"First Bird" Competition Heats Up

Fossil freaks are chatting up and down the Internet this week about a "new" fossil that will potentially shake up how we view the history of dinosaurs/avian-dinosaurs/birds. Readers might know that in addition to being a dino-gal, I have a very specific affection for Archaeopteryx, pictured right, the current holder of the "First bird" title, which it has boasted for 150 years.

Might Archaeopteryx be usurped as Urvogel ("Original Bird" or "First Bird") by this new fossil, Xiaotingia (pictured below)? Maybe. Maybe not. Researchers are agreeing that the fossil may change the way we see this evolutionary process, but it also might be a fluke, or a minor change of course. The "new family tree is statistically weak," says Xing Xu, the fossil's identifier/promoter/manager, and these things are usually theoretical for a long time before anything is "proven" - if it ever is.

It is amazing that we are uncovering the history of our Earth every day. Our knowledge of what came before us is and should be constantly changing -evolving- or our intelligence and knowledge is wasted. With each new fossil we learn more about where all of these amazing life forms came from, and where they are going. Where we are going.

The new fossil doesn't change the fact that birds evolved from dinosaurs, and doesn't eliminate Archaeopteryx's huge role in supporting Darwin's theory of evolution, and demonstrating that what we know is not what always was. Darwin told us that life forms are constantly evolving, that the relatives of species took on different forms in the past - and Archaeopteryx still shows us either a bird with teeth, or a dinosaur with feathers - or something beautiful in between, whether or not it loses its place at the base of the evolutionary tree branch.

For more about the battle of the birds check out these two great articles at NYT and iO9.

Why I'm Voting Republican

'Nuff Said.

POTUS or ANTICHRIST?

This little McCain ad has become the subject of some serious controversy. Check it out:


The ad claims to be a making a joke about how Obama thinks himself to be the Messiah, but this awesome Time.com article stresses that the ad doesn't really come across as a joke, and for a few really good reasons:

"The ad was the creation of Fred Davis, one of McCain's top media gurus, as well as a close friend of former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed and the nephew of conservative Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe. It first caught the attention of Democrats familiar with the Left Behind series, a fictionalized account of the end time that debuted in the 1990s and has sold nearly 70 million books worldwide. "The language in there is so similar to the language in the Left Behind books," says Tony Campolo, a leading progressive evangelical speaker and author.

As the ad begins, the words "It should be known that in 2008 the world shall be blessed. They will call him The One" flash across the screen. The Antichrist of the Left Behind books is a charismatic young political leader named Nicolae Carpathia who founds The One World religion (slogan: "We are God") and promises to heal the world after a time of deep division. One of several Obama clips in the ad features the senator saying, "A nation healed, a world repaired. We are the ones that we've been waiting for."

What is McCain trying to pull here? I'm not sure who said that politics and religion don't mix, but darn if its not true. Come on McCain, keep it off the pulpit, all right?

The best part of the whole thing is the hilariously low-brow comment left on the John McCain ad on youtube that said "John McCain is a desperate dinosaur." Haha.

McCain probably ran this ad as a favor to Moses. They went to grammar school together in their home town of Pangea.

For more great information about the venerable John McCain check out the Women For John McCain website.

Its a Dino-World Out There

Today I've been thinking a lot about Dinosaurs. Maybe its because this weekend we took a rather disappointing trip to the National Geographic Society's Explorers Hall in D.C. and saw a small exhibit on Nigersaurus, the dino tauted as "Africa's Long Necked Fern Mower". Maybe its because I'm pretty much always thinking about Dinosaurs, or trying to think up dino-games one could play in construction sites ("You be the Paleontologist! I'll be the Dinosaur Bone!").

Heres some Dino-fun facts from almost an entire days worth of gleefully scowering the internet:

Although Dinos weren’t officially “discovered” until the 19th Century, there are references to "dragon" bones found in Wucheng, Sichuan, China (written by historian Chang Qu) over 2,000 years ago; these were probably dinosaur fossils (silly Chang Qu).

Can you imagine finding a giant bone before the idea of “dinosaur” existed? What a trip. After that there were plenty of folks finding bones but the word “dinosaur," meaning "terrible lizard," was not coined until 1842 by the British paleontologist Richard Owen. Thats how these cute little dino's got such a bad-velociraptor-rap.

Owen teamed up with an Artist/Sculptor, Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, to create a dino park South of London where you can still see sculptures of dinos as Owen first imagined them. They weren't uber-accurate, but cool none-the-less. He threw a big party full of London socialites and they ate dinner in the belly of one of the sculptures.

A handful of years after Owen had his dinosaur party in London, William Parker Foulke found the first nearly complete dinosaur skeleton in 1858 in a marl pit at Haddonfield, New Jersey.

People have been speculating that dinosaurs still exist in some form since these bones first started popping up. In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel “The Lost World” published in 1912, dinosaurs are discovered in South America still roaming around in modern times.

Clearly the world got all wrapped up with dino-fever when Jurassic Park came out in 1993 helping us imagine the dystopia we could create if we used Dino-DNA to bring dinosaurs back.

Additionally, people still think that The Loch Ness Monster might be a “left over” dinosaur and there are reports still coming out of Africa about possible dinosaurs roaming the Congo in Africa.

People just love dinosaurs because they are so different from our understanding of what is natural. Dinosaurs are a crazy, fictional, fairy tale that is actually real.

I love Dinosaurs, and I love even more that DC has its own dinosaur, the Capitalsaurus. You might be asking, MeanJean, are you for real? Hells yes, I’m for real. There's even a street named after it in Southeast Washington: Capitalsaurus Court, at First and F Streets, S.E. This is where the first dinosaur fossil to be found in Washington, DC was unearthed in 1898. 100 years later, it was named the Official Dinosaur of the District of Columbia. Yes. Like a law.

According to USA Today, plenty of Dino tracks have been found in the suburbs of D.C—not so far from where I live! I feel like I, too, could find a dino track walking home from the Metro one day. Maybe even a bone. Heck, I think I could maybe find some last remaining dinosaur creeping around in the shadows behind Rite Aid or Starbucks. A Silverspringasaurus perhaps. Or a Meanjeanasaurus. Or a Kittyasaurus. Yeah.

In other sort of recent Dino-news:

A dinosaur Graveyard found in Spain might contain links to extinction answers...

A mummified dino found in North Dakota has lots of skin, muscle and tendons scientists haven’t really seen before...
A species of dino found in Montana might be the link between dinos that roamed Asia and those from North America ...

Its even cooler that there really is proof that Dinosaurs evolved from birds.

Modern folks have only known about Dinosaurs for about 150 years, can you imagine how much else there is to learn? What happened to them? (Its like CSI: Dinosaurs)

(Picture from http://its.guilford.k12.nc.us/webquests/dino/dinosaur.gif)