One Fingered Dinosaur

A team of scientists have dug up the first dinosaur ever known to have only one finger. They found the skeletal remains embedded in an 80 million year old rock formation in Inner Mongolia, China. The dinosaur, named Linhenykus monodactylus, was roughly one meter tall and belongs to the alvarezsauroids family of dinosaurs, a group whose members were previously thought to be flightless birds.

It is well known that carnivorous dinosaurs kept losing fingers as they evolved over their ~160 million year existence. The earliest meat eaters had five fingers, while later species had four or three. Even the infamous and highly popularized Tyrannosaurus Rex only had two fingers. The researchers believe that Linhenykus monodactylus likely adapted to have just one claw-like digit for digging purposes, perhaps to specialize in retrieving certain insects. The findings have been published in the most recent release from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Skeletons For Sale

Going once, going twice, SOLD! If you are a serious fossil collector, and can afford the hefty cost, those might be the words you'd hear at a Natural History Auction hosted by I.M. Chait Gallery/Auctioneers on Saturday, March 21 in New York City.

Shown above is Lot 250: a mounted complete skeleton of a Dryosaurus dinosaur from the Jurassic Era. There are only two in the world, the other is on display at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pennsylvania. Apparently the one for sale is by far the more impressive specimen. It measures 127.5 inches from nose to tail, stands 36 inches high, and was expected to sell for $440,000 - $500,000.

But if dinosaurs are not really your style, perhaps you coule find more interest in Lot 199: a complete skeleton of a juvenile Wooly Mammoth. This 7-foot high, 15-foot long fossil is approximately 20,000 years old. The perfectly preserved specimen was expected to sell for $80,000 - $100,000, appealing to the more thrifty of shoppers.

Easter Hunt

Several years ago, Kenneth Rose, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine anatomy professor found some curious bones while traveling through India. Unable to determine what sort of bones they were, he decided to store them in a drawer. In the spring of 2007, it finally hit him! The foot that he found appears to belong to the world's earliest known rabbit found so far, making it 3-4 million years older than its closest contemporary.

Past studies indicated that rabbits and hares evolved 35 million years ago from pikas - mouse-like mammals part of the order Lagomorpha. But Rose and his colleagues believe the new bones show rabbit-like features evolving as far back as the early Eocene (54.8 to 33.7 million years ago).

Robert Asher, zoologist from Cambrige University agreed with these assumptions: "The particular importance of this is that it documents the oldest occurrence of a crown lagomorph—that is, a lagomorph that shares a closer relationship to rabbits and hares to the exclusion of pikas."

Dino Feather

In western France, seven dinosaur-era feathers have been found perfectly preserved in amber. The team of researchers is uncertain whether the feathers belonged to a bird or a dinosaur, since the 100 year-old plumage has similar features to fibers from both.

Either way, the amber-encased feathers show for the first time the transition from downy filaments toward an aerodynamic, planar shape that enabled flight. Perrichot and colleagues described their research last month in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Studies suggest that primitive feathers first evolved in flightless dinosaurs with the function of generating internal heat. It was not until much later on when feathers evolved for use in flight.

Marine Monster Excavated

An enormous prehistoric sea creature, longer than a humpback whale and with teeth the size of bananas, has recently been excavated. It was first discovered in 2006 on the remote Arctic island Spitsbergen, a polar morgue of fossilized sea creatures.

"It's as big or bigger than the largest plesiosaur ever found," said Jørn Hurum, leader of the excavation team. "This absolutely looks like a new species," he added.

This predator measured ~15 meters, and represents one of the largest marine reptiles ever known. Its skull alone is estimated to be 3 meters long. Due to its short neck and large head, Monster is thought to actually belong to the pliosaur family, the top marine predators during the Jurassic period (200-145 million years ago).

The Svalbard archipelago is now the world's source for seeds (see Frozen Seeds entry) and skeletons... quite the contrast.