Latest news with #Dreadnoughtus
Forbes
29-07-2025
- Science
- Forbes
Monsters That Roamed Earth In The Day. What Would Fred Flintstone Say?
Paleontologist Ken Lacovera with a femur bone from his 6' 3' Dreadnoughtus discovery in Patagonia. Courtesy of Robert Clark In the day, how big could the real monster dinosaurs get? Renowned paleontologist Ken Lacovera, best known for his discovery in 2005 of Dreadnoughtus shrani, a 65-ton, 77-million-year-old Titanosaur unearthed in Patagonia, can tell you. Dreadnoughtus is one of the largest land animals ever to have roamed the Earth. One wonders what 1960s fictional television character Fred Flintsone would have thought had he encountered such a beast. Dread (pun intended) might be an appropriate word. We recently caught up with Lacovera, 64, for thoughts on his 'mammoth' discovery two decades back. Following are edited excerpts from a longer conversation. Jim Clash: What were you thinking when you first unearthed Dreadnoughtus? Ken Lacovara: When I found a 1.9-meter [6' 3'] femur bone in the desolate badlands of Patagonia, I suspected I'd discovered a new species of colossal plant-eater. That evening, under the blazing southern stars, I stared at the first few of the 145 bones we'd eventually unearth, wondering: 'Who are you? Where did you come from? What happened to you?' And, more practically, 'How am I going to get you out of here?' Our site was accessible only by raft and horse. Clash: What have been the implications of that find for the science of paleontology? Lacovara: At 65 tons - nine times the mass of a T. rex - you'd think Dreadnoughtus was near the upper limit for terrestrial animals. But bone analysis revealed it was still growing fast, even at its death! Clash: You're also a noted jazz drummer. Was there a moment when you had to choose one path over the other? Lacovera: Yes. After a stint at the Golden Nugget in Atlantic City [New Jersey], I was offered a Broadway gig in New York. But science had already gripped me, ignited largely by Carl Sagan's 'Cosmos,' so I chose graduate school. In a cosmic bit of serendipity, years later my first expedition was funded by Ann Druyan, Sagan's widow. Music remains part of my life, though. I still carry sticks when I travel, and can usually find a spot on stage to sit in. Clash: You recently cut ribbon on a new museum, correct? Lacovera: Over the past two decades, I've gone on to excavate thousands of fossils in southern New Jersey of all places, opening a window on the final chapters of the dinosaur age. To share these discoveries, we have opened the Edelman Fossil Park & Museum, a carbon net-zero architectural wonder with state-of-the-art exhibits, gardens, nature trails and a quarry where visitors can dig for fossils themselves. How about that?
Yahoo
29-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
A dinosaur ‘tombstone' lurks underneath New Jersey
The big sky country of the western North America is a world-renowned dinosaur playground. Household-name dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops, to the lesser known duck-billed Maiasaura once ate, slept, laid eggs, and pooped in this expansive region of plains, rivers, lakes, and mountains. However, the eastern half of the continent shouldn't be left out when the urge to hunt for fossils strikes. Take, for instance, the often maligned state of New Jersey. The Garden State is home to a rock layer that is essentially a geological dinosaur tombstone, preserving remnants of the planet Earth at a rather momentous time. 'What we have is a bone bed, and we can see it's right at the end of the Cretaceous Period,' Kenneth Lacovara, a geologist and paleontologist at Rowan University tells Popular Science. 'So what we really have is the best window into the last moments of the dinosaurs that exist on the planet.' Among his larger finds, Lacovara led the team that discovered the giant, 60-ton behemoth Dreadnoughtus in Argentina that was featured in 2022's Jurassic World: Dominion. When not out finding new Titanosaurs, Lacovara and other paleontologists have spent the last 17 years closer to his home, combing this end-Cretaceous bone bed square meter by square meter. They've recorded over 100,000 fossils, representing more than 100 species of plants and animals. 'All [of the fossils] from this end-Cretaceous boundary layer represent the extinction of the dinosaurs,' says Lacovara. Now, at a new museum and fossil park, citizen scientists can take to the dirt themselves to help put together the puzzle of how, when, and why the largest animals to ever walk the Earth met their demise. Over the past several decades, paleontologists have uncovered several more details on the death of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. Someday during the spring, an asteroid about 6 to 12 miles-wide slammed into the waters off of present-day eastern Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. 'From where I am in New Jersey, your first indication that something has gone wrong would have been at about eight minutes and 37 seconds later. At our location, there would have been a magnitude 10.3 earthquake. A 10.3 earthquake is bigger than the Earth can make. The Earth has to be rung from the outside like a bell to get an earthquake that big, since rocks don't have enough strength to build that much stress up before they snap,' explains Lacovara. That unprecedented earthquake would have spurred mega tsunamis with 2-mile high waves. It also would have been strong enough that 90-ton Sauropods and other mega dinosaurs would have been knocked off their feet–to their deaths. 'If you're a huge Sauropod dinosaur and you fall down, you probably die, you probably burst,' says Lacovara. After the asteroid's impact, the resulting crater would have been about 12 times the size of the state of Massachusetts. The impact likely sent up trillions of millimeter sized capsules of debris dripping with energy, like the fire coming off of a rocket. 'Within the first hour after the impact, global temperatures get up somewhere between toaster oven and pizza oven,' says Lacovara. 'So, if you're on the surface of the Earth that day, if you had no place to hide, you're toast.' Fan favorite dinosaurs Tyrannosaurs rex and Triceratops ultimately died out either quickly from the impact itself or more slowly from the food shortages caused by debris blocking the sunlight, or other planetary upheaval. However, not all of the dinosaurs really disappeared. [ Related: How do we know what dinosaurs looked like? ] The first Jurassic Park novel and subsequent 1993 film introduced a general audience to the idea that birds are dinosaurs. According to Lacovara, there's now a generation of working planetologists that credit Jurassic Park with sparking their interest in paleontology and science. Additionally, we have even more supporting evidence for the fact that some dinosaurs evolved into birds. 'Birds are clearly dinosaurs,' says Lacovara. 'To be considered a dinosaur, you have to have the first dinosaur for an ancestor, and birds do. It's the same reason why we're mammals. We all have the first mammal for an ancestor, and so does kangaroo, and so does blue whale, and so does a hamster.' It's the same with birds from tiny swallows up to giant flamingos or blue herons. They're dinosaurs that share the common ancestor–two-legged dinosaurs known as theropods, which include giants like Tyrannosaurs and smaller raptors. Or as Lacovara puts it, 'a hummingbird is a dinosaur, to the same degree that T. Rex, or a stegosaurus is a dinosaur.' Paleontologists also have a better record of how feathers evolved. Their first function was not flight, but rather insulation. The feathers adorning extinct dinosaurs like Yutyrannus huali and various raptor species likely would have sported something similar to the downy feathers on baby birds, instead of the flat interlocking feathers that evolved later on. 'It's only later that some of these feathered, non-avian dinosaurs began,' says Lacovara. 'They had an arboreal lifestyle, and they began jumping from tree to tree.' While paleontologists have made leaps and bounds in understanding both how dinosaurs lived and died, there is still a lot to learn about all extinct living things, from ammonites on up to the mighty megalodon. To help discover even more in the fossil record, digging enthusiasts can visit the new Edelman Fossil Park & Museum of Rowan University in Sewell, New Jersey. About 30 minutes outside of Philadelphia, the site offers the opportunity to not see some bones up close and also dig for their own discoveries in a former quarry. The park is somewhat of a real Jurassic Park–only without the threat of Velociraptors. With a stream of films, documentary series such as Walking with Dinosaurs, and books, the lure of dinosaurs endures. That love goes deeper than the fun of digging up dinosaur bones, fossilized poop, or Megaolodon teeth. 'I think it's for a bunch of reasons. For one, they were real. This isn't Godzilla or Bigfoot. These things were real,' says Lacovara. As for kids, arguably the target audience for the real Edleman Fossil Park & Museum and fictional Jurassic Park, Lacovara believes that dinosaurs often give children their first taste of expertise. 'For a number of years, they've been told about everything by everybody. 'Here's how to use a fork, here's how to lock the door, here's how to tie your shoes.' Now, for the first time, they're telling other people things that those other people don't know,' he says. Kids also make excellent amateur fossil hunters, and taking that expertise and applying it to the field can be quite exciting. Digging for fossils anywhere also opens exciting avenues to discoveries both big and small–from small seashell-like brachiopods in the damp soil to shark teeth and bigger bones. 'When a kid comes to the fossil park and finds that little clam shell or shark tooth with their own hands, that's a legitimate discovery. No human has ever seen that thing before. It's a little piece of information no human has ever known that thing before,' says Lacavora. 'So they become a legitimate explorer at that moment. And who doesn't want to be that?' [ Related: Celebrate 30 years of Jurassic Park with these recent dinosaur discoveries. ] While dinosaur bones and their extinction story might seem relegated to the past, natural history museums and paleontology offer us an important window to the future. Lacovara cites the quote attributed to Winson Churchill, 'The farther back you can look, the farther forward you can see,' as an example of the good that paleontology gives to the world and how natural history museums offer an important conservation message. 'It's a lens through which we can contextualize our present moment to hopefully help us make better choices for the future,' he says. 'People love what they know, and people protect what they love. So our mission is to connect people with both their ancient planet, and their present planet.' It's a planet that has faced at least five waves of mass extinction and is potentially in the cold grips of a sixth, one that is driven by human activity and not a force of nature like a giant asteroid strike or volcanic eruptions. 'We've been here a very, very short amount of time. And what makes us think that we have some privileged position, that our place in the future is guaranteed? It is not, and the kind of future that we would wish for our posterity is only going to happen if we work for it,' says Lacovara. 'It is not going to happen by accident.'
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
26 Dinosaur Facts That Are So Absolutely Bonkers I'm Questioning My Entire Education Right Now
We've seen them in Dinosaur, Jurassic Park, and The Land Before Time, but how much do you really know about dinosaurs? After speaking with paleontologist Dr. Kenneth Lacovara, I can honestly say — I didn't know as much as I thought! I mean, did you know dinosaurs likely didn't roar or that they still have living descendants today? What about the actual size of a velociraptor? There's more, too. From the speed of a T-Rex to a pterosaur's extensive wingspan, here are more fascinating dinosaur facts you probably didn't know. For context, Dr. Lacovara has discovered some of Earth's largest dinosaurs, including the massive Dreadnoughtus from Jurassic World — he even consulted on early Jurassic films. This interview was conducted during a press trip to Mantua, New Jersey, to tour Edelman Fossil Park & Museum, which Dr. Lacovara founded and opened on March 29. It has been edited for length and clarity. weren't as big and threatening as you think. Universal Pictures / Via Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Gr / Denver Post via Getty Images Dr. Lacovara says, "Velociraptors are nowhere near the size they were in Jurassic Park. A velociraptor skull is about six inches — they're roughly turkey-sized. So think about velociraptor as a pissed-off turkey. The size of the velociraptor in Jurassic Park is more like the size of a dinosaur named Deinonychus, which would be a terrible thing to encounter. You would be dead quickly. They were human-sized, fast, bipedal predators, equipped with deadly sickle-shaped claws, and thanks to their specialized wrists, they could swing those claws sideways in a motion able to impale and gaff hook their prey in a single, deadly strike." were EXTREMELY dangerous. Hadrosaurs, also known as duck-billed dinosaurs, are often portrayed as friendly, approachable creatures. According to Dr. Lacovara, that's far from the truth. "Too often, they are portrayed as dopey, friendly, gentle giants. In Jurassic Park, you can walk up and pet them. In reality, they will kill you." He adds, "There are no safe dinosaurs. Stay away from dinosaurs." 3.T-Rex had exceptionally good eyesight, despite what movies may have made you think. T-Rex are as dangerous as they've been portrayed. "They're the largest land predators ever. They had excellent vision. They could see you if you were standing still — they could smell you, too. Scientists estimate that those grapefruit-sized eyes could spot details with up to five times the sharpness of a falcon and 13 times better than a human. And, like birds and crocs today, T-Rex could see more colors than us, with vision extending into the ultraviolet range." "They were also fast — they could outrun the best Olympic sprinter." while you might not be able to outrun a T-Rex, you probably could out-maneuver one. "They can't turn well. Their head and their tail are so far apart, there's a lot of angular momentum, making it hard to turn around quickly. So if you were to be confronted by a T-Rex, don't try to outrun it, try to out-maneuver it." dinosaurs were precocial — meaning they were self-sufficient almost immediately after birth. "Some, like titanosaurs, got up and walked away just like an antelope does today. Others gave birth to altricial babies — think a little baby robin that's totally helpless when it's born. Some dinosaurs were born like that." oldest known dinosaur is the Nyasasaurus, which lived roughly 237 million years ago. "It lived in the Triassic period in Tanzania. It was small — maybe the size of a golden retriever. Other early dinosaurs are even smaller, more like the size of a house cat. They lived in a world dominated by crocodiles and other nasty reptilian beasts. Dinosaurs didn't become dominant until the Jurassic period, about 36 million years later." but pterosaurs are not dinosaurs. "They're flying reptiles." Related: 18 Adorable Celeb Pets That'll Make You Say "Awwww!" were the first creatures to fly that were bigger than a bug. The largest had a wingspan of 36 feet — roughly the size of a small plane. likely that dinosaurs didn't roar — they probably grumbled or whistled. "Dinosaurs don't roar like lions. They don't have a larynx. They have an analogous or a syrinx like birds and crocodiles. They probably made low gargles and grumbles and could have even made low whistles and pops like birds do." are descended from dinosaurs. "Your children's books lied to you about pterosaurs. The only dinosaurs that have ever flown are birds." Birds evolved from dinosaurs 150 million years ago during the Jurassic Park period. were among the most intelligent dinosaurs. Paleontologists measure dinosaur intelligence using a method called the encephalization quotient, in which their brain size is compared to their body size. "Troodon, a medium-sized feathered predator that lived in modern-day North America during the Cretaceous Period, is often considered one of the brainier dinosaurs because of its high EQ. However, Dr. Lacovara notes, "It's a crude measure. What is for sure is that dinosaurs were smart enough to be dinosaurs. Organisms tend to have the brains they need." would use its massive body weight to crush prey. Dr. Lacovara estimates Dreadnoughtus was about 65 tons. "That's nine times the weight of the T-Rex and about 10 times heavier than a Boeing 737. So you are not gonna mess with a T-Rex. Dreadnoughtus could lean against a T-Rex and press it into a tree and kill it." Related: 21 Extremely Rare Photos That'll Change Your Perception Of The Entire World of course, not all dinosaurs existed at the same time. For example, Dreadnoughtus didn't live at the same time as T-Rex, and T-Rex didn't exist with Stegosaurus. "Dinosaurs spanned 165 million years. Most of them never saw each other. T-Rex lived 66 million years ago and walked among the fossil bones of dinosaurs that are older than our fossils of T-Rex." animals, including frogs, turtles, sharks, clams, and fish lived millions of years before dinosaurs. contrary to what you may have heard, oil does NOT come from them. "Sorry, Elon Musk," Dr. Lacovara says, claiming he once got into a "Twitter fight" with Elon over whether dinosaurs produced oil. "It comes from the smallest creatures, marine plankton. There would never be enough dinosaurs in the world to make all the petroleum that we have." shows velociraptors had feathers — not scales like you've seen in the movies. Deinonychus is another dinosaur believed to have had feathers. dinosaur poop is called coprolite. dinosaur species could swim. "To clarify, Mosasaurs and Plesiosaurs were not dinosaurs — they were reptiles, but dinosaurs could do some swimming, just like any vertebrae animal. There are places where paleontologists have seen a dinosaur trackway that appears to be going into a lake, then the tracks become lighter and lighter until you see a few scrapes on the ground where their claws were swishing against the mud as they swam out into the lake." colors we've seen attributed to dinosaurs are completely fabricated. "The way we assess colors is by looking at modern analogs today. So for example, what color are really giant animals today? Well, disappointingly, they're gray — from whales to hippos and rhinos. So probably the really big dinosaurs were gray or very drab." dinosaurs, however, were probably very colorful. "They could have used their color for signaling. Today, we see animals use color for threat displays, mating displays, and camouflage, of course, so there are all kinds of uses for color and pattern that dinosaurs could have used, too." 2004, paleontologists found the skull of what was believed to be a new dinosaur species. It was named Dracorex hogwartsia, a nod to the Harry Potter books, and is known for its dragon-like head. But according to Dr. Lacovara, "there's convincing research that shows that Dracorex is really just a juvenile Pachycephalosaurus." Pachycephalosaurs have high, dome-like skulls and were first discovered around the mid-1800s. "If true, the Dracorex name would go away, and it would just be called Pachycephalosaurus." fossils are among the hardest to find. Paleontologists first discovered them in the early 1900s — sadly, those fossils were later destroyed in a bombing. "The fossils were first found in 1911 in Egypt. The bones were brought to the Bavarian Museum of Natural History and were on display for decades until those bones and the bones of three other species were destroyed in April of 1944 in an Allied bombing raid. They became known as the Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt — until paleontologists found more spinosaurus fossils in Morocco in 2014." Some scientists believe they were a swimming dinosaur. didn't roar at their food. "Just think – you don't walk up to your salad and yell at it before you eat it. It would have scared off prey." can't de-extinct a dinosaur. "The de-extinction portrayed in the Jurassic movies is probably not realistic. DNA is a water-soluble molecule and doesn't seem to persist that long. The oldest DNA that's been recovered from an organism so far is about 800,000 years, and the oldest environmental DNA is less than two million years. That's a long way from 66 million years and beyond. But scientists are, through genetic engineering, bringing back species that went extinct in the very recent past, such as the dodo, the marsupial wolf, and the mammoth." In April, scientists claimed to have resurrected the dire wolf over 12,000 years after it became extinct. asteroid event that caused dinosaurs to become extinct made global surface temperatures rise as hot as a toaster or pizza oven. "Geophysicists estimate that within an hour of impact, global surface temperatures soared to somewhere between toaster oven and pizza oven. If you were on Earth that day, exposed on the surface with nowhere to hide, you were toast." Most surviving creatures were able to burrow beneath the surface. the largest creature on Earth after the asteroid event was likely badger-sized. Were you surprised by any of these facts? Have any others to share? Write them in the comments below. And be sure to check out Edelman Fossil Park & Museum, which features dinosaur reconstructions, live animal exhibits, a dig experience at the backyard quarry (where thousands of fossils have already been unearthed), and more! Also in Animals: 21 Animals Mother Nature Encoded With A Secret Message
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
26 Dinosaur Facts That Are So Absolutely Bonkers I'm Questioning My Entire Education Right Now
We've seen them in Dinosaur, Jurassic Park, and The Land Before Time, but how much do you really know about dinosaurs? After speaking with paleontologist Dr. Kenneth Lacovara, I can honestly say — I didn't know as much as I thought! I mean, did you know dinosaurs likely didn't roar or that they still have living descendants today? What about the actual size of a velociraptor? There's more, too. From the speed of a T-Rex to a pterosaur's extensive wingspan, here are more fascinating dinosaur facts you probably didn't know. For context, Dr. Lacovara has discovered some of Earth's largest dinosaurs, including the massive Dreadnoughtus from Jurassic World — he even consulted on early Jurassic films. This interview was conducted during a press trip to Mantua, New Jersey, to tour Edelman Fossil Park & Museum, which Dr. Lacovara founded and opened on March 29. It has been edited for length and clarity. weren't as big and threatening as you think. Universal Pictures / Via Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Gr / Denver Post via Getty Images Dr. Lacovara says, "Velociraptors are nowhere near the size they were in Jurassic Park. A velociraptor skull is about six inches — they're roughly turkey-sized. So think about velociraptor as a pissed-off turkey. The size of the velociraptor in Jurassic Park is more like the size of a dinosaur named Deinonychus, which would be a terrible thing to encounter. You would be dead quickly. They were human-sized, fast, bipedal predators, equipped with deadly sickle-shaped claws, and thanks to their specialized wrists, they could swing those claws sideways in a motion able to impale and gaff hook their prey in a single, deadly strike." were EXTREMELY dangerous. Hadrosaurs, also known as duck-billed dinosaurs, are often portrayed as friendly, approachable creatures. According to Dr. Lacovara, that's far from the truth. "Too often, they are portrayed as dopey, friendly, gentle giants. In Jurassic Park, you can walk up and pet them. In reality, they will kill you." He adds, "There are no safe dinosaurs. Stay away from dinosaurs." 3.T-Rex had exceptionally good eyesight, despite what movies may have made you think. T-Rex are as dangerous as they've been portrayed. "They're the largest land predators ever. They had excellent vision. They could see you if you were standing still — they could smell you, too. Scientists estimate that those grapefruit-sized eyes could spot details with up to five times the sharpness of a falcon and 13 times better than a human. And, like birds and crocs today, T-Rex could see more colors than us, with vision extending into the ultraviolet range." "They were also fast — they could outrun the best Olympic sprinter." while you might not be able to outrun a T-Rex, you probably could out-maneuver one. "They can't turn well. Their head and their tail are so far apart, there's a lot of angular momentum, making it hard to turn around quickly. So if you were to be confronted by a T-Rex, don't try to outrun it, try to out-maneuver it." dinosaurs were precocial — meaning they were self-sufficient almost immediately after birth. "Some, like titanosaurs, got up and walked away just like an antelope does today. Others gave birth to altricial babies — think a little baby robin that's totally helpless when it's born. Some dinosaurs were born like that." oldest known dinosaur is the Nyasasaurus, which lived roughly 237 million years ago. "It lived in the Triassic period in Tanzania. It was small — maybe the size of a golden retriever. Other early dinosaurs are even smaller, more like the size of a house cat. They lived in a world dominated by crocodiles and other nasty reptilian beasts. Dinosaurs didn't become dominant until the Jurassic period, about 36 million years later." but pterosaurs are not dinosaurs. "They're flying reptiles." Related: 18 Adorable Celeb Pets That'll Make You Say "Awwww!" were the first creatures to fly that were bigger than a bug. The largest had a wingspan of 36 feet — roughly the size of a small plane. likely that dinosaurs didn't roar — they probably grumbled or whistled. "Dinosaurs don't roar like lions. They don't have a larynx. They have an analogous or a syrinx like birds and crocodiles. They probably made low gargles and grumbles and could have even made low whistles and pops like birds do." are descended from dinosaurs. "Your children's books lied to you about pterosaurs. The only dinosaurs that have ever flown are birds." Birds evolved from dinosaurs 150 million years ago during the Jurassic Park period. were among the most intelligent dinosaurs. Paleontologists measure dinosaur intelligence using a method called the encephalization quotient, in which their brain size is compared to their body size. "Troodon, a medium-sized feathered predator that lived in modern-day North America during the Cretaceous Period, is often considered one of the brainier dinosaurs because of its high EQ. However, Dr. Lacovara notes, "It's a crude measure. What is for sure is that dinosaurs were smart enough to be dinosaurs. Organisms tend to have the brains they need." would use its massive body weight to crush prey. Dr. Lacovara estimates Dreadnoughtus was about 65 tons. "That's nine times the weight of the T-Rex and about 10 times heavier than a Boeing 737. So you are not gonna mess with a T-Rex. Dreadnoughtus could lean against a T-Rex and press it into a tree and kill it." Related: 21 Extremely Rare Photos That'll Change Your Perception Of The Entire World of course, not all dinosaurs existed at the same time. For example, Dreadnoughtus didn't live at the same time as T-Rex, and T-Rex didn't exist with Stegosaurus. "Dinosaurs spanned 165 million years. Most of them never saw each other. T-Rex lived 66 million years ago and walked among the fossil bones of dinosaurs that are older than our fossils of T-Rex." animals, including frogs, turtles, sharks, clams, and fish lived millions of years before dinosaurs. contrary to what you may have heard, oil does NOT come from them. "Sorry, Elon Musk," Dr. Lacovara says, claiming he once got into a "Twitter fight" with Elon over whether dinosaurs produced oil. "It comes from the smallest creatures, marine plankton. There would never be enough dinosaurs in the world to make all the petroleum that we have." shows velociraptors had feathers — not scales like you've seen in the movies. Deinonychus is another dinosaur believed to have had feathers. dinosaur poop is called coprolite. dinosaur species could swim. "To clarify, Mosasaurs and Plesiosaurs were not dinosaurs — they were reptiles, but dinosaurs could do some swimming, just like any vertebrae animal. There are places where paleontologists have seen a dinosaur trackway that appears to be going into a lake, then the tracks become lighter and lighter until you see a few scrapes on the ground where their claws were swishing against the mud as they swam out into the lake." colors we've seen attributed to dinosaurs are completely fabricated. "The way we assess colors is by looking at modern analogs today. So for example, what color are really giant animals today? Well, disappointingly, they're gray — from whales to hippos and rhinos. So probably the really big dinosaurs were gray or very drab." dinosaurs, however, were probably very colorful. "They could have used their color for signaling. Today, we see animals use color for threat displays, mating displays, and camouflage, of course, so there are all kinds of uses for color and pattern that dinosaurs could have used, too." 2004, paleontologists found the skull of what was believed to be a new dinosaur species. It was named Dracorex hogwartsia, a nod to the Harry Potter books, and is known for its dragon-like head. But according to Dr. Lacovara, "there's convincing research that shows that Dracorex is really just a juvenile Pachycephalosaurus." Pachycephalosaurs have high, dome-like skulls and were first discovered around the mid-1800s. "If true, the Dracorex name would go away, and it would just be called Pachycephalosaurus." fossils are among the hardest to find. Paleontologists first discovered them in the early 1900s — sadly, those fossils were later destroyed in a bombing. "The fossils were first found in 1911 in Egypt. The bones were brought to the Bavarian Museum of Natural History and were on display for decades until those bones and the bones of three other species were destroyed in April of 1944 in an Allied bombing raid. They became known as the Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt — until paleontologists found more spinosaurus fossils in Morocco in 2014." Some scientists believe they were a swimming dinosaur. didn't roar at their food. "Just think – you don't walk up to your salad and yell at it before you eat it. It would have scared off prey." can't de-extinct a dinosaur. "The de-extinction portrayed in the Jurassic movies is probably not realistic. DNA is a water-soluble molecule and doesn't seem to persist that long. The oldest DNA that's been recovered from an organism so far is about 800,000 years, and the oldest environmental DNA is less than two million years. That's a long way from 66 million years and beyond. But scientists are, through genetic engineering, bringing back species that went extinct in the very recent past, such as the dodo, the marsupial wolf, and the mammoth." In April, scientists claimed to have resurrected the dire wolf over 12,000 years after it became extinct. asteroid event that caused dinosaurs to become extinct made global surface temperatures rise as hot as a toaster or pizza oven. "Geophysicists estimate that within an hour of impact, global surface temperatures soared to somewhere between toaster oven and pizza oven. If you were on Earth that day, exposed on the surface with nowhere to hide, you were toast." Most surviving creatures were able to burrow beneath the surface. the largest creature on Earth after the asteroid event was likely badger-sized. Were you surprised by any of these facts? Have any others to share? Write them in the comments below. And be sure to check out Edelman Fossil Park & Museum, which features dinosaur reconstructions, live animal exhibits, a dig experience at the backyard quarry (where thousands of fossils have already been unearthed), and more! Also in Animals: 21 Animals Mother Nature Encoded With A Secret Message
New York Times
31-03-2025
- Science
- New York Times
A New Dinosaur Museum Rises From a Hole in the Ground in New Jersey
Ten years ago, this was just a big hole in the ground behind a Lowe's home improvement store in southern New Jersey, an unlikely place to find what might be one of the world's most important fossil sites. But 66 million years ago, tantalizingly close in time to when the dinosaurs went extinct, a multitude of sea creatures died here — a 'mass death assemblage' — and sank to the bottom of what was then a shallow sea. Because of its prehistoric past as a possible mass extinction gravesite, the hole that was once a quarry has become the Edelman Fossil Park & Museum. Built in Mantua, N.J., about 20 miles from Philadelphia, the museum welcomed its first paying customers this past weekend. For Kenneth Lacovara, a professor of paleontology and geology at nearby Rowan University and the museum's executive director, it is the culmination of a decade of work. 'We're doing so much here that I think has never been done in any museum,' said Dr. Lacovara, best known in paleontology for the discovery of Dreadnoughtus, one of the largest dinosaurs ever. The fossils come with a hard-to-miss message from Dr. Lacovara, one that makes direct connections between the mass extinction 66 million years ago and today's rapidly changing climate, which is putting many species in danger of dying out. The museum's motto is 'Discover the past, protect the future.' 'That's really the thrust of this place,' Dr. Lacovara said. 'We need to act, and we need to act now, and every day of inaction or worse, every day that we go backwards, is a burden that we are placing on future generations.' For decades, the Inversand Company had scooped from the quarry a dark greenish sand called marl, used for the treatment of water and soil. Tightened environmental regulations turned the site into a money loser, and Inversand looked to close it. Mantua had hoped that a developer would turn the pit into more suburban homes and shopping. But the Great Recession stalled those plans, and the quarry remained a hole in the ground. The mining of marl had exposed prehistoric sediments that extend throughout this part of South Jersey, but are typically inconveniently buried more than 40 feet underground. Dr. Lacovara, then at Drexel University in Philadelphia, had started visiting the site, which included a fossil-laden layer that appeared to coincide with the mass extinction 66 million years ago. Fossils of anything that died that day are scant within the extinction layer, because the conditions needed to preserve bones are rare. 'This is something that I personally and lots of other paleontologists have been looking for all around the world,' said Dr. Lacovara, adding that he had sought such a layer in southern Patagonia, the foothills of the Himalayas and elsewhere. 'And I found it behind the Lowe's in New Jersey,' he said. More than 100,000 fossils representing 100 species have been carefully excavated from the quarry and cataloged. Until the pandemic, the site opened once a year to the public for a community fossil dig, allowing people to collect fossils from sediments above the mass extinction layer. Rowan University bought the site in 2015 for just under $2 million and lured Dr. Lacovara, who had graduated from the school when it was known as Glassboro State College, to join its faculty as the dean of the new School of Earth and Environment. Rowan also bought into Dr. Lacovara's vision of building a museum. 'This is going to be a place to motivate young minds to become scientists,' Ali Houshmand, the president of Rowan, said in remarks at the start of the media tour. Jean and Ric Edelman, founders of a financial advisory firm and also graduates of Glassboro State, contributed $25 million of the $75 million Rowan needed to build it. 'We immediately recognized that this had the potential to be a world-class destination,' Mr. Edelman said. There is plenty of what one would expect to find in a dinosaur museum, which overlooks the fossil site in the former quarry. Near the ticket kiosks are skeletons of creatures that lived along the east coast of North America during the Cretaceous period. A mosasaur, a ferocious marine reptile, hangs from the ceiling, and a Dryptosaurus, a relative of T. rex, poses menacingly. The museum highlights how some of the earliest dinosaur discoveries were made in New Jersey. The first nearly complete dinosaur skeleton — a duck-billed hadrosaur — was dug up in a quarry in Haddonfield in 1858. Dryptosaurus was the first tyrannosaur to be discovered, in 1866, just a mile from the museum. Visitors walk a winding path through three galleries in the museum. In the first gallery, an introductory movie provides perspective on just how mind-bogglingly old our planet is. If the 4.5-billion-year history of Earth were a 1,000-page book, the entire 10,000 years of human civilization would be covered by just the last word on the last page. That sense of 'deep time' is meant to set up visitors for an understanding of how unnaturally quickly Earth's climate is changing now. Life-size re-creations of dinosaurs, big and not so big, fill the gallery. In the warmth of the late Cretaceous, sea levels were much higher and North America was a series of islands. In one, a big, angry plant-eater known as Astrodon stomps a juvenile meat-eater, Acrocanthosaurus, to death. 'We want to show the gritty underbelly of the dinosaur world,' Dr. Lacovara said. The next gallery highlights the marine creatures that lived in the seas here, including sea turtles, sharks and saber-toothed salmon. This part of New Jersey was about 70 feet underwater and 15 to 30 miles offshore. 'In this gallery, everything you see here is something that was found on the property,' Dr. Lacovara said. That includes the fearsome mosasaurs. 'I would say it's a statistical near certainty that at some point in time, a mosasaur of this size was at that exact location,' Dr. Lacovara said, pointing to a re-creation of the creature. Visitors then enter the Hall of Extinction and Hope. It shows the devastation that enveloped Earth after an asteroid struck the Gulf of Mexico off the Yucatán Peninsula, the fifth mass extinction in the planet's history. Then it turns to the present, which many other scientists describe as the sixth extinction as species struggle to adapt to the changes humans have made to the planet, including the destruction of habitats and global warming spurred by the rise in greenhouse gases released from the burning of fossil fuels. One interactive exhibit shows the sharp rise in global temperatures over the past few centuries and allows a visitor to compare that curve with possible natural causes like sunspots, volcanic eruptions and cyclical changes in Earth's orbit. 'None of those things explain the temperature variation,' Dr. Lacovara said. But the simultaneous rise of temperature and greenhouse gases are 'almost an exact correlation,' he said. 'So at that point, you can draw your own conclusions.' He said he wanted people to learn by examining the data themselves. 'Not everybody is going to connect the dots,' Dr. Lacovara said, 'but if they're inclined to, our job is to help.' At the last station, kiosks offer visitors information about how they can take action to offset climate change. 'Because hope without action is really despair,' Dr. Lacovara said. 'You're all set up to make a positive change in the world before you walk out the doors of the museum.' How might this message play in a time when President Trump calls climate change a hoax and his administration is dismantling projects and research aiming to move away from fossil fuels? 'I guess we'll see when the museum opens,' said Kelly Stoetzel, the managing director who oversees the day-to-day running of the museum. It expects to draw 200,000 visitors a year. She said she was interested in hearing the reactions of visitors who are skeptical that the planet is undergoing rapid changes. 'When they come in and they learn the science, can they be convinced to consider something different?' Ms. Stoetzel said. 'Maybe.' For Dr. Lacovara, the message is simple. 'You can't love what you don't know,' he said. 'And we're hoping to make people fall in love with this amazing planet that we have so that they take action to protect it.' The museum's learn-by-doing ethos will allow visitors to become paleontologists for a day. For an extra fee, from May through October, visitors will be able to dig through the quarry sands for fossils that they can take home. The museum also includes fun flourishes. Take the elevator between its two floors, and you'll hear a snippet of popular singers of the 1950s and 1960s like Dean Martin, whose given name was Dino. Thus, 'dino lounge' music. At the entrance is the pronouncement, 'This facility is smoke-free, weapons-free and asteroid free (for the last 66 million years).' Dr. Lacovara is also proud of the glass used for the exterior windows, because it keeps modern-day dinosaurs — birds — from fatally flying into them. 'What I really love about it is, it relies on evolutionary principles,' Dr. Lacovara said. The eyes of the first vertebrate animals, predating both mammals and dinosaurs, possessed four color receptors — for red, blue, green and ultraviolet light. Birds, which are dinosaurs that survived the mass extinction, still have ultraviolet receptors in their eyes. They see images of spider webs that are imprinted on the museum's glass, and they safely fly away. 'If you come up and you catch just the right angle, you can kind of see it,' Dr. Lacovara said. Mammals, however, lost the ability to see ultraviolet light, because when they arose more than 200 million years ago, they were small creatures that scurried about at night — better not to be seen and eaten by the dinosaurs. There is not a lot of ultraviolet light at night, and in mammals, the gene that encodes that receptor in the eye was co-opted by the olfactory system. As a result, mammals tend to have a good sense of taste and smell but cannot see ultraviolet light. 'To us mammals, this looks like clear glass,' Dr. Lacovara said. 'And I know this because the forklift truck driver who drove through one of these panes was a mammal.' With the museum now open, Dr. Lacovara hopes to turn his attention toward proving that the mass death assemblage in the quarry pit indeed consists of animals killed in the planet-wide cataclysm that followed the asteroid strike. That has been hard to settle, however, because creatures burrowing in the sea bottom churned up the sediments. As a result, the marker of the extinction — a layer containing substantial amounts of iridium, an element concentrated in asteroids and comets — is fuzzy. 'It's almost like looking through a shower door at something,' Dr. Lacovara said. He said he had all the data he needed, but work on the museum had not left him time to finish writing the papers. 'This has been all-consuming,' Dr. Lacovara said.
