Canadian dino experts find oldest embryo fossils and show early tyrannosaurs could swim

Dinosaur experts from the University of Toronto and the University of Alberta have made some cool discoveries recently, that not only give us a better understanding of how these creatures grew, but that also reduce the number of places we can hide from them if scientists ever decide to bring them back from extinction.

Dr. Robert Reisz, a palaeontologist at the University of Toronto, and his team recently uncovered some nearly 200-million-year-old fossils of a species known as Lufengosaurus, and these are apparently the oldest fossilized dinosaur embryos ever found.

“Most of our record of dinosaur embryos is concentrated in the Late Cretaceous period,” said David Evans, the vertebrate palaeontology curator at the Royal Ontario Museum, according to Nature. “This [study] takes a detailed record of dinosaur embryology and pushes it back over 100 million years.”

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These latest fossils, discovered in China, join a previous collection unearthed in South Africa in 2005, and have helped the researchers plot the growth of these dinosaurs inside the egg. Lufengosaurus, which could grow up to 9 metres in length and weigh close to two tons, was apparently the largest land animal alive at the time, and scientists have wondered how they reached that size. With the wider range of growth stages shown by the now larger collection, the research team was able to see that the dinos grew very quickly and flexed their muscles while still inside the egg, which helped with their development.

According to Nature, Reisz said that this extreme growth rate likely continued after these dinos hatched, thus allowing them to survive by outgrowing the other dinosaurs that would have preyed on them.

“This may be a model to explain gigantism in this group,” he said, according to Nature.

Swimming tyrannosaurs?

Meanwhile, over at the University of Alberta, PhD student Scott Persons is also reporting a discovery from China, this one having to do with dinosaur swimming ability.

Persons studies 'non-avian theropod dinosaurs', like Tyrannosaurus and Albertosaurus, and while working with an international team in China, he found claw marks and other evidence in the bed of an ancient river — possibly from an early tyrannosaur — that show these dinosaurs were capable of swimming, similar to a 'dog paddle'.

"What we have are scratches left by the tips of a two-legged dinosaur's feet," said Persons, according to Science Daily. "The dinosaur's claw marks show it was swimming along in this river and just its tippy toes were touching bottom."

The claw marks went on for a distance of about 15 metres, according to Persons, and showed coordination. So, this apparently wasn't just the flailings of an animal that suddenly ended up in the water, but instead showed that these dinosaurs had some ability to swim.

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I guess if scientists really do figure out how to bring dinosaurs back from extinction, with their rapid growth and swimming ability, we're probably in for a lot more trouble than the Jurassic Park movies let on.

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