Ancient T. rex ancestor discovered: Khankhuuluu, ‘prince of dragons'
A new species of early tyrannosaur, dubbed the 'prince of dragons,' has been discovered lurking in a collection of fossils first excavated in Mongolia in the early 1970s, scientists said Wednesday in the journal Nature.
Article content
Khankhuuluu mongoliensis — its scientific name — is an evolutionary ancestor of the most famous tyrannosaur, the 'tyrant lizard king,' T. rex.
Article content
Article content
Article content
With their bone-crushing bites and spindly little arms, large tyrannosaurs (scientifically known as 'eutyrannosaurians') are the celebrities of the dinosaur world. But they started off as small-bodied tyrannosauroids some 150 million years ago in the Jurassic period. It wasn't until the late Cretaceous that they began evolving into the giants that ignite people's imaginations.
Article content
Article content
Their precise evolutionary origins, however, have long been murky. A critical swath of the family tree is blank.
Article content
Khankhuuluu, known from two partial skeletons in fossil collections at the Institute of Paleontology in Mongolia, helps fill in this gap — a transitional 86 million-year-old species that represents the closest known ancestor to the famed late tyrannosaurs.
Article content
Previously, it had been described as an alectrosaurus, another early tyrannosaur. Asked for a modern-day comparison, University of Calgary graduate student Jared Voris, who led the work, said to imagine a large, predatory horse.
Article content
Article content
'What makes them so important is their age,' said Stephen Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved in the study. 'They are about 86 million years old, a good 20 million years older than T. rex. It has been a frustrating gap in the record.'
Article content
Voris was on a research trip in Mongolia in 2023 when he sent a text halfway across the world to his adviser, Darla Zelenitsky, an associate professor of paleontology. He told her that he thought some of the fossils he had examined in a museum collection were actually a new species.
Article content
Those specimens had been classified for decades as alectrosaurus, 'an enigmatic and poorly represented tyrannosauroid species,' Zelenitsky and Voris wrote in their study.
Article content
What leaped out to Voris initially was that the snout bone was hollow, a clear sign that this was an early ancestor of the tyrannosaur family. It was the first of what would come to be dozens of features that suggested this creature was something new.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CBC
19 hours ago
- CBC
'Randomness and chaos': The invisible, unpredictable forces behind fatal rockfall
Social Sharing Scientist Daniel Shugar says images of the aftermath of Thursday's deadly rockslide in Banff National Park provide evidence of its cause — water flowing through the interior of the mountain. "You can actually see some springs coming out of the cliff and actually coming out exactly from the scar itself," said the University of Calgary professor of geomorphology. He described how water from a lake above the cliff at Bow Glacier Falls had been seeping through rocks for decades before it eventually provided enough force to dislodge a boulder, triggering the rockfall. "That lake has existed since 1955," he said. "So over the last 70 years, the water from this lake (and the) glacier retreating has been trying to go downhill through the cracks. It essentially provided the pressure to dislodge the rock." While the forces may have been building for years, Shugar and other scientists agree it would have been impossible for Parks Canada to predict or prevent the massive rockfall. "Yesterday was just a bad confluence of events where this chunk of rock essentially popped out of the cliff," he said. "And, you know, unfortunately, tragically, there were hikers down below." Experts agreed that while evidence of previous rockfalls is easy to see, predicting exactly when they will occur is impossible. Davide Elmo, a mining engineering professor at the University of British Columbia, said that looking at a rock face from the outside doesn't show what's happening inside. "Some people might ask Parks Canada, why didn't you do anything about it," said Elmo, who also has a degree in engineering geology and is an expert in rock mechanics. "Well, that kind of rockfall cannot be stopped." He said the only thing officials can do is to tell the public about the risks when they enter an area that might be prone to rockfalls. "We know they will happen. We don't know when they will happen," said Elmo. Witnesses reported rumblings and stones moving before a slab of mountain broke loose and rained boulders on hikers below. The rockfall occurred in a scenic area close to a popular trail. Looking ahead, Elmo said officials should put up a notice in the area, warning hikers to "minimize the time" spent in that location. "You can take photos from a distance, but don't stay under the slope. That's the worst place to be," said Elmo. John J. Clague, an emeritus professor in Earth sciences at Simon Fraser University, said that when he looks at the Banff and Jasper landscapes, he sees lots of cones marking where rockfalls have occurred in the past. "Predicting exactly where one is going to occur, unless you have some prior indication that something was going on, would be very tough." he said. Body of 2nd victim recovered from rockfall in Banff National Park 1 day ago Duration 5:21 Two people are now confirmed dead in a massive rockfall that struck numerous hikers near Bow Glacier Falls in Banff National Park on Thursday. A 70-year-old Calgary woman was found dead at the scene on Thursday, and RCMP say a second deceased person was recovered on Friday morning. Clague said rockfalls are common in the southern Rocky Mountains, but most are never witnessed. Thursday's slide involved "people being kind of in the wrong place at the wrong time," said Clague. John Pomeroy, Canada Research Chair in water resources and climate change at the University of Saskatchewan, said there was no early indicator from water levels in Iceberg Lake, which feeds Bow Glacier Falls, that could have predicted the tragedy. "There's a lot of randomness and chaos in events like a rock slide, so the conditions were perhaps favourable to it, but that it happened was simply bad luck," he said. "And particularly happening at that time of day when there were people there was extremely bad luck." Pomeroy said that this year, the glacier started melting early, raising water levels in Iceberg Lake earlier than normal. "It's certainly more hazardous because of climate change, but it's hard to say that climate change caused any particular event," he said. Clague said all glaciers in Canada have undergone thinning and retreating amid the warming climate, and he thinks this incident is linked to climate change.
Edmonton Journal
a day ago
- Edmonton Journal
What we know about yawning, from why we do it to why it's contagious
Article content Yawning is strange. It's not obviously just mechanical, like a burp to release gas pressure, or just psychological, like a yelp to express fear or excitement. A yawn is more like a sneeze or a hiccup, an involuntary breath event that is sometimes more or less resistible. But what is really strange, almost unique among human behaviours, is that yawning is contagious. Article content New research on chimpanzees by a British team of cognitive scientists shows contagious yawning is not only common in other species, and can happen between species, but that it can also be induced in chimps by an obviously artificial humanoid robot, an android 'agent' that is just a creepy looking disembodied head and shoulders, and which doesn't even breathe, but which can still give a believable facsimile of a yawn. The paper, published this month in Nature Scientific Reports, details an experiment in which the chimps were shown three behaviours by the android: a full wide-mouth yawn, a more moderate gaping mouth, and a closed mouth. 'The results showed that adult chimpanzees exhibited across-agent yawn contagion, with a graded response: the highest contagion occurred when the android displayed a fully wide-open mouth (Yawn condition), a reduced response when the mouth was partially opened (Gape condition), and no contagion when the android's mouth was closed,' the paper says. Article content And the chimps did not only yawn in response to the yawning robot. They also 'engaged in behaviours associated with drowsiness,' basically by preparing a comfortable place to lie down. 'This suggests that yawning by an unfamiliar model may act as a contextual cue for rest, rather than merely triggering a motor resonance response,' the paper says. Diverse species exhibit contagious yawning, certainly mammals like dogs and cats, but even fish, whose respiratory system shares evolutionary origins with our own. Most vertebrates yawn, but those that are known to yawn contagiously are usually pack animals, somehow social. This suggests the evolutionary purpose of the yawn is at least partly at the level of the group, not just the individual. A sneeze just tries to blast stuff out of your nose, a burp just lets gas out of your belly, but a yawn means something to other people. Not always, of course, Yawning might, for example, help cool the brain for optimal performance, as one theory holds. But yawning also involves empathy, as its contagious aspect shows. It is a social phenomenon, and catching, like laughter. 'What I find strange is that if we see someone walking, we don't an feel urge to walk. But with yawning, we do,' said Ramiro Joly-Mascheroni, a research fellow in social and cognitive neuroscience at City St. George's University of London in the U.K., in an interview. There are a few other behaviours like this. Itching and scratching can be contagious, and tickling seems to rely on an empathetic response to the tickler in order to elicit laughter as opposed to mere annoyance. Article content Joly-Mascheroni has been intrigued by this for years, and investigated it seriously for at least two decades, prompted in the first instance by once realizing he was able to make his dog yawn by yawning himself. At the time, he was studying developmental disorders such as autism, which is often characterized by an inability to empathize or perceive what others are thinking. He was also interested in social interaction during sensory impairment, prompted by his late father's worsening blindness. A key early finding in this research program, of which the new paper is the latest contribution, was that children with autism do not yawn contagiously as much as other children. That seemed to suggest their impaired ability to imagine another person's thoughts was interfering with the contagious aspect of yawning. Later work complicated this finding, by showing that if autistic children were instructed to keep looking at the yawner's face, the difference would disappear. Article content Joly-Mascheroni hypothesized that it was not so much seeing the open mouth that caused the contagion, but rather the eye contact. So he did experiments with eye-tracking technology, but these were inconclusive. People tended to look at the yawning mouth more than the eyes. The chimpanzees in the latest study with the android were from a rescue facility in Spain, and many had been traumatized in earlier life, used and abused in circuses or in advertising. Some demonstrated behaviours comparable to human psychopathy or mental distress, such as rocking back and forth, which might also suggest an impaired empathetic reaction to other chimps or people. Human psychopaths, for example, don't yawn contagiously, and they don't feel tickling, in both cases Joly-Mascheroni said as a result of insensitivity to other people's emotions, good or bad. Article content But the rescued chimps plainly love their current handlers, and Joly-Mascheroni said you would expect they would therefore be more susceptible to the effect of socially contagious yawning from these handlers. But the opposite was true. The chimps would yawn contagiously with strangers more than with their familiar handlers. This is how he got thinking about androids, the ultimate strangers. So while yawning remains mysterious, Joly-Mascheroni thinks he has a grasp on the basics. Yawning happens at the interface of rest and arousal, he said. It might signal to a group that it is time to sleep, or that some members are about to sleep so others should be awake. That is a plausible evolutionary origin with good explanatory power for the contagion. Yawning may have emerged as what the paper describes as 'a pre-language form of communication.' Article content Latest National Stories
Calgary Herald
2 days ago
- Calgary Herald
'Nothing threatening about it': U of C study explores how robots could address social isolation in seniors
Article content Loneliness and social isolation are growing challenges for older adults living in care facilities. But a recent study by a University of Calgary student suggests that robots might be able to fill the gaps where existing programs fall short. Article content Fahimeh Mehrabi, a PhD student in psychology at the U of C, presented a research paper earlier this month at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences in Toronto, titled Wired for Companionship: A Meta-Analysis on Social Robots Filling the Void of Loneliness in Later Life. Article content Article content Article content Article content Her research compiled available quantitative studies that measured loneliness before and after using robots. When she combined and reanalyzed the data, the results were promising. Article content 'Our findings showed that all types of social robots, whether simple or more advanced, can help. As long as they are designed to engage and interact, they are effective,' she said. Article content The idea isn't as far-fetched as it sounds — social robots have been tested in elder care for more than a decade in countries such as Japan and Turkey. Article content Article content Models range from human or pet-like robots that offer comfort through touch and movement, to voice-activated AI companions that can engage in conversations. Often, they offer some combination of both. Article content Unison, the not-for-profit organization that runs the Kerby Centre in Calgary, is all too familiar with the prevalence of social loneliness and isolation among its clients. Article content 'There was a recent study that found prolonged isolation was as bad as smoking 15 cigarettes a day,' said Larry Mathieson, president and CEO of Unison. Article content Unison is tackling senior isolation and loneliness through a wide range of traditional programs at the Kerby and Veiner Centres. These include hundreds of fitness, music and social classes available in person or online. Article content During the COVID-19 pandemic, Unison's online classes helped seniors learn new tech skills and stay socially active. Online classes under its Active Aging department stayed in place post-pandemic due to their accessibility and positive effects.
