Abydosaurus - new species of Sauropod found in Utah

Four skulls belonging to Abydosaurus - a previously undiscovered species of Sauropod - have been found in Utah.

I have noticed that there has been some interest in dinosaurs on ATS, so hope this article will be welcome:

news.sky.com...

Here's how it may have looked:

Abydosaurus was a type of sauropod, a group of huge plant-eating dinosaurs which had light skulls because their head was at the end of a long neck.
Complete dinosaur skulls are rare so researchers were thrilled when they found four Abydosaurus skulls - including two intact - in a quarry at the Dinosaur National Monument in eastern Utah in America.
"Their heads are built lighter than mammal skulls because they sit way out at the end of very long necks," said Dr Brooks Britt, a palaeontologist who worked on the project.

Dr Brooks Britt with one of the skulls:
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/4d6589d686ad.jpg[/atsimg]


And here's an article from the Daily Mail:

www.dailymail.co.uk...

The fossils were so hard that explosives had to be used to free some of the remains from the sandstone.
Dr Brooks Britt, a palaeontologist at Brigham Young University who worked on the project, said: 'Their heads are built lighter than mammal skulls because they sit way out at the end of very long necks.
'Instead of thick bones fused together, sauropod skulls are made of thin bones bound together by soft tissue. Usually it falls apart quickly after death and disintegrates.'
Most of what scientists know about sauropods is from the neck down but the newly discovered skulls provided a few clues about how the largest land animals to roam the Earth ate their food.
Dr Britt said: 'They didn't chew their food; they just grabbed it and swallowed it.
'The skulls are only one two-hundredth of total body volume and don't have an elaborate chewing system.'

"The newly discovered skulls measured around 12inches across. They belonged to juveniles who were 25ft long"

And another artist's impression of how they looked:
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/7e807e5035bb.jpg[/atsimg]

[edit on 24-2-2010 by berenike]

I often wonder why things were soo big back then...was the earths gravity not as pronounced, allowing for gigantic creatures to be the norm?

Anyhow, interesting find, I wonder how many other giants were walking around we have yet to uncover.

Originally posted by SaturnFX
I often wonder why things were soo big back then...was the earths gravity not as pronounced, allowing for gigantic creatures to be the norm?

Anyhow, interesting find, I wonder how many other giants were walking around we have yet to uncover.

things, and by things you mean plants and animals, were larger then due to climate. no expanding earth, no weird alien forces, its just science.

do you wonder why your front lawn grows out of control in the summer if you dont mow it?

that said, the mormons will no doubt view this fossil as another trickster/devil plot!

that said, the mormons will no doubt view this fossil as another trickster/devil plot!

Not just the mormons, Creationism recognizes no particular denomination.
Heck, there are Creationists of all major religions.

Here's another article - I'll put it here to avoid my first post getting too long and unwieldy:

www.scientificblogging.com...

Most of what scientists know about sauropods is from the neck down, but the skulls from Abydosaurus give a few clues about how the largest land animals to roam the earth ate their food. "They didn't chew their food; they just grabbed it and swallowed it," Britt said. "The skulls are only one two-hundredth of total body volume and don't have an elaborate chewing system."

All sauropods ate plants and continually replaced their teeth throughout their lives. In the Jurassic Period, sauropods exhibited a wide range of tooth shapes. But by the end of the dinosaur age, all sauropods had narrow, pencil-like teeth. Abydosaurus teeth are somewhere in between, reflecting a trend toward smaller teeth and more rapid tooth replacement.

Dr Britt again:



I've only taken small quotes from the articles cited which, I hope, each give a new piece of information. It's well worth reading them in full.


Here is a wonderful site for those interested in dinosaurs:

www.dinodata.org...

And here is some information on Sauropods in particular. The 'related articles' at the bottom of the page are very informative too:

dinosaurs.about.com...

[edit on 24-2-2010 by berenike]

I think that this is not the last one.
Too many other species buried in eons.
Thanks.
S&F.

A 67 million year old fossil of a dinosaur-eating snake has been discovered. Not quite as impressive as it sounds, the snakes remains were found wrapped round a baby titanosaur

news.bbc.co.uk...

Scientists say they have identified the fossilised remains of a snake that dined on dinosaur eggs.
The 67-million-year-old skeleton was found in a dinosaur nest.
The study, published in the journal Plos One, is said to show the first direct evidence of feeding behaviour in a fossilised primitive snake.
This 3.5m fossil snake is believed to have fed on the hatchlings of sauropods, as it was found wrapped around a baby titanosaur.
Fully grown, the plant-eating titanosaurs weighed up to 100 tonnes. Many people have a fear of snakes and this research indicates that even giant dinosaurs may have been scared of them, too.
"It was such a thrill to discover such a portentous moment frozen in time," said Dr Dhananjay Mohabey from the Geological Survey of India, who unearthed the fossil.
Experts at the University of Michigan and University of Toronto Mississaugua studied and identified the find.
Ancient gape
According to researchers, the fossil would have lacked the mobile jaws of modern snakes and would have struggled to eat dinosaur eggs. However, the hatchlings of these dinosaurs would have been just the right size.
The fossil was first uncovered in India in 1987 but it was not until 2001 that American scientists were able to detect that there was a snake among the dinosaur eggshells.
The researchers now believe that the snake was attacking a hatchling that had just emerged from the egg. The event was then overcome by a natural disaster, possibly a storm, and the whole scene was frozen in time.
The snake, one of the few animals that preyed on giant dinosaurs, has been named Sanajeh indicus, meaning "ancient gaped one from India" in Sanskrit.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/3af1da8c1fd5.jpg[/atsimg]

[edit on 2-3-2010 by berenike]

Sweet a 2fer Good pics of the new sauropods skull and info for a snake eating a baby sauropod! I like my dinos in big doses! Awesome guys

Here is an article on the recently discovered Asilisaurus. There is already a thread about this but I wanted to add the info here too because I think it's relevant:

www.dailymail.co.uk...

Scientists have discovered an ancient dinosaur-like creature, that lived 10million years before the oldest known dinosaurs roamed Earth.
They reconstructed an almost complete skeleton of a species called Asilisaurus kongwe from the remains of at least 14 individuals at a sing site in Tanzania.
The 240-million-year-old African find has forced scientists to re-think what they know about dinosaur evolution.

Artist's impression:
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/9b9dc1315137.jpg[/atsimg]

Asilisaurus, whose name means 'ancient lizard ancestor' in Swahili and Greek, lived in the Middle Triassic era.
Measuring three to 10 feet long and weighing up to 4st 7lbs, the creature was dinosaur-like in appearance but in fact belonged to a sister group known as silesaurs.
The relationship between dinosaurs and silesaurs was similar to that between humans and chimpanzees, say scientists.

Silesaurs and dinosaurs - as well as crocodiles and the flying pterosaurs - are believed to have shared a common ancestor dating back even further.
Scientists had expected the closest relatives of dinosaurs to been meat-eaters that walked on two legs.
But Asilisaurus stood on four legs and was a vegetarian, or perhaps an omnivore that ate both plants and meat.
The creature had triangular teeth and a lower jaw with a beak-like tip. Similar traits evolved independently in at least two branches of the dinosaur family tree, in animals that were originally carnivorous.
Being able to eat plants may have opened up a broader range of habitats, experts believe.

Dr Randall Irmis, from the University of Utah in the US, one of the international team of scientists who described the find today in the journal Nature, said: 'The crazy thing about this new dinosaur discovery is that it is so very different from what we all were expecting, especially the fact that it is herbivorous and walked on four legs.
'We knew that there were a number of species from the Triassic that were similar to Asilisaurus, but we were only able to recognise that they formed this group called silesaurs.'
Detailed anatomical information gained from the Asilisaurus discovery filled in the gaps in knowledge about the animals, he said.
The fossils were found alongside those of a number of primitive crocodile-like creatures. Their presence together at the same time and place suggests that crocodile and dinosaur diversification was rapid and happened earlier than had been thought.
Co-author Dr Sterling Nesbitt, from the University of Texas at Austin, said: 'Everyone loves dinosaurs, but this new evidence suggests that they were really only one of several large and distinct groups of animals that exploded in diversity in the Triassic, including silesaurs, pterosaurs and several groups of crocodilian relatives.'

"A skeletal reconstruction of Asilisaurus kongwe, with a human silhouette for scale" D.Mail:
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/b497dcab1b1c.jpg[/atsimg]

I have quoted the article in full.

[edit on 4-3-2010 by berenike]

Utah dinosaurs....I think I've read about these. Small brains, the males are polygamous and the females too brainwashed to care....