Scientists seek to solve mystery of Stegosaurus plates

Although nowhere near the largest of the Jurassic dinosaurs, Stegosaurus were still about the size of a bus. Distinctive and heavily built, they were herbivores with short forelimbs and would have walked with their small head close to the ground and the four-spiked tail held high. The double row of plates running along the back helped control body temperature and were probably used in display or possibly in defence against carnivorous Allosaurs. Most fossils for the three known species, including some complete skeletons, have come from the USA, although a recent discovery in Portugal suggests a wider distribution.

By Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent, BBC News

Researchers hope to learn how much it weighed, how it moved and what it used its iconic back plates for.

A UK team has scanned each of its 360 bones into a computer and has digitally reconstructed the dinosaur.

The specimen, nicknamed "Sophie", has been acquired by the Natural History Museum in London.

 

Although Stegosauruses are one of the most well known dinosaurs, they are among those that scientists know the least about. There are only six partial skeletons of the creature, which lived around 150 million years ago.

It could grow to the size of a minibus and the gigantic plates which ran along its back were its most distinctive feature.

Stegosaurus: the outstanding questions

    How did it use its back plates and tail spikes?

    How effective were its muscles?

    How did such a small skull manage to chew enough food for such a large body?

    How much did it weigh?

Surprisingly, it was 100 years ago that the dinosaur's skeleton was properly assessed and scientifically described. Now, using medical imaging techniques and 3D modelling, researchers at the Natural History Museum hope to learn much more about this iconic creature.

Prof Paul Barrett, who is leading the research, said that they were particularly interested in finding out what stegosauruses used their plates for.

"We want to find out whether they were used for defence or whether they were used as a radiator to help the animal pick up or lose heat," he told BBC News.

Mysteries

Sophie is 80% complete and is thought to be the most complete specimen in the world. Dr Charlotte Brassey, who is working with Prof Barrett, helped to scan in its 360 bones and digitally recreate it on her computer as a detailed 3D model.

"I reconstructed the skeleton to see what it might have looked like and then began to reconstruct the muscles and how they connected with the skeleton. From that we can begin to say how effective its muscles were and eventually in the future we would like to reconstruct how it moved," she told BBC News.

Among the mysteries the researchers would like to solve is how the species was able to walk with such small front legs and such large back legs.

World of Warcraft New Mount: Enchanted Fey Dragon

World of Warcraft® In-Game Mount

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The Enchanted Fey Dragon automatically scales to the fastest riding skill known by each character. If they aren’t high enough level to use a flying mount, it will still be useable as a ground mount.

Spinosaurus revealed as a fearsome aquatic dinosaur

Scientists now believe that Spinosaurus lived mostly in the water making it a rarity among normally terrestrial dinosaurs.

Rachel Sullivan
ABC

The giant, sail-backed Spinosaurus was a formidable aquatic predator built for swimming and hunting in water, according to new fossil evidence.

The 15-metre long carnivorous dinosaur Spinosaurus aegyptiacus lived 95 million years ago and is the only known example of a semi-aquatic dinosaur.

"There were lots of aquatic reptiles, such as ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, but until this discovery it was thought that dinosaurs hunted only on land," explains paleontologist and study lead author Dr Nizar Ibrahim from the University of Chicago.

"The discovery shows that dinosaurs were much more diverse and adaptable than previously thought."

The paper is published in Science today.

Spinosaurus was first discovered a century ago by German paleontologist Ernst Freiherr Stromer von Reichenbach in Egypt. However, the partial skeleton he found were destroyed during Allied bombing of Munich in 1944.

Recently, archeologists have discovered new Spinosaurus fossils along desert cliffs in Morocco.

The area was once home to an extensive river system, where coelacanths the size of cars lived alongside seven metre long sawfish, and three metre long lungfish. Freshwater sharks and crocodile-like predators, some as long as a bus, also lived in the river system.

"To hunt successfully in territory occupied by animals this size, Spinosaurus would need to have been big to have survived," Ibrahim says.

Fish-eater

Ibrahim and colleagues CT scanned the new fossil finds and digitally pieced the skeleton together. They filled in the blanks using information from museum collections and Stromer's notes, sketches and photos.

They found that Spinosaurus had a range of adaptations for its aquatic lifestyle, including a long slender jaw and cone shaped teeth that were ideal for capturing slippery prey.

"Its nasal opening was also much further back allowing it to breathe when the skull is submerged. Pressure receptors on the tip of its snout were similar to those used by crocodiles today to detect prey movements," Ibrahim says.

"It has fish-eater written all over its skull."

The rest of its body had strange proportions too, he adds. "Its pelvis was small and it had short, muscular hind legs - adaptations that would have made it easier to paddle in the water and which are only seen in animals that returned to the sea, such as the ancestors of whales."

Spinosaurus also had broad feet and long flat claws to help it paddle through soft mud and a very flexible tail that it would have used in a side-to-side motion like a crocodile.

The final evidence for its aquatic lifestyle came from inside the bones, which lacked the hollow marrow cavity typically found in predatory dinosaurs.

"Instead the bone was very dense, something that we see in penguins and manatees and is thought to help with buoyancy control."

The function of the animal's sail, which would have likely protruded prominently from the water, is still under debate, but Ibrahim thinks it may have served as a warning to other predators not to enter a spinosaur's territory.

Life-size replica printed

Once the digital model was complete, the researchers 3D-printed a life-size replica of the skeleton.

"We knew from looking at it on the monitor that this animal was really big," Ibrahim says, "but it isn't until you are standing face to face with it that you get a true sense of its size."

The model will become the centerpiece of an international traveling exhibition, while the original bones will be returned to Morocco.

Finding other semi-aquatic predatory dinosaurs in the future isn't out of the question, says Ibrahim, but cautions would-be dinosaur hunters that they are rare.

"Most predatory dinosaurs looked a lot like T. rex. We see the same blueprint used over and over again. Spinosaurus was a major departure from that."

AMPHIPTHERE [AMPHIPTERE]

This terrifying creature is a giant snake with horns on its head and wings on its back. It is native to the British Isles, but it has also been seen in Gaul, where it is known as a Guivre. It is an extremely aggressive and vicious predator. It especially hates human beings and attacks them on sight. The creature makes its home in the forest and occasionally in marshlands. Intruders are dealt with severely. 

In combat, the Amphipthere strikes with its horns, goring its targets. It can also bite, which is its preferred tactic against wounded prey, making it easier to eat them. Its most fearsome attack, though, is its ability to constrict its prey by wrapping the target up in its coils and squeezing the life out of it. 

These creatures are so terrifying that, during the Middle Ages, some warlords would feature them in their coats of arms to inflict fear in their enemies and the populace. A person who displayed the Amphipthere was known to be vicious and without mercy just like the beast itself.

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JORMUNGANDR (Midgard Serpent)

Midgard Serpent by ~Hieronymus7Z

Fall of Gods 

berggreen

Midogaruzuorumu

The name of the Midgaard Serpent in Norse myth and a metaphor for geologic violence particularly associated with the mid-Atlantic Ocean. Jormungandr dwelt under the sea. Whenever he tightened his coils about the world, earthquakes and tempests lashed out. In the Twilight of the Gods (Goetterdaemmerung or Ragnarok), the monster's death agonies caused a worldwide flood, part of the universal destruction that ended a former age of greatness.

Germanic myth evinces a real fear of this no-man's-land outside the settlement, and the idea of the frontier is there all the time, with the gods serving to ward off dangers from the wild. The islanders and the people along the shore believed that a universal ocean surrounds the earth, with an unfathomable abyss at the horizon and a huge snake curling at the edge to hold the world together. The serpent is called the Midgardr serpent or Jörmungandr; according to Snorri, this monstrous ophidian bit its tail-a concept that does not occur in the Eddic poems but that is quite common in Eastern religions and that was introduced in Scandinavia by medieval Christian scholarship. The symbol (similar to the ouroboros in Jungian psychology) may be borrowed, but the concept is old, as the name Jörmungandr shows. Connected with jörmungrund (meaning "earth" in st. 20 of the Lay of Grimnir), jörmun- (also a name of Odinn) is an adjective meaning "great, powerful, lofty," and gandr means "magic wand." The compound eormengrund also appears in Beowulf (line 859).

Thor and the World Serpent

Although the Norse Thor may be most closely associated with giant-killing, in Germanic myth the greatest archetypal example of the sky-god with thunder-weapon battling demonic power is manifested in Thor's struggle with Jormungandr, the world serpent, a struggle which does not reach its climax until the final cataclysm at Ragnarok. In this conflict Thor manifests the Indo-European patriarchal sky-god who battles evil incarnate in an attempt to protect humankind; we well might say that in this archetypal opposition Thor represents life and light, while Jormungandr represents death and darkness. Myths concerning such polarized battles between the forces of life and those of death are particularly well suited to mid-winter, when rituals related to them also may take place. This association may be especially true in the far north, where darkness and cold always threaten the delicate balance of subsistence; it is Thor, in the Germanic pantheon, who stands between his followers and the frigid abyss. The thunderer's battle with the world serpent, then, carries mythic overtones regarding ancient and widespread concerns about agricultural fertility. Two familiar comic Norse myths provide the context for this particular manifestation of that struggle, which turns starkly serious at the time of the apocalyptic battle between the gods and their foes. Our first glimpse of Thor's conflict with the great serpent comes from the saga of Utgard-Loki told by Snorri; we pick up the tale shortly after Thor has taken Thialfi and Roskva into his service as recompense for the lameness of his goat.

In this myth Thor has his revenge upon Jormungandr for Utgard-Loki's trick, and in taking this vengeance Thor reasserts those qualities of literal mindedness, wrath, and straightforward power with which audiences were most familiar. It is probably in part for these reasons that this was and remains one of the most popular and enduring myths of Thor. It is also, in this version by Snorri, a finely told and funny story. There are three other versions of this myth known to exist, and this myth was most certainly known in England during the Viking period: the Gosforth Slab shows Thor fishing with an ox head, while the Gosforth Cross contains an illustration of Thor fighting Jormungandr; both are from Gosforth churchyard in Cumbria, and both are from ca. 900 ce. In comparative terms, Thor's bait-the ox head-recalls Feridun's Gurz, and this association may suggest the early and archetypal origin of this late Norse version of an Indo-European myth; further, the ox's name ("Skybellower") might indicate a faint cultural recollection of Thor's archetypal identity as protector sky-god. Finally, this myth has been persuasively associated with the medieval tradition of Christ catching Leviathan on a hook. Laughter aside, however, Jormungandr proves to be-quite literally-Thor's nemesis, and with this foreknowledge the comedy of this myth has a ring of pathos. Thor's last battle with the monster and their mutual destruction un derscore the final failing of the old gods of the North; when Thor falls, the forces of order have lost their greatest part: 

Thor and Jormungandr at Ragnarok

On the dawn of the day of the final struggle, when Heimdalr has sounded his horn and thus announced the approach of Ragnarok, Thor will strap on his girdle of strength, put on his iron gloves, take up Mjollnir, and mount his chariot. Thor will ride into battle at the hand of his father, who will be the first to engage the enemy in the form of the great wolf Fenris. Before Thor can turn to Odin's aid, however, he will be attacked by Jormungandr, and their struggle will be mighty and fearsome to behold. Thor's power will prove the greater at the last, but in its death throes the great worm will spew forth rivers of venom so potent that even the thunderer's vigor will be overcome. Thor will stumble back nine paces and fall, stricken by the serpent's poison. The battle will rage on without him, but the hopes of the gods die with Thor.