#dinosaur evolution

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[secularsasquatch]

[opabinia--regalis]

ok here's some dinosaur yappery, why i think ornithoscelida is the most parsimonious explanation for numerous aspects of early dinosaur evolution:

phylogeny from crown aves up to the base of archosauria (as i mentioned i no longer regard this placement of lagerpetidae as accurate but that's a minor detail):

[sciencefriday]

Every scientist's journey is unique. Paleontologist Jingmai O'Connor grew up surrounded by science–her mom was also a scientist. But her fascination for Mezosoic avian dinosaurs and bird evolution was a convergence of both curiosity and heritage. 

 "This would be a way of combining my love of China and Chinese culture with paleontology, my new fascination and obsession." Watch her story at breakthroughfilms.org.

When paleontologist Jingmai O’Connor looks at the abdomen of a small, ancient avian fossil, she gets a thrill when she spots a jumble of nodules, no bigger than a scattering of goosebumps, protruding from the creature’s bones. Their presence could mean the animal’s metabolism supported rapid egg growth. In another specimen, O’Connor discovers an entire bird gobbled up inside of a chicken-sized feathered dinosaur, revealing a clue about the ecology in which both animals lived.

O’Connor’s obsessive eye for detail and encyclopedic knowledge of morphology comes in handy when she’s placing these fossils on the ancient family tree of birds. She credits those skills, as well as her enthusiasm for science, to her mother, a geochemist who earned her PhD while raising O’Connor and her three siblings. It was also her mother’s influence that led O’Connor to focus on geology—and to explore her own Chinese-American roots—by focusing her studies on the scores of bird fossils coming out of China at the turn of the century.

Dozens of discoveries later, O’Connor is now a professor at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology in Beijing where she uses the world’s largest collection of avian dinosaurs to explore the changes in ancient species that led to wings, tail feathers, flight, and many other adaptations seen in modern birds.

[edgescience]

A brand new paper is out! Dilophosaurus gets a new facelift. Jurassic Park is wrong yet again, but news sites continue to miss out on certain details. Not here folks, not wit me.

[dinodorks]

“Further light has been shed on ideas previously proposed about how small, bipedal dinosaurs became gigantic, long-necked Sauropods, following a study recently published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution .

Until now, researchers assumed that all types of dinosaurs grew gradually and that they all began to increase in size at roughly the same time during the Jurassic period.

(Artist’s impression by Jorge A. Gonzales)

Argentinean researchers at the Universidad Nacional de San Juan, however, believe the trend towards gigantism may have begun much earlier than previously thought: a new dinosaur species dubbed Ingentia Prima has been found and it has none of the features typical among Sauropods — which were previously considered prerequisites for gigantism.”

[livequrious]

The Tiny Dinosaur That Rewrote History in Patagonia

When we picture the age of dinosaurs, our minds instinctively conjure images of towering giants shaking the earth with every footstep. Yet beneath the feet of those colossal beasts scurried creatures that tell an equally fascinating story of survival and change. Imagine a dinosaur that weighed less than a simple bag of sugar. In the windswept badlands of Patagonia in Argentina, researchers have…

The Tiny Dinosaur That Rewrote History in Patagonia

[learnearninfo]

What is this dinosaur #shorts @Wildlife521#animal #ytshorts #wildlife #viralshort