Dinosaurs may have walked in fiery landscape

During the Cretaceous (145-65 million years ago), flame was much more common than earlier supposed, thus representing dinosaurs. during this era may have faced the unpredicted hazard, a latest study has exposed. Researchers from Royal Holloway University of London and The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago traced fire activity in the fossil evidence during the incidence of charcoal deposits, compile a worldwide database for this time gap. Charcoal is the remainder of the plants that were scorched and is easily conserved in the fossil evidence.

This era was a greenhouse world where international temperatures were higher than those of today. Lightning strikes must have been the main activate for these wildfires, but this stage was also one when full of atmosphere oxygen levels were high. Ian Glasspool report authors, points out that this “was why fires were so extensive. At such periods not like today plants with advanced wetness contents could burn.” The prevalence of fires all the way through the Cretaceous must have created a more troubled environment.

“Until now, a small number have taken into account the impact that fires could have had on the environment, not only destroy the plant life but also exacerbate run-off and erosion and promote following flooding following storms,” Professor Scott highlighted. These earlier period events may give a number of insights into how improved fire movement today may impact the world we live in.

Two Latest species of horned dinosaurs has been named

In a latest study, scientists have named two new horned dinosaur species based on fossils collect from Alberta, Canada. The latest species, Unescopceratops koppelhusae and Gryphoceratops morrisoni, are from the Leptoceratopsidae group of horned dinosaurs. The herbivores live in the period of the Late Cretaceous between 75-83 million years ago. “These dinosaurs fill significant gaps in the evolutionary history of small-bodied horned dinosaurs to facilitate lack the large horns and frills of connections like Triceratops from North America,” Michael Ryan, guide author of the learn from The Cleveland Museum of Natural History, said. “Even though horned dinosaurs originate in Asia, our investigation suggests that leptoceratopsids radiate to North America and diversified here, ever since the latest species, Gryphoceratops, is the initial record of the group on this continent,” he said. Unescoceratops koppelhusae lived about 75 million years ago. It considered about one to two meters in length and weighed less than 91 kilograms. It had a small frill extend from behind its head but did not have ornamentation on its skull.

The dinosaur has a parrot-like beak. Its teeth are lower and rounder than those of any further leptoceratopsid. In addition, its hatchet-shaped jaw had a separate piece of bone that predictable below the jaw like a small chin. The lower left jaw piece of Unescoceratops was exposed in 1995 in Dinosaur Provincial Park, a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site through Philip Currie, Ph.D., at the present of the University of Alberta. Initially described in 1998 by Ryan and Currie, the dinosaur was referred to as Leptoceratops. Following research by Ryan and David Evans, beginning the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada, strong-minded the specimen was a latest genus and species. The genus is named to honor the UNESCO World Heritage Site title for the region where the specimen was established and from the Greek “ceratops,” which means “horned face.”

About Dinosaur’s Pterosaur Lunch

Though only regarding the size of a washout, Velociraptor still appear alike to terrifying predator. With snatching hands, a jaw set with curved backward teeth and, of course, a retractable scrape on each foot, almost every end of this dinosaur was pointed. Other than what did this well-appointed Cretaceous killer really eat?

One of the major candidates for a Velociraptor entree has been the little horned dinosaurs Protoceratops. A really magnificent fossil smooth the connection between these dinosaurs. At the same time the Velociraptor had kicked its deadly foot claw into the neck of the Protoceratops, the little ceratopsian had flattened the right arm of the predator, and the two remained protected together in death. The problem is that we can’t be familiar with these two dinosaurs were aggressive. Was the Velociraptor difficult to hound the Protoceratops? Or was the little predator itself attacked by a territorial Protoceratops? That the dinosaurs battled each additional is noticeable, but the cause for their fight remains a mystery.

But a lately described fossil established that Velociraptor or a much related dinosaur eat Protoceratops flesh. In 2010, paleontologist Dave Hone and co-authors report a set of Protoceratops skeleton that had been injured and scored by the teeth of a little predatory dinosaur. How the horned dinosaur died was undecided, but the tooth marks point out that they remains had almost been completely uncovered by the time the carnivorous dinosaur came along to pick off the remaining scraps. Since Velociraptor shared the similar habitat and was of the right size to leave the bite marks, the dinosaur is a fine candidate for being the hunter.

One more additional dinosaur fossil provides a still closer relation between Velociraptor and its victim. In an article the co-authors has been published about the part of Velociraptor meal sealed surrounded by the dinosaur’s body cavity. Represented by a corresponding skeleton to gut stuffing demonstrates the dinosaur fed upon a pterosaur.