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Crear un auténtico «Jurassic Park»: cuando la realidad se confunde con la ficción
Y rápidamente, algunas webs dedicadas a la divulgación científica, y también otras más interesadas por la «ciencia ficción» abrieron el debate sobre esta posibilidad.
Aparentemente, alguien del círculo cercano a Palmer habría revelado que el magnate mantuvo un prolongado contacto con los responsables de clonar a la oveja Dolly, con el objetivo de obtener un dinosaurio y dejarlo libre en un parque especial ubicado en Coolum Beach, Queensland. Incluso ya existía un plan de negocios desplegado, concentrándose sobre acaudalados clientes de Oriente Medio que sin dudas pagarían más que unos cuantos billetes para tener la exclusividad de ver de cerca a un dinosaurio vivo.
Pero el magnífico plan de clonación de Palmer parece haber durado apenas 48 horas, ya que el mismo magnate ha salido a desmentir absolutamente todo lo que se ha dicho al respecto. En realidad, Clive Palmer es una de esas personas que con un par de palabras puede alimentar por semanas a cualquier máquina de rumores.
Desde la réplica del Titanic (supuestamente para 2016) hasta monorieles, Palmer ha sido asociado con una importante cantidad de mega-proyectos que se destacan por lo estrafalario. La nota original, publicada por el Sunshine Coast Daily (y que fue recogida como fuente por otros sitios colegas), ha sido puesta en jaque luego de que Palmer revelara que no se hizo ninguna clase de verificación, ya que la periodista «nunca» habló con él.
Como si esto fuera poco, fuentes del Instituto Roslin (donde Dolly fue clonada) habrían explicado que traer de regreso a un dinosaurio sería difícil por dos razones. La primera sería encontrar un «sustituto» adecuado para obtener un huevo de dinosaurio, y la segunda, hallar células de dinosaurio intactas. Se necesitarían más de cien mil células de dinosaurio para apenas intentar clonar a una de estas criaturas, y como ya sabemos, el proceso de clonación no es perfecto. En otras palabras, no. No habrá un Jurassic Park en el corto plazo, y creo que tampoco en el mediano. Las novelas de Crichton han sido una enorme fuente de inspiración, potenciada por el éxito de las películas, pero el parque de dinosaurios seguiría perteneciendo a la ciencia ficción... a menos que Palmer se arrepienta una vez más y confirme el proyecto en unos días.
Fuente: ABC
The Double Dinosaur Brain Myth
Dinosaur brain expert Emily Buchholtz outlined the double brain issue in the newly-published second edition of The Complete Dinosaur. The idea stems from the work of 19th-century Yale paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh. In an assessment of the sauropod Camarasaurus, Marsh noticed that the canal in the vertebrae over the dinosaur’s hips enlarged into an expanded canal that was larger than the cavity for the dinosaur’s brain. “This is a most suggestive fact,” he wrote, and, according to Buchholtz, in 1881 Marsh described a similar expansion in the neural canal of Stegosaurus as “a posterior braincase.”
Sauropods and stegosaurs seemed like the perfect candidates for butt brains. These huge dinosaurs seemed to have pitiful brain sizes compared to the rest of their body, and a second brain–or similar organ–could have helped coordinate their back legs and tails. Alternatively, the second brain was sometimes cast as a kind of junction box, speeding up signals from the back half of the body up to the primary brain. That is, if such an organ actually existed. As paleontologists now know, no dinosaur had a second brain.
There are two intertwined issues here. The first is that many dinosaurs had noticeable expansions of their spinal cords around their limbs–a feature that left its mark in the size of the neural canal in the vertebrae. This isn’t unusual. As biologists have discovered by studying living species, the enlargement of the spinal cord in the area around the limbs means that there was a greater amount of nervous system tissue in this area, and dinosaurs with larger expansions around the forelimb, for example, probably used their arms more often than dinosaurs without the same kind of enlargement. The expansion of the neural canal can give us some indication about dinosaur movement and behavior.
But the so-called “sacral brain” is something different. So far, this distinct kind of cavity is only seen in stegosaurs and sauropods and is different than the typical expansion of the neural canal. There was something else, other than nerves, filling that space. Frustratingly, though, we don’t really know what that something is.
At the moment, the most promising idea is that the space was similar to a feature in the hips of birds called the glycogen body. As sauropod expert Matt Wedel has pointed out, this space stores energy-rich glycogen in the hips. Perhaps this was true for the sauropods and stegosaurs, too. Again, though, we hit a snag. We don’t really know what the glycogen body does in birds–whether it helps with balance, is a storehouse for nutritious compounds that are drawn upon at specific times or something else. Even if we assume that the expansion in dinosaurs was a glycogen body, we don’t yet know what biological role the feature played. Dinosaurs didn’t have hindbrains, but the significant spaces in the hips of stegosaurs and sauropods still puzzle paleontologists.
World’s Greatest Plant Diversity for the Paleogene: Over a Hundred Different Plant Species Recorded at the Messel Fossil Site
Scientists from the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt have investigated the extensive collection of fruits and seeds from the Messel pit. They found 140 different plant species, 65 of which were previously unknown.
The results were published July 27 in the series "Abhandlungen der Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung." They show that Messel had one of the world's most diverse floras of the Paleogene -- the era between about 65 and 23 million years ago.
Dwarf-horses, the primate Ida and jewel beetles -- the spectacular findings from the fossil site at Messel near Darmstadt are known worldwide. However, the plant fossils from Messel are also unique in their diversity. A team of scientists from the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt, the University of London and the Florida Museum of Natural History now provides an overview of the wealth of plant life 47 million years ago in a 250-page monograph.
Altogether the international team described 140 plant species from the collections of Senckenberg and the Hessian State Museum in Darmstadt. The seeds and fruits, as well as many leaves, flowers and pollen grains were recovered during excavations by both institutions in the previous decades but they had not been studied in detail before. "We have found numerous remains of a diversity of flowering plants and some conifers," says Dr Volker Wilde, head of the palaeobotany section at the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt. "More than 60 types of plants could not be assigned to any known family -- they are genuine new discoveries."
Ten of the recently described families of flowering plants were previously unknown at Messel, three genera were even described for the first time for the Palaeogene. The monograph proves that Messel is one of the world's richest sites for fossils of flowering plants.
"We are impressed not only by the large number of different plant families but also by the variety of dispersal strategies they had developed even at that time," adds Wilde. Some developed wings on their seeds and relied on wind, some depended on animals to spread them, while others developed exploding capsules to scatter their seeds over a wide area.
"From the flora described we are also able to draw conclusions about the diet of animals 47 million years ago," the Frankfurt palaeobotanist explains. "Fruits and seeds in the digestive tracts of vertebrates indicate that they were an important part of their food. Tiny holes in seeds also show that the famous Messel weevils also fed on certain plants."
The flora is also ideal for reconstructing climatic and environmental conditions of the Paleogene. Having analysed around 30,000 plant remains, the scientists conclude that there was a warm tropical climate with slight seasonal variations. The palaeobotanists' work therefore confirms the previous studies on the palaeoclimate at the time of the Messel lake.
"We believe the Messel lake was surrounded by a more or less tropical multi-storey rainforest, similar to those in areas with a comparable climate today. We also identified a high proportion of lianas and several marsh plants -- virtually on our doorstep, it was a real jungle out there at Messel 47 million years ago," says Wilde.
Read More:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120727082523.htm
