I know it must seem like I get a real kick out of spotting other’s taxonomic mistakes and pointing them out here, but really I’d be a much happier man if it wasn’t necessary. All it would take would be for journalists to double check their terms before going to press, or to make sure they got their pieces proof read by someone familiar with the subject. It’s the BBC’s turn again this time, and in the midst of what is, otherwise, an excellent piece about recent pioneering work on determining the colour of dinosaur feathers, by using an electron microscope to examine the shape and structure of fossilised melanosomes. There’s nothing at all wrong with most of the article. In fact, go and read it now; I’ll wait.
See? It’s all very interesting; well researched, and well written, and it avoids the two most grating errors science pieces in the mainstream media usually make; making it sound like this has overturned everything we’ve previously thought about the subject, and giving ‘equal time’ to some wacko who disagrees with the research. So, yes, it’s a great piece. With one small error:
A relatively benign mistake to make while sat at a desk in a nice comfortable office, but there are scenarios where you might want to be a little more careful in checking your definitions…
Oh, oh, oh! This is an exciting one! Earlier this year, when the discovery that Komodo Dragons (Varanus komodoensis) are venomous was published, I idly wondered if any dinosaurs were as well. Komodo Dragons and dinosaurs are not closely related, so there was no reason to make that leap, beyond the fact that they are (or, in the case of dinosaurs, were) both large terrestrial reptiles, and that I want it to be true.
Well, it turns out I might yet be onto a winner with that one. A recent publication by Enpu Gong of the Chinese Academy of Sciences documents fossil evidence that Sinornithosaurus, a small Cretaceous theropod from what is now China, possessed a venomous bite. The venom gland itself, being soft tissue, has not been preserved1, but the skull contains a cavity that Gong believes could have contained one. More convincingly, the animal had long, grooved upper teeth, like those used by extant rear-fanged snakes to inject venom into prey, with voids above them, which could have functioned as local reservoirs.
Not everybody’s convinced, and I’d categorise the evidence as ‘strongly suggestive’ rather than a slam-dunk, but it’s fascinating stuff and lends a big pile of credibility to an idea that I really want to be true.
Check out Ed Yong’s longer and better coverage, over at Not Exactly Rocket Science.
- Which is not to say that soft tissue can never leave fossil evidence, in fact Sinornithosaurus is also famous for being one of the first dinosaurs to be discovered with fossilised feather-impressions, merely that it is significantly rarer. [↩]
Shamelessly stolen from someone I don’t know called Emily Sauls on Facebook.