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Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Dinosaurs Today's Dinosaur News

Posted by Mary Traverse on Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 2:11 PM

I guess a ferris wheel killed the dinosaurs. Or made them sleepy.

rohfilmverleih/film still from "Catapult"
I guess a ferris wheel killed the dinosaurs. Or made them sleepy.

First, thanks to Slog-tipper Vic for sending me this photo of Spreepark, an abandoned amusement park in Berlin. The above image is a still from a documentary, Achterbahn (Catapult), about the owner of the park. You can see more images of Spreepark from French photographer Guillaume Blanchon here.

Second, Jack Horner (rock-star paleontologist) discusses duplicates in our labeling of dinosaurs in his TED talk, which the Smithsonian posted on their dinosaur blog:

Over the past several years, Horner has been picking over the skeletons of Late Cretaceous dinosaurs from North America in an attempt to figure out whether some of the dinosaurs labeled as distinct species are actually growth stages of a single species.

In Tarbosaurus news, a skeleton reveals that juveniles may have had different hunting and eating habits from their parents. Tarbosaurs ("alarming lizards") are relatives of Tyrannosaurs. Scans of the bones were done at Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine in Athens, Ohio:

"One thing that we see in other tyrannosaur species is evidence that maybe some of these young animals actually palled around in groups of juveniles - sort of rambling gangs of young tyrannosaurs - potentially even avoiding the adults."

"Rambling gangs of young tyrannosaurs"... I imagine them snapping their fingers and avoiding Officer Krupke. You can read more here and here.

And finally, Sam Neil (aka Dr. Alan Grant) says there will be no Jurassic Park 4. Sigh.

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Wasn't Spreepark used in the film Hanna?

Posted by Will in Seattle

on June 7, 2011 at 2:15 PM

Wouldn't "Roller Coaster" be a better translation for Achterbahn?

Posted by YakHerder on June 7, 2011 at 3:47 PM

@1 YES! http://www.focusfeatures.com/slideshow/h…

@2 that's the American title listed, so I don't think it's meant to be a direct translation.

Posted by Mary P. Traverse

on June 7, 2011 at 3:57 PM

I've wondered since I was a kid how paleontologists new that the bones of smaller dinosaurs were positively a different species and not just younger (or simply smaller) versions of an already-known species. I can't help but feel a little validated.

Posted by Dougsf on June 7, 2011 at 4:11 PM

@4

uh huh.

Posted by LEE. on June 7, 2011 at 5:16 PM

@4: For a lot of people, it was the glamor of being able to claim a new species or genus for their own.
Of course, back in the day, we didn't know how dinosaurs grew and matured, thinking of them more as like reptiles than as like birds.

Posted by venomlash on June 7, 2011 at 7:35 PM

Dinosaur news is the best news.

Posted by Aislinn on June 8, 2011 at 12:45 AM

The news about the juvenile groups make sense. Juveniles of many species pal around for many reasons, safety in numbers being chief. Crows and ravens hang out together in juvenile flocks until they reach an age when their skills meet the standard required to successfully mate and rear a brood. Wild colts also band together in bachelor herds until they are ready to take on stallions and establish their own family groups, the fillies stay with the harem. There is evidence that the young of great white sharks stay together in proximity of their birth mother for many years as well. It seems to be a good form of protection as well as providing opportunities to learn and mature successfully.

Posted by thatsnotright on June 8, 2011 at 12:42 PM