The burning question of every paleontologist - how DID the mighty dinosaurs have sex?

The joy of T-Rex: Scientists show how dinosaurs had sex (tricky, when you weigh 30 tonnes and one crucial part is 12ft long)

By ROB WAUGH
DAILY MAIL
July 11, 2012

Paleontologists answer many tricky questions about dinosaurs - but perhaps the most interesting is how did 30-ton animals larger than four-storey buildings have sex.

A surprising amount of research has been devoted to the subject - and most researchers have concluded that dinosaurs made love like dogs

'All dinosaurs used the same basic position to mate,' said Dr Beverly Halstead, an English researcher who was one of the first to tackle the subject. 'Mounting from the rear, he put his forelimbs on her shoulders, lifting one hind limb across her back and twisting his tail under hers.'

Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaurs mating - like most dinosaur species, the creatures mated like dogs

Sauroposeidon dinosaurs mate: Biologist
Stuart Landry believes that big dinosaurs
would just fall over on land and would have
needed water to provide support

Scientific illustrators have also attempted to capture the intriguing rituals of the huge beasts - including an illustrator who worked with Dr Halstead on a magazine article in 1988.

The physical challenges involved must have been formidable.

The penis of a tyrannosaur is estimated to be around 12 feet long.

Kristi Curry Rogers, Assistant Professor of Biology and Geology at Macalester College in Minnesota, told the Discovery Channel.

'The most likely position to have intercourse is for the male behind the female, and on top of her, and from behind, any other position is unfathomable.’

'I don't think there's much doubt about that,' Dr. Gregory M. Erickson, an evolutionary biologist at Florida State University, told The Huffington Post 'It must have been a hell of a thing to see.'

Some experts have questioned this line of thinking and suggested that dinosaurs romped in water.

Biologist Stuart Landry believes that big dinosaurs would just fall over on land and would have needed water to provide support.

Pentaceratops dinosaurs mating: A surprising amount of research has been devoted to the subject - and most researchers have concluded that dinosaurs made love like dogs

More on the 'Red Deer Cave' human fossil discovery: images

A skull, possibly from a new species of human, recovered from Longlin cave in Guangxi province, China. Photograph: Darren Curnoe, The Guardian

An artist's reconstruction of fossils from two caves in southwest China have revealed a previously unknown Stone Age people and give a rare glimpse of a recent stage of human evolution with startling implications for the early peopling of Asia. The fossils are of a people with a highly unusual mix of archaic and modern anatomical features and are the youngest of their kind ever found in mainland East Asia. Dated to just 14,500 to 11,500 years old, these people would have shared the landscape with modern-looking people at a time when China's earliest farming cultures were beginning, says an international team of scientists led by associate professor Darren Curnoe, of the University of New South Wales, and professor Ji Xueping of the Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archeology. (Credit: Art copyright by Peter Schouten), ScienceDaily

Read here for details of discovery:

• 'Red Deer Cave people' may be new species of human

• Mystery Human Fossils Put Spotlight On China

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Meet 'Red Deer Cave' men, possible a different species of humans discovered

'Red Deer Cave people' may be new species of human
Stone age remains of people with a penchant for home-cooked venison could represent a new human evolutionary line

Ian Sample
The Guardian
Wednesday 14 March 2012 11.11 EDT

A skull, possibly from a new species of human, recovered from Longlin cave in Guangxi province, China. Photograph: Darren Curnoe -View larger image

The fossilised remains of stone age people recovered from two caves in south west China may belong to a new species of human that survived until around the dawn of agriculture.

The partial skulls and other bone fragments, which are from at least four individuals and are between 14,300 and 11,500 years old, have an extraordinary mix of primitive and modern anatomical features that stunned the researchers who found them.

Named the Red Deer Cave people, after their apparent penchant for home-cooked venison, they are the most recent human remains found anywhere in the world that do not closely resemble modern humans.

The individuals differ from modern humans in their jutting jaws, large molar teeth, prominent brows, thick skulls, flat faces and broad noses. Their brains were of average size by ice age standards.

"They could be a new evolutionary line or a previously unknown modern human population that arrived early from Africa and failed to contribute genetically to living east Asians," said Darren Curnoe, who led the research team at the University of New South Wales in Australia.

"While finely balanced, I think the evidence is slightly weighted towards the Red Deer Cave people representing a new evolutionary line. First, their skulls are anatomically unique. They look very different to all modern humans, whether alive today or in Africa 150,000 years ago," Curnoe told the Guardian.

"Second, the very fact they persisted until almost 11,000 years ago, when we know that very modern looking people lived at the same time immediately to the east and south, suggests they must have been isolated from them. We might infer from this isolation that they either didn't interbreed or did so in a limited way."

One partial skeleton, with much of the skull and teeth, and some rib and limb bones, was recovered from Longlin cave in Guangxi province. More than 30 bones, including at least three partial skulls, two lower jaws and some teeth, ribs and limb fragments, were unearthed at nearby Maludong, or Red Deer Cave, near the city of Mengzi in Yunnan province.

At Maludong, fossil hunters also found remnants of various mammals, all of them species still around today, except for giant red deer, the remains of which were found in abundance. "They clearly had a taste for venison, with evidence they cooked these large deer in the cave," Curnoe said.

The findings are reported in the journal PLoS ONE.

The stone age bones are particularly important because scientists have few human fossils from Asia that are well described and reliably dated, making the story of the peopling of Asia hopelessly vague. The latest findings point to a far more complex picture of human evolution than was previously thought.

"The discovery of the Red Deer Cave people shows just how complicated and interesting human evolutionary history was in Asia right at the end of the ice age. We had multiple populations living in the area, probably representing different evolutionary lines: the Red Deer Cave people on the East Asian continent, Homo floresiensis, or the 'Hobbit', on the island of Flores in Indonesia, and modern humans widely dispersed from northeast Asia to Australia. This paints an amazing picture of diversity, one we had no clue about until this last decade," Curnoe said.

Much of Asia was also occupied by Neanderthals and another group of archaic humans called the Denisovans. Scientists learned of the Denisovans after recovering a fossilised little finger from the Denisova cave in the Altai mountains of southern Siberia in 2010.

The fossils from Longlin cave were found in 1979 by a geologist prospecting in the area. At the time, researchers removed only the lower jaw and a few fragments of rib and limb bones from the cave wall. The rest of the skeleton was left encased in a block of rock, which sat in the basement of the Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology in Kunming, Yunnan, for 30 years. The fossils were rediscovered in 2009 by Ji Xueping, a researcher at the institute, who teamed up with Curnoe to examine the remains.

"It was clear from what we could see that the remains were very primitive and likely to be scientifically important. We had a skilled technician remove the bones from the rock, and they were glued back together. Only then was it clear what we had found: a partial skeleton with a very unusual anatomy," Curnoe said.

The fossils at Maludong were found in 1989 but went unstudied until 2008.

Lumps of charcoal uncovered alongside the Longlin fossils were carbon dated to 11,500 years, a time when modern humans in southern China began to make pottery for food storage and to gather wild rice in some of the first steps towards full-scale farming.

Marta Mirazón Lahr, an evolutionary biologist at Cambridge University, is convinced the remains are from modern humans. The unusual features, she said, suggest the Red Deer Cave people are either "late descendants of an early population of modern humans in Asia" or a very small population that developed the traits through a process known as genetic drift.

Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum, London, was similarly skeptical.

"The human remains from the Longlin Cave and Maludong are very important, particularly because we do not have much well-described and well-dated material from the late Pleistocene of China.

"The fossils are unlike recent populations of modern humans in several respects, and the mosaic of more archaic features could indicate the dispersal of a poorly known and more primitive form of modern human that left Africa before the main exodus at about 60,000 years. This dispersal could have reached as far as China, surviving there for many millennia, before disappearing in the last 12,000 years."

But he added: "There might be another possible explanation for the more archaic features. Could these alternatively be attributed to gene flow from a more archaic population that survived alongside modern humans? In the case of the Longlin Cave and Maludong fossils, the most likely candidate would be the enigmatic Denisovans who apparently interbred with the ancestors of modern Australasians somewhere in south east Asia. Could these Chinese fossils be further evidence of such hybridisation?"

Additional Info:

• Mystery Human Fossils Put Spotlight On China 
  

Russian scientists revive a 30,000 year old plant from Siberian permafrost

Ice To See You: 30,000-Year-Old Flower Revived
Sky News
12:07pm UK, Tuesday February 21, 2012


The Sylene stenophylla in bloom Credit:: Institute of Cell Biophysics of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Fruit and seeds hidden in an Ice Age squirrel's burrow in Siberian permafrost have been resurrected into a flower by Russian scientists.

Using a pioneering experiment, the Sylene stenophylla has become the oldest plant ever to be regrown and it is fertile, producing white flowers and viable seeds.

The seeds date back 30,000 to 32,000 years and raise hopes that iconic Ice Age mammals like the woolly mammoth could also eventually be resurrected.

The researchers, who published their findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the US, said the results prove that permafrost serves a natural depository for ancient life forms.

"We consider it essential to continue permafrost studies in search of an ancient genetic pool, that of pre-existing life, which hypothetically has long since vanished from the earth's surface," the scientists said in the article.

Canadian researchers had earlier regenerated some significantly younger plants from seeds found in burrows.

Svetlana Yashina of the Institute of Cell Biophysics of the Russian Academy Of Sciences, who led the regeneration effort, said the revived plant looked very similar to its modern version, which still grows in the same area in northeastern Siberia.

The Russian research team recovered the fruit after investigating dozens of fossil burrows hidden in ice deposits on the right bank of the lower Kolyma River in northeastern Siberia.
They were firmly cemented together and often totally filled with ice, making any water infiltration impossible - creating a natural freezing chamber fully isolated from the surface.

The burrows were located 125ft (38m) below the present surface in layers containing bones of large mammals, such as mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, bison, horse and deer.


Woolly mammoth tusks dug up from Siberian permafrost in 1999, credit: SkyNews

"The squirrels dug the frozen ground to build their burrows, which are about the size of a soccer ball, putting in hay first and then animal fur for a perfect storage chamber," said Stanislav Gubin, one of the authors of the study, who spent years rummaging through the area for squirrel burrows. "It's a natural cryobank."

"If we are lucky, we can find some frozen squirrel tissue," said Mr Gubin. "And this path could lead us all the way to mammoth."

Possibly, the oldest living animal life discovered on Earth

Sponge fossils from Namibia are the oldest animal life ever found on Earth, say researchers
By ROB WAUGH
DailyMail
Last updated at 12:13 PM on 7th February 2012


- Tiny vase-like sponges 'our ancestor' say researchers
- Found in 760 million year old rocks
- Animals emerged 100 million years earlier than thought

Etosha National Game Park: the tiny fossils
unearthed in the park are the world`s oldest
animal life, says researchers, dating to
760 million years ago. Credit: DailyMail

Sponge-like fossils unearthed in rocks in a national park in Namibia are the world's oldest animal life, say researchers. 

The find in Etosha National Park proves that sponges are the earliest forms of animal life, say the researchers.

The fossils were found in rocks between 760 million and 550 million years old. 

They are tiny speck-sized, vase-shaped creatures. 

The researchers analysed thousands of the fossils using X-rays and scanning electron microscopes. 

The discovery places the emergence of animals 100 to 150 million years earlier than scientists had previously thought.

The scientists describe the fossils as our 'great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother'.

Scientists had predicted that the earliest life would take the form of sponges. Earlier fossil finds in Australia had seemed to confirm this.

'If one looks at the family tree and projects this backward to where you have what's called the stem group, the ancestor of all animals, then yes, this would be our great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother,' says researcher Tony Prave of the University of St Andrews. 

The researchers scanned more than 1,000 of the tiny fossils, credit: DailyMail

(Left) Scanning electron microscope images of the tiny fossils, credit: DailyMail

'The aspect of this that's rather satisfying, at least intellectually, is that it is in broad agreement with what geneticists would tell us based on looking at molecular clocks when we should see the first advent of large multi-cellular life forms.' 

'This proves that the early lineages of animals go back considerably further in time,' say the researchers.

'The age of the fossils age places the advent of animals some 100 to 150million years earlier than proposed, and prior to the extreme climatic changes of Ediacaran time,' say the researchers. '

These findings support the predictions based on genetic sequencing and inferences drawn from biomarkers that the first animals were sponges.

The oldest dinosaur nursery found: photos (DiscoveryNews)

[CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE
OLDEST DINOSAUR NURSERY FOUND: PHOTOS]
By Jennifer Viegas
DiscoveryNews (Jan 23, 2012)

Left image: Artwork by Julius Csotonyi

500 million year old 'Tulip' creature discovered

Unusual 'Tulip' Creature Discovered: Lived in the Ocean More Than 500 Million Years Ago Science Daily(Jan 18, 2012)
Original article: 
University of Toronto/Royal Ontario Museum scientists discover unusual 'tulip' creature University of Toronto, (Jan 18, 2012)

Cluster of four specimens of Siphusauctum gregarium. Scale = 10 mm. (Credit: © Royal Ontario Museum); Science Daily

ScienceDaily (Jan. 18, 2012) — A bizarre creature that lived in the ocean more than 500-million years ago has emerged from the famous Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rockies.

Officially named Siphusauctum gregarium, fossils reveal a tulip-shaped creature that is about the length of a dinner knife (approximately 20 centimetres) and has a unique filter feeding system.

Siphusauctum has a long stem, with a calyx -- a bulbous cup-like structure -- near the top that encloses an unusual filter feeding system and a gut. The animal is thought to have fed by filtering particles from water actively pumped into its calyx through small holes. The stem ends with a small disc which anchored the animal to the seafloor. Siphusauctum lived in large clusters, as indicated by slabs containing over 65 individual specimens.

Lorna O'Brien, a PhD candidate in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto and her supervisor, adjunct professor Jean-Bernard Caron, curator of invertebrate palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum, reported on the discovery Jan. 18 in the online science journal PLoS ONE.

"Most interesting is that this feeding system appears to be unique among animals. Recent advances have linked many bizarre Burgess Shale animals as primitive members of many animal groups that are found today, but Siphusauctum defies this trend. We do not know where it fits in relation to other organisms," said lead author O'Brien.

In this reconstruction of Siphusauctum gregarium, the animals are shown in life position, standing upright in the water column. (Illustration by Marianne Collins) Univ of Toronto

"Our description is based on more than 1,100 fossil specimens from a new Burgess Shale locality that has been nicknamed the Tulip Beds," she added.

Located in Yoho National Park, British Columbia, the Tulip Beds were first discovered in 1983 by the Royal Ontario Museum. They are located high on Mount Stephen, overlooking the town of Field. Like the rest of the Burgess Shale, the beds represent rock layers with exceptional preservation of mostly soft-bodied organisms.

The Burgess Shale, protected under the larger Rocky Mountain Parks UNESCO World Heritage site and managed by Parks Canada, preserves fossil evidence of some of the earliest complex animals that lived in the oceans of our planet nearly 505 million years ago. The discovery of Siphusauctum expands the range of animal diversity that existed during this time period.

The research was partially funded by UofT fellowships to O'Brien and a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Discovery Grant awarded to Caron.

To learn more about the Burgess Shale visit burgess-shale.rom.on.ca

Journal Reference:
Lorna J. O'Brien, Jean-Bernard Caron. A New Stalked Filter-Feeder from the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale, British Columbia, Canada. PLoS ONE, 2012; 7 (1): e29233 
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0029233