Aardonyx celestae pictures
Shirona Patel of the Bernard Price Institute has kindly sent me some pictures of Aardonyx celestae to share with you.
The specimen, one of three found on the site, is impressively large at seven metres long, the length of a African elephant bull. Click though for the full-size images.
Aardonyx skeleton
Aardonyx skull
Aardonyx premaxilla
Aardonyx claw
Aardonyx celestae: new South African fossil treasure
South Africa is awash in palaeontological riches, with fossils of the earliest vertebrates to early and late hominids. It was announced today that a new species of dinosaur is the latest addition to this treasure.
Dr Adam Yates announces Aardonyx celestae
The new species, a vegetarian dinosaur named Aardonyx celestae, from the early Jurassic period (approximately 195 million years old and seven metres long), was described by Dr Adam Yates, the primary investigator and a palaeontologist from the Bernard Price Institute for Paleontological Research, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. The genus name (Aardonyx) means “Earth Claw”, (Aard – Afrikaans for Earth) and (Onyx – Greek for claw) an appropriate name, given that the large, earth-encrusted foot claws were some of the first bones to be discovered in the town of Senekal, near Bethlehem in the Northern Free State, in South Africa. The species name (celestae) is given to acknowledge the work of Celeste Yates who prepared much of the fossil.
“This species is important as the Aardonyx was an animal close to the common ancestor of the gigantic sauropod dinosaurs,” explains Yates. “Sauropods, known popularly as “brontosaurs”, were the largest backboned animals to walk on land with their long necks, tree-trunk legs and whip-like tails. Some were even longer and exceeded 100 feet (about 30 metres) in length. Aardonyx gives us a glimpse into what the first steps towards becoming a sauropod involved.”
The discovery was made by a Wits postgraduate palaeontology student, Mr Marc Blackbeard, who began excavating two sites in the Northern Free State, five years ago, under the leadership of Yates. “We knew that there was likely to be some fossils in these ‘bone beds’ discovered by James Kitching about 20 years ago, but we did not expect to find anything of this magnitude,” says Yates.
Yates elaborates on the anatomy of Aardonyx celestae: “The dinosaur had a wide-gaping mouth, bracing joints in the back vertebrae that made the backbone rigid enough to support great weight and a forearm and hand capable of grasping and supporting weight. Growth rings in the rib and shoulder blade sections show that Aardonyx was not full grown – it was probably less than 10 years old when it died near a river or stream.”
He adds: “Aardonyx probably walked on its hind legs but could drop onto all fours as well. It had flattened feet with large claws that supported body weight on the inside of the foot and a robust thigh bone (femur) for supporting weight.”
Dr Chinsamy-Turan a Wits graduate and a Vertebrate Paleohistologist at UCT concurs: “My analysis of the bone microstructure in the ribs and shoulder blades of Aardonyx suggests that while it had experienced at least seven spurts or cycles of growth, it was not a fully grown animal.”
Dr Adam Yates lies down next to newly exposed dino-femur
According to Dr Matthew Bonnan, a Vertebrate Paleobiologist, Department of Biological Sciences and an author of the paper, they already knew that the earliest sauropods and near-sauropods would be bipeds. “What Aardonyx shows us, however, is that walking quadrupedally and bearing weight on the inside of the foot is a trend that started very early in these dinosaurs, much earlier than previously hypothesised. The bones of the forearm are shaped like those of sauropods – this means that the forearm and hand could bear weight and that Aardonyx could drop onto all-fours as well as walk bipedally.”
Lluc, European ancestor?
Hominoid fossils seem to be coming out of Europe thick and fast at the moment. Following hot on the heels of the Ida hoopla, the fossilised face and jaw of a previously unknown hominoid primate genus has been discovered in Spain. It dates from the Middle Miocene era, in the region of 12 million years ago.
Nicknamed “Lluc,” the male bears a strikingly “modern” facial appearance with a flat face, rather than a protruding one. The finding sheds important new light on the evolutionary development of hominids, including orangutans, chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and humans.
In a study appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Salvador Moyà-Solà, director of the Institut Català de Paleontologia (ICP) at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and colleagues present evidence for the new genus and species, dubbed Anoiapithecus brevirostris. The scientific name is derived from the region where the fossil was found (l’Anoia) and also from its “modern” facial morphology, characterized by a very short face.
Thankfully, no “missing link” talk. But its modern, flat-faced appearance does raise intriguing questions about its relationship to us. Could we have a European ancestor after all?
Anoiapithecus displays a very modern facial morphology, with a muzzle prognathism (i.e., protrusion of the jaw) so reduced that, within the family Hominidae, scientists can only find comparable values within the genus Homo, whereas the remaining great apes are notoriously more prognathic (i.e., having jaws that project forward markedly). The extraordinary resemblance does not indicate that Anoiapithecus has any relationship with Homo, the researchers note. However, the similarity might be a case of evolutionary convergence, where two species evolving separately share common features.
So the debate revolves around the geographic origin of the hominid family. The consensus at the moment is that it is Africa, so is Anoiapithecus brevirostris a European offshoot from an African family? And, fascinatingly, did this European offshoot then return to Africa? This is the subject of an article in New Scientist magazine.
Moyà-Solà says that A. brevirostris and some similar-looking kenyapithecins lived in Europe shortly after the afrohominid and kenyapithecin lineages split, and so that the divergence itself may have happened there. If he is right, our hominid ancestors lived in Europe and only later migrated to Africa, where modern humans evolved.This “into Africa” scenario is likely to be controversial. Critics argue that discoveries like Moyà-Solà’s are more likely to reflect the quality of the fossil records in Africa and Europe than offer clues to the actual origins of hominids.
Muddying the waters is that the European fossil record for the time is superior to the African one. The Spanish project is continuing and researchers anticipate that more fossils remains will be found in the future. These should provide more information to help solve the puzzle.
Isn’t science exciting!
Ida, media sensation
News of the discovery of a 47 million year old primate fossil has just been released. The skeleton, nicknamed Ida, has been classified Darwinius masillae. It was a female animal which lived during the Eocene epoch. It was discovered in Messel, Germany as long ago as 1983. It was privately sold off in two parts which were later acquired for the University of Oslo Natural History Museum. A team of scientists have been examining it for the past two years.
Ida is a lemur-like creature but differs from a lemur in many respects, in particular, the absence of a toilet claw and a toothcomb. Darwinius masillae is part of a larger group of primates, Adapoidea, not simply a lemur. The scientific paper is available and can be found here.
This is clearly an extremely interesting and important find. But the media reports – television, radio and press – are running sensational reports about this being the “missing link” and that it provides “proof” of our – human – evolution from the animal kingdom. The hype is that Ida is our direct ancestor, even that Ida show human characteristics. Here’s but one example:
Evidence in the talus bone links Ida to us. The bone has the same shape as in humans today. Only the human talus is obviously bigger.
This is obvious nonsense. Having the “same shape” is so non-specific as to be meaningless. And as for “Missing link”: this is an archaic phrase now adopted by creationists to cast doubt on the fact of evolution. The tactic is to demand that scientists produce every single morphological change – the full evolutionary record – which is impossible. And of course when any fossil of a new transitional creature is found, another gap, or missing link, is added.
At first glance, this media onslaught with pretty much the same (wrong) message is puzzling. But dig a bit deeper and you will find a well-coordinated public relations effort to promote an upcoming documentary and a new book titled The Link. The press release from the University of Olso has a huge heading: “The Link”. They have a website named, you guessed it, The Link, where they describe what they’re doing:
The scientific publication of Ida has been carefully timed so that the film, book and website can be launched at the same time. The scientists see this as a new way of presenting science for the 21st century, where a major scientific find becomes available to everyone, wherever they are in the world at the same time. Ida connects to us all, and we can all share in understanding her.
This “link” they’re talking about is the one directly to humans. A member of the team, Dr Jens Franzen takes this to unbelievable lengths, describing Ida as “like the Eighth Wonder of the World”, because of the extraordinary completeness of the skeleton. He can’t contain himself:
It was information “palaeontologists can normally only dream of”, he said.In addition, Ida bears “a close resemblance to ourselves” he said, with
nails instead of claws, a grasping hand and an opposable thumb – like
humans and some other primates. But he said some aspects of the teeth
indicate she is not a direct ancestor – more of an “aunt” than a
“grandmother”.
Others are more circumspect. Dr Chris Beard, curator of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and author of The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey, said he was “awestruck” by the publicity machine surrounding the new fossil.
He argued that it could damage the popularisation of science if the creature was not all that it was hyped up to be.
Dr Beard has not yet seen scientific details of the find but said that it would be very nice to have a beautiful new fossil from the Eocene and that Ida would be “a welcome new addition” to the world of early primates.
But he added: “I would be absolutely dumbfounded if it turns out to be a potential ancestor to humans.”
Quite. I’m all for popularising science, but this is not the way to do it. It doesn’t always have to be about us. There is enough beauty and wonder to revel in this find. It doesn’t have to be turned into a proto-human media sensation.
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