Saturday, February 23, 2013

Jurassic turtle graveyard found in China | Essentials

Jurassic turtle graveyard found in China

Evolution: Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature
Evolution: Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature by Hello, I am Bruce
License (according to Flickr): Attribution-ShareAlike License
Excerpt:

Scientists say they've uncovered a pile of 1,800 Jurassic turtle skeletons in China that had been swept into a mass grave millions of years ago. The fossilized mesa chelonia turtles were found in China's northwest province of Xinjiang in what paleontologists call a "bone bed" with some of the shells stacked up on top of each other in the rock. Some 160 million years ago, these turtles (identified as a species in the genus Annemys) likely had gathered in one of the remaining waterholes during a very dry period, awaiting rain, which apparently came too late, the researchers say. When all the water left in the hole dried up, the turtles died. When the rain did finally arrive, it hit with catastrophic force.

People:

Walter Joyce

Overall Sentiment: 0

Relevance: 0.752149

SentimentQuote
0"This site has probably more than doubled the known number of individual turtles from the Jurassic," said Walter Joyce, ...
0"We know from living organisms that individuals of some species look very similar, whereas individuals of other species show a lot of variation," Joyce wrote
-0.093324"We know from living organisms that individuals of some species look very similar, whereas individuals of other species show a lot of variation," Joyce wrote in an email to LiveScience. "As a paleontologist, it is therefore always difficult to assess if your fossil looks different from others because it is a new species, or because it is part of an already known, but variable species. With data from the new site we will finally be able to more rigorously assess patterns of diversity of turtles in the Jurassic of Asia."
Sentiment Stats:
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  • Aggregate Sentiment: -0.093324
  • Mean: -0.031108
  • Standard Deviation: 1.4142135623731

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Additional Info:

FieldTerminology: paleontologists

Overall Sentiment: -0.0705988

Relevance: 0.965969

Country: China

Overall Sentiment: -0.169172

Relevance: 0.691564

Country: Germany

Overall Sentiment: 0

Relevance: 0.427519

StateOrCounty: Xinjiang

Overall Sentiment: -0.0542331

Relevance: 0.528119

City: mesa

Overall Sentiment: -0.395415

Relevance: 0.509199

Continent: Asia

Overall Sentiment: -0.669549

Relevance: 0.471706

Disambiguation: Location | FieldOfStudyReferences:

Organization: University of Tubingen

Overall Sentiment: 0

Relevance: 0.49783

Disambiguation: References:

Company: Twitter

Overall Sentiment: 0

Relevance: 0.47248

Disambiguation: Website | VentureFundedCompanyReferences:

Company: Facebook

Overall Sentiment: 0

Relevance: 0.419833

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