BIOB51H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Zhenyuanlong, Feathered Dinosaur, Theropoda
Document Summary
The tree of life i - chapter 4 (lecture notes) Most radioactive isotopes on earth: were brought to earth by meteorites, were present when earth formed, regenerate themselves in the hot inner core of earth, were formed by interacting with uv radiation from the sun. Steven brusatte studied fossils to address many questions about dinosaurs: how they first evolved 240 million years ago, how they rose to dominate terrestrial ecosystems, how they were decimated in a mass extinction 66 million years ago. In 2014, steven brusatte and junchang lu took a closer look at zhenyuanlong. The fossil was embedded in a slab of rock: the fossil was unearthed by a chinese farmer then placed in a museum. It was pressed flat on the slab, due to the weight of ash from a volcanic eruption 125 million years ago: resulted in every bone being preserved. The fossil showed it was a theropod (a two-legged dinosaur)
