Inside the head of a dinosaur

Research reveals new information on the evolution of dinosaur senses

2012-12-20

(Press-News.org) An international team of scientists, including PhD student Stephan Lautenschlager and Dr Emily Rayfield of the University of Bristol, found that the senses of smell, hearing and balance were well developed in therizinosaurs and might have affected or benefited from an enlarged forebrain. These findings came as a surprise to the researchers as exceptional sensory abilities would be expected from predatory and not necessarily from plant-eating animals.

Therizinosaurs are an unusual group of theropod dinosaurs which lived between 145 and 66 million years ago. Members of this group had evolved into up to 7m (23ft) large animals, with more than 50cm (20in) long, razor-sharp claws on their forelimbs, elongated necks and a coat of primitive, down-like feathers along their bodies. Although closely related to carnivorous dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus rex and Velociraptor, and in spite of their bizarre appearance, therizinosaurs were probably peaceful herbivores.

Inspired by this paradox, the international team of palaeontologists decided to take the first close look inside the heads of these enigmatic dinosaurs.

They studied the brain and inner ear anatomy of therizinosaurs using high-resolution CT scanning and 3D computer visualisation to find out more about their sensory and cognitive capabilities and how these had evolved with the transition from meat- to plant-eating.

The focus of the study was the skull of Erlikosaurus andrewsi – a 3-4m (10-13ft) therizinosaur, which lived more than 90 million years ago in what is now Mongolia.

Lead author, Stephan Lautenschlager of Bristol's School of Earth Sciences said: "Our results suggest that therizinosaurs would have used their well-developed sensory repertoire to their advantage which, for herbivorous animals, must have played an important role in foraging, in the evasion of predators or in social complexity.

"This study sheds a new light on the evolution of dinosaur senses and shows it is more complex than we thought."

Co-author, Professor Lindsay Zanno of the North Carolina Museum of Natural History and the North Carolina State University agrees: "Once you've evolved a good sensory toolkit, it's probably worth hanging on to, whether you're hunting or being hunted."

Fellow author Lawrence Witmer, Chang Professor of Paleontology at the Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine said: "Of course the actual brain tissue is long gone from the fossil skulls but we can use CT scanning to visualize the cavity that the brain once occupied and then generate 3D computer renderings of the olfactory bulbs and other brain parts."

This study has important ramifications for our understanding of how sensory function evolved in different dinosaur groups and whether it was developed as a response to their environment or simply inherited by their ancestors. In particular, in the light of the transition from dinosaurs to birds, these results should prove to be very interesting.

### The study by Stephan Lautenschlager and Emily Rayfield (Bristol), Perle Altangerel (National University of Ulaanbaatar), Lindsay Zanno (North Carolina) and Lawrence Witmer (Ohio) is published today in PLoS One.

It was funded by a research fellowship to Stephan Lautenschlager from the German Volkswagen Foundation, hosted by Emily Rayfield and grants from the National Science Foundation to Lawrence Witmer.

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Alzheimer's Disease: Inflammation as a new therapeutic approach

2012-12-20

The number of Alzheimer's patients will continue to dramatically increase in the next several decades. Various teams of researchers worldwide are feverishly investigating precisely how the illness develops. A team of scientists under the guidance of the University of Bonn and University of Massachusetts (USA) and with the participation of the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases have discovered a new signaling pathway in mice which is involved in the development of chronic inflammation which causes nerve cells in the brain to malfunction and die off. The results ...

Multi-tasking whales sing while feeding, not just breeding

2012-12-20

DURHAM, NC -- Humpback whales are famed for their songs, most often heard in breeding season when males are competing to mate with females. In recent years, however, reports of whale songs occurring outside traditional breeding grounds have become more common. A new study may help explain why. Humpbacks sing for their supper -- or at least, they sing while they hunt for it. The research, published December 19 in PLoS ONE, uncovers the whales' little-understood acoustic behavior while foraging. It also reveals a previously unknown behavioral flexibility on their ...

Scientists construct first map of how the brain organizes everything we see

2012-12-20

Our eyes may be our window to the world, but how do we make sense of the thousands of images that flood our retinas each day? Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have found that the brain is wired to put in order all the categories of objects and actions that we see. They have created the first interactive map of how the brain organizes these groupings. The result – achieved through computational models of brain imaging data collected while the subjects watched hours of movie clips – is what researchers call "a continuous semantic space." Some relationships ...

Are bacteria making you hungry?

2012-12-20

Over the last half decade, it has become increasingly clear that the normal gastrointestinal (GI) bacteria play a variety of very important roles in the biology of human and animals. Now Vic Norris of the University of Rouen, France, and coauthors propose yet another role for GI bacteria: that they exert some control over their hosts' appetites. Their review was published online ahead of print in the Journal of Bacteriology. This hypothesis is based in large part on observations of the number of roles bacteria are already known to play in host biology, as well as their ...

Policy report calls for raise in minimum wage

2012-12-20

AUSTIN, Texas — Raising the minimum wage to a living wage begins the cycle of lifting single mothers out of poverty, according to a policy report released by the Institute for Urban Policy Research & Analysis (IUPRA) at The University of Texas at Austin. The U.S. census shows more Americans — 46.2 million people — are living in poverty than ever before. And for African American and Hispanic women, a full-time minimum wage job isn't enough to break out of the poverty cycle. According to the report, working women of color make $0.64 and $0.56, respectively, for every dollar ...

Soybeans a source of valuable chemical

2012-12-20

The humble soybean could become an inexpensive new source of a widely used chemical for plastics, textiles, drugs, solvents and as a food additive. Succinic acid, traditionally drawn from petroleum, is one focus of research by Rice chemists George Bennett and Ka-Yiu San. In 2004, the Department of Energy named succinic acid one of 12 "platform" chemicals that could be produced from sugars by biological means and turned into high-value materials. Several years ago, Rice patented a process by Bennett and San for the bio-based production of succinic acid that employed ...

Scripps Florida scientists develop new compound that reverses fatty liver disease

2012-12-20

JUPITER, FL, December 19, 2012 – Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have developed the first synthetic compound that can reverse the effects of a serious metabolic condition known as fatty liver disease. True to its name, the disease involves an abnormal buildup of fat in the liver. The compound—known as SR9238—is the first to effectively suppress lipid or fat production in the liver, eliminating inflammation and reversing fat accumulation in animal models of fatty liver disease. The new compound also significantly lowered total ...

Regular marijuana use by teens continues to be a concern

2012-12-20

Continued high use of marijuana by the nation's eighth, 10th and 12th graders combined with a drop in perceptions of its potential harms was revealed in this year's Monitoring the Future survey, an annual survey of eighth, 10th, and 12th-graders conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan. The survey was carried out in classrooms around the country earlier this year, under a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health. The 2012 survey shows that 6.5 percent of high school seniors smoke marijuana daily, up ...

School shootings: What we know and what we can do

2012-12-20

Since the early 1970s school shootings at American elementary, secondary and higher education institutions have been a painful reality for American society. After each incident – like the recent attack in Newtown, CT – there is voluminous dialogue about what can be done to prevent the next, such tragedy. But can anything realistically be done to prevent these horrific crimes? A new article¹ by Dr. Daniel J. Flannery at Case Western Reserve University, and colleagues, scheduled to appear in the January issue of Springer's Current Psychiatry Reports, attempts to parse out ...

Alzheimer's disease: Cutting off immune response promises new approach to therapy

2012-12-20

The Bonn site of the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) and the University of Bonn are leading contributors. The complex named "NLRP3 inflammasome" is composed of several proteins and plays a key role in the immune system. It resembles a fire alarm sensor that triggers a chain reaction when activated. As a result, immune cells are mobilized and substances that foster inflammation are released. This process can be triggered by infections, which are subsequently suppressed by the immune response. However, in the case of Alzheimer's disease, the activation ...

Wiley advances Knowitall Solutions with new trendfinder application for user-friendly chemometric analysis and additional enhancements to analytical workflows

Inside the head of a dinosaur

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: