WASHINGTON (AP) - Fossils of two previously unknown dinosaur species from North America have been identified, researchers announced Monday. Scientists speculate the dinosaurs were feathered and lived about 90 million years ago. Their fossils were found in the Zuni Basin in New Mexico. A team led by Doug Wolfe of the Zuni Basin Paleontological Project has identified a skull and other fossilized bones as belonging to a type of dinosaur known as Coelurosaur, a two-legged meat-eater that stood about 3 feet tall. The new specimen has not been named and its formal description has not been completed, the researchers said.

04/21/2000

Scientists at North Carolina State University and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences have discovered the world's first dinosaur specimen with a fossilized heart. They report the historic finding in the April 21 issue of the journal Science. The fossil is on display in the museum's new $71-million building, which opened April 7. 

"Not only does this specimen have a heart, but computer-enhanced images of its chest strongly suggest it is a four-chambered, double-pump heart with a single systemic aorta, more like the heart of a mammal or bird than a reptile," says Dr. Dale Russell, a paleontologist at NC State University and a senior research curator at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences. 

The finding suggests the dinosaur's circulatory system was more advanced than that of reptiles, and supports the hypothesis that dinosaurs were warm-blooded, Russell says. 

"This challenges some of our most fundamental theories about how and when dinosaurs evolved," he says. 

Russell is director of the newly created Center for the Exploration of the Dinosaurian World, a joint project of the museum and the university. 

The dinosaur, a 66-million-year-old Thescelosaurus (THESS-uh-loh-SAWR-us) about the size of a short-legged pony, was found in 1993 in northwest South Dakota. It was acquired by the museum in 1996 and is on permanent display in the museum's new "Prehistoric North Carolina" exhibit. 

Scientists have nicknamed the 663-pound, 13-foot-long herbivore Willo, after the wife of the rancher on whose property it was found. 

Images of the fossil, a video, and further information is available on the Web at www.dinoheart.org, a free site maintained jointly by the university and museum. 

"Willo's ventricles and aorta indicate it had completely separate pulmonary and body circulation systems, which suggests it had a metabolic rate higher than we generally see in living reptiles," explains Dr. Michael Stoskopf, professor of wildlife and aquatic medicine and environmental toxicology at NC State, and an expert on the comparative anatomy of mammals, reptiles and birds. 

Working with Russell and Stoskopf, imaging specialists at NC State's College of Veterinary Medicine created enhanced 3-D composite images of Willo's thoracic cavity from a series of two-dimensional computerized tomography (CT) scans. These images confirmed that a grapefruit-sized reddish-brown clump visible in Willo's partially exposed chest was, indeed, a fossilized heart. 

"When we looked at the two-dimensional images, there was something in the thoracic cavity that resembled a heart, but we couldn't tell for certain. The skeleton was compressed and not in precise anatomical order due to being buried for 66 million years in sandstone," says Paul Fisher, director of the vet school's Biomedical Imaging Resource Facility. "But once the computer software put all the 2-D images together into a 3-D model, it became very apparent that, yeah -- this was the real deal. You could see both ventricles and the aorta." 

Dr. Reese Barrick, an NC State paleobiologist, and graduate student William Straight conducted X-ray diffraction analyses that confirmed the presence of iron in Willo's heart but not in the sediments surrounding the heart or skeleton. This corroborated Russell, Stoskopf and Fisher's findings that the fossilized concretion in Willo's chest was a heart. 

The research team's co-authors on the Science paper are Michael Hammer of Hammer & Hammer Paleotek of Jacksonville, Ore., and Dr. Andrew Kuzmitz of Ashland, Ore. Hammer and his son Jeff found Willo in the Hell Creek Formation in Harding County, South Dakota, in 1993. Kuzmitz, a family practitioner and amateur paleontologist, did the first CT scans on the fossil. 

Thescelosaurus means "marvelous lizard." Scientists have not yet conclusively identified which species of Thescelosaurus Willo is, but Russell and Hammer believe it is most likely T. neglectus. 

Neglectus translates as "neglected one" -- so named because though the first fossil was found in 1891, it was considered so unremarkable that it sat, unidentified and unstudied, in its packing crate at the Smithsonian Institution for 22 years. It wasn't until 1913 that paleontologist Charles Gilmore examined the fossil and discovered it to be a previously undescribed type. 

"Thescelosaurus neglectus, the marvelous neglected lizard," Russell says. "Marvelous? Yes. But I don't think this one is going to be neglected any more." 

Remarkably well-preserved, Willo is the only Thescelosaurus ever found with a complete skull and with soft tissues usually lost to decay. Tendons are still connected to its spine, and fossilized cartilage remains attached to its ribs. Shadows and shapes revealed by the 3-D images suggest Willo may contain other fossilized organs as well, Russell notes. 

Because of the dinosaur's scientific importance and fragile condition, the museum is displaying it in its original posture, still embedded in the sandstone in which it has rested for 66 million years. The right side of its skull, spinal column, ribs and sections of the tail are partially exposed. The left side and extremities were lost to erosion. 

"We got lucky. If it hadn't been discovered when it was, it could all have eroded within six months," Russell says. He speculates Willo's soft tissues were preserved by a process called saponification, in which soft tissues are converted into a soap-like substance when submerged in wet, oxygen-free environments, allowing them to petrify rather than decay. "This specimen was apparently buried in waterlogged sand," he says. "The cellular structure of the soft tissue was lost but its form was retained." 

Thescelosaurus was an ornithischian, or "bird-hipped," dinosaur that lived at the end of the Cretaceous period, about 1 million years before the end of the dinosaur era. Native to North America, its range extended from Wyoming and the Dakotas northward into Alberta, Canada. 

Since using the 3-D software to reveal Willo's heart, Fisher has also used it to create 3-D images of the fossil's skull, and of remains from other specimens in the museum's collection. It's the first time the software -- developed for medical imaging at the Mayo Clinic -- has been used on dinosaurs, he says, but likely not the last time. "This gives us a nondestructive way to look inside specimens that are still embedded, as two-thirds of Willo is, in stone," he says. "It's an amazing use of the technology." 

The Willo research team will collaborate with scientists and educators from NC State, the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences and other institutions worldwide to conduct continuing research on dinosaurs and dinosaurian ecosystems through the newly formed Center for the Exploration of the Dinosaurian World. 
 

###
North Carolina State University
News Services
919-515-3470
newstips@ncsu.edu
http://www.ncsu.edu/news/

North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences
919-733-7450
http://www.naturalsciences.org/

Video News Release/Background Materials Available
Check out http://www.dinoheart.org for images and background materials on Willo, a video news release and a radio news actuality. To access the site before 2 p.m., April 20, media must enter the ID "media" and the password "godinoheart." 

Media Contacts:
Dr. Dale Russell, 919-515-1339 or dale_russell@ncsu.edu
Paul Fisher, 919-513-6441 or paul_fisher@ncsu.edu
Tim Lucas, NC State News Services, 919-515-3470 or tim_lucas@ncsu.edu
Karen Kemp, NC Museum of Natural Sciences, 919-733-7450, ext. 304 or Karen.Kemp@ncmail.net. 

NOTE TO EDITORS: Dr. Michael Stoskopf can be reached at 919-513-6279 or michael_stoskopf@ ncsu.edu. Dr. Reese Barrick can be reached at 919-515-7648 or reese_barrick@ncsu.edu. Michael Hammer can be reached at 541-899-1864 or Paleotek@cdsnet.net. Dr. Andrew Kuzmitz can be reached at 541-482-5853 or akuzmitz@jeffnet.org. 

The abstract from the research team's paper in Science follows. 
"Cardiovascular Evidence for an Intermediate or Higher Metabolic Rate in an Ornithischian Dinosaur" Authors: Paul E. Fisher, Dale A. Russell, Michael K. Stoskopf, Reese E. Barrick, Michael Hammer, Andrew A. Kuzmitz Published: April 21, 2000, in Science 

ABSTRACT: Computerized tomography (CT) scans of a ferruginous concretion within the chest region of an ornithischian dinosaur reveal structures suggestive of a four chambered heart and single systemic aorta. The apparently derived condition of the cardiovascular system in turn suggests the existence of intermediate to high metabolic rates among dinosaurs. 

     INTERLAKEN, N.Y. (AP) _ From a pile of dirt excavated near his family's gas station, Mike Potts lifted out a basketball-sized boulder, heaved it unsteadily over his head and smashed it against another rock.
     There was no crystal inside, as he'd hoped. But embedded in one large limestone chunk was a glassy object, shaped a bit like a hand. Was it an ancient tree root? A bone from an animal that long ago roamed this land now gouged by the Finger Lakes? Or just an odd-shaped rock?
     ``I thought it might be a couple million years old,'' said Potts, 34, a mechanic who scours nature as much for physical exercise as for any sense of intrigue. ``To find out it's 375 million years old is kind of a shock.''
          The 5-inch-long find, with its unusual appendages and tiny fossils of ancient organisms attached, emerged in November from a cavity being dug for a 15-foot-deep gas tank. Potts was persuaded to pass it along to Cornell through a neighbor who works at the Ivy League school in nearby Ithaca.
     It was no less of an enigma in Chiment's hands, but intriguing enough to unleash the kind of exhaustive detective hunt with unforeseen twists that is commonplace in the jigsaw-puzzle world of paleontology.
     Chiment and graduate student Sande Burr finally found a promising match in Volume 21 of a 40-volume chronicle of the world's first around-the-world oceanographic survey.
     In the 1870s, while dredging the miles-deep waters off the Philippines, the crew of the British vessel HMS Challenger recovered the only known living specimen of a branching glass sponge. It's supposedly secreted away in a British museum somewhere. Chiment is hoping he'll soon get to inspect it.
     Distinct from squishy protein bath sponges or hard sponges made of calcium carbonate, glass sponges make their skeletons out of silica. Those equipped with branches the width of a finger appear to be extremely rare.
     Some have been spotted lately using robotic submersibles. There may be plenty more in the murky depths. But there's been no sight of them thus far in the fossil record of New York, one of the world's best-explored strata.
     Heralding Potts' discovery via the Internet then produced a surprise: Folks around central New York sent in similar specimens they'd picked up over the years. Chiment now has amassed eight possible branching glass sponge fossils or ``perhaps an unknown group of glass sponges.''
     ``I think what we're on to is a locality that is preserving a different group of animals than most of the previously very well-known Devonian fossil localities around here,'' he said.     During the Devonian Period some 410 million to 360 million years ago, eons before the advent of birds, dinosaurs and humans, an inland sea covered much of eastern North America.
     Judging from the profusion of fossils gathered in New York since the 1810s, notably Devonian corals and non-branching glass sponges,
 the standard theory is that this sea was probably never more than 300 feet deep.
     The existence of branching glass sponges would revive an old debate about whether the sea was much deeper in spots. However,
 paleontologists believe it's more likely those sponges once flourished in sunlight-penetrating waters and then, for whatever reasons, retreated to the oceans.
     ``Maybe they were pushed out of their preferred habitat by something else, say the corals,'' Chiment mused. Or now that oceanographers are finding that the ocean abyss seems as rich in species as rain forests or coral reefs, ``it may be the opposite. All of these questions are still open.''
     Because minute marine fauna such as trilobites and brachiopods tended to accumulate on them, ancient sponges could turn out to be peerless storytellers of ocean evolution, Chiment said.  And since sponges seem to form part of the mysterious missing link between single-celled bacteria and multi-celled animals, knowing them better might lend more immediate value such as new disease-fighting drugs or clues to why some coral reefs are dying.
     While paleontology continually raises tantalizing questions, many fossils end up in ``problematica drawers- all those things we don't understand yet because there's little or nothing to compare them to,'' Chiment said.
     For now, Chiment and Burr are busy consulting glass sponge specialists, subjecting their specimens to an array of imaging tests and deciding whether to publish their findings. They're also appealing to colleagues everywhere to dig through their problematica.
     ``More and better material could show up and that would be very helpful,'' said Warren Allmon, director of Ithaca's Paleontological
 Research Institution, which boasts the world's largest collection of Devonian glass sponges. ``This is one of the best explored places on earth and new things still keep coming up. Amateurs are out there collecting every weekend.''
     Potts is a convert. He now spends a few hours a week ``standing around like a chicken pecking at rocks'' in the woods and fields near this village a few miles from Cayuga Lake. ``It's become a neat hobby,'' he said.

10/27/98

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Dozens of fossilized reptile nests discovered in Arizona's Petrified Forest may be the oldest fossils of their kind in the world, scientists reported Monday. The nests - 62 bowl-like pits about 12 inches wide and 18 inches deep - were found along the banks of an ancient, vanished river system and are believed to be 220 million years old. That is about twice the age of the next-oldest reptile nest fossils, the scientists said in a statement released by the University of Colorado at Boulder. The nests were probably made by ancient crocodile-like animals called phytosaurs, armored reptiles known as aetosaurs and perhaps ancient turtles. The Petrified Forest is a section of Arizona's Painted Desert known for its petrified trees.

     CARDIFF, Sept 10 (Reuters) - A new species of mayfly, preserved in amber and estimated to be more than 25 million years old, was unveiled on Thursday.   Andrew Ross, a curator of fossils at Britain's Natural History Museum, told a science conference that the specimen was extremely unusual.  ``It is the first known mayfly in Mexican amber. It's a completely new species,'' he told a press conference.  ``Mayflies are incredibly rare in amber for the simple reason that they only live a few hours...the chances of any of them getting trapped in amber are very slim indeed.''
      An amber dealer, who bought the sample from local Indians in Mexico, brought it to Ross for identification and evaluation.  It is now part of the museum collection.  Amber, fossilised resin from the bark of trees, is a light organic substance. The main deposits are around the Baltic Sea in Russia, Lithuania, Poland and Germany and in the Dominican Republic. Mexican amber is very rare.
     Insects and sometimes larger animals get caught in the sticky resin and trapped by continual flows of amber coming down from the tree.   ``Amber is an amazing substance. It preserves really small things that can never get preserved it rock,'' said Ross.  The resin is popular for making jewellery and for the insects and other objects that are trapped in it.
 

^REUTERS@

^REUTERS@

       WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A pile of dung from an ancient sloth has yielded up secrets from the creature that left it 19,000 years ago, in the form of DNA, researchers said Thursday.   It shows the long-dead animal ate plants such as capers, mustard, mint and lilies, the international team of experts from the United States, Germany, Sweden and Britain said.       Writing in the journal Science, they said they used a new technique to tease the DNA out of the dung, something no one else had been able to do.
     Hendrik Poinar of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Munich and his team found the nearly fossilized feces at Gypsum Cave, which is 18 miles  east of Las Vegas, Nevada.    The cave is full of dried-up animal poop, which researchers have been trying to analyze. 
  Poinar's team used a technique known as polymerase chain reaction (PCR), which makes trillions of copies of tiny gene fragments, making enough product to look at.  This method has failed so far on ancient feces -- known as coprolites -- so the group added a chemical agent called PTB (N-phenacylthiazolium bromide), which released enough DNA to make the PCR work.
     They were first able to identify the animal as a member of the sloth family, ``presumably Nothrotheritops shastensis, whose bones were found in the cave,'' they wrote in the journal Science.
     This giant sloth has been extinct for 11,000 years. But there was DNA in its stool from plants.     They identified genetic material from several known species. ``These are, in order of frequency...: Capers and mustards, lilies and allies, grasses, borages and mints, and saltbushes,'' they wrote.  There was also something that seems to be related to a wild grape.     The team hopes to use its technique to analyze other animal
excreta.

 ^REUTERS@