HemGrupperDiskuteraMerTidsandan
Sök igenom hela webbplatsen
Denna webbplats använder kakor för att fungera optimalt, analysera användarbeteende och för att visa reklam (om du inte är inloggad). Genom att använda LibraryThing intygar du att du har läst och förstått våra Regler och integritetspolicy. All användning av denna webbplats lyder under dessa regler.

Resultat från Google Book Search

Klicka på en bild för att gå till Google Book Search.

Laddar...

Mesozoic Vertebrate Life:

av Darren H. Tanke

MedlemmarRecensionerPopularitetGenomsnittligt betygDiskussioner
2011,091,121 (3)Ingen/inga
This collective volume presents the current knowledge about the Mesozoic reptiles of Patagonia. This is the first book to ever to examine the Mesozoic era in the English language, and the first in any language to treat it in an entire decade. The contributors cover a great amount of material, describing the phylogenetic relationships among the reptiles, their diversity, evolution, and paleobiology. The Patagonian region had a distinctive fauna, which has become much better known over the last 40 years, sometimes due to amazing discoveries. With copious illustrations, this book provides more than a glimpse of a fascinating, ancient past.… (mer)
Ingen/inga
Laddar...

Gå med i LibraryThing för att få reda på om du skulle tycka om den här boken.

Det finns inga diskussioner på LibraryThing om den här boken.

A Festschrift for Canadian dinosaur paleontologist Philip Currie. The title is, unfortunately, misleading; it’s almost all Cretaceous dinosaurs – despite the fact there were plenty of other vertebrates in the Mesozoic. The 33 papers are mostly of indifferent interest (to me, at least; I’m sure if you were a taxonomist several of the papers on random bones from here and there would be fascinating. Of more than glancing interest were:


”A Kerf-and-Drill Model of Tyrannosaur Tooth Serrations”: Anybody who’s cracked their car windshield knows you can stop crack propagation by drilling a tiny hole along the crack. (Author William Ambler points out this was done on a crack in the 40” telescope objective at Yerkes Observatory – news to me but interesting). Tyrannosaurs had teeth serrated on the back edge; the author claims that tooth scratches on bones show that tyrannosaurs fed by grabbing a mouthful and yanking backwards while shaking. That action would put stress on the teeth and the serrations would be logical places for cracks to form. However, every serration also has a tiny hole, which presumably acts to prevent a crack from propagating. Perhaps; I’ve also read that the serrations might acted as places for bacteria to lodge, leading to infected wounds; the tyrannosaur would then presumably trail the wounded animal until it weakened or died. Modern Komodo dragons use this strategy and have similar tooth serrations. Of course, the two possibilities are not exclusive.


”Forelimb Osteology and biomechanics of Tyrannosaurus rex: There’s been a lot of speculation – and a Gary Larson cartoon – on what, exactly, T. rex did with its tiny little arms. Authors Kenneth Carpenter and Matt Smith point out that they’re only tiny compared to the rest of the animal – muscle attachment scars suggest T. rex arms were about 3.5 times as strong as human arms. They also note (in passing) that the question of whether T. rex had two or three digits still isn’t settled, and that the “rest” position for the arms (and, in fact, for any theropod arms) was with the “palms” facing inward (toward the animal’s centerline) rather than downward (which is the way they’re usually shown in painting and reconstructions). They conclude the arms would have been useful in holding struggling prey.


”Gastroliths from the Lower Cretaceous Sauropod Cedarosaurus weiskopfae: Gastroliths are rounded to subrounded stones, (usually) with a characteristic “soapy” polish, found associated with herbivorous dinosaur skeletons. The increasingly accepted assumption is that they were “gizzard stones” that aided the animal in macerating food. The authors describe a skeleton with an assortment of stones in about the right place for a “gizzard”. The animal doesn’t seem to have been very selective about swallowing efficient stones – although most were chert or quartzite, many were siltstone or sandstone. Previous studies suggested that brightly colored stones were favored, but that wasn’t the case here – all of the stones were relatively dull colors. However, studies conducted at LANL showed that all the stones had rather high surface reflectance, implying that the animal picked up and swallowed shiny things.


”Taphonomy and Paleoenvironment of a Hadrosaur (Dinosauria) from the Matanuska Formation (Turonian) in South-Central Alaska”: The more-or-less intact (missing the head) skeleton of a hadrosaur was found in marine sediments indicating an outer shelf environment; the assumption is that the dinosaur carcass drifted out to sea, possibly buoyed by internal gases, then sank. What interested me was that the sedimentary rock and other associated fossils suggested a low oxygen environment, and the tooth scars on the bones were characteristic of mosasaur – rather than shark or fish – teeth. It occurs to me that marine reptiles would have an advantage over sharks or fish in such an environment, since they bring their own air rather than getting it out of the water. Sort of a Cretaceous SCBA.


”Late Cretaceous Dinosaur Provinciality”: Author Thomas Lehman points out that dinosaur fauna from the Late Cretaceous show considerable latitude provinciality. For example, for the Lancian (late Maastrichtian, 70-65 Mya) the southern fauna (northern Mexico to southern Wyoming) is mostly the sauropod Alamosaurus and the pterodactyl Quetzalcoatlus, while the northern fauna (Colorado to Alberta) is mostly the ceratosaur Triceratops and the hadrosaur Edmontosaurus. Where the fauna overlap, Alamosaurus and Quetzalcoatlus seem to favor higher terrain. The interesting thing is that comparative fauna in modern times would be the same along the entire range – bison, pronghorn, mule deer.


”Bones of Contention: Charles H. Sternberg’s Lost Dinosaurs”: The Sternberg family was preeminent vertebrate fossil collectors during the late 19th and early 20th century. They had no formal geological or biological training, but were very good at what they did – if you’re ever in Fort Hays, Kansas, visit the Sternberg Museum. This little historical note documents what happened to a shipment the Sternbergs dispatched to the British museum; the steamship carrying the 10 tons of fossils - S.S. Mount Temple – already of some notoriety for being involved in the Titanic loss – had the misfortune to encounter the German surface raider Moewe. Sternberg’s fossils now rest on the bottom of the Atlantic about 600 miles west of Ireland.


”Dinosaurs in Fiction”: William Sarjeant lists all the fictional works he can find that incorporate dinosaurs as a plot element, including The Lost World (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1912) and The Lost World (Michael Crichton, 1995). My personal favorites are included: Rivers of Time (L. Sprague de Camp, 1993), involving a time-traveling big-game hunter encountering various difficulties with his hunting parties and their quarry (a .375 H&H turns out to be Not Enough Gun for a T. rex); and George Gaylord Simpson’s The Dechronization of Sam Magruder, which is a pretty interesting account of what to do if you suddenly end up stranded in the Cretaceous. ( )
  setnahkt | Dec 15, 2017 |
inga recensioner | lägg till en recension

Ingår i förlagsserien

Du måste logga in för att ändra Allmänna fakta.
Mer hjälp finns på hjälpsidan för Allmänna fakta.
Vedertagen titel
Originaltitel
Alternativa titlar
Första utgivningsdatum
Personer/gestalter
Viktiga platser
Viktiga händelser
Information från den engelska sidan med allmänna fakta. Redigera om du vill anpassa till ditt språk.
Relaterade filmer
Motto
Dedikation
Inledande ord
Citat
Avslutande ord
Särskiljningsnotis
Förlagets redaktörer
På omslaget citeras
Ursprungsspråk
Kanonisk DDC/MDS
Kanonisk LCC
This collective volume presents the current knowledge about the Mesozoic reptiles of Patagonia. This is the first book to ever to examine the Mesozoic era in the English language, and the first in any language to treat it in an entire decade. The contributors cover a great amount of material, describing the phylogenetic relationships among the reptiles, their diversity, evolution, and paleobiology. The Patagonian region had a distinctive fauna, which has become much better known over the last 40 years, sometimes due to amazing discoveries. With copious illustrations, this book provides more than a glimpse of a fascinating, ancient past.

Inga biblioteksbeskrivningar kunde hittas.

Bokbeskrivning
Haiku-sammanfattning

Pågående diskussioner

Ingen/inga

Populära omslag

Snabblänkar

Betyg

Medelbetyg: (3)
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3 1
3.5
4
4.5
5

Är det här du?

Bli LibraryThing-författare.

 

Om | Kontakt | LibraryThing.com | Sekretess/Villkor | Hjälp/Vanliga frågor | Blogg | Butik | APIs | TinyCat | Efterlämnade bibliotek | Förhandsrecensenter | Allmänna fakta | 203,198,914 böcker! | Topplisten: Alltid synlig