i for one am not surprised! i wondered about this too. i hope they can figure out which dino existed and what doesn't exist!


A Third of Dinosaur Species Never Existed?

Brian Handwerk
for National Geographic News

ON TV Dinosaurs Decoded, airs Sunday, October 11 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on the National Geographic Channel. Preview Dinosaurs Decoded >>

Many dinosaurs may be facing a new kind of extinction—a controversial theory suggests as many as a third of all known dinosaur species never existed in the first place.


That's because young dinosaurs didn't look like Mini-Me versions of their parents, according to new analyses by paleontologists Mark Goodwin, University of California, Berkeley, and Jack Horner, of Montana State University.

Instead, like birds and some other living animals, the juveniles went through dramatic physical changes during adulthood.

This means many fossils of young dinosaurs, including T. rex relatives, have been misidentified as unique species, the researchers argue.

How T. Rex Became a Terror

The lean and graceful Nanotyrannus is one strong example. Thought to be a smaller relative of T. rex, the supposed species is now considered by many experts to be based on a misidentified fossil of a juvenile T. rex.

The purported Nanotyrannus fossils have the look of a teenage T. rex, Horner said in the new documentary. That's because T. rex's skull changed dramatically as it grew, he said.

The skull morphed from an elongated shape to the more familiar, short snout and jaw, which could take in large quantities of food.

But the smoking gun, Horner said, was the discovery of a dinosaur between the size of an adult T. rex and Nanotyrannus.

Nanotyrannus—actually a young T. rex in Horner's view—had 17 lower-jaw teeth, and an adult T. rex had 12.

The midsize dinosaur had 14 lower-jaw teeth—suggesting that it was also a young T. rex, and that tyrannosaurs gradually traded their smaller, blade-like teeth for fewer bone-crushing grinders in adulthood

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/20...er-existed.html

make sense, when there are some new dinosaur species that are identified based on skeletal fragments (like 1 femur + 1 rib, etc). and when you are guessing based on incomplete info, the chance are high that some of the guesses are wrong (see brontosaur/apatosaur case)

this happened before in the early 20th century. 2 rival companies unearthed large deposits of bones in arizona. they never bothered to liased with each other and just name any new findings as new species. as a result double naming of one set of bones was inevitable

i wonder which dino will cease to exist after this renaming exercise finishes

i cant believe they just figured this out. i mean, as scientists, shouldnt they explore the possibilities like... i dunno... since school?

the study of Paleontology reached its zenith in the mid 1850's. After that the fad of finding dino bones died out the number of Paleontologist dwindled. If you watched Jurassic Park doctor grant laments the amount of grants for his field these days. in case you dont know even scientific study went through fads. In the 19th century it was all about knowing how the earth works resulting in massive funding for geologist. When Einstein published his photoelectric effect the scientific world joined the physics fad. When he discovered theory of relativity the fad shifted to quantum physics.

these days the bulk of funding went to mega projects such as the Large HAdron Collider. They spent 11 billion euros on this project and a further 500 million annually to keep it running. Other sciences could only look in envy at the amount of money quantum physicist are getting these days. Hell even the research on HIV/AIDS is finding it hard to acquire funding. Mind you back in the mid 80's when Rock Hudson , Freddy Mercury and numerous celebs died of AIDS the HIV/AIDS were the FAD of the day. it's no coincidence that we hardly hear any new breakthrough in HIV/ADIS nowadays.

back to your point Azarimy

they already have this theory for quite a long time. but collating the right data and getting the peer reviews took time. Such is the state of Paleontology now. It is almost a dying scientific field!

Wow, after reading this it seems so obvious lol. It's going to be really freaking hard to figure out which baby dino became which adult dino.

Wow, unbelievable

So is everything in this world. Simply because we define it the way we understand it.

This reminded my of the Korean scientist who claimed to created something like stem cell and later found to be a lie. Does it mean they ran out ideas to sustain their status and risk losing their jobs?

i would like to think the miscategorizing of dinosaur species as due to mistakes, lack of knowledge and bad judgement rather than blatant forgery

scientist or not they make mistakes all the time...if you see most of the great medical breakthrough you know most scientist isnt dat smart at all

Agreed... Even a genius like albert einstein also make mistake at times...

As you can say, No one is perfect =D... But i think this happened due to the lack of data about those dinosaur...