Compsognathus Longipes's Last Supper

OK, one final dinosaur post for the weekend. In the poo post, the implication of carnivory for “ original sin” was touched upon. I never tire of laughing at this article written by everyone’s’ favourite bearded cleric, where he thinks tsunamis, volcanic eruptions and death are the result of eating an apple. I particularly love the paragraph that starts off saying that atheists are becoming more frustrated as our aguments are shown to be limited - he then goes off on a truley ignorant rant of biblical proportions - and he claims to accept evolution, which makes his ignorance all the more incredible. It is a common belief that I don’t think many Christians think about seriously enough. Anyway, here is another example of carnivorous behaviour before the arrival of man. It is a drawing of the rib cage of Compsognathus longipes. Inside, a small skeleton of Bavariasurus (in darker shading) can clearly be seen. It appears to be swallowed whole.

Young earth creationists have to deny this comes before man and claim it ate it’s meal after man and woman sinned. However, let’s ignore the serrated teeth that are so good for hunting for a moment and ask why Elephants or squirrels don’t bring down lions and eat them. Could it be because they are not adapted to be hunters? Theists who accept evolution are confronted with the only credible alternative: god caused large scale industrial suffering to bring his “flawed” masterpiece into being.

Finally, to both sides: a challenge – show some evidence that 1) man existed with dinosaurs and explain the consilient nature of fossil dating techniques, or 2) a role for god in directing evolution that meets the standards of a scientific theory.

T. Rex, Warrior Or Wimp?

I linked to part of this program on the feeding behaviour of Tyrannosaurus rex in the previous post, but it is worth a view in its entierty.

Incidentally, David Houston was one of my Zoology lecturers

Jumbo Dinosaur Jobbies

Having a degree in Parasitology tends to familiarise you with the value of Jobbies; as one of my tutors said, “shit is tour bread and butter as a parasitologist”. This is because many parasites produce cysts or lay eggs that pass out the body in the faeces. These infect the next host and this spreads the disease. The eggs are often characteristic to a particular species or genus. So, you can work out infection rates and parasite loads of particular species in individual hosts. One quarter of the world population is infected by just one parasite – Ascarais lumbricoides. One of my class mates became infected with this and the first she knew of it was when she saw 20 one foot long worms thrashing in the toilet bowl. If you want to feel uncomfortable (or lucky) check out this picture out of someone who has just been "wormed"
Another thing that shit can tell you about diet. I remember one gross practical class where we had to sift through someone’s fudge. It was supposedly collected in the Dominican republic, but contained saw dust- turns out, it had been supplemented with veterinary material. What I remember most though is the huge chunk of onion in it. The person obviously ate onions, but didn’t chew properly or process their food that much either (probably the prof). Apparently, the prof had just discovered that not processing food properly can contribute to severe malnutrition in areas where intestinal parasites are prevalent. He found lots of unprocessed and therefore indigestible corn in the crap.

So, shit can tell you a lot about living animals. Now, to the main point of the post – dino poo. Fossil jobbies are called coprolites. We know for example that pines were on the menu of some dinosaurs, and they were clearly capable of grinding it down – as would be inferred from the structure of the teeth batteries of some herbivores. What is particularly interesting though is the Jumbo Jobbie shown below. It is a possible Tyrannosaurus turd, and measures about 17 inches long.

This majestic Bondi cigar even contains bone fragments belonging to a sub adult herbivore. The large quantity of bone in the meal suggests that the dinosaur was not careful about butchering its meal. We know that Tyrannosaurs were capable of biting through bone, as fossils showing pre-mortem Tyrannosaur bites have been found. These include Hadrosaurs with “healed” wounds that were excised by T. rex bites (about 4 minutes in), and even a T. rex with another T. rex’s tooth embedded in its rib- with an abscess formed around it. Those wanting a laugh (or to annoy themselves) should listen to creationist nincompoop Ken Ham’s short talk on the matter here. I don’t know which is the bigger pile of shite, but at least he knows the consequences of a meat eating dinosaur for his creationist myth that all animals ate fruit and veg before two mythical human beings ate a mythical fruit, and that supposedly caused death, volcanoes, earthquakes and the Mc Chicken Sandwich. That’s why he has to deny evolution. I touch on the absurdity of this claim here (incidentally, that is a Carcharodontosaurus skull at the top of the page).

The other thing that I want to mention is that parasite eggs have been found in fossil shit too (below from left to right Entamoeboides cyst, and two Ascarid eggs). I find this fascinating, and it tells us something about the health of these animals, as well as their ecological interactions with parasites. This is not the first time evidence has popped up for dinosaur parasite interaction, but is certainly the best – and all before man “polluted” creation – yet more evidence that the creationists need to go to farcical lengths to deny.

Finally, we know that some dung beetles even used dino poo – shit’s not that shit after all.