Cuddlysaurus: where fluffy IS deadly

Cuddly-looking, fluffy and fuzzy: not something you'd expect to describe a very large carnivorous mesozoic predator. BUT, there WAS a downy dinosaur. Yutyrannus huali, the tyrannosaurid with the fluffy coat, is the largest dinosaur discovered with a full covering of feathers.

Y. huali was uncovered in China, and estimated to be 60 million years older that its famous cousin, Tyrannosaurus rex. Although considerably feathered, the immense bulk of the predator would not have been very aerodynamic - instead the down was purely for insulation, perhaps with a little splash of colour for display. It's not entirely odd for a predator to be feathered - snowy owls manage quite well in polar climates and their physiology is simply a downsized version of Yutyrannus.

(Image of Yutyrannus huali by Alain Beneteau aka dustdevil)

Info collected from these news articles here, here and here.
And this journal article in Nature.

Apologies don't prevent extinction

Unheard of for me to post more than a single post in a day, but this compelled me to mention and remind us how rapidly thing can go south.

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image from Dept. Land and Nature Resourses, Hawaii

On this day, 7 years ago, the last male Po'ouli, a small, endemic Hawaiian bird, died from Avian malaria whilst in the care of the Maui Bird Conservation Centre with the intention of breeding the species back from the brink. Sadly, his death came barely 2 months after his capture from the wild and a female had not been found in time to breed.

This setback would have been less devastating if there were more Po'ouli to collect to try again. The species was unknown to science until 1975 where the population was estimated to be around 200 (76 birds/km2); however, ten years later, the Po'ouli population dropped to 8 birds/km2. A significant decline of over 90%. Since the loss of the Po'ouli male, the reality of the situation was confirmed when no evidence or sightings of living specimens were found in their natural habitat; making the Po'ouli extinct.

Eric Vanderwerf, of U.S Fish and Wildlife Services lamented in 2004: "I kind of liken it in some way to the loss of the Mona Lisa or the Sistine Chapel. If we lost that, we could never get it back. We can never get another."

Eagles like pork chops too

April 2011: A Wedgetail eagle in Kalbarri gorge, WA. Rounded a bend towards the Murchison River near Little Red Hill and Big Red Hill (damn Australia, we're bloody imaginative). Saw the eagle on the ground and we were pretty excited to see that it had caught something barely minutes before we arrived. This caused a HUGE debate in the car as to what it had caught - the majority said "rabbit"... I claimed "pig".

The car spooked the wedgie, so she tried to drag her prize away into the bushes. We were curious but were also interested in checking the state of the river for future fishing expeditions a few metres away. We hopped out the car and the wedgie decided that we were after her and dropped her kill in the bushes nearby. I wondered over carefully, and used a stick to examine the carcass (didn't want to leave gross human smells on eagle food :P) since the wedgie was still hanging around to grab her meal back the moment we left.

Guess who was right?!?!

Pork chops of Razor-back piglet!!
(headless)

Feathery upset

I had this journal article in Nature brought to my attention; and low and behold! It has my favourite palaeoartist, Raul Martin's interpretation of this amazing predator, Concavenator corcovatus...

Interesting features of this 130 million year old predatory dinosaur:
(1) a strange hump on its back; and
(2) unusual calcareous lumps on its forearms (believed to bear quills - a possible evidence of feathers).

The eleventh and twelfth vertebrae are more prominent, being double the height of the rest of the vertebrae. This pyramidal crest may have been used in territorial disputes and/or attracting a mate, or even similarly used in a manner resembling Stegosaurus' plates. (To me, it looks like an ideal, gentle slope where a male Concavenator could rest his chest while romancing the lady... but that's my outlandish observation).
At this point, all we can gather is Concavenator is a rather strange specimen.

Now the bumps on the forearms is even more controversial than the odd triangular hump. So the problem here is this... C. corcovatus provides evidence that feathers began to appear earlier than previously thought. Which now puts a little twist in the Therapod family tree, as Concavenator is more closely related to "Big Al" (MOR 693) which, up until now, have never had a feathery relative. The sister lineage which has the feather-featuring dinosaurs (T. rex) and finally leading to modern-day birds has now been thrown into shambles over the rights to bear plumage.

"Bird brain"... not such an insult

So, I was going through the TED library of film clips for something interesting to watch and I stumbled upon this piece of gold: Einstein the Parrot.

This was as equally impressive as the documentary I saw of Alex the African Grey who passed away in 2007 at age 31. The vocal range of these guys is amazing and the understanding and recognition of commands and simple words and phrases is really impressive. But the brains don't end at the African Grey Parrot. . .

The kea, (possibly my favourite parrot of mischief) a large New Zealand parrot, have also been know for their intelligence. They've been observed to become destructive (damaging cars, bins, and home roofing), disruptive and bored whilst in captivity; requiring mental stimulation in the form of rather complex puzzles.