Agribusiness, Agriculture, Veterinary Medicine, Cassava, Garri, food security, Agritech and the Red Meat Value Chain.
Saturday, April 23, 2016
Huge long-necked dinosaurs had big, precocious babies.
A research published in the journal of science,that huge long-necked dinosaurs had big, precocious babies
The babies of a huge, long-necked dinosaur called Rapetosaurus that lived on the island of Madagascar did not just sit in a nest and look cute. They were born ready for action. Scientists on Thursday announced the discovery of fossils of a baby Rapetosaurus the size of a big dog that apparently starved to death during a drought several weeks after hatching from its soccer-ball-sized egg.
Unlike many animal babies, particularly humans, the hatchling Rapetosaurus had adult proportions, meaning it likely did not need significant parental support and was actively foraging for plants rather than waiting for momma to feed it.
Such babies are known as "precocial," as opposed to "altricial" offspring that have different body dimensions from adults, cannot get around by themselves and require considerable parental support for food and protection, Macalester College paleontologist Kristi Curry Rogers said.
"The main conclusion was that this is the first evidence for a truly precocial dinosaur: one that matured rapidly and without parental care," Adelphi University paleontologist Michael D'Emic added.
Rapetosaurus lived about 67 million years ago, not long before the demise of the dinosaurs, and was the largest creature in Madagascar at the time.
The baby, known from a partial skeleton including limb bones, pelvic bones, fingers, toes and several vertebrae, was probably around 4 feet (1.2 meters) long from head to tail and weighed between 50 and 90 pounds (23-40 kg) when it died.
An adult Rapetosaurus was probably around 40 feet (12 meters) long, a little more than a school bus, and weighed around 16 tons, roughly 2-1/2 times as much as an elephant, Curry Rogers said. It was a medium-sized member of a dinosaur group called titanosaurs, which included the largest land animals ever on Earth.
Titanosaurs were part of a larger assemblage of dinosaurs called sauropods, known for their long necks, long tails and voracious appetite for plants. D'Emic said the researchers looked at the microstructure of the baby's bones to see preserved cavities that once held cells, blood vessels and nerves.
The density and organization of those indicated a rapidly growing individual, and there was even evidence for bone repair, suggesting an active lifestyle and fast metabolism, D'Emic added. Examples of precocial animals today include most lizards, snakes and reptiles, certain birds and some large mammals including wildebeest.
"Precocial young can avoid predation on their own, and there is a much smaller chance of the entire brood succumbing to predation at once," Curry Rogers said.
read more ;http://in.reuters.com/article
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Agribusiness ideas.
Popular Posts
-
Israeli gov't to fund medical cannabis research. The Ministries of Agriculture and Health will provide NIS 8 million in funding for 1...
-
Billionaire Elon Musk is known for his futuristic ideas and his latest suggestion might just save us from being irrelevant as artificial i...
-
Keeping pet trim is good for pet's health and owners' money. Feeding pets indiscriminately with food high in sugar, fat and cert...
-
Farmers, who regularly irrigate bananas, can boot the weight of the fruit by more than 30 per cent. More than 90 per cent of famers in K...
-
The regulations require producers who raise cattle, cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys and other animals to obtain a veterinarian’s approval b...
-
Across one-fourth of the globe, people aren’t getting the nutrients they need to stay healthy, according to the newly released Global Hung...
AGRIBUSINESS EDUCATION.
Translate
I-CONNECT -AGRICULTURE
AGRIBUSINESS TIPS.
AGRIBUSINESS.
The Agriculture Daily
veterinarymedicineechbeebolanle-ojuri.blogspot.com Cassava: benefits of garri as a fermented food. Cassava processing involves fermentation which is a plus for gut health. The fermentation process removes the cyanogenic glucosides present in the fres...
No comments:
Post a Comment