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110M year-old nodosaur is the best-preserved fossil of its kind (2017)
- runjake 6y agoThis article appears to be from 2017. There isn't any new information on the nodosaur specimen.
- alecb 6y agoYah, it's also a clumsy plagiarization of our article: https://allthatsinteresting.com/nodosaur-dinosaur-mummy https://allthatsinteresting.com/nodosaur-dinosaur-mummy It looks like their site is another on the list that lifts our articles and recirculates them on social media.
- eloff 6y ago@dang can we change the link to this one to give credit to the source? And add 2017 tag.
- gus_massa 6y agoYou will get a faster response if you send an email to hn@ycombinator.com They usually respond very fast.
- dang 6y agoWe've changed from https://www.earthlymission.com/dinosaur-mummy-science-discovery-nodosaur-intact-canada/ https://www.earthlymission.com/dinosaur-mummy-science-discov... to the original source.
- tthayer 6y agoWhich is itself a summary of the original NG article? https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/06/dinosaur-nodosaur-fossil-discovery/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/06/dinosaur...
- ComputerGuru 6y agoYours is just a regurgitation of the National Geographic feature, so I’m not sure what legs you have to stand on here. Ironic.
- wincy 6y agoWow this is amazing! So exciting to see stuff like this.
- WorldPeas 6y agoI wonder if they recovered any vegetation samples from its digestive system
- Ericson2314 6y agoObligatory question: DNA?
- ericlewis 6y agoDNA half-life basically wouldn’t be able to survive this long, no matter how well preserved I believe.
- Ericson2314 6y agoThat is my understanding too. Also they mention mineral deposits so it seems like this is still at least somewhat a fossil?
- epicureanideal 6y agoEven if DNA itself can't, it seems possible that with advanced enough technology there might be hope of recovery of something other than DNA that could be used to figure out what the DNA was. Imagine for example a machine that takes off 1 layer of atoms at a time, painstakingly charting them, and then another layer of software that figures out probabilistically whether the arrangement of atoms means that a decayed strand of DNA was here... and then probabilistically adds together the the billions of decayed shreds of DNA. Maybe the relative positions of the base pairs are still probabilistically informative despite decaying and many of them breaking apart. I don't know. But it seems like there's a plausible way to try to extract data from fossilized DNA.
- shrimp_emoji 6y agoWith advanced enough technology, we might train an ML model to generate a genome that morphologically approximates the dinosaur, simulating the trillions of protein foldings and chemical interactions involved in each trial, until we have a genome that produces the dinosaur, physically. Because we have no certain model of the dinosaur, behaviorally, we can guess at that and ML our way to that, too. And boom: you have your ersatz sim dino, and it only took like three Matrioshka brains.
- 6y ago
- danans 6y ago> it was an enormous four-legged herbivore protected by a spiky, plated armor. It weighed approximately 3,000 pounds. > To give you an idea of how intact the mummified nodosaur is: it still weighs 2,500 pounds! How does it weight less as a stone fossil than as an organic life form mostly made of water? Most stone is 2-3 times as dense as water https://www.thoughtco.com/densities-of-common-rocks-and-minerals-1439119 https://www.thoughtco.com/densities-of-common-rocks-and-mine...
- skykooler 6y agoBecause it wasn't fossilized; it's mostly original material.
- danans 6y agoWow, that's wild, almost like Black Swan wild. I was so predisposed to assume fossils are solid stone that I missed that. Still, living things are mostly water, and I doubt the mummified 2500 pounds is mostly water. Another response to my question suggests that just the outer shell is stone in the inside is empty. In that case, the mass is coming from the stone shell, and is not very analogous to the living animal's mass, which still makes the phrasing in the article a bit dubious. Perhaps though it contains some original carbon that can be used to do some very old radiocarbon dating, which could improve geological strata based dating of other fossil finds.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- catalogia 6y agoAs far as I can gather, that's not true and the soft tissue was in fact mineralized. Dinosaur "mummies" are fossils of mummies. This dinosaur 'mummy' is fairly unique insofar the soft tissue was mineralized without first being desiccated. Chemical traces of things like pigmentation can remain in fossilized soft tissue, I suppose that counts as "original material", but this thing isn't made out of meat anymore.
- throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
- SmallPeePeeMan 6y ago> To give you an idea of how intact the mummified nodosaur is: it still weighs 2,500 pounds! Why is that relevant? Tissue has been replaced by minerals which presumably are much denser than flesh.
- dang 6y agoTrollish usernames aren't allowed on HN because they basically troll every thread they post to. This one's admittedly only mildly trollish, but still. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20trollish%20username https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... We've banned this account for now, but if you want to email hn@ycombinator.com with a better username, we can rename it for you and unban it.
- dmix 6y agoPreviously, with better pictures: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14326913 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14326913 (2017; 117 comments)
- dang 6y agoPlus with comments from the author of the article. Ok, we'll change from https://www.earthlymission.com/dinosaur-mummy-science-discovery-nodosaur-intact-canada/ https://www.earthlymission.com/dinosaur-mummy-science-discov... to https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/06/dinosaur-nodosaur-fossil-discovery/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/06/dinosaur.... Thanks!
- cheerlessbog 6y agoThe NG article is pay walled.
- dang 6y agoIf there's a workaround, it's ok. Users usually post workarounds in the thread. There's at least one in this thread. This is in the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and there's more explanation here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20paywalls&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989
- airstrike 6y agoAnd from that link, here's a video of the miners lifting the fossil out of the mine... SPOILER ALERT only to watch it break into countless pieces!! :( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJx5VlIAMk0&t=710s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJx5VlIAMk0&t=710s
- dmix 6y agoEven though you said it was going to break before I watched it, it was still very difficult and surprising to see it happen. Especially if you watch it from the beginning with all the work they put into it.
- dorkwood 6y agoAlways a red flag when an article doesn't put a date of publication anywhere on the page.
- FriendlyNormie 6y agoPaywall. Fuck off.
- neonate 6y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20171223121530/http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/06/dinosaur-nodosaur-fossil-discovery/ https://web.archive.org/web/20171223121530/http://www.nation...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tpmx 6y agoWhy did this Canadian energy company (Suncor) react to this properly? Theories? Surely there'd be immense economic pressure to just keep digging. (Am I being too cynical?)
- ozborn 6y agoThere's a number of reasons I think, including: 1. The fossil itself is beautiful and outstanding 2. There is less pressure to produce right now given oversupply and shipping constraints in Alberta 3.Suncor cares more about its reputation than some of the other players in the tar sands 4. The Royal Tyrell Museum is well known to most Albertans, kids go there on school trips and it would likely seem like the obvious thing to do (stop work) when presented with such a find. 5. I have no idea if there is a finders fee, but that fossil is probably more valuable than anything that loader was processing all day. 6. It's a dinosaur - most folks find them pretty cool. :)
- tpmx 6y ago2) It happened in 2011. The oil price was around $100/barrel back then. Was there a regional oversupply back then?
- agilebyte 6y agoRe 5) I don't think they knew how valuable it was when uncovering it, the region is filled with fossils. When I visited Royal Tyrrell Museum in 2016 they said they have more fossils in the storage than they have time to process them.
- giarc 6y agoSuncor was right in the midst of a big investigation into 500 ducks that died in a tailings pond. Might have played a role. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/syncrude-suncor-cleared-after-duck-death-investigation-1.1271299 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/syncrude-suncor-clear...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cknoxrun 6y agoI've seen this in person, and almost every year I visit the museum and have the same reaction. I stand there in wonder looking at it for about 30 minutes. The connection to the past world feels absolutely visceral. You can get very close to it, and it is never too busy around the museum as it is so large. If you ever get a chance to visit this part of Canada (Drumheller), and particularly this museum, you should go for it.
- igrekel 6y agoI second this! I visited the Tyrrel museum in Drumheller and the Dinosaur provincial park that's near Patricia as a young adult about 20 years ago and it is still imprinted in my memory. I had seen dinosaur skeletons in museums before but it didn't compare. Also guided tours through the limited access of the park were amazing, almost surreal, with fossils of dinosaur bones just popping out of the ground now and then plus the chance of seeing active digs.
- cmrdporcupine 6y agoWhen we were kids we used to canoe down the Red Deer river in the badlands area, with a fellow from my parent's canoe club who was a retired geologist. (I grew up in central Alberta and my parents were pretty serious canoers, they usually did faster moving whitewater but once in a while we'd do the Red Deer just for us kids) My sister and I would have our minds blown by him as he explained every rock to us. I doubt you could do what we did now, we'd climb all over the hoodoos and find fossils all over (mostly bison bones, but still the odd fossil.) We never took them home, and I believe anything of import was either given to the museum or he told them about it. Lots of neat little caves, bones all over. Very awesome place. Especially when you're a dinosaur obsessed 8 year old. There was one time we were going down the river and there was a cow on the bank stuck in the mud up almost up to its neck. I remember the adults going to find the rancher and a lot of fuss and the cow was eventually saved.
- igrekel 6y agoThat sounds like an excellent idea for a trip. I'd love to do that with my kid, it would awesome.
- dopylitty 6y agoIt looks like an ancestor of the denosaur, which seems to be a much more advanced/evolved take on the same general design.
- octocop 6y ago110 million years old feels like a shoot from the hip. How do they estimate the age of something like this?
- osamagirl69 6y agoUsually using radiometric dating. Carbon-14 has too short of a halflife (~5000 years) to be useful for fossils, but potassium-40 has a long enough halflife (~1.2 billion years) that it can be used to date minerals going back to the formation of the earths crust--it has even been used to estimate when the moon was formed (4-5 billion years ago)!
- close04 6y agoRadiometric dating is also used on the layers around the fossil. In this case of the hydrocarbon deposit [0]. [0] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/308/5726/1293 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/308/5726/1293
- mattkrause 6y agoThere's a comment from the article's author here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14327802 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14327802 The data is thought to be pretty accurate (±5M years) and it's from radiometric dating of the oil sands.
- SeanFerree 6y agoVery cool!!
- smashah 6y agoUmm don't you mean denosaur??
- 29athrowaway 6y agoMust had been a very hostile world if you had to be that armored just to eat plants.
- cmrdporcupine 6y agoSaw this in person at the Tyrell museum. Pretty cool.
- codeisawesome 6y agoWow. It's really no surprise that people in the past imagined dragons! With no theories around fossilisation, biological/geographical eons, evolution etc., imagine finding something like this (even just an exoskeleton fragment!)
- jquave 6y agoPaywalled