Where are the baby dinosaurs?
Museums over the past century have only contained large dinosaur bones. Where are the little dinosaur bones? Jack Horner, the famous American paleontologist, uses his research to describe how scientists have made plentiful mistakes when it comes to naming dinosaurs. He has found the first evidence of parental care to a dinosaur's young and studies the behavior, physiology, ecology, and evolution of dinosaurs. His work has led him to discover his own dinosaur, which he named the Maiasaura, and he is exploring how to build a dinosaur.
In the 1900s, scientists began to search for the biggest dinosaurs to put in their museums. Scientists even competed for the biggest and best dinosaurs. This is why big dinosaurs are
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mainly found in museums. It took 70 years for scientists to start questioning where the little dinosaurs were, and once this happened, scientists began writing papers and researching dinosaurs even more. Jack Horner believes that, “Scientists have egos, and scientists like to name dinosaurs. They like to name anything. Everybody likes to have their own animal that they named.” (00:03:35 - 00:03:46). So every time a scientist found a new dinosaur they would name it, even if it had the slightest differences from another dinosaur. This led to a whole bunch of dinosaurs. Eventually scientist, Dr. Peter Dodson realized that dinosaurs grew kinda like birds do, which is different from reptiles, he used the Cassowary bird as an example, the bird grows 80% adult size before the crest on its head starts to grow, this is allometric cranial ontogeny, which is relative skull growth. Dr. Peter Dodson also showed an example by taking an average between a juvenile and an adult hypacrosaurus to show what it would look like if it grew in a linear fashion. He thought that the subadult hypacrosaurus should have a crest half the size of the adult, but he found that the actual subadult had no crest at all. A dinosaurs age can be revealed by cutting into the bone to see if it is spongy or hard. A juvenile dinosaur would have spongy bones while the adult dinosaur would have very mature massive bones that are hard. So, Jack Horner starts his research by taking the three dinosaurs, pachycephalosaurus, stygimoloch, and dracorex, and cuts into all three of the dinosaurs bones. The dracorex dinosaur has spikes on its head and nose. After cutting into the bones and spikes on its head, they were spongy inside, meaning that the dinosaur was growing up fast from a juvenile. The stygimoloch is somewhat the same except the spikes on its head were smaller than the dracorex spikes and it has a dome in its head.Then the pachycephalosaurus had no spikes just a hard dome. Jack Horner proved this is just a growth series by saying, “So just with these three dinosaurs, as a scientist, we can easily hypothesize that it is just a growth series of the same animal. which of course means that Stygimoloch and Dracorex are extinct. “ (00:11:33 - 00:11:49). Before the year 2000 a juvenile triceratops had never been found.
So Jack Horner noticed that as a juvenile triceratops grows it shape shifts to where the horn on its head starts to move backwards then eventually when it matures the horn moves forward. Also, along the frill of their skull they have triangular bones when they are juvenile, then when they mature the bones spread out. He then cut into three triceratops skulls and they were all spongy, so they were all juvenile meaning there has to be another dinosaur that is an adult. Jack Horner noticed that the triceratops has similarities to a torosaurus, just like other scientists but they couldn't look past the differences, so he cut into the bones of a torosaurus and they were hard, matured bones and the frill around its skull was spread out. This is just another growth series. A T-rex and a nanotyrannus can also be compared this way. Scientists believed they were different because one had seventeen teeth while the other had twelve teeth but, Jack Horner cut into their bones and the nanotyrannus bones were spongy on the inside while the T-rex bones were hard. So again, this is just a growth series of the same dinosaur meaning that the nanotyrannus is just a juvenile T-rex and a torosaurus is just an adult …show more content…
triceratops. As one could clearly see, there is data and information provided by a wide variety of scientists as to why baby dinosaurs are nowhere to be found.
Baby dinosaurs are nowhere to be found because, scientists wanted the biggest dinosaurs in their museums, leaving no room for the baby dinosaurs. Also, scientists would continue to name new dinosaurs even if they had similarities to other dinosaurs. This leaves dinosaurs with a bunch of different names when most were just in a growth series. One could not only why baby dinosaurs are hard to find, but also how one can tell the difference between a baby dinosaur and an adult dinosaur. Through the new discoveries made by these great scientists we can finally conclude that baby dinosaurs do
exist.
Pachycephalosaurians, thick-skulled dinosaurs such as the Stegoceras and the Pachycephalosaurus. (1) Ceratopsians and Pachycephalosaurs are closely related in their characteristics. Ceratopsians processed a saddle-shaped boney frill that extended from the skull to the neck and typically had horns over the nose and eyes. The most popular was the triceratops, which could reach over 26 feet and weigh in excess of twelve metric tons. Their frills served two major functions.
As to jinxing the dinosaur thought, Mr. John Hammond came to visit Dr. Grant. Mr. Hammond has been funding Dr. Grant's research and development for thousands of dollars. Mr. Hammond wanted Dr. Grant to come to his park and consider endorsing it. Mr. Hammond also invited Ellie Sattler to come along for the weekend.
...ories of why dinosaurs went extinct abound, and as there is no theory yet to be truly confirmed as the “right one”, my theory of dinosaur cannibalism is also purely anecdotal. The discovery of the cannibalistic Majungatholus atopus in Madagascar is an important scientific find because it confirms a long-standing theory of cannibalism among certain carnivorous dinosaurs. Behavioral patterns of extinct animals are difficult to establish; however, these bones give authentication to previous unfounded beliefs about the ancient feeding practices of some dinosaurs.
Ever since we were young we have been fascinated by the dinosaurs. We have played with dinosaurs as children, watched documentaries as adults with interest, and watching movies with enjoyment. No dinosaur from the past strikes more fear in the present day to the average person then that of Tyrannosaurus Rex. For decades children have played with dinosaurs and had T-Rex dominating other dinosaurs by chasing them down and destroying them. We have seen it time and time again in movies. In Jurassic Park we saw T-Rex terrorize humans, cars, and other dinosaurs. We have even dreamt about it, but if a recent study is correct we are false in our fears.
Of course it was the movie Jurassic Park who seemed to coin the phrase “Dino DNA.” This movie gave the public the thought that, a) it is possible to find dinosaur DNA and b) we can clone dinosaurs from this DNA. This essay is not going to pick apart Jurassic Park’s scientific value, however it will share the current knowledge and information on dinosaur DNA. The discovery of DNA is important because it may uncover different bits of information. The idea of cloning dinosaurs, especially at this point is out of the question. It is really hard to clone living animals today, with full DNA and genome strands, we can’t even think about recreating animals millions of years ago.
“66 Million–Year–Old Dino With A Heart.” Media Kit 17 April 2000. North Carolina University. 2000 <http://www.dinoheart.org/mediakit/index.html>.
This idea was reinforced when a Diplodocus (a type of sauropod that lived in the late Jurassic) skull was found in 1884 that contained a large hole in the top of the head. Scientists believed that this hole contained the entire nostril (Witmer 2001; ). This positioning of the nostrils was used for many other models of dinosaurs as well, but when it was discovered that...
Dinosaurs held their own, according to studies, for at least 150 million years. After becoming extinct and finding fossilized remains dinosaurs have become a way in which we not only measure the changes that have occurred as the planet evolved, but also how we express ourselves today.
Dinosaurs are an extinct group of animals that thrived for 165 million years starting 230 million years ago in the Late Triassic period of the Mesozoic Era. Despite being extinct for the past 65 million years and not being able to study them in their true form, scientists have been able to estimate many different behaviors of dinosaurs. This paper will show that the close study and examination of different types of body and trace fossils, along with animal models, can be provided as evidence to estimate different types of behaviors in dinosaurs. The different types of behaviors examined below will fall into the categories of: mating; reproduction and nesting; social lives; locomotion; feeding; and fighting. To begin, a great deal of information gathered from fossils and compared to living animal models have been used to estimate mating behaviors.
There has been a debate about what happened to the dinosaurs since they were discovered. There are many thoughts of what happened to the dinosaurs, the two main theories behind the extinction are scientific and religious. Proof for both theories do exist and debates between scientists are still going on to which one really happened. It is a mystery as much for Evolutionists as it is for Creationists about the extinction of the dinosaurs. The fossil record of dinosaurs was poorly know for a long period of time. During this time period was when the dinosaurs were thought to have gone extinct. The scientific reason for their extinction was that there was a giant asteroid that caused chain reaction and wiped out the dinosaurs. Some scientists say the dinosaur’s extinction came quickly. Evolutionists say the dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago. Creationists say that the dinosaurs weren’t able to survive the Earth after the flood. Both of the theories have supporting evidence and that is why there is an ongoing debate over what really happened to the dinosaurs. (WGBH Educational Foundation and Clear Blue Sky Productions, Inc. et al., 2001)
Until recently, scientists believed the chances of finding a fossilized dinosaur heart were extremely slim. The heart belonged to a 66 million year old dinosaur found in Harding County in Northwestern South Dakota. The dinosaur, found in 1993, weighed over 650 pounds and was 13 feet long. The dinosaur was in fairly good condition with the exception of the left side of the skeleton. The small, plant-eating Thescelosaurus, nicknamed ‘Willo’ has been acquired by the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. Thescelosaurus was an ornithischian, or "bird-hipped," dinosaur that lived in the latter stage of the Cretaceous period. This was approximately 1 million years before the end of the dinosaur era. Native to North America, its range extended from the northern United States up into Canada. Since using the 3-D software to reveal Willo's heart, scientists have also used it to create 3-D images of the fossil's skull, and of remains from other dinosaurs in the museum's collection. (Fisher, Paul)
An interesting rumor is that the Triceratops might have never existed. Studies show that as Triceratops’ get older their frills smoothen and their horns get sharper. As they age they start to look like a totally different dinosaur called the Torosaurus (figure 2). Paleontologist found plenty of older Torosaurus fossils but never any of younger Torosaurus’. Can the Triceratops be a younger Torosaurus? Nobody knows the answer to that infamous question.
...pdated 1995, accessed 3 Sept. 2000), Dino Buzz – What killed The Dinosaurs ? – Current Arguments,
Norell, Mark, Lowell Dingus, and Eugene S. Gaffney. "Why Did Nonavian Dinosaurs Become Extinct?" Discovering Dinosaurs: Evolution, Extinction, and the Lessons of Prehistory. Berkeley: U of California, 1995. N. pag. Print.
Reptiles are vertebrate, or backboned animals constituting the class Reptilia and are characterized by a combination of features, none of which alone could separate all reptiles from all other animals.The characteristics of reptiles are numerous, therefore can not be explained in great detail in this report. In no special order, the characteristics of reptiles are: cold-bloodedness; the presence of lungs; direct development, without larval forms as in amphibians; a dry skin with scales but not feathers or hair; an amniote egg; internal fertilization; a three or four-chambered heart; two aortic arches (blood vessels) carrying blood from the heart to the body, unlike mammals and birds that only have one; a metanephric kidney; twelve pairs of cranial nerves; and skeletal features such as limbs with usually five clawed fingers or toes, at least two spinal bones associated with the pelvis, a single ball-and-socket connection at the head-neck joint instead of two, as in advanced amphibians and mammals, and an incomplete or complete partition along the roof of the mouth, separating the food and air passageways so that breathing can continue while food is being chewed. These and other traditional defining characteristics of reptiles have been subjected to considerable modification in recent times. The extinct flying reptiles, called pterosaurs or pterodactyls, are now thought to have been warm-blooded and covered with hair. Also, the dinosaurs are also now considered by many authorities to have been warm-blooded. The earliest known bird, archaeopteryx, is now regarded by many to have been a small dinosaur, despite its covering of feathers The extinct ancestors of the mammals, the therapsids, or mammallike reptiles, are also believed to have been warm-blooded and haired.