| Humpback dinosaur theropod of the north Concavenator corcovatus found in Spain shows signs of flight feather appendagesMeet the humpback dinosaur. The previously unknown Concavenator corcovatus was a meat eater that lived in the Lower Cretaceous 130m years ago and died in what is now in Las Hoyas, Spain.The details of the fossil, reported today in Nature, paint a picture of a six-metre-long theropod, a family of dinosaurs previously thought to be confined to southern continents.Most interesting for the scientists who found the fossil, Francisco Ortega and Jose Sanz of the Universidad Nacional de Educac鱈on a Distancia in Madrid, is a hump-like structure on the dinosaur's back and a series of small knobs on the forearm. The bumps could be analagous to the parts of modern birds' skeletons that anchor the flight feathers. Since the knobs are unlikely to be representative of feathers on Concavenator, the researchers propose instead that they are "non-scale skin appendages", such as tubular filaments, present in modern-day poultry.DinosaursFossilsZoologyEvolutionAlok Jhaguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
[news] Complexity and Statistics: Tipping Points and Crashes Meeting - Friday 22 October 2010 Date and venueFriday 22 October 2010; 11am - 5pmRoyal Statistical Society12 Errol StLondonEC1Y 8LXMap of venueMeeting summaryThis event is being held in association with the Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN) for Industrial Mathematics, and the Cambridge Judge Business School.There is much interest in the possibility of detecting and predicting critical changes in environmental and other... antarctica.ac.uk |
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