
Dinosaur tail found preserved in amber (2016) - triplesec
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38224564
======
PedroBatista
It's been a sad couple of years for people who grew up with Jurassic Park and
now realize those scary beasts are just a bunch of mutant chickens.

~~~
candiodari
Just wait until they realize that these were not warm blooded animals and thus
the large ones, including T-Rex, would have moved slower than large African
animals (probably a lot slower), the fastest of which are about half as fast
as normal human running speeds. for the same reason, our stamina should also
be vastly superior to dinosaurs. If we just simply keep walking after running
away, dinosaurs will never catch up.

Even the smaller ones would only be able to maintain their top speeds for very
short durations. Double digit seconds at the very most, and one can be fairly
sure not more than 20/30 kph.

Humans, and in fact nearly every animal, should be able to easily outrun and
outlast any dinosaur. Probably the same as crocodiles, where being a lot
faster and having more stamina does little good once those jaws close, or if
you can't tell where the animal is reliably (like underwater). So they should
be a lot like crocodiles : a human can pester them (on land) and be nearly
perfectly certain that (s)he's never going to get caught by the animal (which
is practiced in North Australia to get the things out of your bedroom).

~~~
Retric
Central bearded dragon's are ~1lb reptiles and can do 25MPH which is faster
than most people.

So, at least predator dinosaurs where likely faster than most people. We might
do fine over long distances, but overall we are fairly slow.

As to being warm blooded, that's less meaningful for very large creatures.
Body feathers are also a sign something is trying to conserve body heat which
is a sign it's warm blooded.

~~~
candiodari
Trained humans can maintain a speed of ~20kph for hours (as in plural). Peak
speed for a few seconds (which is what would be required to escape these
animals if reaction time is not the problem) is ~50 kph for humans (but only
for 10 meters or so).

Apples to apples, humans are far superior to these speeds. The best animals
for these measurements do crush these figures (by a factor of ~3), but I would
expect that the best dinosaurs wouldn't.

> Very large animals are effectively warm blooded by default due to volume to
> surface ratios cooling is a much larger problem than staying warm.

True, but being "very large" does not really help with either top speed or
explosive power. The fastest animals are small (though not tiny, a decent-not-
huge dog in size but _much_ lighter) brittle little things. They chase,
rapidly inflict a mortal wound, and run away, waiting until it is abandoned to
eat. Fast animals, from cheetahs to rabbits are much lighter than their
appearance would suggest. The animals with greatest endurance are larger, but
humans are, perhaps surprisingly, pretty good at endurance. Clearly we, at one
point, hunted like dogs do : not by outsprinting an animal in an intense fast
chase, but by wearing it down for hours, slowly closing in for the kill. Most
animals should not be able to escape humans using that strategy. Human hunters
would make an animal sprint for it's life 10 times, letting it "escape" 9
times.

~~~
zimpenfish
> Trained humans can maintain a speed of ~20kph for hours

The _very best_ humans can only manage ~20kph for 2.05 hours (WR: 42.2km in
2:02:57 giving 20.59kph). Beyond that, the 50km WR is down to 18.3kph; 100km
WR is 16.1kph; etc.

~~~
babapapa
That's for modern humans. Bone density studies of humans ~10,000 years ago
suggest our muscles were much stronger.

~~~
Retric
Endurance runners are not generally strong. Upper body strength for example is
counter productive.

Further, Olympic paces are maintained by people getting aided with sports
drinks at regular intervals etc. It's very different from the conditions
primitive people would have lived.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
I wonder if we'll eventually find that all, or most, dinosaurs were feathered.
I mean, it is a bit of a coincidence, that we find a dinosaur tail in amber
and it just so happens to be from a feather dinosaur- it's a bit of a
coincidence.

Have other dinosaur body parts been found so well preserved?

~~~
autokad
the nodosaur found in Alberta doesnt seem to have had feathers.

[https://www.sciencealert.com/a-new-dinosaur-fossil-has-
been-...](https://www.sciencealert.com/a-new-dinosaur-fossil-has-been-so-well-
preserved-it-looks-like-a-statue)

~~~
blacksmith_tb
Neither does a tortoise. It doesn't seem like growing armor is conducive to
producing feathers on top of it.

~~~
Nomentatus
And as you likely know, these are dinosaur contemporaries who are from that
general lineage. So great example.

"The earliest fossils are from the beginning of the age of dinosaurs, in the
late Triassic."

------
gcthomas
Assuming that birds _are_ a group of therapod dinosaurs, as many scientists
now describe them, it is true that all _extant_ dinosaurs are feathered.

But it is exciting to see these fossils discovered, so perhaps they should be
described as _extinct_ therapod feathers.

~~~
mannykannot
> Assuming that birds are a group of therapod dinosaurs, as many scientists
> now describe them...

And mammals are synapsids, apparently[1], though that's not so much of an
attention-grabber.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synapsid#Relationships](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synapsid#Relationships)

------
Larrikin
Is this the first discovery of color for dinosaurs?

~~~
dvtv75
If you do a search, you'll get a number of links (the farthest back I found
was 2010) on feather color. I found one popsci article that describes how it
was determined:

[https://www.popsci.com/discover-color-
dinosaur](https://www.popsci.com/discover-color-dinosaur)

------
sizzzzlerz
This makes one wonder what else might be found in these markets where this was
found. This could have been so easily lost to science if the right person
hadn't come along at the right time. If not done already, I assume more
scientist types will start trolling the markets there.

------
ggg9990
Consequences be damned, if I could make Jurassic Park, I would.

~~~
anfilt
If we are able to get any DNA out amber that would be amazing. From what I
understand DNA is not stable for that long. If we are able to get any DNA it
would probably be inferred some microscopic structures or something left
behind from the DNA. However, even then I doubt it would be complete. So why
it would be amazing it would just be tiny fragments of DNA. I doubt we will
even get a tiny fragment. So highly doubt we will ever get enough genetic
information to be able resurrect a dinosaur. Even if we would could fill in
the blanks with bird DNA.

So even if you wanted to I don't think you could. However, a mammoth for
instance might be possible to clone.

~~~
ggg9990
If you imagine finding some big stash of amber with, say, 1 million different
dinosaur fragments preserved, you could imagine using some statistical
techniques combined with knowledge of extant related species to put something
together.

~~~
anfilt
yea and from my understanding it's only ~500 years or so. So a 160 million
years is how old the article says that amber is. So that means what ever
amount of dna would have been gone through it's half life over 300,000 times.
Just thinking about that makes me absolutely certain that we would not even
find an intact base-pair, and a single base pair is not even useful for
cloning.

It's not happening unless there is some natural mechanism that increase that
half life of DNA quite a bit, and is stable for millions of years. Otherwise
we would need the DNA to leave some byproduct that we can detect.

------
fwdpropaganda
> "We can be sure of the source because the vertebrae are not fused into a rod
> or pygostyle as in modern birds and their closest relatives," he explained.

For non-experts (like me) I think it comes as a surprise to learn just how
rudimentary these people's techniques are.

