One of many of a series devoted to all things Mesozoic and dinosaurian!
These are the Flaming Cliffs, a small portion of the vast Gobi Desert that has come to be an absolute treasure trove of paleontological discoveries in the last century.
First scientifically explored by Roy Champman Andrews and an expedition formed by New York City's American Museum of Natural History throughout the early 1920s, the Flaming Cliffs has yielded a great number of important scientific finds--the first known dinosaur eggs (belonging to the bird-like but non-avian Oviraptor), the beaked hervbivore Protoceratops, and the subject of this week's diary--Velociraptor (or 'Swift Seizer').
Velociraptor mongoliensis (the more commmon of the two known species of Velociraptor) was a small, roughly turkey-sized predator that occupied the dune-fields of ancient 75-71 million year old Mongolia. One of the more famous members of the Dromaeosauridae (thanks largely to Jurassic Park), it shares many distinctive features with other 'raptors' found in the northern ancient continent of Laurasia (the first to split from the ancient supercontinent Pangea).
It held a 'semi-lunate carpal', or a half-moon shaped wrist that forced its hands to face inwards, as though it was about to clap (something that countless documentaries and movies have gotten wrong--including Jurassic Park).
However, possibly its most iconic feature is found on its foot--like all other theropods (including birds), Velociraptor had four toes--however, whereas most other Mesozoic theropods walked on three digits with a fourth atrophied (or greatly shrunk), Velociraptor walked on the third and fourth, with its second held up in the air. This was due to a massive sickle-shaped pedal ungual (or toe claw), very likely used in predation.
This type of claw, first described by paleontologist John Ostrom in the 1960s on another Dromaeosaur called Deinonychus has had several uses suggested--disembowelment (in which it cuts open the guts of its prey), vital organ puncturing (think artery in the neck!), or as a sort of crampon--used to enter and hold onto the thick hides of its potential prey (this last hypothesis has been strengthened by an experiment involving a model claw/leg and a dead pig--the claw stuck in the skin and bunched it together instead of tearing through).
Of all the Velociraptor skeletons uncovered, possibly none is more famous or visceral as the 'Fighting Dinosaurs' discovered by a joint Polish/Soviet expedition in 1971. It captures a moment in time countless millions of years ago in which a Velociraptor was tangled in combat with a Protoceratops for its meal. The pair were rapidly buried, either by a sand storm or a collapsed dune.
Due to some missing skeletal elements of the Protoceratops, it has been suggested that after burial and death, they were temporarily uncovered long enough for scavengers to drag off the limbs, then re-buried soonafter.
For years, it was hypothesized that Velociraptor and other Dromaeosaurids were feathered (before a group of discoveries detailed here, this was due to the countless similarities found in the skeletal structures of both Dromaeosaurs and their cousins, the birds). But for Velociraptor, we lacked requisite degree of concrete proof.
Until that is, a discovery made by paleontologist Mark Norell (who, fittingly, is a curator of paleontology at New York's Museum of Natural History) in 2007--quill knobs in the arm bone of a Velociraptor--each serving as an anchor point for a fully developed modern style wing feather.
Unlike many other sciences, there is almost never an ultimate answer in paleontology--we can reach a broad understanding of the ancient natural world, but that understanding shifts and sharpens over time. New discoveries open new doors which in turn provide new questions. That's our job--we explore, we ask these questions (and seek any answers that can be found), and if we can we translate these questions and our thoughts behind them to the rest of the world.
Hopefully I've been able to do just that!
Enjoy, and feel free to rec away.
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Past dairies can be found here--
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