Paleobiology of Dinosaurs 04 03 2013 LECTURE 1 o Paleobiology of Dinosaurs o Dinosaurs include the largest animals to ever walk on land largest carnivores on the planet and the most bizarre creatures ever o Why the fascination organisms o Paleobiology Paleontologist someone who studies any aspect of ancient Fascination with things that are real and not real The study of the lives of ancient organisms physiology behavior ecology and functional anatomy o History of the Field People knew about them before their scientific recognition in 1842 Bones are so big hard to miss China o Dragon bones were long dead serpents were unearthed for centuries for medicinal purposes 1676 o Giant Human Thighbone was found in England o Later specimen was named scrotum humanum technically the first proper scientific name given to a dinosaur They though the bone was a scrotum of a giant o Actually the end of a dinosaur s thigh bone American Indians o Referred to dinosaur remains as the Father of the Buffalo or Sacred Former Race of Giants 1806 1770 1824 o Lewis and Clark found bones in Montana and wrote them off as remains for a giant fish o Thomas Jefferson was a fossil fanatic told L and C to look out for mastadons furry elephants o People didn t think extinction could occur o 40 foot long sea monster named Mosasaurus found in Holland o Baron George Cuvier helped with concept of extinction o William Buckland found reptile jaw with pointed serrated teeth from England o Named Megalosaurus big lizard o Credited for first scientifically valid dinosaur no one paid attention Surgeon Gideon Mantell of England found giant teeth and bones with horn like spike herbivore o Curvier said they were from a rhino and a hippo o Named Iguanodon iguana tooth first herbivore named o Huge sensation gigantic plant eating lizard o Early Renditions o Reptiles Buckland and Mantell depicted their dinosaurs as giant walking on all fours reptiles scaled up sprawling Scaly skin lay hard shelled eggs on land have sprawling posture o Richard Owen took stock of all of the crazy fossil giants being found in Europe and noted they were different than reptiles living today 1842 the Dinosaurs named Dinosauris Fearfully Great Reptiles Worked with artist Waterhouse Hawkins to depict them in full size as part of a huge display of British Science Depictions can still be seen today in Crystal Palace Park Dino mania began and hundreds of thousands of people came to view the Dinosaurs o What makes a dinosaur a dinosaur Dinosaurs had teeth in sockets like crocodiles pterosaurs flying and dinomorphs dinosaur like reptiles thus these are their close relatives Pterosaurs and dinosauromorphs had mesotarsal ankles and thus are closer relatives to dinosaurs than crocodiles Dinosauromorphs have erect posture and are the closest relatives of all of the dinosaurs Unique feature 1 region Unique feature 2 o Three or more sacral vertebrae Fused backbones in hip o Hands with three main fingers Unique feature 3 o Perforate acetabulate hole where the thighbone attached goes all the way through the hip o Dinosaurs in America Yankee Dinosaur o First documented remains were tracks found in 1800 o Written off as being from giant birds 1858 Joseph Leidy was given a nearly complete skeleton of a duck billed dinosaur bipedal o Buckland Mantell and Owen were wrong Dinosaurs were o Envisioned looking like a kangaroo with a big tail o New York officials wanted to show up the Brits so they planned a dinosaur showing in Central Park Hired Waterhouse Hawkins to sculpt them Hawkins studio and renditions are destroyed by thugs and dinosaurs are still buried there today 1800s o Two types of Dinosaurs Ornithischians with hips shaped like birds Saursichians with hips shaped like lizards o Fossil feud led to discovery of some of the most famous dinosaurs from the North American west O C Marsh vs E D Cope Early 1900s o US Museums take over as American Dinosaur strikes Carnegie Museum Smithsonian American Museum Royal Ontario Museum Funded by rich backers After WWII most dinosaurs hunting slowed down o Science was considered kid stuff animals were uninteresting dead end failures considered scaled up slow moving pathetic reptiles o Most dinosaurs were thought to have been found everything was found so there was nothing left to show off o The Dinosaur Renaissance 1964 John Ostrom discovered Deinonychus o Athletic teeter totter tail large killing claws on feet more like a living bird than a sluggish reptile Robert Baker o Ostrom s student o Said all dinosaurs were more athletic like birds and animals o Athletic build bone structure predator prey ratios o Everyone soon started studying dinosaurs and jobs were Outcome created More money spent on dinos than ever Research is getting more sophisticated New dinosaur named every week Luis and Walter Alvarez proposed an asteroid hit the Earth and killed the dinos 1980 Cladistics a method to organize physical characteristics of dinos and discern relationships came into common use in 1990s o Developed by Entomologist Willi Hennig in 1950s o Helped make sense as to who is who among the dinos Paleobiology of Dinosaurs 04 03 2013 238 million years until 65 5 million years ago during the Mesozoic LECTURE 2 o The Age of Dinosaurs o When did dinosaurs live Era or the Age of Dinosaurs o Three Divisions to Age of Dinos Triassic Period Jurassic Period Cretaceous Period o How do we know these ages Radioactive isotopes in volcanic rocks formed at the time of the dinos decay into secondary materials at known rates If you compare original amount to final amount you can asses age Uranium 235 is best for dinosaur age sediments o Rock breaks down over time o Pure volcanic rock that been cooled o Commonly found in lava layers and ash fallout o Climate World was warmer during Age of Dinos Arid in equatorial regions At the poles despite a lack of light for much of the year it was wet and rainy no polar ice caps o Plate Tectonics Continents move driven by volcanic seafloor spreading Harry Hess Triassic continents were adjoined called Pangaea By the end of the Cretaceous period they were close to their present positions Dinos distribution have helped to figure out where the continents were and explains their distributions o One of the ways that we know where the continents were in the past is by finding the same species of dinos in different parts of the world o With a warmer earth there was no ice in the poles This meant oceans were higher and covered much of
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