The Importance of Dinosaur Discoveries

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The Importance of Dinosaur Discoveries

When a paleontologist makes a discovery about Dinosaurs it is usually a celebrated event and will appear on all sorts of covers of magazines and even newspapers, with good reason. These discoveries are often quite exciting for a few reasons. The whole experience of finding a fossil that is hundreds of millions of years old is quite an adrenaline rush, but the fact that each discovery has the ability to answer questions in relation to evolution is quite amazing. Each finding of Dinosaur remains can help answer questions of how that certain species evolved from another. If our species can fully understand how Dinosaurs evolved, maybe in the future we can learn something about our evolution. Without discoveries from the past how is our society supposed to persevere and learn from mistakes that may lead to our own extinction, and who to learn better from than perhaps the dinosaurs that have gone through many stages of evolution and have faced extinction.

The finding that will be discussed is the discovery of a new type of long- necked Sauropod Dinosaur named Rapetosauras, in the country of Madagascar (National Science Foundation). It was found by two groups of scientists. One group was headed up by Dr. Catherine Forster of SUNY Stony Brook and the other was led by Dr. Curry Rogers of the Science Museum of Minnesota (National Science Foundation). The paleontologists in total found a skeleton that possessed a set of 80 to 90 vertebrate from the neck all the way down to the tail (National Geographic). The two teams also discovered two nearly complete skulls, one from a young Rapetosauras and another from an adult (National Geographic). The Rapetosauras is a type of Dinosaur called a Titano...

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<http://www.nature.com> (Primary Source)

Hartman, Joseph, Krause, David, and Rogers Raymond. ”Stratigraphic Analysis of Upper Cretaceous Rocks in the Mahajanga Basin, Northwestern Madagascsar: Implications for Ancient and Modern Faunas.” The Journal of Geology vol. 108

(2000) : 275.

Parsell, D.L. “Skeleton of New Dinosaur “Titan” found in Madagascar on National Geographic.com.” 1 August 2001. National Geographic News. 4 April 2004

<http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/08/0801 madagascardino.html>

“Brachiosaurus” Enchanted Learning.com. 2004. 4 April 5 2004

<http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/dinosaurs/dinos/Brachiosaurus.

Shtml>

“New Long-necked Dinosaur Discovered in Madagascar.” Office of Legislative and Public Affairs. 1 August 2001. National Science Foundation. 5 April 2004

<http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news>

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