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IAM1
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 Posted: Sat Jul 21, 2007 4:38 pm Post subject: Fossil prompts new dinosaur theory |
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Fossil prompts new dinosaur theory
Discovery is changing conventional wisdom on how quickly beasts came to rule Earth
July 20, 2007
By William Mullen
Tribune staff reporter
Deep in the Petrified Forest formation on New Mexico's Ghost Ranch, a group of paleontologists have come across the fossil remains of a surprising creature whose existence could rewrite the books on how dinosaurs came to be.
The story, as it is being rewritten, is that the first dinosaurs on Earth were relatively pint-sized animals and spent 15 million to 20 million years low in life's pecking order before they became the planet's dominant animal form. This idea runs counter to the prevailing theory that after dinosaurs first evolved, their numbers and their size exploded, quickly making them the dominant animal on Earth.
The newly discovered fossil shaking up old theories is not a dinosaur but a very close cousin, named Dromomeron romeri (dro-MO-mer-on RO-mer-eye) by those who discovered him. It belonged to an archaic group of animals called "basal dinosauromorphs," or pre-dinosaurs.
Previously, it was thought that dinosauromorphs went into extinction as the first dinosaurs began to appear on Earth roughly 228 million years ago. [view image of creature at below link]
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-070720predino-graphic,1,7722034.graphic?ctrack=3&cset=true
In fact, the discovery last year of Dromomeron in the Ghost Ranch hills, which were first made famous in paintings by 20th Century American master Georgia O'Keeffe, shows that the 18-inch-high creatures lived and died alongside early dinosaurs not much bigger than them.
"We can no longer say pre-dinosaurs went extinct, making room for the dinosaurs," said Nathan Smith, 27, a University of Chicago doctoral degree candidate and Field Museum research associate who is among Dromomeron's discoverers.
The discovery captured the cover story of Friday's edition of the research journal Science, an honor underscoring the importance of the find.
"This discovery is a very significant piece of work," said an admiring Nick Fraser, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Virginia Museum of Natural History. Fraser, an authority on pre-dinosaur life, was not part of the discovery team.
"I think it answers some questions paleontologists have been seeking for a long time," Fraser said. "It tells us that the appearance of dinosaur life in the late Triassic period [208 million to 220 million years ago] was not, as we previously believed, a sudden, abrupt event."
The six-week Ghost Ranch dig largely is the work of four graduate students still working on their PhDs: Smith, Randall Irmis of the University of California at Berkeley and Sterling Nesbitt and Alan Turner of Columbia University. To help them, they brought in the other three co-authors of the Science article: Ghost Ranch museum curator Alex Downs, Daniel Woody of the University of Colorado and Nesbitt's Berkeley doctoral adviser, the lone PhD, Kevin Padian.
Finding a pre-dinosaur such as Dromomeron living at the same time as true dinosaurs triggered a re-assessment of many late Triassic fossils sitting in various museum collections. Those searches are beginning to show previously misidentified and previously unexamined dinosauromorph fossils collected from many other late Cretaceous fossil beds around the world.
That data, combined with data from the Ghost Ranch quarry finds, underscores how long it took for dinosaurs to take over the world.
"Future theories on dinosaur origins will have to address the fact that early dinosaurs had co-existed with early cousins for a long period of time," Smith said.
"These things aren't necessarily direct ancestors to dinosaurs. They are side branches of an ancestor, but finding them gives us a clearer idea of how the earliest dinosaurs evolved."
Dromomeron, Smith said, were relatively fragile creatures, about 18 inches high at the shoulder. The fossils recovered so far are incomplete and without an intact skull, so the discoverers don't yet know if they were meat eaters or herbivores. They also lack the forelimbs and tail, but it is likely that Dromomeron was bipedal, a runner like meat-eating dinosaurs.
The Dromomeron fossils were recovered from a Ghost Ranch site called the Hayden Quarry.
Like Dromomeron, the early dinosaurs with which they shared territory were relatively pint-sized, Smith said, and likely had to run for their lives from large, powerful crocodilian predators that reached 30 feet in length.
"At that time, even the largest dinosaurs aren't more than 4 or 5 feet high," Smith said.
Dromomeron and most of the other non-dinosaur species of that time did go extinct eventually rather suddenly at the end of the Triassic period and the beginning of the Jurassic, when dinosaurs truly took over the world, growing into the immense beasts so popular in modern imagination.
The Ghost Ranch has been of interest to paleontologists since American Museum paleontologist Edwin H. Colbert found a "graveyard" of Coelophysis bones in a ranch quarry in 1947.
He brought so much fossil-bearing rock back to the New York museum, that some had never been looked at until Nesbitt began studying it in 2005. |
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smokin_joe
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| Posted: Sun Jul 22, 2007 2:04 am Post subject: |
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As our technology grows and new discoveries are made, I truly believe our understanding of Earth's ancient past will completely change.
Quite a few "re-writes" will be taking place in the next 50yrs. |
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_________________
"Science & religion are two windows that people look through, trying to understand the big universe outside. They look out at the same universe. Neither is complete. And both are worthy of RESPECT!" -Physicist Freeman Dyson |
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IAM1
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| Posted: Sun Jul 22, 2007 2:19 am Post subject: |
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| smokin_joe wrote: |
As our technology grows and new discoveries are made, I truly believe our understanding of Earth's ancient past will completely change.
Quite a few "re-writes" will be taking place in the next 50yrs. |
Hi smokinjoe!
I agree! As long as these new scientific findings aren't suppressed or withheld from the public masses for some ulterior motive - I think we will continue to receive new information from discoveries in the field of the sciences for many years to come  Thanks for your comments! Peace....IAM1 |
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smokin_joe
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| Posted: Sun Jul 22, 2007 2:24 am Post subject: |
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I hope suppression doesn't happen. If so, I have to hope it's for truly good reasons. But it never seems to be that way, huh...lol
One thing that gets me is that many of our "revelations" are just changes in our perception.
For example, when I was in school, we were taught Pluto was our ninth planet. Today, of course, it has been downgraded. Did Pluto change? Nope, it was always what it was. Our perception of it changed and now our teaching on it has changed.
I think as we revisit many lines of thought on our past, and re-review the evidence left for us throughout history, we will begin to see a clearer picture. Our perceptions on our ancient past will change then, too. |
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"Science & religion are two windows that people look through, trying to understand the big universe outside. They look out at the same universe. Neither is complete. And both are worthy of RESPECT!" -Physicist Freeman Dyson |
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IAM1
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| Posted: Sun Jul 22, 2007 2:42 am Post subject: |
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| smokin_joe wrote: |
I hope suppression doesn't happen. If so, I have to hope it's for truly good reasons. But it never seems to be that way, huh...lol
One thing that gets me is that many of our "revelations" are just changes in our perception.
For example, when I was in school, we were taught Pluto was our ninth planet. Today, of course, it has been downgraded. Did Pluto change? Nope, it was always what it was. Our perception of it changed and now our teaching on it has changed.
I think as we revisit many lines of thought on our past, and re-review the evidence left for us throughout history, we will begin to see a clearer picture. Our perceptions on our ancient past will change then, too. |
Hi smokinjoe!
I hear ya! I hope it doesn't happen either! But unfortunately look at how long the knowledge of the existence of other life forms from other world's has been suppressed or debunked? Certain individuals in our government and in the military have known about these beings for several years now, but the public has been disallowed from knowing these truths. The "Disclosure Project" has been the closest the public has been allowed to hear the truth about those life forms. I guess the best thing to do is to hold in suspension any information we are "taught" or told is the truth, etc. Until somehow we can verify it for ourselves in some manner I still feel that this world or what we call reality is just an illusion that's constantly in a state of flux. It gives birth to new information and when that dies it's new again...... Peace.....IAM1 |
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okiejack
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| Posted: Sun Jul 22, 2007 5:13 am Post subject: |
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| IAM1 wrote: |
| smokin_joe wrote: |
I hope suppression doesn't happen. If so, I have to hope it's for truly good reasons. But it never seems to be that way, huh...lol
One thing that gets me is that many of our "revelations" are just changes in our perception.
For example, when I was in school, we were taught Pluto was our ninth planet. Today, of course, it has been downgraded. Did Pluto change? Nope, it was always what it was. Our perception of it changed and now our teaching on it has changed.
I think as we revisit many lines of thought on our past, and re-review the evidence left for us throughout history, we will begin to see a clearer picture. Our perceptions on our ancient past will change then, too. |
Hi smokinjoe!
I hear ya! I hope it doesn't happen either! But unfortunately look at how long the knowledge of the existence of other life forms from other world's has been suppressed or debunked? Certain individuals in our government and in the military have known about these beings for several years now, but the public has been disallowed from knowing these truths. The "Disclosure Project" has been the closest the public has been allowed to hear the truth about those life forms. I guess the best thing to do is to hold in suspension any information we are "taught" or told is the truth, etc. Until somehow we can verify it for ourselves in some manner I still feel that this world or what we call reality is just an illusion that's constantly in a state of flux. It gives birth to new information and when that dies it's new again...... Peace.....IAM1 |
The more I learn the more I see the truth in this statement, I found in a tagline on another message board: "A conclusion is what we have when we get tired of thinking". (That's probably not a verbatum quote). I think knowledge and perception are interchangable qualities and are reciprically exacerbating. And, depending on the polarity of the attitude of the observer, perception and knowledge can be reciprically inhibitive.
This also puts me in mind of how unwise it is to base our view of the universe on speculation even if it is "scientific" speculation. Einstein spoke wisely when he said: "Compared to the amount of information in the univers the difference between a genius and a moron is insignificant." (that's probably not verbatum) |
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IAM1
B.V. Info-a-holic
Joined: Sep 01, 2006
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| Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2007 4:43 am Post subject: |
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| okiejack wrote: |
| IAM1 wrote: |
| smokin_joe wrote: |
I hope suppression doesn't happen. If so, I have to hope it's for truly good reasons. But it never seems to be that way, huh...lol
One thing that gets me is that many of our "revelations" are just changes in our perception.
For example, when I was in school, we were taught Pluto was our ninth planet. Today, of course, it has been downgraded. Did Pluto change? Nope, it was always what it was. Our perception of it changed and now our teaching on it has changed.
I think as we revisit many lines of thought on our past, and re-review the evidence left for us throughout history, we will begin to see a clearer picture. Our perceptions on our ancient past will change then, too. |
Hi smokinjoe!
I hear ya! I hope it doesn't happen either! But unfortunately look at how long the knowledge of the existence of other life forms from other world's has been suppressed or debunked? Certain individuals in our government and in the military have known about these beings for several years now, but the public has been disallowed from knowing these truths. The "Disclosure Project" has been the closest the public has been allowed to hear the truth about those life forms. I guess the best thing to do is to hold in suspension any information we are "taught" or told is the truth, etc. Until somehow we can verify it for ourselves in some manner I still feel that this world or what we call reality is just an illusion that's constantly in a state of flux. It gives birth to new information and when that dies it's new again...... Peace.....IAM1 |
The more I learn the more I see the truth in this statement, I found in a tagline on another message board: "A conclusion is what we have when we get tired of thinking". (That's probably not a verbatum quote). I think knowledge and perception are interchangable qualities and are reciprically exacerbating. And, depending on the polarity of the attitude of the observer, perception and knowledge can be reciprically inhibitive.
This also puts me in mind of how unwise it is to base our view of the universe on speculation even if it is "scientific" speculation. Einstein spoke wisely when he said: "Compared to the amount of information in the univers the difference between a genius and a moron is insignificant." (that's probably not verbatum) |
A conclusion can mean several different things depending on context, (brain) perception, etc. Although different, knowledge and perception influence each other dramatically. Why waste time on speculating the difference between a genius and a moron in the first place! Anything and everything can be inhibiting if we disallow our mind to be open to all possibilities ..... Peace....IAM1 |
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