New research addresses longstanding mystery on the anatomy of the Tyrannosaurus rex jaw.
Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaurs chomped through bone by keeping a joint in their lower jaw steady like an alligator, rather than flexible like a snake, according to a study being presented at the American Association for Anatomy annual meeting during the Experimental Biology (EB) 2021 meeting, held virtually April 27-30.
The research sheds new light on a conundrum that has perplexed paleontologists. Dinosaurs had a joint in the middle of their lower jaws, called the intramandibular joint, which is also present in modern-day reptiles. Previous research has suggested this joint was flexible, like it is in snakes and monitor lizards, helping carnivorous dinosaurs to keep struggling prey in their jaws. However, it has been unclear whether the jaws were flexible at all, or how they could be strong enough to bite through and ingest bone, which Tyrannosaurus did regularly, according to fossil evidence.
“We discovered that these joints likely were not flexible at all, as dinosaurs like T. rex possess specialized bones that cross the joint to stiffen the lower jaw,” said John Fortner, a doctoral student in anatomy at the University of Missouri, first author of the study.
Staying with the topic of dinosaurs, Brett French (BILLINGS GAZETTE reports:
The unusual claw of a 3-foot-long dinosaur, which went extinct about 66 million years ago, has been unearthed in Montana — the largest specimen collected from the species so far.
“It’s a cute little dinosaur,” said Denver Fowler, curator of the Badlands Dinosaur Museum in North Dakota’s Dickinson Museum Center.
The fast, long-legged bird — which he named Trierarchuncus prairiensis — had short, strong forelimbs tipped with a large claw next to two smaller claws. One theory is the claws — coupled with the strong, tiny arms — were used to tear open logs to reach grubs to eat.
Earlier speculation was the claws may have been used to tear open termite mounds. The fact that the dinosaur ate insects is manifested by its peg-like teeth, similar to an aardvark’s.
Fowler imagines the dinosaur using its long hind legs to quickly flee an angry group of bees after breaking into a nest to feed.
“Finding one here in Montana was pretty cool,” said Greg Liggett, a paleontologist for the Bureau of Land Management in Billings. “From a BLM perspective, what this shows is that, even after 150 years of studying dinosaurs in the American West, there are still new ones.”
I bet that was a cute little dinosaur. WIKEPDIA notes:
The first remains ware discovered in Montana in 1980 and it was informally known as the "Hell Creek alvarezsaur".[5] The then unnamed species was not mentioned again until it was mentioned briefly in the 2018 Society of Vertebrate Paleontology abstract book. The species and genus were scientifically described by Denver Fowler and colleagues in 2020 based on three claw phalanges from MD-I-2, including the holotype MOR 6622, the distal end of a radius and fragmentary metatarsal.
The first part of the generic name, Trierarch, means "triarch" (the title of captain of the trireme in classical Greece); the second, uncus, is translated from Latin as "hook", thus forming Captain Hook, a reference to the villainous hook-handed pirate of Peter Pan. The specific name means "from the prairie" and refers to the plains of eastern Montana where the remains were discovered.
From a tiny dinosaur to a big one, PHYS.ORG reports:
Chilean paleontologists announced Monday the discovery of a new species of giant dinosaurs called Arackar licanantay.
The dinosaur belongs to the titanosaur dinosaur family tree but is unique in the world due to features on its dorsal vertebrae.
The Arackar licanantay—a Kunza indigenous language name that means "Atacameño bones"—lived in what is now the Atacama Region, during the end of the Cretaceous period, 80 to 66 million years ago.
The fossil specimen belongs to a large, quadruped, herbivore measuring some 6.3 meters (20'8") in length but scientists determined the remains are that of a juvenile.
Adults are estimated to have grown to reach 8 meters in length (26').
The bones—a femur, humerus, ischium and vertebral elements of the neck and back—were initially discovered in the 1990's by geologist Carlos Arévalo.
Arévalo excavated the specimen with experts from Chile's National Geology and Mining Service, during a dig 75 kilometers (46 miles) south of the city of Copiapó, in the Atacama Region.
Wait, we've got one more dinosaur article to note: Carolyn Gramling (SCIENCE NEWS FOR STUDENTS) reports:
Some 66 million years ago, a very different type of rainforest thrived in what is now Colombia. Ferns unfurled. Towering conifers reached for the skies. Flowering shrubs bathed in the sunlight that streamed down to them through large gaps in the canopy between those trees. Then an asteroid crashed into Earth. Overnight, everything changed.
The fireball’s impact set off a massive extinction event. It wiped out more than 75 percent of all life on Earth. It also kicked off a massive transformation of the planet’s tropical rainforests. Gone were the sun-dappled, semi-open woodlands. In their place came forests where large swaths of the ground now were covered by dark, dense, lush and moist trees — ones typical of today’s Amazon. Researchers described their new evidence for this forest-morphing April 2 in Science.
They had analyzed tens of thousands of fossils of pollen, spores and leaves. These came from 39 sites across what is now the South American nation of Colombia. All fossils dated from between 70 million and 56 million years ago.
The team then assessed what plants had left these remains. They gave clues to which had been dominant. They also pointed to what insects had been interacting with them. And the evidence was startling. It showed that once the Earth-shaking space rock struck, forest ecosystems abruptly changed.
We need more science knowledge and science coverage. April agrees and she noted that article in an e-mail. This is science coverage geared towards young adults and a great resource.
"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Tuesday, April 27, 2021. Fall out from Saturday's injustice continues in Iraq, Moqtada al-Sadr makes an alliance, is the Australian government doing anything at all to assist an Australian citizen imprisoned in Iraq, and much more.
Saturday, a fire broke out at Ibn al-Khatib Hospital in Baghdad, ignited when an oxygen tank exploded. As noted in yesterday's snapshot, the death toll of 82 would likely increase. Sura Ali (RUDAW) reports:
The death toll of a massive fire that ripped through Baghdad’s Ibn
al-Khatib Hospital Saturday night has risen to around 130, according to
Iraq’s human rights commission.
A report released
following a fact-finding mission by the government-funded Iraqi High
Commission for Human Rights reports a higher number of casualties than
the government’s previous toll, on Sunday, of 82 deaths. It notes that many of the bodies have yet to be identified due to being burned beyond recognition.
The commission has found that the fire started after an oxygen cylinder
exploded in a patient wing crowded with visitors. They say the number of
people allowed in the space is evidence of the hospital’s failure to
abide by the instructions of the ministry of health.
Fire extinguishing equipment present in the hospital was not used due to
people not being aware of where it was stored, it says, also noting
that many patients were rescued by companions and family members, rather
than civil defense teams.
Widespread negligence on the part of health officials is to blame for a fire that ripped through a Baghdad hospital, Iraq’s prime minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, said Sunday.
Following a special cabinet meeting to discuss the blaze, Kadhimi suspended Health Minister Hassan al-Tamimi — who is backed by the powerful Shia leader Moqtada Sadr — as part of a probe that also includes the governor of Baghdad.
The fire that killed more than 80 people triggered outrage on social media, with a widespread hashtag demanding the health minister be sacked.
The Hezbollah Brigades, one of Iraq’s most radical pro-Iran factions, on Sunday evening demanded that the government quit.
Kadhimi, in a tweet, urged Iraqis “to be united in solidarity and to refrain from playing politics with this national catastrophe.”
Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi ccame to power in May of last year. Like all of the post-2003-invasion prime ministers, he pledged to end corruption. He did not. And now the same interests involved in the corruption that led to the loss of so many lives in Saturday's fire? Mustafa needs their support if he's to remain prime minister after this year's election.
Offering him a possible life raft? Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. THE ARAB WEEKLY explains:
Iraqi Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr has pledged to support Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi for a second term, if the latter decides not to run a party of his own in the upcoming parliamentary elections.
An Iraqi political source familiar with the matter revealed to The Arab Weekly the existence of electoral understandings between Kadhimi and Sadr. According to these , the source said, the Sadrist movement will support the current prime minister to remain at the head of the government in exchange for Kadhimi’s commitment not to form a party or a bloc and not to enter the parliamentary elections that are expected to take place this October.
The source confirmed to The Arab Weekly that these understandings are supported by Shia political forces represented by the former premier Haider al-Abadi and the head of the Wisdom Movement Ammar al-Hakim, as well as by Sunni forces represented by parliamentary speaker Muhammad al-Halbousi and Kurdish groups led by the former president of the Kurdistan Region Masoud Barzani.
Moqtada is supposedly riding a new cusp. Supposedly. I don't believe it and there's nothing to back it up. He's still out of power and still reviled. He broke with the protesters in February of 2021 and then engaged in embarrassing behavior including making demands and issuing orders that were not just ignored, but openly mocked. One example, in April of last year, he demanded that males and females not protest together. He looked out of touch and that was before the mocking began.
Older people watched in amazement as he gave up his leadership role to throw a weeks long tantrum in public. He hasn't recovered from that. Equally true, the issue of corruption raised by the protesters? Moqtada's got corruption issues of his own. His base is in the Sadr City section of Baghdad which is a slum. Which was a slum in 2003 and continues to be to this day. He's delivered nothing for his cult. And that became an issue on Arabic social media late last year.
If Moqtada is making deals to back Khadimi, that's only one more indication that Moqtada is not riding as high as he and his followers claim.
On the issue of the government, Catherine Pepinster (THE TABLET) reports:
Christians in Iraq will only be able to live safely and securely if religion is separated from the state, the head of the Chaldean Catholic Church has warned. According to Cardinal Louis Sako, the Christian community continues to suffer discrimination in a country that does not recognise Christians as citizens with full rights.
“We still have a problem with corruption and sectarianism”, he said, during a webinar hosted by the charity Fellowship and Aid to the Christians of the East. “We need a secular regime. In many Western communities this protects people. We need to focus on this strongly with political leaders”.
Cardinal Sako’s comments came in a wide-ranging conversation with Cardinal Michael Fitzgerald, with participants via Zoom from around the world. The discussion came just weeks after Pope Francis’ visit to Iraq, when Cardinal Sako accompanied him. It was a landmark visit, said the cardinal, with many Muslims in Iraq learning about the Pope, the Vatican and the Catholic Church for the first time through media coverage in the run-up to the visit. He said he believed that the impact of the visit was greater on Muslims than Christians.
“It changed the mentality of people. It touched the heart of all Iraqis, perhaps Muslims more than Christians because it was the first time they could hear and see the Pope. He came for all Iraqis. After years of destruction we heard a message of peace and fraternity”.
Amnesty International MENA has a thread on the hospital fire:
In other news, MEHR NEWS AGENCY notes yet another attack on a US convoy in Iraq:
Iraqi sources reported on Tues. that another US military logistics convoy was targeted in Al-Diwaniyah, the capital of Al-Qādisiyyah Governorate, and Babil Governorate, to become the third convoy targetted on the same day.
No further data has been released about the damages.
Earlier on Tues., Iraqi resources reported that two roadside bombs exploded Tuesday near US military convoys in Dhi Qar Governorate, in southern Iraq.
Does the Australian government ever do anything to protect its citizens? They've done nothing to stop the persecution of Julian Assange. Now they have a citizen in Iraq who's been tossed into a hole. Steve Jackson (THE AUSTRALIAN) reports:
An Australian father of three has been able to speak to his family for the first since he was seized by Iraqi police and thrown in prison three weeks ago after being tricked into attending a fake business meeting with one of the country’s leading institutions.
Robert Pether, who grew up on Sydney’s north shore and attended Knox Grammar School, was arrested, along with an Egyptian colleague, when they arrived for an appointment set up by the Central Bank of Iraq in Baghdad on April 7.
The 46-year-old mechanical engineer had been in the country for about a week to try to resolve a contractual dispute between his Dubai-based building company and the bank over the construction of the financial institution’s landmark new headquarters which has been in the works for about four years.
Mr Pether’s wife, Desree, said he had spent a fortnight in solitary confinement after his arrest before being moved into a cell with his colleague and that she had only been able to talk to him for the first time since he was locked up on Tuesday night.
We'll wind down by noting this from Caitlin Johnstone:
This year has marked the first time ever that trust in news media dropped below fifty percent in the United States, continuing a trend of decline that’s been ongoing for years.
Mass media punditry is divided on where to assign the blame for the plummet in public opinion of their work, with some blaming it on Russia and others blaming it on Donald Trump. Others, like a recent Forbes article titled “Restoring Public Trust In Technology And Media Is Infrastructure Investment” blame it on the internet. Still others, like a Washington Post article earlier this month titled “Bad news for journalists: The public doesn’t share our values” blame it on the people themselves.
The one thing they all seem to agree on is that it’s definitely not because the billionaire-controlled media are propaganda outlets which manipulate us constantly in conjunction with sociopathic government agencies to protect the oligarchic, imperialist status quo upon which the members of the billionaire class have built their respective kingdoms. It cannot possibly be because people sense that they are being lied to and are fed up with it.
And actually it doesn’t ultimately matter what mainstream pundits and reporters believe is the cause of the public’s growing disgust with them, because there’s nothing they can do to fix it anyway. The mass media will never regain the public’s trust.
They’ll never regain the public’s trust for a couple of reasons, the first of which is because they’ll never be able to become trustworthy. At no point will the mass media ever begin wowing the public with its journalistic integrity and causing people to re-evaluate their opinion of mainstream news reporters. At no point will people’s disdain for these outlets ever cease to be reinforced and confirmed by the manipulative and deceitful behaviors which caused that disdain in the first place.
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