Warnings of imminent extinction crisis for largest wild animal species

Warnings of imminent extinction crisis for largest wild animal 

species

Date:

July 27, 2016

Source:

Wildlife Conservation Society

Summary:

A team of conservation biologists is calling for a worldwide strategy to prevent the unthinkable: the extinction of the world's largest mammal species.

Indian water buffalo (Bubalus arnee) in Kaziranga National Park, India, is an endangered bovid with a global population estimated at fewer than 4,000 individuals in the wild.

Credit: Varun R. Goswami, WCS India Program

A team of conservation biologists is calling for a worldwide strategy to prevent the unthinkable: the extinction of the world's largest mammal species.

In a public declaration published in today's edition of the journal BioScience, a group of more than 40 conservation scientists and other experts are calling for a coordinated global plan to prevent the world's "megafauna" from sliding into oblivion.

Among the threats cited by the group as drivers of this mass extinction are illegal hunting, deforestation and habitat loss, the expansion of agriculture and livestock into wildlife areas, and the growth of human populations.

"The more I look at the trends facing the world's largest terrestrial mammals, the more concerned I am we could lose these animals just as science is discovering how important they are to ecosystems and to the services they provide for people," said Dr. William Ripple, professor of ecology at Oregon State University and lead author of the study.

Ripple worked with other authors on the study to examine population trends of many species, including many of the most well-known, charismatic species such as elephants, rhinos, gorillas, and big cats that are now threatened with extinction.

Approximately 59 percent of the world's biggest mammalian carnivore species -- including the tiger -- and 60 percent of the largest herbivores are now listed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species as threatened with extinction.

"Perhaps the biggest threat for many species is direct hunting driven by a demand for meat, pets, and body parts for traditional medicines and ornaments," Dr. Elizabeth Bennett, WCS's Vice President of Species Conservation and a co-author on the study. "Only a massive commitment from the international community will stop this rampant destruction of so many animal populations."

All of these large species play critical roles in their ecosystems. Species at risk include elephants, that provide a suite of vital ecosystem services as ecological engineers, dispersing seeds and nutrients across vast areas. "The loss of elephants in the forests of Central Africa is increasingly damaging the function of the region's most important ecosystems," said WCS Conservation Scientist Dr. Fiona Maisels, one of the study's co-authors. "We're only beginning to understand how vital these keystone species are to the health of rainforests and other species that inhabit them."

Human-wildlife conflict is a serious concurrent threat for many species. "With simultaneous loss of wildlife habitat and expansion of human populations and agriculture, negative interactions between people and wildlife are bound to rise," said WCS India Scientist Dr. Varun R. Goswami, also a co-author on the study. "For wide-ranging megafauna like elephants and tigers, we need landscape-scale conservation strategies, taking into account the increasing interface between wildlife and people."

Some megafauna face the threat of obscurity. The loss of elephants worldwide to poachers in pursuit of ivory is well-known and is the focus of extensive efforts to shut down this trade, but the study authors point out that many species are at risk from many similar threats but are so poorly known that effective conservation efforts to save them are difficult.

The paper includes a 13-part declaration that highlights the need to acknowledge the threatened status of many large mammals and the vital ecological roles they play. The declaration also cites the importance of integrating the efforts of scientists and funding agencies in developing countries where many species occur; the need for a new global framework to conserve megafauna; and the moral obligation of saving the world's biggest mammal species.

Should the gray wolf keep its endangered species protection?

New genomic research provides the scientific answer

Date:

July 27, 2016

Source:

University of California - Los Angeles

Summary:

A decision by the US Fish and Wildlife Service to remove the gray wolf from protection under the US Endangered Species Act may be made as early as this fall. Research presents strong evidence that the scientific reason advanced by the service for delisting the gray wolf is incorrect.

Gray wolves are currently protected under the US Endangered Species Act (and are not always gray).

Credit: Dan Stahler

Research by UCLA biologists published today in the journalScience Advances presents strong evidence that the scientific reason advanced by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove the gray wolf from protection under the Endangered Species Act is incorrect.

A key justification for protection of the gray wolf under the act was that its geographic range included the Great Lakes region and 29 Eastern states, as well as much of North America. The Fish and Wildlife Service published a document in 2014 which asserted that a newly recognized species called the eastern wolf occupied the Great Lakes region and eastern states, not the gray wolf. Therefore, the original listing under the act was invalid, and the service recommended that the species (except for the Mexican gray wolf, which is the most endangered gray wolf in North America) should be removed from protection under the act.

A decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove the gray wolf from protection under the Endangered Species Act may be made as early as this fall.

In the new study, biologists analyzed the complete genomes of North American wolves -- including the gray wolf, eastern wolf and red wolf -- and coyotes. The researchers found that both the red wolf and eastern wolf are not distinct species, but instead are mixes of gray wolf and coyote.

"The recently defined eastern wolf is just a gray wolf and coyote mix, with about 75 percent of its genome assigned to the gray wolf," said senior author Robert Wayne, a UCLA professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. "We found no evidence for an eastern wolf that has a separate evolutionary legacy. The gray wolf should keep its endangered species status and be preserved because the reason for removing it is incorrect. The gray wolf did live in the Great Lakes area and in the 29 eastern states."

Once common throughout North America and among the world's most widespread mammals, the gray wolf is now extinct in much of the United States, Mexico and Western Europe, and lives mostly in wilderness and remote areas. Gray wolves still lives in the Great lakes area, but not in the eastern states.

Apparently, the two species first mixed hundreds of years ago in the American South, resulting in a population that has become more coyote-like as gray wolves were slaughtered, Wayne said. The same process occurred more recently in the Great Lakes area, as wolves became rare and coyotes entered the region in the 1920s.

The researchers analyzed the genomes of 12 pure gray wolves (from areas where there are no coyotes), three coyotes (from areas where there are no gray wolves), six eastern wolves (which the researchers call Great Lakes wolves) and three red wolves.

There has been a substantial controversy over whether red wolves and eastern wolves are genetically distinct species. In their study, the researchers did not find a unique ancestry in either that could not be explained by inter-breeding between gray wolves and coyotes.

"If you did this same experiment with humans -- human genomes from Eurasia -- you would find that one to four percent of the human genome has what looks like strange genomic elements from another species: Neanderthals," Wayne said. "In red wolves and eastern wolves, we thought it might be at least 10 to 20 percent of the genome that could not be explained by ancestry from gray wolves and coyotes. However, we found just three to four percent, on average -- similar to that found in individuals from the same species when compared to our small reference set."

Pure eastern wolves were thought to reside in Ontario's Algonquin Provincial Park. The researchers studied two samples from Algonquin Provincial Park and found they were about 50 percent gray wolf, 50 percent coyote.

Biologists mistakenly classified the offspring of gray wolves and coyotes as red wolves or eastern wolves, but the new genomic data suggest they are hybrids. "These gray wolf-coyote hybrids look distinct and were mistaken as a distinct species," Wayne said.

Eventually, after the extinction of gray wolves in the American south, the red wolves could mate only with one another and coyotes, and became increasingly coyote-like.

Red wolves turn out to be about 25 percent gray wolf and 75 percent coyote, while the eastern wolf's ancestry is approximately 75 percent gray wolf and 25 percent coyote, Wayne said. (Wayne's research team published findings in the journal Nature in 1991 suggesting red wolves were a mixture of gray wolves and coyotes.)

Although the red wolf, listed as an endangered species in 1973, is not a distinct species, Wayne believes it is worth conserving; it is the only repository of the gray wolf genes that existed in the American South, he said.

The researchers analyzed SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) -- tiny variations in a genetic sequence, and used sophisticated statistical approaches. In the more than two dozen genomes, they found 5.4 million differences in SNPs, a very large number.

Wayne said the Endangered Species Act has been extremely effective. He adds, however, that when it was formulated in the 1970s, biologists thought species tended not to inter-breed with other species, and that if there were hybrids, they were not as fit. The scientific view has changed substantially since then. Inter-breeding in the wild is common and may even be beneficial, he said. The researchers believe the Endangered Species Act should be applied with more flexibility to allow protection of hybrids in some cases (it currently does not), and scientists have made several suggestions about how this might be done without a change in the law, Wayne said.

Animals Endangered

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeqcyeWpJ5I

Extinct

Mass Extinction Occurred Much Faster Than Previously Thought

FEBRUARY 20, 2014 By Sarah Pruitt

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At the end of the Permian period, around 252 million years ago, a mass extinction wiped out more than 96 percent of marine life and 70 percent of land animals on earth. Scientists have proposed various theories as to what caused the end-Permian extinction, including an asteroid impact, a wave of massive volcanic eruptions or other similarly cataclysmic natural disasters. In an effort to shed some light on the ongoing mystery, a team of researchers has made the most precise measurement yet of how long the extinction took, with some surprising results.

Ever since the mid-1800s, scientists have known that a major event occurred around 252 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period and the beginning of the Triassic. Fossil evidence had mounted by that time indicating that the boundary marked a major change in the diversity of life on Earth. Species such as trilobites (which left horseshoe crab-like tracks on the ocean floor) seemed to have completely disappeared by the Triassic period, along with massive coral reefs and entire forests of ferns and cyads.

Now, a team of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers has used cutting-edge dating techniques on end-Permian rocks to make the most precise measurement yet of how long it took for the vast majority of Earth’s species to become extinct. According to the researchers’ findings, published recently in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the entire mass extinction took place over around 60,000 years — more than 10 times faster than scientists had previously believed, and a virtual blink of an eye in geologic time.

Since 2006, MIT geologist Dr. Sam Bowring and his colleagues have been studying fossils found in the hills of Meishan, China, in an area made from rocks of the late Permian and early Triassic eras. To estimate the fossils’ age, they collected volcanic ash preserved in the rock around them, which contains radioactive atoms that have been in the process of breaking down since the ash was first ejected from a volcano. In 2011, Dr. Bowring’s team estimated the end-Permian extinction took less than about 200,000 years. Since that time, however, their dating technology has improved, allowing them to be more precise. They have narrowed the window down to less than about 60,000 years (with a margin of error of 48,000 years) and hope to narrow it even further in the future.

A more precise timetable for the end-Permian extinction is expected to help scientists evaluate different theories about what might have triggered it. Geologists have found evidence of massive volcanic eruptions in Siberia around the time of the extinction, as well as a spike in the ocean’s temperature of 18 degrees Fahrenheit. The eruptions, which helped formed the step-like hills of the Siberian Traps region, are thought to have covered more than 5 million cubic kilometers. As one theory goes, the Siberian volcanoes may have triggered the end-Permian extinction by releasing carbon dioxide and methane gases into the atmosphere and oceans, raising global temperatures and making life unsustainable for many species.

In addition to adjusting the timeframe of the extinction, Bowring and his colleagues confirmed that the oceans experienced a surge of light carbon around 10,000 years before the extinction, which likely reflected a similar surge of carbon dioxide into the world’s atmosphere. Now they are working to determine a similarly precise timeline for the Siberian Traps eruptions, in an effort to see where the two events–the eruptions and the mass extinction–may have overlapped. According to Seth Burgess, a graduate student at MIT and the lead author of the paper that reported the findings, “It is clear that whatever triggered extinction must have acted very quickly…fast enough to destabilize the biosphere before the majority of plant and animal life had time to adapt in an effort to survive.”

THE EXTINCTION CRISIS

It’s frightening but true: Our planet is now in the midst of its sixth mass extinction of plants and animals — the sixth wave of extinctions in the past half-billion years. We’re currently experiencing the worst spate of species die-offs since the loss of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Although extinction is a natural phenomenon, it occurs at a natural “background” rate of about one to five species per year. Scientists estimate we’re now losing species at 1,000 to 10,000 times the background rate, with literally dozens going extinct every day [1]. It could be a scary future indeed, with as many as 30 to 50 percent of all species possibly heading toward extinction by mid-century [2].

Unlike past mass extinctions, caused by events like asteroid strikes, volcanic eruptions, and natural climate shifts, the current crisis is almost entirely caused by us — humans. In fact, 99 percent of currently threatened species are at risk from human activities, primarily those driving habitat loss, introduction of exotic species, and global warming [3]. Because the rate of change in our biosphere is increasing, and because every species’ extinction potentially leads to the extinction of others bound to that species in a complex ecological web, numbers of extinctions are likely to snowball in the coming decades as ecosystems unravel. 

Species diversity ensures ecosystem resilience, giving ecological communities the scope they need to withstand stress. Thus while conservationists often justifiably focus their efforts on species-rich ecosystems like rainforests and coral reefs — which have a lot to lose — a comprehensive strategy for saving biodiversity must also include habitat types with fewer species, like grasslands, tundra, and polar seas — for which any loss could be irreversibly devastating. And while much concern over extinction focuses on globally lost species, most of biodiversity’s benefits take place at a local level, and conserving local populations is the only way to ensure genetic diversity critical for a species’ long-term survival.

In the past 500 years, we know of approximately 1,000 species that have gone extinct, from the woodland bison of West Virginia and Arizona’s Merriam’s elk to the Rocky Mountain grasshopper, passenger pigeon and Puerto Rico’s Culebra parrot — but this doesn’t account for thousands of species that disappeared before scientists had a chance to describe them [4]. Nobody really knows how many species are in danger of becoming extinct. Noted conservation scientist David Wilcove estimates that there are 14,000 to 35,000 endangered species in the United States, which is 7 to 18 percent of U.S. flora and fauna. The IUCN has assessed roughly 3 percent of described species and identified 16,928 species worldwide as being threatened with extinction, or roughly 38 percent of those assessed. In its latest four-year endangered species assessment, the IUCN reports that the world won’t meet a goal of reversing the extinction trend toward species depletion by 2010 [5].

What’s clear is that many thousands of species are at risk of disappearing forever in the coming decades.

AMPHIBIANS

No group of animals has a higher rate of endangerment than amphibians. Scientists estimate that a third or more of all the roughly 6,300 known species of amphibians are at risk of extinction [6]. The current amphibian extinction rate may range from 25,039 to 45,474 times the background extinction rate [7].

Frogs, toads, and salamanders are disappearing because of habitat loss, water and air pollution, climate change, ultraviolet light exposure, introduced exotic species, and disease. Because of their sensitivity to environmental changes, vanishing amphibians should be viewed as the canary in the global coal mine, signaling subtle yet radical ecosystem changes that could ultimately claim many other species, including humans.

BIRDS

Birds occur in nearly every habitat on the planet and are often the most visible and familiar wildlife to people across the globe. As such, they provide an important bellwether for tracking changes to the biosphere. Declining bird populations across most to all habitats confirm that profound changes are occurring on our planet in response to human activities. 

A 2009 report on the state of birds in the United States found that 251 (31 percent) of the 800 species in the country are of conservation concern [8]. Globally, BirdLife International estimates that 12 percent of known 9,865 bird species are now considered threatened, with 192 species, or 2 percent, facing  an “extremely high risk” of extinction in the wild — two more species than in 2008. Habitat loss and degradation have caused most of the bird declines, but the impacts of invasive species and capture by collectors play a big role, too.

FISH 

Increasing demand for water, the damming of rivers throughout the world, the dumping and accumulation of various pollutants, and invasive species make aquatic ecosystems some of the most threatened on the planet; thus, it’s not surprising that there are many fish species that are endangered in both freshwater and marine habitats. 

The American Fisheries Society identified 700 species of freshwater or anadromous fish in North America as being imperiled, amounting to 39 percent of all such fish on the continent [9]. In North American marine waters, at least 82 fish species are imperiled. Across the globe, 1,851 species of fish —  21 percent of all fish species evaluated —  were deemed at risk of extinction by the IUCN in 2010, including more than a third of sharks and rays. 

INVERTEBRATES 

Invertebrates, from butterflies to mollusks to earthworms to corals, are vastly diverse — and though no one knows just how many invertebrate species exist, they’re estimated to account for about 97 percent of the total species of animals on Earth [10]. Of the 1.3 million known invertebrate species, the IUCN has evaluated about 9,526 species, with about 30 percent of the species evaluated at risk of extinction. Freshwater invertebrates are severely threatened by water pollution, groundwater withdrawal, and water projects, while a large number of invertebrates of notable scientific significance have become either endangered or extinct due to deforestation, especially because of the rapid destruction of tropical rainforests. In the ocean, reef-building corals are declining at an alarming rate: 2008’s first-ever comprehensive global assessment of these animals revealed that a third of reef-building corals are threatened.

MAMMALS
Perhaps one of the most striking elements of the present extinction crisis is the fact that the majority of our closest relatives — the primates — are severely endangered. About 90 percent of primates — the group that contains monkeys, lemurs, lorids, galagos, tarsiers, and apes (as well as humans) — live in tropical forests, which are fast disappearing. The IUCN estimates that almost 50 percent of the world’s primate species are at risk of extinction. Overall, the IUCN estimates that half the globe’s 5,491 known mammals are declining in population and a fifth are clearly at risk of disappearing forever with no less than 1,131 mammals across the globe classified as endangered, threatened, or vulnerable. In addition to primates, marine mammals — including several species of whales, dolphins, and porpoises — are among those mammals slipping most quickly toward extinction. 

PLANTS
Through photosynthesis, plants provide the oxygen we breathe and the food we eat and are thus the foundation of most life on Earth. They’re also the source of a majority of medicines in use today. Of the more than 300,000 known species of plants, the IUCN has evaluated only 12,914 species, finding that about 68 percent of evaluated plant species are threatened with extinction.

Unlike animals, plants can’t readily move as their habitat is destroyed, making them particularly vulnerable to extinction. Indeed, one study found that habitat destruction leads to an “extinction debt,” whereby plants that appear dominant will disappear over time because they aren’t able to disperse to new habitat patches [11]. Global warming is likely to substantially exacerbate this problem. Already, scientists say, warming temperatures are causing quick and dramatic changes in the range and distribution of plants around the world. With plants making up the backbone of ecosystems and the base of the food chain, that’s very bad news for all species, which depend on plants for food, shelter, and survival.

REPTILES

Globally, 21 percent of the total evaluated reptiles in the world are deemed endangered or vulnerable to extinction by the IUCN — 594 species — while in the United States, 32 reptile species are at risk, about 9 percent of the total. Island reptile species have been dealt the hardest blow, with at least 28 island reptiles having died out since 1600. But scientists say that island-style extinctions are creeping onto the mainlands because human activities fragment continental habitats, creating “virtual islands” as they isolate species from one another, preventing interbreeding and hindering populations’ health. The main threats to reptiles are habitat destruction and the invasion of nonnative species, which prey on reptiles and compete with them for habitat and food.

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Dinosaur Die Out Was Gradual, Miserable, Painful

Dinosaurs gradually began to die out at least 40 million years before the devastating asteroid impact killed the rest in a dramatic way about 66 million years ago, concludes an extensive new study.

The research, outlined in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first to incorporate phylogenetic information — meaning how species are related to one another — when studying speciation and extinction in dinosaurs.

The data provides evidence that things went from really bad to worse for most dinosaurs that did not evolve into birds.

 PLAY VIDEO

Meet A Dino That Survived The Mass Extinction

Its name might be a tongue-twister, but Leikupal Laticauda has vaulted into the upper reaches of dinosaur stardom. Why? Because it lived after almost nothing else did.

“Some dinosaurs definitely would have been instantly killed in the impact, those in the vicinity of the impact site for instance; others may have perished in the tsunami caused by the blast,” lead author Manabu Sakamoto of the University of Reading’s School of Biological Sciences told Discovery News.

He continued, “The majority of the remaining dinosaurs all over the rest of the world would have likely starved to death as vegetation died out owing to the layer of ash that blacked out the sky (nuclear winter).”

A model created by Sakamoto and colleagues Michael Benton and Chris Venditti found that most dinosaur populations were already declining as early as 48–53 million years before the asteroid impact, which left the massive Chicxulub crater in Mexico. They say that the Cretaceous Period was a time of extreme geological and environmental changes.

“For instance,” Sakamoto said, “sea level was fluctuating, climate was shifting from a hot house to a global cooling, there were prolonged volcanic activities, and continents were breaking apart, establishing the main continents we have today.”

He explained that the supercontinent breakup would have resulted in less available land for dinosaurs to use for migration, which previously helped to fuel the evolution of new species. Climate change, both then and now, could induce major environmental and ecological shifts.

Sea level rise turned out to be more complex. Initially, it favored the evolution of more dinosaur species, but smaller land areas eventually restricted population growth.

Our ancestors, the early mammals, could have posed a big threat to dinos as well.

“Another possibility is that mammals, which were small rodent-like creatures at that time, were in some way contributing to the dinosaur’s downfall,” Benton, a professor of vertebrate paleontology at the University of Bristol, told Discovery News. “Recent studies show evidence that mammals were on the rise prior to the K-Pg (extinction) event, so this scenario would be consistent with our finding.”

Venditti, from the University of Reading, added that mammals might have outcompeted dinosaurs for resources, eaten their eggs, spread diseases or caused other problems for the once mighty dinos.

Aside from the dinosaur lineage that evolved to become birds, two other major groups of dinosaurs — the plant-eating hadrosaurs and ceratopsians — remained strong until the asteroid struck. Sakamoto explained that these dinos acquired specialized jaw structures that allowed them to process plant foods efficiently.

Paleontologist Steve Brusatte from the University of Edinburgh’s School of GeoSciences said the new study is an impressive take on “a subject that has been studied to death.”

"Cretaceous dinosaurs were evolving into fewer new species, and going extinct at a faster rate, than earlier dinosaurs,” said Brusatte. But he does not think that dinosaurs were doomed to extinction before 66 million years ago.

“The asteroid hit at a time when dinosaurs had already been around for a long time, and had already endured their really prolific periods of evolution,” Brusatte said. “But the way I see it, the dinosaur extinction still came down to the asteroid. No asteroid, no extinction."

There is an eerie footnote regarding lessons learned from the extinction of dinosaurs, and other animals that bit the dust after the asteroid hit. Any group of animals that is under a prolonged period of decline can be wiped out, should there be catastrophic event.

Sakamoto said, “This means that if some major catastrophe hits, then it is highly possible that whole groups of animals could be completely wiped off the face of the Earth.”

New Titanosaur: Big Body, Small Brain, Major A

CARNEGIE MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

A new titanosaur dig includes one of the best dinosaur skulls ever discovered, allowing researchers to reconstruct everything from the dino’s intellect -- or lack thereof -- to its senses and head posture.

Named Sarmientosaurus musacchioi, the new, small-brained dino had good eyesight, hearing tuned to low frequencies, and habitually held its head with its snout facing downward, according to a paper published in the journal PLOS ONE. The head was at the end of a long neck and featured a mouth full of sharp teeth.

 PLAY VIDEO

Meet A Dino That Survived The Mass Extinction

Its name might be a tongue-twister, but Leikupal Laticauda has vaulted into the upper reaches of dinosaur stardom. Why? Because it lived after almost nothing else did.

DCI

The researchers believe that the plant-eating dinosaur lived life basically like a giant weed whacker, sweeping its neck over the ground to find plants that it would grab, but not chew.

“Sarmientosaurus had powerful teeth … but those teeth did not chew,” lead author Rubén Martínez of the Laboratorio de Paleovertebrados of the Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia San Juan Bosco told Discovery News. “(The teeth) would only cut the leaves and the dinosaur would eat them with almost no chewing.”

Co-author Lawrence Witmer of the Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine added that the dinosaur “had a large feeding envelope. When you’re as large as these sauropods were, being able to scarf down a lot of food without having to move saves a lot of energy.”

Witmer estimates that the dinosaur, which lived roughly 95 million years ago, was about 40–50 feet long and weighed 8–12 tons. He and his colleagues consider it to have been a modest-sized titanosaur, given that others could grow to 90 feet in length and weigh as much as 50 tons. They were the largest animals ever to walk the earth.

The new species was excavated in southern Chubut Province, Argentina, near the town of Sarmiento, for which the dino was named. The species name also honors the late paleontologist Eduardo Musacchio, who was a friend of Martínez and other members of the team.

Of the 60 plus species of titanosaur that have been discovered so far, only four are represented by nearly or even reasonably complete skulls. They include Nemegtosaurus, Rapetosaurus, Tapuiasaurus, and now, possibly with the best preserved skull of all, Sarmientosaurus.

The dino certainly did not have a lot of brain matter to weigh down its head. The researchers estimate that the creature's brain was the size of a lime. Witmer said that “Sarmientosaurus certainly was no Einstein and was governed mostly by instinct. It probably had enough intelligence to have some fairly complicated behaviors, but this was not a clever animal by any means.”A new titanosaur dig includes one of the best dinosaur skulls ever discovered, allowing researchers to reconstruct everything from the dino’s intellect -- or lack thereof -- to its senses and head posture.

Named Sarmientosaurus musacchioi, the new, small-brained dino had good eyesight, hearing tuned to low frequencies, and habitually held its head with its snout facing downward, according to a paper published in the journal PLOS ONE. The head was at the end of a long neck and featured a mouth full of sharp teeth.

 PLAY VIDEO

Meet A Dino That Survived The Mass Extinction

Its name might be a tongue-twister, but Leikupal Laticauda has vaulted into the upper reaches of dinosaur stardom. Why? Because it lived after almost nothing else did.

DCI

The researchers believe that the plant-eating dinosaur lived life basically like a giant weed whacker, sweeping its neck over the ground to find plants that it would grab, but not chew.

“Sarmientosaurus had powerful teeth … but those teeth did not chew,” lead author Rubén Martínez of the Laboratorio de Paleovertebrados of the Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia San Juan Bosco told Discovery News. “(The teeth) would only cut the leaves and the dinosaur would eat them with almost no chewing.”

Co-author Lawrence Witmer of the Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine added that the dinosaur “had a large feeding envelope. When you’re as large as these sauropods were, being able to scarf down a lot of food without having to move saves a lot of energy.”

Witmer estimates that the dinosaur, which lived roughly 95 million years ago, was about 40–50 feet long and weighed 8–12 tons. He and his colleagues consider it to have been a modest-sized titanosaur, given that others could grow to 90 feet in length and weigh as much as 50 tons. They were the largest animals ever to walk the earth.

The new species was excavated in southern Chubut Province, Argentina, near the town of Sarmiento, for which the dino was named. The species name also honors the late paleontologist Eduardo Musacchio, who was a friend of Martínez and other members of the team.

Of the 60 plus species of titanosaur that have been discovered so far, only four are represented by nearly or even reasonably complete skulls. They include Nemegtosaurus, Rapetosaurus, Tapuiasaurus, and now, possibly with the best preserved skull of all, Sarmientosaurus.

The dino certainly did not have a lot of brain matter to weigh down its head. The researchers estimate that the creature's brain was the size of a lime. Witmer said that “Sarmientosaurus certainly was no Einstein and was governed mostly by instinct. It probably had enough intelligence to have some fairly complicated behaviors, but this was not a clever animal by any means.”

At least it could see and hear predators, like the meat-eating Megaraptor. Its cochlear duct was different from that of most other known titanosaurs, and enabled it to hear low-frequency sounds spread out over long distances. Witmer said the ability “could have helped the animals keep track of others in the herd as they spread out over the countryside.”

He added that it might have been a primitive trait inherited from its ancestors. Sarmientosaurus appears to have been an intermediate species on the titanosaur family tree, providing a unique glimpse at evolution in action when compared with additional dinosaurs in the group.

 PLAY VIDEO

Meet A Dino That Survived The Mass Extinction

Its name might be a tongue-twister, but Leikupal Laticauda has vaulted into the upper reaches of dinosaur stardom. Why? Because it lived after almost nothing else did.

DCI

The dinosaur’s well-preserved inner ear, revealed via CT scanning, reveals that it habitually held its snout pointing downward with its eyes directed forward.

As for its long neck, Martínez said that the bones in it were extremely light and nearly hollow with up to 80 percent air.

It's the first non-bird dinosaur to preserve a bizarre structure in the neck that the researchers interpret to have been a long bony tendon. The scientists support the widely held view, however, that birds evolved from two-legged, meat-eating dinosaurs similar to Velociraptor and not from large plant-eaters like Sarmientosaurus.

They suspect that other plant-eating dinosaurs, known as sauropods, had the bony tendon, but that, for some reason, it didn't fossilize in them the way that it did in the Sarmientosaurus remains.

Paleontologist Matt Lamanna of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History told Discovery News that five new dinosaur species have been found so far at the site in Argentina, called Estancia Laguna Palacios. They include Notohypsilophodon (a fast-running plant eater), Aniksosaurus (a small meat eater thought to have roamed in packs or herds), Katepensaurus (Lamanna called it “a super-weird, probably broad-snouted and toothy low-browsing sauropod,”) an as-of-yet unnamed new abelisaurid (“relative of the famous horned, bulldog-faced Carnotaurus and Majungasaurus”) and now Sarmientosaurus.

Lamanna said that all “came from an area of just a few square miles. It’s an awesome place.”

Snoring Lizards Reveal Sleep Predates Dinosaurs

APR 28, 2016 02:01 PM ET // BY JENNIFER VIEGAS

Owners of pet lizards for years have anecdotally reported that their reptilian friends snore, appear to dream, and seem to enjoy snoozing just as we do, and now new research finds that reptiles do indeed experience the same sleep states of mammals and birds.

Before, it was thought that only birds, humans and other mammals went through rapid eye movement sleep (REM) and slow-wave sleep (SWS) as they snoozed, but the new findings, published in the journal Science, suggest that these sleep patterns evolved in the common ancestor of all such animals more than 300 million years ago.

By extension, it is then likely that today’s reptiles dream, and that many long-extinct animals such as dinosaurs did so as well.

“Dreaming, like sleep, consciousness, language, pain etc. are all concepts or phenomena that were first experienced and described in a self-referential manner by humans, assigned a word and implicitly considered as uniquely human,” senior author Gilles Laurent, director of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, told Discovery News.

“But if you think as a biologist about these phenomena, accept that most of them probably did not drop from the sky onto the first human being, but rather result from some slow evolutionary process, then we can start thinking about dreams as patterns of neuronal activity in the brain during sleep that are at least partly built up from past experience,” he added. “If you are ready to accept that bits of neuronal playback in certain brain areas during sleep can be called dreams, then I’ll bet that lizards dream.”

Scientists for decades tried to detect sleep patterns in reptiles by placing electrodes on the surface of the animals’ brains, similar to doing an EEG. Laurent and his team took this a step further, by implanting probes right into the brains of five bearded dragons (lizards). As a result, the researchers were better able to record the sleep patterns and to match them to eye movements.

Animals Grab Some Shut-Eye on World Sleep Day: Photos

Humans go through four or five 60 to 90 minute SWS-REM cycles on average every night, but the lizards experienced about 350 80-second cycles. Rest is unaffected, Laurent said, as the two sleep cycles run together, just as they do in humans. The individual is basically unaware that all of this brain wave change is happening.

“Among mammals, there tends to be some relationship between animal size and length of sleep cycle,” he said. “It is not absolute, but is statistically true. For example, the human sleep cycle is about 60–90 minutes, while it is 30 minutes for cats and 15 minutes for rats.”

Even insects and arachnids like spiders sleep, but it is unclear if they experience REM and SWS sleep patterns. Some animals rest, but do not technically sleep.

Laurent explained, “Multicellular animals without brains, such as sponges and jellyfish…most likely do not express ‘brain sleep’ both by definition since they lack a brain and because REM and SWS require certain neural circuits that, as far as we know, they lack.”

Even for these creatures, prior amounts of rest, temperature shifts and other environmental factors seem to affect rest, which in multicellular animals without brains probably is expressed through their circadian rhythms, otherwise known as their internal “body clocks.”

As for now-extinct dinosaurs, Laurent said that “it seems likely they expressed REM and SWS.” They therefore probably dreamed and consolidated their memories as they slept in a way that was at least somewhat similar to how we and many other animals do so today.

Thanos Siapas, a professor of computation and neural systems at Caltech, told Discovery News that the new study “is a truly groundbreaking paper that sheds new light into how the architecture of sleep evolved. The data and analysis are very compelling and suggest an ancient origin of the two alternating stages of sleep.”

Siapas and the researchers were surprised that the sleep patterns detected in the lizards originated from different parts of the brain than expected, based on what happens in mammals and birds. Siapas hopes that future research will explore why this occurs, clarifying the functions of those brain regions.

Then there is what Laurent called “the $64 million dollar question”: Why and how did sleep evolved in the first place?

“We do not know now, and this is a fascinating question,” he said. “Did it evolve as something completely different, and evolve into what we know today? It is too early to say.”

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DinosaurBloodandBoneCellsFound:Photos

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