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The skeleton of a drowned baby dinosaur was discovered in Canada.

From NBC News:

The toddler was just 3 years old and 5 feet (1.5 meters) long when it wandered into a river near Alberta, Canada, and drowned about 70 million years ago. The beast was so well-preserved that some of its skin left impressions in the nearby rock.

The fossil is the smallest intact skeleton ever found from a group of horned, plant-eating dinosaurs known as ceratopsids, a group that includes the iconic Triceratops.

Finding intact baby dinosaurs is incredibly rare.

"The big ones just preserve better: They don't get eaten, they don't get destroyed by animals," said study co-author Philip Currie, a paleobiologist at the University of Alberta. "You always hope you're going to find something small and that it will turn out to be a dinosaur."

Read more here.

Photo: Philip J. Currie, Robert Holmes, Michael Ryan Clive Coy, Eva B. Koppelhus/LiveScience

Don't let anyone tell you toxic parenting is all bad. The strawberry poison frog (Oophaga pumilio) uses to make their babies unpalatable to predators by feeding them unfertilized eggs laced with bitter alkaloids. This means of chemical defense is currently unique to the species.



That's the word from a study headed up by researcher Ralph Saporito of Ohio's John Carroll University. From National Geographic:

For their study, the researchers measured alkaloid content in strawberry poison frogs during different stages of development.

In one group, tadpoles were reared and fed by their mothers, and a second group was reared by the researchers and fed with eggs from another species of frog not known to harbor alkaloids.

As the tadpoles from both groups developed, the team analyzed their alkaloid contents. The results were clear-cut: Tadpoles reared by mom contained alkaloids in most stages, whereas tadpoles from the second group showed no sign of these chemicals, according to the study, published November 12 in the journal Ecology.

Read the full story here.

Photo: Robert Pickett/National Geographic

After 30 years of captivity, two sea turtles named Touche and Daisy were released off the Desert Islands in Portugal. How's that for a happy ending?

See the release in the video blow.

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A new study from the University of Waterloo shows that snakes can optimize their vision by controlling the blood flow in their eyes when they perceive a threat.

Kevin van Doorn, PhD, and Professor Jacob Sivak, from the Faculty of Science, discovered that the coachwhip snake’s visual blood flow patterns change depending on what’s in its environment. The findings appear in the most recent issue of the Journal of Experimental Biology.

"Each species' perception of the world is unique due to differences in sensory systems," said van Doorn, from the School of Optometry & Vision Science.

Instead of eyelids, snakes have a clear scale called a spectacle. It works like a window, covering and protecting their eyes. Spectacles are the result of eyelids that fuse together and become transparent during embryonic development.

When van Doorn was examining a different part of the eye, the illumination from his instrument detected something unusual.

Surprisingly, these spectacles contained a network of blood vessels, much like a blind on a window. To see if this feature obscured the snake’s vision, van Doorn examined if the pattern of blood flow changed under different conditions.

When the snake was resting, the blood vessels in the spectacle constricted and dilated in a regular cycle. This rhythmic pattern repeated several times over the span of several minutes.

But when researchers presented the snake with stimuli it perceived as threatening, the fight-or-flight response changed the spectacle’s blood flow pattern. The blood vessel constricted, reducing blood flow for longer periods than at rest, up to several minutes. The absence of blood cells within the vasculature guarantees the best possible visual capacity in times of greatest need.

"This work shows that the blood flow pattern in the snake spectacle is not static but rather dynamic," said van Doorn.

Next, the research team examined the blood flow pattern of the snake spectacle when the snake shed its skin. They found a third pattern. During this time, the vessels remained dilated and the blood flow stayed strong and continuous, unlike the cyclical pattern seen during resting.

Together, these experiments show the relationship between environmental stimuli and vision, as well as highlight the interesting and complex effect blood flow patterns have on visual clarity. Future research will investigate the mechanism underlying this relationship.

"This research is the perfect example of how a fortuitous discovery can redefine our understanding of the world around us," said van Doorn.

The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada supported this project.

Photo: Kevin van Doorn/ University of Waterloo

Snake venom and other harmful substances can save lives as well as take them.
From LiveScience.com:

"Poisons can be bad for some things and good for others, including humans," said Michael Novacek, senior vice president of the American Museum of Natural History, at an opening of a new poison-themed exhibition Tuesday (Nov. 12).

[...]

The strongest of poisons occur in evolutionary arms races, Siddall explained. For example, opossums can feed upon some venomous snakes thanks to a resistance to the snakes' venom. In response, the snakes over generations have amped up the toxicity of their venom to keep these marsupial predators at bay. Meanwhile, the opossums continue to evolve resistance to the ever-stronger venom, he said.

Read the full story here.

Photo: kingsnake.com user cochran

Florida commercial fisher Eddie Toomer was awarded the Gladding Memorial Award by the Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries Institute for his lifetime commitment to protecting endangered sea turtles.

From KBTX.com:

Toomer is most renowned for his important contributions to the design of turtle excluder devices (TEDs) for shrimp trawlers. "TEDs maximize shrimp harvest while allowing endangered sea turtles to escape. Shrimpers' use of TEDs has spared hundreds of thousands of endangered sea turtles around the world," said Pamela Plotkin, director of Texas Sea Grant and author of the book, Biology and Conservation of Ridley Sea Turtles.

With his mom and dad and a dozen or so others, Toomer also is responsible for the 3 million-acre no trawling pink shrimp nursery area in the Gulf.

"I feel fortunate to be a part of the history of the TED," said Toomer. "Finding a successful design was achieved by joining the practical experience and creativity of fishers, with the design ideas and studies of scientists."

Read the full story here.

Veterinarians in Germany didn't just treat the injuries on an injured tortoise brought in to a local animal shelter after being inured. They raided the toy box and built him a prosthetic wheeled leg.

From The Local:

"First we fitted a double wheel but it was difficult for him to turn corners so we replaced it with a single wheel and that is much better for him," Dr Panagiotis Azmanis told The Local.

He works at the Birdconsulting International veterinary practice of Marcellus Bürkle in Achern in Baden, and ended up raiding the toy box of the practice manager's daughter for wheels and spacer blocks.

Initially though the focus was on saving the tortoise's life. "He was in pretty bad shape when they brought him to us. The lower part of his front leg was missing, and the upper part was very bad, with bone showing, and maggots in necrotic flesh."

One the animal had been stabilized, the vets amputated the injured leg at the shoulder and treated him with antibiotics and fluids, as well as giving him pain killers.

Then came the question of lifting his fourth corner so he could move around.

"Tortoises need to run free in gardens, so he needed a prosthetic," said Azmanis.

Read the full story here.

Photo: DPA

A Florida paleontologist says climate change may turn back the species clock to a day when mammals were tiny and reptiles huge.

From NBC News:

"You see the size of these animals dancing with the climate," said Jonathan Bloch, a paleontologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

Bloch delved into the connection between body size and global temperatures, particularly during a hot time known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, on Monday during the ScienceWriters2013 conference here in Gainesville. Like so many facets of global change, the lessons from the distant past don't make the far future look all that sunny. Super-snakes, anyone?

Read the full story here.

Photo: Artist’s conception of the largest snake the world has ever known from Jason Bourque / University of Florida.

Considering they're still making news 66 million years after going extinct, dinosaurs are clearly one of humanity's favorite animals. Here is a round-up of dino-centric stories from the last week:

From National Geographic:

An enigma for decades, a giant dinosaur known only for its brawny arms actually towered over the local tyrannosaurs, paleontologists report. It also ate plants and perhaps sported a surprising sail or hump on its back.

The dinosaur Deinocheirus mirificus (which means, essentially, "terrible hands that look peculiar") had been a stubborn fossil enigma for nearly 50 years.

Nothing except the dinosaur's eight-foot-long arms, tipped in three huge claws, and a handful of other bone fragments had ever been found.

But at the annual Society of Vertebrate Paleontology conference held in Los Angeles last week, Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources paleontologist Yuong-Nam Lee presented a wealth of new fossils that make Deinocheirus stranger than anyone had previously imagined.

From Discovery.com:

A nursery of bizarre-looking dinosaurs known as therizinosaurs has been found in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia.

The nesting colony contained at least 17 clutches of eggs.

"Not only is this the largest colony of nonavian theropods, but this is the best documented site," said study co-author Yoshitsugu Kobayashi, a vertebrate paleontologist at Hokkaido University in Japan, who presented the findings here at the 73rd annual Society of Vertebrate Paleontology conference.

The finding suggests the odd little creatures were social animals. Read more...

From NBC News:

Paleontologists on Wednesday unveiled a new dinosaur discovered four years ago in southern Utah that proves giant tyrant dinosaurs like the Tyrannosaurus rex were around 10 million years earlier than previously believed.

A full skeletal replica of the carnivore — the equivalent of the great uncle of the T. rex — was on display at the Natural History Museum of Utah alongside a 3-D model of the head and a large painted mural of the dinosaur roaming a shoreline.

It was the public's first glimpse at the new species, which researchers named Lythronax argestes (LY'-throw-nax ar-GES'-tees). The first part of the name means "king of gore," and the second part is derived from poet Homer's southwest wind. Read more...

Photo: National Geogrphic