Deaf ichthyosaur and T. rex skin

[bh480@scn.org]

Deaf ichthyosaur and T. rex skin
From: Ben Creisler bh480@scn.org

A couple of stories off the web that may be of interest--
I'm giving the texts since there seem to be problems with 
urls I have provided recently. Note there are some obvious 
inaccuracies (ichthyosaurs called "dinosaurs" and 2 m 
sounds awfully large for a "new born" ichthyosaur).

Dinosaur of the deep deaf as a post  
By BRADY HARAN 
UNTIL yesterday, radiographer George Kourlis's oldest 
patient was a 102-year-old woman with dementia. 
Now, it is a 110 million-year-old dinosaur that has 
hearing problems. Mr Kourlis, from the Royal Adelaide 
Hospital, has been working with SA Museum paleontologist 
Ben Kear on a series of CAT scans on the fossilised bones 
of an ichthyosaur. 
The X-rays, performed on the hospital's $2 million helical 
scanner, have provided fascinating information about the 
sea-going dinosaurs. 
"This has really let us get inside the skull and see how 
all the bones are connected," Mr Kear said yesterday. 
"For example, we have learned the bones in the ear were 
virtually non-functional and the dinosaur was probably 
stone deaf." 
This conclusion was reached because the inner ear bone was 
too thick to detect noise vibrations and was set too deep 
in the skull. 
The three-dimensional images also showed holes and 
channels in the skull that housed vessels and nerves 
servicing the jaw. 
"It is possible the ichthyosaur had a dermal skin sensor, 
sort of like the electro receptors that platypuses and 
sharks have," Mr Kear said. 
The fossilised remains of the dinosaur were found in 1994 
in Hughenden, Queensland, which was part of Australia's 
Early Cretaceous inland sea. 
The animal died as a new born, but was still nearly 2m 
long. Adult ichthyosaurs reached about 7m in length. 
"This is among the best ichthyosaur material in the world. 
It is for all intents and purposes exactly how the 
dinosaur was when it died," Mr Kear said. 

Fossilized skin of T-rex a treasured find 
October 17, 2001, Wednesday
GREAT BEND, Kan. The fossilized skin of a Tyrannosaurus 
rex ranks at the top of finds by Kansas fossil hunters 
Alan and Robert Detrich. 
"This is the most exciting thing that we've ever found," 
Alan Detrich said Tuesday during a visit to a local school 
for a display of the latest fossil discoveries. "I had no 
idea that we would get skin impressions. People hadn't 
realized it was possible." The big attraction for students 
at Great Bend's Lincoln Elementary from the Detrichs' 
latest find in the badlands of South Dakota is a much 
larger specimen, a 65-million-year-old edmontosaurus. 
That dinosaur is enclosed in a protective cast until it 
can be extracted from rock and assembled. 
The Detrichs are more excited, though, by the dimpled, 
sand-colored, palm-sized rocks they brought with them in a 
small display case. 
Detrich said the big debate about the fossilized skin has 
been whether the animal had feathers, or fur, or was 
reptilian. 
"It look like they were birdlike," Alan Detrich said of 
the fossilized skin, comparing its appearance to that of a 
plucked chicken. 
Samples of the finding will be analyzed by Dr. Dale 
Russell at North Carolina State University and by Dr. Phil 
Currie at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in 
Canada. 
It appears Currie may have seen T-rex skin before. In 
1995, 12-year-old Tess Owen reportedly discovered 
tyrannosaurus skin impressions in a rock formation near 
Edmonton, Canada. 
The 10-centimeter-square impression was by far the best of 
three impressions from the site. Currie is quoted in the 
Edmonton Journal as saying that the 12-year-old's find 
was "humbling." 
According to ZoomDinosaurs.com, fossilized skin 
impressions have been found for only a small fraction of 
the known dinosaurs. 
The Detrichs find is similar to that of the Canadian girl -
 a small rock with symmetrical rows of raised bumps. 
Currie said the specimen found in Canada indicates that 
tyrannosaurs had a lightly pebbled skin, like an elephants 
hide. 
The Detrichs found their skin with a T-rex rib in Harding 
County, S.D., the same county where the edmontosaurus was 
found. The large dinosaur was encased in a burlap and 
plastic jacket and hauled to Great Bend on a flatbed 
trailer. 
Before returning to Kansas, the Detrichs showed the 
edmontosaurus to Harding County students, who painted an 
American flag and other symbols on the cast. 
It will be restored in Mark Rosenberg's warehouse in Great 
Bend, the same building where Alan Detrich housed "Mr. Z-
Rex," a tyrannosaurus rex discovered in South Dakota in 
1992 that he tried to sell twice through Internet auction. 
Detrich said he finally sold it to an undisclosed buyer 
earlier this year. 
Although the edmontosaurus isn't a rare dinosaur, it's 
rare to find one this complete, Alan Detrich said. Usually 
bones are scattered about, but this one was articulated, 
with the bones still joined, possibly because it died in 
wet sand. 
Alan Detrich postulated that the duck-billed dinosaur died 
in a flood or was caught in a river. There may even be 
contents in the dinosaur's stomach, he said.