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 Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2016 4:20 pm
Mr. Investi-Gator! Did you know that...?
Username: Cheyriddle4
Prize Preferences: 1,2,4,3,6,5
Prompt: 1
What's so interesting about that? The closest living relations to this fantastic species are birds. Unlike what people tend to believe. Crocodiles are more related to birds and dinosaurs than to snakes and the reptiles in which we first think of. We know this by studies in which Scientists have conducted with the crocodile gene and genes of birds. In which studies have shown that they are more related than was previously thought possible.
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Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2016 4:55 pm
Mr. Investi-Gator! Did you know that...?
Username: Rein-Carnation
Prize Preferences: 1, 7, 3, 2, 4
Prompt : 3
What's so interesting about that?
Pseudosuchians didn't look very much like crocodiles but phytosaurs were a specific evolutionary species that filled the evolutionary niche. The resembled crocodiles having short legs, heavy bodies with rows of scutes on their backs, with elongated toothy snouts. Phytosaur basically translate to "plant creatures" that were once thought to eat only plants. The habits of phytosaurs actually comes from the living crocodiles of modern age hunting prey like fish, land animals, shellfish and turtles.
The reason that is believed for continuing evolution of species is adaptation. They will keep evolving staying the same in appearance and behavior as long as their niche habitats of food-rich waters survive.
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Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2016 5:29 pm
Mr. Investi-Gator! Did you know that...?
Username: Rein-Carnation
Prize Preferences: 1, 3, 2, 4
Prompt : 4
What's so interesting about that?
The previous ancestors of crocodiles such as aetosaurs, rauisuchians, and sphenosuchians actually walked upright. Rauisuchians were found to be living completely on land with a posture that was erect and agile compared to their modern crocodilian relatives that have a splayed walk. Aetosaurs also lived on land but were heavily armored classified as herbivores. Finally the Sphenosuchians possessed scutes upon their backs though they were arranged in two rows along the spinal area. They were much smaller in size and believed to be the closest ancestor to the modern day living crocodiles.
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Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2016 5:50 pm
Mr. Investi-Gator! Did you know that...?
Username: Rein-Carnation
Prize Preferences: 1, 7, 3, 2, 4
Prompt : 5
What's so interesting about that?
The first ancestors of Crocodilians played an enormous role in the ecosystem and how it progressed. the Crurotarsi were the other ancestor of the archosaur groups comprising with the Phytosaurs, Aetosaurs, Rauisuchia, and the Sphenosuchia. While the first ancestors prefered plants in evolution the following species grew to a pallet of flesh and meat. So basically they grew from being simple plant based into mighty hunters of flesh and bone as our modern crocodiles are like today on the higher food chain.
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Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2016 6:11 pm
Mr. Investi-Gator! Did you know that...?
Username: LunaRei_SilverBlood
Prize Preferences: 2 - reroll
Prompt: 3
What's so interesting about that? Phytosaurs have a very close resemblance to our modern crocodiles. They have similar size, appearance and lifestyle. And they are a great example of the convergence / parallel evolution. They are a semi aquatic and existed in the Late Triassic period. In recent studies it's being suggested that the Phytosaurs evolved before the crocodile and birds split.
Animals evolve because of adaptation. Failure to adapt means that they will die off.
Mr. Investi-Gator! Did you know that...?
Username: LunaRei_SilverBlood
Prize Preferences: 2 - reroll
Prompt: 4
What's so interesting about that?
Aetosaurs have small heads, upturned snouts, erect limbs and a body covered in scutes. They were heavily armored and ranged to medium - large size. Their head are flat and blunt with a snout like a pigs.
Rauisuchians had long high legs and scales on the back, their legs were positioned under them, rather than the sprawling to the side.
Sphenosuchians are primarily tiny, with a few exceptions of larger ones. The small ones had a slender body with long legs.
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Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2016 6:20 pm
Mr. Investi-Gator! Did you know that...?
Username: Rein-Carnation
Prize Preferences: 1, 7, 3, 2, 4
Prompt : 6
What's so interesting about that?
The diversity of color in birds is the result of two different ways; pigmentation or light refraction caused by the structure of a bird's feathers. Pigmentaion can be found in things such as plants and animals making it independent of the structural composition of a feather. It comes from three groups; carotenoids, melanins, and porphyrines. Carotenoids are produced by plants by ingesting something that has eaten that plant will produce pigmentation. Melanins appear in tiny granules of color in both the skin and the feathers. Not only does it provide color but it also produces feathers that are stronger and more resistant. Porphyrins is the third group of pigments produced by modifying amino acids in diets.
Scientists do believe that there is enough evidence to predict what colors a dinosaur was but there are some speculations about it. While extracting the pigment-giving organelles known as melanosomes have been found in fossilized dinosaur feathers. Eumelanosomes is also black pigment found that traces to the modern day birds.
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Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2016 6:52 pm
Mr. Investi-Gator! Did you know that...?
Username: Rein-Carnation
Prize Preferences: 1, 7, 3, 2, 4
Prompt : 7
What's so interesting about that?
After 68 million years a T-Rex thigh bone was found to carry valuable DNA. The discovery brought great news of blood vessels and structures that looked like whole cells. This was the very first observation of its kind among scientists alike explaining the iron found in the tissue preserved it from decaying. Also at a Harvard University foundings of soft blood cells, blood cell protein, connective tissue, and cell tissue amino acids were found with a hardosaur otherwise known as a duck-billed dinosaur. These finds are great tools in discovering the biological molecules helping scientists better understand who these dinosaurs truly were.
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Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2016 7:54 pm
Mr. Investi-Gator! Did you know that...?
Username: Sabin Duvert
Prize Preferences: 1, 2, 4, 3, 6, 5
Prompt: 4
What's so interesting about that? Unlike modern crocodilians, aetosaurs, rauisuchians, and sphenosuchians were terrestrial. They had legs positioned directly under their bodies (pillar-like) and were more capable of supporting their weight out of the water. Unlike modern crocodilians who kind of waddle when out of the water, these creatures were capable of hunting prey on land, rather than ambushing prey that come to water holes to drink. While they had a variety of body types, some were predators and some were herbivores, like the aetosaur.
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Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2016 7:57 pm
Mr. Investi-Gator! Did you know that...?
Username: Rita Zyon
Prize Preferences: 4, 5
Prompt: Prompt 1
Crocodiles, alligators, caimans, and gharials are all part of the order Crocodilia. What animals are the closest living evolutionary relatives to crocodilians? How do we know? (1 ticket)
What's so interesting about that? Birds are the closest living evolutionary relatives to crocodiles (side note: very interesting!). In an article I read from the University of California: Santa Cruz, it was described that approximately 240 million years ago - birds and crocodiles shared a common ancestor. This same common ancestor also led to the dinosaurs. By researching crocodilian genomes, scientists from the University of California Santa Cruz found that the crocodilian genome has evolved at a slow rate. By combining the crocodilian genome with the bird genome, scientists were able to partially reconstruct the genome of the common ancestor shared by birds, dinosaurs, and crocodiles. We know that crocodiles and birds are related due to the genome mapping that was conducted by the UC Santa Cruz over a 4-year period. By comparing the genomes of 45 bird species with the crocodile genomes (American alligator, saltwater crocodile, and the Indian gharial), scientists found vast similarities within their DNA sequences.
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Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2016 8:02 pm
Mr. Investi-Gator! Did you know that...?
Username: Sabin Duvert
Prize Preferences: 1, 2, 4, 7, 3, 6, 5
Prompt: BONUS
What's so interesting about that?
I have learned a great deal about ancient crocodilians and their ancestors through these questions! However, what actually surpised me the most was researching the very first question: which modern animals are most closely related to crocodiles. I would have never guessed that birds were more closely related to crocodiles than crocodiles are to other reptiles like komodo dragons or lizards. I knew that birds were modern day dinosaurs, even catogorized as "avian dinosaurs" rather than necessarily a separate taxonomy, but I didn't know just how closely they were related to crocodiles. But having studied anthropology and human evolutionary lines, there can be a lot of surprising divergences and convergent evolution. I find it fascinating how minor traits, recentlyly revealed genetic structures and other advanced biological, paleontoligcal, etc tools can reveal about taxonomy.
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Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2016 8:10 pm
Mr. Investi-Gator! Did you know that...?
Username: Sabin Duvert
Prize Preferences: 1, 2, 4, 7, 3, 6, 5
Prompt: 6
What's so interesting about that? The color of bird feathers that we see with our eyes isn't necessarily just from the physical pigmentation in the feathers, but can also be due to the physical structure of the feather and how it refracts the light. Pigments come from three different groups: carotenoids, melanins, and porphyrines. Structural coloration can yield such dramatic results such as iridescent feathers, or can scatter the light to produce different colors: particularly blue pigments. And when these two factors interact, you can get a dizzying array of hue alterations!
Because of this, even if we can determine genetically what pigment groups are present in dinosaur feathers, it can't account for the alterations such as iridescent or blue colors. However, feather shape is presumably also coded genetically, so I don't see why it couldn't be possible some day to also determine the shape of dinosaur feathers if there is some modern cognate to those structural patterns.
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Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2016 8:17 pm
Mr. Investi-Gator! Did you know that...?
Username: Sabin Duvert
Prize Preferences: 1, 2, 4, 3, 6, 5
Prompt: 7
What's so interesting about that? As nice as it would be if Jurassic Park were true and it was as simple as they put it to locate extinct dinosaur DNA, it is not nearly so simple to extract enough biological data to get anywhere near cloning a dinosaur. DNA degrades over time, and 65 million + years is a very, very long time. However, we have been able to find some useful information to build on our knowledge of non-avian dinosaurs within the biological data. One such piece of information has been extracted from bone tissue/osteocytes in preserved bone, identified as actual preserved biological samples due to the presence of anitbodies within the cel samples which were very similar to ostrich osteocytes. They have also found some fossilized tissue that show flexible blood vessels with what looked like red blood cells suspened within in a T-rex sample. This was the sample that confirmed the relationship with birds, followed by crocodiles: a fact that previously had just been a far-out theory.
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Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2016 8:26 pm
Mr. Investi-Gator! Did you know that...?
Username: Sabin Duvert
Prize Preferences: 1, 2, 4, 7, 3, 6, 5
Prompt: 8
What's so interesting about that? Studying fossil bone histology in dinosaurs has produced some fascinating information, even without DNA sequencing. For example, theropod bones reveal that these dinosaurs grew very rapidly with a structure comparable to today's large birds. Troodon formosus reached its adult size in less than 5 years: another fact that links the relation between dinosaurs and birds. Maiasaurs had an average adult mass of 2.3 tons, and reached full maturity in only 8 years! Furthermore, the growth rate of bones can be linked with the envirornment of the animal, and comparisons have been drawn in studies with quail under different experimental conditions to dinosaurs in different regions of the world that had a very different environemnt at the time.
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Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2016 7:34 am
Mr. Investi-Gator! Did you know that...?
Username: Fatal Irony
Prize Preferences: 1, 2, 4, 7, 3, 5, 6
Prompt: Prompt 3
What's so interesting about that?
An example of an ancient reptile that is similar to crocodiles is Phytosaur (though champsosaurs, certain labyrinthodont amphibians, and perhaps even the early whale Ambulocetus could also be named here). Creatures that look and act like crocodiles keep evolving most likely because of the effectiveness of the design. As far as evolution goes, as adversities or food supply (or lack) or any other situation arises that causes a need for a different trait, then those of the species that have that trait will be "selected for", or will have a higher survival rate/reproduction rate due to their advantage. Should this persist, those with the desired trait will pass along their genetic material, while those who don't, won't. Over time this selection process is what leads to evolution of a species. Crocodiles, and creatures similar, have had little need to change their design for millions of years, probably due to their adaptive capabilities. It's actually rather impressive how relatively little has changed in crocodiles over the millions of years. If it ain't broke, don't fix it I guess!
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Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2016 9:37 am
Mr. Investi-Gator! Did you know that...?
Username: Teh Cheryl
Prize Preferences: 6, 5
Prompt: 1
What's so interesting about that? Birbs are the closest evolutionary relatives to crocodilians! They share a common ancestor down the evolutionary chain. They also have several traits in common. Living diapsid tetrapods (which is the parent group that includes crocs, lizards, and birds) is the presence of two openings on either side of the skull behind the eye. Other similarities include having a vocal range of hearing similar to birds and airflow movement in the lungs.
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