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Dinosaur bones show T. rex link to birds
Reuters ^ | 2005-06-02 | Maggie Fox

Posted on 06/02/2005 2:06:01 PM PDT by dread78645

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaur that died 68 million years ago has provided some of the strongest evidence yet that birds are the closest-living relatives of dinosaurs, scientists said on Thursday.

Soft tissue found in the animal's thighbone strongly suggests it was a female, and just about to lay eggs, the researchers report.

The bone tissue is strongly similar to that made inside the bones of female birds -- and no other living type of animal -- when they are producing the hard shells of eggs just before they lay them, said Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina State University in Raleigh.

"In addition to demonstrating gender, it also links the reproductive physiology of dinosaurs to birds very closely. It indicates that dinosaurs produced and shelled their eggs much more like modern birds than like modern crocodiles," Schweitzer told reporters in a telephone briefing.

Female birds produce a layer of bone tissue called medullary bone when they are laying eggs. It is rich in calcium, providing minerals that would otherwise be leached from harder bone material, leaving the bird susceptible to fractures.

"The way that crocodiles lay and shell their eggs is they hold them in their reproductive tract and shell them all at once," Schweitzer said.

"Birds shell their eggs one at a time as they move down through the reproductive tract. It is a pretty calcium-intensive process."

ALREADY A STAR

This particular T. rex fossil made headlines in March when the same team of paleontologists reported it contained preserved soft tissue -- the first ever found in a dinosaur bone.

"The reason that we have found all the things in this one particular animal is this specimen was in a very remote part of Montana, in the Hell Creek formation," said Jack Horner of the Museum of the Rockies and Montana State University.

"It was so far out in the country that we needed to helicopter it out and we actually had to split the thighbone into two pieces to get it into the helicopter."

When Schweitzer unwrapped the cracked-open femur she immediately saw the soft tissue and went to work proving its remarkable state of preservation.

Horner plans to crack open some other bones.

"We have 12 specimens of Tyrannosaurus rex here at this institution, and we are about to find out if any more of them are females, just by looking inside," he said.

It was a stroke of luck to find an animal at just the right stage to be making medullary bone, Schweitzer said.

"It would not be present in a brooding animal," she said.

"But it would be present as long as there was an egg left to lay. The animal was probably near the end of its laying cycle."

Finding another such specimen will be difficult.

"I think it is pretty much a long shot," she said.

In April, Tamaki Sato of the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, and colleagues reported they had found the fossil of a dinosaur in China that carried two eggs in its body.

Its physiology also was closer to modern birds than to modern crocodiles, Sato reported.

Horner said most experts are convinced the two-legged dinosaurs known as theropods were closely related to living birds.

"This is another piece to the puzzle and there are a lot of them," he said. "Anyone who would argue that birds and dinosaurs are not related -- frankly I'd put them in the Flat Earth Society group."


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: crevolist; dinosaur; evolution; id
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To: Modernman

I don't "know" that I'll get NO response.

I *suspect* that any answer I do get will be shallow and dismissive of the problems I noted associated with the C14 variable ratio proposition.

All we can do is try, I guess.


121 posted on 06/03/2005 11:26:32 AM PDT by King Prout (RG'OIHGV 08 YAEGRKoirliha35u9p089 y5gep'iojq5g353hat5eohiahetb98 ye5po)
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To: King Prout

What is amusing is that this putative flood changed not only the carbon concentrations, but also concentrations of chemicals other than carbon. Potassium, argon, uranium, lead, etc., had their isotopic ratios changed so as to exactly change the estimated age of the Earth to aboutt 4.5ga. Likewise the O16 and O18 ratios were changed exactly as the C12 and C14 ratios.

It's not so much that things may change in a flood (though, such changes are not observed in any subsequent flooding), but that the changes were coordinated exactly so as to fool people into getting the results no matter what method is used. (You may breathe now.)

That sentence was so long that I used Alta Vista to translate it into German and back: It's emergency much that things May CHANGE in A flood (though, look for CHANGES of acres emergency observed in any subsequent flooding), but that in such a way the CHANGES were coordinated exactly so as tons fool people into getting the results NO more matt what method is used.


122 posted on 06/03/2005 11:28:20 AM PDT by Doctor Stochastic (Vegetabilisch = chaotisch is der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
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To: Doctor Stochastic

hehhehheh... completely concretely...

I didn't want to go into the potassium, uranium, and argon isotopes... I don't know enough about 'em to get the same kind of punchline as in 118:3:j

;)


123 posted on 06/03/2005 11:32:46 AM PDT by King Prout (RG'OIHGV 08 YAEGRKoirliha35u9p089 y5gep'iojq5g353hat5eohiahetb98 ye5po)
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To: VadeRetro
They get the hips so well all can get the brains! Now THAT's science!

Yeah, but my brains disappear when I get near a good set of hips.

124 posted on 06/03/2005 11:47:35 AM PDT by vollmond (Head back to base for debriefing and cocktails.)
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To: Doctor Stochastic
I used to know a guy who worked with plant fossils

I almost read that as "who worked to plant fossils".
125 posted on 06/03/2005 12:23:55 PM PDT by Dimensio (http://angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif <-- required reading before you use your next apostrophe!)
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To: Doctor Stochastic
Obviously it was a magic flood. A Biblical Deus Ex Machina. Literally.

I find it amusing that in many cases where creationists are up against a wall when it comes to evidence flatly contradicting their claims, they simply appeal to the "flood" as some kind of magic event that changed the fundamental nature of the planet in just the right way to make all of the data fit with their claims.
126 posted on 06/03/2005 12:28:16 PM PDT by Dimensio (http://angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif <-- required reading before you use your next apostrophe!)
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To: Dimensio

flooddidit


127 posted on 06/03/2005 12:30:57 PM PDT by FreedomAvatar (Gravity is only a theory)
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To: Modernman

"Criticisms like this get tiresome. If you've been on these threads for any amount of time, you've seen the mountains of evidence for the various dating methods."

And all of those pieces of evidence have criticisms. In addition, they are at variance with other dating methods (such as helium escape in zircons, C14 dating, etc.)

The fact is that the major piece of evidence used for dating rocks is fossils, and the date of the rock is used to assign dates to the remaining fossils.

However, this assumes that we know how long a certain species is extant, which we do not. There are many species that are extant today which ONLY have fossils from much earlier periods.


128 posted on 06/03/2005 12:58:21 PM PDT by johnnyb_61820
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To: King Prout

"have you (or they) ever tried to wash the carbon into or out of organic matter using water?"

You're missing the point. It's not about washing out, it's about burial. The flood buried massive amounts of organic material, which took it out of the biosphere. This is where we get coal, fossils, and all the other stuff in the geologic column.

As I mentioned, the amount of atmospheric C14 remained relatively constant between before-the-flood and after-the-flood. It is the amount of carbon in the biosphere which decreased so dramatically, thus making the C14 generated in the atmosphere more prevalent percentage-wise.


129 posted on 06/03/2005 12:58:24 PM PDT by johnnyb_61820
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To: johnnyb_61820

you really didn't read my reply, did you?
read it again.
read it carefully.
the "amount of carbon in the biosphere" is irrelevant. It is the amount of carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere which pertains.
read it again.
read it carefully.
shoot for comprehension this time.


130 posted on 06/03/2005 1:16:50 PM PDT by King Prout (RG'OIHGV 08 YAEGRKoirliha35u9p089 y5gep'iojq5g353hat5eohiahetb98 ye5po)
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To: Modernman

yep: as suspected, the eventual reply was indeed shallow and dismissive.


131 posted on 06/03/2005 1:20:08 PM PDT by King Prout (RG'OIHGV 08 YAEGRKoirliha35u9p089 y5gep'iojq5g353hat5eohiahetb98 ye5po)
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To: Modernman

Someone posted a while ago that we have written records from Egyptian pharaohs who lived at about the same time as the supposed flood. Yet, none of them mention anything about such a deluge. No one has explained that, either.
---
Many different cultures (Native Americans to Chinese) have global flood accounts as part of their oral tradition. Explain that fact.

"Someone posted a while ago..." Talk about peer-review.


132 posted on 06/03/2005 1:21:52 PM PDT by Stark_GOP
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To: Stark_GOP; Modernman
Many different cultures (Native Americans to Chinese) have global flood accounts as part of their oral tradition. Explain that fact.

easy: until the advent of mechanical transport, most people lived and died within 30miles of the place where they were born. A local flood to such an isolated primitive would indeed seem to be a world-drowner. Add generations of the "telephone game" effect as oral traditions are handed down, and a piddly little flood gets built up into Oroborus Eats The World.

Moreover, 15,000 years or so ago, there WAS a massive global flood which inundated the coastlines of all the continents, raising the sea-level an hundred or more feet, drowning miles and miles and miles of coastal plain... where most folks lived... in a relatively sudden flood. This flood was accompanied by massive climatic shifts and widespread torrential rains. These rains swept the Sahara on-and-off for decades, as an example.

We call it "the end of the last glacial period"

133 posted on 06/03/2005 1:31:17 PM PDT by King Prout (RG'OIHGV 08 YAEGRKoirliha35u9p089 y5gep'iojq5g353hat5eohiahetb98 ye5po)
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To: Stark_GOP
Many different cultures (Native Americans to Chinese) have global flood accounts as part of their oral tradition. Explain that fact.

Primitive cultures live and die by what the rivers around them do. Pretty much all early agrarian cultures arose around rivers. It's not surprising that stories about terrible floods are common.

The Egyptians kept detailed written records of pretty much everything that went on in their kingdom. By 2500 BC, the Old Kingdom was in full swing. And yet, there is no mention in Egyptian records of any global flood. How do you explain that?

134 posted on 06/03/2005 1:31:34 PM PDT by Modernman ("Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made." -Bismarck)
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To: Modernman
I think that Occam's Razor applies here. You have multiple cultures who lived near places prone to flooding with global flood stories. Which is easier to believe? That they just happened to all come up with the same global flood story simply because they lived near an area that was prone to flooding and few of the inhabitants had a chance to go elsewhere to confirm that, in fact, it didn't flood all over the world or that some 4000 (or more or less) years ago the God of the Old Testament sent rain for 40 days and 40 nights, wiped out all living things except for one male and one female of each species except for humans (of which an entire family survived, from whom we descended to this day) and fundamentally changed the properties of the planet and its geology?

Really, I think that the obvious choice is clear. Unless you're a commie hippe atheist liberal.
135 posted on 06/03/2005 1:43:48 PM PDT by Dimensio (http://angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif <-- required reading before you use your next apostrophe!)
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To: Dimensio

or a baby-killing nazi... can't forget to include those choice epithets


136 posted on 06/03/2005 1:48:00 PM PDT by King Prout (RG'OIHGV 08 YAEGRKoirliha35u9p089 y5gep'iojq5g353hat5eohiahetb98 ye5po)
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To: Modernman
The Egyptians kept detailed written records of pretty much everything that went on in their kingdom. By 2500 BC, the Old Kingdom was in full swing. And yet, there is no mention in Egyptian records of any global flood. How do you explain that?

Not sure there isnt. They do have a water God. Reading about him leads you to different kinds of stories about floods. Beyond that though there are other cultures that record it.
People will view the historical records along with the myths and legends from different peoples at the time as support of the Biblical flood.
I guess it depends on your perspective.

137 posted on 06/03/2005 1:55:27 PM PDT by wallcrawlr (http://www.bionicear.com)
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To: Modernman
Primitive cultures live and die by what the rivers around them do. Pretty much all early agrarian cultures arose around rivers. It's not surprising that stories about terrible floods are common.
---
Nice dodge. Most cultures have a global flood account that is approx. 80% similar. You know. A guy in a big boat with lots of animals. And most cultures at that time didn't like Hebrews or Hebrew 'myths'.

Concerning Egyptian records, how many kings and cities have been swept away by the desert sands? Your asking me to disprove a negative. (i.e. Why is something not there?) I'm not taking the bait.
138 posted on 06/03/2005 2:03:13 PM PDT by Stark_GOP
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To: curmudgeonII

Yes, they had to flap their little arms really hard.


139 posted on 06/03/2005 2:11:27 PM PDT by Manic_Episode (OUT OF ORDER)
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To: Modernman
"Concerning Egyptian records, how many kings and cities have been swept away by the desert sands?"

Sanddidit.

140 posted on 06/03/2005 2:13:24 PM PDT by WildHorseCrash
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