Dinosaur Fleas

Hi everyone, it’s Katrina number 10: dinosaur fleas.

Fleas have been a nuisance for millions of years, since the days of the dinosaurs.

Except back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, fleas were about 10 times bigger.

Researchers have recently discovered the fossils of organisms very similar to fleas that crawled onto dinosaurs and bit them.

Professor George Poyner Jr from Oregon State University says it would have felt like a hypodermic needle going in and it would have been extremely painful.

We’re lucky that our modern fleas aren’t nearly as big as the ones that bothered the Dinosaurs.

The fossils of the newly identified species were found in inner Mongolia.

They weren’t preserved as two-dimensional Impressions, but fully fossilized, just like dinosaur bones.

They are really well preserved and have given scientists a detailed map of the creature’s body structure.

They had flat, disgusting bodies, just like modern bed bugs and ticks, but their claws were much longer designed so they could crawl over the scales of dinosaurs.

Modern fleas have evolved to move swiftly through Fur and Feathers, allowing them to Feast on today’s mammals and birds.

But these prehistoric bugs needed claws like ice picks to pierce rough dinosaur hide and armor.

The ancient fleas were roughly the size of small cockroaches.

Some of them were almost an inch long, living 165 million years ago.

But that’s only the body.

When including the antenna and mouth Parts, the fleas could have been about the size of your thumb.

The Giant Titan

Number nine – the giant Titan.

A new giant dinosaur has been discovered that stood seven stories tall.

It measured in at a whopping 100 tons and was 130 feet from head to tail.

This thing was absolutely humongous, weighing the same as 14 African elephants.

The creature’s bones were found by farmers in Argentina back in 2011.

They were shocked to uncover femur bones bigger than themselves.

Paleontologist at hideo ferdulillo from the Museum of paleontology then came to analyze the fossilized remains.

After many years of research, they now believe the massive bones belong to a new species of Titanosaur.

It was a Patagonian herbivore that lived 95 million years ago.

It walked on four legs, had a very long neck and its tail was longer than most slides you’ll find at your nearest amusement park.

But was this the biggest dinosaur that ever roamed the Earth?

That’s the question we’re desperately trying to answer.

Paul Barrett from London’s Natural History Museum says it’s premature to make any official announcements.

The issue is that the newly discovered monster has been reconstructed based only on fragmented fossils.

There isn’t a complete skeleton, which means everything scientists say is just an educated guess.

Do you think there could have been a dinosaur bigger than this one?

Let me know in the comments.

And now for number eight.

But first it’s shout out time.

I wanted to say a big thank you to mark Baker and Hell Kaiser 12 for supporting this channel.

Be sure to subscribe, if you haven’t already, for more videos about amazing dinosaur discoveries.

Dino Hoodlums

Number eight Dino hoodlums.

A shocking new study has proved duck-billed dinosaurs may have been rebellious teenagers who roamed around in gangs.

They may have been the hoodlums of the Prehistoric Age.

Paleontologists were studying a pair of North American bone beds containing the fossilized remains of hadrosaurs, a type of duck-billed dinosaur.

This creature was an herbivore living in the Cretaceous Period, roughly 75 million years ago.

The Bone Bed allowed researchers to determine that young individuals left the herd when they reached about 45 percent of their maximum size.

This means they probably left when they were teens.

Hadrosaurus were some of the most common dinosaurs- you might compare them to deer in our modern world.

They were everywhere and they left behind a lot of Bones.

So many fossils have allowed scientists to gain knowledge about their interactions with one another, and these most recent bone beds have been the icing on the cake.

Scientists already knew Hadrosaurus left the nest when they were young, but now we have physical proof that they lived separately with individuals of their own age.

It’s like a bunch of college kids going out and getting an apartment together.

Only these were dinosaurs.

Still, it’s not entirely clear what the purpose of these teenage gangs of dinosaurs was.

Did it have something to do with reproductive maturity?

Was there a complex social structure?

Did they just hunt Better Together?

Those are the kinds of questions that scientists are still struggling to answer.

What do you think these dinosaur teenagers were doing?

Let me know in the comments.

The Great Veggie Ancestor

Number seven: the great veggie ancestor.

For as long as dinosaurs have been in our imaginations, scientists have believed there were two distinct types.

Carnivores like the Tyrannosaurus Rex strictly ate meat, while long neck dinosaurs were herbivores.

However, a recent study has shown that dinosaur diets may have been much more diverse than previously believed.

Researchers from the universe City of Bristol examined skulls from several different kinds of dinosaurs using Ct scans.

They looked at long neck dinosaurs in particular and created 3D models of their teeth.

Teeth give the best indication of what a specific animal can eat.

Teeth are the natural tools for breaking down food.

Herbivores have dull teeth for breaking nuts and chewing leaves, while carnivores have sharp teeth for ripping meat.

Dinosaurs had a lot of different kinds of teeth.

They had teeth like blades, teeth shaped like Leaves- all kinds.

This proves that dinosaurs evolve to have many different feeding habits.

Certain dinosaurs had certain dietary restrictions.

Scientists found some of the earliest dinosaurs that were classified as carnivores had teeth very similar to monitor lizards, and early dinosaurs classified as herbivores had teeth much like iguanas.

The consensus is that at the beginning of dinosaur evolution, most animals were likely omnivores.

Even long-necked Giants may not have been been strictly vegetarians and may have started out eating insects and other animals.

Maraxis Higas

Number six maraxis higas.

Another new species of dinosaur was recently found in Argentina.

It’s called the maraxis higas, and it was very similar to the Tyrannosaurus Rex, mainly because it was very big and had very small arms.

It also had a gigantic head, which it needed for crutching up its victims and swallowing them into its oversized tummy.

Researchers believe the huge carnivorous puny forelimbs weren’t an accident of evolution but an evolutionary Advantage.

Scientists just aren’t sure exactly what that Advantage was, though they think it had something to do with mating The maraxis higas.

Remains indicated that it was about 45 years old when it died.

That’s an exceptionally long life for a dinosaur.

It weighed four tons and ruled the vast landscape of Patagonia 100 million years ago.

It belonged to the cargo roadontosaurid family, meaning it was related to men, any of the biggest carnivores of the dinosaur age-

And although its Anatomy is still poorly understood, it’s clear that its head was the main feature.

Its tiny four limbs didn’t do much, and so all the animal’s strength came from its Noggin.

It likely used its huge skull to bash its enemies, interact with its environment and, of course, to eat the vinyl.

Fascinating feature of the maraxis higas is that it evolved at a time when carnivores in Argentina had reached Peak diversity.

This was right before they all started going extinct.

Researchers found that it had evolved incredible facial ornamentation, something that may have helped it socially.

Evidence points to these carnivores reaching impressive levels of social sophistication, the likes of which we can’t even imagine.

TRex Baby

, number 5.. T-Rex baby.

Paleontologist in Montana have found an exceedingly rare Tyrannosaur baby fossil.

It appears to be the fossilized remains of an infant Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Researchers from the University of Kansas excavated the adorable fossil from the Hell Creek formation.

The Remains include a section of upper jaw, some rows of teeth and fragments from these skull, hips and backbones.

This particular baby T-Rex lived 66 million years ago, shortly before the asteroid hit our planet and its species went extinct.

David Burnham from the University says its teeth suggest it was likely a T-Rex, but because baby rexes are so incredibly rare, it’s difficult to match it with something known.

It could have been a different kind of Carnivore baby.

Experts aren’t 100 sure, but it’s still an amazing Discovery.

Researchers are hoping to go back out soon in the coming months to try and find more fossils.

In recent years, archaeologists have been finding evidence that T-Rexes roamed in packs.

If that’s true, the Baby Rex may have died in a sort of prehistoric Nursery.

This would have been a place where babies within the dinosaur community could be raised by adults while learning how to socialize with one another.

If that does prove to be the case, they could find even more baby carnivores at the Hell Creek formation during their next excavations.

Do you think a baby T-Rex would be cute or terrifying?

Let me know in the comments and be sure to subscribe.

Kicking Dinosaur

Number four: kickboxing dinosaur.

New research has found that there was a dinosaur that had a Kung Fu kick like a kangaroo.

The dinosaur in question is called Pachycephalosaurus, most famous for having an extremely hard head.

This bizarre Dino had a dome-shaped skull that made it look as though it was wearing a helmet.

Researchers have always thought that because of its robust headgear, the dinosaur must have specialized in head butting, just like how a bighorn sheep uses its horns.

They figured it used its solid skull like a battering ram.

However, new studies say it may have preferred a kicking like a kangaroo.

Instead, scientists created a three-dimensional model of a Pachycephalosaurus skeleton and analyze the Vertebrae.

They were a little surprised to find the inverter of the dinosaur shared a lot of similarities with the modern vertebrae of a kangaroo.

It didn’t have any similar bone structure to animals specializing in head butting.

It looks like the dinosaur used its tail for back support, just like modern kangaroos.

Then it was able to lift itself off the ground and kick its enemies with both legs.

A Very Rare Dinosaur Egg

Considering this was a hefty dinosaur, such a kick would have easily ruptured the rib cages of humans, broken bones and, of course, cause death.

Number three: a very rare dinosaur egg.

A remarkable Discovery was recently made in China.

A fossilized dinosaur egg from 70 million years ago was found with the embryonic skeleton still inside.

The embryo is of an oviraptorid dinosaur, still curled up as if waiting to be born.

Scientists nicknamed it baby Ying Liang.

Associate professor Darla Zelenitsky from the University of Calgary called it an amazing specimen.

She said that after 25- five years of researching dinosaurs, she has never seen anything like it.

Up until this discovery, very little was known about what happened inside a dinosaur egg before it hatched.

Finding an embryonic skeleton is almost impossible, never mind one perfectly preserved.

Researchers have already collected quite a bit of information from it.

We can see that theropod dinosaurs, like Velociraptors, were incredibly similar to Modern Birds.

The position of the skeleton inside the egg, with its head on the other side of its feet and its back curled along the thick End, is Extremely close to Modern bird embryos.

What this suggests is that late in the incubation period, oviraptorids developed bird-like postures.

This is the most recent evidence showing just how similar dinosaurs were to birds and just how much avian animals have changed.

But that’s not the end of the discovery.

The embryonic skeleton has shown that the hatching behavior of birds didn’t originate with birds.

It came from non-avian Dinosaurs.

Spinosaurus of the Isle of Wight

The answer to the question which came first, the chicken or the egg, seems to be dinosaur number two the Spinosaurus of the Isle of White.

Two new Spinosaur species have been discovered on the Isle of White.

If you’re not sure what a Spinosaurus is, let’s do a quick recap.

The incredibly dangerous dinosaur was a carnivorous monster that lived 129 million years ago.

Some have called it the riverbank Hunter and others call it the Heron from Hell.

The Spinosaurus hunted in watery marshy areas and primarily feasted on whatever it could catch with its massive Jaws.

Scientists are still torn over whether it could swim or if it simply hung out on the shore and hunted like a heron.

Whatever the case, there appeared to have been a lot of these voracious dinosaurs in the prehistoric world.

Two new species on the Isle of Wight alone suggest there must have been dozens of species spread out across the world, and yet not many full skeletons have been found.

It’s too big egg and its bones are always found fragmented.

This has given paleontologists a headache trying to piece its Anatomy together.

Spinosaurus likely walked upright and mostly ate fish, but it also may have feasted on other predators and herbivores.

It had Jaws like a crocodile, making it look like a mix between a T-Rex and a mythical dragon.

The armless monster

Number one: the armless monster.

Paleontologists identified yet another new species of dinosaur in Argentina.

They discovered a carnivore with arms so small it would have made the T-Rex look like Stretch Armstrong.

Its arms were so small, they were basically Nubs.

It’s been named Guamessia Ochoa and it’s a type of a Bellasaurus.

That was a group of Ruthless Predators who lived across the whole planet and only went extinct because of the asteroid impact.

The fossilized remains found are about 70 million years old.

Unlike its Fierce dinosaur cousins, it had a really tiny brain.

Researchers called its brain case remarkably small, the smallest ever found.

The guemesia Ochoa has the embarrassing title of being the dumbest, smallest brained dinosaur of its kind to have ever lived.

It also had those tiny arms, so it must have been humiliating.

Still, you would not have wanted to fight this thing.

It was huge, nearly 20 feet long, and weighing about a ton.

Paleontologists have come paired it to the more famous and even more ruthless Carnotaurus.

But what’s the deal with the arms?

Researchers say they were so small they would have flopped like wet socks against its chest as it moved.

It couldn’t bend its arms, it had no Claws and it couldn’t even grab something with its fingers.

Even the T-Rex had more muscular arms.

This dinosaur may have reached the end of an evolutionary path.

Its limbs were likely vestigial meaning left over from ancestors who had walked on four legs instead of two.

The Guamessia Ochoa, just like other dinosaurs with tiny arms, was in the middle of evolving its arms right off its body.

Why do you think this guy had such a small brain and no arms?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

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Bye.