- Title: Dynamite blast reveals dinosaur fossil
- Date: 25th November 2016
- Summary: EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, UK (NOVEMBER 21, 2016) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) PALEONTOLOGIST STEVE BRUSATTE OF SCOTLAND'S UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, SAYING: "I wish I could say that I found this dinosaur because it's a beautiful skeleton, one of the nicest skeletons I've ever seen, but it was actually found by construction workers, by workmen that were building a high school and they were blasting through the bedrock in this part of southern China. They were using dynamite, and it was that dynamite explosion that revealed this new fossil. Almost destroyed it but it only broke a little bit of the skeleton and it left most of it there and it unveiled it and that was how it was discovered." VARIOUS OF BRUSATTE EXAMINING DIFFERENT MUDDY FOSSIL (SOUNDBITE) (English) PALEONTOLOGIST STEVE BRUSATTE OF SCOTLAND'S UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, SAYING: "We call the new dinosaur Tongtianlong. That's the formal scientific name and that comes from a few different Chinese words that mean 'muddy dragon the road to heaven', which I think is a beautiful name, beautiful poetry there. My Chinese colleagues came up with a great name and that refers to the fact that it looks like this dinosaur died because it got stuck in the mud." ZOOM IN FROM BRUSATTE WITH MICROSCOPE TO ON-SCREEN ANIMATION OF TONGTIANLONG LIMOSUS (SOUNDBITE) (English) PALEONTOLOGIST STEVE BRUSATTE OF SCOTLAND'S UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, SAYING: "Tongtianlong was about the size of a sheep, maybe a small donkey, so not a very big animal. It was covered in feathers, just like a bird. It had wings, just like a bird, although it couldn't fly. It was still too big to fly, it probably used its wings for display purposes, for attracting a mate and intimidating its rivals, that sort of thing. It had a beak, it didn't have any teeth, so this was a dinosaur that didn't eat meat like a T. Rex and it didn't eat a lot of plants like a brontosaurus, but it looked like it had a varied diet, an omnivorous diet." VARIOUS OF BRUSATTE EXAMINING DIFFERENT MUDDY FOSSIL (SOUNDBITE) (English) PALEONTOLOGIST STEVE BRUSATTE OF SCOTLAND'S UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, SAYING: "We don't have feathers preserved on this fossil. It's very rare to get feathers preserved. They're soft. Like skin and muscle they decay very quickly. But we know from close relatives found in other parts of the world, in settings where feathers can be preserved more easily, we know that these kind of dinosaurs had feathers and even wings. So that part of the illustration is based on what we know from close relatives. Now the colours, we don't know for sure the colours but now there are ways, if you have very well preserved feathers, to tell what colour they were, so that's really the next step for a lot of dinosaurs, figuring out exactly what colours of the rainbow they would have." NEWCASTLE, ENGLAND, UK (NOVEMBER 22, 2016) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF PROFESSOR PETER CUMPSON, MECHANICAL AND SYSTEMS ENGINEERING, AND GRAHAM PURVIS, GEOSCIENTIST OF NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY, WITH TOF-SIMS AND A HELIUM ION MICROSCOPE ZOOM INTO ANCIENT FLY FOSSIL SPECIMEN (SOUNDBITE) (English) PROFESSOR PETER CUMPSON, MECHANICAL AND SYSTEMS ENGINEERING, NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY, SAYING: "We've had all sorts of mass spectrometry for many years, but we've generally had to homogenise something, mix it up, and we can tell something about the object as a whole. It's imaging mass spectrometry that really is making the difference because then we can have a look at this surface and tell you which molecules were where. So on this fossilised feather there was a set of molecules here and here and here, which are black or white and that's what led to the stripes in this feather by comparison with species which survive."
- Embargoed: 10th December 2016 11:48
- Keywords: Mud Dragon dinosaur fossil Vhina Steve Brusatte Tongtianlong Peter Cumpson oviraptorosaur
- Location: EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, AND NEWCASTLE, ENGLAND, UK / ANIMATION / GANZHOU, CHINA
- City: EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, AND NEWCASTLE, ENGLAND, UK / ANIMATION / GANZHOU, CHINA
- Country: United Kingdom
- Topics: Science
- Reuters ID: LVA00359Y06SB
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: In a humid, tropical jungle in southern China aeons ago, a remarkably bird-like dinosaur with wing-like arms, a toothless beak and a dome-shaped crest atop its head became trapped in mud, struggled in vain to escape and died.
Workmen blasting bedrock while building a school near the city of Ganzhou unearthed a beautifully preserved fossil of the roughly 6.5-foot-long (2-meter-long) dinosaur, nicknamed the "Mud Dragon," still in that contorted position.
Paleontologist Steve Brusatte, of Scotland's University of Edinburgh, who worked on the study published in the journal Scientific Reports, said the fossil adds to the understanding of dinosaur evolution on the eve of destruction.
He told Reuters: "It was found by construction workers building a high school and they were blasting through the bedrock in this part of southern China. They were using dynamite, and it was that dynamite explosion that revealed this new fossil. They almost destroyed it but it only broke a little bit of the skeleton and it left most of it there and it unveiled it and that was how it was discovered."
Brusatte added: "We call the new dinosaur Tongtianlong. That's the formal scientific name and that comes from a few different Chinese words that mean 'muddy dragon the road to heaven', which I think is a beautiful name. My Chinese colleagues came up with a great name and that refers to the fact that it looks like this dinosaur died because it got stuck in the mud."
The Cretaceous Period creature, called Tongtianlong limosus, lived 66 to 72 million years ago, at the twilight of the dinosaurs' more than 160-million-year reign on Earth. It was a member of a group called oviraptorosaurs, one of the closest relatives to birds, which evolved earlier from small, feathered dinosaurs.
The discovery of Tongtianlong and five other oviraptorosaur species in southern China showed this group was still blossoming and diversifying during the last few million years before an asteroid struck Earth about 66 million years ago, wiping out the dinosaurs, Brusatte said.
The fossil preserved a tragic moment for posterity, with the dinosaur's neck arched, its head sticking up, and its arms out-stretched to the sides.
Other previous dramatic fossil finds include Mongolia's famous "fighting dinosaurs," a Velociraptor and Protoceratops apparently locked in mortal combat when a sand dune collapsed on them.
Tongtianlong was a two-legged omnivore, with a bony crest on its short, squat skull that was probably used for display purposes to attract mates and intimidate rivals. Its arms likely had quill-like feathers layered over each other like on a wing, though it could not fly.
"Tongtianlong was about the size of a sheep, maybe a small donkey, so not a very big animal," said Brusatte. "It was covered in feathers, just like a bird. It had wings, just like a bird, although it couldn't fly. It was still too big to fly, it probably used its wings for display purposes, for attracting a mate and intimidating its rivals, that sort of thing. It had a beak, it didn't have any teeth, so this was a dinosaur that didn't eat meat like a T. Rex and it didn't eat a lot of plants like a brontosaurus, but it looked like it had a varied diet, an omnivorous diet."
Brusatte believes Tongtianlong would have eaten nuts, seeds, shellfish, plants, and small amounts of meat, and says its beak could have been key to its evolutionary success.
It would have lived in humid, jungle-like, conditions.
Brusatte explained how the animation was rendered by researcher Zhao Chuang.
He said: "We don't have feathers preserved on this fossil. It's very rare to get feathers preserved. They're soft. Like skin and muscle they decay very quickly. But we know from close relatives found in other parts of the world, in settings where feathers can be preserved more easily, that these kind of dinosaurs had feathers and even wings. We don't know for sure the feathers' colours but there are now ways, if you have very well preserved feathers, to tell what colour they were, so that's really the next step for a lot of dinosaurs, figuring out exactly what colours of the rainbow they would have."
Professor of Mechanical and Systems Engineering, Peter Cumpson, of Newcastle University, says mass spectrometry is helping with this. Cumpson says the combination of Newcastle's ToFSIMS machine and Helium Ion Microscope offers the best such system in Europe.
"We've had all sorts of mass spectrometry for many years, but we've generally had to homogenise something, mix it up, and we can tell something about the object as a whole. It's imaging mass spectrometry that really is making the difference because then we can have a look at this surface and tell you which molecules were where. So on this fossilised feather there was a set of molecules here and here and here, which are black or white and that's what led to the stripes in this feather by comparison with species which survive."
Brusatte says we are living in a golden age of dinosaur fossil finds and that the recent Chinese construction boom is helping uncover many important finds in the populous country. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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