Latest news with #palaeontologists
South China Morning Post
4 days ago
- Science
- South China Morning Post
Dino-era diet debate: Chinese pterosaur fossil rewrites menu of ancient flying reptile
Scientists in China and Brazil have found the first evidence of a plant-eating pterosaur, the ancient flying reptiles that coexisted with dinosaurs The rare find sheds light on the mysterious diets of the creatures that ruled the skies before birds and renews a contentious debate among palaeontologists. 'We report the first evidence of stomach contents of a pterodactyloid pterosaur,' the team said in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Science Bulletin on July 1. The fossil of the Sinopterus atavismus – a species of pterosaur – was found in northeastern China. Its stomach was found to contain phytoliths, a rigid, microscopic mineral deposit that forms in some plants, as well as small quartz crystals possibly swallowed to aid digestion, the team said. Quartz is commonly present in gastroliths – or mineralised 'stomach stones' that many living animals, including birds and lizards, keep in their gizzards or stomachs to help grind up tough foods like plants. 'The first occurrence of phytoliths, associated with gastroliths, in the stomach contents confirms the herbivory of Sinopterus. It is the first time that such structures have been discovered in pterosaurs.'
The Independent
25-06-2025
- Science
- The Independent
Dinosaur the size of a Labrador discovered in US after misclassification
A new dog-sized dinosaur species, Enigmacursor, has been identified after its fossils were initially miscategorised. Believed to have lived approximately 150 million years ago, Enigmacursor was a herbivore roughly the size of a Labrador with long legs for escaping predators. The fossils, discovered between 2021 and 2022 in the western United States, were bought by the Natural History Museum from a commercial dealer. Palaeontologists realised the near-complete skeleton was not a Nanosaurus, as originally labelled, leading to its reclassification as a distinct species, Enigmacursor, meaning "mysterious runner." This discovery offers hope for correctly identifying hundreds of other small dinosaur bones previously misclassified and highlights the need to re-evaluate historical assumptions in palaeontology.
The Independent
25-06-2025
- Science
- The Independent
Dog-sized dinosaur that scuttled between feet of giants 150m years ago discovered
A new, dog-sized species of dinosaur that once scuttled between the feet of giants has been discovered after being wrongly categorised. Enigmacursor, which means 'mysterious runner', is believed to have lived around 150 million years ago. At 64 cm tall and 180 cm long, the dinosaur is roughly the size of a Labrador but with larger feet and a tail that was likely longer than the rest of the dinosaur. Its long legs would have enabled this little herbivore to dart away from danger as it navigated the network of rivers and floodplains stretching across large parts of the western United States, where it was discovered. It likely existed alongside the giants of the dinosaur species, including the diplodocus and the carnivorous Ceratosaurus. On Thursday, it will become the first new dinosaur to go on display at the Natural History Museum. It will be placed on the balcony of the museum's Earth Hall. The fossils were found on private land between 2021 and 2022 and put up for sale through a commercial fossil dealer. The finding was originally advertised as an animal from the Nanosaurus, a species of which little is known, which was first named in the 1870s. After the Natural History Museum purchased the fossils, palaeontologists realised that their understanding of the Nanosaurus species was based largely on the preserved impressions of bones pressed into hardened sand. But this discovery included an almost full skeleton. Experts even believe they were able to estimate the age of the dinosaur based on the lack of neural arches fused in place along the dinosaur's spine, suggesting it was a teenager that died before it was fully grown. Experts say the discovery offers hope that the hundreds of unidentified bones, previously classified as Nanosaurus, can now be properly understood. Professor Susannah Maidment, one of the lead researchers into Enigmacursor, says she hopes this will open the way for the identification of many more smaller dinosaurs that often get ignored. 'While the Morrison Formation has been well-known for a long time, most of the focus has been on searching for the biggest and most impressive dinosaurs,' she said. 'Smaller dinosaurs are often left behind, meaning there are probably many still in the ground.' 'Enigmacursor shows that there's still plenty to discover in even this well-studied region, and highlights just how important it is not to take historic assumptions about dinosaurs at face value.'
The Independent
11-06-2025
- Science
- The Independent
Secrets of underground reptile colonies revealed after 250 million years
A fossilised colony of small burrowing reptiles that lived some 250 million years ago was recently found in South Africa. It's the first time that the Procolophon trigoniceps, which lived in the lowlands of what was then the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana (today the central Karoo), has been found to have lived and died communally in complex, underground burrows. Up till now, they have only been found as single specimens. With a short neck, long body and long tail, the Procolophon trigoniceps was about half a metre long, roughly the same size as a juvenile monitor lizard. It had a broad, flat-topped skull, with distinctive horns that pointed backwards, and enlarged chisel-like teeth designed to crush tough plants and maybe even freshwater crayfish. Fossils of the lizard-shaped animal itself were first found in 1876 near Tarkastad in South Africa's Eastern Cape. Since then, it's been found in Brazil and Antarctica. But this is the first time that palaeontologists have found a group of fossils of different sizes (adults and juveniles) in bone-on-bone contact. This suggests that before they died, they were huddling together to stabilise their body temperature, and conclusively shows that they lived and died together. Before this finding, communal underground living was assumed to have begun with mammals. However, the Procolophon lived 20 million years before the first mammal evolved. For the past three years, I've headed a research team that used neutron tomography – similar to X-rays – to look into rock and produce 3D images of the Procolophon skeletons inside. We were amazed to be able to clearly identify an adult Procolophon skeleton lying curled up on the bottom of a large space or chamber at the end of the burrow with the scattered bones of a juvenile lying on top. Our research found that these ancient reptiles used their front limbs to dig tunnels approximately one metre below the surface and then carve out chambers where they lived together. We now know for the first time that the reason we find Procolophon trigoniceps fossils in batches is that sand and mud from flash floods sometimes filled their burrows, burying them while they hibernated. This is how, today, in the rock outcrops of the central Karoo region of South Africa, we've been able to find some of these ancient colonies spectacularly fossilised with their occupants still intact. How the Procolophon fossils were preserved Our research involved interpreting the ancient environment – the landscapes, climate and ecosystems of that time. We then analysed the anatomy of the skeletons to confirm that these animals were capable of digging underground. We also studied the outside surfaces of the infilled burrows and found scratch marks that closely matched the width and spacing of the front claws of adult Procolophon skeletons. This made us more certain that the animals dug these burrows to shelter from extreme heat and cold conditions up on the floodplain surface. They could also have been trying to escape from unpredictable rainfall and fluctuating daily temperatures. This was the period just after the end-Permian mass extinction – Earth's biggest mass extinction event to date and a time of extreme storms and long dry seasons, something like today's monsoonal climate. Our research suggests that they dug their burrows into soil situated close to ponds that would have been surrounded by ferns and trees as their main food source. These areas were ideal for digging simple sloping tunnels down to about one metre below the floodplain surface. From the layering of the burrows, we noticed that these small reptiles reused abandoned burrows as well as digging new burrows in the same place for several decades. Over this long period, the number of burrows dug close to each other increased to form a complex or 'township' that we now interpret as a colony. Fossils of the same species, from rocks of roughly the same age, have also been found in Brazil and Antarctica. This led us to ask how this small, cold-blooded (ectothermic) reptile had managed to spread out over a distance of 3,000 kilometres – all along the lowland areas of southern Gondwana at that time. We were fortunate to have Brazilian researchers Juan Cisneros and Felipe Pinheiro on the team. They were able to confirm that the fossils found in South Africa, Brazil and Antarctica were all the same species. We concluded that the reason Procolophon was able to survive as a species and spread out over such a huge distance was its ability to dig underground shelters and to form colonies. This protected them from extreme weather, predators, and allowed them to establish breeding colonies. Discovery of a communal reptile Through this work, we have found evidence that supports previous suggestions that Procolophon was a burrower. We have now been able to propose that it was also a group-living, and possibly socially communal, reptile. Although they are not related, we think that the Procolophon lived in a similar way to the desert tortoise, Gopherus agassizii, that lives today in the arid parts of the southwestern United States and Mexico. These findings mean we can now see that communal living among land-living reptiles happened further back in time than we thought. To find out more, we took the scratch-marked burrow casts to the Australian neutron tomography laboratory at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation in Sydney for further investigation. It was here that we were able to find evidence that the animals reused abandoned burrows and likely laid their eggs in the terminal chambers. The research team included Sibusiso Mtungata of the Iziko Karoo Palaeo lab, Tiffany Ingham-Brown of Pushing up Daisies, Julien Benoit and Derik Wolvaardt from the University of the Witwatersrand, Joseph Bevitt from ANSTO, and Brazilian researchers Juan Cisneros and Felipe Pinheiro.
The Independent
11-06-2025
- Science
- The Independent
Fossilised stomach reveals sauropod dinosaur's final meal
Since the late 19th century, sauropod dinosaurs (long-necks like Brontosaurus and Brachiosaurus) have been almost universally regarded as herbivores, or plant eaters. However, until recently, no direct evidence – in the form of fossilised gut contents – had been found to support this. I was one of the palaeontologists on a dinosaur dig in outback Queensland, Australia, that unearthed 'Judy': an exceptional sauropod specimen with the fossilised remains of its last meal in its abdomen. In a new paper published in Current Biology, we describe these gut contents while also revealing that Judy is the most complete sauropod, and the first with fossilised skin, ever found in Australia. Remarkably preserved, Judy helps to shed light on the feeding habits of the largest land-living animals of all time. Plant-eating land behemoths Sauropod dinosaurs dominated Earth's landscapes for the entire 130 million years of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. Along with many other species, they died out in the mass extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous 66 million years ago. Ever since the first reasonably complete sauropod skeletons were found in the 1870s, the hypothesis that they were herbivores has rarely been contested. Simply put, it is hard to envisage sauropods eating anything other than plants. Their relatively simple teeth were not adapted for tearing flesh or crushing bone. Their small brains and ponderous pace would have prevented them from outsmarting or outpacing most potential prey. And to sustain their huge bodies, sauropods would have had to eat regularly and often, necessitating an abundant and reliable food source – plants. Although the general body plan of sauropods seems pretty uniform – stocky, on all fours, with long necks – these behemoths did vary when we look more closely. Some had squared-off snouts with tiny, rapidly replaced teeth confined to the front of the mouth. Others had rounded snouts, with much more robust teeth, arranged in a row that extended farther back in the mouth. Neck length varied greatly (with some necks up to 15 metres long), as did neck flexibility. In addition, a few of them had taller shoulders than hips. Absolute size varied too – some were less enormous than others. All of these factors would have constrained how high above ground each species could feed and which plants they could reach. Food in the belly Sauropod discoveries are becoming more regular in outback Queensland, thanks largely to the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum in Winton. In 2017, I helped the museum unearth a roughly 95-million-year-old sauropod, nicknamed Judy after the museum's co-founder Judy Elliott. We soon realised this find was extraordinary. Besides being the most complete sauropod skeleton and skin ever found in Australia, Judy's belly region hosted a strange rock layer. It was about two square metres in area and ten centimetres thick on average, chock-full of fossil plants. The fact that this plant-rich layer was confined to Judy's abdomen and located on the inside surface of the fossil skin, made us wonder – had we unearthed the remains of Judy's last meal or meals? If so, we knew we had something special on our hands: the first sauropod gut contents ever found. Multi-level feeding Analysis of Judy's skeleton, which was prepared out of the surrounding rock by volunteers in the museum's laboratory, enabled us to classify her as a Diamantinasaurus matildae. We scanned portions of Judy's gut contents with X-rays at the Australian Synchrotron in Melbourne and at CSIRO in Perth, and with neutrons at Australia's Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation in Sydney. This enabled us to digitally visualise the plants – which were preserved as voids within the rock – without destroying them. We did destructively sample some small portions of the gut contents to figure out their chemical make-up, along with the skin and surrounding rock. This revealed the gut contents were turned to stone by microbes in an acidic environment (stomach juices, perhaps), with minerals likely derived from the decomposition of Judy's own body tissues. Judy's gut contents confirm that sauropods ate their greens but barely chewed them – their gut flora did most of the digestive work. Most importantly, we can tell Judy ate bracts from conifers (relatives of modern monkey puzzle trees and redwoods), seed pods from extinct seed ferns, and leaves from angiosperms (flowering plants) just before she died. Conifers then, as now, would have been huge, implying Judy fed well above ground level. By contrast, flowering plants were mostly low-growing in the mid-Cretaceous. Based on other specimens (especially teeth), scientists previously thought Diamantinasaurus browsed plants relatively high off the ground. The conifer bracts in Judy's belly support this. However, Judy was not fully grown when she died, and the angiosperms in her belly imply lower-level feeding, as well. It seems likely, then, that the diets of some sauropods changed slightly as they grew. Nevertheless, they were lifelong vegetarians. Judy's skin and gut contents are now on display at the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum in Winton. I'm not sure how I'd feel about having the remains of my last meal publicly exhibited for all to see posthumously, but if it helped the cause of science, I think I'd be OK with it.
