Dinosaur remains/fossils.

JimiTime

I was just wondering, talking to a Doctor of Chemistry recently, and he claimed that to his knowledge, no full remains (As in Bones) or fossils of T-rex's etc were ever found. Any chance you could enlighten me on this?

Cheers.

Wibbs

Depends what he means by full. If he means that the bones were completely replaced by minerals, maybe, but even there he wouldn't be right. I can think of at least one hadrosaur that was mummified and the bones remained with their original chemical makeup. On the part of T rex they've even extracted short bits of the original proteins from some fossils. If he's referring to full compliment of bones, he may be right with t rex but there are full assemblages of dinosaur skeletons.

Galvasean

I think he is slightly confused. In the case of T. rex I believe 70-80% of the skeleton has been found. 100% complete dinosaur skeletons are extremely rare. The full picture (so to speak) of what a particular kind of dinosaur looked like is often made up of more than one specimen. After that any missing bones are filled in based on closely related dinosaurs.

JimiTime

I don't suppose you guys have a link to some websites with extensive images and info of dinosaur finds?

Galvasean

Info wise dinodata.org is one of the best sites for telling you exactly what has been found of the newest dinosaur specimens. It is a rather technical website though.
If you are looking for extensive images of these new finds you generally have to track down the peer reviewed paper describing the discovery. Unfortunately most of these are not released for free in the public domain (some of them are though).
Interesting (from a media perspective at least) finds often show up in the likes of nationalgeographic and Science Centric. They often post up decent photographs of new fossils on their websites.

I hope this information is helpful. If you have any more specifics ask away.

JimiTime

Galvasean wrote: »

Info wise dinodata.org is one of the best sites for telling you exactly what has been found of the newest dinosaur specimens. It is a rather technical website though.
If you are looking for extensive images of these new finds you generally have to track down the peer reviewed paper describing the discovery. Unfortunately most of these are not released for free in the public domain (some of them are though).
Interesting (from a media perspective at least) finds often show up in the likes of nationalgeographic and Science Centric. They often post up decent photographs of new fossils on their websites.

I hope this information is helpful. If you have any more specifics ask away.

Thanks for that. I tried google before coming here, but it didn't really throw up anything I was looking for.

Here's the thing, the accusation my friend made against dinosaur findings etc was the following (NB: My friend is not religious or anything, so its not that he's looking for some creationist thing etc)

Most of the dinosaurs we 'know' about, were pieced together from fragments of bones. His words were, 'they could find a few bones, and could identify one as a femur, another as something else etc, then build a model on it. He does not trust its accuracy.

I don't know why, but I always assumed that fossils or skeletons had been found for the dinosaurs we know and love.

Could you enlighten me, a complete ignoramous in this department, as to what the story is with this?

Zombrex

JimiTime wrote: »

He does not trust its accuracy.

Sorry to be blunt, but he doesn't have to. The palaeontologists trust the methods they use, they are the professionals in this area and they are interested in accuracy. If your friend thinks palaeontologists are idiots who don't know what they are doing fair enough, but the first question I would ask him is how can he support this.

Wibbs

There's something to what he says, in that some remains are fragmentary, but most of the big ones have good remains based evidence. Now there have been mistakes in the past. Brontosaurus in the british natural history museum had the wrong head for example, but with more and more stuff being dug up the picture has become clearer and clearer.

I would however agree with him with some evidence out there, specifically with regard to our human ancestors, where full, even partial skeletons are very very rare. The famous "Lucy" is just about 40% of the skeleton and the skull is mostly missing. I do think theres a helluva lot of conjecture and mis diagnosis of species going on there. Where there are claims of 6, 7 or 8 different hominids in the same area. IMHO there are far less and they're basing the numbers on really bloody thin evidence(and some politics). Mistakes like natural variation in a species, different genders being seen as different species etc.

Wibbs

Wicknight wrote: »

Sorry to be blunt, but he doesn't have to. The palaeontologists trust the methods they use, they are the professionals in this area and they are interested in accuracy. If your friend thinks palaeontologists are idiots who don't know what they are doing fair enough, but the first question I would ask him is how can he support this.

Well I would certainly not suggest that palaeontologists are eejits or anything like it, but a fresh eye is no bad thing. A huge proportion of palaeontological discovery was(and is) down to amateurs. And the science is the better for it. It's one of the reasons why I like it as a discipline. Other sciences can be much more a "closed shop" with very set ideas. Astronomy is a great example where amateurs discover things on an almost daily basis. There's a guy in Australia, a preist I believe, who has spotted more novas from his shed than all the other big observatories together. Another more famous example is Sir Patrick Moore. He's not a professional astronomer, yet is extremely well regarded by those who are and has a few discoveries of his own under his belt. What I love about professional astronomers is they are very supportive of the guy or gal in the back garden with their little telescopes(and in many cases actively aid them). More sciences could benefit from that approach IMHO.

Like I said mistakes have been made in assembling fossil skeletons in the past. Both with wrong parts and especially with the way they thought they looked. Early best guesses had them looking like big lizards. Iguanadon had a spike on its nose until someone(an amateur) spotted the error and found they had thumb spikes. Then there was the tail dragger look, replaced with the running birds with the tail as a counterbalance. So this guy is right to ask the questions. He's also partially right with his answers too. While some of the dinosaur rebuilds appear to be bang on the money, some are defo bound not to be. And that's how he can support his questions.

Galvasean

Hey Jimi, your friend might be interested in this.
Basically several scientists are currently trying to 'downsize' the number of dinosaur species currently accepted as being valid.
While I think some of their findings may be jumping the gun, in the past (and also currently to be honest) many sceientists have been all too quick to label a tooth or a bone fragment as a new species (they probably just want their name on a fossil).