially-important find. The Alf Museum gave the Utah researchers permission to prepare and study the skull.

Titus noted the discovery of this new species was a team effort involving the Alf Museum, the Utah Museum of Natural History and the national monument.

"The cooperative effort put into its collection and research has truly been a model for scientific investigation on public lands," he said.

It wasn't until Utah researchers began working on the skull in 2005 that the full significance of the find began to emerge, Gates said.

The well-preserved skull was initially missing key pieces from the nose region. Fortunately, the California museum had collected a box full of eroded bones, including bits of the nose bone, which was critical for identifying the creature.

"I knew immediately that we had some species of Gryposaurus," Gates said.

A toothy beast

The creature's large number of teeth embedded in the thick skull is among the features that made G. monumentensis, as well as other closely related duck-billed dinosaurs, such a successful herbivore.

At any given time, the dinosaur had over 300 teeth available to slice up plant material. Inside the jaw bone, there were numerous replacement teeth waiting, meaning that at any moment, this Gryposaur may have carried more than 800 teeth.

"IIt was capable of eating most any plant it wanted to," Gates said. "Although much more evidence is needed before we can hypothesize on its dietary preferences."

While the diet is unknown, given the considerable size of the creature, the massive teeth and jaws are thought to have been used to slice up large amounts of tough, fibrous plant material.

The teeth may hold important clues the dinosaur's eating habits. The Utah museum plans to study the composition of the dinosaur teeth, which when compared to other plant-eating dinosaurs from the Kaiparowits Formation, will help researchers decipher differences in diet.

G. monumentensis is one of several new dinosaur species found in Grand Staircase, including: a Velociraptor-like carnivore named Hagryphus, a tyrannosaur, and several kinds of horned dinosaurs. In all, more than a dozen kinds of dinosaurs have been recovered from these badlands, and most represent species that are new to science.

"This is a brand new and extremely important window into the world of dinosaurs," said Sampson.

Under ideal circumstances, paleontologists will find the skull and other key bones at the same site. In this case, the head was the only thing they managed to find from where the Alf team searched.

Researchers believe the head of this particular Gryposaur likely rolled into a bend of a river, where it was partly buried. The right half of the head remained exposed to the river current, dislodging several bones before this side was buried as well.

In other parts of the monument, Utah researchers have excavated bones believed to be from the same species. Gates estimates G. monumentensis may have grown up to 30 feet long as an adult.

"As each new find such as this new Gryposaur is made," Titus said, "it is placed into the greater context of an entire ecosystem that has remained lost for eons, and is only now coming under scientific scrutiny."

Life in 'West America'

Around 75 million years ago, southern Utah differed dramatically from today's arid desert and redrock country. During much of the Late Cretaceous, a shallow sea split North America down the middle, dividing the continent into eastern and western landmasses.

In what Sampson terms "West America," G. monumentensis and its fellow dinosaurs lived in a narrow strip of land sandwiched between the seaway to the east and rising mountains to the west. Due in large part to the presence of the seaway, the climate was moist and humid.

Thanks to more than 100 years of fossil collection, scientists know more about the Cretaceous dinosaurs from North American than they do from any other time or continent on Earth, Sampson noted.

While G. monumentensis gulped down its greens and tried to avoid predatory tyrannosaurs down in Utah, closely related but different species of duck-billed dinosaurs were doing the same thing farther north, in places like Montana and Alberta, Canada.

The new Utah species is proving crucial for determining patterns of duck-billed dinosaur evolution and ecology during the Late Cretaceous of North America, Gates said. He added that "this calls for a re-evaluation of previous ideas about the evolution of duck-billed dinosaurs across the world."

Earlier explanations of dinosaurs undertaking long distance migrations have gone out the window. "Now we have to figure out how so many different kinds of giants managed to coexist in such small areas," said Sampson. "We're just beginning to unravel this story."

Bones from G. monumentensis are on display at Big Water Visitor Center in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and for a short time at the Utah Museum of Natural History before returning to the Alf Museum.

This research was published in the Oct. 3 issue of the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

source: This story has been adapted from material provided by University of Utah.

Neolithic Chewing Gum ?

Discarded chewing gum is the bane of town centre pavements across the UK – but imagine finding a piece that’s a jaw-dropping 5,000 years old?

That’s just what University of Derby BA (Hons) Heritage and Conservation student Sarah Pickin found during an archaeological dig in Finland recently.

The 23-year-old, from Uttoxeter Old Road in Derby, was one of just five UK students on a unique volunteer programme at the Kierikki Centre on the west coast of Finland when she made the find – a piece of Neolithic chewing gum – a chewed cob made from birch bark tar.

Sarah also found part of an amber ring and a slate arrow head, all of which will be on display at the centre after they have been analysed in laboratories.

The Centre manages public excavations between May and October to unearth items of historical importance in an area of woodland called ‘Kierikkikangas’ which dates to the Neolithic period, c. 4,000-5,000 BC.

One of the Kierikki Centre’s supervisors, Sami Viljanmaa, said: “This gum substance of that period was often used as chewing gum and could also have been used to repair damaged arrowheads

“This and the other two items that Sarah discovered were very exciting finds.”

Sarah’s tutor at Derby, Professor Trevor Brown, an expert in Heritage and Conservation, said: “Birch bark tar contains phenols, which are antiseptic compounds.

"It is generally believed that Neolithic People found that by chewing this stuff if they had gum infections it helped to treat the condition. “It’s particularly significant because well defined tooth imprints were found on the gum which Sarah discovered.”

Colleague Sini Annala said: “The actual material is some kind of tar, that was made by heating birch bark. After the tar was made, it was boiled, and when it cooled, it became solid.

“When it was heated again, it became softer, and it was used at least sometimes as some kind of chewing gum. Birch bark tar was also used as glue for repairing broken ceramic pots and to unite quartz or slate arrowheads to their shafts.”

Sarah said: “I was delighted to find the gum and was very excited to learn more about the history of the items. I am keen to work in this area in the future so the experience has stood me in good stead.”

The finds were made with help from two diggers from Oulu, Rumana Hossein and Maisoun Alsanat during Sarah’s trip, made possible through the Leonardo Di Vinci European Programme, and Grampus Heritage and Training Limited, based in Cumbria and help from the University’s Career Development Centre.

Sarah’s participation in the course, and her subsequent academic write-up will contribute 15 credits towards her degree, as she prepares to begin her final year of study.

In relation to the ring, its original diameter was four centimetres and the Centre says it was probably already broken in the Stone Age. After that someone made a hole in the ring so that it could still be used as jewellery.

This is the third piece of amber found at the Kierikkikangas site. Two pearls were found last year also with the help of British students.

The four centimetre long worked slate arrow is from the so-called “Typical Comb Ceramic period” 3,500-4,000 BC.

The first known mention of findings from ancient structures in the Kierikki area is from the 1800s*.

Finally, during excavations in the early 1990s, significant findings were made of foundations for dwellings and various objects.

*It became understood that the Kierikki area has been an important settlement for nearly 2,000 years, roughly between 5,000 and 3,000 BC, over 7,000 years ago.

Source: University of Derby

Sarcosuchus imperator

Steve Irwin, the daredevil Australian naturalist killed last year by a stingray, never wrestled a croc like this one.

French paleontologists at the
Museum of Natural History in Paris,
Philippe Taquet(L) and
France de Lapparent de Broin
pose on a likeness of the
"Sarcosuchus imperator"
that lived 110 million years ago.

As long as a tourist bus and with jaws big enough to pick up a cow, "Sarcosuchus imperator" lived 110 million years ago and was surely the biggest, baddest crocodile to ever roam the earth.


This week its scales-and-blood likeness was unveiled by the man who first identified and named the amphibious predator based on fossil remains found in Niger more than 40 years ago.

"It is impressive to finally see this animal in the flesh -- excuse me, I mean in resin," said a smiling Philippe Taquet, a paleontologist at the Museum of Natural History in Paris.

Measuring 12 meters (40 feet) from snout to tail, and weighing in at 10 tonnes, Sarco -- as the beast is known among dinsosaur buffs -- undoubtably chomped on big fish and small dinosaurs, dragging them into the tropical rivers that once criss-crossed what is today the Sahara.

The reconstruction of the animal by the French company Ophys required 1800 hours of work and 750 kilos (1650 pounds), and was undertaken under the watchful eye of paleontologist France de Lapparent de Broin, who co-authored with Taquet the first scientific article on Sarco in 1966.

Sarco's new home will be the Crocodile Farm, an wildlife park with 400 of the pre-historic reptile's modern cousins, along with an assortment of giant turtles.

21st century technology cracks alchemists' secret recipe

500-year old mystery surrounding the centerpiece of the alchemists' lab kit has been solved by UCL (University College London) and Cardiff University archaeologists.

Since the Middle Ages, mixing vessels – or crucibles – manufactured in the Hesse region of Germany have been world renowned because of their ability to withstand strong reagents and high temperatures.

Previous work by the team has shown that Hessian crucibles have been found in archaeological sites across the world, including Scandinavia, Central Europe, Spain, Portugal, the UK, and even colonial America. At the time, many people tried to reproduce them but always failed.

Now, writing in Nature, the researchers reveal using petrographic, chemical and X-ray diffraction analysis that Hessian crucible makers made use of an advanced material only properly identified and named in the 20th century.

Dr Marcos Martinón-Torres, of the UCL Institute of Archaeology, who led the study, explains: "Our analysis of 50 Hessian and non-Hessian crucibles revealed that the secret component in their manufacture is an aluminium silicate known as mullite (Al6Si2O13).

"Today mullite is used in a wide range of modern conventional and advanced ceramics, such as building materials, electronic packaging devices, optical materials and catalytic converters, as well as in ceramic matrix composites such as thermal protection systems and liners for aircraft and stationary gas turbine engines.

"This material was only first described in the 20th century, though Hessian crucible makers were already taking advantage of this peculiar aluminium silicate 400 years earlier: they synthesised mullite by manufacturing their crucibles with kaolinitic clay and then firing them at temperatures above 1100 degrees.

"Mullite is extremely resistant to thermal, chemical and mechanical stresses, and that's what made the crucibles so fit for their functions. It is thanks to the availability of Hessian crucibles that the discovery of some elements and their thermochemical behaviour could take place.

"Crucible makers were not aware of mullite, but they mastered a very successful recipe, and that's why they kept it constant, and secret, for centuries."

Professor Ian Freestone, Cardiff School of History and Archaeology, said: "Manufacture of the crucibles used in early metallurgy and alchemy challenged the potters as they were required to withstand conditions more extreme than those required of other ceramics. In this case we find that the properties of a material which we regard as modern and high-tech, in this case mullite, were being exploited centuries ago by craftsmen who had a limited scientific understanding of their products but a great deal of skill and ingenuity."

Source: University College London