Dinosaur wonders
January 16th 2008 04:59
In the past decade or so, the study of dinosaurs has become so detailed and sophisticated that researchers are now able to tell (of particular dinosaurs) how rapidly they grew, how they breathed, that they had feathers, how fast they could run, how large their brains were (and even how much of their brains were dedicated to smell), whether a fossil is that of a male or female, their likely parenting behaviours, their biting strength, how alike their bone proteins were to those of modern birds, and what their scales and patterning looked like. Of course, given the very real limitations of the fossil record, there is a great deal we still don’t know (and probably never will know, as so much is lost in the turbulence of history), so a good deal of guesswork and speculation must necessarily still go on, but individual discoveries add new understanding to particular dinosaurs, and are suggestive of broader patterns. It is now fairly safe, for example, to say that birds evolved from dinosaurs, because the convergence of several independent pieces of evidence in favour of this hypothesis is pretty strong. Speaking more generally, it's just incredible how human ingenuity and good old-fashioned perseverance (accompanied by a bit of good luck here and there to help us along) has allowed us to peer back in time - over 65 million years ago - and reconstruct such a detailed portrait of a lost world.
Where once dinosaurs were widely thought to be dull-witted, slow and unsuccessful denizens of natural history, they are now seen as active, sophisticated animals that could hold their own. Their affinities to birds are nowadays often depicted with some very birdlike reconstructions in palaeo-art. Where once we thought of them as being greenish-brown, they are now endowed with dazzling colours like modern day lizards and birds. And why not? After all, dinosaurs were living, breathing animals. Their lineages evolved and adapted in accordance to local circumstances, and those circumstances were determined by the biotic and abiotic environments prevailing at the time. Evolution, we can surmise, was working by the same rules back then as it is now. We can also surmise that there were ecological niches being filled in much the same manner as they are today, with predators, grazers, scavengers, fish eaters, insectivores, and omnivores. The Permian-Triassic extinction event that occurred some 251 million years ago – terminating the Palaeozoic era – wiped out about 95 percent of all species living at the time (earning it the apt name, the “Great Dying”), and opening the way for the later prominence of the dinosaurs (of course, it didn’t happen in order for dinosaurs to have their shot. Meteorites and volcanic eruptions have no foresight; they do their business, and that’s that, however much the results matter to us). We call what came afterwards the Mesozoic Era, or the "Age of Reptiles" (pretty misleading, as it gives the impression of a ladder of evolution. Lots of other groups continued to live on, and indeed, as the late palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould said in his excellent book “Full House”, it has always been the Age of Bacteria. Reptiles – including the dinosaurs, ichthyosaurs, flying reptiles and others - would together only have constituted a small fraction of the total biodiversity; it’s just that we characterise each age from the vantage point of its most exciting inhabitants). This is when the dinosaurs came to prominence (on land, at least). After mass extinctions, the niches filled by the previous fauna come to be occupied by newly evolved species. So it was with the dinosaurs, filling in the niches previously filled by the "mammal-like reptiles” that lived during the Palaeozoic Era. When the dinosaurs met their end in the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event (more widely known to the general public than the Permian-Triassic event even though it wasn’t as devastating), the niches they had occupied came to be filled by mammals. There is a recurring, large-scale pattern to life; as someone once said of history, “it rhymes”.
Here are some links from BBC News (Science/Nature) to some of the discoveries that are changing our view of dinosaurs:
Amazing find of dinosaur 'mummy'
Dinosaurs breathed like penguins
Experts tell Mr from Mrs dinosaur
New meat-eating dinosaur unveiled
Dinosaurs grew fast, bred young
Flesh wound reveals dino secrets
Velociraptor dino 'had feathers'
Huge bird-like dinosaur unearthed
T. rex was 'slow-turning plodder'
Fierce T. rex's 'fluffy' history
Protein links T. rex to chickens
Teenage T. rex's monstrous growth
Where once dinosaurs were widely thought to be dull-witted, slow and unsuccessful denizens of natural history, they are now seen as active, sophisticated animals that could hold their own. Their affinities to birds are nowadays often depicted with some very birdlike reconstructions in palaeo-art. Where once we thought of them as being greenish-brown, they are now endowed with dazzling colours like modern day lizards and birds. And why not? After all, dinosaurs were living, breathing animals. Their lineages evolved and adapted in accordance to local circumstances, and those circumstances were determined by the biotic and abiotic environments prevailing at the time. Evolution, we can surmise, was working by the same rules back then as it is now. We can also surmise that there were ecological niches being filled in much the same manner as they are today, with predators, grazers, scavengers, fish eaters, insectivores, and omnivores. The Permian-Triassic extinction event that occurred some 251 million years ago – terminating the Palaeozoic era – wiped out about 95 percent of all species living at the time (earning it the apt name, the “Great Dying”), and opening the way for the later prominence of the dinosaurs (of course, it didn’t happen in order for dinosaurs to have their shot. Meteorites and volcanic eruptions have no foresight; they do their business, and that’s that, however much the results matter to us). We call what came afterwards the Mesozoic Era, or the "Age of Reptiles" (pretty misleading, as it gives the impression of a ladder of evolution. Lots of other groups continued to live on, and indeed, as the late palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould said in his excellent book “Full House”, it has always been the Age of Bacteria. Reptiles – including the dinosaurs, ichthyosaurs, flying reptiles and others - would together only have constituted a small fraction of the total biodiversity; it’s just that we characterise each age from the vantage point of its most exciting inhabitants). This is when the dinosaurs came to prominence (on land, at least). After mass extinctions, the niches filled by the previous fauna come to be occupied by newly evolved species. So it was with the dinosaurs, filling in the niches previously filled by the "mammal-like reptiles” that lived during the Palaeozoic Era. When the dinosaurs met their end in the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event (more widely known to the general public than the Permian-Triassic event even though it wasn’t as devastating), the niches they had occupied came to be filled by mammals. There is a recurring, large-scale pattern to life; as someone once said of history, “it rhymes”.
Here are some links from BBC News (Science/Nature) to some of the discoveries that are changing our view of dinosaurs:
Amazing find of dinosaur 'mummy'
Dinosaurs breathed like penguins
Experts tell Mr from Mrs dinosaur
New meat-eating dinosaur unveiled
Dinosaurs grew fast, bred young
Flesh wound reveals dino secrets
Velociraptor dino 'had feathers'
Huge bird-like dinosaur unearthed
T. rex was 'slow-turning plodder'
Fierce T. rex's 'fluffy' history
Protein links T. rex to chickens
Teenage T. rex's monstrous growth
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