The White Stripes

Back in August, I posted about a study by Vinther and colleagues looking at fossil bird feathers in an attempt to not only determine color patterns in life, but the actual colors constituting those patterns. That study looked only at Cenozoic birds, but tantalizingly, Vinther and co. promised follow-ups looking at Mesozoic birds and other feathered or proto-feathered dinosaurs.

Well, somebody has beat them to it (though, interestingly, Vinther has responded with skepticism to this newest study which has beat him to the punch though appears to use similar methods, as reported by Ed Young). Specifically, Zhang and colleagues have an online-first paper out in Nature today reporting the presence of melanosomes (pigmentation-bearing cell bits) for the first time in protofeathers. The team looked at Sinosauropteryx, Sinornithosaurus and Confuciusornis, and found pigment in all of them.

This is interesting for a few reasons, not the least of which that children's books can now officially limit their audiences imaginations by saying "no, little Billy, dinosaurs weren't whatever color you can dream of, this one here for example was black with shades of red and white patches thrown in." Firstly, this whole color-patterns-in-dinos thing was (as far as I know) first officially brought up by Nick Longrich at SVP 2002. Longrich pointed out that the thing everybody noticed about Sinosauropteryx (the stripey tail) was not an artifact of preservation, as the describers suggested, but reflected color, in the same way that prehistoric insects and fish fossils can show patterns. Based on Longrich's conclusions, I did the painting of Sinosauropteryx shown above, and this has proven largely correct (I lightened the color a bit to seem lighter browning orange, but the original was pretty close if I may say so!).

Unfortunately, being a Nature publication, this announcement comes with high prestige and itty bitty page count. The authors here promise more detailed follow-ups with more specific color patterns, and presumably Vinther et al. are also still working on their studies. Vinther's objection, which I mentioned above, is that as they had pointed out, really deciphering fossil animal colors requires a thorough understanding of how different pigment structures create color in modern birds, which is barely understood. So new discoveries with modern animals could overturn some or all of this. But, for now, all good paleoartists will reconstruct Sinosauropteryx as red-brown with a striped tail, and if Longrich was right about the rest, a bit of counter-shading.

Interestingly, the Sinosaur the new study uses is an undescribed specimen. In some news reports like this one, it is stated that Sinosauropteryx had only a feather fringe along the back, implying a partly scaly body. Now, other specimens have shown evidence of feathers on at least the lateral torso, but could this new one show evidence of a more Juravenator-type scalation on the legs and tail base (as I also restored above)? We'll see...

NY Daily News Staff Writers Are Dumb As Bricks

Above: Maybe venomous, but NOT a spitter!

Check out this short piece "attempting" to condense the recent story on potentially venomous sinornithosaurs. The piece was written by New York Daily News staff writer Ethan Sacks, who does not understand one word of the subject he's covering.

The headline:
"Venomous velociraptor: Scientists discover sinornithosaurus dinosaur spit poison at prey"

*HEADDESK*

I can guarantee you with 100% certainty no scientist or press release even remotely said anything like this.

What they probably told him/what he probably read on other news sites: "The dinosaur Sinornithosaurus, a relative of Velociraptor, was venomous, like the spitting dinosaurs in Jurassic Park."

What Sacks heard: "Velociraptor's relatives were venom-spitting dinosaurs, like in Jurassic Park!"

Way to make the world a dumber place, Ethan Sacks.

Venomous Dinosaurs

Above: Illustration of a Sinornithosaurus skull.

A few of you may remember a little 1993 picture called Jurassic Park. In the film as in the novel it was based on, a point was made of showing how unpredictable cloning extinct organisms could be, and that we would not be able to anticipate all the dangers dinosaurs posed just from their fossil remains. To illustrate this, author Michael Crichton invented the idea that the basal theropod Dilophosaurus was venomous. This was, of course, completely fictional and only present to make a philosophical point. There is no evidence whatsoever that this dino had venom, let alone could spit it like a cobra, let alone had a ridiculous display like a rattling frill-neck lizard (added only for the movie).

However, while Dilophosaurus in particular was probably not venomous (and if it was, the late Crichton should be hailed as a prophet for picking that specific dino out of his... orifice), this doesn't rule out the possibility that some dinosaurs were. Poison or venom of come kind exists in a wide selection of modern vertebrates, from amphibians, to lizards (like the gila monster and Komodo dragon) and even birds such as the Hooded Pitohui, which is very aptly named, as the neurotoxins in its feathers cause predators to promptly spit it out.

There has in the past been some goss to the effect that we have evidence for venomous dinosaurs (the difference between venom and poison: poison is ingested or absorbed from prey to predator, venom is injected from predator into prey). A 2 cm long tooth with a longitudinal groove, reported from Mexico in 2001, was suggested to come from a venomous theropod.

Those grooves, which are actually present in most theropod teeth to some extent, are the issue of a new controversy over a paper on the Chinese dromaeosaurid Sinornithosaurus, which we've covered before regarding it's hind wings, or lack therof. A new study looks at the unusually positioned gooves on sinornithosaur teeth, and speculates that these could have delivered venom. The researchers even identify an opening in the upper jaw bone where the venom gland may have been. (left: Sinornithosaurus by FunkMonk. Licensed.)

This is exciting stuff, but take it with a grain of salt. Ed Young does a good job covering the situation at his blog. Basically, it's entirely possible that the grooves are simply features typical of other theropods. Many animals have grooves on their teeth to negate any suction that would occur when pulling the tooth out of flesh. However, Young also reports that Bryan Fry, who discovered the venom of Komodo dragons, has stated that grooved never occur on the posterior side of the tooth surface except in venomous animals, which sounds pretty convincing.

The authors of the new paper cite the length of the grooved teeth as evidence that they were "fangs", but it really just looks like they're out of socket, the way many theropod skulls are mounted in museums. T. rex famously have 6-inch teeth, but that includes the roots. Really, only 2 or three of those inches would protrude from the jaw. Fossils that have been crushed and distorted are also susceptible to out of socket teeth making the dentition look more formidable (and more fang-like) than it really was.

Above: T. rex mount with teeth dangling out of the mouth like it just finished a brutal hockey game. Photo by Quadell from Wikipedia. Licensed.

Obviously more investigation needs to be done, but famous TV personality Dr Tom Holtz is on record saying he evidence is weak, so let's not be too hasty with conclusions here.

V-D Day for Matt Wedel

Quick epilogue to the Clash of the Dinosaurs quote-mining incident, Matt was able to talk to someone at the Discovery Channel (which aired and distributes but did not directly produce the special). Discovery promised not to re-run the show until the offending segment was removed, and it will be fixed on the DVD and Blu-ray release as well. Congrats Matt, and way to go Discovery Channel! It is definitely the network's responsibility to ensure the integrity of the shows they air, and Discovery is certainly living by its policy here.

You can read Matt's latest post at SV-POW.

CotD: The Saga Continues

Above: If Wedel had used the words "laser" and "armor" at any time during his interview, CotD would have looked like this. Not that I'd complain.

Matt Wedel has posted his experiences trying to chase down what exactly went wrong with his infamous interview segment in the Discovery Channel and Dangerous, Ltd.'s special Clash of the Dinosaurs. You can read the letter where Dangerous, Ltd. admits that they quote-mined him like creationists and had him spouting nonsense discredited before he was born as if it were fact, here.

An excerpt of the good part:

"In your email, you said: ‘Someone in the editing room cut away the framing explanation and left me presenting a thoroughly discredited idea as if it was current science.’ In your interview you carefully set out a context in which you made your argument, a context that was perhaps not included in the show as carefully as it could have been. Whether this was in the interests of brevity or not, I entirely appreciate your position. We had no wish to suggest you were presenting an old, discredited argument, we were simply working on the show ever aware of the demands of our audience. This does not excuse a part of the program which was perhaps not edited with as much finesse as it could have been and consequently I will make your concerns clear to the production team in the hope that we may avoid such situations again."

Note that they don't apologize or say they'll fix this in future broadcasts of the show (and if it's like other Discovery shows, it will be running on a loop for months). The best part is that the lame excuse email makes clear Dangerous' motivations: They only wanted to accomodate the needs of their audience and hold everyone's attention. That means this was done ON PURPOSE, because the truth was TOO BORING.

Discovery Communications and their affiliate production companies don't care about science. Sorry if I sound like Kanye, but this is true and everybody needs to learn this fact. The only goal here is to keep eyeballs glued to the TV with whatever fake nonsense they can piece together from edited sound bites given by experts hired only to bring a veneer of credibility. They decide what they want to say and show, then hire experts and interview them until they've said enough vowels and consonants to piece together a convincing ransom-note narration.

Not that this wasn't already obvious, but there it is in print.

CotD: More Ugly

Above: The modern conception of sauropods, as envisioned by Dangerous productions.

In last week's post on Clash of the Dinosaurs, I discussed the pros and cons from a viewers perspective. To sum up, I thought it was decent but flawed, with too much repetitive CGI and science made palatable by the presence of real experts like Matt Wedel.

Matt has chimed in with his own post about the special, which points out some really, really troubling behind-the-scenes behavior on the part of the producers, and proves once and for all that Dangerous Ltd., a production company for venues like the Discovery Channel, are not interested in science. Well maybe initially, but when it comes time to air, snazzy gee-whiz-wow anti-facts are all that matters to them. From Matt's blog post:

"I said something like, 'There was this old idea that the sacral expansion functioned as a second brain to control the hindlimbs and tail. But in fact, it almost certainly contained a glycogen body, like the sacral expansions of birds. Trouble is, nobody knows exactly what the glycogen bodies of birds do.'"
...
"Somebody in the editing room neatly sidestepped the mystery of the glycogen body by cutting that bit down, so what I am shown saying in the program is this, 'The sacral expansion functioned as a second brain to control the hindlimbs and tail.'"

Matt is rightly extremely pissed about this and I'm right there with him. A show supposedly about science edited the words of a sauropod expert to espouse the idea, in a national TV program airing in the year 2009 (note: not year 1939!) that sauropods had a second brain in the tail.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Ok? Good. This is like the paleo equivalent of a documentary about Darwin, featuring Darwin on film, then editing Darwin's words to make it sound like he was a creationist. Did I just call Matt Wedel the Darwin of sauropodology? You decide.

To sum up, the only thing worse than science reporting in the news, are science "documentaries" on TV. I'd have no problem if Discovery Channel had called this a science fiction special, but they did not, and that's flat-out lying.

The Baddest Dino You've Probably Heard Of

Above: CGI Spinosaurus from Monsters Resurrected.

Yesterday, I covered the first part of the Discovery Channel's night of dinos on December 6th. After Clash of the Dinosaurs, Discovery aired a less-promoted special on Spinosaurus (apparently the first in a series) called Monsters Resurrected: Biggest Dino Killer. According to Tom Holtz, who was interviewed for the show, a second (apparently better, from his POV) special focusing on Acrocanthosaurus will air in the coming weeks or months. The point of this series seems to bring focus to lesser known giant carnivorous theropods.

The "lesser known" conceit was the first in some bizarre choices, pseudo-errors, and misleading narration/imagery to come from this special. Altogether, I can't say it was "better" than CotD, but to me it was heaps more interesting because of all these little quirks, and some very cool paleontologist segments, not to mention CGI sequences that lasted more than 3 seconds apiece.

Above: For the reference, an accurate Spinosaurus head. By Steve O'Connor, licensed.

First, to call Spinosaurus little-known is a bit of a reach, isn't it? The narrator started nearly every post-commercial break segment with a line like "The most terrifying dinosaur you've never heard of." Yeah, Jurassic Park III wasn't as popular as the first film, but isn't Spinosaurus at least among Brachiosaurus in the ranks of well-known second-tier dinosaur stars nowadays? Or is it only among us dino fanboys? But who else is watching this show?

The next thing that struck me was the design of the CGI Spinosaurus. It is pretty darn inaccurate by today's standards. But... it isn't based on today's standards. It's clearly a direct copy of an older, very awesome drawing by Todd Marshall, down to the dewlap, the spikes, and the almost certainly inaccurate croc-like scale detailing. Whether Marshall was a consultant for the show, or they just ripped his design off after it turned up on Google Image Search, I don't know. Anybody know the scoop? Because if he wasn't involve, this is definitely a case of blatant plagiarism.

Above right: Spinosaurus by Todd Marshall, blatantly plagiarized by me from Google Images. Left: Spinosaurus from Monsters Resurrected.

The main inaccuracy in their Spino model is the head. Now that we have decent skull material, we know Spino has a very narrow, thin snout with a distinct kink in the top and a huge rosette of teeth on the robust lower jaw (see accurate drawing, above). This is all thanks to dal Sasso and his team, who were featured extensively in the special (very cool to see) along with a life-sized model of an accurate skull. Does nobody notice the difference? Adding to the confusion, the special also featured segments with Lawrence Witmer in his famous anatomy lab (and Dr. Holtz's segments even super-imposed him into the lab via green screen, according to his comments on the DML!) . Witmer was shown using computer modeling to re-construct Spino based on the type specimens (destroyed in WWII) and with gaps filled in from the related Suchomimus. Unfortunately, the producers don't seem to have realized that the skull Witmer used was a stand-in, and anytime the skull of Spinosaurus was discussed (that is, every 2 minutes), the (very different) skull of Suchomimus was shown. Suchomimus skull also matches the one Marshall probably based his drawing on, so the accurate, dal Sasso restoration as briefly shown ends up looking very out of place.

Above: Not Spinosaurus.

Also bizarrely, the (almost universally accepted) idea that Spinosaurus was primarily a fisher is only addressed briefly at the very end, along with the hypothesis that the sail could be used as a fish-luring shade as in modern herons. The rest of the time, the talking heads like Holtz discuss ways Spino may have dispatched their prey, probably thinking of fish and small/juvenile dinosaurs and other vertebrates, while the animation shows it picking up and eating a small Rugops like corn on the cob! Never mind that the hand articulation would make corn eating impossible for theropod dinosaurs.

The commentary throughout the episode is actually very good, and mostly accurate, as it's coming from the pros, which are given more talk time than in some other specials. However, the animation and narrator talking about how bad-ass the Spinosaurus is are clearly meant to make it look like a bigger, meaner version of t. rex, rather than a giant heron. Don't get me wrong, giant herons would be damn scary, but I doubt they'd be running around eating abelisaur shish kebab and gutting giant mesoeucrocodylians like fish (very gory and kinda cool, don't see that in a lot of docs!). Also, there was a lot of speculation treated as fact. The bite and feeding style of Spinosaurus is based on modern crocodiles, by experts, but it's just speculation, not the basis of studies, and I've already seen people trying to add this to Wikipedia in the mistaken belief that it's been demonstrated scientifically. It's not even really a well-reasoned speculation, as the snout of Spinosaurus itself is more like a gharial than a crocodile. But maybe the expert quoted was thinking of the broader- snouted Suchomimus.

All in all, an interesting, schizophrenic doc, and I'm really looking forward to the Acrocanthosaurus installment, as that's known from much better remains, not to mention footprint evidence of hunting behavior. However, Discovery needs to get the experts to help write those commercial break trivia questions, and provide pronunciation guides--the poor guy kept calling it SPIN-o-saur-us, as in the Spin Doctors.

Oh, and this is two in a row that got the sauropod feet (nearly) right! The show featured Paralatitan, and you could clearly make the hands out as fingerless stumps. SV-POW must be having some effect!

Above: Hooray for sauropod feet!