Smithsonian.com

Upload your dino drawing for Draw a Dinosaur Day, January 30. Courtesy of Flickr user DalBoz17

Calling All Artists: ART Evolved spreads the word about “Draw a Dinosaur Day,” which will be celebrated tomorrow on January 30th. See the entries at the official website.

News You Can Use: Fed up with constant errors in the media, David Hone at Archosaur Musings has written “A Guide for Journalists Reporting on Dinosaur Stories.” Among his tips: avoid generating false controversies. “Don’t deliberately hunt down contradictory quotes and generate straw men for others to pull down. Science is about consensus NOT balance, so seeking out an alternative point of view does not necessarily make things better (and indeed rarely does).”

The Year That Was: All hail the Paleo King, who offers his 2009 retrospective list of the best and worst in dinosaurs and paleontology.

Fun For All Ages: Got scissors and glue? Then Mike Taylor at SV-POW! can show you how to make your very own brachiosaurid cervical vertebra!

A Matter of Perspective: Biostratigraphy is a technique for assessing the relative ages of rock strata by studying the fossil remains contained within. As Walcott’s Quarry illustrates, that’s great if you’re a geologist—but rather traumatizing if you’re a trilobite.

Deep in the Heart of Texas: Chinleana makes a pilgrimage to a small Texas town named Spur. What’s the appeal? An impressive painting on the side of the local history museum: “Let’s just say that outdoor murals of aetosaurs are rare, and to someone who has spent over a decade researching these animals and especially this taxon—visiting the area where the original specimens were collected, the town D. spurensis was named for, and this spectacular mural, is a thrill (at least for me).

Wear the Wild Things Are: Dinochick highlights the latest must-have paleo-fashion item. Behold, Jurassic Parka!

Make Dinos, Not War: Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs spotlights a fascinating sculpture—“Triceracopter: Hope for the Obsolescence of War,” which melds the body of a decommissioned helicopter with a fiberglass Triceratops head and limbs. “The meaning of the piece is pretty clear— it plays off the durable old conception of dinosaurs as failed monstrosities, the most outlandish critters on the evolutionary discard pile. A bit on the nose, and while I disagree with dinosaurs being saddled with this reputation—no group of animals who dominated terrestrial ecosystems for 120,000,000 years has much to apologize for—you can’t fault the craftsmanship.”

Keeping it Real: Reflecting on the pterosaur-inspired “Mountain Banshees” that appear in the blockbuster film Avatar, Asher Elbein argues that the most effective critters in sci-fi and monster movies are those that take their cues from paleontology: “Things that look prehistoric just seem more impressive to most people, even if they can’t quite say why. A flying reptile should look like a pterosaur….A big bipedal predator is going to look like a theropod. It’s not a matter of unoriginality, although alien creatures almost certainly will look nothing like dinosaurs. But it’s what the audience expects, deep down. Dinosaurs are alien to us in the most fundamental of ways, even when they seem familiar.”

The skeleton of Sinosauropteryx, complete with preserved feathers. From Wikipedia.

At one point or another, almost every general book about dinosaurs I have ever seen has said the same thing: we cannot know what color dinosaurs were. Scientists have found the skin impressions of some specimens, but as far as we know these traces contain nothing that might tell us what color those dinosaurs were. As described in this week’s issue of the journal Nature, however, scientists have been developing a technique that may allow us to see the colors displayed by some dinosaurs, and it is thanks to their connection with birds.

Last year the journal Biology Letters published the results of a study that identified preserved microstructures related to color in the feather of a fossil bird. The scientists could not say for sure what colors the feather exhibited in life, but they were able to document minute differences in the feather that are seen in living birds, meaning that evidence of color was preserved in the fossil even if it could not be fully understood yet. Now a different team of scientists has published a new study that has accomplished a similar task, but this time for two feathered dinosaurs and one of their bird relatives.

What the scientists behind the Nature study were looking for were melanosomes. These are color-carrying structures found inside pigment cells and are partially responsible for the colors we see in many organisms. The paleontologists found them in abundance in the feathers of the dinosaurs Sinosauropteryx and Sinonithosaurus, as well is in the preserved plumage of Confuciusornis. The structures were not preserved bacteria or some other remnant. Instead they were the preserved vestiges of dinosaur cell structure.

Clearly these animals had color-carrying cells in their feathers, but what color were they? That is a more difficult question to answer. The fossils that were examined contained two types of melanosomes: eumelanosomes and phaeomelanosomes. From the study of living organisms we know that eumelanosomes are associated with dark colors (i.e. black) while phaeomelanosomes are associated with lighter colors (i.e. yellowish to red). They cannot tell us specifically what color the dinosaurs were, but they can help us confirm color patterns and be used create hypotheses. The tail of Sinosauropteryx, for example, contains  bands of feathers stuffed with phaeomelanosomes, and so the authors of the new paper suggest that it might have had bands of rich, reddish tail feathers. This hypothesis will require more evidence to confirm, however, especially since scientists are still learning how melanosomes are involved in producing particular colors.

The new research is a step closer to understanding what colors some dinosaurs were, and it is another piece of evidence confirming that the structures preserved around dinosaurs like Sinosauropteryx and Sinornithosaurus really are feathers. The melanosomes are contained entirely inside the feathers, just like in living birds, and there no longer can be any reasonable doubt that these animals were feathered dinosaurs. Even better, this line of inquiry has only just begun, and perhaps in a few years we will be able to tell with greater certainty whether dinosaurs were as colorful as their living relatives.

Zhang, F., Kearns, S., Orr, P., Benton, M., Zhou, Z., Johnson, D., Xu, X., & Wang, X. (2010). Fossilized melanosomes and the colour of Cretaceous dinosaurs and birds Nature DOI: 10.1038/nature08740

A dinosaur at South of the Border. Photo by Brian Wolly.

Anyone who has driven I-95 over the North Carolina/South Carolina state line is familiar with the tourist trap South of the Border (the numerous billboards advertising it make it hard to miss), but unless you look carefully you might miss the dinosaur there. That is what our own Brian Wolly found when he stopped at the notoriously campy attraction earlier this month. Wearing a sky-blue sombrero, the almost nauseatingly-colored dinosaur grins at patrons of the gas station, though it does not look very much like any of the dinosaurs recently discovered in Mexico.

Have you stumbled across a dinosaur in an unexpected place? If you have, and have a photo of the encounter, send it to us via dinosaursightings@gmail.com!

Dinosaurs by Thomas Holtz, one of the most up-to-date books about dinosaurs for kids.

I read too many dinosaur books when I was a kid. It was so bad that the school librarian even called in my parents to express concern over my reading habits. If there was a book about dinosaurs in the library, I’d read it and then read it again.

That was a long time ago, though, back when many of the children’s books about dinosaurs showed them as drab, tail-dragging monsters. Things have changed a lot since then, so here is a brief list of some more up-to-date books that will be sure to entertain young dino fans:

Encyclopedia Prehistorica Dinosaurs

The appeal of this intricately-constructed pop-up book immediately became apparent when I could not tear myself away from it. True, the text was a bit sparse, but the numerous pop-ups and side panels kept me well entertained. It is a must-have for any lover of dinosaurs and pop-up books.

National Geographic Dinosaurs

Every aspiring dinosaur hunter needs a handy compendium (or two or three or…) of different dinosaurs, and National Geographic Dinosaurs is a solid choice. Full of high quality photographs and restorations, it is one of the most visually appealing dinosaur books for kids, and the generous amount of text will keep them well-informed as they want to learn more.

The “How Do Dinosaurs …” Series

Ok, so maybe they are not that educational, but books like How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? and How Do Dinosaurs Love Their Cats? are a lot of fun. It is especially good to see some dinosaurs that don’t get much attention, such as Cryolophosaurus, getting some attention.

Boy, Were We Wrong About Dinosaurs!

As paleontologists have learned more about dinosaurs, our image of them has changed, and Boy, Were We Wrong About Dinosaurs! contrasts what we thought we knew with what we know now. This allows the book to bring in the history of science along with details about the dinosaurs, and it helps children recognize some of the mistakes that still pop up in restorations now and then. (Not like they need much help. Just use the word “Brontosaurus” around an enthusiastic dinosaur fan and you will get an earful.)

The Discovery and Mystery of a Dinosaur Named Jane

Not every dinosaur book needs to be general. The Discovery and Mystery of a Dinosaur Named Jane is a more specific title that describes the fascinating discovery of a juvenile Tyrannosaurus nicknamed “Jane.” The book takes readers from the discovery of the fossils to their display in a museum, and the wonderful original artwork of paleoartist Michael Skrepnick makes this book even better.

Dinosaurs: The Most Complete, Up-to-Date Encyclopedia for Dinosaur Lovers of All Ages

While the text might be a little heavy for younger readers, this is most comprehensive and up-to-date book on dinosaurs available. Written by paleontologist Thomas Holtz, the book covers all the traditional ground (how fossils are formed, the early history of paleontology) but is unique in covering the whole swath of dinosaur diversity. No group is left out, and the eye-popping illustrations by Luis Rey will no doubt make this book a favorite of readers who love dinosaur restorations. Indeed, this is a good book for dinosaur nuts to grow on as they get older, providing the background for especially enthusiastic readers to eventually make the jump to science books written for more mature audiences.

Those are just a few of my current favorites. What are yours?

The skeleton of Saurornitholestes, a "raptor" dinosaur. From Flickr user Traumador.

It is not every day that authorities hold a dinosaur as evidence of a crime.

In 2002 a team of paleontologists organized by amateur fossil hunter Nate Murphy discovered the bones of a small, nearly complete raptor dinosaur on a ranch in Montana. Murphy could tell immediately that it was something new, but he decided to conceal his discovery from the ranch owners (a mistake, especially since it turned out that the fossil was actually on the property of a neighboring ranch owner). Later Murphy would excavate the entire skeleton himself, trying to hide it while he arranged for copies of it to be made for sale, but he was charged with and convicted of several fossil-collecting crimes. All the while the significant new specimen was tied up in red tape.

Now the ownership of that fossil has been returned to the landowners, and they are looking for a buyer. As reported in the Great Falls Tribune, the fossil, now undergoing preparation at the Black Hills Institute, has caught the eye of two major museums (and the BHI will also sell full replicas to the tune of $12,500 apiece). Regardless of where it ends up, though, the study of this new dinosaur will probably take a few years more to complete. Solid research can’t be rushed, and paleontologists will be relieved when the specimen comes to reside at a reputable institution.