Spectacularly Preserved Fossil Suggests Most Dinosaurs Were Feathered

A newfound squirrel-tailed specimen is the most primitive meat-eating dinosaur with feathers, according to a new study. The late-Jurassic discovery, study authors say, challenges the image of dinosaurs as “overgrown lizards.”

Unearthed recently from a Bavarian limestone quarry, the “exquisitely preserved” 150-million-year-old fossil has been dubbed Sciurumimus albersdoerferi—”Scirius” being the scientific name for tree squirrels.

Sciurumimus was likely a young megalosaur, a group of large, two-legged meat-eating dinosaurs. The hatchling had a large skull, short hind limbs, and long, hairlike plumage on its midsection, back, and tail.

Previously, paleontologists have found feathers only on coelurosaurs—birdlike dinosaurs that evolved later than so-called megalosaurs such as Sciurumimus.

Because Sciurumimus is not closely related to coelurosaurs, the new fossil suggests feathered dinosaurs were the norm, not the exception. Learn more here or here.

Dinosaur gases ‘warmed the Earth’

Excuse you. Researchers have found that immense herbivorous dinosaurs may have produced enough methane gas—essentially burps and farts—to substantially boost global temperatures. The group of dinosaurs known as sauropods—plant eaters famed for their long necks and gargantuan size, such as those shown in an artist’s reconstruction below—were common members of many ancient ecosystems.

Previous research hints that each square kilometer of well-vegetated area may have supported between 11 and 15 sauropods, which together could have weighed about 200 metric tons. Using methane-production data for modern gut bacteria, researchers estimate that over the course of a year, sauropods worldwide would have produced about 520 million metric tons of the greenhouse gas. That’s roughly the amount of methane entering the atmosphere each year from all of today’s sources combined—including agriculture, beef and dairy production, wetlands, and forest fires.

Because methane has about 25 times the planet-warming power of carbon dioxide, the gas generated by sauropods alone could have warmed the planet almost as effectively as all of the carbon dioxide in today’s atmosphere. Learn more here, here, here or here.

T. Rex Bite Strongest Ever on Land

Once the largest known carnivore on land, Tyrannosaurus rex also had the most powerful bite of any terrestrial animal of any time period, a new study suggests.

To see how forcefully T. rex could bite, biomechanicists involved in the new study used laser scanners to digitize juvenile and adult T. rex skulls. The team then used computer models to reconstruct the dinosaur’s jaw muscles and analyze bite performance.

The models suggest that an adult T. rex was capable of a maximum bite force of 35,000 to 57,000 newtons at its back teeth. That’s more than four times higher than past estimates and several times as forceful as the bite of a modern crocodile. Learn more here.

Fish that swallowed a pterosaur that swallowed a fish

Dining can be a dangerous business. About 150 million years ago, a winged pterosaur called Rhamphorhynchus swooped down to pluck an unsuspecting fish out of the Jurassic ocean. Before the reptile could enjoy its meal, though, a much larger fish – Aspidorhynchus – grabbed the pterosaur and pulled it beneath the waves.

We’re not done yet, though: before the predatory fish could tuck into its flying snack, it too somehow managed to die – perhaps choking on what was clearly an awkward meal. All three unfortunate beasts then sank to settle on the sea floor, where they fossilised.

Learn more here.

Prehistoric Penguins Revealed

Scientists finally have the skinny on two extinct species of giant “svelte” penguins that lived in New Zealand 25 million years ago.

Instead of a modern penguin’s rotund shape, each of the newly named species had a narrow chest; long, tapering flippers; and a narrow beak—a body specialized for hunting fish.

Standing about 4.3 feet (1.3 meters) tall, both species would have been taller than the tallest living penguin species, the emperor penguin, which can reach 4 feet (1.2 meters) tall.

In the penguins’ time, New Zealand itself was mostly underwater—only a smattering of islets were above the surface. Shallow waves rich with food and protection from predators would’ve made the habitat ideal for the birds. Learn more here or here.

120-Million-Year-Old ‘Dragon’ Discovered

Paleontologists in northeast China have discovered a wildly snaggle-toothed skull that belonged to a previously unknown, 120-million-year-old flying reptile.

Named Guidraco venator, which is Chinese and Latin for “ghost dragon hunter,” the meat-eating pterosaur had a wingspan of between 13 and 16 feet. The basket of pointy teeth at the end of its foot-long skull probably helped it catch fish, and a round sail on its head may have stabilized flight.

Pterosaurs were highly successful reptiles (not dinosaurs, as they’re commonly mislabeled) that lived between 210 and 65 million years ago. Although insects took to air first, pterosaurs are recognized as the first flying vertebrates. Learn more here.

Revealing ancient colours in a moth

What was blue, yellow, and fuzzy all over? The answer, according to a new study on prehistoric color, is a 47-million-year-old moth.

It’s not easy to figure out what animals looked like millions of years ago. The petrified remains of long-dead organisms do not typically preserve their original colors. But in the past few years, paleontologists have found a way around this obstacle through the phenomenon of structural color. By analyzing microscopic structures in a fossil, researchers can sometimes figure out which pigments they correspond to or which wavelengths of light they reflect. The approach has revealed the original hues of a variety of organisms, from beetles to feathered dinosaurs.

The latest creature to be cast in Technicolor is a 47-million-year-old moth.

Learn more here.

Ancient shrimp had amazing eyes

Half a billion years ago, sea creatures fled from a terrifying new creature: a gigantic primordial shrimp with pin-sharp vision. It is one of the oldest known animals with compound eyes, the hallmark of modern insects and crustaceans.

Anomalocaris – the name means “strange shrimp” – is the earliest known example of a top predator. At 90 to 200 centimetres long, it was the largest animal in the Cambrian seas. It had formidable grasping claws, which allowed it to grab its prey and pull it into its mouth. Lacking legs, it must have swum in open water.

That raises a question: how did it find its prey? It had eyes, but all fossils discovered until now have been in poor condition, so we didn’t know how well it could see. Now scientists have found a pair of exceptionally well-preserved eyes, 515 million years old, on Kangaroo Island off Australia’s south coast.

The eyes were on stalks on the strange shrimp’s head, and each was 2 to 3 centimetres across – about the size of an olive. They were covered with lenses, each 70 to 110 micrometres in diameter. That means each eye had at least 16,000 lenses. Anomalocaris‘s acute eyesight probably allowed it to seek out its prey in the brightly lit upper layers of the ocean. Learn more here, here or here.

World’s oldest wood

Two 400-million-year-old fossil plants are the oldest known examples of wood. They are small herbs, suggesting that wood did not evolve to help plants grow tall.

Trees did not evolve until about 385 million years ago, at which point they began scrambling to grow taller in order to capture more light. Wood was crucial for this, because it made their trunks sturdier.

But scientists think that was not why wood first evolved. These new fossils are stems only 12 centimetres long, so they wouldn’t need the support. Instead the wood may have improved the flow of water up the stems. Learn more here.

What colour were prehistoric birds?

What colors were the first birds? Our avian friends appeared about 150 million years ago, and some prehistoric bird fossils have been found with their feathers nearly intact. But the colors faded away long ago, leaving paleontologists in the dark about the original hues. Now a research team employing state-of-the-art chemical imaging has found traces of the plumes’ ancient pigments. The new techniques might eventually tell scientists not only what colors prehistoric birds sported but also why they evolved highly pigmented plumage in the first place.

The same technique could theoretically be applied to fossils of any animal, providing new insights into their appearance. Learn more here or here.