“If these sea turtles do, in fact, form a tightly knit group, evolutionarily speaking, the [African] specimen provides proof that members of that group survived the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous.” — Timothy Myers, SMU
Live Science Senior Writer Laura Geggel covered the research of paleontologist Timothy Scott Myers, a postdoctoral researcher in SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.
Myers analyzed an ancient sea turtle, discovered in Angola in 2012, with a triangular-shaped head that lived about 64 million years ago and that is closely related to earlier sea turtles that lived before scientists think an asteroid smashed into the earth sparking a massive mass extinction event.
The article “Tough Turtle: Dino-Killing Asteroid Spared Sea Creature,” cites new findings from Myers’ research, which studied the specimen. It was found along sea cliffs near the town of Landana, in the Angolan province of Cabinda in June 2012.
By Laura Geggel
Live Science
Shortly after an asteroid smashed into Earth about 65.5 million years ago, obliterating much of life on Earth,an ancient sea turtle with a triangular-shaped head swam along the relatively arid shores of southern Africa, a new study finds.
The creature, a newly identified species, lived about 64 million years ago during the Paleocene, an epoch within the Paleogene period, the researchers said. The animal is closely related to earlier sea turtles that lived before the asteroid struck, an event known as the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary, which marks the mass extinction that killed about 75 percent of all species on Earth, including the nonavian dinosaurs.
“If these sea turtles do, in fact, form a tightly knit group, evolutionarily speaking, then the [African] specimen provides proof that members of that group survived the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous,” study lead researcher Timothy Myers, a research assistant professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at Southern Methodist University in Texas, told Live Science in an email.
Paleontologists found the specimen along the sea cliffs near the town of Landana, in the Angolan province of Cabinda in June 2012. Study senior researcher Louis Jacobs, a vertebrate paleontologist at Southern Methodist University, noticed part of the bone protruding from the rock. He and his team soon realized it was a nearly complete turtle skull and most of a hyoid, a U-shaped neck bone that supports the tongue.
SMU scientists and their research have a global reach that is frequently noted, beyond peer publications and media mentions.
By Margaret Allen
SMU News & Communications
It was a good year for SMU faculty and student research efforts. Here is a small sampling of public and published acknowledgements during 2015:
Hot topic merits open access
Taylor & Francis, publisher of the online journal Environmental Education Research, lifted its subscription-only requirement to meet demand for an article on how climate change is taught to middle-schoolers in California.
Co-author of the research was Diego Román, assistant professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning, Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development.
Román’s research revealed that California textbooks are teaching sixth graders that climate change is a controversial debate stemming from differing opinions, rather than a scientific conclusion based on rigorous scientific evidence.
Research makes the cover of Biochemistry
Drugs important in the battle against cancer were tested in a virtual lab by SMU biology professors to see how they would behave in the human cell.
A computer-generated composite image of the simulation made the Dec. 15 cover of the journal Biochemistry.
Scientific articles about discoveries from the simulation were also published in the peer review journals Biochemistry and in Pharmacology Research & Perspectives.
The researchers tested the drugs by simulating their interaction in a computer-generated model of one of the cell’s key molecular pumps — the protein P-glycoprotein, or P-gp. Outcomes of interest were then tested in the Wise-Vogel wet lab.
The ongoing research is the work of biochemists John Wise, associate professor, and Pia Vogel, professor and director of the SMU Center for Drug Discovery, Design and Delivery in Dedman College. Assisting them were a team of SMU graduate and undergraduate students.
The researchers developed the model to overcome the problem of relying on traditional static images for the structure of P-gp. The simulation makes it possible for researchers to dock nearly any drug in the protein and see how it behaves, then test those of interest in an actual lab.
To date, the researchers have run millions of compounds through the pump and have discovered some that are promising for development into pharmaceutical drugs to battle cancer.
Strong interest in research on sexual victimization
Teen girls were less likely to report being sexually victimized after learning to assertively resist unwanted sexual overtures and after practicing resistance in a realistic virtual environment, according to three professors from the SMU Department of Psychology.
The finding was reported in Behavior Therapy. The article was one of the psychology journal’s most heavily shared and mentioned articles across social media, blogs and news outlets during 2015, the publisher announced.
The study was the work of Dedman College faculty Lorelei Simpson Rowe, associate professor and Psychology Department graduate program co-director; Ernest Jouriles, professor; and Renee McDonald, SMU associate dean for research and academic affairs.
Consumers assume bigger price equals better quality
Even when competing firms can credibly disclose the positive attributes of their products to buyers, they may not do so.
Instead, they find it more lucrative to “signal” quality through the prices they charge, typically working on the assumption that shoppers think a high price indicates high quality. The resulting high prices hurt buyers, and may create a case for mandatory disclosure of quality through public policy.
That was a finding of the research of Dedman College’s Santanu Roy, professor, Department of Economics. Roy’s article about the research was published in February in one of the blue-ribbon journals, and the oldest, in the field, The Economic Journal.
Published by the U.K.’s Royal Economic Society, The Economic Journal is one of the founding journals of modern economics. The journal issued a media briefing about the paper, “Competition, Disclosure and Signaling,” typically reserved for academic papers of broad public interest.
Chemistry research group edits special issue
Chemistry professors Dieter Cremer and Elfi Kraka, who lead SMU’s Computational and Theoretical Chemistry Group, were guest editors of a special issue of the prestigious Journal of Physical Chemistry. The issue published in March.
The Computational and Theoretical research group, called CATCO for short, is a union of computational and theoretical chemistry scientists at SMU. Their focus is research in computational chemistry, educating and training graduate and undergraduate students, disseminating and explaining results of their research to the broader public, and programming computers for the calculation of molecules and molecular aggregates.
The special issue of Physical Chemistry included 40 contributions from participants of a four-day conference in Dallas in March 2014 that was hosted by CATCO. The 25th Austin Symposium drew 108 participants from 22 different countries who, combined, presented eight plenary talks, 60 lectures and about 40 posters.
CATCO presented its research with contributions from Cremer and Kraka, as well as Marek Freindorf, research assistant professor; Wenli Zou, visiting professor; Robert Kalescky, post-doctoral fellow; and graduate students Alan Humason, Thomas Sexton, Dani Setlawan and Vytor Oliveira.
There have been more than 75 graduate students and research associates working in the CATCO group, which originally was formed at the University of Cologne, Germany, before moving to SMU in 2009.
Vertebrate paleontology recognized with proclamation
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings proclaimed Oct. 11-17, 2015 Vertebrate Paleontology week in Dallas on behalf of the Dallas City Council.
The proclamation honored the 75th Annual Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, which was jointly hosted by SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences in Dedman College and the Perot Museum of Science and Nature. The conference drew to Dallas some 1,200 scientists from around the world.
Making research presentations or presenting research posters were: faculty members Bonnie Jacobs, Louis Jacobs, Michael Polcyn, Neil Tabor and Dale Winkler; adjunct research assistant professor Alisa Winkler; research staff member Kurt Ferguson; post-doctoral researchers T. Scott Myers and Lauren Michael; and graduate students Matthew Clemens, John Graf, Gary Johnson and Kate Andrzejewski.
The host committee co-chairs were Anthony Fiorillo, adjunct research professor; and Louis Jacobs, professor. Committee members included Polcyn; Christopher Strganac, graduate student; Diana Vineyard, research associate; and research professor Dale Winkler.
KERA radio reporter Kat Chow filed a report from the conference, explaining to listeners the science of vertebrate paleontology, which exposes the past, present and future of life on earth by studying fossils of animals that had backbones.
SMU earthquake scientists rock scientific journal
Modelled pressure changes caused by injection and production. (Nature Communications/SMU)
Findings by the SMU earthquake team reverberated across the nation with publication of their scientific article in the prestigious British interdisciplinary journal Nature, ranked as one of the world’s most cited scientific journals.
The article reported that the SMU-led seismology team found that high volumes of wastewater injection combined with saltwater extraction from natural gas wells is the most likely cause of unusually frequent earthquakes occurring in the Dallas-Fort Worth area near the small community of Azle.
The research was the work of Dedman College faculty Matthew Hornbach, associate professor of geophysics; Heather DeShon, associate professor of geophysics; Brian Stump, SMU Albritton Chair in Earth Sciences; Chris Hayward, research staff and director geophysics research program; and Beatrice Magnani, associate professor of geophysics.
The article, “Causal factors for seismicity near Azle, Texas,” published online in late April. Already the article has been downloaded nearly 6,000 times, and heavily shared on both social and conventional media. The article has achieved a ranking of 270, which puts it in the 99th percentile of 144,972 tracked articles of a similar age in all journals, and 98th percentile of 626 tracked articles of a similar age in Nature.
“It has a very high impact factor for an article of its age,” said Robert Gregory, professor and chair, SMU Earth Sciences Department.
The scientific article also was entered into the record for public hearings both at the Texas Railroad Commission and the Texas House Subcommittee on Seismic Activity.
Researchers settle long-debated heritage question of “The Ancient One”
The skull of Kennewick Man and a sculpted bust by StudioEIS based on forensic facial reconstruction by sculptor Amanda Danning. (Credit: Brittany Tatchell)
The research of Dedman College anthropologist and Henderson-Morrison Professor of Prehistory David Meltzer played a role in settling the long-debated and highly controversial heritage of “Kennewick Man.”
Also known as “The Ancient One,” the 8,400-year-old male skeleton discovered in Washington state has been the subject of debate for nearly two decades. Argument over his ancestry has gained him notoriety in high-profile newspaper and magazine articles, as well as making him the subject of intense scholarly study.
Officially the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Kennewick Man was discovered in 1996 and radiocarbon dated to 8500 years ago.
Because of his cranial shape and size he was declared not Native American but instead ‘Caucasoid,’ implying a very different population had once been in the Americas, one that was unrelated to contemporary Native Americans.
But Native Americans long have claimed Kennewick Man as theirs and had asked for repatriation of his remains for burial according to their customs.
Meltzer, collaborating with his geneticist colleague Eske Willerslev and his team at the Centre for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen, in June reported the results of their analysis of the DNA of Kennewick in the prestigious British journal Nature in the scientific paper “The ancestry and affiliations of Kennewick Man.”
The results were announced at a news conference, settling the question based on first-ever DNA evidence: Kennewick Man is Native American.
The announcement garnered national and international media attention, and propelled a new push to return the skeleton to a coalition of Columbia Basin tribes. Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) introduced the Bring the Ancient One Home Act of 2015 and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has offered state assistance for returning the remains to Native Tribes.
Science named the Kennewick work one of its nine runners-up in the highly esteemed magazine’s annual “Breakthrough of the Year” competition.
The research article has been viewed more than 60,000 times. It has achieved a ranking of 665, which puts it in the 99th percentile of 169,466 tracked articles of a similar age in all journals, and in the 94th percentile of 958 tracked articles of a similar age in Nature.
In “Kennewick Man: coming to closure,” an article in the December issue of Antiquity, a journal of Cambridge University Press, Meltzer noted that the DNA merely confirmed what the tribes had known all along: “We are him, he is us,” said one tribal spokesman. Meltzer concludes: “We presented the DNA evidence. The tribal members gave it meaning.”
Prehistoric vacuum cleaner captures singular award
Paleontologists Louis L. Jacobs, SMU, and Anthony Fiorillo, Perot Museum, have identified a new species of marine mammal from bones recovered from Unalaska, an Aleutian island in the North Pacific. (Hillsman Jackson, SMU)
Science writer Laura Geggel with Live Science named a new species of extinct marine mammal identified by two SMU paleontologists among “The 10 Strangest Animal Discoveries of 2015.”
The new species, dubbed a prehistoric hoover by London’s Daily Mail online news site, was identified by SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, a professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, and paleontologist and SMU adjunct research professor Anthony Fiorillo, vice president of research and collections and chief curator at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science.
Jacobs and Fiorillo co-authored a study about the identification of new fossils from the oddball creature Desmostylia, discovered in the same waters where the popular “Deadliest Catch” TV show is filmed. The hippo-like creature ate like a vacuum cleaner and is a new genus and species of the only order of marine mammals ever to go extinct — surviving a mere 23 million years.
Desmostylians, every single species combined, lived in an interval between 33 million and 10 million years ago. Their strange columnar teeth and odd style of eating don’t occur in any other animal, Jacobs said.
As noted by the CERN Courier — the news magazine of the CERN Laboratory in Geneva, which hosts the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest science experiment — more than 250 scientists from 30 countries presented more than 200 talks on a multitude of subjects relevant to experimental and theoretical research. SMU physicists presented at the conference.
The SMU organizing committee was led by Fred Olness, professor and chair of the SMU Department of Physics in Dedman College, who also gave opening and closing remarks at the conference. The committee consisted of other SMU faculty, including Jodi Cooley, associate professor; Simon Dalley, senior lecturer; Robert Kehoe, professor; Pavel Nadolsky, associate professor, who also presented progress on experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider; Randy Scalise, senior lecturer; and Stephen Sekula, associate professor.
Sekula also organized a series of short talks for the public about physics and the big questions that face us as we try to understand our universe.
Every toothed pterosaur identified from North America’s Cretaceous has been discovered in North Texas. New species marks only the third.
A new species of toothy pterosaur is a native of Texas whose closest relative is from England.
The new 94-million-year-old species, named Cimoliopterus dunni, is strikingly similar to England’s Cimoliopterus cuvieri.
Identification of the new flying reptile links prehistoric Texas to England, says paleontologist Timothy S. Myers, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, who identified the fossil as a new species.
Pterosaur relatives from two continents suggests the prehistoric creatures moved between North America and England earlier in the Cretaceous — despite progressive widening of the North Atlantic Ocean during that time.
The Texas and English Cimoliopterus cousins are different species, so some evolutionary divergence occurred.
That indicates the populations were isolated from one another at 94 million years ago, Myers said.
The similarity between the two species, however, implies minimal divergence time, so gene flow between North American and European populations would have been possible at some point shortly before that date.
“The Atlantic opened the supercontinent Pangea like a zipper, separating continents and leaving animal populations isolated, so gene flow ceased and we start to see evolutionary divergence,” said Myers, a research assistant professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences at SMU. “Animals start to look different and you see different species on one continent versus another. Pterosaurs are a little trickier because unlike land animals they can fly and disperse across bodies of water. The later ones are pretty good flyers.”
Based on fossils discovered so far, it’s known that toothed pterosaurs are generally abundant during the Cretaceous in Asia, Europe and South America. But they are rare in North America.
The new Texas native, Cimoliopterus dunni, is only the third pterosaur species with teeth from the Cretaceous of North America. All three of the toothy Cretaceous-era pterosaurs discovered so far from North America are Texans. Nevertheless, Cimoliopterus dunni is most closely related to England’s Cimoliopterus cuvieri, said Myers.
The Cretaceous spanned about 80 million years from 145 million years ago to 66 million years ago.
Each of the Texas pterosaurs was discovered near Dallas.
Pterosaurs can cross marine barriers between emergent landmasses, effectively ‘island hopping’ Besides the new 94-million-year-old Cimoliopterus dunni, Myers in 2010 identified the 96-million-year-old Aetodactylus halli, a close cousin to Cimoliopterus. The third Texas pterosaur, 105-million-year-old Coloborhynchus wadleighi, was identified in 1994 by then-SMU student Yuong-Nam Lee. It too has an English connection: The first Coloborhynchus species ever described is from England.
“Given the small sample size, it’s odd that we have two that are so closely related to the English species,” Myers said. “It’s hard to draw any statistically significant conclusions from that, but it definitely indicates this is not a one-off, and that there was some relatively strong, significant connection. Two means a lot more than one in this case.”
Myers isn’t suggesting a land bridge. But scientists have suggested the sea level of the North Atlantic fluctuated over time.
“Pterosaurs don’t necessarily need land bridges to disperse because they can cross marine barriers between emergent landmasses, effectively ‘island hopping’ from one continental mass to another,” Myers said.
Nevertheless, identification of the new toothy Texas pterosaur deepens a mystery surrounding the flying reptiles: There still is no evidence of close ties between North American and South American pterosaur populations, he said.
“There are toothed pteranodontoids in South America — lots of individuals and lots of different species — but no close relatives to the toothed pteranodontoids in North America,” he said. “That might indicate there was some barrier to dispersal from the south. It’s unusual we don’t see a connection between these pterosaur populations. Maybe we will when we find more of this material.”
A long-lived group, whether toothy and small, or toothless and big
As a group, pterosaurs, which lived alongside dinosaurs, were long-lived. They survived about 162 million years, from the Late Triassic, 228 million years ago, through the Cretaceous, 66 million years ago.
Pterosaurs were among the earliest vertebrates to steadily flap their wings to power their flying.
Early forms were toothy and had wingspans similar to a flying fox, while later they were toothless and as large as fighter jets.
Pterosaurs nested on land but their bones are often recovered from shallow marine rocks. Some species have slender, pointed teeth, suitable for a diet of fish.
“This group is very abundant around the world in the middle Cretaceous — except in North America. The only evidence we have of the toothed members comes from Texas,” Myers said. “In general we see a broad trend in pterosaurs away from teeth, so at the end of the Cretaceous all known species are toothless.”
Pterosaur hunted fish offshore from North America’s Interior Seaway Cimoliopterus dunni likely hunted fish just off shore in the shallow Western Interior Seaway.
The prehistoric Seaway covered the central United States and Canada, extending from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean.
Myers identified the new pterosaur from a partial upper jaw — specifically the tip of the blunt snout, or rostrum. The rostrum has sockets for 13 pair of teeth. Atop the snout is a thin, prominent crest that starts near the front and extends back. The crest is fully fused to the jaw, a good indicator the pterosaur was not a juvenile, Myers said.
“The crest is really striking,” he said. “It’s almost preserved in its entirety.”
Prolific amateur collector Brent Dunn discovered the upper jaw in January 2013 while walking the spillway of Lake Lewisville north of Dallas. The fossil, coated in reddish mud, had weathered out of the ground. The marine shale layer in which it was found is part of the Eagle Ford Group, a rock unit unique to Texas.
The fossil was found alongside ammonites and crustaceans, called index fossils, because they date the shale layer. Ammonites also indicate an open marine environment, with no fresh water influence.
Although Cimoliopterus dunni would have been large, it was mid-sized as pterosaurs go, with a wingspan of about 6 feet.
“It wouldn’t have been small and cute,” Myers said. “You would have thought twice about approaching it.”
It’s fortunate to have the beautifully preserved fossil because the potential for preserving pterosaur bones is low, Myers said. Their bones were light and hollow, filled with vacuities to help them fly, so they tend to crush easily and break into pieces. “So their normal cylindrical bone is pancaked flat,” he said.
Dunn, a long-time member of the Dallas Paleontological Society, donated it to SMU’s Shuler Museum of Paleontology. He died in 2013. Myers named the fossil for Dunn. — Margaret Allen, SMU
The Guardian reporter David Hambling covered the research of SMU paleontologist Timothy S. Myers in the London newspaper’s daily Weatherwatch column.
Myers’ recent research has focused on the climate of the Jurassic, testing the notion that the era’s ancient climate was similar to modern. His most recent study found that climate was more variable than previously understood in the area now covered by the Morrison Formation, a massive and prolific fossil bearing formation that runs throughout a large portion of the western United States.
Prior to this study, a previous one set out to discover whether the modern relationship between lush environments and a proliferation of animal life held true 150 million years ago during the Late Jurassic when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
Paleosol matrix was collected in the field by SMU paleontologist Timothy S. Myers for chemical analysis. (Myers, SMU)
Myers’ uses geochemical analysis of ancient soil, called paleosols, to unearth climate data from the Jurassic.
His findings suggest that scientists must use different approaches to quantify paleoclimate, he said.
“It’s not enough to just look at soil types and draw conclusions about the paleoclimate,” Myers said. “It’s not even enough to look at rainfall in this quantitative fashion. There are numerous factors to consider.”
Myers analyzed 22 paleosol samples from northern New Mexico, 15 from northern Wyoming and seven from southern Montana.
The samples from Montana were younger than those from New Mexico, but roughly contemporary with the samples from Wyoming.
Study found this Wyoming area surprisingly was more arid than its counterpart in New Mexico. (Credit: Myers, SMU)
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“We found that, indeed, New Mexico was relatively arid,” Myers said. “But the surprising part was that the Wyoming locality was more arid and had less rainfall than New Mexico, even though it was at a higher latitude, and above the mid-latitude arid belt. And the Montana locality, which is not far from the Wyoming locality, had the highest rainfall of all three. And there’s a very abrupt transition between the two.”
Co-authors of the study were Neil J. Tabor, SMU earth sciences professor and an expert in ancient soil, and Nicholas Rosenau, a stable isotope geochemist, Dolan Integration Group.
By David Hambling
The Guardian
We need to understand the conditions of earlier eras to make sense of climate change data. But past conditions were complex; the Jurassic world was, after all, not an unbroken vista of volcanoes and steamy jungle.
Timothy Myers, a palaeontologist at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, collected 44 samples of ancient soils, or paleosols, from parts of the Morrison formation in the US south-west.
Researchers may assume that soil type gives a good indication of the prevailing climate. The reasoning, here, was that New Mexico, as today, would have been more arid than Wyoming and Montana further to the north.
Yet when Myers did the first detailed quantitative study, he found that mean average rainfall was 76cm (30in) for New Mexico and 114cm (45in) for north Montana, while being just 51cm (20in) in northern Wyoming.
There were big differences even between adjacent sites. “The apparently sudden shift from dry to relatively wet environments over such a short distance was perplexing,” said Myers. Normally this sort of pattern would only occur on opposite sides of a topographic feature, such as a mountain range.
Myers suggested that precipitation could have been highly seasonal at the Wyoming site, and this could have distorted the estimate for the total rainfall.
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
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First detailed chemical analysis of ancient soil from the Morrison Formation — a massive source of significant dinosaur discoveries for more than 100 years— reveals there was an unexpected abrupt change from arid to wet environments during the Jurassic.
The climate 150 million years ago of a large swath of the western United States was more complex than previously known, according to new research from Southern Methodist University, Dallas.
It’s been held that the climate during the Jurassic was fairly dry in New Mexico, then gradually transitioned to a wetter climate northward to Montana.
But based on new evidence, the theory of a gradual transition from a dry climate to a wetter one during the Jurassic doesn’t tell the whole story, says SMU paleontologist Timothy S. Myers, lead author on the study.
Geochemical analysis of ancient soils, called paleosols, revealed an unexpected and mysterious abrupt transition from dry to wet even though some of the samples came from two nearby locales, Myers said.
Myers discovered the abrupt transition through geochemical analysis of more than 40 ancient soil samples.
Paleosol matrix was collected in the field by SMU paleontologist Timothy S. Myers for chemical analysis of the ancient soil by grinding it to a powder, which was then fused into a glass disc for elemental analysis. (Myers, SMU)
He collected the samples from the Morrison Formation, a vast rock unit that has been a major source of significant dinosaur discoveries for more than 100 years.
The Morrison extends from New Mexico to Montana, sprawling across 13 states and Canada, formed from sediments deposited during the Jurassic.
Myers’ study is the first in the Morrison to significantly draw on quantitative data — the geochemistry of the rocks.
The abrupt transition, Myers says, isn’t readily explained.
“I don’t have a good explanation,” he said. “Normally when you see these dramatic differences in climate in areas that are close to one another it’s the result of a stark variation in topography. But in this case, there weren’t any big topographic features like a mountain range that divided these two localities in the Jurassic.”
Surprisingly, paleosols from the sample areas did not reveal marked differences until they were analyzed using geochemical weathering indices.
Paleosol samples from the Jurassic in Wyoming indicate this area of the massive Morrison Formation surprisingly was more arid than its counterpart in New Mexico. (Credit: Myers, SMU)
“It’s sobering to think that by just looking at the paleosols superficially at these localities, they don’t appear incredibly different. We see the same types of ancient soils in both places,” Myers said. “So these are some fairly major climate differences that aren’t reflected in the basic ancient soil types. Yet this is what a lot of scientists, myself included, depend on for a first pass idea of paleoclimate in an area — certain types of soils form in drier environments, others in wetter, others in cooler, that sort of thing.”
That didn’t hold true for the current study.
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With the geochemical analysis, Myers estimated the mean average precipitation during the Jurassic for northern Montana was approximately 45 inches, 20 inches for northern Wyoming and 30 inches for New Mexico.
“This changes how we view the distribution of the types of environments in the Morrison,” Myers said. “Too many times we talk about the Morrison as though it was this monolithic unit sprinkled with patchy, but similar, variations. But it’s incredibly large. It spans almost 10 degrees of latitude. So it’s going to encompass a lot of different environments. Regions with broadly similar climates can have internal differences, even over short distances. That’s the take-home.”
Co-authors of the study were Neil J. Tabor, SMU earth sciences professor and an expert in ancient soil, and Nicholas Rosenau, a stable isotope geochemist, Dolan Integration Group.
The popular artistic representations we see today of dinosaurs in a landscape setting are based on bits of evidence from plant and animal fossils found in various places, Tabor said. While that’s based on the best information to date, it’s probably inaccurate, he said. Myers’ findings provide new insights to many studies that have been done prior to his. This will drive paleontologists and geologists to seek out more quantitative data about the ancient environment.
“The geology of the Morrison has been studied exhaustively from an observational standpoint for 100 years,” Tabor said. “I have no doubt there will be many more fossil discoveries in the Morrison, even though over the past century we’ve gained a pretty clear understanding of the plants and animals at that time. But now we can ask deeper questions about the landscape and how organisms in the ancient world interacted with their environment.”
Surprising results: Northern locale more arid than southern locale
The Morrison Formation has produced some of our most familiar dinosaurs, as well as new species never seen before. Discoveries began in the late 1800s and ultimately precipitated the Bone Wars — the fossil equivalent of California’s Gold Rush.
After Myers studied dinosaur fossils from the Morrison, he became curious about the climate. Embarking on the geochemical analysis, Myers, like scientists before him, hypothesized the climate would be similar to modern zonal circulation patterns, which are driven by the distribution of the continents. Under that hypothesis, New Mexico would be relatively arid, and Wyoming and Montana both would be wetter at the time dinosaurs roamed the landscape.
Myers analyzed 22 paleosol samples from northern New Mexico, 15 from northern Wyoming and seven from southern Montana. The samples from Montana were younger than those from New Mexico, but roughly contemporary with the samples from Wyoming.
“We found that, indeed, New Mexico was relatively arid,” Myers said. “But the surprising part was that the Wyoming locality was more arid and had less rainfall than New Mexico, even though it was at a higher latitude, and above the mid-latitude arid belt. And the Montana locality, which is not far from the Wyoming locality, had the highest rainfall of all three. And there’s a very abrupt transition between the two.”
During the Jurassic, the Morrison was between 30 degrees north and 45 degrees north, which is about five degrees south of where it sits now. Its sediments were deposited from 155 to 148 million years ago. Some areas show evidence of a marine environment, but most were continental. The mean average precipitation determined for the Jurassic doesn’t match our modern distribution, Myers said.
Study underscores that understanding climate requires multiple approaches
Previously scientists speculated on the climate based on qualitative measures, such as types of soils or rocks, or types of sedimentary structures, and inferred climate from that.
“I tried to find quantitative information, but no one had done it,” Myers said. “There are entire volumes about Morrison paleoclimate, but not a single paper with quantitative estimates. Given the volume of important fossils that have come out of the Morrison, and how significant this formation is, it just struck me as important that it be done.”
Myers classified the fossil soils according to the Mack paleosol classification, and established the elemental composition of each one to determine how much weathering the paleosols had undergone.
“There are some elements, such as aluminum, that are not easily weathered out of soils,” Myers said. “There are others that are easily flushed out. We looked at the ratio of the elements, such as aluminum versus elements easily weathered. From that, we used the ratios to determine how weathered or not the soil was.”
These findings suggest that scientists must use different approaches to quantify paleoclimate, he said.
“It’s not enough to just look at soil types and draw conclusions about the paleoclimate,” Myers said. “It’s not even enough to look at rainfall in this quantitative fashion. There are numerous factors to consider.”
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
To book a live or taped interview with Dr. Scott Myers in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call SMU News at 214-768-7650 or email SMU News at news@smu.edu.
News wire UPI covered the research of SMU paleontologist Timothy S. Myers for the news site.
Myers’ latest study found Jurassic ecosystems were similar to modern: Animals flourish among lush plants. The study set out to discover whether that same relationship held true 150 million years ago during the Late Jurassic when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
“The assumption has been that ancient ecosystems worked just like our modern ecosystems,” said Myers. “We wanted to see if this was, in fact, the case.”
UPI
The Earth’s ecosystems in the Jurassic period were similar to modern ones with animals flourishing, taking advantage of lush plant growth, U.S. researchers say.
In modern ecosystems animal populations do well in regions where the climate and landscape produce lush vegetation, and scientists at Southern Methodist University wanted to find out if the same relationship held true 150 million years ago during the Late Jurassic when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
“The assumption has been that ancient ecosystems worked just like our modern ecosystems,” paleontologist Timothy S. Myers said in an SMU release Tuesday. “We wanted to see if this was, in fact, the case.”
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
Myers’ latest study found Jurassic ecosystems were similar to modern: Animals flourish among lush plants. The study set out to discover whether that same relationship held true 150 million years ago during the Late Jurassic when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
“The assumption has been that ancient ecosystems worked just like our modern ecosystems,” said Myers. “We wanted to see if this was, in fact, the case.”
To book a live or taped interview with Dr. Scott Myers in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call SMU News at 214-768-7650 or email SMU News at news@smu.edu.
By Rayshell Clapper
redOrbit.com
According to Southern Methodist University paleontologists Timothy S. Myers, Louis L. Jacobs, and SMU sedimentary geologist Neil J. Tabor, the modern relationship between animals and vegetation is similar to millions of years ago.
In their study, the SMU scientists used fossil soils from the Late Jurassic age gathered from locations where animal fossils were previously found to determine the levels of carbon isotopes. The team used fossils gathered from North America, Europe, and Africa. The main problem with the study, though, is that few places in the world are well-sampled enough for terrestrial fossils, so Myers and his team discovered a new and creative use of an already existing method and already existing geological data.
To gather his results, Myers used a traditional method to estimate carbon dioxide in the ancient atmosphere, only he applied it to estimate the amount of carbon dioxide in ancient soils. To do this, the team took measurements from the nodules of calcite that take on the isotopic signature of the carbon dioxide gas around them. This comes from two sources: the atmosphere and the plants decaying in the soil.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide has a more positive isotope while the decaying plants have more negative isotopes. Therefore, more carbon dioxide from plants means a lusher, wetter environment, which is exactly what their research found.
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
CO2 levels in fossil soils from the Late Jurassic confirm that climate, vegetation and animal richness varied across the planet 150 million years ago, suggesting future human changes to global climate will heavily impact plant and animal life.
In modern ecosystems, it’s widely known that animals flourish in regions where the climate and landscape produce lush vegetation.
A new study set out to discover whether that same relationship held true 150 million years ago during the Late Jurassic when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
“The assumption has been that ancient ecosystems worked just like our modern ecosystems,” said paleontologist and lead author Timothy S. Myers, Southern Methodist University, Dallas. “We wanted to see if this was, in fact, the case.”
To test the theory, Myers analyzed fossil soils from the Late Jurassic by measuring the ratios of carbon isotopes. His analysis indicated that the Jurassic soils contained high levels of CO2 from vegetation.
Nodules of ancient soil are fairly common in present day rock, forming as a result of seasonally dry conditions. They harden into mineralized clods, making them easy to spot and sample as they weather out of ancient soil profiles. (Image: Myers)
From that, Myers was able to infer the presence of lush plant life in certain regions during the Jurassic. The soils came from locales where scientists previously have gathered animal fossils — North America, Europe and Africa. Combining the data with the known fossil sampling allowed Myers to confirm that the modern relationship between animals and vegetation held true even millions of years ago.
“Our analysis represents the first time that anyone has tried to apply ecological modeling to this relationship in the fossil record,” Myers said.
Book a live interview
To book a live or taped interview with Dr. Scott Myers in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call SMU News at 214-768-7650 or email SMU News at news@smu.edu.
Relatively few places in the world are well-sampled for terrestrial fossils, so Myers’ discovery of a new use for an already existing method represents a useful tool, he said. The new use allows scientists to tap the geochemical data of soils from anywhere in the world and from other geologic time periods to infer the relative abundance of plants and animals, particularly for areas where fossils are lacking.
“This not only provides a more complete picture of the ancient landscape and climate in which ancient animals lived,” Myers said. “It also illustrates that climate and biota have been ecologically connected for many millions of years and that future human-caused changes to global climate will have profound impacts on plant and animal life around the world.”
Co-authors were SMU sedimentary geochemist Neil J. Tabor and paleontologists Louis L. Jacobs, SMU, and Octávio Mateus, New University of Lisbon, Portugal.
“Devising new and creative methods to understand how Earth and life have functioned together in the past is the foundation for predicting the future of life on our planet,” said Jacobs, a vertebrate paleontologist and professor in SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences. “It is the only approach that provides a long enough perspective of what is possible.”
New method applied to old hypothesis confirms regional variability
Typically researchers count the number of animal species discovered in a region to determine how many different types of animals once lived there. Scientists call that a measure of faunal richness.
Myers took a different approach. Using a traditional method typically used to estimate carbon dioxide in the ancient atmosphere, Myers instead applied it to estimate the amount of CO2 in ancient soils.
Measurements were taken from nodules of calcite that form in soil as a result of wet and dry seasons. These nodules take on the isotopic signature of the CO2 gas around them, which is a mixture derived from two sources: the atmosphere, which leaves a more positive isotopic signature, and plants decaying in the soil, which leave a more negative isotopic signature.
A higher volume of CO2 from plants indicates a lusher, wetter environment.
“There’s a lot more litter fall in an environment with a lot of plants, and that produces a lot of organic material in the soil, creating CO2. So we see more soil-produced CO2, displacing the atmospheric CO2. These are established relationships,” Myers said.
“Our method can be used to infer relative levels of richness for areas where soils have been preserved, but where fossils are lacking because conditions were unsuitable for their preservation,” he said.
“Vertebrate paleontologists have been accumulating information about vertebrate fossils in the Jurassic for well over 100 years. In addition, geochemists have been systematically sampling the composition of ancient soils for several decades,” Tabor said. “In these respects, the data that are the foundation of this study are not extraordinary. What is remarkable, though, is combining the paleontology and geochemistry data to answer large-scale questions that extend beyond the data points — specifically, to answer questions about ancient ecosystems.”
Data from Morrison Formation, Central Africa and Portugal
Myers tested Upper Jurassic soil nodules collected from the Morrison Formation in the western United States. The formation extends from Montana to New Mexico and has been the source of many dinosaur fossil discoveries.
He also analyzed Upper Jurassic soil nodules from Portugal, another location well-sampled for dinosaur fossils. The region’s paleoclimate was broadly similar to that of the Morrison Formation.
In addition, Myers tested a small Upper Jurassic core sample from Central Africa, where there’s no evidence of any major terrestrial life. Unique minerals in the rocks indicate that the region had an arid environment during the Late Jurassic.
Based on their hypothesis, the researchers expected to see regional variations in plant productivity — the amount of new growth produced in an area over time, which is an indirect measure of the amount of plant life in an environment. Forests, savannas and deserts all have different amounts of plant productivity, although those specific ecosystems can’t be identified on the basis of plant productivity alone.
The researchers expected to see higher plant productivity for Portugal than for the Morrison Formation, with the lowest productivity in Central Africa.
“Essentially that’s what we found,” Myers said. “We understand it’s tenuous and not a trend, but few places in the world are well-sampled. However, it’s still a useful tool for places where all we have are the soil nodules, without well-preserved fauna.”
Soil nodules are fairly common, Myers said. They form as a result of seasonally dry conditions and may be preserved in all but the wettest environments. Since they harden into mineralized clods, they are easy to spot and sample as they weather out of ancient soil profiles.
CO2 in ancient calcite nodules offers key to ancient climate
From the analysis scientists can draw a more complete picture of the ancient landscape and climate in which prehistoric animals lived.
“The Jurassic is thought of as very warm, very wet, with lots of dinosaurs,” said Myers, research curator for SMU’s Shuler Museum of Paleontology. “But we see from our analysis that there was regional variability during the Late Jurassic in the climate and in the abundance of animals across the planet.”
The Late Jurassic extended from 160 million years ago to 145 million years ago. — Margaret Allen
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
Ray interviewed Myers about a new dinosaur fossil discovered north of Dallas-Fort Worth at Lake Lewisville by amateur fossil hunter Dan Bidleman, Denton.
To book a live or taped interview with Dr. Scott Myers in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call SMU News at 214-768-7650 or email SMU News at news@smu.edu.
This week’s Lone Star Adventure takes us north of Dallas to Lewisville Lake, fossil hunting with a North Texas man whose remarkable find first got the attention of an amateur paleontologist – an amateur who is something of an expert — and now has professional scientists working with the bones.
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
WFAA-TV reporter Jonathan Betz has covered the flying reptile research of SMU paleontologist Timothy S. Myers and the rare discovery of the bones by amateur fossil hunter Gary Byrd. The story, North Texan finds dinosaurs in our backyards, aired March 17.
Myers identified fossilized bones discovered in Texas from a flying reptile that died 89 million years ago. The bones may be the world’s earliest occurrence of the prehistoric creature known as Pteranodon, Myers says.
Pteranodon was a type of pterosaur that lived about the same time as some dinosaurs, about 100 million to 65 million years ago. The only reptiles to dominate the ancient skies, pterosaurs had broad leathery wings and slim torsos.
The specimen identified by Myers had a wing span between 12 and 13 feet, or 3.6 to 4 meters. It was discovered in a rock unit that dates to early in the Late Cretaceous.
By Jonathan Betz WFAA Look up and you’ll see Gary Byrd on a roof. That’s where his work is.
But it’s what’s underground that fascinates him.
Every free moment, the contractor roams North Texas digging in the dirt.
“When I was a kid, we’d run up and down creeks and look for stuff, and wonder what it was,” he said. “I just kept doing it, kept finding more interesting things.”
For most of his life, the 55-year-old has scoured construction sites and creek beds for dinosaur bones.
Often, he finds just dirt and rocks. But on occasion, Byrd has unearthed some truly extraordinary finds.
His treasures are enough to fill cabinets at Southern Methodist University.
“This specimen is 89 million years old,” he boasted, displaying the rare remains of a pterosaur, an ancient flying reptile that until now, had not been thought to live in Texas. Byrd plucked the fossilized bones out of a half-built Plano subdivision.
“Finding a fossil of this magnitude is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of find,” said SMU researcher Timothy Myers. “A lot of paleontologists would probably go their entire careers without finding something this significant.”
And that’s not all. Byrd has even discovered a new dinosaur species, a large duck-billed herbivore called Protohadros byrdi — yes, named after Bird himself, who found the remains near a highway.
Science journalist Tim Wall has covered the flying reptile research of SMU’s Timothy S. Myers on his popular Discovery News Online blog. Wall’s March 2 entry aptly warns “Don’t mess with Texas Pterosaurs!”
Myers identified fossilized bones discovered in Texas from a flying reptile that died 89 million years ago. The bones may be the world’s earliest occurrence of the prehistoric creature known as Pteranodon, Myers says.
Pteranodon was a type of pterosaur that lived about the same time as some dinosaurs, about 100 million to 65 million years ago. The only reptiles to dominate the ancient skies, pterosaurs had broad leathery wings and slim torsos.
The specimen identified by Myers had a wing span between 12 and 13 feet, or 3.6 to 4 meters. It was discovered in a rock unit that dates to early in the Late Cretaceous.
By Tim Wall
Discovery News Online
Don’t mess with Texas Pterosaurs! They are the oldest yet found in North America. One recently found specimen may even be the oldest Pteranodon in the world.
The mystery flying reptile a type of pterosaur, took a final plunge 89 million years ago into the waters of the inland sea that once covered the central United States. It sank to the bottom, fossilized, and lay there until amateur fossil hunter Gary Byrd found the ancient aviator’s bones. They were uncovered during the excavation of a culvert in a new subdivision north of Dallas.
Pterosaur Windsurfed Across Surface of Prehistoric Seas
“I found a couple parts of a fish, and then when I saw these my initial thought was that they weren’t fish,” Byrd, a roofing contractor by day, said in a Southern Methodist University press release. “I kind of knew it was something different — a birdlike thing. It’s very rare you find those thin, long bones.”
Byrd already has a species of duckbill dinosaur, Protohadros byrdi, named after him in 1994. He donated the fossils to Southern Methodist University’s Shuler Museum of Paleontology.
At the museum, Timothy Myers identified the bones as belonging to the left wing of a pterosaur, most likely a Pteranodon.
New Dino-Eating Pterosaur Evolved in Unusual Way
“If it wasn’t crushed so badly, it would be possible to determine if it really is Pteranodon,” Myers said in a SMU press release. “These bones are easily flattened. They are hollow inside, because they have to be lightweight to allow a pterosaur to fly. So they compress like a pancake as they’re embedded in layers of rock.”
Unique specimen is first of its kind discovered as far south as Texas, where it flew over a vast ancient sea
Fossilized bones discovered in Texas from a flying reptile that died 89 million years ago may be the earliest occurrence of the prehistoric creature known as Pteranodon.
Previously, Pteranodon bones have been found in Kansas, South Dakota and Wyoming in the Niobrara and Pierre geological formations. This likely Pteranodon specimen is the first of its kind found in Texas, according to paleontologist Timothy S. Myers at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, who identified the reptile. The specimen was discovered north of Dallas by an amateur fossil hunter who found various bones belonging to the left wing.
Pteranodon was a type of pterosaur that lived about the same time as some dinosaurs, about 100 million to 65 million years ago. The only reptiles to dominate the ancient skies, pterosaurs had broad leathery wings and slim torsos.
Adult pterosaur, toothless variety with about a 12-foot wing span
The specimen identified by Myers is an adult pterosaur of the toothless variety and while larger than most birds, wasn’t among the largest pterosaurs, Myers said, noting it had a wing span between 12 and 13 feet, or 3.6 to 4 meters. It was discovered in the Austin Group, a prominent rock unit in Texas that was deposited around 89 million years ago, early in the geological time period called the Late Cretaceous.
Pterosaurs, many of which survived on fish, lived at a time when a massive ancient sea cut across the central United States. The Western Interior Seaway was a shallow body of water that split North America in half from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico.
More than a thousand Pteranodon fossils have been unearthed from the middle part of the seaway.
No definitive Pteranodon specimens have emerged from the southern part that is now Texas.
The SMU specimen, if it is Pteranodon, would be the first discovered so far south in the Western Interior Seaway, said Myers, a postdoctoral researcher in SMU’s Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.
Left wing suggests Pteranodon; cause of death a mystery
Key to identifying the SMU fossils as Pteranodon is a humerus of 5.7 inches, or 14.5 centimeters. The humerus is the uppermost bone in the wing and attaches to the torso. The humerus of the SMU specimen, while complete, did suffer some damage during fossilization when it became compressed and distorted through millions of years of compaction.
Book a live interview
To book a live or taped interview with Timothy S. Myers in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call SMU News at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu.
“If it wasn’t crushed so badly, it would be possible to determine if it really is Pteranodon,” Myers said. “These bones are easily flattened. They are hollow inside, because they have to be lightweight to allow a pterosaur to fly. So they compress like a pancake as they’re embedded in layers of rock.”
While it’s difficult to narrow the humerus definitively to a specific genus and species, some features clearly identify the specimen as part of the Pteranodontidae family, most likely the genus Pteranodon. It exhibits, for example, the prominent warped deltopectoral crest that is characteristic of members of the Pteranodontidae family, called pteranodontids, he said.
Discovered along with the humerus were parts of the elongated fourth finger that in pterosaurs forms the wing. The SMU specimen’s metacarpal — at 20 centimeters — is incomplete, missing an estimated 37 percent of its length.
The fossils do not solve the mystery of the reptile’s cause of death, Myers said. But it appears the animal probably died in flight over the sea and then fell into the water. Its carcass probably floated for some time, so that when the flesh decomposed the bones separated at the joints, known as “disarticulation,” before they settled to the sea floor and were buried.
“We know it was disarticulated when it was buried because the bones weren’t preserved in correct anatomical position,” Myers said. “Abrupt truncation of the broken end of one of the bones and infilling of the break with sediment also indicates that the breakage and disarticulation took place prior to burial.”
May be oldest Pteranodon in world
If the specimen represents Pteranodon, Myers said, it would be the oldest one in North America by 1 million to 2 million years, and the second oldest pteranodontid in the world.
Pterosaurs were alive from the Late Triassic — more than 200 million years ago — to the Late Cretaceous, evolving from small-bodied creatures to some of the largest animals to ever inhabit the skies, Myers said. An older pteranodontid specimen, belonging to the genus Ornithostoma, previously was identified in England.
“Any pterosaur material is fairly rare to find unless you have exceptional preservation conditions. They are frail, fragile bones, and they require rapid burial to be well preserved,” Myers said. “The SMU specimen was deposited relatively far offshore in deep water, perhaps 50 to 80 feet deep. It’s fairly exceptional because of the number of elements. Typically you’ll only find one piece, or one part of a piece in the local rock.”
During the Early Cretaceous, many types of pterosaurs lived around the world, Myers said. The earliest ones had thin, razor-sharp teeth. In the transition from Early to Late Cretaceous, the toothed variety disappear from the fossil record and toothless forms, like the SMU specimen, become more common, he said.
Dallas area specimens illustrate pterosaur evolution
North Texas is fortunate to have had both the toothed and toothless kinds discovered in the area, illustrating the evolutionary transition, noted Myers.
Besides the toothless specimen just identified by Myers, an older toothed pterosaur, Aetodactylus halli, previously was discovered in the Dallas area. Aetodactylus, also identified by Myers, lived 95 million years ago.
“This new specimen adds a lot more information about pterosaurs in North America,” Myers said. “It helps constrain the timing of the transition from toothed to toothless because there’s only a few million years separating this specimen and Aetodactylus.”
Amateur fossil collector Gary Byrd of Rockwall, Texas, discovered the new SMU pterosaur fossils about 10 years ago.
A roofing contractor who keeps an eye out for fossils, Byrd made the find after stopping to look at two freshly excavated culverts while driving through a new subdivision in Collin County. Using a hammer and pick he dug out the bones and brought them to SMU paleontologists Louis Jacobs and Dale Winkler. Jacobs and Winkler indicated the fossils were likely a pterosaur. Byrd donated the fossils to SMU’s Shuler Museum of Paleontology.
“I found a couple parts of a fish, and then when I saw these my initial thought was that they weren’t fish,” Byrd recalled. “I kind of knew it was something different — a birdlike thing. It’s very rare you find those thin, long bones.”
This isn’t the first time Byrd has hit it lucky finding fossils. In 1994 he discovered dinosaur bones that he donated to SMU’s Shuler Museum. The specimen was identified as a rare primitive duck-billed dinosaur and named Protohadros byrdi after Byrd. — Margaret Allen
National Geographic News interviewed SMU postdoctoral researcher Timothy S. Myers about the new species and genus of pterosaur he identified and named, Aetodactylus Halli.
In the April 28 article “Toothy Texas Pterosaur Found; Soared Over Dallas” reporter John Roach talked to Myers about the 95 million-year-old jaw that was discovered by Lake Worth resident Lance Hall.
The pterosaur flew over the ancient sea that used to cover much of the Dallas-Fort Worth area. A rare species of pterosaur in North America, Myers named the new flying reptile after Hall.
Others who wrote about Myers’ Aetodactylus Halli research include:
By John Roach
National Geographic News
Long before six flags flew over Texas, a newfound species of winged reptile
with an exceptionally toothy grin owned the skies over what is now the Lone
Star State.
The recently discovered pterosaur, dubbed Aetodactylus halli, was identified based on a 95-million-year-old lower jawbone found outside of Dallas by amateur fossil hunter Lance Hall.
The pterosaur had a relatively slender jaw filled with thin, needlelike teeth, which might have helped the creature pluck fish from the shallow sea that once covered the region, a new study says.
“It was hanging out near the ocean, and that is probably where it derived its food from,” said study leader Timothy Myers, a paleontologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
By comparing the jawbone to more complete pterosaur fossils, Myers and his team think A. halli was a medium-size animal with a nine-foot (three-meter) wingspan and a short tail.
Texas’s Toothy Pterosaur a Rare Find
Pterosaurs ruled the skies from the late Triassic period, more than 200 million years ago, until dinosaurs went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous, about 65 million years ago.
A 95 million-year-old fossilized jaw discovered in Texas has been identified as a new genus and species of flying reptile, Aetodactylus halli.
Aetodactylus halli is a pterosaur, a group of flying reptiles commonly referred to as pterodactyls.
The rare pterosaur — literally winged lizard — is one of the youngest members in the world of the pterosaur family Ornithocheiridae, says paleontologist Timothy S. Myers, who identified and named Aetodactylus halli.
The newly identified reptile is only the second ornithocheirid ever documented in North America, Myers says. He is a postdoctoral fellow in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
Aetodactylus halli would have soared over what is now the Dallas-Fort Worth area during the Cretaceous Period when much of the Lone Star state was under water, covered by a vast ancient sea.
While rare in North America, toothed pterosaurs belonging to the Ornithocheiridae are a major component of Cretaceous pterosaur faunas elsewhere in the world, Myers says. The Texas specimen — a nearly complete mandible with most of its 54 teeth missing — is definitively younger than most other ornithocheirid specimens from Brazil, England and China, he says. It is five million years younger than the only other known North American ornithocheirid.
Myers named the pterosaur Aetodactylus halli after Lance Hall, a member of the Dallas Paleontological Society who hunts fossils for a hobby. Hall found the specimen in 2006 in North Texas. It was embedded in a soft, powdery shale exposed by excavation of a hillside next to a highway. The site was near the city of Mansfield, southwest of Dallas and west of Joe Pool Lake. Hall donated the specimen to SMU.
Pterosaurs ruled the skies from the late Triassic, more than 200 million years ago, to the end of the Cretaceous, about 65 million years ago, when they went extinct. They represent the earliest vertebrates capable of flying.
Fossil hunter saw long row of teeth sockets
The Aetodactylus halli jaw was discovered in the geologic unit known as the Eagle Ford Group, which comprises sediments deposited in a shallow sea, Myers says. Outcrop of the Eagle Ford Group extends northward from southwestern Texas into southern Oklahoma and southwestern Arkansas.
“I was scanning the exposure and noticed what at first I thought was a piece of oyster shell spanning across a small erosion valley,” Hall recalls of the discovery. “Only about an inch or two was exposed. I almost passed it up thinking it was oyster, but realized it was more tan-colored like bone. I started uncovering it and realized it was the jaw to something — but I had no idea what. It was upside down and when I turned over the snout portion it was nothing but a long row of teeth sockets, which was very exciting.”
SMU vertebrate paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, a dinosaur expert internationally recognized for his fossil discoveries in Texas and Africa, and SMU paleontologist Michael J. Polcyn, recognized for his expertise on the extinct marine reptiles called mosasaurs, both told Hall it was a pterosaur and an important find.
Unique jaw differs from others
The 38.4-centimeter Aetodactylus jaw originally contained 54 slender, pointed teeth, but only two remain in their sockets, Myers says. The lower teeth were evenly spaced and extended far back along the jaw, covering nearly three quarters of the length of the mandible. The upper and lower teeth interlaced when the jaws were closed.
In Aetodactylus, changes in tooth size along the jaw follow a similar pattern to those of other ornithocheirids. However, Aetodactylus differs from all other ornithocheirids in that its jaws were thin and delicate, with a maximum thickness not much greater than 1 centimeter, Myers says. But the specimen does compare favorably with Boreopterus, a related pterosaur from the Early Cretaceous of China, in terms of the number of teeth present in the lower jaw, he says.
Myers has estimated the wingspan around roughly 3 meters, or about 9 feet, indicating Aetodactylus would have been a “medium-sized” pterosaur, he says. While it’s not known how Aetodactylus died, at the time of death the reptile was flying over the sea and fell into the water, perhaps while fishing, Jacobs says.
Find hints at new diversity of pterosaurs
North American pterosaurs that date from the Cretaceous are all toothless, except for Aetodactylus and Coloborhynchus, Myers says. The thinness of the jaws, upward angle of the back half of the mandible and the lack of a pronounced expansion of the jaw tips indicate that Aetodactylus is different from other ornithocheirids and represents a new genus and species of pterosaur.
“Discovery of another ornithocheirid species in Texas hints at a diversity of pterosaurs in the Cretaceous of North America that wasn’t previously realized,” Myers says. “Aetodactylus also represents one of the final occurrences of ornithocheirids prior to the Late Cretaceous transition to pterosaur faunas that were dominated by the edentulous, or toothless, species.”
Texas now claims the only two of their kind
Hall on April 14 was presented with the Dallas Paleontological Society’s highest honor, the Lloyd Hill award. The award is named for the late Lloyd Hill, an amateur fossil hunter and longtime member of the Dallas Paleontological Society. Hill wrote the well-regarded novel The Village of Bom Jesus.
Much of Texas was once submerged under the Western Interior Seaway. The massive sea split North America from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean.
On shore, the terrain was flat and flowering plants were already dominating flora communities in this part of North America, according to paleobotanist Bonnie Jacobs, associate professor of Earth Sciences at SMU.
“There were still conifers and ferns as well, but mostly of the sort that had tiny needle leaves, like junipers,” says Bonnie Jacobs. “Sycamores and their relatives would have been among the flowering plants.”
The first ornithocheirid remains from North America, discovered in Fort Worth, were described by former SMU student Young-Nam Lee and donated by amateur collector Chris Wadleigh, says SMU’s Louis Jacobs.
“The ancient sea that covered Dallas provided the right conditions to preserve marine reptiles and other denizens of the deep, as well as the delicate bones of flying reptiles that fell from their flight to the water below,” says Louis Jacobs, a professor in SMU’s Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.
“The rocks and fossils here record a time not well represented elsewhere in North America,” says Louis Jacobs. “That’s why two species of ornithocheirids have been found here but nowhere else, and that’s why discoveries of other new fossils are sure to be made by Lance Hall and other fossil lovers.”
Myers’ article in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology is titled “A new ornithocheirid pterosaur from the Upper Cretaceous (Cenomanian-Turonian) Eagle Ford Group of Texas.”
The Congo Basin — with its massive, lush tropical rain forest — was far different 150 million to 200 million years ago.
At that time Africa and South America were part of the single continent Gondwana. The Congo Basin was arid, with a small amount of seasonal rainfall, and few bushes or trees populated the landscape, according to a new geochemical analysis of rare ancient soils.
“There aren’t a whole lot of terrestrial deposits from that time period preserved in Central Africa,” Myers says. “Scientists have been looking at Africa’s paleoclimate for some time, but data from this time period is unique.”
There are several reasons for the scarcity of deposits: Ongoing armed conflict makes it difficult and challenging to retrieve them; and the thick vegetation, a humid climate and continual erosion prevent the preservation of ancient deposits, which would safeguard clues to Africa’s paleoclimate.
Myers’ research is based on a core sample drilled by a syndicate interested in the oil and mineral deposits in the Congo Basin. Myers accessed the sample — drilled from a depth of more than 2 kilometers — from the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium, where it is housed. With the permission of the museum, he analyzed pieces of the core at the SMU Huffington Department of Earth Science’s Isotope Laboratory.
“I would love to look at an outcrop in the Congo,” Myers says, “but I was happy to be able to do this.”
The Samba borehole, as it’s known, was drilled near the center of the Congo Basin. The Congo Basin today is a closed canopy tropical forest — the world’s second largest after the Amazon. It’s home to elephants, great apes, many species of birds and mammals, as well as the Congo River.
Myers’ results are consistent with data from other low paleolatitude, continental, Upper Jurassic deposits in Africa, and with regional projections of paleoclimate generated by general circulation models, he says.
“It provides a good context for the vertebrate fossils found in Central Africa,” Myers says. “At times, any indications of the paleoclimate are listed as an afterthought, because climate is more abstract. But it’s important because it yields data about the ecological conditions. Climate determines the plant communities, and not just how many, but also the diversity of plants.”
While there was no evidence of terrestrial vertebrates in the deposits Myers studied, dinosaurs were present in Africa at the same time. Their fossils appear in places that were once closer to the coast and probably wetter and more hospitable, he says.
The Belgium samples yielded good evidence of the paleoclimate. Myers found minerals indicative of an extremely arid climate typical of a marshy, saline environment. With the Congo Basin at the center of Gondwana, humid marine air from the coasts would have lost much of its moisture content by the time it reached the interior of the massive continent.
“There probably wouldn’t have been a whole lot of trees; more scrubby kinds of plants,” Myers says.
The clay minerals that form in soils have an isotopic composition related to that of the local rainfall and shallow groundwater. The difference in isotopic composition between these waters and the clay minerals is a function of surface temperature, he says. By measuring the oxygen and hydrogen isotopic values of the clays in the soils, researchers can estimate the temperature at which the clays formed.
The work of SMU researchers Timothy Myers and Anthony Fiorillo was featured online March 19, 2009 on the Discovery Channel. “Mass Dino Graves Suggest Young Banded Together” by Jennifer Viegas highlighted findings being published in the April issue of “Science” magazine.
New findings on mass dinosaur graves, where several juveniles died together, suggest that young dinosaurs banded together to improve their chances for survival, according to two new studies.
Together, two new studies present three gory ways in which the young dinosaur groups probably met their end: mud traps, droughts and predators.
Paul Sereno, a University of Chicago paleontologist, and his team studied the remains of a herd of more than 25 young, bird-like dinosaurs of the species Sinornithomimus dongi that died together 90 million years ago at what is now the Gobi Desert. …
Researchers Timothy Myers and Anthony Fiorillo of the Huffington Department of Earth Sciences at Southern Methodist University focused their attention on two other juvenile dinosaur fossil sites, which are described in a paper that will be published in next month’s Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.
The first, at Mother’s Day Quarry in Montana, contains the remains of several young sauropods that died en masse during the Upper Jurassic. Skin impressions indicate soft tissue was still present when the animals were buried at the site.
“During droughts, modern animals tend to cluster around water sources,” Myers told Discovery News. “The herd of sauropods preserved at the Mother’s Day Quarry may have done the same.”
He and Fiorillo also studied the remains of three juvenile Alamosaurus sanjuanensis at the Upper Cretaceous site Big Bend in Texas. The minimally weathered bones suggest the young sauropods died together in a single event.
“Given their proximity to a lake shore, it’s possible that they succumbed to drought as well,” Myers said.
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