An embryonic skeleton of the prosauropod dinosaur Massospondylus is preserved inside the egg. University of Toronto at Mississauga
Posted on 07/29/2005 8:31:10 AM PDT by SmithL
Tiny fossil embryos curled up inside a clutch of African dinosaur eggs nearly 200 million years old hint at a remarkable story of evolution, scientists report -- the transformation of an early tribe of plant-eating animals only a few feet long that became, over millions of years, the largest animals ever to walk the Earth.
The body design of the embryos suggests that as hatchlings, those young dinosaurs were obliged to walk on four legs, but grew up as two-legged adults, the scientists say, while the lumbering, long-necked animals that succeeded them were four-legged all their lives.
And from the absence of teeth in the fossil embryos, the scientists who analyzed them have deduced that the babies must have been born unable to feed themselves -- meaning, perhaps, that a loving mother's tender care does indeed have ancient origins.
A report on the fossils is published today in the journal Nature by Robert Reisz of the University of Toronto's Mississauga campus in Canada, who says they are the oldest dinosaur embryos ever discovered and their skeletons are so remarkably well preserved they provide priceless clues to the evolution of their later relatives.
"An amazing discovery," said Paul Sereno, a noted paleontologist at the University of Chicago, after reading the report and discussing it by telephone.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Awesome. My newspaper ran the same photo this morning, but not in color.
A face only a mother could love.
Hmmmm....200,000,000 years of evolution.....countless random changes & mutations
and it remained a dinosaurus!
Guess just not enough time and or random mutations, right?
Hmmmm....200,000,000 years of evolution.....countless random changes & mutations
and it remained a dinosaurus!
Guess just not enough time and or random mutations, right?
Er...there were different dinosaurs, which did evolve.
But some things, like certain sharks, got perfected at the top of their food chain and were lucky enough not get displaced or threatened by other factors and so remained essentially unchanged.
Life rocks.
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