What do they have in common? Ask my brother.
Originally published January 26, 2006. Copyright 2006 Carl Zimmer.
The New York Times, January 26, 2006
Scientists at the American Museum of Natural History have discovered a fossil in New Mexico that looks like a six-foot-long, two-legged dinosaur along the lines of a tyrannosaur or a velociraptor. But it is actually an ancient relative of today’s alligators and crocodiles.
The discovery is a striking example of how different animals can evolve the same kind of body over and over again.
For almost 60 years, the 210-million-year-old fossil has been hiding in plain sight. It was lodged in a slab of rock dug up in 1947 in New Mexico by a team led by Edward Colbert, a paleontologist at the museum.
I’ve got an article in tomorrow’s New York Times about the discovery of a remarkable case of convergence: an ancient relative of today’s crocodiles and alligators that evolved a dinosaur’s body–80 million before the dinosaurs evolved it. Here’s the paper.
Update, 1/26 7 am: Here’s Seth Sean Murtha’s nice sketch of Effigia okeeffeae. A bigger version is here.
Update, 2/1 9 am: Be sure to check out Carl Buell’s croc gallery.
My review of the Darwin show at the American Museum of Natural History is in the new issue of Discover. You can read the full text here.
Originally published January 25, 2006. Copyright 2006 Carl Zimmer.
Are brain parasites altering the personalities of three billion people? The question emerged a few years ago, and it shows no signs of going away.
I first encountered this idea while working on my book Parasite Rex. I was investigating the remarkable ability parasites have to manipulate the behavior of their hosts. The lancet fluke Dicrocoelium dendriticum, for example, forces its ant host to clamp itself to the tip of grass blades, where a grazing mammal might eat it. It’s in the fluke’s interest to get eaten, because only by getting into the gut of a sheep or some other grazer can it complete its life cycle.