The rebirth of zombie dinosaurs

The rebirth of zombie dinosaurs https://i2.wp.com/www.eresviral.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/El-renacer-de-los-dinosaurios-zombis.jpg?fit=247%2C146&ssl=1

The rebirth of zombie dinosaurs







The zombies of Walking Dead and the White Walkers of Game of Thrones have something in common: their dead bodies are in process of decomposition, some parts are missing or are skinned, and others are deformed. With this gloomy image, some paleontologists go to the reconstruction of fossils of dinosaurs.



Although they are no more than their bones, those creatures that inhabited the Earth millions of years ago had more muscles and fat at the time than the undead of Halloween night. But, after the death of the animal, organic matter is the first to disappear and the body is incomplete at the time of fossilization.



This process could distort the original form of dinosaurs and other beings at the time of reconstruction. So, were they really like us?



"As soon as an organism dies, it begins to decompose and this process of decomposition inevitably involves changes in the appearance of the characteristics or parts of the body: they can collapse, alter their shape or position; very soon they liquefy and they are devoured by bacteria until there is nothing left, "explains professor Sarah Gabbott of the School of Geography, Geology and Environment of the University of Leicester (United Kingdom).

In a study, published in the journal Paleontology and funded by the Natural Environment Research Council of the United Kingdom, a group of British scientists has conducted a series of experiments with corpses of modern animals to try to understand how much of a fossil is missing and what has changed by decomposition and mineralization.







Artistic reconstruction of a Tyrannosaurus rex zombie. The missing parts are the result of the degradation of your body after the death of the animal. (Photo: Herschel Hoffmeyer)



For these paleontologists, the image that is created of animals and their ecosystems is more precise, more complete and, above all, less partial. "Some of the characteristics that are present are not at all like those they had when the animal was alive and many traits are completely missing. The trick is to recognize the partially decomposed characteristics, where the parts of the body rotted completely, "emphasizes Mark Purnell, lead author and researcher at the University of Leicester (United Kingdom).



According to these scientists, the decomposition of dead animals, from the clown fish and lampreys (primitive creatures similar to eels) to insects and several worms, shows that the "carefully designed" experiments provide unique information about the processes of decomposition and fossilization.



However, to what extent do soft tissues influence the history of biodiversity and evolution? "Without the skeletal tissues we would not know neither the dinosaurs, nor the trilobites, nor the ammonites, nor the origin of life 3,500 million years ago, nor the majority of our ancestors because the majority of the fossil record consists of that only: skeletons, shells, bones, shells, tracks, footprints and ichnites ", ditch to Sinc Gloria Cuenca Bescós, from the University of Zaragoza.



At the end of the 19th century, taphonomy was born, the science that deals with "burial laws" and that would allow paleontologists to understand how animals left their tracks and thus analyze the accumulation, modification and preservation of fossil remains.



"The lack of anatomical knowledge leads to the reconstruction of botched jobs far removed from reality", explains the researcher. According to her, new methods and technologies of paleontological excavation are necessary to correct the errors.



Therefore, before venturing to reconstruct anything, the first question that scientists must ask is: what was the living being whose fossil they study? "Even so mistakes are made," Cuenca-Bescós points out, "surely many more than we would like to admit to paleontologists."



In addition, not everything that appeared in the deposits were skeletal remains, there were also icnitas (dinosaur footprints), fossilized burrows, eggshells, mollusc shells or unicellular microorganisms, pollen, seeds, insects and plants in amber, among many others.



In the absence of soft tissues, paleontologists generally apply techniques and methodologies of comparative anatomy and applied taphonomy at the same time of the excavations.



"When we know what the areas of muscle insertion are, we can know what the muscle was like, what strength it should exercise and what levers it was moving. So it is not difficult to rebuild an animal, although it has already been extinguished, "he says.



The present also helps them to reconstruct the past: the biology of the current species are their model. How would we know but how fast the dinosaurs grew? The answer is thanks to observations with chickens and crocodiles, their closest current relatives.



These techniques are combined with the analysis of ancient DNA, biomimetics in sediments and bones. This is the only way to know for example that Neanderthals could have red hair, know the color of the feathers of dinosaurs or the type of bacteria that inhabited the original earth three billion years ago.



But the reconstruction of a fossil is not complete until we understand how and where the animals lived. And in this sense, one of the aspects that have most concerned paleontologists, within the taphonomy, are the accumulations of fossils.



"Explaining life in the past also requires knowing how the organisms that once formed the biosphere left their mark," says the scientist at the University of Zaragoza.



When large amounts of remains of stacked mammals appear in the sites, there is only one explanation: the action of hominids or carnivores. And this is confirmed by several studies.



This is the case of the Rincones site in Zaragoza, where 1,443 remains of fragments of fossil bones, mainly goats, have been recovered. It is one of the few European sites whose accumulation is due to the action of leopards and the use of the cave as a winter refuge for brown bears.



Paleontologists found among all these bones the remains of brown bears and leopards that confirmed their activity during the Upper Pleistocene, more than 11,000 years ago.



Another recent study, led by scientists from the National Research Center on Human Evolution (CENIEH), also corroborated the action of carnivores in the preservation of the sites. The experiments carried out with foxes in the Natural Park of the Alt Pirineu in Lleida made it possible to demonstrate that thousands of years ago these small carnivores accumulated large quantities of bones and also modified them, being able to produce great alterations in the deposits.



Only taking into account all these aspects, scientists finally manage to reconstruct not only the animal or the plant, but also its entire environment, the ecosystem in which it lived, how it reproduced and even how it walked. (Source: SINC)

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