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New Dino Resembles T. Rex, B. Bunny
AFP via Discovery News ^ | 9/17/2002 | AFP

Posted on 09/18/2002 12:41:30 PM PDT by SteveH

New Dino Resembles T. Rex, B. Bunny

AFP

The Buck-Toothed Beauty

Sep. 18 — The world's greatest team of fossil hunters are scratching their heads over their latest find — a unique dinosaur whose distant cousins were mighty carnivores, yet which has two bucky front teeth, rather like a rabbit's.

The creature has many of the features of the oviraptor, a small two-legged dinosaur that, as a theropod, was distantly related to the Tyrannosaurus rex.

Instead of having the carnivore's typically long, sharp teeth, oviraptors had a rounded, parrot-like beak which they used to steal eggs from nests.

But the oddity unearthed by Xing Xu at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing is quite different. It has a low, long skull and small cheek teeth and two buck teeth at the front. The teeth are significant because they show that theropods were not just meat-eaters.

"These dental features were previously unknown among theropods and suggest a herbivorous diet," Xu's team report Thursday in the British weekly science journal, Nature. "The new discovery provides a case of convergent evolution and demonstrates that non-avian theropods were much more diverse ecologically than previously suspected."

The creature, which lived more than 128 million years ago, was found at a site in Liaoning province where Xu and his colleagues have already unearthed dozens of remarkable finds, including feathered specimens that shed light on the evolution of dinosaurs to birds.

The newest find has been named Incisivosaurus gauthieri, in honor of its unusual teeth and of Jacques Gauthier, a Yale paleontologist who wrote a ground-breaking work in 1986 that traced the lineage to modern-day birds.


TOPICS: Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: birds; bucky; bugsbunny; dinosaurs; evolution; oviraptor; paleontology; tyrannosaurusrex
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To: SteveH
The creature has many of the features of the oviraptor, a small two-legged dinosaur that, as a theropod, was distantly related to the Tyrannosaurus rex.

Instead of having the carnivore's typically long, sharp teeth, oviraptors had a rounded, parrot-like beak which they used to steal eggs from nests.

This theropod is more properly an ovisuckor.

21 posted on 09/18/2002 1:30:40 PM PDT by JohnYankeeCmpsr
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To: SteveH
Yep, it's her spittin image!....Let's see-based on the time line, that would have to be an artist's rendering of her mom....Bless her long departed soul...But as far as feathers, they are wrong. I remember her sporting sharp quills.
22 posted on 09/18/2002 1:34:02 PM PDT by Tarzantheape
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To: SteveH
Sounds more like a Piltdown dino.
23 posted on 09/18/2002 1:38:12 PM PDT by stanz
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To: SteveH

Put a pair of horn-rimmed glasses on that thing and it would look just like a girl I sat next to in Mrs. Barksdale's 7th grade class at Crowley Junior High School. No kidding deal!!!

Wonder if we're related?


24 posted on 09/18/2002 1:40:40 PM PDT by sinclair
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To: lsee
Aaaaaaarrrrgh!!!


25 posted on 09/18/2002 1:52:19 PM PDT by socal_parrot
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To: SteveH




26 posted on 09/18/2002 1:56:03 PM PDT by SkyPilot
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To: SkyPilot
Run away!!!! Run away!!!
27 posted on 09/18/2002 2:06:19 PM PDT by Gumlegs
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To: socal_parrot
ROFLOL!
28 posted on 09/18/2002 2:22:12 PM PDT by lsee
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To: sinclair
Did her teeth look like this? Fake teeth


29 posted on 09/18/2002 2:25:32 PM PDT by lsee
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To: RightWhale
Picture dinos clustered on the power line and burying the car in droppings.

Wow ... and I've always been glad that cows don't fly.

30 posted on 09/18/2002 2:33:01 PM PDT by templar
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To: lsee
"Did her teeth look like this?"

Nope. Looked just like the birdlike dino-thingy's did.


31 posted on 09/18/2002 2:35:20 PM PDT by sinclair
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To: SteveH

Hmm, another theory: possibly it was just a general condition of the population at the time...

32 posted on 09/18/2002 3:59:08 PM PDT by SteveH
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To: SteveH

The Manticore was believed to have three rows of teeth.

Just what the hell good that was supposed to do is at present unknown.

33 posted on 09/18/2002 4:03:39 PM PDT by Gumlegs
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To: SteveH

34 posted on 09/18/2002 4:11:31 PM PDT by tomkat
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To: All
MAN I HOPE IT USED FLOSS !!!!
35 posted on 09/18/2002 4:43:26 PM PDT by bug girl
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To: tomkat
MY WHAT BIG EARS YOU HAVE....
HAPPY 4TH TOMKAT
36 posted on 09/18/2002 4:44:30 PM PDT by bug girl
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To: Gumlegs
The Manticore was believed to have three rows of teeth.

Just what the hell good that was supposed to do is at present unknown.

Betcha it didn't get many offers to intern with the offices of contemporary potentates, if you know what I mean (and I think you do ;-).

37 posted on 09/18/2002 5:15:41 PM PDT by SteveH
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To: SteveH
New Dino Resembles T. Rex

I don't think so....

38 posted on 09/18/2002 5:27:26 PM PDT by general_re
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To: SteveH
Probably got picked on by the other dinosaurs a lot.
39 posted on 09/18/2002 5:57:07 PM PDT by Junior
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To: SteveH
Kill the Wabbit!

--Boris

40 posted on 09/18/2002 6:50:33 PM PDT by boris
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