Today – 1/25 Critter in the news History of dinosaur discoveries In-class writing

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Administration: Honors

Clear / unclear T-chart Biostratigraphy Carbon isotope stratigraphy Magnetostratigraphy

An oxygen atom is an oxygen atom because a) it has 8 electrons b) it has 8 protons c) it has 8 neutrons d) all of the above

In the ID article, Miller is against bringing ID into science classrooms because a) he thinks it is impossible to believe in God and evolution at the same time b) the “theory of gravity” isn’t being tested in court c) it is untestable d) all of the above

Megalosaurus was so hard to understand (i.e. make a realistic reconstruction of appearance and behavior) because a) the original fossil material was so fragmentary b) there was no pre-existing database of well- understood dinosaur material to compare it to c) preconceptions both spiritual and scientific made it hard to think about something so radically different from anything alive today d) all of the above

In chapter 3 of Gorgon, Roger Smith a) overturns the conventional thinking that the P-T boundary was not preserved in the sedimentary rocks of the Karoo b) correctly identifies the P-T boundary as the last appearance of Dicynodon, not the first appearance of Lystrosaurus c) realizes that sediments below the boundary layer were deposited by a large meandering river, sediments above the boundary layer by braided streams d) all of the above

Last time: Magnetostratigraphy Reconstructing dinos from fossils Protoceratops, Megalosaurus, Iguanodon Buckland, Mantell, Owen Steno, Hutton, Lyell, Darwin

William Smith 1815

Archaeopteryx – London specimen, found 1861

Taphonomy - the study of how fossils get preserved How sedimentary rock deposits are formed and how dead animals get in them Help us understand ancient ecosystems Helps us understand biases in the fossil record Some organisms and parts of organisms rarely preserved How we make sense of a fossil find – what it does and doesn’t tell us

Solenhofen specimen - 60’s Berlin specimen

paleo.cc/paluxy/livptero.htm Pterodactylus kochi leute.server.de/frankmuster/P/Pterodactylus.htm

Ichthyosaur from Holzmaden

Brief history of bird origins debate Archae has teeth, hand claws, and a bony tail like dinos; but feathers like birds 1926 Heilmann decides birds did not descend from dinos because dinos lack wishbones (since found) 1964 Deinonychus discovered 1972 Walker suggests birds descended from an ancestral crocodilian

Deinonychus

Connecticut Valley dinosaur tracks described by Edward Hitchcock Ichnology: study of trace fossils

Joseph Leidy publishes first description of North American dinosaur fossils

Hadrosaur “duckbill”

Cope’s Law Species in a lineage tend to get larger over time. Certainly not always true, but we will see some spectacular examples of it in this class.

Stegosaurus stenops   Stegosaurus ungulatus

Allosaurus fragilis

Iguanodon mass grave found in Belgium

Dollo’s Law Law of Irreversible Evolution – species can evolve particular specializations, but can never re-evolve their original condition. First step towards the science of cladistics. Not completely true. For us, when a lineage loses a bone, it does not re-evolve it.

Brontosaurus, now called Apatosaurus

Ornithischia - “bird-hipped” Saurischia - “lizard-hipped”

Hatcher finds 32 ceratopsians

World’s first quarry map

TorosaurusPentaceratops