Evolution or Creation

Cool story, did you father help them clean all the bird **** in the horn?

I remember they at one time thought the cause of the backround radiation was the pigeon droppings in the horn.

is that horn in the Smithsonian now? It oughta be.

Flighty Side of T. Rex, a New Link
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD




To the growing evidence that some dinosaurs had feathers, add the family of tyrannosaurs, mighty predators in the age of reptiles. Fossils of the earliest known ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex have been discovered with clear impressions of downy feathers from head to tail, precursors to the feathers found on living birds.

In a report yesterday in Nature, the discovery team announced that the 130-million-year-old fossils from northeastern China provided the first direct evidence that tyrannosaurs had protofeathers and supported the hypothesis that some dinosaurs evolved a feathery covering to help them keep warm.

The primitive species, based on remains of two specimens, is a five-foot-long dinosaur that has been named Dilong paradoxus.

The researchers said it would probably be an exaggeration to suggest that the much larger T. rex, which lived toward the end of the age of dinosaurs, 65 million years ago, also was covered in feathers. But those and other later tyrannosaurs, they added, could have had fluffy protofeathers at some stage in their lives, perhaps until their maturity.

Over the last eight years, paleontologists have excavated dozens of dinosaurs that bore traces of featherlike structures. Such feathers, many scientists contend, were eventually adapted for flight in the transition of some carnivorous dinosaurs to birds. A dinosaur-bird link has broad but not unanimous support among scientists.

The principal authors of the new report, Drs. Xing Xu and Mark A. Norell, both of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, described their findings this week in interviews. They pointed to the faint strands of hairlike protofeathers imbedded near the dinosaur's tailbone and to a nearly complete skull.

Dr. Xu said the bones indicated that the specimen was nearly an adult. Although smaller and more primitive than later tyrannosaurs, he said, its skull in particular was remarkably similar to that of T. rex.

Dr. Norell speculated that Dilong paradoxus was probably covered in feathers. Such smaller animals and the juveniles of larger species presumably needed the feathers for thermal regulation.

If an adult T. rex lost most of its young feathers, Dr. Norell said, its exposed skin would probably not be scaly, as in most reptiles, but "pretty much like the leathery skin on the neck of an ostrich."

Dr. Norell is curator of paleontology at the museum. Dr. Xu is a research fellow there and is also affiliated with the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology in Beijing. He was a member of the expedition that discovered the most recent fossils last year in Liaoning Province.

"The discovery of protofeathers in such a primitive tyrannosaur," Dr. Norell said, "is giving us a much clearer picture than we had even five years ago of how these animals looked and provides even more evidence of the shared evolutionary features between nonavian dinosaurs and living birds.

The following might be somewhat off topic here, but it seems interesting and, I think, not totally invalid..

Flighty Side of T. Rex, a New Link
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD

Maybe worthy of a new thread? We haven't had a Dino/Bird thread in a long time.

'New' giant ape found in DR Congo


Scientists believe they have discovered a new group of giant apes in the jungles of central Africa.

The animals, with characteristics of both gorillas and chimpanzees, have been sighted in the north of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

According to local villagers, the apes are ferocious, and even capable of killing lions.

The UK magazine New Scientist is to publish its report about the mysterious creatures next week.

If they are a new species of primate, it could be one of the most important wildlife discoveries in decades.

The discovery of these apes "reveals just how much we still have to learn about our closest living relatives," New Scientist says.

They stand up to two metres tall, the size of gorillas, and like gorillas, they nest on the ground, not in trees.
But they live hundreds of kilometres away from any other known gorilla populations, and their diet is closer to that of chimpanzees.

Primatologist Shelly Williams is thought to be the only scientist to have seen the apes.



During her visit to DR Congo two years ago, she says she captured them on video and located their nests.

She describes her encounter with them: "Four suddenly came rushing out of the bush towards me," she told New Scientist.

"If this had been a bluff charge, they would have been screaming to intimidate us. These guys were quiet. And they were huge. They were coming in for the kill. I was directly in front of them, and as soon as they saw my face, they stopped and disappeared."

Mystery

The discovery has baffled scientists.

There are three controversial possibilities to explain the origin of the mystery apes:


They are a new species of ape

They are giant chimpanzees, much larger than any so far recorded, but behave like gorillas

They could be hybrids, the product of gorillas mating with chimpanzees.


So far, researchers have little to go on, but they now plan to return to northern DR Congo to study the apes further.

In the meantime, there are fears that unless measures are taken to protect them, poaching could threaten this new group of primates before the mystery of their identity is resolved.

"This is a lawless area," says Kenyan-based Swiss photographer Karl Ammann, who tipped Ms Williams off about the apes.

"The government has practically no control over hunting. If we found something interesting it would attract more investment. People would be more interested in conserving it."