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Science News General; Stuff that doesn't need its own topic
Topic Started: Apr 9 2014, 07:11 AM (11,244 Views)
LittleLazyLass
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DML dump again. I'll probably do this every month and halfpoint of a month. Note the links aren't the paper names.

North American Elmisaurine Specimens and paleobiology of Caenaghnathoidea (Open Access); Elmisaurs more cursorial and predatory then other caenagnathids, caanagnathids in general more cursorial and omnivorous then the slower and more herbivorous oviraptorids. I'll probably bring this up in Causes of Dinosaur Extinction.

Very complete specimen of Allosaurus, with many pathologies (Open Access); There are several traumatic, infectious, and traumatic-infectious, as well as potential developmental pathologies in this very complete specimen. Provides support for face biting, active hunting, and potentially social behaviour in Allosaurus.

Isisfordia as a basal Neosuchian, and generally a Pylogeny of Neosuchia (Open Access); Isisfordia and Susisuchus are recovered as a monophyletic group of Neosuchians closer to Eusuchians then dyrosaurids but farther then goniopholids. Supported by the secondary palate and vertebra morphology.

Revision of large ornithopod Ichnotaxa (Open Access); 34 ichnogenera and 44 ichnospecies evaluated, 3 ichnogenera and 8 ichnospecies regarded as valid. In other words, say goodbye to 80% of large ornithopod ichnotaxa you've never heard of anyway. Decent historic revision as well.

New Hadrosauroid from Kitadani formation, Japan (Preview; Abstract, Introduction, Conclusion); New basal hadrosauroid from Japan, the same formation as the more basal Styracosternan Fukuisaurus. One of the few Early Cretaceous asian ornithopods outside Mongolia and China.

Alamosaurus osteoderms; Osteoderms associated with a definitive Alamosaurus specimen (USNM 15660), proving the taxon had armor.

Chinease tracks
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LittleLazyLass
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End of the month, more papers. We'll ignore Taylor & Francis for now, since I got carried away and just cleaned out what I think is the most recent stuff. So like three dozens abstracts. Also, it's late, so I've not read any of these papers yet; not even the abstracts for some; sorry. For all I know I could be linking utter crap.

Firstly, holy crap, PLoS ONE has had a good month. There was the ichnology thing from last time... and half a dozen more this round. Overall February's been nothing to scoff at.

Basilosaurus had bone-crushing bite force (Open Access): Eocene speccers* and whale fanatics, take note; also, apparently they're bite forces match up with pliosaurs nearly perfectly. Interesting.

From land to sea - a story of Cetaceans (Open Access); Arguably a more catchy title then the actual paper, if I do say so myself. Anyway, Remingtonocetids and protocetids were almost entirely aquatic, but kept to shallow water.

Musculator in NA therizinosaurs (Open Access); I'll go with that as my summary, since the actual title is like some foreign language to me; all this technical stuff when it comes to biology is beyond my understanding. Anyway, for those more enlightened, this might be interesting.

Mosasuar sclerotic rings - anatomy and comparisons (Open Access); Ok, so maybe February was a bit more kind to marine life this time around. Anyway, four mosasaur taxa, and their eyes. A bit niche, I'd think.

The implications for sauropod teeth on early diversity (Open Access); Also a bit niche; thought I'm always into teeth and ichnites myself.

Purussaurus had a 7 metric ton bite force (Open Access); I think this speaks for itself.

And some other goodies:

Paleoenvironments of Kazakstan Azdarchids (Open Access); A bit niche, maybe, but probably should be taken into account for azdarchid paleoecology either way.

Spinosaurids were oddly common in Northern Africa in the Early-K (Abstract); Not much to say. Spinosaurs were unprecedentedly - shut up, if that's not a word it should be - common.

A bit on the morphological evidence of turtle placement (Open Access); From the abstract I can't tell what they're stance is. For classification or turtle or basla diapsid buffs, it's probably important.

More Whales! Evaluation of Cope's Rule on marine animals (Abstract); Not much else to say. Basically the rule isn't a simple as they get bigger over time; I can't say much else without the paper itself. Nothing groundbreaking here.

Mass extinctions and plants (Open Access); Man, this is just the month of niche interests, isn't it? Might sound boring, but this kind of stuff is important to both future and alt evo. Speccer, take note. If your project has a mass extinction and takes place on earth, you should probably read through this one. Hell, if you don't, read it for future reference anyway.

Sometime soon eventually: A crap ton of abstracts from T & F.

*Oh right, I'm supposed to working on something...
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Datura
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I don't know if this should get its own topic, but, Godzillus. That is all.

http://www.uc.edu/news/nr.aspx?id=15649

The article is two years old, but, I am intrigued by it, even though it seems to be a fossilized algae mat.
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Scrublord
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Godzillus? That's a waste of a name. Godzillus is what you call a 50-foot mosasaur.
In other news, there's this study about the ultimate fate of the universe:
http://phys.org/news/2015-03-universe-brink-collapse-cosmological-timescale.html
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Kamidio
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Scrublord
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Well, if it's any consolation, consider the alternative: the universe goes on expanding faster and faster until it tears itself apart atom by atom.
My Projects:
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In the end, the best advice I could give you would be to do your project in a way that feels natural to you, rather than trying to imitate some geek with a laptop in Colorado.
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Sheather
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That's still an awful lot of time.
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Kamidio
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I'D RATHER BE TORN APART THAN CRUSHED AND REPLACED BY A NEW UNIVERSE.
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colddigger
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https://www.animalsciencepublications.org/publications/jas/articles/92/10/4255

Not exactly new, but it's information.
GMOs.
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Scrublord
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In. Just in. I never thought I'd say this, but BRONTOSAURUS IS VALID AGAIN! HALLELUJAH!
http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/why-brontosaurus-no-longer-dirty-word-dinosaur-hunters
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In the end, the best advice I could give you would be to do your project in a way that feels natural to you, rather than trying to imitate some geek with a laptop in Colorado.
--Heteromorph
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LittleLazyLass
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Don't get to excited yet. It isn't case closed until people agree with it. And Bakker's been trying for decades, to no avail, so it's not like this stuff hasn't been rejected before.
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ÐK
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This time around they weren't trying to resurrect Brontosaurus though, that was just a happy accident from the analysis performed in the study. The analysis itself is on the phylogeny of diplodocids, and uses a quantitative approach for a wholly specimen-based analysis with more rigour and detail than ever before performed on diplodocid phylogeny. In John Conway's words, "Brontosaurus may stick this time".

The paper, for those of you who think they can slog through it.
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In the absence of proper data, speculate wildy.

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pfft, DK making a project

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I'm sorry but in what alternative universe would thousands of zebras be sent back in time by some sort of illegal time travel group to change history and preparing them by making gigantic working animatronic allosaurs?

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Scrublord
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What I'm actually more interested in is where Amphicoelias falls.
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ÐK
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Assuming you're talking about Amphicoelias fragillimus, here's what they had to say:

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This specimen was the only putative diplodocid holotype specimen not included into the present analysis. Given that it was lost shortly after publication (Carpenter, 2006), and that no other material has yet been referred to the same species, it seems unwise to speculate about its phylogenetic position solely based on the single drawing and inadequate description of this extremely fragmentary specimen. Amphicoelias fragillimus is thus herein considered a nomen dubium.
~Projects~

Earth Without Earth; Like nothing on Earth...


Quote:
 
In the absence of proper data, speculate wildy.

~Mark Witton, Pterosaurs (Chapter 3, page 18)


Quote:
 
pfft, DK making a project

~Troll Man, Skype (15/2/15)


Quote:
 
I'm sorry but in what alternative universe would thousands of zebras be sent back in time by some sort of illegal time travel group to change history and preparing them by making gigantic working animatronic allosaurs?

~Komodo, Zebra's sent back in time (4/1/13)
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LittleLazyLass
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Synonym of A. atlus, as far as the table is concerned (although this doesn't derive from their results). As for the genus itself; it is camarasaur like in some ways and still highly unstable (unless there's something on it later in the paper). All we know is that it was really damn weird.

Have starting reading this; I stand corrected. This is actually fairly convincing. Have to finish it first, of course.

edit: Ninja'd. Seems like a better answer anyway.
Edited by LittleLazyLass, Apr 7 2015, 04:35 PM.
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