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Dinostars

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Dinosaurs are the rock stars of the fossil world. Transcending the world of science to be embraced by popular culture. Films, comics, documentaries, t shirts and toys – dinosaurs are everywhere. But, even amongst them, there are a select group of iconic dinosaurs that have stuck in the public’s imagination. Which ones, and why?

If everyone made a list of their five favourite dinosaurs, there would be a lot of repetition. Tyrannosaurus, of course. Triceratops. Stegosaurus. Brachiosaurus? Maybe Velociraptor and Spinosaurus. A couple of decades ago, the list would probably be a little different. When I was growing up, every set of dinosaur toys would have a T. rex, a Triceratops, a Diplodocus, a Stegosaurus and maybe an Iguanodon or a Brontosaurus. This last one got made scientifically extinct a while ago when it was realized there had been a misidentification; poor Bronto was just an Apatosaurus and the name was formally dropped. That all changed in 2015 when it was reinstated with some more recent finds. The damage has been done, though, and Bronotosaurus has been dropped from our list of heroes.

On the other hand, Spinosaurus and Velociraptor are relative newcomers. Velociraptor was the star of Jurassic Park – bulked up and defeathered by the film-makers, they terrified a new generation of dino-lovers and tore their way through our ribcages into our hearts. Spinosaurus, while also appearing in the Jurassic Park movies, is the most widely available commercial dinosaur tooth. It’s pretty easy to buy a nice example of a Spino tooth, and I think this has significantly boosted its popularity over the past 20 years. Tyrannosaurus rex holds the position it has always held. As its name proudly tells us, it’s the king. I mentioned the two newcomers above, but most of the reason behind our list of dinosaur elite is how long they’ve been known to us. Today, with new techniques available to paleontology, and a spread of the science to the developing world, new dinosaur species are discovered at an astonishing rate, but it wasn’t long ago new finds seemed few and far between. This means it’s hard for a new find to stick out from the crowd, and that’s partly why the first dinosaurs to be named have a bit of an edge. They’ve had years to build their reputations and endear themselves to us before the hordes appeared.

Tyrannosaurus was found in 1900, but described five years later, with a bit of fanfare. Here was an enormous, horrifying beast, a monster that immediately and perfectly represented all we imagine when we think of carnivorous dinosaurs. And the name… perfect. So many scientific names are awkward and difficult to pronounce. Tyrannosaurus rex is a joy to say.

Triceratops is another dino-darling, born of the Bone Wars or Marsh and Cope, in 1889. Although there are now a lot of ceratopsians known, and Trike was far from the first found, lots of them were uncovered, and many in good shape. Museum fodder. The distinctive beaked, horned and frilled head quickly lodged itself in dinosaur artwork and museum displays across the world. There are a few reasons our list of favourites formed in the first place, and evolved in recent years. Get in there early and make a big impression. Have a cool name. Be big. Be scary. Be pointy. Be well-preserved and on display. But more important nowadays – be in movies.

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DISASTER

It’s all felt a little apocalyptic recently. We humans haven’t really been around very long in geological terms. A few hundred thousand years, perhaps, more or less as we are now. That’s the blink of an eye, in terms of our planet’s history. We have grown up quickly, but in blissful ignorance of the harsh realities of large-scale natural disasters. Earth’s past, well-documented in its geological record, is littered with them, but we’ve not been here long enough to witness them first hand – thankfully. Covid 19 is a little taste of the power of nature.

A very long time ago, when our planet was young, it was hammered by rocks. Lots of huge rocks, for ages. Not a particularly enjoyable experience, you’d imagine, but character-forming, like winter camping.
This prolonged period of galactic stoning has a name – The Late Heavy Bombardment. Seems a very long time ago for something to be called ‘late’, but it’s considered late in the time frame of the formation of the solar system’s planets. The Heavy Bombardment part you get, I’m sure.
We know what happened to the dinosaurs, more or less. Instead of bazillions of smaller stones battering the planet, one single enormous rock thumped into the Gulf of Mexico (or where it is now, at least) and caused a great deal of damage. As well as a chain of events that saw the extinction of around 76% of species. Hard times, but there have been worse extinction events – those at the end of the Triassic and Permian saw 80% and 96% of species wiped out.

On a far smaller scale, climate change has been a factor in some disastrous periods in the history of life. Droughts and ice ages, floods and heatwaves, but if I’m focusing on the geological, aside from things falling from space to cause trouble, there can be events beneath the surface that are similarly awful. Volcanic events on a gigantic scale have taken place, flooding huge areas of land with lava and the skies with smoke and ash for thousands of years. Not good for plants. Not good for things that eat plants. And not good for things that eat things that eat plants. Yellowstone Park in Wyoming is home to the famous geyser Old Faithful, and many others. These are a fascinating and beautiful phenomenon, but there’s a sinister reason behind them. Yellowstone sits on the caldera of a supervolcano. The devastation that would follow the eruption of a volcano of that size doesn’t bear thinking about – but for the brave, there’s a decent imagining of the outcome on Youtube. Due to the calculated mass of magma in the chamber, though, a massive eruption seems unlikely in the short term, so we can breathe easy.

The other obvious tectonic activity that threatens life on our planet is the earthquake. Their scope for damage is probably more limited, even if we consider the resulting tsunami, but for humans there are complicating factors. Panic, chaos, disease, food and water shortages, and – more obviously – buildings falling down.
I started by mentioning how short humanity’s existence has been, and how that our limited perspective can blinker us a little to the dangers of the world. But it can also be a reassurance. Things will go on. Bad times pass. It’s important to remember that sometimes.

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The Deepest Blue

Lapis Lazuli is one of the most popular stones in the world, and has been for a lot longer than you’d think. It’s been mined in Badakhshan, in North Eastern Afghanistan for as long as nine thousand years, and has been traded extensively for almost as long. It’s not a mineral, but a metamorphic rock, formed by the heating and twisting of rocks at depth within the Earth’s crust. It’s comprised of a few minerals, but mainly lazurite and sodalite, which provide the color, with white streaks of calcite and brassy gold spots of pyrite. While it can be found elsewhere – Chile and Russia have some resources – the Afghan sites are by far the richest, and have provided the world with lapis since it was first discovered. The gradual spread of the stone around the globe via trade routes is remarkable.

The prized stone made its way East and South via trade routes into the Indus Valley, where it was made into crude beads and jewelry. Later, it found its way West, where the Mesopotamians used it as a decorative stone, and the Sumerians set it in daggers and cups. The Egyptians went crazy for it, too, using it for seals, sculpting, make up, jewelry and for throwing at slaves. Tutankhamun’s death mask contains pieces of Afghan lapis. The Greeks and Romans were also big fans, thinking it a powerful aphrodisiac, and in the Middle Ages it began to move North into the rest of Europe, where painters got excited about it.

Before people knew about chemistry and factories, when paint used to be made by crushing up beetles, stones, leaves and hippo dung, the most expensive color was always blue. Ultramarine – the beautiful blue pigment made from lapis – was so precious it always saved for the most important bits of paintings, which is at least partly why the Virgin Mary tends to be pictured in a blue dress. Michelangelo used it in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. A synthetic version of ultramarine has been used for a couple of centuries now, so most lapis remains uncrushed these days.

It’s mentioned a number of times in the Old Testament, though at that time (and in older translations) it was called sapphires, before the blue gem corundum stole that name for itself. The origins of the ‘new’, memorable, alliterative name doesn’t add to the poetry of its story, unfortunately. Lapis comes from the Latin for ‘stone’ and lazuli is derived from the Arabic word for blue, heaven or sky, ‘lazaward’. Blue stone. Genius. Lapis is supposed to promote self-awareness and reveal inner truth. The inner truth is that it doesn’t. What it DOES do, however, is look beautiful. And sometimes that’s enough.

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Space rocks

Meteorites, like E.T. and Superman, come from space. If you go outside and look up, you’ll see it, even though it’s very far away. Their arrival here is a happy accident; a violent end to an incredible journey. Meteorites are classified in a number of ways, but mostly by their chemistry. The simplest way to split them up is into three broad groups: stony – known as chondrites and the most common type, iron and stony-iron, a combination of the first two. There are about 60,000 documented finds, with examples of a few millimetres across to the 60-tonne Hoba, in Namibia.

Meteorites fall all the time and everywhere, but they are not all large enough to notice, and a surprisingly small percentage of our planet’s surface is covered in humans that might notice. Most – the vast majority – are chondrites, which can be difficult to distinguish from slightly polished rocks. Easier to actually find and collect, however, are the iron type. Mostly because you can use a metal detector to find them, and – once you have it in your hand – is easier to recognise as something unusual. A larger fall will result in a strewn field – a spread of small pieces across a wide area, as the mass breaks up on entering the atmosphere. Even once you have a good idea where you might find the pieces, finding some can take a bit of careful planning and a lot of physical work.

So – what actually IS it? Most of the material that hits Earth is simply leftover matter from the event that created our solar system. Stuff that didn’t get to be part of a planet, and have been flying around the sun since then, lonely and afraid, and roughly the same age as our planet – about 4.54-4.55 billion years old. The oldest meteorite found so far, Muonionalusta, which fell over Sweden a million years ago, has been dated at 4.5653 billion. The nomenclature can be a little confusing. These leftover lumps take a few different forms. Asteroids are big chunks, determinedly orbiting the sun pretending they are planets. We think they have iron-rich cores surrounded by a thick rocky jacket. That’s where the meteorites come from – iron-nickels are bits of the centre, chondrites from the edges, and so on.

Meteorites have a bit of a bad rep, for killing the dinosaurs and Bruce Willis. But we need to forgive them, because in reality they are amazing things. Space travellers, older than the mountains, that may well be the end of us one day, but also perhaps brought us some of the building blocks of life in the first place. In 1969 near Murchison in Australia, a meteorite fell that contained organic molecules, including amino acids. Perhaps we all came from space, too.

Smaller pieces are meteoroids, which become meteors as they come through our atmosphere, the heat creating a fireball and long, burning tail. Shooting stars. They only become meteorites once they land. Landing is not just what makes them meteorites – it’s the scariest part of the whole phenomenon for us humans. In the long term, provided we avoid killing ourselves, the impact of a huge meteorite may well be what finishes us off. Perhaps only a great many from the initial impact, but then quite possibly the rest of us from the resulting environmental mess.

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Meg – The Monster Shark

We have a fascination with sharks, and we have a fascination with enormous animals. It follows that one of the most popular fossils in the commercial world is the tooth of the biggest ever shark, Otodus megalodon, often known simply as Meg. Sharks, on the other hand, don’t care about us at all.

As shark skeletons are made of cartilage rather than bone, they tend not to fossilize. What do get preserved are the teeth, and it’s these that give Meg its name – megalodon simply means “big tooth”. It’s thought there would have been between 250-280 teeth in its jaw. Sharks grow and shed teeth constantly throughout their life, so over a lifetime a single animal will have produced thousands of teeth. As a result, there are plenty fossilized for us to find and treasure.

Size estimates vary, depending on who you listen to, but most would put the adult shark somewhere between 34 and 60 feet long, with the biggest of these (probably females) weighing as much as 60 tons. The figures vary as there are different ways to calculate the size of the shark from the teeth alone. What we are sure about is that the biggest tooth found – so far – measures over 7” long.

Huge teeth, lots of them, and incredible power in the bite makes for a terrifying predator. So – what did they eat? Megs first appear in the fossil record at 20-23 million years ago, and we think they became extinct at around 3.6 million years ago. Modern humans have never had to worry about exactly what being eaten by a meg would be like. We can speculate, of course. It would almost certainly be an unsettling experience, uncomfortable and painful, if mercifully brief. And we’d probably swallow a lot of seawater, which is never fun. Great Whites, the largest predatory shark living today, have a varied diet, feeding on seals, turtles, large fish, American teenagers*, smaller cetaceans and even birds. Although not closely related, it’s likely meg would have been similar. There are plenty of whale bones – from very large whales – that show predation from megalodon.

Megalodons have shifted around the shark family tree a few times, and were recently moved into the genus Otodus. It had wrongly been thought they were ancestors of the modern Great White, but were then assigned the name Carcharocles. This latest reshuffle means meg has a family history going back about 100 million years. Like many deep water sharks, it was a traveller, and teeth have been found on every continent apart from Antarctica. The main source is South Carolina, where collectors can pick them up at beach and river sites, though the best are found by divers using feeling their way through the soft sediments of the riverbeds, blinded by the mud they stir up. Must be quite a thrill to head to the surface with a giant tooth in your hand.
*This is a Jaws joke. Sharks don’t eat many humans, really, and don’t seem to be fussy when they do.

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Man on the Moon

As you likely noticed, from extensive media coverage, it’s now been fifty years since man first set foot on the moon. An iconic event in human history; the names of those involved, quotes, indelible images firmly planted in the collective consciousness of most of the planet.

Although Armstrong and Aldrin carried with them a selection of crackers and pickles, NASA already suspected the moon was not made of cheese. They were right. The moon is actually a lump of our very own Earth, knocked off in a collision with planet-sized lump of matter (called Theia) when Earth was just a baby, some 4.51 billion years ago. What happened to Theia? It’s now thought the collision was more than a glancing blow and that what remains of Theia was essentially absorbed by Earth and our moon. She may have brought us the bulk of our water, for which we should be eternally grateful. No water, no us… Thanks, Theia.

The Apollo missions around the turn of the 1970s brought back with them some 2,200 samples of moon rock, and no cheese. The un-manned Russian Luna projects also collected specimens, and a lot of pieces of the moon have made it to Earth as meteorites, similarly dislodged from their second home and returned to their roots via an exciting journey through space, unassisted by astronaut or robot. In 1973 NASA made a gift of a mounted piece of the Apollo material, a fragment of sample 70017, to each US state and independent nation – the Goodwill Moonrocks. There’s an on-going project to locate each of these pieces, but perhaps unsurprisingly, a sizeable number (180 of 270) have gone missing over the years – sold, stolen, eaten by wolves.

While the Goodwill pieces can’t be legally traded, there is a global market for meteorites; lunar meteorites included. So it is possible to own a little piece of the moon. There is an international group of over 1,000 scientists and enthusiasts called the Meteoritical Society, who issue a regular bulletin documenting and classifying each and every meteorite find. All known meteorites are given a name – some more inspiring than others – making things easier for everybody. The NWA number shown on the boxed example pictured is its name – the letters simply standing for North West Africa, where it was found. Sometimes more information is known; a more specific find locality, a date, the name of the collector, etc, but there will always be a description of the type of rock and basic chemistry.

Whatever happens next in our attempts to explore our cosmic surroundings, Neil Armstrong’s first step on the moon will forever remain one of humanity’s crowning achievements, and the celebrations and commemorations are entirely justified.

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