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A reconstruction of Halszkaraptor escuilliei reveals the oddball sported a swan-like neck and flippers.

Credit: Lukas Panzarin and Andrea Cau for scientific supervision

An enigmatic dinosaur - which sported a swan-like neck, amphibious flippers and Velociraptor-esque claws - could walk like a duck and swim like a penguin during its heyday on Earth, scientists have found after examining its fossilized remains.

In fact, the remains, which were on the black market for years, painted such a wacky image of a dinosaur that paleontologists thought it was a sophisticated fake at first. [ See images of the swan-necked, amphibious dinosaur]

Its discovery reveals that the bird-like dinosaur was likely semiaquatic and felt right at home in the water, the researchers said. This is surprising because the newfound species is a theropod - a group of bipedal, mostly meat-eating dinosaurs that includes Tyrannosaurus rex - and it's thought that most theropods didn't spend much time in the water, the researchers said. (The major exception being Spinosaurus. Also, T. rex could likely swim, fossilized underwater footprints show.)

The newly identified species likely swam with its flipper-like arms, and its long neck likely helped it with foraging and ambush hunting, the researchers said.

The newfound dinosaur hails from Ukhaa Tolgod, a dinosaur graveyard in southern Mongolia. Researchers named it Halszkaraptor escuilliei, or "Halszka" for short, honoring Halszka Osmólska (1930-2008), a Polish paleontologist who specialized in Mongolian dinosaurs. The species name honors François Escuillié, who returned the poached specimen to Mongolia, the researchers wrote in the study.

"Illegally exported from Mongolia, Halszka resided in private collections around the world before it was acquired in 2015 and offered to paleontologists for study and to prepare its return to Mongolia," study senior researcher Pascal Godefroit, a paleontologist at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels, said in a statement.

Once H. escuilliei was safely delivered to scientists, they set about analyzing it. But the bizarre dinosaur didn't fit into any of the predatory dinosaur groups known from Mongolia. Rather, it had a mix of reptilian, avian and amphibian characteristics. It even had sickle-like "killer claws" on its feet, like those of Velociraptor, the researchers noted.

"The first time I examined the specimen, I even questioned whether it was a genuine fossil," study lead researcher Andrea Cau, a paleontologist at the Geological Museum Giovanni Capellini in Bologna, Italy, said in the statement.

To ensure the specimen was real, and not a fake configured on the black market, the researchers analyzed it with synchrotron multi-resolution X-ray microtomography. This technique allowed the researchers to take multiple X-rays that were 100 billion times more powerful than X-rays used in hospitals. The scientists then assembled these X-rays to create a virtual 3D image of the dinosaur.

Much to the scientists' delight, the results showed that the specimen appeared to be a genuine animal, and not a fake specimen pieced together from different fossils, said study co-researcher Dennis Voeten, a researcher at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF).

The synchrotron also revealed that the dinosaur has a number of teeth in its mouth that can't be seen with the naked eye, study co-researcher Vincent Beyrand, a researcher at the ESRF, said. "We also identified a neurovascular mesh inside its snout that resembles those of modern crocodiles to a remarkable degree," Beyrand said in the statement. "These aspects suggest that Halszka was an aquatic predator."

The synchrotron also showed that Halszka walked on two legs while on land, likely with the same posture that modern ducks have. While in the water, the bird-like dinosaur likely used its "flippers" to swim, much like penguins do today, the researchers said. [ In Images: Digging Up a Swimming Dinosaur Called Spinosaurus]

Despite its odd features, Halszka isn't the only bizarre dinosaur from the Gobi Desert. Several other strange Mongolian theropods appear to be closely related to it, which prompted the researchers to create Halszkaraptorinae, a new group that is a subfamily of the dromaeosaurs, a dinosaur group commonly known as raptors.

However, some scientists are still skeptical about Halszka's validity.

It could be a weird new type of dinosaur, "but because the specimen was collected by poachers and sold on the black market, I am just not 100 percent sure it hasn't been tampered with," said Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh. "Some fakes these days are so sophisticated."

The conclusion that the dinosaur was semiaquatic is not a "slam dunk," Brusatte added. "The evidence is mostly circumstantial at this point," he told Live Science in an email. "For instance, the long neck is seen in many other small theropods, and is even seen in modern dinosaurs that are not aquatic, like ostriches."

Despite this uncertainty, "I'm very excited about this fossil, but I think it raises more questions than it answers, and we'll probably be debating about it for years," Brusatte said.

The study was published online yesterday (Dec. 6) in the journal Nature.

Original article on Live Science.

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This Dinosaur Fossil Was So Bizarre, Scientists Thought It Was Fake

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An enigmatic dinosaur - which sported a swan-like neck, amphibious flippers and Velociraptor-esque claws - could walk like a duck and swim like a penguin during its heyday on Earth, scientists have found after examining its fossilized remains.

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Amongst species of colonial snapping shrimp, the capacity for defense versus reproduction in queens varies with the level of cooperation, according to a study published March 14, 2018 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Sally Bornbusch from Duke University, USA, and colleagues.

Snapping shrimp in the genus Synalpheus are the only marine organisms that are eusocial, that is, reproduction is skewed to the queens, and colonies defend their territories cooperatively. The degree of eusociality varies amongst Synalpheus species, however, raising the question of whether queens of different species also have different strategies for allocating their resources between defense and reproduction. To find out, Bornbusch and colleagues determined fighting claw mass and egg number of 353 egg-bearing females from 221 colonies of six eusocial snapping shrimp species in the Caribbean.

In queens of snapping shrimp species that are weakly eusocial, the researchers found strong trade-offs between fighting claw mass and egg number. In contrast, this trade-off was smaller or absent in queens of species that are strongly eusocial. In addition, colony size was also a factor: in large colonies of highly eusocial species, trade-offs between queens' weaponry and fecundity were smaller. This work suggests that in snapping shrimp species that are less cooperative, female-female conflict within the colony has selected for queens that retain weapons at a significant cost to fecundity. Conversely, in species that are more eusocial -- notably those with a single queen per colony -- protection by other colony members could be an explanation to a reduction in this cost of weaponry in queens.

"We find that in eusocial Synalpheus shrimp, female-female competition and reproductive skew play a role in shaping a trade-off in queen energy allocation between reproductive success and defense weaponry," says Bornbusch. "These findings suggest that the evolution of eusociality in Synalpheus shrimp has left a signal in the allometry of female reproduction and defense."
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Materials provided by PLOS. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

Sarah L. Bornbusch, Jonathan S. Lefcheck, J. Emmett Duffy. Allometry of individual reproduction and defense in eusocial colonies: A comparative approach to trade-offs in social sponge-dwelling Synalpheus shrimps. PLOS ONE, 2018; 13 (3): e0193305 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0193305

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mating and breeding; new species; frogs and reptiles; fisheries; extinction; nature; endangered animals; biology

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Tradeoffs between weaponry and fecundity in snapping shrimp queens vary with eusociality: Weakly eusocial queens must trade off their investment in maintaining their fighting claws or producing eggs

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Amongst species of colonial snapping shrimp, the capacity for defense versus reproduction in queens varies with the level of cooperation, according to a study published March 14, 2018 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Sally Bornbusch from Duke University, USA, and colleagues.

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(Image: © G. Mayr/Senckenberg Research Institute)

The fossils of a refrigerator-size penguin were so gargantuan that the scientists who discovered them initially thought they belonged to a giant turtle. The ancient behemoth is now considered the second-largest penguin on record.

The newfound penguin species would have stood nearly 6 feet tall (1.8 meters) and weighed about 220 lbs. (100 kilograms) during its heyday tens of millions of years ago.

The bird's gigantism indicates that "a very large size seems to have developed early on in penguin evolution, soon after these birds lost their flight capabilities," said study co-lead researcher Gerald Mayr, a curator of ornithology at the Senckenberg Research Institute, in Germany. [ In Photos: The Amazing Penguins of Antarctica]

At first, the researchers thought the penguin fossils belonged to a turtle, said study co-lead researcher Alan Tennyson, a vertebrate curator at the Museum of New Zealand (Te Papa Tongarewa), who discovered the fossil with paleontologist Paul Scofield on a beach in New Zealand's Otago province in 2004.

But shortly after a fossil technician began preparing the specimen in 2015, he found a part of the shoulder blade, known as the coracoid, which revealed that the fossils came from a penguin, Tennyson told Live Science.

(Image credit: G. Mayr/Senckenberg Research Institute)

Further analysis dated the penguin to between 55 million and 59 million years ago, meaning that it lived a mere 7 million to 11 million years after an asteroid slammed into Earth and killed the nonavian dinosaurs, Mayr said.

The researchers named the late-Paleocene penguin Kumimanu biceae. Its genus name, Kumimanu, was inspired by the Maori indigenous culture of New Zealand. In the Maori culture, "kumi" is a mythological monster, and "manu" is the Maori word for "bird." The species name, biceae, honors Tennyson's mother, Beatrice "Bice" A. Tennyson, who encouraged him to pursue his interest in natural history.

K. biceae didn't look much like modern penguins. Although researchers could not find its skull, they "know from similarly aged fossils that the earliest penguins had much longer beaks, which they probably used to spear fishes, than their modern relatives [do]," Mayr told Live Science. Like its modern cousins, however, K. biceae would have already developed typical penguin feathers, waddled with an upright stance and sported flipper-like wings that helped it swim, he added.

Researchers have discovered other ancient penguin fossils in New Zealand, including those of Waimanu manneringi, which lived about 61 million years ago. However, the largest penguin on record is Palaeeudyptes klekowskii, which lived about 37 million years ago in Antarctica. P. klekowskii stood about 6.5 feet (2 m) tall and weighed a whopping 250 lbs. (115 kg), according to a 2014 study in the journal Comptes Rendus Palevol (Palevol Reports).

(Image credit: G. Mayr/Senckenberg Research Institute)

Given that the Antarctic penguin was larger than K. biceae, it's likely that "giant size evolved more than once in penguin evolution," Mayr said.

K. biceae is a "cool fossil," said Daniel Ksepka, a curator at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut, who was not involved in the research. "It's very old; it's almost as old as the oldest known penguins anywhere," Ksepka told Live Science. "That shows that [penguins] got big really quickly. And it all seems to have happened in New Zealand." [ Photos of Flightless Birds: All 18 Penguin Species]

But why was New Zealand a penguin paradise? The archipelago was surrounded by fish for penguins to eat, and it originally had no native mammals (although today it's home to many sheep, weasels and domestic pets), meaning that there were no predators to bother the penguins when they came ashore to molt their feathers and lay eggs, Ksepka said.

The study was published online today (Dec. 12) in the journal Nature Communications.

(Image credit: G. Mayr/Senckenberg Research Institute)

Original article on Live Science.

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Giant Penguin: This Ancient Bird Was As Tall As a Refrigerator

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(Image: © G. Mayr/Senckenberg Research Institute) The fossils of a refrigerator-size penguin were so gargantuan that the scientists who discovered them initially thought they belonged to a giant turtle. The ancient behemoth is now considered the second-largest penguin on record. The newfound penguin species would have stood nearly 6 feet tall (1.8 meters) and weighed about 220 lbs.

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C. juji prepares to snatch its prey.

Credit: Zhao Chuang

Despite its fearsome, Velociraptor-like skull, a 161-million-year-old dinosaur the size of a duck would have been a shining, shimmering and splendid sight to behold - mostly because it sported gleaming, iridescent feathers that were rainbow-colored, a new study finds.

Iridescent feathers glistened on the dinosaur's head, wings and tail, according to an analysis of the shape and structure of the creature's melanosomes, the parts of cells that contain pigment.

"The preservation of this dinosaur is incredible - we were really excited when we realized the level of detail we were able to see on the feathers," study co-researcher Chad Eliason, a postdoctoral researcher at the Field Museum in Chicago, said in a statement. [ See images and illustrations of the iridescent dinosaur]

A farmer in northeastern China's Hebei Province discovered the fossil, and the Paleontological Museum of Liaoning in China acquired the find in 2014. After discovering its iridescence and noting the unique bony crest on top of the dinosaur's head, researchers gave it a colorful name - Caihong juji - which is Mandarin for "rainbow with the big crest."

The scientists discovered the dinosaur's iridescence and colorful nature by examining its feathers using a scanning electron microscope (SEM). Incredibly, the SEM analysis showed imprints of melanosomes in the fossil. The organic pigment once contained in the melanosomes is long gone, but the structure of the cell parts revealed the feathers' original colors, the researchers said. That's because differently shaped melanosomes reflect light in different ways.

" Hummingbirds have bright, iridescent feathers, but if you took a hummingbird feather and smashed it into tiny pieces, you'd only see black dust," Eliason said. "The pigment in the feathers is black, but the shapes of the melanosomes that produce that pigment are what make the colors in hummingbird feathers that we see."

The pancake-shaped melanosomes in C. juji matched those in hummingbirds, indicating that the Jurassic-age dinosaur had iridescent feathers, the researchers said.

C. juji isn't the first dinosaur on record to have iridescent feathers; Microraptor, a four-winged dinosaur also sported gleaming feathers, Live Science previously reported. But that dinosaur lived about 40 million years after C. juji, so the newly identified dinosaur is by far the oldest dinosaur on record to flaunt iridescent plumage, the researchers said.

C. juji is also the oldest animal on record to have asymmetrical feathers, which help modern birds steer while flying. However, unlike modern birds, whose asymmetrical feathers are on their wing tips, C. juji sported these lopsided feathers on its tail. That, combined with the fact that C. juji likely couldn't fly, led the researchers to conclude the dinosaur likely used its feathers to attract mates and keep warm.

This "bizarre" feature has never been seen before in either dinosaurs or birds, which evolved from dinosaurs, said study co-researcher Xing Xu, a researcher at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. This suggests that tail feathers may have played a role in early, controlled flight, Xu said.

But not all of C. juji's features are out of the blue. Some of its traits, such as its bony head crest, resemble those on other dinosaurs, researchers said.

"This combination of traits is rather unusual," study co-researcher Julia Clarke, a professor of vertebrate paleontology at the University of Texas at Austin, said in the statement. "It has a Velociraptor-type skull on the body of this very avian, fully feathered, fluffy kind of form." [ Tiny Dino: Reconstructing Microraptor's Black Feathers]

This mixture of old and new traits is an example of mosaic evolution, when some parts of an animal evolve, but others stay the same, the researchers said.

The study was published online today (Jan. 15) in the journal Nature Communications.

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Little 'Rainbow' Dinosaur Discovered by Farmer in China

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Despite its fearsome, Velociraptor-like skull, a 161-million-year-old dinosaur the size of a duck would have been a shining, shimmering and splendid sight to behold - mostly because it sported gleaming, iridescent feathers that were rainbow-colored, a new study finds.

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Scientists believe is a new whale species is doing the exact opposite of other whales. It is being as heard as it is seen.

Recordings taken near the polar continent captured a strange, never-before-heard whale sound - a signal they are calling "Antarctic BW29". Researchers say that they located the signal 1,000 times in 14 separate recordings.

The unique sounds are similar to a chirp and are usually associated with a particular kind of whale, known as beaked whales to navigate their way. Scientists are able to identify what species of beaked whale is nearby just by listening to the recordings. But while this particular signal has similar frequencies and pulses that beak whales use, it's still different from anything ever heard before.

Beaked whales are a family of whales that is known for its members' "highly elusive behavior." They are notoriously difficult to spot, diving deep into the ocean's depths and only surfacing for short periods of time. As a result, scientists are still discovering different species today. One species, Deraniyagala's beaked whale, was only identified last year.

Because beaked whales are so poorly studied, it is possible that the sound comes from an already-observed species that is finally speaking on the record. But given the whales' slippery past, the authors believe that there is a chance that this signal might indicate a species that hasn't been observed yet. It will take further research to get to the bottom of this mystery, but we're keeping our ears peeled.

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New Species of Whale Discovered In Antarctica | Antarctica Journal

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New Species of Whale Discovered In Antarctica5 (100%) 1 vote Scientists believe is a new whale species is doing the exact opposite of other whales. It is being as heard as it is seen. Recordings taken near the polar continent captured a strange, never-before-heard whale sound - a signal they are calling "Antarctic BW29".

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By Micaela Jemison

Flitting swiftly through the darkness above the tropical forest canopy in Central and South America, a group of cute little bats with dog-like faces have long been hiding a big secret. Now, their secret is out.

For more than 50 years, scientists believed that only six species of the fast flying, insect-eating mammals known as dog-faced bats existed. That number has now increased to eight with the discovery of two new species, the Freeman's dog-faced bat ( Cynomops freemani), collected by Smithsonian researchers in Panama in 2012 and the Waorani dog-faced bat ( Cynomops tonkigui) from Ecuador. Both new species are described today in the journal Mammalian Biology.

"Identifying two mammal species new to science is extremely exciting," says Ligiane Moras, lead author of the study and who did part of this work as a fellow at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) in Washington, D.C. during her doctoral studies at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais in Brazil.

"After characterizing the body shapes of 242 dog-faced bats from museum collections across the Americas and Europe, comparing their DNA, and adding in field observations including sound recordings, we consider there to be eight species in this group, two of them new to science," Moras says.

The description of the new Freeman's dog-faced bat, named for bat researcher Patricia Freeman, was based not only on specimens previously identified as C. paranus or C. greenhalli in the drawers of the extensive bat collection at NMNH but also on physical measurements taken from live animals.

Flying high above the tree canopy at speeds much faster than other bats, dog-faced bats are rarely caught by even the most dedicated of bat researchers. So, it was a mixture of luck and specialized mist nets that led to the capture of 56 Freeman's dog-faced bats in Gamboa, Panama in 2012 by a group of students working with staff scientist Rachel Page at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI).

"I knew we had caught something exceptional, but all the bats of the Cynomops genus look very similar in the hand. I had not realized we had caught a new species, now called Freeman's dog-faced bat, until Ligiane came back with the DNA results," explains Thomas Sattler, one of the students in the field in Panama who was working on his Post-Doc at the University of Ulm as well as at STRI and is now at the Swiss Ornithological Institute

"We were very lucky to catch several different individuals of this species in mist nets and to record their calls. Having the call data may make it possible for us to find them again in the future and to learn more about this newly discovered bat species," said Sattler.

Because the new scientific description of Freeman's dog-faced bat includes recordings of its echolocation calls-the signals it uses to navigate through the air in and above the forest canopy and to find insect prey-it may be possible to find this species again using a "bat detector," a special recorder that allows researchers to hear bats as they fly by and identify them as a single species.

The combination of genetic and morphological data along with recordings of echolocation calls is incredibly rare for any description of a new bat species.

The discovery of the slightly smaller Waorani dog-faced bat ( C. tonkigui) unfortunately does not include call recordings and is based solely on the physical examination and DNA comparison of museum specimens collected in Ecuador. The name " tonkigui" honors the Waorani tribe of Ecuador, some of whom live in the surrounding forest at one of the locations where these bats were captured. Tonkigui means bat in Waorani.

It is exceptionally rare to catch dog-faced bats in the wild. Museum collections combined with new technologies were invaluable in the further understanding of this cryptic group of animals, the researchers say.

"The discovery of two new species of Cynomops is tremendously exciting. Molecular tools combined with meticulous morphological measurements are opening new doors to the diversity of this poorly understood group," says Rachel Page of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. "This discovery begs the question-what other new species are there, right under our very noses? What new diversity is yet to be uncovered?"

Tags: bats, mammals, National Museum of Natural History, new species, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

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More sky puppies! Scientists discover two new species of dog-faced bat

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By Micaela Jemison Flitting swiftly through the darkness above the tropical forest canopy in Central and South America, a group of cute little bats with dog-like faces have long been hiding a big secret. Now, their secret is out. For more than 50 years, scientists believed that only six species of the fast flying, insect-eating mammals known as dog-faced bats existed.

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Updated February 21, 2018 11:16:43

Up to five new fish species are among a haul of thousands of fish collected from the dark depths of Australia's eastern abyss.

Scientists on board the research ship Investigator collected 42,747 fish and invertebrate specimens from ocean depths of up to 4,800 metres during a voyage last year.

Among their most interesting findings was the rediscovery of the "faceless" fish, as well as blob fish, bioluminescent cookie-cutter sharks and the lizard fish.

More than 100 different fish species collected on the voyage are now being examined at the CSIRO in Hobart to determine which of them are new to science.

CSIRO ichthyologist John Pogonoski said they spent many hours processing the samples, photographing specimens and extracting muscle samples for DNA analysis.

He described the voyage as "frontier science" which was vital for increasing the understanding of the deep-sea environment.

"We are investigating possible new species and fishes never before recorded in Australian waters," he said.

Mr Pogonoski said discovering a new species was both exciting and challenging.

"It is breaking new ground, it is frontier science," he said.

"It is also gathering all of the information you can, so there is forensic work involved as well."

The Investigator left Bell Bay in Tasmania in May last year and surveyed seven Commonwealth Marine Reserves (CMR) - from Freycinet off eastern Tasmania to the Coral Sea off central Queensland - before finishing in Brisbane in June.

Mr Pogonoski said out of the 100 species collected, about 10 per cent were new records for Australia, and about 5 per cent were potentially completely new to science.

"We are still going through the process and investigating those [species]," he said.

"There are a couple of basketwork eels that could be new, there is also an unknown eelpout and also a duckbilled eel that appears to be an undescribed species."

Museums Victoria ichthyologist Martin Gomon said the voyage was the first systematic attempt to examine life at abyssal depths anywhere along Australia's coast line.

"The discoveries provide us with a glimpse into how our marine fauna fits into the interconnected abyssal environment worldwide and for the scientists, adds another piece to the puzzle of what affects evolution in the deep sea," he said.

"Very little is known about many of the areas in those [abyssal] waters.

"What we need to know is whether the animals that are living at these depths around Australia are the same or unique, quite different from those found elsewhere around the world.

"I have little doubt that there are many species out there we haven't seen yet."

Mr Pogonoski said scientists had only "scratched the surface" in terms of discovering fish from the abyss.

"There is a lot more work to be done, especially in the northern part of Australia and the western part of Australia."

First posted February 21, 2018 09:05:25

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New fish found in deep-sea haul from 'frontier' voyage to eastern abyss

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Updated February 21, 2018 11:16:43 Up to five new fish species are among a haul of thousands of fish collected from the dark depths of Australia's eastern abyss. Scientists on board the research ship Investigator collected 42,747 fish and invertebrate specimens from ocean depths of up to 4,800 metres during a voyage last year.

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A new species of dinosaur found in the Egyptian desert is shedding light on Africa's missing history of dinosaurs.

Few fossils have been unearthed from the last days of the dinosaurs, between 100 and 66 million years ago, on the continent. Scientists say the dinosaur, which lived about 80 million years ago, is an "incredible discovery". The giant plant-eater was the length of a school bus and weighed about the same as an elephant.

It had a long neck and bony plates embedded in its skin. The dinosaur's fossilised remains were unearthed during an expedition by palaeontologists from Mansoura University in Egypt. Named Mansourasaurus shahinae, the new species is regarded as a critical discovery for science.

"It was thrilling for my students to uncover bone after bone, as each new element we recovered helped to reveal who this giant dinosaur was," said Dr Hesham Sallam of Mansoura University, who led the research. He said he expected the pace of discovery to accelerate in the years to come.

The course of dinosaur evolution in Africa has remained much of a mystery for the last 30 million years or so of the reign of the dinosaurs.

Study co-researcher Dr Matt Lamanna of Carnegie Museum of Natural History said that his jaw "hit the floor" when he first saw pictures of the fossils.

"This was the Holy Grail," he said. "A well-preserved dinosaur from the end of the Age of Dinosaurs in Africa that we palaeontologists had been searching for for a long, long time." Dinosaur fossils in Africa are rare as much of the land is now covered in lush vegetation, rather than the exposed rock that has yielded dinosaur treasure troves elsewhere.

There is a huge gap in the fossil record during the Late Cretaceous, when the continents were coming towards the end of huge geological changes. "Africa remains a giant question mark in terms of land-dwelling animals at the end of the Age of Dinosaurs," said Dr Eric Gorscak of The Field Museum, who worked on the research, published in the journal, Nature Ecology & Evolution.

" Mansourasaurus helps us address longstanding questions about Africa's fossil record and palaeobiology - what animals were living there, and to what other species were these animals most closely related?"

Geological upheaval

Throughout much of the Triassic and Jurassic periods, during the early years of the dinosaurs, the Earth's continents were joined together as one large land mass, known as Pangaea. During the Cretaceous Period, the continents began splitting apart and shifting towards the configuration that we see today.

It has not been clear how well connected Africa was to other Southern Hemisphere landmasses and Europe during this time and to what degree Africa's animals may have been cut off from their neighbours to evolve along their own separate lines. By analysing anatomical features of its bones, the researchers determined that Mansourasaurus was more closely related to dinosaurs from Europe and Asia than to those found further south in Africa or in South America.

This, in turn, shows that at least some dinosaurs could move between Africa and Europe near the end of these animals' reign. "It shows Africa wasn't this strange lost world of dinosaurs that lived nowhere else," said Dr Lamanna. "That at least some African dinosaurs had other close relations in other continents at the time."

Mansourasaurus belongs to the Titanosauria, a group of sauropods, or long-necked plant-eating dinosaurs, that were common during the Cretaceous. Titanosaurs are famous as some of the largest land animals on Earth. Mansourasaurus, however, was relatively small for a titanosaur, and about the weight of an African bull elephant.

Its skeleton is important in being the most complete dinosaur specimen so far discovered from the end of the Cretaceous in Africa. Parts of the skull, the lower jaw, neck and back vertebrae, ribs, most of the shoulder and forelimb, part of the hind foot, and pieces of dermal plates are preserved. Rather than being a piece of a jigsaw filling in the gaps in dinosaur history, it is more like "a corner piece", said Dr Gorscak. "It's like finding an edge piece that you use to help figure out what the picture is, that you can build from."

Dr Veronica Diez Diaz, an expert in sauropod dinosaurs from the Museum fur Naturkunde in Berlin, who is not connected with the study, said sauropod remains have previously been found in Tanzania and Madagascar. "The important thing about this discovery is that we did not know any Late Cretaceous sauropod species from North Africa," she said. "Most of the remains were teeth and isolated bones. Thanks to Mansourasaurus that is not the case anymore."

Commenting on the study, Dr Philip Mannion of Imperial College, London, said, "This is just the tip of the iceberg - it points to the fact that Africa has the potential to reveal a much richer fossil record." And Dr Michael D'Emic, Adelphi University, added: "It's just an incredible discovery. It's special because of where it was found."

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A new species of dinosaur found in the Egyptian desert is shedding light on Africa's missing history of dinosaurs

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A new species of dinosaur found in the Egyptian desert is shedding light on Africa's missing history of dinosaurs. Few fossils have been unearthed from the last days of the dinosaurs, between 100 and 66 million years ago, on the continent. Scientists say the dinosaur, which lived about 80 million years ago, is an "incredible discovery".

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By Micaela Jemison

Flitting swiftly through the darkness above the tropical forest canopy in Central and South America, a group of cute little bats with dog-like faces have long been hiding a big secret. Now, their secret is out.

For more than 50 years, scientists believed that only six species of the fast flying, insect-eating mammals known as dog-faced bats existed. That number has now increased to eight with the discovery of two new species, the Freeman's dog-faced bat ( Cynomops freemani), collected by Smithsonian researchers in Panama in 2012 and the Waorani dog-faced bat ( Cynomops tonkigui) from Ecuador. Both new species are described today in the journal Mammalian Biology.

"Identifying two mammal species new to science is extremely exciting," says Ligiane Moras, lead author of the study and who did part of this work as a fellow at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) in Washington, D.C. during her doctoral studies at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais in Brazil.

"After characterizing the body shapes of 242 dog-faced bats from museum collections across the Americas and Europe, comparing their DNA, and adding in field observations including sound recordings, we consider there to be eight species in this group, two of them new to science," Moras says.

The description of the new Freeman's dog-faced bat, named for bat researcher Patricia Freeman, was based not only on specimens previously identified as C. paranus or C. greenhalli in the drawers of the extensive bat collection at NMNH but also on physical measurements taken from live animals.

Flying high above the tree canopy at speeds much faster than other bats, dog-faced bats are rarely caught by even the most dedicated of bat researchers. So, it was a mixture of luck and specialized mist nets that led to the capture of 56 Freeman's dog-faced bats in Gamboa, Panama in 2012 by a group of students working with staff scientist Rachel Page at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI).

"I knew we had caught something exceptional, but all the bats of the Cynomops genus look very similar in the hand. I had not realized we had caught a new species, now called Freeman's dog-faced bat, until Ligiane came back with the DNA results," explains Thomas Sattler, one of the students in the field in Panama who was working on his Post-Doc at the University of Ulm as well as at STRI and is now at the Swiss Ornithological Institute

"We were very lucky to catch several different individuals of this species in mist nets and to record their calls. Having the call data may make it possible for us to find them again in the future and to learn more about this newly discovered bat species," said Sattler.

Because the new scientific description of Freeman's dog-faced bat includes recordings of its echolocation calls-the signals it uses to navigate through the air in and above the forest canopy and to find insect prey-it may be possible to find this species again using a "bat detector," a special recorder that allows researchers to hear bats as they fly by and identify them as a single species.

The combination of genetic and morphological data along with recordings of echolocation calls is incredibly rare for any description of a new bat species.

The discovery of the slightly smaller Waorani dog-faced bat ( C. tonkigui) unfortunately does not include call recordings and is based solely on the physical examination and DNA comparison of museum specimens collected in Ecuador. The name " tonkigui" honors the Waorani tribe of Ecuador, some of whom live in the surrounding forest at one of the locations where these bats were captured. Tonkigui means bat in Waorani.

It is exceptionally rare to catch dog-faced bats in the wild. Museum collections combined with new technologies were invaluable in the further understanding of this cryptic group of animals, the researchers say.

"The discovery of two new species of Cynomops is tremendously exciting. Molecular tools combined with meticulous morphological measurements are opening new doors to the diversity of this poorly understood group," says Rachel Page of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. "This discovery begs the question-what other new species are there, right under our very noses? What new diversity is yet to be uncovered?"

Tags: bats, mammals, National Museum of Natural History, new species, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

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More sky puppies! Scientists discover two new species of dog-faced bat

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By Micaela Jemison Flitting swiftly through the darkness above the tropical forest canopy in Central and South America, a group of cute little bats with dog-like faces have long been hiding a big secret. Now, their secret is out. For more than 50 years, scientists believed that only six species of the fast flying, insect-eating mammals known as dog-faced bats existed.

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New species found: walking catfish, Beelzebub bat and two-legged lizard

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New species found: walking catfish, Beelzebub bat and two-legged lizard.

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Sharks are a mysterious, understudied group of animals. Sometimes, our fear of them prevents us from getting too close. Other times, the ocean dwellers are simply out of reach, since some species live in extreme depths thousands of feet below the surface.

"This is a very cryptic population," says Blake Chapman, a marine biologist and shark expert at Australia's University of Queensland. "They're a very poorly understood group of animals, these kinds of sharks."

But despite these odds, shark research still emerges.

Recently, scientists at the Florida Institute of Technology have confirmed that there is a new species of sixgill shark. Now named the Atlantic sixgill shark, this species inhabits the depths of the Atlantic Ocean, as well as parts of the Indian and Pacific oceans. Its ancestors date back more than 250 million years, which is 20 million years before the time of dinosaurs. (Watch: " These Sharks Thrive Inside an Underwater Volcano")

The findings were published last week in the journal Marine Biodiversity.

Florida Tech biology professor Toby Daly-Engel caught wind of the new species when she was tagging bluntnose sixgill sharks at the University of Hawaii. While analyzing DNA samples, she found that those being sent in to the lab didn't quite match up with those of the species she already had.

"We expected that there might be some of the smaller species in there, and then we got ones that were completely different," Daly-Engel says. "We just kind of stumbled on this alien DNA sequence that looked so different from anything we had seen."

So, Daly-Engel decided to partner up with colleagues across the world to investigate shark DNA. Working with MarAlliance in Belize, the National Marine Fisheries Service, and organizations throughout Florida, the international team analyzed 1,310 base pairs of two mitochondrial genes to see if there were enough molecular differences between samples from the bigeyed sixgill ( Hexanchus nakamurai) species. With their results, they were able to rename the Atlantic variety of this species to Hexanchus vitulus. (Watch: " Rare Megamouth Shark Captured on Video")

"We can still find these sorts of cryptic, mysterious sources of diversity," Daly-Engel says.

Sixgill sharks, also known as cow sharks, are deep ocean dwellers that look little like their gray, torpedo-shape shallow-water relatives. They can grow up to 26 feet long, have saw-like lower teeth, and, as their name suggests, six gills-typical sharks only have five gills. (Related: " New Miniature Shark Species Glows in the Dark")

Up until now, there were two species of sixgill shark: bluntnose and bigeyed. Sharks in the sixgill family can look similar to each other, and the Atlantic variety closely resembles the Hexanchus nakamurai species. However, the researchers found it varies on a molecular level. Additionally, the Atlantic sixgill shark is about 6 feet in length, making it smaller than its 20-foot-plus Indo-Pacific relatives.

Preparing for the Future

George Burgess, director emeritus at the Florida Program for Shark Research, was not surprised that Daly-Engel's team was able to discover a new species. Sharks have lived for hundreds of thousands of years by adapting to their environment. Conditions in the deep ocean rarely change, and the cold, dark waters are not particularly affected by climate change. (Related: "'Alien'-Like Sharks With Extendable Jaws Pulled From Deep Sea")

"We're finding that they are a lookalike species," Burgess says. "Upon close examination using DNA, we find that they are [new] species."

Of all chondrichthian species-composed of sharks, skates, rays, and chimaeras-about 48 percent live in the deep ocean. Science knows about less than five percent of these elusive species. With new species being discovered all the time, it makes sense that some are cropping up in ocean waters.

"We just know so little about them, so this species [discovery] helps us to understand the evolution of sharks as a whole," Chapman says. "Getting to know these animals a little better provides some exciting opportunities."

This find gives more insight into understanding shark diversity, particularly in the deep ocean, and could help with conservation efforts. Animals that live in the deep ocean are longer lived, says Burgess, but they also tend to have slower population growth rates because they reproduce so slowly. This makes them more vulnerable to a changing environment and fishing pressure.

Known to threaten shallow marine ecosystems, commercial fisheries are branching out into deeper ocean waters. This threatens life that can only live in these cold, dark environments, and overfishing could have more severe consequences on these species since deep ocean animals don't reproduce as quickly.

"We need to be especially careful for how we fish in deep water," Burgess says.

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New Species of Shark Discovered in Deep Sea

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Sharks are a mysterious, understudied group of animals. Sometimes, our fear of them prevents us from getting too close. Other times, the ocean dwellers are simply out of reach, since some species live in extreme depths thousands of feet below the surface.