Ankylosaurs Had Composite Armor 34
An anonymous reader writes "Ankylosaurs were the most heavily armored dinosaurs. Researchers thought their protective plates were a lot like modern crocodiles. But a new study by a University of Bonn grad student Torsten Scheyer found that fibers in the plates were woven for strength and lightness much like Kevlar or fiberglass. Good thing, as ankylosaurs had to contend with T. rex."
how do they know what it was made of? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:how do they know what it was made of? (Score:2)
On the other hand it could just involve a lot of guessing and bullshit.
Re:how do they know what it was made of? (Score:5, Informative)
Now imagine a woven rush basket that somehow becomes fossilized (not likely, but just go with it). Now looking at the fossil, you're going to see the rises and falls of the individual reeds as they transverse all the perpendicular reeds in the design, and you'll be able to see the remnants of the grain running across and down the design as well. That's the sort of thing the student was studying - the anklyosaurus had a similar structure, only on a much smaller scale.
Fossilization doesn't turn something into a piece of amorphous rock - it preserves the topography (at least) of what was fossilized. So it's possible to examine not only the major features (skeletal structure, etc.) but also minor ones which were preserved. Some fossils, if preserved before flesh decay occurred (frozen instantly, caught in a tar pit, etc.) can even have the features of skin imprinted on the rock. That's how we know archeopteryx had feathers, for instance.
Hope that helps!
Nitpick (Score:5, Interesting)
Not so. The Tyrannosaurus Rex was, according to consensus of scientific opinion, a opportunistic scavenger rather than an out and out predator, despite what films such as Jurassic Park portray. Heavy plate armour is so successful a defense mechanism, you might wonder why many more species don't utilise it.
This just goes to show that Nature, with a decent head start, can produce some pretty spectacular materials, an example that springs to mind is Morpho menelaus a butterfly with striking laser-blue irridescent wings, which uses an optical trick to make them shine so brightly. [webexhibits.org] I was always fascinated by a little tray my father had when I was a kid, which was just the top side of the wings of these butterflies pressed under glass. I had a hard time believing it was from an organic being. Anyway, you can't get things like that anymore (I've looked) which is probably due to them having to be a protected species. Shame on all of us really, for hunting these creatures to near extinction, like the dinosaurs.
Re:Nitpick (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, man, it was them or us. After you lose half your family to an iguanadon or an iridescent butterfly, you'll quickly ditch your sentimental way of thinking.
OT: Your Sig (Score:2)
GTRacer
- Is that like the oo-ray?
Re:OT: Your Sig (Score:1)
Consensus? (Score:5, Insightful)
I will ask you to label two modern creatures to show why talking about t-rex eating behaviour is so futile.
Would you label the Hyena as a predator or a scavenger? And the lion?
Modern studies show that the scavenger Hyena kills a higher percentage of its food then the lion. Yet many still label the killer hyena as the scavenger and the lion known to eat hyena left overs as the predator.
Some people claim that t-rex build was unsuitable to hunt (head to big unable to run for long). Some claim that it build was exactly right to an ambush style hunt where it would deliver one large trauma wound and then use its nose to track the animal as it slowly died.
The same nose could also be used to find already dead prey.
Most like t-rex filled both roles shifting from one to the other as circumstances dictated. There are pure predators who refure to eat already dead animals but they are rare. Most predators are also scavengers and even some well known herbivores eat meat if they come upon it.
Talking about the movie. If you want to nitpick then nitpick that movie itself describes that the T-rex has a good nose but is somehow unable to small a scared human right infront of it. Even my cat spots a meal if you rub its nose in it. And this animal mews when I open a paint can.
Re:Consensus? (Score:2)
Hell, my mom's cats come running if you open a mountain dew or a can of Java Espresso Soda. Even if you put a can of soup on the coun
Re:Consensus? (Score:1)
Re:Consensus? (Score:2, Interesting)
OK, the comparison isn't perfect, but its the best I could think of. Hyena's aren't the greatest comparator either; they tend to hunt in packs whereas T Rex was thought to be a solitary hunter, so would certainly kill more prey than scavenge from other killers.
Man, that movie's science sucked. The whole mov
Re:Consensus? (Score:3, Interesting)
And hunting together in packs implies more predation than scavenging. It is thought that younger members of a T-Rex family group would drive prey torwards the massive jaws of the slower moving adults.
Think more of a wolf pack.
Re:Consensus? (Score:2)
Re:Consensus? (Score:2)
That's... not an issue. As such...
It had those plates on its back because its ancestors had other critters attacking it and the ones with the larger bony platy thingies survived more attacks than the others.
And I'm sure T-rexs attacked them occasionally. The young and inexperienced, or the hungry and desperate (or a mix of the two) will attack things they rightly shouldn't bother
Re:Consensus? (Score:2)
A human wearing perfumes. Ol' Rex there would probably confuse it with a plant. Its not like it has extensive experience in humans yet.
Re:Nitpick (Score:2)
Re:Nitpick (Score:5, Funny)
It worked for Bill Gates.
Hay-ooo!
Re:Nitpick (Score:3, Insightful)
It does if it's in the habit of opportunistically scavenging 10 ton carcasses.
Nitpick of the Nitpick (Score:1)
Hmm... Well, if humanity hunted the dinosaurs to near extinction, as your post implies, I suppose this means we didn't hunt them to complete extinction, which implies that there are still dinosaurs around today -- and that there were a lot more dinosaurs back in Cro-Magnon times.
Um... [berkeley.edu]
Seriously, if you're going to engage in Green humanity-bashing, at least check that you're using the right stick.
Re:Nitpick of the Nitpick (Score:2)
And they are delicious!
Re:Nitpick (Score:2)
First of all: Its called a "museum of natural history" or something similar. Find one.
secondly, y
Re:Nitpick (Score:3, Interesting)
Glyptodon [ucsb.edu] is an extinct mammal from south america that died out in the pliestocene...I saw one at the Peabody museum at Harvard and good lord was it ever armored. if it simply squatted so its shell rested on the ground, you couldn't hurt it with guns or cars, it bore so massive a shell. And so I had to ask the same question you pose: This looks invincible, a veritable Hummer of a beast, s
Ankylosaurus? (Score:2)
From the article:
This huge, extremely heavy reptile was an herbivore (it ate only plants).
It had to eat a huge amount of low-lying plant material to sustain itself so
its gut must have been very large. It probably had a fermentation compartment
to aid in the digestion of the tough plant material, producing prodigious
amounts of gas!
Better call it Puteo [nd.edu]saurus then.
Re: Ankylosaurus? (Score:4, Interesting)
> Better call it Puteosaurus then.
ped- is the root you're looking for, though the site you linked thinks pedere means the same thing as pedare.
Modern materials (Score:5, Interesting)
kevlar and fiberglass? (Score:4, Insightful)
So I guess I must be missing something here... how is this dinosaur's armor similar to both Kevlar and fiberglass? Or is it really nothing at all like either of them except that it's strong and light?
Re:kevlar and fiberglass? (Score:3, Informative)
Anklyosaur armor is, from the description of fibers through the bone, analogous to bonded Kevlar or fiberglass.
The article is somewhat misleading, since unbonded Kevlar is the material protective vests are usually made from, not bonded. (Though there are bonded Kevlar armors, they're rather more a s
What would be infinitely more interesting (Score:1)