All about dinosaurs, fossils and prehistoric animals by Everything Dinosaur team members.
10 10, 2017

School Website Upgraded to HTTPS

By | October 10th, 2017|General Teaching|Comments Off on School Website Upgraded to HTTPS

Website for Schools Upgraded to HTTPS

All of Everything Dinosaur’s websites including this website dedicated to schools, home tutors and educationalists, have been upgraded to https status.  These changes, all part of our on-going commitment to protecting visitors to our websites, provide enhance visitor security.  The acronym “https” stands for “Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure”.  Information sent between the browser of a visitor to one of our websites and our on-line presence, is encrypted helping to protect that person’s data.

As Everything Dinosaur has upgraded to this new security status we are helping to protect your data from any third party that might want to acquire it.

Everything Dinosaur’s Websites have been Upgraded to HTTPS

HTTPS a secure website for Everything Dinosaur.

New security safeguards added to Everything Dinosaur’s website. Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Visit the award-winning Everything Dinosaur website: Visit Everything Dinosaur.

Everything Dinosaur – Protecting Personal Data

Although this website does not collect and store personal data, we do have comments being posted up from our numerous blog articles as well as a lot of visitors downloading free teaching resources and other materials.  With these changes, visitors to our websites can be assured that Everything Dinosaur is taking their personal data and security very seriously.

A spokesperson for the company that provides dinosaur and fossil themed workshops in schools explained:

“We meticulously follow guidelines when visiting a school to deliver a dinosaur themed workshop.  We take safeguarding issues extremely seriously and it is only natural for us to show the same care and consideration for our virtual business elements too.”

For educational dinosaur themed products: Educational Dinosaur Toys, Gifts and Games.

10 10, 2017

Fused Bones in Primitive Birds Earlier than Previously Thought

By | October 10th, 2017|Dinosaur and Prehistoric Animal News Stories, Dinosaur Fans, Main Page, Photos/Pictures of Fossils|0 Comments

The Evolution of the Light but Strong Skeleton for Powered Flight

It is widely accepted that birds evolved from dinosaurs.  The Order Dinosauria is now classified into two parts, the non-avian dinosaurs, which are extinct and the avian dinosaurs (the birds), which are very much still with us.  However, the evolution of the specialised anatomy that enables powered flight is not well understood.

Birds have several skeletal modifications that greatly assist them when it comes to their aerial abilities.  Any aeronautical engineer will expound the virtues of a light but strong frame for an aircraft, birds have a light but strong skeleton with many elements fused for greater rigidity.  A team of scientists writing in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences”, have provided new evidence to help explain how these remarkable anatomical modifications came about.  This evolutionary story is likely to be much more complicated than previously thought.

Some Theropod Dinosaurs Evolved into Birds Skeletal Similarities and Differences

Bird skeleton compared to ground dwelling dinosaur skeleton

A skeleton of the theropod dinosaur compared with a simplified skeleton of a modern bird.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

The picture above shows the skeleton of the recently described oviraptorid Corythoraptor jacobsi compared to that of a modern bird.  The bird skeleton shows a number of adaptations for powered flight, such as fused hand and foot bones and an enlarged sternum but the ground-dwelling Oviraptor possesses number of anatomical characteristics which show its affinity to modern birds.  Both Aves and the Oviraptoridae are included together in the clade Maniraptora which consists of modern birds and their closest extinct relatives from the coelurosaurian theropods.

Pterygornis dapingfangensis – Fused Bones

A second, beautifully-preserved specimen of the Early Cretaceous enantiornithine bird Pterygornis dapingfangensis has fully fused hands (carpometacarpus bones) as well as a fused pelvic girdle.  Dating from around 120 million years ago, this specimen is the oldest known bird fossil which shows these modifications for powered flight.  The fossil comes from the Jiufotang Formation of Liaoning Province (north-eastern China).  This sparrow-sized creature is one of several genera known from these Lower Cretaceous deposits, only the Solnhofen deposits of Germany are older in terms of the bird fossils they contain.

The exquisite specimen shows that the carpometacarpus and the pelvis are completely fused, it had been thought that these traits did not appear in Aves until the Late Cretaceous.   The fossil record had shown that all bird fossils associated with Upper Cretaceous deposits have a completely fused hand and pelvis.  Thanks to this newly published scientific paper, the historical origin of these avian bone fusions has been pushed back some forty million years.

The Second Specimen of Pterygornis dapingfangensis

Pterygornis dapingfangensi helps scientists to better understand bird evolution.

Pterygornis dapingfangensi fossil.

Picture credit: W. GAO (Chinese Academy of Sciences)

Great Fossils but Squashed Flat!

Named in 2015 from a single, disarticulated specimen, discovered near the town of Dapingfang, Chaoyang County in Liaoning Province, Pterygornis shows a number of unique autapomorphies that distinguishes it from other enantiornithines and the second fossil has shown that the body plan for a rigid, fused skeleton was present in at least one species of bird from the Early Cretaceous.

Dr Steve Brusatte (University of Edinburgh), who reviewed the scientific paper, commented:

“These [fused bones] are fundamental features of the modern bird blueprint, and are integral to giving birds the strength and rigidity needed to fly.  There seems to have been a lot of experimentation among early birds, with different species trying out different ways of making their skeletons stronger and better able to withstand the rigours of flight.”

Sadly, many of the fossils from the Jiufotang Formation have been compressed and distorted as a result of the fossilisation process.  However, despite the taphonomy that ends with a lot of the fossils from these rocks being squashed flat, the researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences were able to identify that the fused bones in the second known specimen of Pterygornis were not a result of pathology or the fossilisation process.

The Disarticulated Holotype Specimen of Pterygornis dapingfangensis

Pterygornis dapingfangensi holotype material.

The scattered and disarticulated fossil remains of Pterygornis dapingfangensi.

Picture credit: Wang Min

The Search for Transitional Fossils (Birds Evolved from Dinosaurs)

The lack of transitional fossils has hindered the process of identifying the evolutionary process towards the modern bird skeleton.  More fossils would help to demonstrate how birds evolved from dinosaurs.  However, in this research paper the authors outline how the fusion of pelvic bones and those in the hands and feet may have evolved independently in non-avian dinosaurs, primitive and more advanced birds.

The scientists speculate that varying degrees of bone fusion were likely to have evolved in basal birds, perhaps as a result of environmental pressures or related to a refinement of flight capability.  It seems that the developmental pathway from ground-dwelling dinosaur to the skeletal shape of living birds has a few more surprises to spring before it is more fully understood.

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