New Bizarre Looking Dinosaur was First Carnivorous Bipedal Swimmer 75 Million Years Ago

BY SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — With a bill like a duck but teeth like a croc's, a swanlike neck and killer claws, a new dinosaur species uncovered by scientists looks like something Dr. Seuss could have dreamed up.

It also had flippers like a penguin, and while it walked like an ostrich it could also swim. That's the first time swimming ability has been shown for a two-legged, meat-eating dinosaur.

The tiny creature, only about 18 inches (45 centimeters) tall, roamed 75 million years ago in what is now Mongolia. Its full curled-up skeleton was found in a sandstone rock.

"It's such a peculiar animal," said Dennis Voeten, a paleontology researcher at Palacky University in the Czech Republic. "It combines different parts we knew from other groups into this one small animal."

In a study released Wednesday by the journal Nature , Voeten and coauthors named it Halszkaraptor escuilliei  (HAHL-shka-rap-tor ES-key-lay-ee) or "Halszka" after the late Polish paleontologist Halszka Osmolska.

Paleontologist Kristi Curry Rogers of Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, who didn't participate in the study, called it "a pretty crazy chimera: a swan neck and dinosaur body, but with a mouthful of tiny teeth and hands and feet that look like they might be good for swimming."

Its mashup body let it run and hunt on the ground and fish in fresh water, said study co-author Paul Tafforeau. He's a paleontologist at the ESRF , known as the European Synchrotron in Grenoble, France, a powerful X-ray generator where numerous tests were made on the fossil.

Lead author Andrea Cau, a paleontologist at the Geological Museum Capellini in Bologna, Italy, said he was at first highly suspicious about the fossil's authenticity, both because of its appearance and the fact that the rock containing the skeleton had been smuggled out of Mongolia and left in a private collector's hands.

"I asked myself, 'Is this a real, natural skeleton, or an artifact, a chimera? If this is a fake, how could I demonstrate it?'" Cau said in an email. "Assuming it was a fake instead of starting assuming that the fossil is genuine was the most appropriate way to start the investigation of such a bizarre fossil."

So researchers used the Synchrotron to create three-dimensional images of the fossil, which showed the creature was indeed a single animal and not a concoction built up from several sources. For example, an arm hidden in the rock perfectly matched the visible left arm, and lines indicating growth matched up across the bones.

Even though the creature wasn't dreamed up by Dr. Seuss, it got a blessing from a Dr. Sues.

Hans Sues, a paleontologist at the Smithsonian Institution who wasn't part of the research, praised the work and said it "shows again how amazingly diverse dinosaurs were."

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Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears and his work can be found here .
 

Paleontologists Discover New Dinosaur in Africa!

Reconstruction of the new titanosaur and the landscape in which it lived, in what is now Tanzania.

Credit: Mark Witton, www.markwitton.com

Eureka! Paleontologists found a new dinosaur! Well, a new species of the already-known long-necked Titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur. They're calling it Shingopana songwensis. "Shingopana" is Swahili for "wide neck" and "Songwe" is the region it was unearthed from in Africa. 

Now, Titanosaur bones are mostly found in South America, but discovering this one in Africa's southwestern Tanzania is a rare find. 

Excavation of Shingopana songwensis showing ribs and other bones being prepared for plaster-jacketing.

Credit: Nancy Stevens

Actually, part of this new dinosaur fossil was excavated by the Rukwa Rift Basin Project in 2002, leaving the vertebrae, ribs, humerus, and lower jaw for later recovery. 

Scientific testing revealed the Singopana were genetically closer to South American titanosaurs than any other found around the world. 

"There are anatomical features present only in Shingopana and in several South American titanosaurs, but not in other African titanosaurs," said lead paper author Eric Gorscak, a paleontologist at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. "Shingopana had siblings in South America, whereas other African titanosaurs were only distant cousins."

During the earthquake-active Cretaceous Period, Madagascar broke off from southern Africa, with South America gradually splitting off from south to north over 95-105 million years. This divided the dinosaur populations into separate continents where they adapted to different environments. 

"This discovery suggests that the fauna of northern and southern Africa were very different in the Cretaceous Period," said Judy Skog, a program director in NSF's Division of Earth Sciences, which supported the research. "At that time, southern Africa dinosaurs were more closely related to those in South America, and were more widespread than we knew."

As an extra bonus, these Shingopana bones also had tiny tunnels bored through them from ancient insects, giving researchers another rare opportunity to reconstruct the time of death and insights into the ancient dinosaur food chain. 

The Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, funded by National Science Foundation, published this research in August 2017. 

The study was also funded by the National Geographic Society, Jurassic Foundation, Paleontological Society, Ohio University Student Enhancement Award, Ohio University Original Work Grant, Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine, Ohio University Office of the Vice President for Research and Creative Activity, and James Cook University.

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Sources:

https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=242862&org=NSF&from=news