MONGOLIA – Before there were Power Rangers Dino Thunder, there was the original Power Rangers. And before Power Rangers, there were dinosaurs.

And before I learned to love booze, hookers, and Africa, I loved dinosaurs. Any more you can get any old piece of any old lizard on the black market so, as a service to you, I will keep you, my potential clientele, abreast of the dinosaur related news for each financial quarter.

“KILLING MACHINE” by the indispensable Brandon Bird. Show him (and the wall of your loft) the love.

First Trace of Color Found in Fossil Bird Feathers

When I zoomed in on the fossils, it was nothing but these little sausages.”
-Jakob Vinther, Yale graduate student

While you were asleep, pretty much every member of Suborder Theropoda (yer Allosaurs, yer Deinonychus, yer Troödons, all that good stuff), have received new depictions with fine coats of fuzzy, feathery coats.

+  =

Until recently, all evidence of feathers have either been from imprints in rock or from otherwise colorless fossils leaving you and I left reaching for our box of crayons at random to depict our bitchin’ Utahraptor ambushes. Now, plucky paleontologists have discovered color-producing molecules within a fossil feather and have deduced that they had a dark, glossy, metallic sheen. To the point: dinosaurs were starling-colored.

Ew.

In further feathery news…

Dinosaurs had ‘earliest feathers’

BBC, Sept. 24

Whoops. Looks like someone’s trying to steal Archaeopteryx’s shine.

The first bird may be eclipsed by Anchiornis huxleyi, the upstart dino-bird recently uncovered in China that might have been around as many as 150 million years before Archaeopteryx bust onto the scene.

Fossil Find Challenges Theories on T. Rex

New York Times, Sept. 17

also: Tiny T.rex fossil discovery startles scientists, CNN

“Startles scientists.” Jumpy little fellers, ain’t they?

In a discovery that may cause paleontologists to rethink fan-favorite and Hollywood bad boy, Tyrannosaurs “T-Rex” Rex’s evolutionary track, a collector has revealed the skeleton of a little critter that has come to been nicknamed, “Raptorex.”

Raptorex kriegsteini predeceased its famous descendant by 60 million years and, most interestingly, looks nearly identical only scaled down—right down to the tiny forelimbs. That sort of thing stays in the family they say. Er, not that I’d know. [cough] Raptorex was slightly larger than the human male, scientists said. Or a human male scientist, at least.

The nearly complete skeleton discovered in northeastern China was snapped up by collector, Henry J. Kriegstein (see: Raptorex kriegsteini), who called on University of Chicago paleontologist, Dr. Paul C. Sereno to observe and report.

China, as you may have figured out, is a veritable hotbed of cornucopias of treasure troves of dinosaur burial grounds. It is also rife with corruption and looting. As such, the fossil, which, as it turns out was illicitly excavated, will be returned to a museum in China.

Fearsome T. rex Sue may have died of sore throat

Guardian UK, Sept. 29

Sue— you remember, Sue, right? Largest most completest T-Rex-iest fossil ever uncovered?

Right, that Sue.

Sue, who, at one time was thought to have died in totally awesome battle with other Tyrannosaurs might instead have actually succumbed to parasitic infection not unlike the one that afflicts pigeons today.

The disease, which researchers say is much like today’s trichomonosis, causes bone loss in the jaw in its later stages but would mean that those suffering from it would find it “increasingly difficult to swallow and may eventually have starved to death.”

Pfft. Lame.

Why is it that for ever wicked rad discovery science makes, nine wicked rad things must be disproved with mind-numbly dull corrections?

So, remember, kids: wash your hands, stay home when you feel sick, and if you have to cough or sneeze, do it into the face of someone holding a picture of Obama with a Hitler mustache.

Dinosaur eggs are found in India

BBC, Oct. 1

Indian paleontologists have discovered a whole mess of sauropod (yer Brachiosaurs, yer Apatosaurs, yer Diplodicusses) in an ancient riverbed in the state of Tamil Nadu.

Because the eggs have been found in many different layers of the sediment, researchers point to the fact that dinos may have returned to the same location, year after year, to lay their eggs. All of the eggs found were, apparently, infertile for some reason… er, which is why they are still there as opposed to having hatched and not being there.

And finally, and perhaps most importantly,

This little ditty, “I Am A Paleontologist” is off of They Might Be Giants ridiculously classy new albumn, “Here Comes Science.” There’s lots of great new videos floating around on Boingboing and other various and sundry locations thanks to TMBG’s podcasts and I heartily endorse each and every last one of them including a correction of a previous TMBG’s song.

Who does that? Who gets to be that classy?

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