Re: Crab and Sauropod Fossil Together

[Phil Bigelow <bigelowp@juno.com>]

Dinosaurs had crabs?

<pb>
--

On Mon, 16 Feb 2004 09:11:46 -0700 (MST) "Richard W. Travsky"
<rtravsky@uwyo.edu> writes:
> Came across this by accident. From April 2003. Great picture.
> 
> 
> http://record.wustl.edu/news/page/normal/539.html
> 
> Dinosaur, crab fossils reveal ecosystem secrets
> 
> For centuries, they wouldn't be caught dead next to each other.
> 
> But now a team of geologists directed by Joshua Smith, Ph.D., 
> assistant
> professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, has 
> found a
> well-preserved fossil of a crab within inches of a tail vertebra 
> from a
> massive plant-eating dinosaur.
> 
> Necrocarcinidae (crab), meet titanosaurian sauropod (dinosaur).
> 
> The find, in Egypt's Bahariya Oasis, is the first instance of a 
> crab
> fossil found with a dinosaur fossil. It reveals much about both 
> species
> and the kind of ecosystem where the fossils were found, thought to 
> be a
> predator-rich mangrove setting dominated by tree ferns and other 
> coastal
> plants, similar to Florida's swampy Everglades.
> 
> The rocks containing these fossils are about 94 million years old, 
> which
> means they date back to the Cretaceous Period, some 65 million to 
> 130
> million years ago.  ... "As far as we can tell from the literature, 
> this
> is the first confirmed notice of a crab associated with a dinosaur," 
> said
> Schweitzer [geologist Carrie E. Schweitzer, Ph.D., of the Kent 
> State
> University Department of Geology], who is the lead author on the 
> crab
> paper. "The find is significant because it permits paleontologists 
> to
> frame a very diverse and thus much more accurate description of what 
> these
> ancient environments would have looked like.
> ...
> 
> 







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