Myth of Dwarf Dinos in Dracula Country Confirmed

Myth of Dwarf Dinos in Dracula Country Confirmed
Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News


June 13, 2008 -- In 1900, the sister of an eccentric Austro-Hungarian aristocrat named Baron von Nopsca found a tiny bone on the baron's family estate in Transylvania, a historical region in present-day Romania. The baron, who was a dinosaur buff, identified the bone as belonging to a dwarf dino that likely once lived on an island in the region.

The motorcycle-riding baron's outrageous theories were ridiculed and largely dismissed, but now new evidence suggests his proposed island of dwarf dinosaurs did indeed exist in the land of the mythical, blood-drinking Count Dracula.

"Bram Stoker's [Dracula] tale is without a very sustainable historical background, but that is not the case here," lead researcher Vlad Codrea told Discovery News.

Dwarfed Bones Support the Claims

Codrea, a professor of biology and geology at University Babes-Bolyai in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and colleague Pascal Godefroit recently found several bones belonging to Zalmoxes shqiperorum, an herbivorous dinosaur with forelimbs that were much shorter than its hindlimbs.

The findings have been accepted for publication in the journal Comptes Rendus Palevol.

"Obviously it was a dwarf dinosaur," said Codrea, who compared the dinosaur to its Rhabdodon relatives from southern France and northern Spain. Rhabdodon, meaning "fluted tooth," measured just over 14 feet long, which, in itself, is a relatively small size for a dinosaur. Zalmoxes, on the other hand, was only 7 to 10 feet long.

The dwarf dinosaur has been classified as belonging to the iguanodont dinosaur group. These Mid Jurassic to Late Cretaceous animals included duck-billed dinos. Some members of the group could weigh up to eight tons and reach 50 feet in length.

Codrea and Godefroit unearthed the newly found bones in a red clay deposit at the Jibou Formation in Somes Odorhei, Romania.

More Mini Dinosaurs

The small Romanian dinosaur was apparently not a loner.

"Zalmoxes had in Transylvania select dinosaur company," Codrea said. "All were dwarves."

He explained that after the initial discovery on Nopsca's estate, the baron set off on his motorcycle to excavate various parts of his homeland. Over the years he found bones belonging to multiple dwarfed species.

These included a sauropod named Magyarosaurus dacus, which looked like a tiny version of a brontosaurus or diplodocus, and the ankylosaur Strutiosaurus transilvanicus, whose body was covered by many tiny bones that formed a protective shield.

A duck-billed dinosaur called Telmatosaurus transylvanicus was also excavated in the area, along with several carnivorous dinos, such as Velociraptorinae indet, Euronychodon and Paronychodon.

The Island Effect

Although many scientists scoffed at the notion of tiny dinosaurs inhabiting Transylvania, imminent paleontologist David Weishampel, fresh out of graduate school, became intrigued by the baron's finds, which he investigated first-hand in Romania.

Weishampel, who now works in the Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution at Johns Hopkins University, came to the conclusion that Nopsca was right -- very small dinosaurs really did live in Romania during the Late Cretaceous (around 70 to 65 million years ago).

He also agreed with the baron's theory that life in isolation on an island, which Weishampel has named Hateg Island, led to the dino dwarfism.

"Hateg was an eastern European island that existed throughout most of the Cretaceous," Weishampel told Discovery News. "It was colonized by the dinosaurs, turtles, crocodiles and various other animals that lived in subtropical to temperate shallow marine environments."

The new research suggests Hateg Island might have connected to mainland Transylvania at one point on the northeastern side, but scientists are still piecing together the region's geological history.

What is clear, however, is that the dinosaurs must have evolved away from other parts of Europe, since such isolated groups tend to be smaller or larger than normal, due to condensed ecosystems that result in size extremes.

On the Other End of the Scale

A few years ago, two of Codrea's colleagues from Bucharest, along with French paleontologist Eric Buffetaud, described "a new giant pterosaur" from Cretaceous Transylvania that was "remarkable for its very large size and for the robustness of its large skull."

The new pterosaur turned out to have a wingspan of 40 feet or more. Its scientific name, Hatzegopteryx thambema, appropriately means "Hateg Island Monster."

The flying reptile's head alone was nearly 10 feet long. Its skull was so long that Buffetaud's team wondered how the creature could have ever taken flight, but the researchers discovered that thin bones enclosing small air pockets gave the monster "strength and lightness."

Recreations of Hateg Island now therefore take on quite a psychedelic dream-like picture, with dwarf Transylvania dinosaurs living in relative tropical splendor, while flying monstrous reptiles swoop overhead.

Codrea explained that the pterosaur originally came as "an intruder, a visitor arrived from far away areas," and could fly over large distances that prevented it from locking into the island miniaturizing pattern of evolution.

The Baron's Tragic Ending

Baron von Nopsca did not live to see his theories validated.

He embarked on a motorcycle tour of Italy and Europe with his lover and secretary, Bayazid Doda, an Albanian Muslim, seated in his sidecar. The two men ran out of money and cut their journey short in Vienna where, in a rage, the baron drugged Doda's tea to render him unconscious. He then shot Doda before turning the gun on himself in 1933 when he was 56 years old.

Despite the baron's inner demons, other researchers now mostly support his theories, which included not only his work on dinosaurs, but also plate tectonics. Weishampel believes his work was so important that he's taken a year off to study it further and to write a related book.

Codrea and his colleague are also still exploring Transylvania's dinosaurs. They plan to publish information on even more finds there soon.

"I'm sure that Nopsca would be pleased about our discoveries, if he were alive," Codrea said. "He was an enthusiastic paleontologist and he believed in his research."

He added, "Sometimes, when I'm in the field, I have the strange sensation that he is somewhere near…"



Copyright © 2008 Discovery Communications, LLC. The number-one nonfiction media company.

Odysseus' Bloody Homecoming Dated to 1178 B.C.

Odysseus' Bloody Homecoming Dated to 1178 B.C.
Randolph E. Schmid, Associated Press


June 24, 2008 -- Using clues from star and sun positions mentioned by the ancient Greek poet Homer, scholars think they have determined the date when King Odysseus returned from the Trojan War and slaughtered a group of suitors who had been pressing his wife to marry one of them.

It was on April 16, 1178 B.C. that the great warrior struck with arrows, swords and spears, killing those who sought to replace him, a pair of researchers say in Monday's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

Experts have long debated whether the books of Homer reflect the actual history of the Trojan War and its aftermath.

Marcelo O. Magnasco of Rockefeller University in New York and Constantino Baikouzis of the Astronomical Observatory in La Plata, Argentina, acknowledge they had to make some assumptions to determine the date Odysseus returned to his kingdom of Ithaca.

But interpreting clues in Homer's "Odyssey" as references to the positions of stars and a total eclipse of the sun allowed them to determine when a particular set of conditions would have occurred.

"What we'd like to achieve is to get the reader to pick up the 'Odyssey' and read it again, and ponder," said Magnasco. "And to realize that our understanding of these texts is quite imperfect, and even when entire libraries have been written about Homeric studies, there is still room for further investigation."

Their study potentially adds support to the accuracy of Homer's writing.

"Under the assumption that our work turns out to be correct, it adds to the evidence that he knew what he was talking about," Magnasco said. "It still does not prove the historicity of the return of Odysseus," he said. "It only proves that Homer knew about certain astronomical phenomena that happened much before his time."

Homer reports that on the day of the slaughter the sun is blotted from the sky, possibly a reference to an eclipse. In addition, he mentions more than once that it is the time of a new moon, which is necessary for a total eclipse, the researchers say.

Other clues include:

* Six days before the slaughter, Venus is visible and high in the sky.
* Twenty-nine days before, two constellations -- the Pleiades and Bootes -- are simultaneously visible at sunset.
* And 33 days before, Mercury is high at dawn and near the western end of its trajectory. This is the researchers' interpretation, anyway. Homer wrote that Hermes, the Greek name for Mercury, traveled far west to deliver a message.

"Of course we believe it's amply justified, otherwise we would not commit it to print. However we do recognize there's less ammunition to defend this interpretation than the others," Magnasco said.

"Even though the other astronomical references are much clearer, our interpretation of them as allusions to astronomical phenomena is an assumption," he added in an interview via e-mail.

For example, Magnasco said, Homer writes that as Odysseus spread his sails out of Ogygia, "sleep did not weigh on his eyelids as he watched the Pleiades, and late-setting Bootes, and the Bear."

"We assume he means that as Odysseus set sail shortly after sunset, at nautical twilight the Pleiades and Bootes were simultaneously visible, and that Bootes would be the later-setting of the two," Magnasco explained. "It is a good assumption because every member of his audience would know what was being discussed, as the Pleiades and Bootes were important to them to know the passage of the seasons and would be very familiar with which times of the year they were visible. Remember the only calendar they had was the sky."

Since the occurrence of an eclipse and the various star positions repeat over different periods of time, Magnasco and Baikouzis set out to calculate when they would all occur in the order mentioned in the "Odyssey."

And their result has Odysseus exacting his revenge on April 16, 1178 B.C.



Copyright © 2008 Discovery Communications, LLC. The number-one nonfiction media company.

Odd Story: Cows Use Inner Compass to Point North-South

Cows Use Inner Compass to Point North-South
Randolph E. Schmid, Associated Press


Aug. 26, 2008 -- Talk about animal magnetism, cows seem to have a built-in compass. No bull: Somehow, cattle seem to know how to find north and south, say researchers who studied satellite photos of thousands of cows around the world.

Most cattle that were grazing or resting tended to align their bodies in a north-south direction, a team of German and Czech researchers reports in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

And the finding held true regardless of what continent the cattle were on, according to the study led by Hynek Burda and Sabine Begall of the faculty of biology at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany.

"The magnetic field of the Earth has to be considered as a factor," the scientists said.

This challenges scientists to find out why and how these animals align to the magnetic field, Begall said in an interview via e-mail.

"Of course, the question arises whether humans show also such a spontaneous behavior," she said, adding, what "consequences does it have for their health."

The study sent Tina Hinchley, who with her husband Duane operates a dairy farm in Cambridge, Wis., to take a new look at an aerial photo taken of their farm a few years ago.

"The cows that were in the pasture were all over the place ... about two-thirds were north-south," Hinchley said.

Two-thirds is close to what the researchers found in their look at 8,510 cattle in 308 pastures. In the study, 60 percent to 70 percent of cattle were oriented north-south, which Begall termed a "highly significant deviation from random distribution."

Hinchley stressed that one factor that must be considered is cow comfort.

"They don't like to get hot. Their body temperature is 102, and they are wearing black leather jackets, literally! If turning north-south would keep them cooler, they would stand that way."

The research team noted that in very windy conditions cattle tend to face the wind, and have been known to seek out the sun on cold days. But they said they were able to discount weather effects in the study by analyzing clues such as the position of the sun based on shadows.

"This is a surprising discovery," said Kenneth J. Lohmann of the biology department at the University of North Carolina. "Nothing like this has been observed before in cattle or in any large animal."

However Lohmann, who was not part of the research team, cautioned that "the study is based entirely on correlations. To demonstrate conclusively that cattle have a magnetic sense, some kind of experimental manipulation will eventually be needed."

Joseph L. Kirschvink of the California Institute of Technology said he wondered if fences around the pastures could affect cattle orientation.

Passive alignment of animals to magnetic fields has been reported in honeybees and termites, he noted. It requires some type of special sensory organ to detect the magnetic field.

"If they have evidence suggesting that mammals are using magnetic fields to orient their movements, this is very cool," said Mark A. Willis, an associate professor of biomedical sciences at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Willis, who was not part of the research team, added, "We have only in the last few years begun to understand the mechanisms underlying magnetic field orientation in birds and other smaller animals."

Indeed, it's small animals that led to this study, Begall explained. They were researching the magnetic field effect on African mole-rats.

"At one point last year the question came up whether large animals could also sense the Earth's magnetic field or not. But of course, it is difficult, or maybe impossible, to do these studies in the lab," she said. "So, the idea arose to look for other large mammals like cattle, and Hynek Burda was fascinated when he recognized that cattle could be found on Google Earth satellite images."

With satellite images they could tell the north-south orientation of the animals, but not whether an individual cow was facing north or south. You have to get closer to tell which end is which.

Now the researchers are moving on to study sheep, goats, horses, wild boar and some further deer species, Begall added.

The current study said red and roe deer also were found to orient in a north-south direction when grazing and resting, but unlike the worldwide cattle study, the deer portion was limited to the Czech Republic.



Copyright © 2008 Discovery Communications, LLC. The number-one nonfiction media company.

Ireland's Sheela-Na-Gigs

Found a site about Sheela-Na-Gigs in Ireland:

http://www.irelands-sheelanagigs.org/



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Health Advice from Dr. Weil: Eight Ways to Prevent Gallstones

Eight Ways to Prevent Gallstones

Every year, more than one million Americans discover that they have gallstones – hardened, pebble-like deposits in the gallbladder that can range in size from a grain of sand to a golf ball. Roughly 50 percent of people diagnosed with gallstones end up in surgery for the removal of the gallbladder.

So how can you prevent gallstones? Since most stones are composed of cholesterol, diet plays a role in their formation. If you are at risk of developing gallstones (risk factors include a family history of gallstones, being overweight, recent rapid weight loss and, among women, pregnancy, using birth control pills, or hormone replacement therapy after menopause), you may be able to prevent them or prevent symptoms from worsening with these measures:

1. If you need to lose weight, do so slowly (crash dieting can lead to gallstone formation).

2. Drink plenty of water throughout the day to keep hydrated – this can help keep the bile in your gallbladder fluid.

3. Make sure you get 1,000 to 1,200 mg of calcium from all sources daily (an intake level that's associated with a lower incidence of gallstones). Women should consider taking 500-700 mg of calcium in supplement form. This can help bind bile acids and decrease the risk of stone formation. However, men should limit calcium consumption to 500 to 600 mg from all sources.

4. Take 300 mg of curcumin (an active component of the yellow spice turmeric) three times a day to increase the solubility of your bile. Choose a product standardized for curcuminoid content.

5. Take 200 mg of supplemental vitamin C daily (in one study women with higher blood levels of vitamin C were half as likely to develop gallstones as those with lower levels).

6. Keep your fat intake to about 25 percent of daily calories. A high-fat diet can trigger the gallbladder to release bile and set off an attack if you already have gallstones. But be wary of very low-fat diets, which can promote the formation of stones by failing to stimulate normal gallbladder contraction and flow of bile.

7. Limit your intake of sugar, which may promote gallstone formation.

8. Increase your fiber intake, and substitute whole soy protein for animal protein in your diet.


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Fetus Mummies Were Likely King Tut's

Fetus Mummies Were Likely King Tut's
Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News


Aug. 15, 2008 -- Ongoing analysis on the mummified remains of two female fetuses buried in the tomb of Tutankhamun will most likely show that at least one of the stillborn children is the offspring of the teenage pharaoh, a scientist who carried serological analysis on the mummified remains told Discovery News.

"I studied one of the mummies, the larger one, back in 1979 [and] determined the blood group data from this baby mummy and compared it with my 1969 blood grouping of Tutankhamun.

"The results confirmed that this larger fetus could indeed be the daughter of Tutankhamen," said Robert Connolly, senior lecturer in physical anthropology from the University of Liverpool's Department of Human Anatomy and Cell Biology.

The fetuses have been stored at the Cairo University's Faculty of Medicine since archaeologist Howard Carter first discovered them in Tutankhamun's tomb on the west bank of Luxor, Egypt in 1922.

Egyptologists have long debated whether these mummies were the stillborn children of King Tut and his wife Ankhesenamun or if they were placed in the tomb with the symbolic purpose of allowing the boy king to live as newborns in the afterlife.

Never publicly displayed, the two fetuses will soon undergo CT scans and DNA testing to determine possible diseases and their relation to the famous pharaoh, and possibly "identify the fetuses' mother," Zahi Hawass, the head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said in a statement.

"This is a very important project, as these fetuses have never been fully studied," Swiss anatomist and paleopathologist Frank Rühli told Discovery News.

The smaller fetus, about five months in gestational age, has only been examined by Carter in 1925. The mummy is less than 30 centimeters (11.8 inches) in height and is well preserved, according to Rühli.

Rühli, head of the Swiss Mummy Project at the University of Zurich, added that the mummy showed no signs of brain removal or abdominal incision, the umbilical cord was still there, and a funerary mask was still in place.

The older, larger fetus is estimated to be between seven and nine months in gestational age. It is less well preserved than the other and measures 38.5 centimeters (15.16 inches).

"The mummy was subjected to X-rays in 1978 and a number of skeletal malformations were observed," Rühli said

At that time, Connolly and British scientist Ronald Harrison, along with colleagues from Cairo University, suggested that the older stillborn fetus displayed what could have been the earliest evidence of Sprengel's deformity, a relatively rare and congenital skeletal disorder where a scapula sits too high on one side.

Moreover, the female mummy was diagnosed with a vertebral dislocation, spina bifida and scoliosis. Now Connolly is less certain about those conclusions.

"I did publish a paper with Harrison and others in which we suggested Sprengel's disease. However, recently I have concluded that the elevated clavicle was simply a result of manipulation of the baby during mummification," Connolly said.

He is also cautions about the diagnosis of spina bifida, and suggests a more accurate examination of the body could yield other explanations.

So who were these stillborn girls? Why were they buried with King Tut? Was the boy king their dad? And what was their cause of death?

Hawass believes that DNA tests might help solve this riddle and even more mysteries around King Tut. The fetuses might help identify "the lineage and the family of King Tutankhamun, particularly his parents," he said.

Tutankhamun's lineage has piqued the curiosity of Egyptologists ever since his mummy and treasure-packed tomb were discovered.

It is unclear if King Tut was the son of Kiya and the "heretic" pharaoh Akhenaton, or of Akhenaton's other wife, the famously-beautiful queen Nefertiti.

Only a few facts about King Tut's life are known. King Tut-ankh-Amun, meaning "the living image of Amun," ascended the throne in 1333 B.C., at the age of nine, and reigned until his death at about 19. He was a pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty, probably the greatest of the Egyptian royal families.

He married 13-year-old Ankhesenpaaten, Nefertiti's daughter, on his accession to the throne.

Although many diseases have been attributed to the teenage king, the 2005 CT scan suggests he was a mostly healthy young man with no signs of childhood malnutrition.

"I strongly believe he was fertile," Rühli, a member of the small Egyptian-led research team that examined King Tut's CT scan images in 2005, said.

Indeed, many scholars believe that the fetuses are the stillborn children of King Tut and Ankhesenpaaten, who had changed her name to Ankhesenamun.

If so, DNA analysis on the fetuses could help determine whether Ankhesenamun was King Tut's half-sister or full sister.

"If the fetus DNA matches King Tut's DNA and Ankhesenamun's DNA, then they shared the same mother," Hawass said.

In their 1979 research, Harrison and Connolly also analyzed blood types to try and determine how the fetuses fit into the relationship of King Tut and other Pharaohs of the 18th Dynasty.

According to the 30-year-old analysis, the stillborn children may have been the baby daughters either of King Tut and Ankhesenamun, or Pharaoh Amenhotep III and his wife (and most likely his daughter) Sitamun, or Pharoahs Tutankhamun or Smenkhkare (a predecessor of King Tut) and Sitamun.

"I am pretty sure the fetuses were Ankhesenamen's," Egyptologist and paleopathologist Bob Brier, one of the world's foremost experts on mummies, told Discovery News.

Connolly agrees: "Since these two fetuses were found in the tomb of Tutankhamen, there is no reason to think that they were other than his offspring, a matter supported by my 1979 blood group studies."

The two fetuses will be studied at a new ancient DNA lab opening at Cairo University to supplement research at a similar lab created at the Egyptian Museum, with funding from the Discovery Channel.

The DNA tests and CT scans should be finished by December.

'Iceman' Oetzi's Clothes Suggest Shepherd Life

A Shepherd's Shoes


'Iceman' Oetzi's Clothes Suggest Shepherd Life
Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News


Aug. 22, 2008 -- Oetzi the Iceman walked his last steps on Earth wearing moccasins made from cattle leather, according to German researchers who have disclosed the 5,300-year-old dress code of the world's oldest intact human mummy.

The research, based on a hi-tech method of analyzing proteins, established that the famous Neolithic man did not dress like a hunter, but like a herdsman -- in clothes made from sheep and cattle hair.

Using MALDITOF (matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization) mass spectrometry, Klaus Hollemeyer of Saarland University in Germany and colleagues examined "four animal-hair-bearing samples of the accoutrement of the mummy."

"Two samples from his coat, and a sample from his leggings, were assigned to sheep. The upper leather of his moccasins, was made from cattle," the researchers wrote in the September issue of journal Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry.

Exclusively based on the analysis of proteins, the method allowed the researchers to compare the patterns of molecules in fermented proteins present in the hairs of Oetzi's clothing with those found in living animals.

"A main advantage of this method is the high stability of hair proteins compared to the more labile DNA molecules," Hollemeyer told Discovery News. "In archaeological samples, the long storage under suboptimal conditions often destroys the DNA structures, but keeps the structural hair proteins mainly conserved," he said.

The Iceman's clothing is the only Neolithic accoutrement that has been found in Europe so well preserved, yet the animal species used to make these clothing have been often the subject of controversy.

It was suggested that the clothing came from red deer, goats and or even chamois, a goat-like animal native to the Alps.

Finding that the mummy wore a coat and leggings of Neolithic sheep hair helps archaeologists understand the social and cultural background of the Iceman, according to Hollemeyer.

Access to such animals "is an indication for a more progressive pastoral-agricultural society," Hollemeyer said.

On the contrary, if his clothes had been "exclusively made from wild games, this would be a sign for a hunter-gatherer society with no access to domesticated species like sheep, goat or cattle," he said.

The Oetzi mummy has been extensively studied since its discovery in 1991 in a melting glacier in the Oetztal Alps. It is now known that his body froze and mummified after a violent death at about age 45.

The Iceman was shot with an arrow -- the head of which remained lodged in his shoulder -- that fatally severed his left subclavian artery. He also suffered a traumatic cerebral lesion, the consequence of a trauma from a blow or a fall onto the rocks.

It's unclear which wound actually killed Oetzi. "I think the blow to the head is significant but not the ultimate cause of death. On the contrary, the rupture of the artery kills you very fast," Frank Rühli, of the Institute of Anatomy at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, told Discovery News.

Rühli, a member of the Swiss-Itaian team who last year discovered the fatal lesion of a close-to-the-shoulder artery, found the new study on the mummy clothes very interesting.

"It particularly shows how much information you can get out of such state-of-the-art methods. Also, it highlights that research on the Iceman is still helpful and will provide more interesting turns in the future," Rühli said.