Reconstruction of the new Triassic carnivorous dinosaur Tawa hallae. Tawa was discovered by Sterling Nesbitt and colleagues at Hayden Quarry in northern New Mexico. (Photo Credit: Illustration by Jorge Gonzalez)
Posted on 12/11/2009 10:38:25 AM PST by JoeProBono
Long, long ago, some of the first dinosaurs walked the Earth. But scientists have not known with any confidence where those initial dino prints were made. Much more recently, hikers stumbled across a few bits of bone at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, leading to the discovery of a game-changing dinosaur that reveals where it all began.
The dinosaur, now called Tawa hallae, had a body that was only the size of a medium to large dog, but its remains have helped scientists shore up where dinosaurs came from. The research team used the extremely well-preserved and complete skeletal remains as a means to fitting the newbie and other early dinosaurs onto the evolutionary tree.
"[The results] showed a lot of the South American dinosaurs in the Triassic were the most primitive dinosaurs we have found to date," said lead researcher Sterling Nesbitt of the University of Texas at Austin. "They are closest to the common ancestor of all dinosaurs." (Nesbitt was at the American Museum of Natural History in New York when he made the discovery.)
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Reconstruction of the new Triassic carnivorous dinosaur Tawa hallae. Tawa was discovered by Sterling Nesbitt and colleagues at Hayden Quarry in northern New Mexico. (Photo Credit: Illustration by Jorge Gonzalez)
Headlines like this have a way of being tossed aside by evolutionists themselves within a few years, yet the constant media barrage makes it seem like evolution is constantly proven and unchallengeable.
Take, for example, the characterization of this dinosaur as 'primitive.' I virtually never see objective evidence presented to justify an assessment of any particular fossil as 'primitive'. And behind the headlines, the typical pattern is for expert assessments to recognize that 'primitive' fossils actually show specialization and high levels of adaptation to their environment, in contradiction to the public pronouncements of about being 'primitive.'
GGG — cool pics!
That’s an unusually restrained Super Fly pimpmobile. Maybe they held back because of the beauty of the original ‘69 Eldorado Biarritz underlying all that bling.
Not Chrysler’s finest hour, that Imperial Le Baron wasn’t.
So according to these claims the earliest dinosaurs developed in the same area as the Roswell UFO crash? Maybe the aliens were returning to check out results of their species development experiments. The truth is out there, ha ha ha
There was a four-door hardtop ‘57 that was pretty awesome, too. Stainless steel roof, rear hinged “suicide doors.” The most advanced car made by anybody at that time, cost more than a Silver Cloud.
The traffic patterns today aren’t nearly as primitive ... and the pigeons have undergone a considerably duskier evolution ...
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Have you guys never heard of the Edselopterus Rex?
Just once... get over yourself.
Roswell is in southeast NM on the western edge of the 'staked plains' region of Texas. The part of NM they are discussing is about 250 miles away in the mountains of northern New Mexico.
UFO Navigation in & around NM is very tricky, due to the secret Ancient installations in Vitorio Peak...or at least was, until the government discovered them & shipped them to Area 51, before sanitizing the site.
Doc Noss (nor Chief Victorio) didn't even scratch the surface of what was there.
The Watcher still watches.
BTW, the following blog post reveals more about how this new fossil clarifies early dinosaur evolution, and why in particular it points to South America as the point of origin:
scientificblogging.com/news_articles/tawa_hallaenew_theropod_dinosaur_alters_evolutionary_tree
What the Tawa hallae discovery reveals about another dinosaur, Herrerasaurus, the center of a lively debate since its discovery in Argentina in the 1960s, may prove to be quite significant.
Herrerasaurus had some traits in common with theropods—including large claws, carnivorous teeth and certain pelvic features—but lacked other theropod traits such as pockets in vertebrae for airsacs. Some paleontologists claimed it was so unusual it was outside the evolutionary tree of theropods, or even of dinosaurs. Others placed it among the earliest theropods.
"The question was did those carnivorous traits arise in Herrerasaurus and in theropods independently or were they traits from a recent common ancestor that got passed down," said Sterling Nesbitt, lead author of the Science paper. "We had so few specimens of early theropods that it was hard to answer that question. But now that we have Tawa, we think we have an answer."
Tawa had a mix of Herrerasaurus-like characteristics (for example, in the pelvis) and features found in firmly established theropod dinosaurs (for example, pockets for airsacs in the backbone). Therefore, the characteristics that Herrerasaurus shares uniquely with theropods such as Tawa confirm the characteristics didn't arise independently and that Herrerasaurus is indeed a theropod.
The firm placement of Herrerasaurus within the theropod lineage points up an interesting fact about dinosaur evolution: once they appeared, they very rapidly diversified into the three main dinosaur lineages that persisted for more than 170 million years. Herrerasaurus was found in a South American rock layer alongside the oldest members of two major lineages—the sauropods and the ornithischians.
"Tawa pulls Herrerasaurus into the theropod lineage, so that means all three lineages are present in South America pretty much as soon as dinosaurs evolved," said Nesbitt. "Without Tawa, you can guess at that, but Tawa helps shore up that argument."
When I was in South America bird hunting, we shot some birds that still had claws on their WINGS! Not on the tips, but on the elbows. Climbing trees, or whatever?
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