{"id":28123,"date":"2018-03-14T09:28:23","date_gmt":"2018-03-14T14:28:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/?post_type=news&#038;p=28123"},"modified":"2018-03-14T09:28:23","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T14:28:23","slug":"new-research-solves-the-60-year-old-paleontological-mystery-of-a-phantom-dicynodont","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/news\/new-research-solves-the-60-year-old-paleontological-mystery-of-a-phantom-dicynodont\/","title":{"rendered":"New research solves the 60-year-old paleontological mystery of a \u201cphantom\u201d dicynodont"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A new study has re-discovered fossil collections from a 19<sup>th<\/sup> century hermit that validate \u201cphantom\u201d fossil footprints collected in the 1950s showing dicynodonts coexisting with dinosaurs.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/BrdwIQKPCHY?rel=0\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Before the dinosaurs, around 260 million years ago, a group of early mammal relatives called dicynodonts were the most abundant vertebrate land animals. These bizarre plant-eaters with tusks and turtle-like beaks were thought to have gone extinct by the Late Triassic Period, 210 million years ago, when dinosaurs first started to proliferate. However, in the 1950s, suspiciously dicynodont-like footprints were found alongside dinosaur prints in southern Africa, suggesting the presence of a late-surviving phantom dicynodont unknown in the skeletal record. These \u201cphantom\u201d prints were so out-of-place that they were disregarded as evidence for dicynodont survival by paleontologists. A new study has re-discovered fossil collections from a 19<sup>th<\/sup> century hermit that validate these \u201cphantom\u201d prints and show that dicynodonts coexisted with early plant-eating dinosaurs. While this research enhances our knowledge of ancient ecosystems, it also emphasizes the often-overlooked importance of trace fossils, like footprints, and the work of amateur scientists.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAlthough we tend to think of paleontological discoveries coming from new field work, many of our most important conclusions come from specimens already in museums,\u201d says Dr. Christian Kammerer, Research Curator of Paleontology at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and author of the new study.<\/p>\n<p>The re-discovered fossils that solved this mystery were originally collected in South Africa in the 1870s by Alfred \u201cGogga\u201d Brown. Brown was an amateur paleontologist and hermit who spent years trying, with little success, to interest European researchers in his discoveries. Brown had shipped these specimens to the Natural History Museum in Vienna in 1876, where they were deposited in the museum\u2019s collection but never described.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI knew the Brown collections in Vienna were largely unstudied, but there was general agreement that his Late Triassic collections were made up only of dinosaur fossils. To my great surprise, I immediately noticed clear dicynodont jaw and arm bones among these supposed \u2018dinosaur\u2019 fossils,\u201d says Kammerer. \u201cAs I went through this collection I found more and more bones matching a dicynodont instead of a dinosaur, representing parts of the skull, limbs, and spinal column.\u201d This was exciting\u2014despite over a century of extensive collection, no skeletal evidence of a dicynodont had ever been recognized in the Late Triassic of South Africa.<\/p>\n<p>Before this point, the only evidence of dicynodonts in the southern African Late Triassic was from questionable footprints: a short-toed, five-fingered track named <em>Pentasauropus incredibilis <\/em>(meaning the \u201cincredible five-toed lizard foot\u201d). In recognition of the importance of these tracks for suggesting the existence of Late Triassic dicynodonts and the contributions of \u201cGogga\u201d Brown in collecting the actual fossil bones, the re-discovered and newly described dicynodont has been named <em>Pentasaurus goggai <\/em>(\u201cGogga\u2019s five-[toed] lizard\u201d).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Pentasaurus_PR.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"img-responsive\" src=\"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Pentasaurus_PR.jpg\" alt=\"Skeleton of the dicynodont Placerias, a close relative of the newly-discovered Pentasaurus, with dicynodont trackways (Pentasauropus).\" \/><\/a> Skeleton of the dicynodont <em>Placerias<\/em>, a close relative of the newly-discovered <em>Pentasaurus<\/em>, with dicynodont trackways (<em>Pentasauropus<\/em>).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe case of <em>Pentasaurus<\/em> illustrates the importance of various underappreciated sources of data in understanding prehistory,\u201d says Kammerer. \u201cYou have the contributions of amateur researchers like \u2018Gogga\u2019 Brown, who was largely ignored in his 19<sup>th<\/sup> century heyday, the evidence from footprints, which some paleontologists disbelieved because they conflicted with the skeletal evidence, and of course the importance of well-curated museum collections that provide scientists today an opportunity to study specimens collected 140 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The paper, \u201cThe first skeletal evidence of a dicynodont from the lower Elliot Formation of South Africa,\u201d is published in the journal <em>Palaeontologia africana<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28125,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/28123"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/28123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}