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Worlds smallest dinosaur fossil left in draw and found after 2yrs!

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posted on Jun, 15 2011 @ 09:10 PM
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Just found another interesting read... this dinosaur "Ashdown Maniraptoran" was discovered by a budding amature fossil hunter... but then left in a draw for 2yrs before being rediscovered!

I spose you wouldnt expect to leave a t-rex skeleton lying around without it going unoticed lol


Your thoughts?

Source



posted on Jun, 15 2011 @ 09:17 PM
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Government Conspiracy maybe lol
Probably just had a lot on his mind, like when you put your favorite video game on a shelf you don't normally use
and then start playing another video game, and then three years later your cleaning off the shelf and happen to find it again.



posted on Jun, 15 2011 @ 09:19 PM
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Guess he just had no idea what he had....


Pretty cool.I used to love going digging for fossils in the creek by my house. Found some cool things, but never as cool as this.



posted on Jun, 15 2011 @ 09:21 PM
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I bet there are a ton of fossils that have never been examined by the scientific community. Pretty cool though that this one is of such importance.

PS: I don't know if a T-Rex vertebrae would fit in a drawer



posted on Jun, 15 2011 @ 09:34 PM
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It could possibly fit if you pivot. Haha
What if this dinosaur is the missing link in the explanations of aliens
and this guy just forgets about it.



posted on Jun, 15 2011 @ 09:52 PM
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reply to post by xXR34P3RXx
 


I think this is more than likely the missing link between dino's and common avian creatures of today.

Notice it's similarity to the size and stature of a chicken?

I can see the resemblence here. I read a while ago that many specialist in the field of dino's are starting to beleive that they infact had feathers and not just scales?!? havent looked for a link but I remeber even seeing a small peice about it at the london natural history museum many years ago.

Could this link the birds with the rather large dino's? Only time and lots of research will tell i guess!



posted on Jun, 16 2011 @ 01:33 AM
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I bet dollars to doughnuts that there are tons of stuff hidden away at locations like the Smithsonian and other large museums in their basements that were brought in years [if not decades and in some case hundreds of years] previously that have yet to either be opened and or identified/explained.




S & F

Good find.



posted on Jun, 16 2011 @ 11:58 PM
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Originally posted by w3nd1g0
Just found another interesting read... this dinosaur "Ashdown Maniraptoran" was discovered by a budding amature fossil hunter... but then left in a draw for 2yrs before being rediscovered!

I spose you wouldnt expect to leave a t-rex skeleton lying around without it going unoticed lol


Your thoughts?

Source


I'm rolling my eyes at the artist's reconstruction.

The abstract, which the reporter couldn't actually read, goes:


In contrast to the Barremian Wessex Formation on the Isle of Wight, the remains of small theropods are rare in the Berriasian–Valanginian Hastings Group of the English mainland. Both units are part of the dinosaur-rich Wealden Supergroup (Berriasian–Aptian) of southern Britain. Here we report the cervical vertebra of a small dinosaur from the Pevensey Pit at Ashdown Brickworks, a site located northwest of Bexhill, East Sussex. The pit yields a rich assemblage of vertebrate fossils from the Valanginian Wadhurst Clay Formation of the Hastings Group. The new specimen, a near-complete but water-worn posterior cervical vertebra, is tiny (total centrum length = 7.1 mm) but evidently from an adult theropod. Its large hypapophysis, X-shaped neural arch and amphicoelous centrum suggest referral to Maniraptora, and the subparallel anterior and posterior articular surfaces imply that it does not belong to a deinonychosaur. The X-shaped neural arch recalls a similar condition seen in oviraptorosaurs while the high neural canal/articular surface ratio (0.70) is bird-like. The specimen is significant in representing the first maniraptoran to be reported from the Hastings Group but is otherwise indeterminate. By comparing the specimen to better known maniraptorans and estimating the proportions of the animal to which it belongs, we suggest that the total skeletal length of this maniraptoran was somewhere between 16 and 40 cm. It may therefore have been among the smallest of known Mesozoic dinosaurs


In paleontologist lingo (as many of you know, I'm a volunteer fossil preparator and am working on dinosaurs), what this means is that they found a big pit with a huge chunk of intermixed bones (stuck in rock, mind you) awhile back. They found ONE neck bone (which was probably missing some bits (crushing)) from the lower part of the neck near the shoulders.

From some of the features on the vertebra (we'd have to be standing together while I pointed them out for all this to make sense), they conclude that it's probably a Maniraptor. HOWEVER... they didn't identify it as a new species yet (not enough data.)

Some of this group had downy feathers (and not flight feathers) while others had flight feathers. They have a hand-like structure on the wing.

Oh yeah... they don't have any skull material of this creature. The artist is just guessing when he/she made it Very Birdy. For all we know, it could have looked like a mini crocodile.

So why did it take two years? Well, Jurassic Park and other media gives a VERY twisted view of how we get fossils out of rock. Here's what happens:

Somebody finds a fossil. You have to locate the land owner, get permission to get the thing out (and own the fossil) and then you have to get a dig team. In this case, it looks like they were digging in a bone bed. The blocks come out in chunks and the nasty thing about bone beds is that a lot of the bones are crushed (by other dinosaurs falling on top of the lower layers or walking all over them). Bones get mixed up, too and skeletons get pulled apart.

In one block (3 feet by five feet by 3 feet) with a pachyrhinosaurus skull we also found hadrosaur femurs, hip joints of a different pachyrhinosaur, T rex teeth, and rib bones of several different species. The skull was in about 500 pieces, ranging in size from the size of your thumbnail to a nice chunk some 2 feet long and 1 feet wide.)

It took the paleontologist 2 years of full time work to get all the other bones away from the skull and then glue the skull together like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Wadhurst Clay group means the area was a swamp when this particular creature was lurking around, and that stuff has hardened into a shaly clay. It's very messy to work with scribe and cleanup often requires a lot of hand work with dental picks.

So, yes, it's not a surprising amount of time. You should check and see if your local museum does paleontology and ask if you can take a peek at the lab. It'll be an eye-opening experience, I promise you! Not many museums have a paleontology research section but if you can find one, DO ask if you can see the labs!



posted on Jun, 17 2011 @ 12:01 AM
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Originally posted by SLAYER69
I bet dollars to doughnuts that there are tons of stuff hidden away at locations like the Smithsonian and other large museums in their basements that were brought in years [if not decades and in some case hundreds of years] previously that have yet to either be opened and or identified/explained.


You can remediate this situation (she says with a wicked grin) by marching up there and announcing you want to be a volunteer fossil preparator. Most museums with fossil prep labs are grateful for their volunteers. And you'll help them get a little less behind.

(I love encouraging folks to try this out! It's actually very cool if you have the personality to enjoy it.)



posted on Jun, 17 2011 @ 12:12 PM
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reply to post by Byrd
 


I've been kicking that idea around for a while. I love the topic. It has always fascinated me. I do have a few friends in the field.



posted on Jun, 18 2011 @ 08:15 PM
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Originally posted by SLAYER69
reply to post by Byrd
 


I've been kicking that idea around for a while. I love the topic. It has always fascinated me. I do have a few friends in the field.


Oh *DO*! It's incredible to go play with REALLY old bones! You get a sense of "deep time" and you learn a lot about how and why scientists think these things developed. And geology -- you will NEVER look at the earth in the same way, and you'll be delighted and amazed at every single rock out there.

After the Alamosaurus is done, I'll move on to the Alaskan hadrosaurs and pachyrhios, which is one of the research focuses of this museum.



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