#Parrot from Jurassic World Evolution

[lowpolyanimals]

Parrot from Jurassic World: Evolution

[nanas-45]

Feathers and Flight: Unveiling the World of Birds

Birds, the amazing warm-blooded vertebrates that we often see flitting around our backyards, belong to the class Aves. These fascinating creatures are distinguished by their feathers, toothless beaks, and the laying of hard-shelled eggs. Birds exhibit an incredible range of sizes, from the tiny 5.5 cm (2.2 in) bee hummingbird to the towering 2.8 m (9 ft 2 in) common ostrich. With over 11,000 living species, more than half are passerines, commonly known as "perching" birds.

The Evolution of Wings and Flight

Birds are equipped with wings—modified forelimbs that allowed many to conquer the skies. While some species, like the extinct moa and elephant birds, lost their wings over time, others, like penguins and various island species, evolved wings adapted for swimming or other specific functions. Their unique respiratory and digestive systems are perfectly tailored for flight.

Dinosaurs Among Us

Did you know? Birds are actually feathered dinosaurs and represent the only living lineage of these ancient creatures. Modern birds are descendants of primitive avialans like Archaeopteryx, which first appeared during the Late Jurassic. They evolved and diversified significantly around the time of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, which wiped out all non-avian dinosaurs.

Social Creatures and Cultural Icons

Birds are not just incredible for their physical adaptations; they also showcase fascinating social behaviors. Many species exhibit complex communication through calls and songs, participate in cooperative breeding, flocking, and even mobbing predators. Most birds form monogamous pairs for at least a breeding season, although some have polygamous or polyandrous systems.

Economic and Cultural Importance

Birds play crucial roles in human economies and cultures. They are sources of food, feathers, and guano (used as fertilizer). Songbirds and parrots are beloved pets, and birdwatching has become a popular pastime, contributing to ecotourism. Unfortunately, human activities have driven about 120 to 130 bird species to extinction since the 17th century, and many more are currently at risk. Conservation efforts are ongoing to protect these remarkable creatures.

The Classification of Birds

The study of birds, known as ornithology, dates back to the early classifications by Francis Willughby and John Ray in 1676, with Carl Linnaeus refining the system in 1758. Birds are classified under the class Aves and are part of the clade Theropoda. While traditional definitions of Aves included all descendants of the most recent common ancestor of modern birds and Archaeopteryx, a more recent definition focuses solely on the crown group of modern birds and their closest extinct relatives.

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Heracles inexpectatus

By Scott Reid 

Etymology: For the Greek Demigod Heracles

First Described By: Worthy et al., 2019

Classification: Dinosauromorpha, Dinosauriformes, Dracohors, Dinosauria, Saurischia, Eusaurischia, Theropoda, Neotheropoda, Averostra, Tetanurae, Orionides, Avetheropoda, Coelurosauria, Tyrannoraptora, Maniraptoromorpha, Maniraptoriformes, Maniraptora, Pennaraptora, Paraves, Eumaniraptora, Averaptora, Avialae, Euavialae, Avebrevicauda, Pygostaylia, Ornithothoraces, Euornithes, Ornithuromorpha, Ornithurae, Neornithes, Neognathae, Neoaves, Inopinaves, Telluraves, Australaves, Eufalconimorphae, Psittacopasserae, Psittaciformes, Strigopoidea

Status: Extinct

Time and Place: Between 19 and 16 million years ago, in the Burdigalian of the Miocene 

Heracles is known from the Bannockburn Formation of the South Island of New Zealand 

Physical Description: Heracles is an utterly fascinating recent dinosaur discovery, both for its inherent qualities and those due to the circumstances of its discovery. This was a large, Kākāpō-like parrot, about the height of a shorter adult or a child. It is the largest known parrot, and it would have been about one meter tall and weighing about seven kilograms. Given this size, it was flightless, and probably mostly terrestrial. It had a very strong beak, and probably resembled in many ways a giant version of the modern-day Kākāpō, Kaka, and Kea. As such, it would have been quite fat looking, probably greenish in color, and very fluffy as well.

By Brian Choo, Press Release Image 

Diet: As a parrot, Heracles is most likely to have fed on seeds and nuts, though the fact that it was closely related to the living Kea means there is a non insignificant chance it was carnivorous. For now, we’ll say it was most likely an omnivore.

Behavior: It is logical to presume that Heracles resembled its modern relatives, which means it would have been a loosely social animal, spending most of its time on the ground in groups of about a dozen animals. It would have been able to use tools to get at sources of food, especially difficult to reach ones. It possibly would have also used its sharp beak to attack other dinosaurs on the island, chasing them with a hopping gait until they were isolated and then killed. An intelligent animal, it would have been able to solve puzzles and work together to get at sources of food or shelter. As a member of the New Zealand Parrot Group, it probably would have been polygamous, with the males having multiple mates at a time. They would have made nests on the ground, and since they never came across with mammalian predators, they probably would have been fine in terms of reproduction rate. 

By Ripley Cook 

Ecosystem: The Saint Bathans Fauna was a unique ecosystem filled with almost entirely birds, and other creatures that could float or fly over to New Zealand after it emerged from having flooded. This meant that birds were filling niches that, in the rest of the world, were being taken up by mammals. In short, this was a weird sort of Jurassic Park - with dinosaurs wreaking havoc as echoes of their former reign. Dinosaurs of the Saint Bathans Fauna included another New Zealand Parrot, Nelepsittacus, a bittern Pikaihao, herons like Matuku and Pikaihao, the swimming flamingo Palaelodus, flightless rails such as Priscaweka and Litorallus, the early Adzebill Aptornis proasciarostratus, the pigeon Rupephaps, the stiff-tailed duck Dunstanneta, the early Kiwi Proapteryx, the small Manuherikia duck, and the early New Zealand Wren Kuiornis - just to name a few! Given that only sparse remains are known from some unnamed birds of prey, this points to Heracles being at least somewhat carnivorous and fulfilling that role in its ecosystem. This was a series of extensive lakes, filled with cycad and palm trees, and there were also a wide variety of geckos, skinks, crocodilians, turtles, tuatara, and bats. There was one other mammal present - but, for now, we have no idea what it was. 

By José Carlos Cortés

Other: The Saint Bathans Fauna is one of the most fascinating ecosystems of fossil birds of the Cenozoic Era. The unique ecosystem of New Zealand, with its almost complete lack of mammals before human interference. Heracles is an extremely important fossil find, as it may help us to piece together how the weird New Zealand Parrots evolved - previously, little was known in the way of fossil members of this group beyond recent history. The more we research it, the more we will be able to understand one small piece of the evolutionary puzzle that is this unique island. Also, it’s common name is Squawkzilla.

~ By Meig Dickson

Sources Under the Cut 

Mather, Ellen K.; Tennyson, Alan J. D.; Scofield, R. Paul; Pietri, Vanesa L. De; Hand, Suzanne J.; Archer, Michael; Handley, Warren D.; Worthy, Trevor H. (2019-03-04). “Flightless rails (Aves: Rallidae) from the early Miocene St Bathans Fauna, Otago, New Zealand”. Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. 17 (5): 423–449.

Scofield, R. Paul; Worthy, Trevor H. & Tennyson, Alan J.D. (2010). “A heron (Aves: Ardeidae) from the Early Miocene St Bathans Fauna of southern New Zealand.” (PDF). In W.E. Boles & T.H. Worthy. (eds.). Proceedings of the VII International Meeting of the Society of Avian Paleontology and Evolution. Records of the Australian Museum. 62. pp. 89–104.

Tennyson, Alan J. D.; Worthy, Trevor H.; Scofield, R. Paul (2010). “A heron (Aves: Ardeidae) from the Early Miocene St Bathans fauna of southern New Zealand. In Proceedings of the VII International Meeting of the Society of Avian Paleontology and Evolution, ed. W.E. Boles and T.H. Worthy”. Records of the Australian Museum. 62: 89–104.

Worthy, Trevor H.; Lee, Michael S. Y. (2008). “Affinities of Miocene Waterfowl (anatidae: Manuherikia, Dunstanetta and Miotadorna) from the St Bathans Fauna, New Zealand”. Palaeontology. 51 (3): 677–708.

Worthy, Trevor H.; Tennyson, Alan J. D.; Hand, Suzanne J.; Scofield, R. Paul (2008-06-01). “A new species of the diving duck Manuherikia and evidence for geese (Aves: Anatidae: Anserinae) in the St Bathans Fauna (Early Miocene), New Zealand”. Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand. 38 (2): 97–114.  

Worthy, T. H., S. J. Hand, M. Archer, R. P. Scofield, and V. L. De Pietri. 2019. Evidence for a giant parrot from the Early Miocene of New Zealand. Biology Letters 15:20190467

[tcmpcral]

1. FIRST NAME: masha.

2. STRANGE FACT ABOUT YOURSELF: my father’s birthday is the day before mine :v

3. TOP THREE PHYSICAL THINGS YOU FIND ATTRACTIVE ON A PERSON: i mean, i’m asexual and aromantic but aesthetically i guess i could say the quintessential. roman?? nose for some reason fjfeka; i just like the look of them lies down also certain kinds of genuine smiles get me right in the heart. dark eyes are also very nice. or perhaps i should say like. when someone has dark eyelashes?? i think that’s it. also i’m always reminded of a girl i went to ireland with who had a seriously endearing case of doe eyes, and i’m still not sure if her eyes were just naturally that shape or if she used makeup to get that Look but either way i thought she was extremely pretty the whole time lmao the fact that she was also very sweet and thoughtful didn’t hurt either

4. A FOOD YOU COULD EAT FOREVER AND NOT GET BORED OF: rice and eggs fjjfiea; eggs in general, tbh. possibly also noodles. and dumplings. cheesecake. lotus paste. smoked cheeses hhhh sALMON. sweet potatoes. maybe pears and apples listen i’m sorry i love food, there can’t be Only One

5. A FOOD YOU HATE: hominy fjfkda; cauliflower. uhhhh also tuna casserole blegh. asparagus jfjkf;da oh YEAH I HATE BOLOGNA TOO i can’t. i can’t do it hhhhghg. and yet i love vienna sausages and deviled ham...

6. GUILTY PLEASURE: whispers taking the long way home so i can spend more time listening to the radio and singing along with it probably lmao

7. WHAT DO YOU SLEEP IN: whatever i wore the previous day fjfjiea; I’M SLOPPY

8. SERIOUS RELATIONSHIPS OR FLINGS: technically neither, but i guess i’d take flings over the other

9. IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN THE PAST AND CHANGE ONE THING ABOUT YOUR LIFE, WOULD YOU AND WHAT WOULD IT BE: lies down i do kinda wish i hadn’t dropped out of high school. on that front, it’s worked out in the end, but. still. it would have been nice to have kept up with my friends orz on a different front, i’m conflicted about it, but. sometimes i wonder how much better my life might be today if i’d gone straight for nursing instead of getting an art degree ._.

10. ARE YOU AN AFFECTIONATE PERSON: i. think i can be

11. A MOVIE YOU COULD WATCH OVER AND OVER AGAIN: yeah it’s still the kung fu panda trilogy lmao. but also tokyo godfathers, shutter island aaand. idk jurassic park? tremors? a good chunk of the x-men movies bc i’m not very picky with them and there’s things i like about most of them?? thinking emoji oH there’s also that movie push from 2009. the one with chris evans :v

12. FAVORITE BOOK: a little princess, war of the worlds, uhhh on the beach, house of stairs, the secret garden. i was once weirdly attached to this book i read in jr. high called where the lilies bloom. i also loved heidi uhhh. see, there were all these obscure books i read in late elementary school and jr. high that i loved that i often have trouble recalling rip. like there was one called eva, and another called home before dark. one named belle prater’s boy. the crystal garden. sweet sassy tree hhhh almost anything written by robert cormier ahaaa

13. YOU HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO KEEP ANY ANIMAL AS A PET, WHAT DO YOU CHOOSE: i’m honestly very happy keeping dogs as pets, but i’ve always wanted to. like. idk, maybe pet a wolf or a fox or other wild canid. i’d also like to maybe have a cat someday. and parrots and other birds are adorable and i love them, but. oof. they just seem. Intimidating pets. maybe someday i can have ducks or geese again, tho. oh, and. i’ll admit i’ve always been amused at the thought of having a pet goat, bc my grandmother apparently did as a child lmao

14. TOP FIVE FICTIONAL SHIPS [IF YOU ARE AN RP BLOG, YOU CAN USE YOUR OWN SHIPS AS WELL]: oh boy there’s. a Bunch. let me think... i. still have a very big soft spot for germany/italy hhh. uh. i hope the rest of them don’t have to be canon bc..... yeah. anyway still attached to beerus and whis... wheezes and both euroshipping (kaiba/bakura) and what’s apparently called stormshipping now (fubuki/manjoume). and ok i have to go with another hetalia one bc i’m such a sucker for france/russia lies down i was also once a big lex/zex shipper, and i still have a soft spot for. what it once was. not entirely too comfortable actually shipping it now since i haven’t Kept Up with kh and i’m not 100% on zexion/ienzo’s age anymore squints

15. PIE OR CAKE: ....whichever one cheesecake falls under :v

16. FAVORITE SCENT: ohghfjfkda there’s A BUNCH. aloe vera, bleach, lysol, sweet pea, tea, tires, sawdust, cucumbers and melons, ginger, beer

17. CELEBRITY CRUSH: yeahh, i still don’t really have one but. i do have a lot of affection for weird al lmao

18. IF YOU COULD TRAVEL ANYWHERE, WHERE WOULD YOU GO: whispers i would love to go to russia some day, but i think everyone knows that lmao. i’d also love to revisit ireland, especially killarney and blarney castle. and i’d love to revisit sorrento. and possibly italy in general tbh aaaa. i’ve also always kinda wanted to visit china 6_6

19. INTROVERT OR EXTROVERT: pretty sure i’m an introvert, but i also happen to be one who really loves crowds

20. DO YOU SCARE EASILY: i’m a. very jumpy person kffja; also certain topics Disturb me way more than others, and ngl i have something close to an Actual phobia of the dark rip

21. IPHONE OR ANDROID: i’ve never had an iphone, so probably android

22. DO YOU PLAY ANY VIDEO GAMES: animal crossing. also tetris when i’m bored. i love puzzle games like poppit and bejeweled lmao i used to play kingdom hearts and super smash brothers, and i miss them both tbh. i also played crisis core, two star fox games, and the world ends with you at some point. and uh. a handful of legend of zelda games when i was a kid. my favorite game is probably majora’s mask :v

23. DREAM JOB: comic book creator orz or some kind of concept artist for animated movies. but. i’ve come to terms with the fact that i’m not really. Good(TM) enough for that, so nowadays i’m much more interested in something more mundane like nursing. as long as it’s night shift, i want it

24. WHAT WOULD YOU DO WITH A MILLION DOLLARS: SO MUCH. get my car back in shape, pay off my grandparents’ house probably, go back to school fINALLY, move out lies down there’s so much i could do with that money lmao

25. FICTIONAL CHARACTER YOU HATE: there. aren’t any tbh lies down the most i usually get to is feeling neutral toward a character lmao except i just remembered umbridge exists so she might count

26. FANDOM THAT YOU WERE ONCE A PART OF BUT AREN’T ANY LONGER: not counting the ones i keep coming back to, there’s uhhh. gundam wing, star wars (waaaay back when the phantom menace was first released lmao), digimon, x-men evolution. i was in the MCU fandom for like a month before i lost interest XD;; i might count yugioh and yugioh gx as part of this, but. i’m still kind of invested in those tbh

all of these i’ve just kinda fallen away from thinking emoji i’ve never really had a bad fandom experience, so. you know

[braindamageforbeginners]

Jurassic Park

I just saw Jurassic Park again. I don't mean whichever version of Jurassic World is out with Chris Pratt this week, I mean the original one, which is so old that I believe it used actual footage of dinosaurs because it was filmed in the late Triassic. The one that was released in, Gods help me, 1993, and is now being rereleased in certain places. If it's your burg, I'd recommend checking it out; I went for $12 and thought it was worth it. This was a sort of experiment on my part; I've seen the film about 400 times, and reread the book more than a few times (most recently in 2010); I went based on the recommendation/idea in the von Hoffman Bros. Big Damn Book of Sheer Manliness (yes, that's a thing), that said, of Apocalypse Now, "If you get the chance, see on the big screen, with theater-quality sound, it's a real slap in the brain-pan." Now, I've gotten my brainpan slapped more than anyone should in recent years (almost literally), so I thought I'd do it wth an old familiar favorite (but remastered), and, even though I liked it, there are a few things that you notice when you're trapped in an adult's body. First off, from a cellular biology perspective (and I've known about this one for years, so it's not a revelation), they jump from "reassembling ancient DNA" to "dinosaurs are back." We know from Dolly that it'd require an ooctye (egg) to kick off the cloning process. Crichton glossed over this in the book, too, but as an adult with a background in the field (sort of), it's incredibly - almost invitingly - lazy that this would go from book to screen (actually, it's not so surprising when you know that Michael Crichton is also the credited screen writer, and he's historically good at overlooking and committing to film his errors), when, to paraphrase "Thank You for Smoking," it's an immediate and easy fix, "Thank God we invented the [whatever] device." Ellie and Alan's relationship is amazingly dysfunctional. It's one thing not to want children, and it's one thing to have incompatible long-term goals. It's another thing entirely to verbally crap on your girlfriends' aspirations at every single point. It's unsettling and a little creepy; Alan Grant will go on, at length about the evils of children even when there are no children in sight and the conversation/dialog only casually touches upon it, but I don't think you make it past the fifth date with that attitude. To be fair, the filmmakers' manage to create the world's most unbearably annoying child characters ever (and, 20 years later, it is beyond weird to know that Tim, cast as Eugene Slede, will on day say, with utmost conviction, "I hope the Japanese don't surrender. I hope we get to kill every single one of them."). Alan also gets minus Chekov points for having a giant, shiny bottle opener on his belt in every single scene (go ahead and watch the movie again) without ever using it, even though he brings his weird velociraptor claw with him to dinosaur island, and keeps it with him after learning dinosaurs are back. Speaking of enormous shiny things that are visually distracting, let's talk Jeff Goldblum (the character is Ian Grant, but I'm sure it's all Jeff). I know that we've been conditioned by years of exposure to the Internet to hold the Great Shirtless One above fault (and the entire theater erupted into applause at the start of that scene), but he is beyond creepy toward Ellie throughout the film; touchy, quick-moving, and behaving in a way I wouldn't endorse for anyone not contemplating a nomination for Supreme Court. Depite every single adult male in this film being kind of rapey or astonishingly indifferent about Ellie (that would be Alan). the film technically passes the Bechdel test. Stick with me on this one. The Bechdel Test was originally put forth by Alison Bechdel as a test of feminism in a film (or a test of not-outright sexism, as the case might be). The test - and it's fairly simple - is that a film feature two or more female characters, discussing something other than a man, in at least one scene. Back to the feature at hand, you'll remember that all the dinosaurs in the film, according to Wu, are female. Even though they later learn that the dinosaurs, thanks to frog DNA, can swap genders (actually, that's more common in chordates than you'd think). There are three adult velociraptors in the film; let's assume for the argument that two of the three identify as female. Now, go back and watch that kitchen scene where the two raptors hunt the kids in the kitchen and are clearly communicating with each other. Admittedly, one of those two kids is Tim, but he's so annoying throughout  the film that I'd really rather not categorize him as "human," much less traditionally male. Speaking of the dinosaurs hunting the kids, every single character exerts themselves far more than necessary to achieve their ends. The paleontologists get on a helicopter with a man they literally met twenty minutes before (as the Too Long, Didn't Watch guys point out, this never, ever ends well in reality) because he offers to pay them; the lawyer (Gennaro) wears a tie and button-up shirt with shorts (as someone who has lived in the tropics, it's a very, very basic intelligence test to see how you dress when you actually have time to pack and plan ahead, and, even then, putting on pants to leave the apartment will have you cursing those vile missionaries who converted everyone to linen shackles); and Newman (technically Nedry, but, again, the degree to which every actor commits to their well-known characters throughout this film is impressive) works way too hard to steal way too little. First of all, there's a reason over 99,9% of initially-promising biomedical discoveries lead to a final drug or therapy; it's enormously costly to develop and safety-test a product at each point. Even the coolest, old-timey drug companies rarely discovered drugs for themselves, they patented or investigated promising prior research. Going from "Maybe that mosquito trapped in amber has DNA in it" to "brachiosaurus" would be cost-prohibitive. Especially when you consider that this was 1993; Bill Gates would've been able to buy and sell the island ten times over just a few years later. Michael Crichton predicted that this would restrict biotech companies to entertainment-related investments (he got that hilariously wrong, as I can testify to on a personal and professional level). He also predicted that exploitative employer/employee relationships would intensify (he got that one right) in the book, by making Nedry a programmer who had underbid his peers to get Hammond's contract, which was unfairly added to and amended until the character was almost driven out of business. The book also makes it clear that, despit Hammond's claims, the park cuts every financial corner it can, including hiring only the lowest-bidding contractors or least-qualified people (in the film, the vet doesn't even look at the triceratops' mouth until Ellie does, which is something even horse owners know is important). So, they wind up with Newman. Who, instead of simply embezzling the money (I refuse to believe my Step-Mom's nonsensical claim that Newman would be able to get access to the high-tech, uber-secret Embryo Storage Lair, but not have access to the payroll programming or pension fund data), creates the world's most convoluted scheme to steal Hammond's embryos and sell them to a competitor. This film also predicted the rise of vegans. I base that on Lex's line regarding the dinosaurs eating the goat ("I happen to be a vegetarian.")(as someone from the future watching that and hearing the line, "I'm a vegan;" it's kind of chilling). I also realized something weird and kind of dispiriting wih this viewing. I'm not really sure I'd want to travel and go out of my way to go to dinosaur island, because dinosaurs aren't quite as interesting at age 95 as they were when I was young. Don't get me wrong, I still love dinosaurs far more than the average man-child, but I've learned a few things since then. So, I've kept abreast of intelligence-measuring tools developed by modern science (I know, that's a shocker). We all know of the body mass: brain mass ratio; but we've since developed the encephalization quotient (EQ) which, I believe (and I might be wrong) is a comparison of the body mass: brain ratio for a specific animal with the expected ratio of a critter with similar mass. And, when we use that as the predictor, animal rankings look more like what we'd expect, intuitively - Humans, dolphins, chimpanzees, gorillas, and parrots are the top-five scorers. Using that tool, the smartest of dinosaurs were about as intelligent as the dumbest modern birds. I love chickens, but even the most ardent fowl-owner would admit that chickens are not exactly weighted down by brains. That might not seem like an epiphany, but I now own a goldendoodle who is possibly more clever than me (on my bad days). He's a great dog, but that ability to outthink and outorganize me makes him far more troublesome than all the dogs we owned before (and we had 10 huskies at one point). Same thing with dinosaurs, every creature you see has 70 million years' of evolution on them. The critters around today are better-suited to this planet and more interesting (speaking from a biology background)  than the vast majority of dinosaurs. If given the choice between a lifetime pass at the San Diego Wild Animal Park and one or two trips to dinosaur island, I know that we're not going to have elephants for much longer, which makes one clearly more appealing. Which, come to it, may have been the entire point of "Jurassic Park."

[mst3kproject]

208: Lost Continent

I honestly don't remember hating Lost Continent this much when I first saw the episode.  It was just a dull and stupid film that didn't make much of an impression.  About the only thing I could recall was Frank and Dr. Forrester gloating over 'rock climbing'.  I've now watched the fucking movie four times in the effort to find something to say about it, and I've hated it more every time.  Everybody who made this movie needs to be dropped off a cliff.  Lost Continent is the equivalent of writing an essay on Hamlet and spending most of it droning about the anatomy of facial bones, because you haven't actually read Hamlet but you know there's a skull in it somewhere.

An experimental rocket comes down on an island in the Pacific, and a crack team of soldiers and scientists are sent to find it and retrieve its top-secret innards.  A mysterious phenomenon – which later turns out to be the radiation from an immense uranium deposit – causes their plane to crash on the same island, where the natives tell them that the rocket landed atop the local Sacred Mountain. Despite warnings that nobody who tries to climb the mountain ever comes back, they scale its steep cliffs at great length, and at the top discover a prehistoric world of jungles and dinosaurs!

Exactly how much area this plateau covers is never discussed, but I think I'm safe in saying that it does not qualify as a 'continent'.  I'm guessing they called the movie Lost Continent because they wanted to invoke The Lost World without inviting litigation from the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who were evidently just as lawyer-happy seventy years ago as they are today. It's still not a good title, and not even a good bad title.  A good bad movie title is something like Night of the Blood Beast or The Horrors of Spider Island, inviting all sorts of lurid mental pictures that may or may not be relevant to the actual story.  Lost Continent, as a title, is pretty bland. What about Dinosaur Mountain?  Or The Land Above the Clouds? Or Radioactive Island?  Those are just the first three I came up with off the top of my head!

The title may be dull, but when you describe the movie itself, it actually sounds pretty exciting.  A lost prehistoric land at the top of a mountain!  Surely we'll get to see dinosaur fights and atomic mutants and beautiful island women!  And... well... we do get some of those things (despite the constant talk of radioactivity, there are regrettably no atomic mutants), but they're expensive, so the movie uses as few of them as possible.  Instead, it fills eighty minutes mostly by wasting our time.

The movie starts out the way a movie should, by introducing the characters and setting up the rest of the story.  We learn about the rocket, about the crash, and that they have to get the instruments back.  A lot of movies would rush through this stuff to get to the action, so at this point it's actually kind of nice that Lost Continent lingers and lets us meet everybody.  The novelty soon wears off, though, and the movie begins to drag as we move on to a lengthy scene of Cesar Romero's character bragging to a woman about how cool the air force is.  There's an awkward moment when he realizes he's already told her this story, and then he's whisked away on the mission.  This wouldn't be so bad if it served some kind of purpose in the plot.  In a normal movie the girlfriend, and her suspicion that she's not Romero's only girlfriend, would reappear later.  In Lost Continent, she's only there to kill time.

Likewise just about everything else we learned in this opening sequence or in most of the sequences that follow it.  There's the suspicion that Dr. Rostov might be a spy.  In a normal movie, either he would be or else somebody else in the party would be, endangering the whole project – in Lost Continent, there is no spy.  There's the boy and girl on the island who point them towards the crash site.  In a normal movie these characters would continue to help them, or at least be rescued from the volcanic eruption at the end – in Lost Continent, they are never seen or heard from again.  There's the mechanic who talks to his plane like it's his girlfriend.  In a normal movie, he'd be able to save them all by repairing it despite impossible odds – in Lost Continent he's just pointless comic relief.

Despite all the time we spend meeting these characters, we never really feel like we know any of them.  I certainly don't remember most of their names.  I think Cesar Romero's character was called Nolan, but the only one I'm sure of is Dr. Rostov, and only because he's The Russian.  The rest of them all kind of look alike, as guys in fifties movies tend to do, and I don't even recall which one was Hugh Beaumont.  For all the emphasis on them, this is not a character-driven movie, and so the time spent on them, like the time spent on the island kids or Romero's girlfriend, is just wasted.

Then we get into the rock climbing.

I don't know if anything needs to be said about the rock climbing.  Joel pretty much said it all in his little speech on the history of padding: the rock climbing sequence is there to push the movie up to feature length, and while it's actually about fifteen minutes long it feels like it takes four days.  Even when one of the identical cast members falls to his death we don't care, because we as the audience know damned well that there are dinosaurs on the top of that mountain and the movie is deliberately putting off showing them to us!  It's as if your mom decided on Christmas Eve that you can't open presents until New Years.

Anyone who can wade through the rock climbing sequence without falling asleep or turning the movie off is rewarded by finally arriving at the titular Lost Continent.  There are two basic types of prehistoric lands in movies – islands, which come from Edgar Rice Burrough's The Land that Time Forgot, and mountain plateaux, which come from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World. Islands are more common in fiction, perhaps because they seem more plausibly isolated to us, and ironically Doyle's term lost world is often used to refer to them, as in The Lost World: Jurassic Park.  As an example of a mountain plateau 'lost world', Lost Continent is actually pretty rare, and it's interesting that they added the layer of toxic smog around the mountain.  This seems to tie into the plausibility thing.  In somebody's mind, the steep cliffs just weren't enough to keep this ecosystem from interacting with the outside world, so this extra barrier was needed.  Too bad that's the only interesting thing in the movie.

As in the Hamlet metaphor in the opening paragraph, the fact that the film-makers appear to have drawn inspiration from The Lost World doesn't mean they actually read it.  I think they may have seen the 1925 film when it was new, and based their movie on dim recollections of that.  They knew there was a scientific expedition and dinosaurs, and they sure as shit knew there was a mountain, but that seems to be about it.  Like Yorick's skull in Hamlet, the mountain in The Lost World is a fairly iconic image, but not really part of what the story is about.

When we do get to the dinosaurs... well, let's say they're not exactly worth waiting for.  They're realized through cheap, plasticine-y stop motion, and have amusing cartoonish faces.  The two triceratops have parrot-like smiles and while the brontosaurus never snarls like its counterpart in the 1925 Lost World it's still pretty damn silly.  Despite there being a T-rex on the poster, we never see one in the movie.  And this probably doesn't bother anybody but me, but almost nobody who writes 'land of isolated prehistoric creatures' stories ever seems to realize that creatures in such an environment would continue to evolve.  Even if there were recognizable ceratopsians on the mountain, there shouldn't be recognizable sauropods, because those were extinct long before triceratops came along!  The only movies that have an excuse for mixing geological eras like that are the aforementioned Jurassic Park franchise.

And of course, there's the ending where the whole island blows up in a conveniently-timed volcanic eruption, so that there will never be any consequences for any of this.  If the characters went home and said holy shit everybody, we found a mountain with dinosaurs! the entire world would show up to see, leading to lots of science and dinosaurs being put in zoos and a bunch of other things that could make for much better movies than Lost Continent.  We can't have that!  Instead we get our heroes in the same position as the guys in The Mole People or the dude from Phantom Planet, where they can't tell anybody about this amazing thing they found because the evidence is gone and they'll be considered liars or madmen.  I hate those endings.

Lost Continent is a nasty joke of a movie, one that delivers what it promised but in a way that seems calculated to leave the audience feeling cheated.  The dinosaur footage in the trailer is a cynical trick to part people from their money for as little as possible in return.  There's almost nothing in the movie, and everything that is in it sucks.  Yet somehow, it still doesn't leave as bad a taste in my mouth as shit like Hobgoblins or Attack of the The Eye Creatures.  Maybe because Frank and Dr. Forrester warned me about the rock climbing interlude.  Or maybe because by the time we got to the dinosaur footage, my expectations had dipped so low that the shitty plateau sequence actually met them.  Or maybe the movie is just so forgettable that I'm able to repress it without pain.

If you're interested in an adventure story about a 'lost island' where evolution has continued, try Warren Fahy's Fragment. If you want one that explores what happens later in a world where somebody found a lost land of prehistoric life, there's Greg Bear's Dinosaur Summer.  I'm still waiting for somebody to make a movie out of either.

[azvolrien]

Berlin - Day 4

I got up at about 8.30 again and headed off for the natural history museum – on foot this time, as it’s relatively within walking distance; I’d estimate about 20mins/half an hour from the hotel, but the public transport link would have been rather convoluted and probably would have taken longer than walking. Either way I arrived about ten minutes before opening time, so I paused for a quick croissant before the doors opened and bought my ticket. Perhaps the museums at home have spoiled me but there’s a part of me that resents having to pay to get into a museum.

However, this one was worth the admission fee. It’s not remotely as big as the one in London, even including the floors closed for renovation (only the ground floor is currently open to the public), but the collection they do have on display is spectacular.

The first thing you see coming in the door (after the foyer) is the Dinosaur Hall, which houses a lot of fossils, not all of dinosaurs, and four gigantic skeletons: one Kentrosaurus, one Diplodocus, a short-necked sauropod whose name I can’t remember, and arguably the centrepiece of the whole museum, a truly colossal Brachiosaurus.

(cue Jurassic Park theme here)

It was found on a dig in Tanzania, and has a Guinness World Records certificate on display by its feet proclaiming it to be the tallest mounted dinosaur skeleton in the world. The scale of the beast is so awe-inspiring that it’s genuinely difficult to fathom how something so big could move. Even without including its neck – which makes up about half of its 13+m height – it’s taller than any elephant I’ve ever seen, and including its neck it still puts any giraffe to shame. They have a second skull on display by its feet, as the full skeleton is too tall to make out any details of its head. I’m not sure if the one on the ground is a replica and the one mounted on the neck is the real deal or vice versa.

Immediately behind the dinosaurs, in a little alcove of its own, is another highlight of the museum: perhaps the most iconic, instantly recognisable fossil in the world, the famous Berlin Specimen of Archaeopteryx. I’ve seen the London specimen in the museum there, but this one is in a league of its own. It’s far more complete than its already impressive cousin in London, and the level of preservation is unbelievable: as well as the bones themselves, possessed of a certain delicate beauty, you can clearly pick out the impressions of the feathers on its long tail and outstretched wings. Removing the bones from their matrix would ruin this, so a nearby display shows a mounted replica of an Archaeopteryx skeleton, probably made by scanning the original. It’s often referred to as a ‘missing link’ between dinosaurs and birds, but with the knowledge that most theropods had feathers, it’s really more dinosaur than bird.

Speaking of theropods, a nearby chamber houses another amazing skeleton: with about 170 bones, one of the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons found so far. Nicknamed ‘Tristan’ after one of the owners’ sons, he isn’t quite up there with Sue in terms of completeness, but he’s getting there. The bones they’ve found are, though somewhat fragmented, in good enough condition to give a fair bit of information about the animal: they’re fairly sure he was getting on a bit in years, and a swelling in his jaw suggested that he suffered from a tumour there. He was probably a tough old guy, too, as his ribs show evidence of healed breaks.

The museum also houses an extensive biodiversity gallery, starting with a sweeping overview of animal groups and moving on to explain such concepts as speciation, polymorphism within species – demonstrated with two jaguars, one normal and one black – convergent evolution, and mutation. This last was illustrated by a few rather gruesome specimens in jars, including a cyclopean pig and a puppy with one head and two bodies.

After that section was a hall about, I presume, the work of a German wildlife filmmaker, which I think I lacked the cultural background to fully appreciate though there was some good taxidermy in there. After that was something anyone can appreciate, cultural background or not, and what no self-respecting natural history museum should be without: Things In Jars! They probably have more wet specimens in storage in the back rooms, but what they had on public display was impressive enough: a whole huge room filled with shelving units of thousands of glass jars, with more in the centre not accessible to the public but which you could still see peeking through the outer shelves. Mostly fish, but I did spot a crocodile as well.

The next room, all about the development and process of taxidermy, was mostly stuff I was already familiar with from other museums but did include some famous ex-residents of Zoo Berlin: Bobby the gorilla, Bao Bao the panda, and (probably the most famous of all Zoo Berlin’s animals) Knut the polar bear. From there I walked through the geology section – more on earth processes than minerals, though the traditional mineral cabinets were there in a separate room – and paused to watch a short film about the formation of the solar system, which – in a twist – was projected onto the ceiling so that you had to lie back on a specially-designed circular sofa to watch it. I found it a little early, and while waiting for it to start was kept entertained by a group of little girls to regaled us all with a stirring rendition of the extended theme to Miraculous Ladybug. Twice. In Russian.

By then I had seen most of what the museum had to show, including a temporary exhibition about parrots, but I stayed a while longer to do a couple of sketches and revisit a few favourites, and then bought a t-shirt and a pin badge in the gift shop before leaving the museum at about quarter past 3. I stopped at a supermarket I’d passed on the way to buy some rolls and juice, and went back to the hotel for a rest before dinner.

Getting hungry again, I left for an early tea. I’d remembered seeing a few possible restaurants back at the Sony Centre near Potsdamer Platz, so I took the S-Bahn down from Hackescher Markt, switching trains at Friedrichstrasse. I’m not entirely sure what the strict distinction between S-Bahn and U-Bahn is, as a lot of the S-Bahn lines are also mostly underground.

I got a pizza at one of the Sony Centre restaurants – including wait time, it was probably about 6.30 by the time I actually ate – and returned to the hotel for tonight’s write-up, taking the same trains in reverse order. Fun fact about the Berlin S- and U-Bahn: no ticket barriers. I do have a week-ticket I bought at the airport, but I have taken several different trains since then and with the exception of the guard on the train from the airport, nobody has actually checked my ticket. Presumably they rely on the possibility of getting caught out to deter free-riders.

[avmkilleen]

Birds are a group of endothermic vertebrates, characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a lightweight but strong skeleton. Birds live worldwide and range in size from the 5 cm bee hummingbird to the 2.75 m  ostrich. They rank as the class of tetrapods with the most living species, at approximately ten thousand, with more than half of these being passerines, sometimes known as perching birds or, less accurately, as songbirds.

Fossil records and modern advances in “reverse evolution” genetic engineering indicate that birds are the last surviving dinosaurs, termed avian dinosaurs, having evolved from feathered ancestors within the theropod group of saurischian dinosaurs. True birds first appeared during the Cretaceous period, around 100 million years ago.

bird

DNA-based evidence finds that birds diversified dramatically around the time of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event that killed off all other dinosaurs. Birds in South America survived this event and then migrated to other parts of the world via multiple land bridges while diversifying during periods of global cooling.

Primitive bird-like dinosaurs that lie outside class Aves proper, in the broader group Avialae, have been found dating back to the mid-Jurassic period. Many of these early “stem-birds”, such as Archaeopteryx, were not yet capable of fully powered flight, and many retained primitive characteristics like toothy jaws in place of beaks, and long bony tails.

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

C. S. Lewis

Birds have wings which are more or less developed depending on the species; the only known groups without wings are the extinct moas and elephant birds. Wings, which evolved from forelimbs, give most birds the ability to fly, although further speciation has led to some flightless birds, including ratites, penguins, and diverse endemic island species of birds. The digestive and respiratory systems of birds are also uniquely adapted for flight. Some bird species of aquatic environments, particularly the aforementioned flightless penguins, and also members of the duck family, have also evolved for swimming. Birds, specifically Darwin’s finches, played an important part in the inception of Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection.

Some birds, especially corvids and parrots, are among the most intelligent animals; several bird species make and use tools, and many social species pass on knowledge across generations, which is considered a form of culture. Many species annually migrate great distances. Birds are social, communicating with visual signals, calls, and bird songs, and participating in such social behaviours as cooperative breeding and hunting, flocking, and mobbing of predators.

The vast majority of bird species are socially monogamous, usually for one breeding season at a time, sometimes for years, but rarely for life. Other species have polygynous or, rarely, polyandrous  breeding systems. Birds produce offspring by laying eggs which are fertilized through sexual reproduction. They are usually laid in a nest and incubated by the parents. Most birds have an extended period of parental care after hatching. Some birds, such as hens, lay eggs even when not fertilized, though unfertilized eggs do not produce offspring.

Many species of birds are economically important. Domesticated and undomesticated birds are important sources of eggs, meat, and feathers. Songbirds, parrots, and other species are popular as pets. Guano is harvested for use as a fertilizer. Birds prominently figure throughout human culture. About 120–130 species have become extinct due to human activity since the 17th century, and hundreds more before then. Human activity threatens about 1,200 bird species with extinction, though efforts are underway to protect them. Recreational birdwatching is an important part of the ecotourism industry.

Birds From Around the World Birds are a group of endothermic vertebrates, characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a lightweight but strong skeleton.

[ntrending]

Scientists worry that shrinking national monuments will hurt their research

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/scientists-worry-that-shrinking-national-monuments-will-hurt-their-research/

Scientists worry that shrinking national monuments will hurt their research

The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology is suing to defend Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments in Utah. They’re trying to protect more than 400 archaeology sites, where scientists have found thousands of important fossils—including Diabloceratops, one of the oldest known triceratops and David Polly’s personal favorite. When Polly became the president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, he never expected that filing lawsuits would be part of the gig.

“We’re primarily a scientific organization,” he says. “We have a scientific conference, we have a scientific journal. But part of our organization’s mission is developing policies and best practices and advocating for vertebrate fossils.”

On December 4, the Trump administration announced that they intend to reduce Bear’s Ears to about 15 percent of the 1.5 million acres designated by President Obama last year. The executive branch will also shrink Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument to about half its current size, which was put in place by Bill Clinton in 1996. Polly says that the changes to the national monuments in southern Utah affect at least ten percent of his whole organization, about 2,200 scientists.

Scientists worry that private enterprises such as mineral excavation and drilling will disturb the fossils and wildlife at the monuments, and that this presidential action will lead to funding cuts that will limit both research and science communication. Popular Science spoke to three scientists about their research—and their concerns about how cuts to Bear’s Ears and Grand Staircase will affect it.

Allison Stegner

Allison Stegner, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, studies packrat middens in the Bear’s Ears national monument. That might sound cute, but the research involves anything but fuzzy rodent gloves. These small mammals collect carnivore bones, coyote poop, and the regurgitations of raptors and owls. “It’s really charming,” says Stegner.

Because packrats are so picky about the rocky hovels where they spend their lives, a single family can occupy the same space for thousands of years. This makes them ideal archaeological assistants. “If you were to dig a hole through the sand you would find ancient, buried levels of the packrat nest,” says Stegner. By exploring these layers, she learns about how different species—plants, animals, long-gone mollusks, and even a juvenile parrot—have responded to past environmental changes. With this data, she makes hypotheses about how Utah’s native species will respond to future climate change. She has found that small mammal populations remained pretty much stable over 5,000 years. But that all started to change over the last couple centuries. Lately, species have been disappearing.

In addition to her packrat work, Stegner surveys fossils across the monument. She has found the bones of a phytosaur, an extinct crocodile with a long snout and extensive body armor. She’s also tracked down some Permian fossils that help paleontologist piece together how different species moved from the water to the land over the course of their evolution.

Stegner says that oil and gas mining pose a threat to the rare fossil beds in Bear’s Ears, which shed light on how different species once interacted. “I have no problem with multi-use land in any way, but I do have a problem with giving over this incredible place, that is so important culturally and scientifically, to [serve] the interests of a few people,” she says.

Seth Bybee

Seth Bybee, life sciences professor at Brigham Young University, started hearing reports of fireflies in Utah in 2012. He wanted to investigate the diversity of local firefly populations. He started to collect fireflies in the state, but realized that the research was going to be slow going. Then, he had the idea of harnessing the power of the masses. With the help of Christie Bills, then a collections manager at the Natural History Museum of Utah, he set up a website where citizen scientists could report their firefly observations. Their project took off. “We think we’ve discovered three new species, though we have to do a lot of leg work to make sure,” he says. “We’re pretty excited about that.”

Western fireflies are the party insects of the Pyractomena world. They tend to come out earlier and stay out later than their eastern counterparts, which makes them easier to spot. Volunteers can submit their sightings with a timestamp and habitat information. Undergrads or trained citizen scientists venture out to check the site, which the researchers then load onto a map of fireflies in Utah.

Bybee says that convincing people to submit data was easy. “Turns out Utahns love fireflies,” he says. “It was not a hard sell to get people to participate.” And the project is a popular public service to people who want a luminescent camping experience. Bybee says he gets as many requests for information on where the fireflies are as submissions with new sightings.

Many of the firefly sightings lie with the national monument. Bybee says he doesn’t know how the shrinking public lands will affect his research, or the firefly populations. He anticipates some early conveniences. “It might actually make it easier on us because we don’t have to get as many permits,” he says. But he worries about how the changes will affect his research over time. “We might lose the possibility to get down there and look at these things in untarnished habitats,” he says.

Robert Gay

When Robert Gay was an undergraduate studying paleontology, his research cleared a dinosaur species of cannibalism charges. Other scientists thought that Coelophysis, a bird-like dinosaur, ate its young because they found some bones inside the Coelophysis rib cage. But Gay disproved this theory. “My work showed that the animals had been underneath, not inside, the animals,” he says. “And some of the bones would not have been able to fit down the esophagus.”

Now Gay looks for fossils in Bear’s Ears. He knows exactly what will happen if the monument status is taken away. He’s already lived that scenario. Barack Obama only designated the monument in December 2016. While Gay was working in Bear’s Ears before the change, one of the sites was looted. The skull of a crocodile mimic called a Pravasuchus was returned to staff at the petrified forests of Arizona. The researchers there published an abstract announcing they had the fossilized head right as Gay and his research team discovered the rest of the body. It fit perfectly.

When the site became a national monument, extra law enforcement were assigned to protect archaeological sites. Now, Gay says he is concerned that funding will be cut and his dig, right off the highway, will become a beacon for fossil thieves. “It becomes harder to do the work,” he says. He was also hoping that the area could someday be turned into a dinosaur park display, because of the diversity of species in the area. Visitors might be able to imagine Utah as the Jurassic (or Triassic) Park it once was, with many species of dinosaurs and mammals interacting. Tax dollars fund scientific research, after all, and U.S. citizens deserve to get their money’s worth. Now, he says that dream is a long shot, and people are less likely to view—and be amazed by—the megafauna that once ruled the region. “The public may never get to see this site,” he says.

Written By Ellen Airhart

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Euryapteryx curtus

By Jack Wood

Etymology: Broad Lacker of Wings

First Described By: Haast, 1874

Classification: Dinosauromorpha, Dinosauriformes, Dracohors, Dinosauria, Saurischia, Eusaurischia, Theropoda, Neotheropoda, Averostra, Tetanurae, Orionides, Avetheropoda, Coelurosauria, Tyrannoraptora, Maniraptoriformes, Maniraptora, Pennaraptora, Paraves, Eumaniraptora, Averaptora, Avialae, Euavialae, Avebrevicauda, Pygostylia, Ornithothoraces, Euornithes, Ornithuromorpha, Ornithurae, Neornithes, Palaeognathae, Notopalaeognathae, Tinamiformes + Dinornithiformes Clade, Dinornithiformes, Emeidae

Status: Extinct

Time and Place: Between 130,000 and 600 years ago, from the Chibanian of the Pleistocene and the Holocene 

The Broad-Billed Moa is known from all over the New Zealand islands, especially lowland dunes, forests, shrublands, and grasslands 

Physical Description: The Broad-Billed Moa was a large, bulky dinosaur, covered in very shaggy feathers all over its body. It had a long neck, ending in a small head, with a wide bill - hence the name! It also had very sturdy, thick feet. These birds - like all Moa - entirely lost their wings, giving them a fairly boxy appearance. Their shaggy feathers would have been somewhat monochromatic, as well. These birds would grow up to one meter long, and females of this species were probably larger than the males. 

Diet: The Broad-Billed Moa was an herbivore, grazing on a wide variety of plant material (including grass). 

By Michael B. H., CC BY-SA 3.0 

Behavior: These birds would have been somewhat slower animals, spending most of their time lumbering about the coasts and plains of New Zealand, and eating most of the plant material they could find. They probably would eat as much food as they could, using their broad bills to grab more food and to not selectively browse on specific plants. They also probably herded together, forming loose groups as they roamed across the fields for food. These birds probably took care of their young, though how and to what extent is uncertain as it varies quite a bit amongst other ratites. 

Ecosystem: New Zealand in the Pleistocene and Holocene was an extremely unique ecosystem, one of the few places in the world largely free of mammals during the Cenozoic. This meant that birds tended to fill the niches of mammals, doing things that ancient non-avian dinosaurs used to do. In addition, the lack of mammalian predators allowed for extensive diversification of birds even within their usual niches - the weird New Zealand Wrens, for example, are some of the most unique types of perching birds.  

By Scott Reid 

This environment consisted of many other Moas, such as Pachyornis, Anomalopteryx, and Dinornis just to name a few; the aforementioned Kiwi bird; and other large weird birds like the Kākāpō and Kea and Kākā, other parrots, other passerines, cuckoos, swifts, water birds, owls, and more. During the days of the Moa, there was also the Haast’s Eagle, a large predator of Moa that would have been a huge thorn in the side of the Broad-Billed Moa. Also, there were Adzebills, weird relatives of living cranes that also filled the large land bird niche but with pointier beaks. In short, this was a modern-day Jurassic park, prior to being screwed up by human colonization and hunting, which drove many of these unique animals to extinction in the early modern period of history.

Other: For a long time, Moa like Euryapteryx were thought to be closely related to the other weird ratite of New Zealand, the Kiwi. However, later research revealed they were more closely related to the Tinamous of South America. What this shows is that, at some point, relatives of the Tinamous flew over to New Zealand, and colonized the island before becoming large, flightless weirdos.

~ By Meig Dickson

Sources Under the Cut 

Bunce, M., T. H. Worthy, M. J. Phillips, R. N. Holdaway, E. Willerslev, J. Haile, B. Shapiro, R. P. Scofield, A. Drummond, P. J. J. Kamp, and A. Cooper. 2009. The evolutionary history of the extinct ratite moa and New Zealand Neogene paleogeography. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106:20646-20651

Carroll, R. L. 1988. Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution 1-698

Davies, S. J. J. F. (2003). "Moas". In Hutchins, Michael (ed.). Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia. 8: Birds I: Tinamous and Ratites to Hoatzins (2nd ed.). Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group.

Gill, B. J. (2010). "Regional comparisons of the thickness of moa eggshell fragments (Aves: Dinornithiformes)". Records of the Australian Museum. 62: 115–122.

Lambrecht, K. 1933. Handbuch der Palaeornithologie. 1-1024

Milkovsky, J. 1995. Nomenclatural and taxonomic status of fossil birds described by H.G.L. Reichenbach in 1852. Courier Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg 181:311-316

Owen, R. (1846). A History of British Fossil Mammals and Birds. London, UK: John Van Voorst.

Worthy, T. H., and R. N. Holdaway. 1994. Quaternary fossil faunas from caves in Takaka Valley and on Takaka Hill, northwest Nelson, South Island, New Zealand. Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand 24(3):297-391

Worthy, T. H., and R. N. Holdaway. 1996. Taphonomy of two holocene microvertebrate deposits, Takaka Hill, Nelson, New Zealand, and identification of the avian predator responsible. Historical Biology 12(1):1-24

Worthy, T. H. 1998. A remarkable fossil and archaeological avifauna from Marfells Beach, Lake Grassmere, South Island, New Zealand. Records of the Canterbury Museum 12:79-176

Worthy, T. H., and J. A. Grant-Mackie. 2003. Late-Pleistocene avifaunas from Cape Wanbrow, Otago, South Island, New Zealand. Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand 33(1):427-485

Worthy, T. H.; Scofield, R. P. (2012). "Twenty-first century advances in knowledge of the biology of moa (Aves: Dinornithiformes): a new morphological analysis and moa diagnoses revised". New Zealand Journal of Zoology. 39 (2): 87–153.