Why “The Extinction of the Dinosaurs” is Misleading

It’s well-known that about 65 million years ago, something happened. An event so big that it caused a global mass extinction, dramatically changing ecosystems all over the world. This left such a clear mark in the geologic record that scientists knew about the extinction long before they found evidence of possible causes (in the form of an asteroid crater or huge amounts of volcanic rock).

The most famous effect of this event – and the reason most people have heard of it – was the disappearance of the dinosaurs. Scientists may call it the end-Cretaceous mass extinction (since it happened at the end of the Cretaceous Period), or the K-Pg mass extinction (“K” for Cretaceous and “Pg” for Paleogene, the Period that came next), but for most of the general public, it’s known as “the Extinction of the Dinosaurs.”

But this is a misleading name. Here’s why:

Psittacosaurus and the Colorful Dinosaur Revolution

Within the last decade, paleontologists have discovered how to unlock the color of extinct organisms, and I think it is one of the most exciting and thought-provoking modern advancements in the field. I’ve written about it no less than four times on this blog (one, two, three, four!), and now I feel obligated to write about it again.

It has been about a month now since the unveiling of the “most accurate depiction of a dinosaur ever,” and the fanfare was suitably loud. Now, I’d like to take a look over what we know about this dinosaur, and where it fits into this grand paleontological revolution we're living through.

The dinosaur: Psittacosaurus

What's New In Paleontology? Highlights from SVPCA 2016. (Part 2)

Last week, paleontologists gathered in Liverpool for the 64^th Annual Symposium for Vertebrate Paleontology and Comparative Anatomy (SVPCA). I was unable to attend, mostly because of that big ocean sitting in the way (actually I’ve never been to SVPCA, I’d love to go) but I did get a hold of the abstract book. Lots of great talks and posters this year.

Here, I’ll go through some of my personal favorite highlights from this year’s meeting. I won’t have all the details, since I’m mostly going by the abstracts and not the full presentations, but I will be offering a glimpse into what’s currently happening in the field of paleontological research. 

Part II: Flying and Slithering Reptiles

What's New In Paleontology? Highlights from SVPCA 2016. (Part 1)

Last week, paleontologists gathered in Liverpool for the 64^th Annual Symposium for Vertebrate Paleontology and Comparative Anatomy (SVPCA). I was unable to attend, mostly because of that big ocean sitting in the way (actually I’ve never been to SVPCA, I’d love to go) but I did get a hold of the abstract book. Lots of great talks and posters this year.

Here, I’ll go through some of my personal favorite highlights from this year’s meeting. I won’t have all the details, since I’m mostly going by the abstracts and not the full presentations, but I will be offering a glimpse into what’s currently happening in the field of paleontological research. 

Part I: Dinosaurs

Floating Spinosaurus

Let's start with Donald Henderson throwing some big theropods in the water.

Beer Made With 45 Million Year Old Yeast?

The other day I came across a Reddit post entitled: “Beer Made With 45 Million-Year-Old Yeast Found in Amber.”

And I was intrigued.

The link led to an Indiegogo campaign from the Fossil Fuels Brewing Co. aiming to raise money to further their production of beer made with ancient yeast. As the story goes, the idea was born after the “chance discovery of a beautiful amber stone, replete with a 45 million year old leaf, and a single yeast spore – still alive and itching to make beer.”

The Earth's Deepest Scars

No matter how thoroughly researched and well-understood a scientific theory is, there’s always room for improvement, always something we missed. Plate tectonics is one of the most powerful and comprehensive theories in modern science, but according to a new study out today, we may have missed an important piece of the geologic puzzle. According to this research, tectonic activity may be controlled by forces deeper below the surface than we’ve realized.

Plate tectonics theory explains how the Earth’s crust moves and changes. The crust isn’t a solid shell over the Earth, it’s broken into fragments: plates. Each plate butts right up against all the surrounding plates, so there’s no space in between, but they can rotate in place, or shift like conveyor belts, sliding and grinding past each other, into each other, or underneath each other. Boundaries between plates are areas of massive geologic activity. Where plates move together, they form massive mountains or deep trenches; where plates pull apart, volcanic activity creates new crust. The surface of the Earth is constantly shaking, shifting, and deforming, mostly at these boundaries.

This is a map of the major tectonic plates of the Earth.
Notice the places where the plates meet - those are the very active plate boundaries.
Image from Wikipedia.

The Mystery of the Sunken City of Zakynthos

This scientific discovery reads like a science-fiction mystery novel.

It starts in 2014, when a group of tourists visiting the Greek island of Zakynthos decided to go snorkeling. While exploring the shallow ocean waters close to Alikanas Bay they stumbled upon what appeared to be the remnants of a sunken civilization: flat pavement stones and the circular bases of collapsed colonnades. Perhaps these were lost fragments of a city port submerged by the sea?

The divers took pictures and uploaded them online, where they reached the attention of Greece’s Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities, who sent in an archaeological investigation team. The team discovered something very odd: there was no pottery, no coins, no signs at all of any human life. If this had once been a city, who lived there? Who built it? And why didn’t they leave behind any artifacts?

Dawn Comes to Ceres

This Friday is going to be an exciting day in space exploration!

I just got finished watching NASA’s JPL briefing on the status of the Dawn spacecraft mission, and I loved it! And as Bill Nye says: “When you’re in love, you want to tell the world!”

The Dawn spacecraft was launched in September 2007, and in 2011 it became the first spacecraft to orbit a body in the main asteroid belt: it spent over a year examining the giant asteroid Vesta, making wonderful observations about its surface features and geologic activity. Vesta is the second-largest object in the asteroid belt, but Dawn wasn’t quite satisfied with that.

On Friday, it will reach Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt, and earn two other unprecedented titles: the first spacecraft to orbit two different worlds, and the first spacecraft to reach and investigate a dwarf planet.

Mars Science Lab: Liftoff!

Yesterday morning, at 10:02 EST, NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) took off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.  In my opinion, this is possibly the most exciting scientific event of the year, as this mission to Mars is carrying the new Mars rover, Curiosity.

Curiosity isn’t the first Mars rover, of course.  The first was the small rover Pathfinder, which spent nearly three months on Mars in 1997 and set the precedent for all following rovers.   Most people are probably more familiar with the Mars Exploration Rovers (MER), Spirit and Opportunity.  The MER twins landed on opposite sides of Mars in 2004, their mission to answer the big question: has there ever been permanent water on Mars?  In the time since their deployment, these rovers, along with the handful of other landers and orbiters we’ve sent to Mars, have uncovered astounding evidence of past Martian environments: geologic features that hint at ancient river beds, floods, and perhaps even oceans.  The resounding answer is yes, Mars used to have plenty of water.

And why do we care if Mars had water?  Because on Earth, water is the basis of all life.  If Mars had water at one point, could it also have had life like we have on Earth?  This is the underlying question in all Mars research, and it is the main objective of the Mars Science Laboratory mission.

Flashback

With each new blog post, I try to find some big important new research to talk about, and I try to vary the topics as much as I can.  But just because I posted about something already doesn’t mean that research has stopped, and every now and then I find some new developments in news I've already blogged about.  Here are some recent updates to previous topics I've mentioned:

Who's To Blame For Disaster?

Put on your serious hats, folks.  Today’s story has a moral.

In April 2009, a 6.3 magnitude earthquake hit the city of L’Aquila in central Italy.  With over 300 dead, hundreds more injured, and thousands of buildings damaged or destroyed, it was the worst earthquake to strike Italy in decades.  And now a group of scientists are being blamed for it.

The L'Aquila earthquake devastated
several towns in 2009

For several months before the quake, the region had been experiencing small tremors, and a meeting was held to discuss whether or not there was cause for alarm.  A panel of seven earthquake experts decided that these tremors were not unusual for the region, and stated that it was unlikely that a major quake was coming.  The disaster occurred a week later, and now, Judge Giuseppe Romano Gargarella is ordering that the seven scientists be tried for manslaughter.  The judge claims that the experts’ information was faulty and misleading, and that, had the scientists done a better job predicting the earthquake, an evacuation could have been planned, and lives could have been saved.

But there’s a problem with that argument:  You cannot predict an earthquake.

Earthquakes - Past, Present, and Future

In the aftermath of the March 11^th disaster in Japan, the topic of the earthquake is still making headlines.  I’m not going to talk about the Japanese earthquake much here, because it’s been done a thousand times by now, and by better-informed people than myself.  One of those people is Donald Prothero, who wrote up a very thorough description of the event.

But let’s talk about earthquakes.  Anyone who knows earthquakes will tell you that they are dangerous and terrifying for two main reasons.  First, they can be incredibly powerful and extremely destructive, and we’ve seen examples of this countless times.  And second, they are largely unpredictable.  Our instruments often determine that a big quake is coming only seconds before it hits.  Despite decades of study, an accurate predictive model for earthquakes still remains the unachieved holy grail of seismology.

But a new study from researchers in Tel Aviv is a step in the right direction.  Actually, at first glance it sounds more like a step in the opposite direction.  Instead of working on a model to predict earthquakes in the future, they’re developing a model to study earthquakes of the distant past.