Archive for December, 2009
Tuesday, December 29th, 2009
Until recently, the success of the dinosaurs over the rhynchosaurs, dicynodonts and cynodonts was explained by a competitive model. It was assumed that the erect gait of the dinosaurs, and other supposed advantages, allowed them to vanquish other Triassic animals and drive them to extinction.
There was a major crisis about 225 million years ago, some five million years after the origin of the first small dinosaurs. Numerous groups of animals died out in the sea and on land, as a result of a great climatic change or some other catastrophe. There is evidence that plants underwent major evolutionary upheavals about this time, and the rhynchosaurs and dicynodonts may have died out when they lost their essential plant foods. Whatever the cause, there was a mass extinction 225 million years ago. A mass extinction is the disappearance of a broad cross-section of plant and animal groups in a relatively short time. A dozen or more reptile groups died out then, including several significant ones such as the rhynchosaurs, dicynodonts, aetosaurs, and various carnivorous cynodont and ‘thecodontian’ groups. This left a large number of gaps in the ecology and possible lifestyles of terrestrial plants and animals, giving great opportunities for the surviving groups to take over and fill the gaps. The rare early dinosaurs, never more than one or two percent of their communities before the mass extinction, blossomed to represent 50 percent or more within a few million years.
This model for the origin of the dinosaurs – their opportunistic radiation into ‘empty ecospace’ is very different from the old competitive model. There is no long-term battle, in which whole groups are pitted against each other globally. The dinosaurs were lucky to be around at the right time, and they seized the opportunity. Competitive advantage no doubt played a part, however. The small Lagosuchus-like dinosaurs had an effective erect gait, with all of its advantages, and they were agile carnivores able to hunt a variety of prey. Just as the mammals replaced the dinosaurs opportunistically after the latter’s extinction, some 160 million years later, so the dinosaurs probably owed 95 percent of their success to being in the right place at the right time, and five percent to their natural competitive attributes.
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Tags: Animal Groups, Carnivores, Climatic Change, Competitive Advantage, Cross Section, Cynodont, Cynodonts, Dinosaurs, Disappearance, Five Million Years, Gait, Groups Of Animals, Mass Extinction, No Doubt, Plants And Animals, Reptile Groups, Right Time, Terrestrial Plants, Triassic Animals, Upheavals
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Saturday, December 19th, 2009
The erect posture of dinosaurs is often said to be the key to their success. Why is this? An important reason is that an erect posture is mechanically more satisfactory than a sprawling one. The weight of the body is supported entirely from below. In a sprawler, the weight of the body is supported from the sides. While gravity effectively pulls straight down from the center of the body mass, in a sprawler this force has to be converted into a sideways component along the femur or humerus (upper arm bone), and then a vertical component down the tibia and fibula, and the radius and ulna (forearm bones), which causes great stresses are avoided if the gravitational force of the animal’s mass is transferred down through a straight, erect limb.
This mechanical advantage is important. Firstly, erect animals can run in a more sustained way: not necessarily faster, but with more stamina, because the effort of supporting the body weight is much less than in a sprawler. This would have been an immediate advantage to an archosaur chasing sprawling prey animals or escaping from a sprawling carnivore. Interestingly, the main plant-eating groups of the Middle Triassic, the pig-like rhynchosaurs and dicynodonts, were evolving semi-erect gaits at the same time. Indeed, the ancestors of the mammals, the cynodonts – which were moderate-sized carnivores at that stage – also showed similar advances.
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Tags: Auto Financing, Body Mass, Carnivore, Cynodonts, Dinosaurs, Femur, Forearm Bones, Gaits, Gravitational Force, Mammals, Mechanical Advantage, Posture, Prey Animals, Radius And Ulna, Radius And Ulna Forearm, Sized Carnivores, Stamina, Stresses, Tibia And Fibula, Upper Arm Bone, Vertical Component
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Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
Most of the synapomorphies of the leg that appear in Ornithosuchus, advance in Lagosuchus, and come to full development in the dinosaurs are concerned with the acquisition of an erect gait – or the fully upright posture. It is important to note that erect or upright gait does not necessarily mean bipedal. Cows and horses have the erect gait and posture, just as much as humans do.
The first archosaurs were sprawlers, like modern lizards and salamanders. The limbs stuck out sideways from the body, and the elbows and knees form right angles at all times as the animal walks. Even at speed, a lizard generally swings its limbs far out to the side of its body, and it is assumed that the Early Triassic archosaurs moved in a similar way. During the Middle Triassic, most archosaurs adopted a semi-erect posture in which the body could be lifted clear of the ground, with the arms and legs tucked partly underneath for rapid locomotion. Finally, in the Middle and Late Triassic, the two archosaur lineages noted above – the crocodilian and dinosaur lines – adopted an erect posture in which the limbs were tucked underneath the body at all times. This seems to have happened independently in each line.
The aetosaurs, rauisuchians and early crocodilians evolved an erect posture in which the acetabula shifted beneath the hip bones and the heads of the femurs fitted straight up into them, like straight columns beneath a building. The members of the dinosaur line used the approach seen in mammals, in which the acetabula remain on the side of the hip bones but the femurs develop right-angled heads that fit in from the sides. In this design the relationship of hip girdle and leg is more like a buttress on the side of a church building, rather than a column beneath its roof, but the result is the same. The legs of dinosaurs, and of mammals, come together in a slightly knock-kneed fashion beneath the body, and this is a crucial feature.
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Tags: Acetabula, Archosaurs, Arms And Legs, Cows And Horses, Crocodilian, Crocodilians, Dinosaur Line, Dinosaurs, Femurs, Gait, Hip Bones, Hip Girdle, Lineages, Locomotion, Posture, Right Angles, Salamanders, Straight Columns, Synapomorphies, Triassic
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Saturday, December 12th, 2009
The inturned head of the femur (the beginnings of the full right-angled femur head seen in dinosaurs and in a different from in mammals); the straight knee joint; the reduced hinge-like ankle joint (technically termed the advanced mesotarsal, or AM, ankle); the long toes and the digitigrade posture of the foot, in which only the toes touch the ground, not the sole of the foot as in earlier archosaurs – and in humans today.
Most of the dinosaur-like characters are also seen in the flying pterosaurs. Certain paleontologists argue that Lagosuchus, the pterosaurs, and the dinosaurs together form a major clade that arose in the Middle to Late Triassic, some 230 million years ago.
The dinosaur-like synapomorphies of this clade, and their further modification in the dinosaurs proper, are part of a major series of related anatomical changes that took place among the archosaurs during the Triassic, and which may have been the key to the origin of the dinosaurs.
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Tags: Anatomical Changes, Ankle Joint, Archosaurs, Auto Financing, Clade, Dinosaur, Dinosaurs, Femur Head, Hinge, Knee Joint, Long Toes, Mammals, Million Years, Paleontologists, Posture, Pterosaurs, Sole, Synapomorphies, Winnipeg
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Wednesday, December 9th, 2009
Birds as well as the extinct dinosaurs, pterosaurs (flying contemporaries of the dinosaurs) and the ‘thecodontians’, a ragbag group that includes the ancestors of all the other archosaurs.
The archosaurs arose some 250 million years ago, as far as we can tell. The first group, the proterosuchids, spread nearly worldwide. Their fossils are known from the Soviet Union, southern Africa, Antarctica, Australia, India, China and South America. They show the archosaurs, but in no other animals: an antorbital fenestra (a particular hole in the skull), recurved flat -sided teeth and a fourth trochanter on the femur (a specific ridge on the thigh bone).
During the Triassic period, some 245-208 million years ago, the archosaurs radiated (evolved and diversified) as moderately successful carnivores and gave rise to one herbivorous group. The Triassic ‘thecodontians’ split into two main lineages. One included the superficially crocodile-like phytosaurs, the herbivorous aetosaurs (which also looked rather like crocodiles, but had snub noses for rooting up plant food, and narrow leaf-like teeth) and the often massive, carnivorous rauisuchians. Finally, in the Late Triassic, this Lineage sprouted some lightweight bipedal (two-legged); animals that probably fed on insects and small lizard-like animals. These were, perhaps surprisingly, the first crocodilians. The group adopted its amphibious, quadrupedal (four-legged) fish-eating existing only some 20 million years later, after the extinction of the phytosaurs.
The second archosaur lineage included active carnivores such as Ornithosuchus, which could walk quadrupedally or bipedally, and the lightweight Lagosuchus, which was a biped. These animals are so close to being dinosaurs in many features, it now seems remarkable that many scientists had denied it until recently. Lagosuchus, in particular, shows a long list of ‘dinosaur’ characters: its bipedal posture; the long limbs with the shin bones (tibia and fibula) longer than the femur; the perforated acetabulum (the bowl-like depression in the hip bone that receives the ball-shaped end of the femur).
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Tags: Archosaur, Archosaurs, Australia India, Biped, Bipedal, Carnivores, Crocodiles, Crocodilians, Dinosaur Characters, Extinct Dinosaurs, Femur, Herbivorous, India China, Legged Animals, Narrow Leaf, Ornithosuchus, Plant Food, Shin Bones, Thigh Bone, Triassic Period, Trochanter
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Saturday, December 5th, 2009
The evolutionary tree of dinosaurs contains a great deal of information. The horizontal axis represents time, and the vertical axis represents dinosaurian diversity. All the major families of dinosaurs are indicated with horizontal lines that record their known distribution in time, as based upon present fossil evidence. Future finds of dinosaur skeletons may extend the time ranges backwards or forwards in time.
There are two “fixed” time lines that do not seem to be breached, however. The dinosaurs arose from a single ancestor some 230 million years ago, in the Middle to Late Triassic, and it is unlikely that older dinosaur skeletons will be found. The second “fixed” time line corresponds to the extinction of the last dinosaurs 66 million years ago. Despite strenuous efforts to find post-Mesozoic dinosaur specimens, and many reports of supposed discoveries, no such remains have withstood close scrutiny. Most usually, post-mesozoic dinosaur bones have been reworked, that is, removed from the rock by natural erosion and redeposited in a younger sediment.
The most important aspect of this phylogenetic tree is the representation of the relationships between the different families. This is based on recent cladistic anlyses, carried out by a number of North American and European vertebrae paleontologists after 1985, and the pattern shown here is quite revolutionary in the sense that it is dramatically different from anything in popular books of this sort. It is also important because it shows a much higher degree of resolution than the earlier phylogenies; that is, the pattern of relationships is shown in a much more detailed way than was possible before.
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Tags: Cladistic, Dinosaur Bones, Dinosaur Skeletons, Dinosaur Specimens, Dinosaurs, Evolutionary Tree, Fossil Evidence, Higher Degree, Horizontal Axis, Horizontal Lines, Million Years, Natural Erosion, Phylogenetic Tree, Phylogenies, Popular Books, Strenuous Efforts, Time Lines, Triassic, Vertebrae, Vertical Axis
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Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009
Plants that are most suited to the temperate/subtropical terrarium require a relative humidity factor of approximately 50% to 60%. The spider plant Chlorophytum, is a hardy plant that requires full sun; this plant might do well in a temperate/subtropical environment. Other possible candidates include Cordyline, Setcreasea, and Yucca plants. These are all plants that require full sun. Yucca has hazardous points at the ends of its leaves. Nevertheless, this plant makes a beautiful appearance in just about any location. Another drawback to yuccas is their inclination to demand cool temperatures during the winter months.
Stenotaphrum (St. Augustine’s grass), which also requires full sun, might be grown successfully in the temperate/subtropical habitat. Dracaena and Ficus (fig) plants, which need plenty of light, should not be exposed.
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Tags: Appearance, Auto Financing, Chlorophytum, Dracaena, Drawback, Ficus Plants, Grass, Habitat, Inclination, Leaves, Relative Humidity, Setcreasea, Spider Plant, St Augustine, Subtropical Environment, Sun, Temperatures, Terrarium, Winnipeg, Yucca Plants
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