Not a Raptor–a Caring Mom

Posted on by Lori Jia

Discover, January 1, 1997

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Few animals have experienced such a dramatic rehabilitation as the dinosaur Oviraptor. Its name means egg thief, which paleontologists working in Mongolia in the 1920s gave to fossils of this slender, two- legged creature that were resting by a nest of eggs–eggs the paleontologists assumed the dinosaur must have been devouring. In 1993, though, a team of American and Mongolian paleontologists found another of these eggs (they have a distinctive shape and microscopic structure), but this one was split open. Inside was a curled embryo–of an Oviraptor. Even more proof of Oviraptor’s nurturing side came in December 1995 and last April, when two teams independently reported finding skeletons of Oviraptor in Mongolia sitting on their nests.

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Shell Game

Posted on by Lori Jia

Discover, January 1, 1997

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Zoologists sometimes use the term living fossil loosely. It’s enough for a newly discovered species to belong to a supposedly extinct family or order to earn the name. Much rarer are cases of true living fossils, such as that of the Gulf snapping turtle shown below. Until 1996, zoologists thought the species had died out somewhere between 20,000 and 50,000 years ago. But when herpetologist Scott Thomson of the University of Canberra was asked to identify the shell of an unfamiliar-looking modern turtle found at Lawn Hill Creek in Queensland, he naturally compared it with a snapper fossil that had been found in the same place.

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So Big, So Cosmopolitan

Posted on by Lori Jia

Discover, January 1, 1997

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Tyrannosaurus rex was the undisputed giant of all land predators for 90 years, and in that time it developed the aura of a dinosaurian Muhammad Ali. It was, truly, the greatest. But in 1995 paleontologists in Argentina discovered a new dinosaur, called Giganotosaurus, which was probably heavier and certainly as long as the 40-foot, 70-million-year-old T. rex. And this past year, like the second blow of a one-two punch, came the report of another predator the size of a T. rex, this one from Africa.

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An Explosion Defused?

Posted on by Lori Jia

Discover, December 1, 1996

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From Darwin’s time to today, one group of fossils–those of the early Cambrian Period, beginning 540 million years ago–have baffled researchers. Before the Cambrian, fossils tell us, there existed only a few types of simple, blobby animals. Then, within just 10 million years, almost every major group, or phylum, of animals appeared. Almost all the major body plans seem to have sprung into existence–including phyla such as arthropods (which came to include insects and crustaceans), annelids (leeches and worms), mollusks (squid and clams), echinoderms (starfish and sea urchins), and chordates (fish and humans). Now dubbed the Cambrian explosion, it’s looked upon as the great event in animal evolution–and, in its suddenness, one of evolution’s greatest mysteries.

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The Light at the Bottom of the Sea

Posted on by Lori Jia

Discover, November 1, 1996

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Once it seemed that the ocean floor was a desert of darkness. As everyone knew, sunlight was what made life possible by fueling photosynthesis, and sunlight can penetrate only the first few hundred yards of the ocean’s great depths. Lower, a few creatures might still eke out a living by scrounging the organic detritus that drifts down from the surface of the sea. But thousands of feet down, in the utter blackness at the ocean’s bottom, there could be practically nothing.

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