Lots of Ink: From New Mex. when dinos were new – a prospect of the king tyrant lizard, a vestige of S. American beginning
The journal Science this week has on its cover the magnified image of bacteria infecting a rice plant, and the editorial is about the international fraternity of science, its political importance for the common welfare, and its reliance on cooperation (and its price: bureaucracy). All very serious and consequential. But the story with six press releases listed just in the journal’s own promotions, a press teleconference from DC yesterday, and lots of fancy artistic impressions of things we’ll never see is about dinosaurs, those almost fool-proof crowd pleasers. Reporters, editors, and their readers love those beasts.
T. rex comes up, although the explicit connection is distant and faint indeed between that giant meat-eater beast from the Cretaceous fall of the curtain on the age of dinosaurs 65 million years ago, and the one in the journal – a fierce little bipedal carnivore from 150 million years earlier during their opening acts in the late Triassic.
For all the hooplah and Tyrannosaur-evoking tom-toms, the news is pretty neat. A team led by a man from the American Museum of Natural 
History in NY who is now at U. Texas-Austin, with six colleagues at universities and other museums, have analyzed several specimens – adding up to a complete bone set – from a glamorously toothy dinosaur species that was found in New Mexico on famed Ghost Ranch reserve. It is a theropod – it walked on its back legs – and seems to be among the earliest of that group. Not only that but via complex inference and comparisons among other dinosaur species, the researchers say it (somehow) fortifies a case that all dinosaurs including the long-necked sauropods and similar things, plus stocky rhino-esque beasts like ceretopsians radiated from an origin in what is now South America – which at the time was not such a distinct place (ponder that map of 
Pangaea, source). This one, it says here, was just migrating through North America when a few of its members expired in sediments that are now Southwestern bedrock. It was not very large as dinos go – six to maybe a dozen feet long and, in its stooped stance, perhaps chest-high to a person who in a parallel universe it could dice lickity-split into dino chow. They call it Tawa hallae after a Pueblo Sun God and an historic dinosaur authority at Ghost Ranch. It may have had feathery down on its hide. And its general form persisted as the template for myriad other meat-eaters including T. rex.
The NSF and some of the other releases follow an old rule in newsmaking – pin stories in part to things that readers already know about, then lead them on. Reporters tended to agree. Nothing wrong with that. But let’s check a few sites and see how many in media see no need for ref. to Tawa‘s distant not-direct descendant, good old Tyrannosaurus rex.
Stories with T. rex (and where):
- USA Today – Dan Vergano: T. Rex precursor suggests dinosaurs originated in S. America ; T.r.: hed and lede. Nice quote – what did it eat? A: “Probably .. anything he got his hands on.” That’ll keep the little kids wide-eyed.
- Guardian (UK) Ian Sample: Early-bird dinosaur. T.r- 4th graf.
- SF Chronicle – David Perlman: Meat-eating dinosaur feeds migration theory ; T.r. 5th graf, and as the lead author studied at Berkeley and his prof. is still there, this is in part a local story for Perlman.
- Nat’l Geo News – Brian Handwerk: New T. Rex Cousin Suggests Dinosaurs Arose in S. America ; T.r. hed, lede ; It’s a brief piece, but Hanwerk finds room to note S. America was hitched at the time to every other continental mass.
- Times (UK) Hannah Devlin – Fossil found in New Mexico was very erly relative of T. rex: T.r. hed, lede ; Story provides detail on the several migrations from S. America that the team infers.
- AP – Randolph E. Schmid: New Fossils shed light on evolution of dinosaurs ; T.r. 9th graf.
- BBC – Victoria Gill: T. rex ‘little cousin’ discovered ; T.r. hed, graf 1 ; And she emphasizes that a S. American origin for all dinos was already in the air. The new study merely reinforces it.
- Deseret News – James Thalman: Dinosaur discovery sheds light on Triassic, University of Utah scientist says ; T.r – lede. Check out the boisterous prose in this one. I think Thalman gets away with it, too. And in a state known for the popularity of genealogy, he slips that term in neatly.
- Cosmos (Australia) Gemma Black: New dinosaur solves evolutionary riddle ; T.r.: 5th graf. Nice bit on a S. American fossil and how this clears up one, somewhat obscure paleontological tangle.
Stories without T. rex:
- Independent – Steve Connor: Dinosaur fossil fills gaps in evolutionary knowledge ; Hurrah for the Independent man at the Independent. Besides, with the pic, who needs prompting to think velociraptor-T.rex-oh my?
- Chicago Sun-Times – Kara Spak: It’s a bird, it’s a dino — it’s Tawa hallae. No T.r. – story appears largely keyed by the press release from nearby Field Museum.
- LiveScience – Jeanna Bryner: Discovery reveals where dinosaurs originated ; Nice long piece; It, as do several other pieces, says there were no Jurassic dinosaurs other than carnivorous theropods in N. America. No sauropods. No ornithiscians. Perhaps a line on what the theropods might have eaten would be in order. Crocodiles?
- Salt Lake Tribune – Brian Maffly : New Mexico find sheds light on nearly dinosaur dispersal; Utah is a state big on dinos, and Maffly is not shy in sharing with reader many of their proper names by genus.
Could go on. But Looks like T. rex shoehorned itself into most, clearly not all.
Grist for the Mill:
NSF Press Release ; Field Museum Press Release ; Univ. Utah Press Release ; U.Texas-Austin Press Release ; Amer. Museum Nat. History Press Release ;
- Charlie Petit
