amredthelector (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
amredthelector) wrote2009-07-03 09:50 am
amredthelector) wrote2009-07-03 09:50 am
Entry tags:
i can't just keep the awesome to myself
So this is one of the coolest fucking things I have ever seen or heard.
A fossilized dinosaur (a hadrosaur, to be exact) was found with it's skin fossilized and intact. This is something that is very rare - skin decomposes, so it's not likely to fossilize. It takes just the right circumstances - in this case, being quickly covered by water and silt - for skin to fossilize right along with bones. This is a huge, HUGE discovery in paleontology, because up to this point, we haven't been able to tell what a dino looks with skin. All the models, drawings, etc where guess work, with some cues taken from impressions of skin found in fossilized rock. Unfortunately, that article has very few pictures of the fossil itself, though it states that the whole body was intact.
I'm sure this isn't as exciting to everyone else, but I love dinosaurs. Like, seriously LOVE dinosaurs. When I was a kid, I had a tape of songs about dinosaurs that I listened to so much that the ribbon shredded. I had a tone of dinosaur toys. I even got the book Dinotopia, and read it religiously. Not because the story was any good (it was crap, really) but because of the rich illustrations of dinosaurs living along side man. Hell, when I heard about the dino skin on the radio, I knew exactly what a hydrosaur was.
And for the record, my favorite dinosaur is deinonychus, a small raptor with a large, nasty claw on its feet.
A fossilized dinosaur (a hadrosaur, to be exact) was found with it's skin fossilized and intact. This is something that is very rare - skin decomposes, so it's not likely to fossilize. It takes just the right circumstances - in this case, being quickly covered by water and silt - for skin to fossilize right along with bones. This is a huge, HUGE discovery in paleontology, because up to this point, we haven't been able to tell what a dino looks with skin. All the models, drawings, etc where guess work, with some cues taken from impressions of skin found in fossilized rock. Unfortunately, that article has very few pictures of the fossil itself, though it states that the whole body was intact.
I'm sure this isn't as exciting to everyone else, but I love dinosaurs. Like, seriously LOVE dinosaurs. When I was a kid, I had a tape of songs about dinosaurs that I listened to so much that the ribbon shredded. I had a tone of dinosaur toys. I even got the book Dinotopia, and read it religiously. Not because the story was any good (it was crap, really) but because of the rich illustrations of dinosaurs living along side man. Hell, when I heard about the dino skin on the radio, I knew exactly what a hydrosaur was.
And for the record, my favorite dinosaur is deinonychus, a small raptor with a large, nasty claw on its feet.