Dinosaur Embryos
Granted this is far from my field of expertise (i.e. I know little about dinosaurs), but I still found this article concerning a recent publication in Nature to be interesting. They have found detailed, fossilized dinosaur embryos. I wonder how the scientists know that the dinosaur embryos flexed their muscles within the egg.
Oldest Dinosaur Embryos Discovered
Oldest Dinosaur Embryos Discovered
I am taking embryology this semester meaning I have spent a good chunk of the last 4 months studying development from the time of conception, through cellular division/differentiation, organogenesis, and finally birth. Most of the class focuses around human development. However, I found this article to be interesting because of the different vantage point it stems from. It is interesting to take the time to consider the continuity of developmental processes over thousands of years. Just like lizards and other reptiles of today dinosaurs developed in a similar fashion. I thought it was also interesting how the scientists were able to tell how quickly dinosaurs developed based on the spaces between primary bone cavities.
ReplyDeleteI have always been hesitant to believe the different findings that were brought to the light about dinosaurs. The article discussed how scientist found new clues dealing with dinosaur embryos and the early stages of development. It was very intriguing to read about dinosaurs being able to flex while still in the egg. However, when writing an article including this type of information I would like to see case studies, or images to support the evidence that has been presented. The author stated that synchrotron radiation and highly advanced infrared spectroscopy was used to view bone patterns. If so there should be images included to view this unique study. Are these two methods used to view the primary bone cavities and growth patterns of the embryos? How do scientist know they flexed their muscles in the egg? How did these embryos grow so much faster? What did these embryos look like when they were first discovered? I would definitely have a lot of questions for these scientist to answer.
ReplyDeleteI am also no expert in dinosaur embryology, so my critique might not hold too much ground, but I am going to give it a shot anyways! It is pretty cool that paleontologists are able to find and characterize dinosaur embryos. However, I also become a little skeptical when it comes to fossils and ancient embryology. I feel this way because it seems like the purpose of many paleontologists' work is to discover the origin of a species or to find missing links in the lineage of evolution. I also feel like fossil data is easy to tinker with and possibly falsify. I guess what I am trying to say is, what's the point? How does characterizing dinosaur embryos benefit us today? Yes, it is cool that dinosaurs developed really fast, compared to other species we know of today. But I feel like the time and money put into this research could be used to help solve developmental problems within human embryos. Maybe I'm being a little harsh, or ignorant, but I don't see the point in this type of research. But the technology is super cool!!
ReplyDeleteThe discovery of dinosaur embryos is quite incredible. Dinosaurs are one of the most intriguing creatures ever to have roamed the earth, probably because they all died so long ago, and we know nothing about them. As technology has become more advanced, scientists have been able to discover many things about both the present and the past, dinosaurs being one of those things.
ReplyDeleteI think it is truly incredible that these scientists were able to discover all they say they discovered using new technologies. However, I am very disappointed that they only mentioned a few of their methods. Perhaps, the journalist writing the story wanted to make the article less technical and more reader friendly. I would be very interested to learn how these machines work and, given the debate over the age of the earth, how accurate they are.
The article mentioned several things that seemed odd. First of all, how would they know the embryos flexed their muscles? I would also be interested in hearing their theory for discovering bone fragments of embryos believed to be millions of years old. I know that bones last for a long time, but is it possible for bone fragments, some as small as “pencil lead”, to last millions of years through the shifting of dirt, storms, and millions of years of decay? Also, the article mentions that the embryos were found in pieces. How did the paleontologists that discovered them know how to put them together in the right place? How likely is it that they messed up and made something bigger or smaller than it should have been? Finally, how is it that they know what dinosaur these embryos were growing into? The article made it sound like these embryos were a rare discovery. If this is true, how can they tie them to a specific type of dinosaur?
This was very interesting. I never thought to compare the embryo of a human to that of a dinosaur and how dinosaur's got so much bigger. I think its great that paleontologists are taking time to look into the development of dinosaur embryos. Ross definitely would have loved this!! I didn't know that the space between bone cavities had an influence on the rate of embryo growth. In this article they synchrotron radiation and highly advanced infrared spectroscopy to isolate the main bone crystallizing structure. I wonder how they got uncontaminated species? I hope that they continue to further research the embryo. This is very interesting!
ReplyDeleteI am fascinated by how embryos grow; however, I have never thought about how a dinosaur develops! I found it interesting that they started just as small as a bird and then grow extraordinarily fast. In embryology we learned that they slower developing organisms are generally more intelligent and capable. This makes me wonder if dinosaurs are actually very unintelligent. I am interested as to how dinosaur embryos became fossilized. The paper reports that the embryos are of a specific type of dinosaur named the sauropodomorphs . I would like to know how they know that. If these are the first embryos discovered, how do they know that they are indeed from dinosaurs and a specific type at that? There seems a lot to this article that doesn’t make sense to me. It will probably going to be something that evolutionists will use in their argument against creationism. I would like to have more data to understand it better. Also, it would be nice to know how this discovery will help today’s scientific world for the better.
ReplyDeleteI think it's really interesting that dinosaur embryos can be compared to human embryos. I never thought of examining the way they grow. It's very cool, however, I don't believe I am as shocked at this discovery as the researchers are. It stands to reason that dinosaurs would grow faster than humans, they were much bigger, and lived in a much more dangerous environment than humans do. Just like how a giraffe baby can stand and walk within hours of birth, it makes sense that dinosaurs would grow quickly. This decreases the chance they will die before their time. That being said, I think that pictures would have been a marvelous addition to this article. I think there should be more supporting evidence in this article, rather than just statements. Where is the proof of how they know what kind of dinosaurs these are, and is there any scientific paper showing the previous research that led them to believe they are sauropodomorphs?
ReplyDeleteThis was such an interesting article! To beging with, it's still amazing to me how embryos are fossilized,especially dinossaur embryos. I found the correlation between larger amounts of soft tissue cavities in bone tissue and a faster growth rate really intriguing. Once you look at it that way it makes a lot more sense, since these cavities house the potential blood vessels, which are important for nutrient transport and whatnot.
ReplyDeleteIt's also so interesting that a total of more than 200(!) bone fragments were found in a single species, and that the scientists were able to obtain uncontaminated samples from the main bone crystallizing structure in order examine the ossification.
This is definitely something worth looking more into, because as great as it sounds, it was still a little vague, and more evidence and a deeper look into this discovery are definitely necessary.
It's funny to think that when you hear dinosaurs, you never think about how they were actually born. There seems to be much more to it than someone would think and those that are working on it are definitely discovering that. It is very interesting how they discover different things from the primary bone cavities spacing to the amount of bone tissue in the embryo. The whole fossil record involving dinosaurs is amazing and great to study to learn more about the past, but I wish they could include some kind of benefit to this research.
ReplyDeleteThis article is really cool! As some of the other commenters pointed out, this type of research does not directly benefit patients or improve their quality of care. However, this does not nullify these kinds of studies. These findings are extremely relevant for biological science and can offer a wide range of applications for humans as well. The history of medicine shows that some of the most significant discoveries have been made by obscure forages into the world of biology, botany, entomology, etc. The discovery of ampicillin, for instance, was found through yeast contamination of a bacterial experiment. Despite decades of careful planning and carefully crafting experimental designs, many of science’s great discoveries are serendipitous, so that our most profound discoveries occur through happenstance. Since all biological sciences are interconnected, these dinosaur studies may prove highly useful for human therapeutics, genetics and cloning, and stem cell research. Although they seem random or obscure, these studies can substantially widen scientific horizons and lead to exciting new discoveries.
ReplyDeleteI have to begin by saying that I find it amazing how extensive the world of science is. From aeromechanics, engineering, and mathematics to biology, ecology, and even paleontology, there is such great diversity in this field that one can always find scientists doing something novel and interesting in their own little niche. With that in mind, I must admit that while fossils and dinosaurs don't pique my interest as much as drugs and diseases do, this is still a fascinating find. It's good to see that even though a lot of scientists spend time looking to the future and how to make it a better, a good number of them focus on the past and what we can learn from it as well. I am really interested in seeing how these scientists can use their discovery to give us a clearer picture of life before the Cenozoic era.
ReplyDeleteIn two posts due to length.
ReplyDeleteAs I’ve discovered news sites tend to be notoriously poor at reporting on scientific discoveries (a recent research paper of mine found a scientific paper discussing rapid evolution in some Tasmanian devil genes in light of a deadly cancer decimating the population (CITE). A news article about that paper declared that Tasmanian devils had ‘discovered’ the cure for cancer, and that these genes could one day be used to treat humans (this latter despite the fact that the only mention of ‘humans’ in the original paper was as a means of estimating the functions of those devil genes: the analogous human gene does X, thus the devil gene is theorized to have a similar function) (CITE).), I decided to do a bit of searching to try and find the original dinosaur embryo research. I ended up on Nature’s website (http://www.nature.com/news/oldest-dinosaur-embryo-fossils-discovered-in-china-1.12779), and discovered a PDF summarizing the study (http://www.nature.com/articles/nature11978.epdf?referrer_access_token=Hpx5dMdKrlDljOOABLXjL9RgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0PLNcJcjznxejPseEN7eaC_qxr7p8FA9_gi3i90e5N7ap5TGNbZE5kwYi7F13dNI7qmabdk__cHNvu5KZw9TNitbL6vd8sIJaX2D5139rzoVYVMqtDrjlegYgYt4iFH5eUNxqlONmIEm-OlLlCCv7rp8d8fTOekRqCbC8dmZbEOil9-jr21jicbbfsgDVTuUB7Zhy-f9FScu4kTz21FxYEV&tracking_referrer=). Information about and quotes from the study all come from this link.
The researchers were able to get information about the dinosaur embryology in the first place due to the eggs’ having been shattered and skeletal fragments of the developing young scattered at the site. This enabled a rare look at the tissue and bone development in these animals. Although the identity of the dinosaur species isn’t certain, the researchers pegged it as a sauropod and suggested the most likely genus. This identification was based on structural similarities to other embryonic dinosaur fossils. As sauropods include the largest dinosaurs, the research was particularly intriguing for its insights into how tiny embryos grew up into members of the Earth’s largest land-animal clade. Muscle twitching was a question mentioned in the initial blog post, and the paper indeed enlightens on how that was inferred- certain bone growth patterns seen in birds that exhibit pre-hatching “muscle activation” were also found in these dinosaurs.
I just realized I forgot to include my citations for the mention of the Tasmanian devil papers. Here they are:
DeleteNews article: http://www.newser.com/story/230379/tasmanian-devil-may-be-evolving-to-fight-cancer.html
Journal: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5013612/
Although perhaps less glitzy than the embryo discoveries, the researchers also found the compacted remains of a single egg, “making it possible to obtain microstructural information about the oldest known terrestrial vertebrate eggshell.” They also included detailed description of the possible hydrology leading to such an arrangement of egg fossils.
ReplyDeleteParticularly exciting is the excellent sample size of bone fossils, with more than 200 fragments collected, including vertebrae, ribs, hips, leg and foot bones, and jaw fragments. These bones were identified as embryonic due to their partial ossification and other skeletal abnormalities, such as teeth that don’t protrude beyond the jawbone.
Comparisons among femurs from a range of developmental stages were done, allowing the researchers to theorize on the rapid growth of this bone in these dinosaurs, both by direct comparison to each other and through observing features that correlated with rapid growth, such as high vascularity. The researchers argue that this rapid growth continued after hatching, enabling these dinosaurs to reach such vast sizes.
The bones were analyzed by microscope analysis, as well as decalcification and SR-FTIR spectroscopy. The researchers also mentioned the finding of organic compounds with spectroscopy, but don’t elaborate greatly on these due to the controversial nature of the origin of such compounds.
As a long-time dinosaur fan, I find the results of this study fascinating, and hope to see more published research on the matter. While the researchers did a good overview of the fossils, more in-depth studies on the fossilized histological features of the embryos, more extensive comparisons with other sauropods, and deeper explanations as to the structure of the eggshells would be exciting to see.