First near-complete sauropod dinosaur skull found in Australia hints at ancient links between continents
In May and June of 2018, Australia’s first near-complete skull of a sauropod – a group of long-tailed, long-necked, small-headed dinosaurs – was found on a sheep station northwest of Winton in Queensland.
I was part of the dig team from the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum that made the discovery, and subsequently had the privilege of leading the team that studied the skull. After years of work, our results are published today in Royal Society Open Science.
The skull belonged to a creature we have dubbed “Ann”: a member of the species Diamantinasaurus matildae which shows surprising similarities to fossils found halfway across the world, lending weight to the theory that dinosaurs once roamed between Australia and South America via an Antarctic land connection.
A good skull is hard to findThe sauropod dinosaurs have been a source of lifelong fascination for me, and finding a sauropod skull was one of my childhood dreams. Sadly, the fossil record is biased towards preserving sauropod limbs, vertebrae and ribs, and heavily against skulls.
This makes sense when you consider the processes that act on an organism’s body after it dies, which paleontologists call taphonomy.
Large, robust limb bones are resistant to decomposition, and if they are buried rapidly they might fossilize quite readily. Vertebrae and ribs comprise a significant proportion of a vertebrate skeleton, increasing their odds of preservation.
By contrast, sauropod skulls were relatively small, made up of many delicate bones that were only loosely held together by soft tissue, and seemingly easily detached from the end of the neck. They might also have been prime targets for carnivorous dinosaurs: the only previously described sauropod braincase from Australia preserves several bite marks from fierce theropods.
The original skull bones of the sauropod dinosaur Diamantinasaurus matildae. Trish Sloan / Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum
The bones of the skull were found around two meters beneath the surface, scattered over an area of about nine square metres. Much of the right side of the face is missing, but most of the left is present. Sadly, many of the bones show signs of distortion (presumably a result of post mortem scavenging or trampling), which makes physical reassembly of the skull a delicate process.
Modern technology recreates an ancient animalThis being the case, we set out to reconstruct the skull digitally. We CT scanned the bones at St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne. This enabled the internal features of each bone to be observed on a computer.
Inside one bone in the snout (which we also had scanned at the Australian Synchrotron), we found replacement teeth. It has long been known that sauropods, like crocodiles today, continually replaced their teeth throughout their lives.
CT scanning a sauropod skull at St Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne. Adele Pentland
We also scanned all of the bones with a surface scanner, enabling detailed 3D models of each bone to be made on a computer. The skull could then be reassembled in a virtual space with no risk of damage to the fossils themselves.
The teeth in the new sauropod skull were very similar to those found at other sites in the Winton area. Comparisons with Australia’s only other fragmentary sauropod skull (also from Winton) revealed additional similarities.
Meet Diamantinasaurus matildaeOur skull belongs to the species Diamantinasaurus matildae. Diamantinasaurus would have been about as long as a tennis court, as tall as basketball ring at the shoulder, and weighed ~25 tonnes – about as much as two fire engines.
Our skull belongs to the species Diamantinasaurus matildae. Diamantinasaurus would have been about as long as a tennis court, as tall as basketball ring at the shoulder, and weighed ~25 tonnes – about as much as two fire engines.
Diamantinasaurus occupies a low branch on the family tree of a group of sauropods called titanosaurs. Other members of the titanosaur group (from higher branches on their family tree) include the largest land animals that ever lived, such as Patagotitan and Argentinosaurus, which exceeded 30 meters in length. Titanosaurs were the only sauropods to live right until the end of the Cretaceous Period (66 million years ago), when the age of dinosaurs came to a close.
Diamantinasaurus has a rounded snout, typical of medium- to high-level browsing sauropods. Its teeth are robustly constructed, but those from other sites show little sign of wear by soil or grit, reinforcing the idea Diamantinasaurus preferred to feed some distance above ground level.
The reconstructed skull of Diamantinasaurus matildae, viewed from the left side. Stephen Poropat / Samantha Rigby
Only two replacement teeth are present in each tooth socket, implying that Diamantinasaurus replaced its teeth relatively slowly. And finally, the teeth are restricted to the front of the snout, meaning that Diamantinasaurus, like all other sauropods, did not chew its food.
Family resemblancesWe compared our sauropod skull with others from around the world. The most similar skull was that of Sarmientosaurus musacchioi, which lived in southern South America. Diamantinasaurus and Sarmientosaurus lived at around the same time (about 95 million years ago), and at around the same latitude (50°S).
We had previously hypothesised that these two sauropods were close relatives, albeit on the basis of limited evidence. The new skull shores up that idea in a big way: bone for bone, the skulls of Diamantinasaurus and Sarmientosaurus are extremely similar. This might seem strange, given the great physical distance between South America and Australia today. However, back then each of those continents retained a lingering land connection with Antarctica.
Sauropods seemingly preferred warmer climates at low to medium latitudes. However, 95 million years ago the climate was extremely warm, even by the warm standards of the Cretaceous. With polar latitudes more amenable for sauropods, these scaly behemoths – and other landlubbing animals – could trundle through lush forests at the bottom of the world between South America and Antarctica.
It is a privilege to be able to finally put a face to the name Diamantinasaurus matildae. Future discoveries will hopefully help cement its status as one of the most completely understood titanosaurs worldwide.
https://theconversation.com/first-near-complete-sauropod-dinosaur-skull-found-in-australia-hints-at-ancient-links-between-continents-203405Could 2023 be a quieter hurricane season? Early forecasts hint at below-average year
MIAMI — After back-to-back years of grueling and devastating hurricane seasons, early forecasts suggest that 2023 may offer a bit of a break — at last.
The pre-season forecast from Colorado State University, released Thursday, calls for a below-average hurricane season, thanks to the development of an atmospheric phenomenon called El Niño that dampens storm activity in the Atlantic.
CSU predicts this season will include 13 named storms, six of which will become hurricanes and two will become major hurricanes, which is category 3 or higher. An average season includes 14 named storms, seven hurricanes and three major hurricanes.
Hurricane season in the Atlantic runs from June 1 to Nov. 30, with a peak in August to September. But predicting what the season will hold gets dicey this early. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration makes its official prediction for the season — the gold standard — in late May.
But academic outlets and for-profit weather companies often make early season predictions, and CSU’s is one of the highest regarded. Its latest prediction falls closely in line with several others, including the well-known European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, or Euro.
“Hurricane seasons are not random. There are clues in the atmosphere that can tip us off,” said Phil Klotzbach, CSU meteorologist and lead author of the forecast. “Those clues really seem to appear this time of the year.”
However, Klotzbach warned, predictions get more accurate the closer to the peak of the season.
“There’s a lot that can change between April and August when the season really ramps up,” he said.
El Niño — or nothing?Several early season forecasts call for normal or below-normal storm activity this hurricane season, and that prediction hinges largely on whether or not an El Niño will happen this year.
El Niño is the name for an atmospheric phenomenon that reaches across the globe, warming waters in the Pacific Ocean and shifting the upper-level winds in the Atlantic. That usually makes it harder for tropical storms to form and brings a colder, wetter winter to the East Coast.
“That wind shear has somewhat of a protective effect on Florida,” said Ryan Truchelut, the chief meteorologist of private weather service Weather Tiger, which also predicts a normal or below-normal season ahead.
For the last three years, the Atlantic has seen the weather pattern at the opposite end of the spectrum, a La Niña. Unlike El Niños, La Niñas are usually associated with more storm activity in the Atlantic and less in the Pacific.
These weather patterns make a big difference for the number of storms that form. Truchelut said that since 1900, La Niña seasons include an average of 0.8 land-falling hurricanes a year in Florida, compared with 0.4 land-falling storms a year for El Niño seasons.
This year, meteorologists are split on whether an El Niño will form (and when) or if the season will remain right in the middle of the two extremes, known as ENSO neutral.
The latest official prediction from NOAA says there’s a 82% likelihood one will form by August to October.
“Both of those paths forward are possible. It’s also possible that we don’t get an El Niño at all,” said Truchelut. “In the spring, you always have to take El Niño and La Niña predictions with a big grain of salt.”
And even if an El Niño forms, it’s not a guarantee of a quiet season for Florida, as much as the storm-slapped state needs it. In 2018, an El Niño formed toward the end of the season, dampening all storm activity. But not before a small window of perfect storm conditions opened, just big enough for Category 5 Hurricane Michael to swell and crash into the Panhandle.
“I don’t want people to take away from this that they don’t need to be prepared for hurricane season. Even in an El Niño year, there’s a significant chance of Florida seeing a landfalling storm,” Truchelut said.
“It lowers the odds, but we live in the most hurricane-prone part of the US and it’s just a fact of life. That risk is always going to be with us.”
© Miami HeraldTennessee florist refuses service to Republican National Committee
A Republican National Convention fundraising event scheduled this weekend could go without flowers after a florist in Nashville, Tennessee, reportedly refused to provide its services over the GOP's gun positions.
The FLWR Shop wrote a letter to the Republican National Committee, saying the shop had received a request to provide floral arrangements for a Nashville fundraising event planned for mid-April. The letter, which was made public on Instagram, indicates that former President Donald Trump and "other prominent members of the Republican party" will be in attendance.
The shop said it declined the opportunity, noting instead that it would use the spotlight to push the GOP on its stance on gun violence. Going even further, the letter encourages fellow small business owners in the area to follow its lead.
"We would like to challenge others in the Nashville event industry to say no to taking money or jobs from the Republican party until they begin to make the changes to gun laws that most Americans are calling for," the flower shop wrote in the letter on Instagram.
To further clarify the shop's stance, the owner posted in the caption on Instagram that they feel it's appropriate at times to mix personal beliefs with business.
"I’ve been loud about protecting Black lives, the illness of racism in our country, and in defense of trans people," the post says. "These things should not be considered political in my opinion."
The letter was picked up by local news site WZTV, which went to the shop but found that the owner was not in the store. The shop then issued the following statement, according to ABC7.
"Most Americans including Conservatives agree we need some commonsense reform of gun laws," the reported statement says. "Refusing to work with the RNC is not a rebuke of Conservative values, it was a plea to our lawmakers... To step up and do what Americans are asking and expecting of them."
https://www.rawstory.com/rnc-denied-service/
