CHILESAURUS IS MISSING LINK IN DINO FAMILY TREE.

Researchers said on 16th August, 2017 (Wednesday) an oddball, vegetarian dinosaur with silhouette of a flesh-ripping velocireptor, whose fossilised remains were unearthed in Chile 13 years ago, was a missing link in dino evolution. Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Natural History Museum in the United Kingdom used a dataset to analyse over 450 anatomical characteristics of early dinosaurs and correctly placed the creature, known as Chilesaurus, in the dinosaur family tree. The results, published in the journal Biology Letters, suggest that Chilesaurus effectively fills a large gap between two major dinosaur groups, and shows how the divide between them may have happened. Chilesaurus, which lived about 150 million years ago, has an odd collection of physical characteristics. Its head resembles that of a carnivore, but it has flat teeth for grinding plant matter. 
"Chilesaurus almost looks like it was stitched together  from different animals, which is why it baffled everybody", said Matthew Baron, a Ph.D student at Cambridge. Early research suggested th dinosaur belonged to the group Theropoda, the 'lizard-hipped' group, but the new study said it was probably an early member of Ornithischia group or the 'bird-hipped' group.
However, Chilesaurus does not possess the distinctive 'beak' like bird-hipped dinosaurs, researchers said. "This shows in bird-hipped dinos, the gut evolved first, and jaws evolved later - it fills the gap quiet nicely", Baron said.
---------------------------------------------------------------- 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

VIEWS OF MANU AND KAUTILYA ON THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE.

The state performed its duty of protection of society and the individual through coercive enforcement of the standards of justice based on the concept of ' Dharma '. From the Vedic period onward, the perennial attitude of Indian culture had been justice and righteousness. Justice, in the Indian context, was a human expression of a wider universal principle of nature and if men were entirely true to nature, their actions would be spontaneously just. Men experienced Justice, in the sense of a distributive equity, as moral justice, social justice, and legal justice. Each of these forms of justice was viewed as a particularisation of the general principle of the universe seen as a total organism. Impartial administration of justice was always regarded as one of the main duties of the King and he was considered to be the fountain of justice. The ethical code of society and its cultural standards were inter-related. The cultural maturity and social amicability and even their det...
Read more

ARCHAEOLOGISTS DISCOVER TOMBS IN EGYPT DATING BACK 2,000 YEARS.

Egypt's antiquities ministry said on 14th August, 2017 (Tuesday) that archaeologists have discovered three tombs dating more than 2,000 years, from the Ptolemaic Period. The discovery was made in the Nile valley province of Minya south of Cairo, in an area known as al-kamin al-Sahrawi. The unearthed sarcophagi and clay fragments suggest that the area was a large necropolis from sometime between the 27th Dynasty and the Greco-Roman period. ---------------------------------------------------------------- 
Read more

ANCIENT INDIA'S LINKS TO TODAY.

You may not have heard of Shu-ilishu but he is a man of great significance. He reaches out to us from almost 4,300 years ago, through a small Akkadian cylinder seal now housed at the Louvre Museum in Paris. On the seal, you will find an image of him talking to two men. The inscription describes Shu-ilishu as the interpreter of the Meluhhan language. 'Meluha' was, in all probability, the term used by ancient Mesopotamians for the Indus Valley region, and the presence of an oficial 'interpreter' there indicates just how important the steady flow of good from the Indian sub-continent was.  Precious and vibrant lapis lazuli stones, carnelian beads, wood and even dogs would go across via old trade routes and ports like Lothal (in modern-day Gujarat) to Akkad, capital of the Akkadian Empire (03rd millennium BCE) and now in modern-day Iraq. There are also references to a settlement of Meluhhans in the city of Guabba in Sumer, in Mesopotamia.  The story of Shi-ilishu and ...
Read more