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Paleontologists have performed a complete re-analysis of Oxyuropoda ligioides, a land-based peracarid crustacean first reported in 1908 from the Late Devonian floodplains of Ireland and left with unresolved systematic affinities despite a century of attempts at identification.

“Woodlice and their relatives form a group of crustaceans named peracarids that are as species-rich as the more famous group comprising krill, crabs and shrimps named eucarids,” said Dr. Ninon Robin, a postdoctoral researcher at University College Cork.

“From their ancestral marine habitat some peracarids have, unlike eucarids, evolved fully terrestrial ground-crawling ecologies, inhabiting even commonly our gardens, for example pillbugs and sowbugs, which are very common in Ireland.”

In the study, Dr. Robin and her colleagues analyzed the anatomy of Oxyuropoda ligioides, which is known from a single specimen preserved in two dimensions, using digital microscopy and multispectral macroimaging to enhance the contrast of morphological structures.

“Our work advances science’s understanding of when land-dwelling species of crustaceans roamed the Earth, and what they looked like,” Dr. Robin said.

“Using new modern imaging techniques, we determined that Oxyuropoda ligioides was actually a peracarid crustacean, even the oldest known one; which supports the theory that woodlice cousins were already crawling on Irish lands at that very early time, 360 million years ago.”

“From previous genomic and molecular studies, scientists had suggested that this group of crustaceans must have appeared around 450 million years ago.”

“However, their fossils were very rare in the Paleozoic era, which was 560-250 million years ago, so we had no idea at all how they looked at that time, nor if they were marine or yet terrestrial.”

“Our work is an advance in the field of the evolution of invertebrate animals, especially crustaceans, and in our knowledge of the timing of their colonization of land.”

The new results were published in the journal Biology Letters.

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N. Robin et al. 2021. The oldest peracarid crustacean reveals a Late Devonian freshwater colonization by isopod relatives. Biol. Lett 17 (6): 20210226; doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2021.0226

Source: www.sci-news.com/

About 66 million years ago, a 10-km- (6.2-mile) wide asteroid crashed into Earth near the site of the small town of Chicxulub in what is now Mexico. While this impact is firmly linked to the end-Cretaceous extinction of non-avian dinosaurs and 75% of life on the planet, the temporal relationship of the lesser-known Boltysh impact structure in Ukraine to these events is uncertain, although it is thought to have occurred 2,000 to 5,000 years before the mass extinction. A new study, published in the journal Science Advances, shows that the Boltysh impact occurred 650,000 years after the end-Cretaceous mass extinction; at that time, the climate was recovering from the effects of the Chicxulub impact and Deccan Trap volcanism.

The Boltysh impact structure is approximately 24 km (15 miles) in diameter with a 6-km- (3.7-mile) diameter central uplift.

Located in Kivorohrads’ka oblast, Ukraine, the structure is now buried beneath over 500 m (1,640 feet) of post-impact sediments.

Previous analysis of samples from Boltysh, undertaken decades ago, suggested that the meteorite may have struck the Earth between 2,000 and 5,000 years before the Chicxulub asteroid.

The Chicxulub impact is widely believed to have caused the mass extinction event which made non-avian dinosaurs extinct, and the climate event which created the geological signature known as the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary.

However, questions still remained over whether the Boltysh impact might have occurred close enough in time to have had an effect on both.

The new analysis suggests that, in fact, the Boltysh impact happened around 650,000 years after the Chicxulub event.

“The results allow us to place the Boltysh impact more accurately in our timeline of what happened to the Earth in the period after the end-Cretaceous mass extinction event, and better understand our deep geological history,” said Dr. Annemarie Pickersgill, a researcher in the School of Geographical and Earth Sciences at the University of Glasgow.

To determine the date of the Boltysh impact more precisely than ever before, Dr. Pickersgill and colleagues selected four samples from two rock cores taken from the Boltysh crater, containing rocks generated during the impact event and lake sediments which accumulated over time after the crater was formed.

They determined the age of the samples using the argon-argon dating facility.

Argon-argon dating measures the radioactive decay of potassium to argon. The level of decay acts as a ‘rock clock’, which ticks down over geological time and allows researchers today to determine when the rocks were created during the Boltysh impact event.

“Our analysis suggests that the impact occurred very close to 65.39 million years ago,” Dr. Pickersgill said.

“That puts it firmly after the Chicxulub impact and the formation of the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, evidence for which is found in geological records around the world.”

The researchers draw links for the first time between the new dating of the Boltysh impact and evidence for a known ‘hyperthermal’ event found in the Earth’s sediment record, a period of extreme global heating called the lower C29N hyperthermal.

At that time in Earth’s history, volcanoes in India known as the Deccan Traps were releasing vast amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, accelerating a period of global climate change.

“Paleoclimatology aims to help us understand and adapt to today’s changing climate by studying how our atmosphere responded to environmental stresses in the past,” Dr. Pickersgill said.

“Being able to link the Boltysh lake sediments to the lower C29N hyperthermal is another piece of the jigsaw which will form a clearer picture of how our planet has responded to climate change in the past.”

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Annemarie E. Pickersgill et al. 2021. The Boltysh impact structure: An early Danian impact event during recovery from the K-Pg mass extinction. Science Advances 7 (25): eabe6530; doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abe6530

Source: www.sci-news.com/

Researchers at the UPV/EHU-University of the Basque Country describe two palaeotheriidae mammals that lived in the subtropical landscape of Alava

The UPV/EHU's Vertebrate Paleontology research group has described two new species of palaeotheriidae mammals that inhabited the subtropical landscape of Zambrana (Álava) about 37 million years ago. Their atypical dental features could point to a difference in environmental conditions between the Iberian and Central European areas.

Although hypomorph mammals (or equids) are currently represented by only one genus ("Equus') and just a handful of species of horses, donkeys and zebras, they were more diverse during the Eocene epoch (between 56 and 33.9 million years ago). One of the most widespread groups in Europe, which was an archipelago at that time, were the palaeotheriidae, named after the genus "Palaeotherium," described in 1804 from fossils originating in the quarries of Montmartre (Paris) by the famous French naturalist George Cuvier.

The international Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology has recently published a paper on a study led by Leire Perales-Gogenola describing two new species of palaeotheriidae mammals that inhabited the subtropical landscape of Zambrana (Álava) 37 million years ago. Together with their collaborators from the UPV/EHU's Vertebrate Paleontology research group, they described the new species Leptolophus cuestai and Leptolophus franzeni, naming them in memory of the paleontologists Miguel Ángel Cuesta from Palencia, and Jens Lorenz Franzen from Bremen, specialists in mammal fauna of the Eocene epoch in Europe.

Palaeotheriidae (or pseudo-horses) were represented across the European archipelago by more than half a dozen genera, more than half of which were endemic to the Iberian island, and became extinct during the climatic-biological crisis of the Eocene-Oligocene transition, also known as Stehlin's Grande Coupure. Palaeotheriidae were mammals similar in terms of body shape to today's horses, but smaller in size. "Can one imagine animals similar to horses with three toes, the size of a fox terrier, a Great Dane and a donkey living in a subtropical landscape in Alava? Many of these pseudo-horses have been described at the Zambrana site," said one of the team members Dr. Ainara Badiola. "Examples of them are the Pachynolophus zambranensis and Iberolophus arabensis species, which were first specified in this palaeontological enclave."

The two new species not only expand the fossil record and the biodiversity of palaeotheriidae fauna, but also display dental features atypical for equids of the Eocene. "Their molars have a very high crown and are covered with a thick layer of cementum. This type of dentition, also present in other endemic Iberian palaeotheriidae, could be indicative of a difference in environmental conditions between the Iberian and Central European areas, with more arid conditions or less dense or closed forests and the presence of more open areas in Iberia," explained Perales-Gogenola.

At the end of the Eocene in Europe, forests of an intertropical type gradually disappeared, giving way to plant communities of a more temperate type with more open areas. Modern horses or equids appeared in Europe later on during the Miocene (23-5.3 Ma). Their dentition, with very high crowns, is adapted for eating vegetation with a high grit content (grasses). The new species Leptolophus cuestai from the Upper Eocene site at Zambrana (Álava) also displays molars with atypically high crowns, similar to those of some of the earliest equids in Europe.

In addition to its palaeobiological interest, the diverse fossil association of mammals from Zambrana, which comprises primates, rodents, marsupials, carnivores, artiodactyla and perissodactyla, provides new information on the climatic and environmental changes that occurred in Europe and in our environment over geological time.

The UPV/EHU's Vertebrate Paleontology group is currently immersed in the description of more palaeotheriidae material, which could facilitate the description of new genera and species with unusual dental features among the equoid perissodactyla.

Source: https://phys.org/

In a paper published this month in the journal Fungal Biology, a duo of paleontologists from the United States and France described a new genus and species of ancient parasitic fungus found in a piece of 50-million-year-old amber from Europe’s Baltic region.

The newly-described species, named Allocordyceps baltica, is the oldest known fossil fungus of an ant.

“It’s a mushroom growing out of a carpenter ant (tribe Camponotini),” said Professor George Poinar Jr., a researcher in the Department of Integrative Biology at Oregon State University.

“Ants are hosts to a number of intriguing parasites, some of which modify the insects’ behavior to benefit the parasites’ development and dispersion.”

“Carpenter ants seem especially susceptible to fungal pathogens of the genus Ophiocordyceps, including one species that compels infected ants to bite into various erect plant parts just before they die.”

Doing so puts the ants in a favorable position for allowing fungal spores to be released from cup-shaped ascomata — the fungi’s fruiting body — protruding from the ants’ head and neck. Carpenter ants usually make their nests in trees, rotting logs and stumps.

Allocordyceps baltica belongs to the fungi order Hypocreales and shares certain features with Ophiocordyceps, but also displays several developmental stages not previously reported.

“We can see a large, orange, cup-shaped ascoma with developing perithecia — flask-shaped structures that let the spores out — emerging from rectum of the ant,” Professor Poinar said.

“The vegetative part of the fungus is coming out of the abdomen and the base of the neck.”

“We see freestanding fungal bodies also bearing what look like perithecia, and in addition we see what look like the sacs where spores develop.”

“All of the stages, those attached to the ant and the freestanding ones, are of the same species.”

Allocordyceps baltica could not be placed in the Ophiocordyceps genus because ascomata in those fungi usually come out the neck or head of an ant and not the rectum.

“There is no doubt that Allocordyceps baltica represents a fungal infection of a carpenter ant,” Professor Poinar said.

“This is the first fossil record of a member of the Hypocreales order emerging from the body of an ant.”

“And as the earliest fossil record of fungal parasitism of ants, it can be used in future studies as a reference point regarding the origin of the fungus-ant association.”

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George Poinar & Yves-MarieMaltier. Allocordyceps baltica gen. et sp. nov. (Hypocreales: Clavicipitaceae), an ancient fungal parasite of an ant in Baltic amber. Fungal Biology, published online June 5, 2021; doi: 10.1016/j.funbio.2021.06.002

Source: www.sci-news.com/

The end-Permian mass extinction — the most severe extinction event in the past 540 million years — was caused by massive volcanic eruptions in what is now Siberia, according to new research.

“The end-Permian mass extinction, which occurred about 252 million years ago, was the most severe biotic crisis in the Phanerozoic Eon, eliminating more than 90% of marine and 75% of terrestrial species,” said senior author Dr. Yanan Shen from the University of Science and Technology of China and colleagues.

“The Siberian Traps large igneous province is widely hypothesized to have been the primary trigger for the catastrophic environmental deterioration driving the extinction event.”

“Potential kill mechanisms triggered by emplacement of the Siberian Traps magmas include global warming, ultraviolet radiation exposure, hypercapnia, ocean acidification and anoxia, and toxic metal release.”

In the study, the researchers analyzed the Permian-Triassic sedimentary rocks from the Buchanan Lake section in the Sverdrup Basin, Canadian High Arctic.

They found that the samples have the lightest nickel isotope ratios ever measured in sedimentary rocks.

The only plausible explanation is that the nickel was sourced from the volcanic terrain, very likely carried by aerosol particles and deposited in the ocean, where it dramatically changed the chemistry of seawater and severely disrupted the marine ecosystem.

“The study results provide strong evidence that nickel-rich particles were aerosolized and dispersed widely, both through the atmosphere and into the ocean,” said co-author Dr. Laura Wasylenki, a researcher at Northern Arizona University.

“Nickel is an essential trace metal for many organisms, but an increase in nickel abundance would have driven an unusual surge in productivity of methanogens, microorganisms that produce methane gas. Increased methane would have been tremendously harmful to all oxygen-dependent life.”

“Our data provide a direct link between global dispersion of nickel-rich aerosols, ocean chemistry changes and the mass extinction event,” she added.

“The data also demonstrate that environmental degradation likely began well before the extinction event — perhaps starting as early as 300,000 years before then.”

“Prior to this study, the connection between Siberian Traps flood basalt volcanism, marine anoxia and mass extinction was rather vague, but now we have evidence of a specific kill mechanism.”

“This finding demonstrates the power of nickel isotope analyses, which are relatively new, to solve long-standing problems in the geosciences.”

The results were published in the journal Nature Communications.

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M. Li et al. 2021. Nickel isotopes link Siberian Traps aerosol particles to the end-Permian mass extinction. Nat Commun 12, 2024; doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-22066-7

Source: www.sci-news.com/

The Colin Trevorrow directorial Jurassic World: Dominion will pick up from the events of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom that concluded with dinosaurs escaping into the world after being freed.

The makers of Jurassic World 3, officially titled Jurassic World: Dominion, have teased fans of the franchise with the first look of the film. But, the five-minute preview of the movie can only be watched during the IMAX screenings of F9, the ninth Fast and Furious movie.

The clip gives a sneak peek into the new species of dinosaurs which will be introduced in the film which is set 65 million years ago. It also gives a brief glimpse into a clash between a T-rex and the Giganotosaurus, a new addition to the franchise. From the short clip which is being called the extended look tease, Jurassic World 3 seems to be a visual extravaganza.

The Colin Trevorrow directorial will pick up from the events of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom that concluded with dinosaurs escaping into the world after being freed. Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard will reprise their roles of Owen Grady and Claire Dearing, respectively. The others who have joined the film’s cast include Jake Johnson, Omar Sy, Daniella Pineda, Justice Smith, Isabella Sermon, Mamoudou Athie, DeWanda Wise, Dichen Lachman, and Scott Haze.

Last year, Chris Pratt had called the film’s script ‘unbelievable’ on Ellen DeGeneres’ show. “It’s got everybody. It’s got pretty much everybody in it. Maybe I just blew it, but I don’t care. All of the cast from the original Jurassic Park is coming back, so it’s going to feel very much like how Endgame brought everything together at Marvel,” the actor said.

Jurassic World: Dominion started filming in 2020, but the shoot had to be stalled due to the coronavirus pandemic. It is scheduled to hit screens on June 10, 2022.

Source: https://indianexpress.com/

An extinct species of dwarf elephant experienced a weight and height reduction of 8,000kg and almost two meters after evolving from one of the largest land mammals that ever lived, a new study has confirmed.

The island-dwelling Sicilian dwarf elephant Palaeoloxodon cf. mnaidriensis —which it is thought may have become extinct about 19,000 years ago—was just 15% of its original body mass by the time its dwarfing process was complete

The study, involving Nottingham Trent University, the University of Potsdam in Germany and the Natural History Museum, used combined molecular and fossil evidence to define the minimum and maximum dwarfing rate of the species.

The team found that the less than 2m tall dwarf elephant reduced in weight and height by a maximum 200kg and 4cm per generation.

Because of their insular and isolated environments, evolution on islands is a process which can lead to a variety of extreme changes in a short timeframe, including dwarfism and gigantism and is often referred to as 'evolution in action." To put the extent of the size reduction of the dwarf elephant into context, it would be comparable to modern humans dwarfing to approximately the size of a Rhesus monkey.

As part of the work the team successfully recovered ancient DNA from dwarf elephant remains from Sicily's Puntali Cave, with an estimated age of between 175,000 and 50,000 years.

Many island dwarfs and giants are now extinct and measuring the rate of change in extinct animals from fossils alone can be challenging due to the incompleteness of the fossil record. And molecular dating using ancient DNA to measure the rate of evolutionary change is hampered by the fact they often existed on islands with warm climates in which DNA does not survive well.

To overcome the challenge of DNA degradation, the researchers analyzed a piece of petrous bone—part of the skull that contains the organs of the inner ear—which is known to preserve DNA better than other parts of the skeleton.

By combining the DNA and fossil evidence the researchers were able to determine that this specific Sicilian elephant's mitochondrial, or maternal, lineage diverged from the straight tusked elephant Palaeoloxodon antiquus from Neumark Nord (Germany), which stood at almost 4m tall with a weight of ten tons.

Palaeoloxodon antiquus livedon the European mainland between 800,000 and 40,000 years ago and the team believes it will have colonized Sicily some time between 70,000 and 200,000 years ago. Colonization probably occurred during periods of cold climate when sea levels were lower, exposing land bridges that the elephants could have utilized to colonize the islands.

It is thought that the dwarfing process at the earliest began once the Puntali elephant diverged from its mainland relative.

Using the estimated age of the Puntali elephant fossil, the size and mass of the straight-tusked elephant, and the estimated start of the dwarfing process, the team was able to calculate size and body mass reduction rate per year and per generation.

The study, which is published in the journal Current Biology, also involved the University of York, the University of Iceland, the University of Palermo and the University of Cambridge.

"By combining ancient DNA with paleontological evidence we can show the timing of observable evolutionary changes with greater accuracy," said Dr. Axel Barlow, an expert in palaeogenomics and molecular bioscience in Nottingham Trent University's School of Science and Technology.

He said: "The magnitude of dwarfing resulting from this rapid evolutionary process is truly striking, resulting in a loss of body mass of almost 85% in one of the largest ever terrestrial mammals. As the descendants of giants, the extinct dwarf elephants are among the most intriguing examples of evolution on islands."

Dr. Victoria Herridge, an evolutionary biologist based at the Natural History Museum London, said: "It's such an achievement to successfully sequence an ancient mitochondrial genome from a Sicilian dwarf elephant, and to finally have DNA from a southern European straight-tusked elephant.

"It opens the door for more studies of this kind, and with it the chance to finally crack one of the big mysteries of evolutionary biology: why elephants evolve to be so small on islands."

Dr. Johanna Paijmans, a research fellow in the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge, said: "This is a really exciting example of the power of multidisciplinary studies. Only through combining multiple lines of evidence we were able to gain a better understanding of the dwarfing process of this iconic species."

The dwarf elephant remains are kept in the Gemmellaro Museum (University of Palermo) where the specimens were sampled.

Dr. Giulio Catalano, a postdoctoral researcher in the STEBICEF Department at the University of Palermo, said: "With this exciting study we shed new light on the complex evolutionary history of dwarf elephant species lived in Sicily in the Pleistocene."

Source: https://phys.org/

The 110-million-year-old footprints discovered in Kent, southern England, were left by three types of dinosaurs, including theropod, ornithopod, and ankylosaur dinosaurs.

The 110-million-year-old (Early Cretaceous period) dinosaur footprints were discovered in the cliffs and on the foreshore in Folkestone, where stormy conditions affect the cliff and coastal waters, and are constantly revealing new fossils.

“This is the first time dinosaur footprints have been found in strata known as the Folkestone Formation and it’s quite an extraordinary discovery because these dinosaurs would have been the last to roam in this country before becoming extinct,” said Professor David Martill, a paleontologist in the School of the Environment, Geography and Geosciences at the University of Portsmouth.

The Folkestone footprints are thought to be from ankylosaurs, rugged-looking armored dinosaurs which were like living tanks; theropods, three-toed flesh-eating dinosaurs like the Tyrannosaurus rex; and ornithopods, plant-eating ‘bird-hipped’ dinosaurs so-called because of their pelvic structure being a little bit similar to birds.

Most of the findings are isolated footprints, but one discovery comprises six footprints.

This trackway was likely left by an ornithopod dinosaur and assigned to the ichnogenus Ornithopodichnus.

“This is a remarkable discovery because the rocks here represented the last time there was land in the British Isle of about 50 million years, during which time the dinosaurs went extinct,” Professor Martill said.

“We have documented the very last dinosaurs to walk in Britain.”

The largest Folkestone footprint measures 80 cm (31.5 inches) in width and 65 cm (25.6 inches) in length and belongs to an Iguanodon-like dinosaur.

“To find such an array of species in one place is fascinating,” Professor Martill said.

“These dinosaurs probably took advantage of the tidal exposures on coastal foreshores, perhaps foraging for food or taking advantage of clear migration routes.”

The discovery is described in a paper published this month in the journal Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association.

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Philip T. Hadland et al. The youngest dinosaur footprints from England and their palaeoenvironmental implications. Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association, published online June 17, 2021; doi: 10.1016/j.pgeola.2021.04.005

Source: www.sci-news.com/

Spielberg beat Cameron to the film rights by 'a few hours.' If he'd called earlier, Jurassic Park could've turned out very differently.

Steven Spielberg and James Cameron have the distinction of being the only two directors to have broken the record for highest-grossing movie ever made more than once. Cameron has broken the record twice, with Titanic and Avatar, while Spielberg has broken it a whopping three times with Jaws, E.T., and Jurassic Park. But the only reason that last movie was directed by Spielberg and not Cameron was a little twist of fate.

While at the opening of the Titanic Museum in Belfast back in 2012, Cameron revealed that he actually wanted to direct Jurassic Park himself. He read Michael Crichton’s source material, envisioned a film adaptation, called the publisher to ask about picking up the rights, and was met with some bad news. Cameron explained, “I tried to buy the book rights and [Spielberg] beat me to it by a few hours.”

Whether Spielberg or Cameron directed the movie is about much more than whose name appears in the end credits. While they’ve both broken their fair share of ground in the world of visual effects, Spielberg and Cameron have very different filmmaking styles. Spielberg’s alien movie has a mild-mannered dad recreating Devil's Tower with mashed potatoes; Cameron’s alien movie has Marines being torn to shreds on a distant planet. Spielberg’s robot movie is essentially Pinocchio with artificial intelligence; Cameron’s robot movie has a police station massacre.

At the time, Cameron said, “When I saw the film, I realized that I was not the right person to make [Jurassic Park]. He was, because he made a dinosaur movie for kids, and mine would’ve been Aliens with dinosaurs, and that wouldn’t have been fair. Dinosaurs are for eight-year-olds.” When Spielberg read Jurassic Park, he envisioned a movie for the whole family, but when Cameron read it, he saw a dark, violent, bloody movie for grownups.

Spielberg sanitized a lot of the book’s violence. In the book, Nedry carries his own intestines after his initial attack. Muldoon cuts a raptor in half with a rocket launcher. John Hammond is eaten alive by a group of compys. If Spielberg didn’t tone down the violence and adapted the book faithfully, it couldn’t hope to avoid an R rating. Cameron’s plan was to lean into the graphic, brutal nature of Crichton’s source material: “I’d have gone further, nastier, much nastier.” One gruesome death scene that Spielberg was going to leave in was Samuel L. Jackson’s character, but bad weather prevented Jackson from flying out to the set. So, in the final movie, his death is merely implied by the presence of his severed arm.

It seems that the main difference between Spielberg’s Jurassic Park and Cameron’s Jurassic Park is that Spielberg aimed for a PG-13 rating and Cameron would’ve aimed for an R rating. “Aliens with dinosaurs” is the key descriptor. Cameron’s sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1979 horror masterpiece Alien is defined by its hard-R violence, nonstop grisly spectacle, and overwhelming sense of sheer terror. But it also has plenty of thought-provoking sci-fi storytelling that’s often overlooked. Carter Burke’s attempt to impregnate Ripley or Newt with a xenomorph so he can bring it home is similar to John Hammond playing God by cloning dinosaurs for an amusement park.

Cameron’s concession that Spielberg was the right filmmaker to helm Jurassic Park hinges on kids’ ability to enjoy it, but kids love Aliens (kids whose parents are cool enough to let them watch Aliens, anyway). As much as ‘90s kids loved Spielberg’s take on Jurassic Park, they probably would’ve lapped up a more blood-soaked version, too.

Spielberg was able to create mountains of tension without excessive on-screen violence in Jurassic Park. While Cameron’s version would’ve relied on boundary-pushing blood and guts to shock the audience, Spielberg terrified audiences across the world with a relatively bloodless PG-13 movie. The scene in which the raptors stalk Lex and Tim through the kitchen is a masterclass in suspense-building. The T. rex attack is both a thrilling midpoint twist and a perfectly crafted set piece. The threat of the raptors outlined by Alan Grant in an early scene is terrifying enough without actually seeing them claw out people’s guts.

It’s tough to say whether Cameron’s version would’ve turned out better than Spielberg’s because Cameron’s version didn’t get any further into development than calling to enquire about the rights, but Spielberg’s version is an untouchable masterpiece. With its revolutionary visual effects (which still hold up today), Jurassic Park is one of the greatest and most groundbreaking movies ever made.

After seeing Spielberg’s film, Cameron conceded that he was the wrong person to adapt Crichton’s novel. His Jurassic Park might’ve been a cool movie, though. In the age of re-imaginings, someone in Hollywood should cook up a blood-drenched, R-rated riff on Jurassic Park with more brutal, realistic dinosaur attacks in line with Cameron’s curious original vision for the Spielberg classic.

Source: https://gamerant.com/

Talk about a blast from the past.

Yes! Just like dogs, some insects, and even millipedes, dinosaurs undoubtedly would have passed gas.

Not only did Brontosaurus and Triceratops make wind, but they would have made a lot of it. So much, in fact, that it affected the entire Earth and its climate. One study found that dinosaurs’ ‘emissions’ were an important factor in keeping the planet warm and moist during the Mesozoic Era (250 to 65 million years ago).

Similarly, farts and burps shape our modern climate: emissions from livestock account for more than 10 per cent of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions today.

Source: www.sciencefocus.com/