Betty cover science

  

Dinosaur or Dino-sore-throat?

Dolly The Dinosaur?  She was discovered back in 1990.  She's in the news again.

CNN reports:

 

About 150 million years ago, a young long-necked dinosaur fell ill, likely coughing and suffering from a fever as it wandered what is now southwest Montana.

The fossil of this dinosaur, nicknamed "Dolly" for Dolly Parton, has revealed what could be the first evidence of a respiratory infection in a dinosaur, according to new research. A study detailing the findings published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports.

The diplodocid, an herbivorous dinosaur with a long neck, reached about 60 feet (18 meters) in length and was between 15 and 20 years old when it died, according to Cary Woodruff, lead study author and director of paleontology at the Great Plains Dinosaur Museum in Malta, Montana.

Dolly's remains, including a complete skull and neck vertebrae, were first discovered in 1990 at a site in Montana yielding other dinosaur discoveries. They aren't able to determine Dolly's gender based on the fossils.

 

 Sid Perkins (SCIENCE NEWS) notes:

Lesions found in the vertebrae of a 150-million-year-old juvenile sauropod dubbed “Dolly” point to a lung infection that moved into her bones, vertebrate paleontologist Cary Woodruff and colleagues report February 10 in Scientific Reports. That’s at least 50 million years older than the previously reported respiratory infection in a titanosaur unearthed in Brazil.

Dolly, a long-necked dinosaur, was probably closely related to Diplodocus. At the time of her death in what’s now southwestern Montana, she was about 18 meters long and less than 20 years old, Woodruff estimates.

The fossils that the team analyzed include the dinosaur’s skull and the first seven neck vertebrae, which contained air sacs connected to the lungs and other parts of the respiratory system. The bones of many of today’s birds, which are modern-day dinosaurs, have similar features. 

On the fifth through seventh vertebrae, the fossils have bone lesions at spots where the air sacs would have intruded into the bone, the team found. The oddly shaped and textured bumps protrude from the bone as much as 1 centimeter, says Woodruff, of the Great Plains Dinosaur Museum in Malta, Mont.

And here's one more video report.

 

 

"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):