2008-10-09 – Ebay incredible fossils of the week !!! (Fossili, asta)

1st place

Nothosaurus sp. fossil skeleton dinosaur age

US $350,000.00

Nothosaurus sp. fossil skeleton.

Location China

386cm x 75cm (slab), 455cm x182cm(frame) (12.66 feet x 2.46 feet slab, 14.92 feet x 5.97 feet with frame)

dinosaur_scott( 743)

2nd place

Protoceratops Dinosaur fossil skeleton

US $129,000.00

Skeleton measures 120cm (3.93 feet) in length

Discovered in Mongolia.

 

dinosaur_scott( 743)

3rd place

Prenocephale Pachycephalosaur Dinosaur Fossil skeleton

US $350,000.00 

Museum quality Prenocephale sp. fossil skeleton.

This skeleton was discovered in Mongolia, and measures 5.25ft (160cm) in length. This is one of my favorite skeletons. It is very rare, especially in this part of the world. The seller is motivated and will consider offers

Prenocephale was a small pachycephalosaurid dinosaur genus from the Late Cretaceous and was similar in many ways to its close relative, Homalocephale. Prenocephale probably weighed around 130 kilograms and was around 2m to 3m long. Unlike the flattened wedge-shaped skull of Homalocephale, the head of Prenocephale was rounded and sloping. It lived in what is now Mongolia.

dinosaur_scott( 743)

4th place

Real Fossilized Mummified Edmontosaurus Dinosaur Skin

US $4,000.00 

This is a piece of actual fossilized mummified dinosaur skin found with the upper limb bones of an Edmontosaurus.  It was found in Eastern Montana, Hell Creek Formation.  It is large at 5 1/2″ x 2 1/4″ approximately.    This is NOT merely fossilized skin impressions, which also are quite rare; this is actual fossilized MUMMIFIED skin WHICH IS AS RARE AS IT GETS for dinosaur fossils.  This specimen perfectly demonstrates that it is the actual positive fossil from mummified tissue extremely well.  Notice the edge-on photos which show the highly 3-dimensional preservation of the scales.  The scales are seen in high relief and exhibit a variety of sizes and shapes.  The entire fossil has a smooth lengthwise curvature, preserving perfectly the shape of the forelimb.  The scales themselves have beautifully preserved texture and the black color, which is totally natural, provides excellent color contrast.  I believe the black color of these scales is likely not the actual preserved original living color, but is likely due to carbon preservation of bacterial mats, which is how skin, hair, feathers and other soft tissue are usually preserved as fossils. 

How might a dinosaur become mummified?  It would seem to require a rare sequence of unlikely events.  The dinosaur would have to die and its carcass would have to be left largely untouched by scavangers.  It would have to be exposed to extreme dryness for a very long time and it would have to dry out to the point of becoming very hard, including the soft tissues and internal organs.    One scenario that has been put forth is that it would be lying on a spit of sand in the middle of a stream.  (Still, it would seem to me vulnerable to crocodiles and pterosaurs.)  Next, it would have to become rapidly buried, perhaps carried downstream in a flood and buried in sand, and through permineralization, the mummy would become fossilized.  Only a few dinosaur mummies have been found and they are considered among the rarest and most valuable of all dinosaur fossils.  The most famous dinosaur mummy was an Edmontosaurus, described by Henry Fairfield Osborn in 1912, AMNH 5060, residing at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.  And, as pointed out by Osborn regarding AMNH 5060, “There is no remnent of actual skin preserved only its imprint.”  The lucky purchaser of this fossil will have a dinosaur mummy skin fossil superior to that found on the most famous dinosaur mummy!

This is about as good as fossilized skin gets: Obvious 3-D preservation of scales, original preserved body contours, striking color contrast, and superb detail.  I trust you will not find a higher quality piece of dinosaur mummified skin anywhere on the web, on a National Geographic Special, in a book, and maybe not in any museum!  Touching this as as close as it gets to touching a living dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous! 

bruce55( 315)

see more on Ebay (link)

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2008-09-25 – “Leonardo” (Brachylophosaurus canadensis) fornisce nuove informazioni sulla dieta egli Adrosauri

Well-Preserved Dinosaur Guts Give Insight Into Prehistoric Diet

Thursday, September 25, 2008

By Robin Lloyd

 

An analysis of the gut contents from an exceptionally well-preserved juvenile dinosaur fossil suggests that the hadrosaur’s last meal included plenty of well-chewed leaves digested into tiny bits.

The fossil, Brachylophosaurus canadensis aka “Leonardo,” is the second well-substantiated case in which the gut contents of a plant-eating dinosaur have been revealed, said Justin S. Tweet, who was a graduate student at the University of Colorado at Boulder when he studied the fossil with colleagues there including paleontologist Karen Chin.

The dino, found in what geologists call the Judith River Formation, in Montana, will go on display to the public Friday at the Houston Museum of Natural Science’s “Dinosaur Mummy CSA: Cretaceous Science Investigation” exhibition.

“Our interpretation suggests that the subadult Judith River Formation brachylophosaur had a leaf-dominated diet shortly before its death,” the authors write in the September issue of PALAIOS, the journal of the Society for Sedimentary Geology.

Skin and scales

Leonardo is a 77-million-year-old duckbilled dinosaur whose remains are covered with patterned fossilized skin. The specimen has given scientists a rare peek inside a dinosaur. Digital technology and X-ray scans, some of which were conducted at NASA Johnson Space Center’s Ellington Field facility in Texas, has helped paleontologists reconstruct what Leonardo looked like in life, what it ate, its muscle mass and its limb movements.

An analysis of pollen found in the specimen’s gut region revealed a variety of plants, including ferns, conifers and flowering plants. Although the pollen could have been ingested when the dinosaur drank water, the tiny leaf bits, under 5 millimeters (a quarter-inch) in length, indicate that Leonardo was a big browser of plants, Chin said.

Hadrosaurs were certainly capable of processing food into tiny bits in part with their continually replacing teeth and grinding jaws.

The tricky part with the analysis was building a case that the plant matter found inside the gut came from the dinosaur’s last meal, not from material that penetrated the body or flowed into the area after death. The case was helped by the fact that Leonardo was buried quickly and undisturbed by scavengers, and its body cavity appears to be undisturbed. At least 12 percent of the gut contents in the carcass included organic matter, such as leaves. The rest was clay and grit. Some of the inorganic stuff probably flowed into the body after death, Tweet said.

Overall, the most exciting part of the research was working with material that could actually be gut contents, Tweet said.

“This is very rare for dinosaurs, where we usually have to settle for generalizations of feeding behavior based on skull anatomy,” he told LiveScience.

The research was funded by grants through the University of Colorado and its Museum of Natural History and a Geological Society of American Graduate Student Grant.

‘Cranial Cuisinart’

Houston Museum of Natural Science Curator of Paleontology Robert T. Bakker, one of the first scientists to work on the fossil, said that duckbill dinosaurs like Leonardo had large bills and jaws full of tiny teeth, about 800 of them, that ground and chopped tough plants and plant parts, including conifer needles, bark and twigs, like a “cranial Cuisinart.”

The contents of the gastrointestinal tract then were processed by digestive juices and gut microbes.

Leonardo has a pebbly skin texture, like the lower leg of an ostrich or another big bird, Bakker said, but on the front of Leonardo’s ankle and shin, the skin becomes very thick like armor which helped it move through the underbrush.

The fossil was discovered in the summer of 2000 during an expedition to a cattle ranch about 15 miles north of Malta, Mont. Leonardo was named after graffiti found on a nearby rock that read: “Leonard Webb loves Geneva Jordan 1916.”

The Houston exhibition will also feature an icthyosaur “mummy,” which has contents of her intestines and four babies preserved inside her body, and the only mummified Triceratops skin ever found. The exhibition’s opening was delayed a week as a result of conditions and power losses in the Houston area after Hurricane Ike, including five days without primary power at the museum. Leonardo and other exhibition specimens were unharmed, a museum spokeswoman said.

• Click here to visit FOXNews.com’s Evolution & Paleontology Center.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,428023,00.html

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Probable Gut Contents Within A Specimen Of Brachylophosaurus Canadensis (Dinosauria: Hadrosauridae) From the Upper Cretaceous Judith River Formation Of Montana

Justin S. Tweet, Karen Chin, Dennis R. Braman, and Nate L. Murphy
PALAIOS 2008 23: 624-635. [Abstract] [Full Text] [Figures Only] [PDF]  

Abstract – An exceptionally preserved subadult specimen (JRF 115H) of a hadrosaurid, Brachylophosaurus canadensis, from the Judith River Formation near Malta, Montana, contains abundant plant fragments concentrated within the body cavity. We examined the taphonomy of the carcass and analyzed the gut-region material to test whether the organic remains represent fossilized gut contents. The dinosaur was buried in a fluvial channel setting, and the excellent articulation, integument impressions, and lack of scavenging indicate rapid burial. The organic material occupies a volume of at least 5750 cm³, and comparable material is not found outside the carcass. The carcass contents include about 63% clay, about 16% undetermined matrix, about 12% organic matter, and about 9% larger inorganic clasts—mostly 50–100 µm quartz grains. Most of the organics appear to be mm-scale leaf fragments. The most parsimonious explanation for the presence and composition of the gut-region material is that much of the plant fossils represent reworked brachylophosaur ingesta influenced by flowing water that entered through openings in the carcass and introduced clay. The evidence strongly suggests that the hadrosaurid ate significant quantities of leaves and processed them into small pieces. This study provides baseline information for analyzing other cases of putative gut contents in herbivorous dinosaurs.

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