Analysis of a last meal

Given how everything kind of sucks at the moment, I suppose I'm to be forgiven for escaping 110 million years into the past to look at a dinosaur's last dinner.

The dinosaur was a nodosaur, of the species Borealopelta markmitchelli.  Not one of your more familiar dinosaurs, but pretty impressive nonetheless; something on the order of three meters long, it looked a bit like an armored tank with a face.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons ケラトプスユウタ, Nodosaur, CC BY-SA 4.0]

So far, just another dinosaur fossil, albeit a pretty cool one.  But this one, found in northern Alberta a couple of years ago, has a difference that was the subject of a paper this week in the journal Royal Society of Open Science: it is preserved so well that its last meal can be analyzed down to the cellular level.

In "Dietary Palaeoecology of an Early Cretaceous Armoured Dinosaur (Ornithischia; Nodosauridae) Based on Floral Analysis of Stomach Contents," by a team led by Caleb Brown of the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, in Drumheller, Alberta, we find out that the state of preservation of this dinosaur is so intricate that we not only know what it liked to eat, but that it was feeding in an area that had been hit recently by a wildfire, and died in early summer.

"When people see this stunning fossil and are told that we know what its last meal was because its stomach was so well preserved inside the skeleton, it will almost bring the beast back to life for them, providing a glimpse of how the animal actually carried out its daily activities, where it lived, and what its preferred food was," said Jim Basinger, geologist at the University of Saskatchewan and co-author of the paper, in an interview with CNN.

"We could see the different layers of cells in a leaf fragment including the epidermis with the pores, called stomata, through which plants take in carbon dioxide," added study co-author David Greenwood, of Brandon University.  "We could also see the surface patterning of the epidermis cells, which was like a jigsaw pattern that we see on many living ferns."

The degree of preservation allowed for microscopic analysis, and identification of what it had eaten down to the particular species it preferred.

"The lack of horsetails, and rarity of cycads and conifers is surprising, given that these are very common in the surrounding flora," said study lead author Caleb Brown.  "Even within ferns, it looks like Borealopelta may have had a preference for certain types of ferns, while ignoring others."

Two other things -- the growth pattern in the plant material in its stomach, and the presence of charcoal, gave researchers two more pieces of information -- that the dinosaur's death occurred in early summer, and that it was feeding in an area that had been recently burned over.

"When you think about it, this may actually make a lot of sense," Brown said. "If you are a nodosaur, you can only feed close to the ground.  This new growth will also be more palatable and has a higher nutrient content than established growth [like conifers].  As a result, many large mammal herbivores we are familiar with today will seek out recently burned areas in both grasslands and forests, as they provide unique feeding opportunities."

"The discovery of charcoal together with a fern-filled stomach opens a window into the biology of this large herbivorous armoured dinosaur as it suggested Borealopelta was likely a keystone herbivore that shaped the landscape by its grazing, and that it also grazed on the ferns growing in open areas created by wildfires," Greenwood added.  "That is so cool."

What's uncertain is what killed the poor guy.  His body was buried under silt in an aquatic environment, and was mineralized (along with the contents of his stomach) so slowly and gently that it preserved detail down to the cellular level.  Then the rock formation in which he was encased moved along with the continent, sliding northward until what had been a lush, tropical environment, filled with ferns, was positioned in northern Alberta, only to be found by some scientists 110 million years later.

Which, unfortunately, brings us back to the present.  I guess that was inevitable.  And I guess I should be thankful that whatever 2020 has brought, at least it hasn't left me buried in layers of silt, waiting to be uncovered by future paleontologists, who will conclude that mostly what I lived on is toast with raspberry preserves.

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation of the week is a fun one -- George Zaidan's Ingredients: The Strange Chemistry of What We Put In Us and On Us.  Springboarding off the loony recommendations that have been rampant in the last few years -- fad diets, alarmist warnings about everything from vaccines to sunscreen, the pros and cons of processed food, substances that seem to be good for us one week and bad for us the next, Zaidan goes through the reality behind the hype, taking apart the claims in a way that is both factually accurate and laugh-out-loud funny.

And high time.  Bogus health claims, fueled by such sites as Natural News, are potentially dangerous.  Zaidan's book holds a lens up to the chemicals we ingest, inhale, and put on our skin -- and will help you sort the fact from the fiction.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

A visit from the death reaper

In case you needed more incentive not to take a time machine back to the Cretaceous Period, paleontologists have just discovered a new species of dinosaur from Alberta and christened it Thanatotheristes -- Greek for "the reaper of death."

Add that to the fact that it looked a bit like a cross between a toucan and a Tyrannosaurus rex, and you've got some real nightmare fuel.

[Artist's concept of Thanatotheristes by Julius Csotonyi of the Royal Tyrrell Museum]

The fossils date from 79.5 million years ago, so about 14 million years (give or take) from the giant meteorite collision that would spell the end of the Age of Dinosaurs.

"It definitely would have been quite an imposing animal, roughly 2.4 meters at the hips," said study lead researcher Jared Voris, a doctoral student of paleontology at the University of Calgary in Alberta, in an interview with LiveScience.

Add to that the fact that it was eight meters from tip to tail and had seven-centimeter-long teeth that invite the inevitable comparison to steak knives, and you have a seriously badass creature.

It was found near bones of a Triceratops relative and a species of pachycephalosaurid, both herbivores, and it's a fair guess these were on the Thanatotheristes dinner menu.

It's amazing to think about what the biodiversity must have been like back then, when Alberta was a tropical forest near the equator.  For one thing, we tend to have the impression that the species we've found are all there were, so a new discovery like this is somehow a surprising addition to the menagerie.  In reality, the conditions that result in fossilization are so specific, and so rare, that it's kind of a wonder we have any fossil record at all.  Most dead animals and plants are gone with nary a trace in only a few years; the fact that these bones survived, substantially intact, for almost eighty million years is a little mindblowing.

So what that means is that the species we know about constitute only a very small percentage of the animals and plants that were alive back then.  How small a percentage is a matter of speculation.  But it's a safe bet that it's less that 0.1% -- meaning, even at a generous estimate, for every one species we have fossils of -- and therefore a sense of what it looked like -- there are 999 that we not only don't know about, we have no way of knowing about.

It is only a slight exaggeration that our current situation is like trying to draw a good picture of our current biodiversity using only the bones of a rabbit, largemouth bass, reticulated python, and hummingbird, a handful of mollusk shells, a pile of various insect exoskeletons, and some leaves.  So our ideas about the prehistoric world -- even much more recent times than the Cretaceous Period -- are no so much wrong as they are wildly, hugely incomplete.

Which they will always be, unless we develop that time machine.  And even that brings up its own set of problems, which you know all too well if you've read any science fiction.  I'm reminded of the first time I came across the idea of how fraught time travel into the past would be, when I read Ray Bradbury's brilliant, disturbing short story "The Sound of Thunder" -- where a safari into the Cretaceous Era results in catastrophe in the present despite the organizers' attempts to prevent it. 

So there are a variety of reasons that it might be prudent to remain in ignorance of what critters were around back then, even if we were somehow able to.  Changing the past has drastic consequences, and if you believe science fiction stories, they're almost always bad ones.  Then there's the more direct danger of being eaten by a Toucanosaurus rex.  You can see how that would kind of suck.

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This week's Skeptophilia book of the week is a dark one, but absolutely gripping: the brilliant novelist Haruki Murakami's Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche.

Most of you probably know about the sarin attack in the subways of Tokyo in 1995, perpetrated by members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult under the leadership of Shoko Asahara.  Asahara, acting through five Aum members, set off nerve gas containers during rush hour, killing fifty people outright and injuring over a thousand others.  All six of them were hanged in 2018 for the crimes, along with a seventh who acted as a getaway driver.

Murakami does an amazing job in recounting the events leading up to the attack, and getting into the psyches of the perpetrators.  Amazingly, most of them were from completely ordinary backgrounds and had no criminal records at all, nor any other signs of the horrors they had planned.  Murakami interviewed commuters who were injured by the poison and also a number of first responders, and draws a grim but fascinating picture of one of the darkest days in Japanese history.

You won't be able to put it down.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Psychic health care fundraiser

I swear, sometimes humans are so weird that it leaves me not knowing what to think.

Take, for example, the Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre, in Red Deer, Alberta, Canada.  Like any good hospital, Red Deer is committed to excellence in patient care.  It's also like other hospitals in that there's never enough money to achieve everything they want to achieve, so they rely on volunteers, donations, and groups like the Friends of the Red Deer Regional Hospital to meet their goals.  The FRDRH says on their homepage that their vision is to "improve care and comfort to all patients and residents through selfless efforts of staff and volunteers," and their mission to "facilitate innovative fundraising programs for services and equipment to benefit patients and residents in our facilities."

Which all sounds fantastic.  So the FRDRH decided to hold a fundraiser to support their efforts, and as part of this fundraiser, hired...

... a psychic.

For a hundred dollars a pop, you can have a chat with medium Colette Baron-Reid, who bills herself as follows:

Colette Baron-Reid is an internationally acclaimed intuition expert and host of the TV show Messages From Spirit.  She’s also a bestselling inspirational author published in 27 languages, keynote speaker, recording artist, and entrepreneur. 

Vote into the Watkins List as one of the Top 100 Most Spiritually Influential People in 2013, her reputation as a noted contemporary thought leader was firmly established.  In person or on paper, Colette delivers her message of perspective and hope with her trademarked compassionate candor peppered with a pinch of infectious personality.

All righty, then.

So we have a fundraiser for promoting cutting-edge, evidence-based health care that involves paying lots of money to have a woman tell you she can get in touch with your dead relatives, and that Aunt Bertha is just having a jolly old time in heaven.

Which brings up a question I've always had.  When the mediums do their shtick, why do they never find that your dead relatives are in hell?  I know that given some of the people in my family, it seems pretty likely.  We always get told that Grandpa Albert is happy and wishes all of us people down here on Earth the best, but we never get messages like, "Grandpa Albert says to tell you, "DEAR GOD GET ME OUT OF HERE SATAN JUST SENT A CRAZED WEASEL TO CHEW OFF MY FEET."

Which, now that I think about it, could be kind of entertaining.  Maybe I should start my own business as a medium, specializing on getting in touch with people who are in hell.  It'd be fun to tell people, "Uncle Steve says the Lake of Eternal Fire is kind of toasty this time of year.  He also said to tell you, 'Satan said to say "see you next Thursday."'  Do you know what all that's about?"

But I digress.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

I can't argue with a charity event that raises money for a needy hospital, but for cryin' in the sink, why couldn't they have found a better way to do it?  Hire a magician.  At least with a magician, no one's pretending that what they do is real.

Anyhow, if you're in Red Deer, Alberta on April 9, and have $100 to throw away, you might want to consider attending.  I'm always curious about how these hucksters ply their trade, and would love to hear a report.  And at least you'll have the comfort of knowing that your money is going to a good cause, and not to the medium's downpayment on her next crystal ball.