Ancient Egg Cluster Preserved in Glass

The first million-year-old fossils of half-thousand clusters of soft-shelled eggs have been preserved of a new strange way in China of the south; some of eggs were even taken in the act to divide itself. The three-dimensional clusters of eggs terrified of the invertebrate animals that lived in a sea make 501 million a 510 million years preserve in silicone crystal essentially. Jih-Pai Lin, paleontology of the university of state of Ohio, explained this is a totally unexpected way so that the smooth eggs fossilize and survive for eons.


Lin is the author of the lead of a report on the clusters of the egg published in the application of December the Geology of the newspaper. The means of the discovery are probably still more fossilized early old rock eggs and embryos there. The fossil hunters as soon as the diverse ways need to have present that can be that they are preserved, and therefore the diverse types of rocks on which can be that they are found. "This one is the intact cluster known to a great extent older of the disclosed egg," the news this Lin of the discovery.
Other eggs have found of age similar, but they are dispersed, that is except distant revealing on the animal that put eggs, he explained. Egg cluster to be probably to preserve in same point he to be to put in sea floor, that to say something on unknown strategy early animal to use to reproduce, Lin said. He could also make reference to how much energy had the animal that stops to make eggs, and therefore how much food was available in the floor of old sea in that time far distant, he said. "The clusters to provide a little more detail in the picture of the Cambrian ecology," said Lin, referring to the geologic era in which exploded life first, beginning some makes 543 million years. That happiness, other paleontlogist is impressed more by the fact that the eggs, and possibly equal embryos, of old organisms can now be looked for on silicone-based rocks.


"The fresh thing on this is the preservation," said to paleontologist Whitey Hagadorn of the university of Amherst, referring to the silicone that replaced the smooth pieces of eggs. The previous eggs and embryos of the Cambrian and have been previous on carbonate-rich and phosphate-rich rocks of the calcium, that of many ways was probably resembled the original chemistry of the sediments in which the eggs were put.


The fossil eggs of the silicone that Lin and its colleagues are studying, on the other hand, required a entirely diverse process of fossilization that is rather the one of the terrified wood more of high quality. The details of the individual cells of the interior of the structures even can be considered sometimes. The source of silicone for fossilization probably came from spicules of crystal of sponges found on same rocks, Lin conjectured.

"That is something we had not known before" said Hagadorn of the preservation of silicone. Lin explained the discovery of this method to preserve the eggs that the means are a whole rock class there as of the Cambrian era in the several parts of the world that can be explored for eggs and older embryos.

Flying Mammals Lived With Dinos

A new fossil discovery of China demonstrates that a very small one squirrel-like creature slid through air during the age of dinosaurios, than 75 million years more previous that the scientists had documented that capacity in a mammal. The creature could even have beaten birds in the air. Like squirrels of today of the flight, she stretched a hairy membrane between his members to provide a sustenation surface to slide after she jumped of a tree. But she is not related to any thing that lives today. The scientists do not know exactly when the animal lived. Their rest could anywhere be from 130 million a 164 million years, said to Jin Meng of the American museum of natural history. It and the colleagues of Beijing disclose the discovery in the application of Thursday the nature of the newspaper.

She is so clearly older than the million-year-old wood 51 that was the oldest evidence of the flight or the sliding in a mammal. And he has an occasion to precede the known bird more early, Archaeopteryx, that flew near ago 150 million years. He is much more young that the reptiles of the flight called pterosaurs, which they have been old fashioned to start off for of 230 million years. However, added to a recent finding in he himself locale in China of the northeast that revealed semi-aquatic creature, the discovery demonstrates that the early mammals were varied much more who the earth-affectionate scientists of the creatures have anticipated traditionally, Meng this. It and the colleagues doubled antiquus animal of Volaticotherium, that is Latin and the Greek for the ?old beast of the flight (or been flying).? Think that he was night, as other mammals of the time were thought to be, and as mammalian of sliding it is today. It was the size of a squirrel or a wood - less than three ounces of the flight. Its stiff tail could have been longer than the trunk of its body. The finding includes not only the bones, but also the impressions to the rock left that reveal the hairy membrane the creature used to slide.

Their teeth demonstrate it that it ate the insects mainly, investigators this. But it could not probably look for insects whereas one slid because he was a too clumsy aviator and it could not remain sufficiently long airborne, the investigators this. So because sliding? He is hard to draw the conclusions for this creature, Meng specifically said, but the scientists think generally that the sliding is a way energy saving to be able of tree to the tree, compared in several occasions to raise above and under trunks. The sliding increased probably range of the forage of the creature perhaps and it helped you to save predators in the trees, he said. Larry Heaney, guardian of mammals in the museum of the field in Chicago that has studied of sliding length mammalian, said that the new creature ?has taken the first measurement? towards flight driven like exposed objects from a wood. But of its anatomy, ?Heaney would say that this animal was not probably very distant throughout the trajectory truth flight,? this. ?It was not in the way to the classes of modifications that we see in the woods that allow that they really fly.? Meng said that it is not clear if the descendants of the creature gained the capacity to fly.

New Dinosaur Discovered: T. Rex Cousin Had Feathers

Very small, previous cousin of rex of Tyrannosaurus at least amused a partial layer of the pens of hairlike, disclosed scientists today. The persecuted prey dinosaurio and vagado the forests of lakeside of the province of Liaoning in northern China makes about 130 million years, the investigators said. Although it is predicted by several paleontlogos, the marks of the discovery the first time that the structures of featherlike have been observed directly in tyrannosaurid. Tyrannosaurids is dinosaurios predominant great with forelimbs short that vagaron the Earth does 130 to 65 million years.



"It is the thing class that we hoped, but we thought that it can be that we never find a fossil that would demonstrate it justifiable," we said the Norell mark, that Co-she was author of a paper that describes the new species. The study appears tomorrow in the nature of the newspaper of science. Norell, a guardian and the chair of the division of paleontology in the American museum of New York of natural history, said the theories that the dinosaurios were birdlike, the creatures of hot blood of the aids of the discovery that developed pens to remain hot-not to fly.



The investigators named paradoxus new of Dilong of the species of dinosaurio. Dilong derives from the words of the official held in low esteem that mean the "emperor" and the "dragoon." Paradoxus refers the found unusual pens in 5 carnivorous the foot-long one (1.5-to put-long). The investigation was partly supported by a concession of the committee of the national geographic society on the investigation and the exploration. Thomas Holtz, vertebrate paleontologo in the university of Maryland in park of the university, was between the group of early paleontologos to predict that tyrannosaurids had pens. The scientist, who was not implied in the study, said that they move it in the last finding.



"There are many of attention given to the surprises in paleontology," he said. "But there is a side to him where we hoped to be scientists, and the part of science bases on the predictions that are based on the best present evidence. Aid to see the casserole of the predictions towards outside with discoveries." The predictions Holtz and other paleontologos have done are based on the skeletal data that suggest them tyrannosaurids had a more recent common ancestor with the birds that Sinosauropteryx, dinosaurio emplumado known more primitive. Sinosauropteryx lived 120 ago to 150 million years. Holtz observed that, if the early pens of Sinosauropteryx and the pens of birds and other emplumados dinosaurios are all the expressions of he himself evolutionary change, "then we must deduce that tyrannosaurids also [had certain expression of he himself characteristic the pens]."



"To deduce of another way he would be invoking an evolutionary change for which we did not have any evidence," he said. Xu Xing of the institute of vertebrate paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, China, is the author of the lead of the new paper. It said his discovery is significant because he spills the light in the evolution of tyrannosaurids, that includes rex giant of the carnivorous T. Tyrannosaurids belongs to a ampler group, diverse of dinosaurios known like coelurosaurs. Most of the paleontologos they think that this group gave rise to birds. How it happened east evolutionary change is complex, Xu this. Tyrannosaurids great as rex of the T. were covered according to inquires in scales instead of the pens, suggesting they were related distant to the birds.



"With this new finding, we can see a perfect evolutionary transition of coelurosaurians typical tyrannosaurids great extremely specialized and to clarify a number of questions," Xu this. Particularly, the head of the new specimen shares many characteristics with tyrannosaurids advanced, said Xu, whereas its body is of a form coelursaurian more primitive, more nonspecific. The Hans-Dieter demands, the director of the associate for the investigation and the collections in the national museum of the institution of Smithsonain of natural history in Washington, C.C., agree. "New tyrannosaur small definitively demonstrates a primitive interesting mosaic of and characteristics derived; its skull is already the one of another one, tyrannosaurs rather last than the rest of its skeleton," said demand, that it is a member of the committee of the national geographic society for the investigation and the exploration.



The characteristic outposts of the skull of tyrannosaurid observed in Dilong include teeth and a single nasal bone. (Dinosaurios more primitive offered a pair of nasal bones.) Pero desemejante of tyrannosaurids more advanced, Dilong had relatively long forearms with three fingers, the report of the investigators. According to Holtz, the university of the paleontelogo of Maryland, the combination of a head outpost of tyrannosaurid with a body generalized of coelurosaur is constant within paleontology. "For example, the contemporary ceratopsian primitive of Psittacosaurus-a, and perhaps the prey, of Dilong-demonstrates a head with the initial changes towards the specializations of feeding of dinosaurios of last horns. The small pieces [of] their body are a body of herbivore generic," he said.