Long-dead dinosaurs support new life

Bringing new life to the dead zone.

The Gulf of Mexico “dead zone” reached a record 7,700 square miles in the summer of 1999. That year, heavier flow in the Mississippi River brought an abundance of nutrients to the Gulf, resulting in hypoxia, or inadequate dissolved oxygen in bottom waters that forces bottom-dwelling animals to either flee or die. With the year 2001 have come legislative efforts to reduce the dead zone—if not ki...

Pancreas Divisum: On Life Support, But Not Quite Dead

Pancreas divisum, the failure of fusion of the dorsal and ventral pancreatic ductal systems in utero, is the most common congenital abnormality of the pancreas. The clinical significance of pancreas divisum is often considered when it is found in patients with idiopathic acute or recurrent pancreatitis. With increasing use of magnetic resonance imaging and magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatog...

A New Phylogeny of the Carnivorous Dinosaurs

The last several years have seen the discovery of many new theropod dinosaur taxa. Data obtained from these and from fragmentary forms not previously utilized in cladistic analyses are examined. An analysis of forty one primary ingroup taxa and 386 characters yielded a set of most parsimonious cladograms which preserves many previously discovered relationships (e.g., a basal split between Cerat...

Findings of New Armored Dinosaurs in Mongolia

A new long-necked 'sauropod-mimic' stegosaur and the evolution of the plated dinosaurs.

Stegosaurian dinosaurs have a quadrupedal stance, short forelimbs, short necks, and are generally considered to be low browsers. A new stegosaur, Miragaia longicollum gen. et sp. nov., from the Late Jurassic of Portugal, has a neck comprising at least 17 cervical vertebrae. This is eight additional cervical vertebrae when compared with the ancestral condition seen in basal ornithischians such a...