Posted on 04/21/2012 7:01:51 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
An Argentine-Swedish research team has reported a 70-million-year-old pocket of fossilized bones and unique eggs of an enigmatic birdlike dinosaur in Patagonia...
The dinosaur represents the latest survivor of its kind from Gondwana, the southern landmass in the Mesozoic Era. The creature belongs to one of the most mysterious groups of dinosaurs, the Alvarezsauridae, and it is one of the largest members, 2.6 m, of the family. It was first discovered by Dr. Powell, but has now been described and named Bonapartenykus ultimus in honor of Dr. José Bonaparte who 1991 discovered the first alvarezsaurid in Patagonia...
The two eggs found together with the bones during the expedition might have been inside the oviducts of the Bonapartenykus female when the animal perished. On the other hand numerous eggshell fragments later found show considerable calcite resorption of the inner eggshell layer, which suggest that at least some of the eggs were incubated and contained embryos at an advanced stage of their development.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
Nest thing you know, this topic will descend into a pun war.
Which is a good thing.
First the dinosaurs were giant cold-blooded reptiles. Now, they’re giant warm-blooded birds. A hundred years from now school children will laugh to think that adults thought the obviously mammalian dinosaurs were birds.
The dividing line (warm-blooded vs cold-blooded) has itself been superseded as a consequence of the study of more species.
So are we seeing greater speciation today with larger distinctions between species?
Not much — there’s no speciation going on today, as far as has been observed. In the fossil record there’s a broad diversity of critter types, same as now, with unknown numbers not preserved, or poorly represented (no complete type specimen). This suggests that there’s not much difference in the sheer number and diversity now as there ever has been — but it’s apparent that whole taxa vanished at the various paleontological boundaries.
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