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New long-necked dinosaur helps rewrite evolutionary history of sauropods in South America – University of Michigan News

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Panoramic view of the Serranía del Perijá in Colombia, where a vertebra was found in 1943. The vertebra has allowed for scientists to identify a new species of sauropod, the Perijasaurus lapaz. Image credit: Jeff Wilson Mantilla, University of Michigan

A medium-sized sauropod dinosaur inhabited the tropical lowland forested area of the Serranía del Perijá in northern Colombia approximately 175 million years ago, according to a new study by an international team of researchers published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

The new species is a long-necked, plant-eating dinosaur known from a single trunk vertebra that is about a half meter tall and wide. The vertebra bears a distinct pattern of bony struts that identify it as the new dinosaur species Perijasaurus lapaz (pear-EE-hah-SOW-roos la-PAHZ)—named in recognition of the mountainous region where it was found and for the 2016 peace treaty that allowed scientists to pursue their research decades after the fossil remains were found in 1943.

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Perijasaurus is the northernmost occurrence of a sauropod in South America and represents an early phase in their evolutionary history.

Aldo Rincón Burbano, a professor of physics and geosciences at the Universidad del Norte in Colombia, collects samples in the Serranía del Perijá in Colombia. Image credit: Jeff Wilson Mantilla, University of Michigan
Aldo Rincón Burbano, a professor of physics and geosciences at the Universidad del Norte in Colombia, collects samples in the Serranía del Perijá in Colombia. Image credit: Jeff Wilson Mantilla, University of Michigan

“This new genus and species in the paleotropics allows us to understand a little more about the origin of the sauropods in the Jurassic, as well as how they set the stage for later sauropods from the Cretaceous,” said study lead author Aldo Rincón Burbano, professor of physics and geosciences at the Universidad del Norte in Colombia.

The fossil was first discovered in 1943 during a geological mapping campaign by the Tropical Oil Company. The specimen was taken to the collections of University of California, Berkeley and preliminarily described in 1955.

University of Michigan paleontology curator and professor Jeff Wilson Mantilla examined the specimen as a graduate student in 1997 and later developed a project supported by the Fulbright Foundation to study early sauropod evolution in Colombia.

As part of that project, the Colombian specimen was loaned to U-M, where chief preparator William Sanders removed glues and plaster, greatly increasing the visibility of anatomical details and reducing the total weight of the sample.

“Following repreparation of the fossil, we were able to better visualize the delicate bony laminae that interconnect the projecting parts of the vertebra—the spine, the intervertebral articulations, the rib articulations—the architecture of those connections provides critical morphological information that identifies it as a new species and places it within the sauropod family tree,” Wilson Mantilla said.

A single trunk vertebra that is about a half meter tall and wide has allowed scientists to identify a new species of  long-necked, plant-eating dinosaur. Image credit: U-M Online Repository of Fossils viewer developed by the U-M Museum of Paleontology
A single trunk vertebra that is about a half meter tall and wide has allowed scientists to identify a new species of long-necked, plant-eating dinosaur. Image credit: U-M Online Repository of Fossils viewer developed by the U-M Museum of Paleontology

A 3D model of the specimen is hosted on the University of Michigan Online Repository of Fossils.

A conflict since 1964 between the Colombian military forces, the FARC guerrilla group and paramilitary groups made it unsafe to conduct research in Serranía del Perijá, near the border between Colombia and Venezuela, until the peace agreements in 2016.

Since then, the research team has been working to determine with higher precision where the fossil was found. A satellite image of the region was superimposed upon a hand-drawn map from 1955 showing the location of the fossil. A further clue was provided by sediment removed from the vertebra itself during the preparation process—allowing the team to determine the specific layer from which the bone was
collected. Fieldwork at the site and neighboring localities helped to reconstruct the paleoenvironment the dinosaur inhabited.

“Perijasaurus lived in an environment of low slopes associated with a river and a forested area. We found fine sand and leaf debris in the sediment deposited in the area where the vertebra was originally found, and it is consistent with the sediment within the neural arch of the vertebra, which are only preserved near a floodplain, i.e., near the slopes of a river, a wooded area,” said Daniel Raad, a former geology student at the Universidad del Norte.

Most of the discoveries of dinosaurs in South America come from rocks from the Cretaceous period located in Argentina and Brazil. Dinosaurs from the northern part of South America are much rarer, particularly during the Jurassic and Triassic periods, during the initial radiation of dinosaurs, when landmasses were still substantially interconnected.

“Although Perijasaurus is represented by a single vertebra, that region of ​​the skeleton provides the most information in sauropods, due to a series of laminae and other structures,” said Martín Ezcurra, a paleontologist and associate researcher of the CONICET (Argentina’s National Council for Scientific and Technical Research) and head curator of paleovertebrates at the Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences.

The researchers were able to determine the evolutionary relationships of Perijasaurus through a computational analysis focusing on Early and Middle Jurassic sauropods.

“Perijasaurus is part of the early radiation of sauropods, which includes species from southern South America, Africa, Asia and Europe,” said Harold Jiménez Velandia, a geologist at the University of Caldas.

The presence of Perijasaurus in the paleotropics of South America, together with its close phylogenetic relationship with geographically widespread species that inhabited low latitudes, suggests that sauropods diversified and dispersed fairly rapidly following a major anoxic event at the end of the Lower Jurassic, when portions of the oceans were depleted of oxygen over large geographic areas.

“What we see in the Early Jurassic, both in high latitudes and in the most tropical areas, is that sauropod species were evolutionarily and geographically interconnected, which is something that had also been seen with other groups of carnivorous and herbivorous dinosaurs,” Ezcurra said.

Patagosaurus is from Patagonia, and it is one of the sauropods most closely related to Perijasaurus. The image of Patagosaurus is a silhouette reconstruction done by Pol et al. (2020)
Patagosaurus is from Patagonia, and it is one of the sauropods most closely related to Perijasaurus. The image of Patagosaurus is a silhouette reconstruction done by Pol et al. (2020)

Sauropods are the largest animals to have walked on land, some reaching estimated lengths of 49 meters and weights of up to 57 metric tons. Their ability to support their weight and move their bodies efficiently stems from a series of adaptations to reduce weight and increase bony support.

An anatomical hallmark of sauropods is vertebral pneumaticity. Essentially, extensions of the air-sac system of the lungs extend into the vertebral column and actually remove internal bone, effectively lightening the skeleton.

Jeff Wilson Mantilla
Jeff Wilson Mantilla

“By the Late Jurassic, sauropods had evolved highly pneumatic vertebrae riddled with air spaces that removed one-half to three-quarters the bone weight. Perijasaurus represents an evolutionary antecedent in which the pneumatic invasions are much simpler and more limited in extent, removing less than a quarter of bone volume,” Wilson Mantilla said.

He said the team will continue to focus on regions of Colombia that have exposures of Jurassic sediments.

“Colombia is emerging as a country with great potential to contribute to the paleontology of the continent and the world,” Wilson Mantilla said.

Perijasaurus is permanently stored at the University of California Museum of Paleontology in Berkeley, California. The research was funded by the Fulbright Foundation, Universidad del Norte, Sam Welles Fund and CONICET.

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The total solar eclipse in North America could shed light on a persistent puzzle about the sun – Phys.org

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The total solar eclipse in North America could shed light on a persistent puzzle about the sun

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The path of eclipse totality passes through Mexico, the US and Canada. Credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio

A total solar eclipse takes place on April 8 across North America. These events occur when the moon passes between the sun and Earth, completely blocking the sun’s face. This plunges observers into a darkness similar to dawn or dusk.

During the upcoming eclipse, the path of totality, where observers experience the darkest part of the moon’s shadow (the umbra), crosses Mexico, arcing north-east through Texas, the Midwest and briefly entering Canada before ending in Maine.

Total solar eclipses occur roughly every 18 months at some location on Earth. The last that crossed the US took place on August 21 2017.

An international team of scientists, led by Aberystwyth University, will be conducting experiments from near Dallas, at a location in the path of totality. The team consists of Ph.D. students and researchers from Aberystwyth University, Nasa Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, and Caltech (California Institute of Technology) in Pasadena.

There is valuable science to be done during eclipses that is comparable to or better than what we can achieve via space-based missions. Our experiments may also shed light on a longstanding puzzle about the outermost part of the sun’s atmosphere—its corona.

The sun’s intense light is blocked by the moon during a total solar eclipse. This means that we can observe the sun’s faint corona with incredible clarity, from distances very close to the sun, out to several solar radii. One radius is the distance equivalent to half the sun’s diameter, about 696,000km (432,000 miles).

Measuring the corona is extremely difficult without an eclipse. It requires a special telescope called a coronagraph that is designed to block out direct light from the sun. This allows fainter light from the corona to be resolved. The clarity of eclipse measurements surpasses even coronagraphs based in space.

We can also observe the corona on a relatively small budget, compared to, for example, spacecraft missions. A persistent puzzle about the corona is the observation that it is much hotter than the photosphere (the visible surface of the sun). As we move away from a hot object, the surrounding temperature should decrease, not increase. How the corona is heated to such high temperatures is one question we will investigate.

We have two main scientific instruments. The first of these is Cip (coronal imaging polarimeter). Cip is also the Welsh word for “glance,” or “quick look.” The instrument takes images of the sun’s corona with a polariser.

The light we want to measure from the corona is highly polarized, which means it is made up of waves that vibrate in a single geometric plane. A polarizer is a filter that lets light with a particular polarization pass through it, while blocking light with other polarizations.

The Cip images will allow us to measure fundamental properties of the corona, such as its density. It will also shed light on phenomena such as the solar wind. This is a stream of sub-atomic particles in the form of plasma—superheated matter—flowing continuously outward from the sun. Cip could help us identify sources in the sun’s atmosphere for certain solar wind streams.

Direct measurements of the magnetic field in the sun’s atmosphere are difficult. But the eclipse data should allow us to study its fine-scale structure and trace the field’s direction. We’ll be able to see how far magnetic structures called large “closed” magnetic loops extend from the sun. This in turn will give us information about large-scale magnetic conditions in the corona.

The second instrument is Chils (coronal high-resolution line spectrometer). It collects high-resolution spectra, where light is separated into its component colors. Here, we are looking for a particular spectral signature of iron emitted from the corona.

It comprises three , where light is emitted or absorbed in a narrow frequency range. These are each generated at a different range of temperatures (in the millions of degrees), so their relative brightness tells us about the coronal temperature in different regions.

Mapping the ‘s temperature informs advanced, computer-based models of its behavior. These models must include mechanisms for how the coronal plasma is heated to such high temperatures. Such mechanisms might include the conversion of magnetic waves to thermal plasma energy, for example. If we show that some regions are hotter than others, this can be replicated in models.

This year’s eclipse also occurs during a time of heightened solar activity, so we could observe a coronal mass ejection (CME). These are huge clouds of magnetized plasma that are ejected from the sun’s atmosphere into space. They can affect infrastructure near Earth, causing problems for vital satellites.

Many aspects of CMEs are poorly understood, including their early evolution near the sun. Spectral information on CMEs will allow us to gain information on their thermodynamics, and their velocity and expansion near the sun.

Our eclipse instruments have recently been proposed for a space mission called moon-enabled solar occultation mission (Mesom). The plan is to orbit the moon to gain more frequent and extended eclipse observations. It is being planned as a UK Space Agency mission involving several countries, but led by University College London, the University of Surrey and Aberystwyth University.

We will also have an advanced commercial 360-degree camera to collect video of the April 8 eclipse and the observing site. The video is valuable for public outreach events, where we highlight the work we do, and helps to generate public interest in our local star, the sun.

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This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.The Conversation

Citation:
The total solar eclipse in North America could shed light on a persistent puzzle about the sun (2024, March 28)
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from https://phys.org/news/2024-03-total-solar-eclipse-north-america.html

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How the 2024 total solar eclipse is different than the 2017 eclipse



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Mar 30: An Australian Atlantis and other lost landscapes, and more… – CBC.ca

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Quirks and Quarks54:00An Australian Atlantis and other lost landscapes, and more…


On this week’s episode of Quirks & Quarks with Bob McDonald: 

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Archaeologists identify a medieval war-horse graveyard near Buckingham Palace 

Quirks and Quarks9:04Archaeologists identify a medieval war-horse graveyard near Buckingham Palace

We know knights in shining armour rode powerful horses, but remains of those horses are rare. Now, researchers studying equine remains from a site near Buckingham Palace have built a case, based on evidence from their bones, that these animals were likely used in jousting tournaments and battle. Archaeologist Katherine Kanne says the bone analysis also revealed a complex, continent-crossing medieval horse trading network that supplied the British elite with sturdy stallions. This paper was published in Science Advances.

University of Exeter researchers analyzed horse skeletons found near Buckingham Palace and conducted isotope tests on teeth to find out more about the animals’ origins. (University of Exeter)

In an ice-free Arctic, polar bears are dining on duck eggs — and gulls are taking advantage

Quirks and Quarks9:22In an ice-free Arctic, Polar bears are dining on duck eggs — and gulls are taking advantage

Researchers using drones to study ground-nesting birds in the Arctic have observed entire colonies being devastated by marauding polar bears that would normally be out on the ice hunting seals, except the ice isn’t there. What’s more, now they’re enabling a second predator — hungry gulls that raid the nests in the bears’ wake. Andrew Barnas made the observations of this “gull tornado” by following around polar bears in East Bay Island in Nunavut. The research was published in the journal Ecology and Evolution.

Aerial video of a polar bear on grassy, rocky terrain with white birds circling nearby.
A polar bear storms eider duck nests on East Bay island in Nunavut, while herring gulls follow closely behind to snack on any remaining eggs. (Submitted by Andrew Barnas)

A NASA mission might have the tools to detect life on Europa from space

Quirks and Quarks8:05A NASA mission might have the tools to detect life on Europa from space

NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, due to launch this fall, is set to explore the jewel of our solar system: Jupiter’s moon, Europa. The mission’s focus is to determine if the icy moon, thought to harbour an ocean with more water than all of the water on Earth, is amenable to life. However, postdoctoral researcher Fabian Klenner, now at the University of Washington, demonstrated how the spacecraft may be able to detect fragments of bacterial life in a single grain of ice ejected from the surface of the moon. The study was published in the journal Science Advances.

The silhouette of the spacecraft is flying over a brightly pink, blue and orange tinted moon with lots of darker coloured veins underneath with a slightly eclipsed Jupiter looming in the backdrop.
Scientists think under Europa’s icy shell, there is a global, saltwater ocean with twice the volume of Earth’s oceans combined. (NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech)

Pollution is preventing pollinators from recognizing floral plants by scent

Quirks and Quarks7:50Pollution is preventing pollinators from finding plants by scent

Our polluted air is transforming floral scents so pollinators that spread their pollen can no longer recognize them. In a new study in the journal Science, researchers found that a certain compound in air pollution reacts with the flower’s scent molecules so pollinators — like the hummingbird hawk-moths that pollinate at night — fail to recognize them. Jeremy Chan, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Naples, said the change in scent made the flowers smell “less fruity and less fresh.”

A huge insect that looks like a hummingbird hovers over a vibrant pink flower with its long antenna inside one of the blooms.
Scientists found that a hummingbird hawk-moth’s ability to recognize the smell of flowers is hampered by air pollution. (Thomas Kienzle/AFP/Getty Images)

An Australian Atlantis and underwater archeological remains in the Baltic 

Quirks and Quarks17:14An Australian Atlantis and underwater archeological remains in the Baltic

During the last ice age, sea levels were more than 100 metres lower than they are today, which means vast tracts of what are currently coastal seafloor were dry land back then. Geologists and archaeologists are searching for these lost landscapes to identify places prehistoric humans might have occupied. These included a country-sized area of Australia that could have been home to half a million people. Archaeologist Kasih Norman and her colleagues published their study of this now-drowned landscape in Quaternary Science Reviews

Another example is an undersea wall off the coast of Northern Germany that preserves an underwater reindeer hunting ground, described in research led by Jacob Geersen, published in the journal PNAS.

a black-and-white depiction of a small group of caribou walking between a low stone wall and an ocean coastline.
An artist’s representation of caribou being directed by a hunters’ stone wall, as it would have appeared 8-11,000 years ago, before rising sea levels left it 20m below the surface of the Baltic Sea. (Michał Grabowski)

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Solar eclipse April 8 – South Grey News

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March 28, 2024

Graphic: Appalachian Mtn Club

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Grey Bruce Public Health is urging residents to resist the temptation to look directly at the sun during the upcoming solar eclipse and take steps to safeguard their visual health during this relatively rare celestial event.

On April 8, 2024, parts of southern and eastern Ontario will experience a total solar eclipse for the first time since 1925. Grey-Bruce will be outside of the so-called Path of Totality — a narrow area where the moon will completely block out the sun — but will still experience a partial eclipse.

The eclipse is expected to begin at about 2 pm and continue until 4:30 pm The eclipse will peak around 3:20 pm.

It is never safe to stare directly at the sun, but it may be tempting to do so during a solar eclipse.

Looking directly at the sun during an eclipse can cause retinal burns, blurred vision, and/or temporary or permanent loss of visual function, according to the Ontario Association of Optometrists. Damage to the eyes can occur without any sensation of pain.

Grey Bruce Public Health advises the following:

  • Do not look directly at the sun without proper eye protection during the solar eclipse. Looking at even a small sliver of the sun before or after the eclipse without proper eye protection can harm vision.
  • Keep a close eye on children and other vulnerable family members during the eclipse to ensure they do not inadvertently look up at the sun without proper eye protection.
  • To safely view the eclipse, ISO-certified eclipse glasses that meet the ISO 12312-2 international safety standard must be worn. Ensure these glasses are in good condition, without any wrinkles or scratches, and that they fully cover the entire field of vision. Put on the glasses when looking away from the sun, then look at the eclipse. Look away from the sun before taking the glasses off.
  • Regular sunglasses or homemade filters will not protect the eyes.
  • It is not safe to view the eclipse through a camera/phone lens, telescope, binoculars, or any other optical device.

Other ways to safely experience the solar eclipse include watching a livestream of the event or creating and using an eclipse box or pinhole projector.

Anyone experiencing temporary vision loss or blurred vision during or after the eclipse should speak with their eye care professional or healthcare provider as soon as possible.

Anyone experiencing blindness (immediate or delayed) after viewing the eclipse must seek emergency care immediately.

More information on the upcoming eclipse is available on the GBPH website.


At South Grey News, we endeavour to bring you truthful and factual, up-to-date local community news in a quick and easy-to-digest format that’s free of political bias. We believe this service is more important today than ever before, as social media has given rise to misinformation, largely unchecked by big corporations who put profits ahead of their responsibilities.

South Grey News does not have the resources of a big corporation. We are a small, locally owned-and-operated organization. Research, analysis and physical attendance at public meetings and community events requires considerable effort. But contributions from readers and advertisers, however big or small, go a long way to helping us deliver positive, open and honest journalism for this community.

Please consider supporting South Grey News with a donation in lieu of a subscription fee and let us know that our efforts are appreciated. Thank you.

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