An artist’s impression of Yutyrannus huali, a giant, previously unrecognized dinosaur. The name of the species means “beautiful feathered tyrant.” Brian Choo
A Yutyrannus skull. Zang Hailong
Yutyrannus tail feathers. Zang Hailong
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD Published: April 4, 2012
Fossils discovered in northeastern China of a giant, previously unrecognized dinosaur show that it is the largest known feathered animal, living or extinct, scientists report.
Although several species of dinosaurs with feathers have already been uncovered in the rich fossil beds of Liaoning Province, the three largely complete 125-million-year-old specimens are by far the largest. The adult was at least 30 feet long and weighed a ton and a half, about 40 times the heft of Beipiaosaurus, the largest previously known feathered dinosaur. The two juveniles were a mere half ton each.
The new species was a distant relative of Tyrannosaurus rex, the mighty predator that lived 60 million years later, at the end of the dinosaur era. The scaly T. rex apparently did not go in for feathers.
In an article in the journal Nature, published online Wednesday, Chinese and Canadian paleontologists said the discovery provided the first “direct evidence for the presence of extensively feathered gigantic dinosaurs” and offered “new insights into early feather evolution.”
Xing Xu of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, who was the lead author of the paper, said in a statement that it was “possible that feathers were much more widespread, at least among meat-eating dinosaurs, than most scientists would have guessed even a few years ago.”
Dr. Xu said the feathers were simple filaments, more like the fuzzy down of a modern baby chick than the stiff plumes of an adult bird. Such insubstantial feathers, not to mention the animal’s huge size, would have made flight impossible. The feathers’ most important function was probably as insulation.
The species has been named Yutyrannus huali, which means “beautiful feathered tyrant” in a combination of Latin and Mandarin.
Mark A. Norell, a curator of paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, who had no part in the research, said the findings were significant because they swept aside a longstanding argument that perhaps dinosaurs had feathers only when they were small and shed them as they grew.
Corwin Sullivan, a Canadian paleontologist affiliated with the Beijing institute and an author of the report, noted that the idea of primitive feathers for insulation was not new.
“However, large-bodied animals typically can retain heat quite easily, and actually have more of a potential problem with overheating,” Dr. Sullivan said. “That makes Yutyrannus, which is large and downright shaggy, a bit of a surprise.”
The researchers suggested that the climate might have been cooler when this feathered giant lived than it was when T. rex roamed in the late Cretaceous period. Not necessarily, said Dr. Norell, who pointed out that large, hairy mammals like giraffes and wildebeest, perhaps analogous to feathered dinosaurs, live today in hot latitudes.
Another possible explanation, offered by the authors of the journal article, is that the feathers were not widely distributed over the dinosaurs’ bodies, and so their function as display plumage cannot be ruled out. Yet the researchers noted several times that the feather covering was extensive and “densely packed,” resembling some recent discoveries of fossil birds “that undoubtedly had plumage covering most of the body.”
“This is a great time to be a dinosaur paleontologist,” said Dr. Norell, whose research concentrates on fossils from China and the Gobi Desert of Mongolia. “The feathered dinosaurs show how the whole conception of dinosaurs has really changed in the last 15 years.”
Animal discovered by 11-year-old Russian boy may have been killed by humans in the Ice Age
Associated Press in Moscow - guardian.co.uk, Friday 5 October 2012 16.36 BST
The head of the mammoth, which is said to be the best-preserved since one found in 1901. Photograph: Sergei Gorbunov/AP
A well-preserved mammoth that may have been killed by Ice Age humans has been found in the permafrost of northern Siberia.
Prof Alexei Tikhonov of the Zoology Institute in St Petersburg announced the finding of the mammoth, which was excavated from the Siberian permafrost in late September near the Sopochnaya Karga cape, 2,200 miles (3,500km) north-east of Moscow.
The 16-year-old mammoth has been named Jenya, after the 11-year-old Russian boy who found the animal's limbs sticking out of the frozen mud. The mammoth was two metres (6ft 6in) tall and weighed 500kg (1,100lb). "He was pretty small for his age," Tikhonov said.
But what killed Jenya was not his size but a missing left tusk that made him unfit for fights with other mammoths or human hunters who were settling the Siberian marshes and swamps some 20,000-30,000 years ago, Tikhonov said.
The splits on Jenya's remaining tusk show a "possible human touch", he added.
The examination of Jenya's body has already proved that the massive humps on mammoths seen on Ice Age cave paintings from Spain and France were not extended bones but huge chunks of fat that helped them survive the long, cold winters, Tikhonov said.
Jenya's hump was relatively small, which means he died during a short Arctic summer, he said.
Up to 4 metres in height and 10 tonnes in weight, mammoths inhabited huge areas between Great Britain and north America and were driven to extinction by humans and the changing climate.
Woolly mammoths are thought to have died out around 10,000 years ago, although scientists think small groups of them lived longer in Alaska and on Russia's .. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/russia .. Wrangel Island off the Siberian coast.
Their bodies have mostly been found in the Siberian permafrost. Siberian cultural myths paint them as primordial creatures who moved underground and helped to create the Earth.
Most of the well-preserved mammoths are calves. Jenya's carcass is the best-preserved one since the 1901 discovery of a giant mammoth near the Beryozovka river in Russia's north-eastern Yakutia region, Tikhonov said.
Unfortunately, its DNA has been damaged by low temperatures and is "hardly" suitable for possible cloning, he said.
However, an earlier mammoth discovery might be able to help recreate the Ice Age elephant.
Russia's North-Eastern Federal University said in early September that an international team of researchers had discovered mammoth hair, soft tissues and bone marrow some 100 metres underground during a summer expedition in Yakutia.
Scientists have already deciphered much of the genetic code of the woolly mammoth from balls of mammoth hair found frozen in the Siberian permafrost. Some believe it would be possible to recreate the prehistoric animal if living cells are found in the permafrost.
Anyone who succeeds in recreating an extinct animal could claim a "Jurassic Park prize", a concept being developed by the X Prize Foundation that awarded a 2004 prize for the first private spacecraft.
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