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Hundreds Of Eggs From Ancient Flying Reptile Are Found In China

A cache of hundreds of eggs discovered in China sheds new light on the development and nesting behavior of prehistoric, winged reptiles called pterosaurs.

Pterosaurs were fearsome-looking creatures that flew during the Lower Cretaceous period alongside dinosaurs. This particular species was believed to have a massive wingspan of up to 13 feet, and likely ate fish with their large teeth-filled jaws.

Researchers working in the Turpan-Hami Basin in northwestern China collected the eggs over a 10-year span from 2006 to 2016.

A single sandstone block held at least 215 well-preserved eggs that have mostly kept their shape. Sixteen of those eggs have embryonic remains of the pterosaur species Hamipterus tianshanensis, the researchers said in findings released today in Science.

The fossils in the area are so plentiful that scientists refer to it as “Pterosaur Eden,” says Shunxing Jiang, a paleontologist at the Chinese Academy of Science’s Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology. “You can very easily find the pterosaur bones,” he says, adding that they believe dozens more eggs might still lie hidden within the sandstone.

Artist’s rendition of a family of pterosaurs, which had massive wingspans of up to 13 feet and likely ate fish with their large teeth-filled jaws. Illustrated by Zhao Chuang

Hundreds of pterosaur bones from the Lower Cretaceous period lie on the surface of an excavation site in the China’s Turpan-Hami Basin. Alexander Kellner/Museu Nacional/UFRJ

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Are colour-changing octopuses really colourblind? 

Cephalopods, including octopuses and squid, have some of the most incredible colour-changing abilities in nature. 

They can almost instantly blend in with their surroundings to evade predators or lay in wait, and put on colourful displays to attract mates or dazzle potential prey.

This is impressive enough on its own, but becomes even more amazing when you discover these creatures are in fact colourblind – they only have one type of light receptor in their eyes, meaning they can only see in black and white.

So how do they know what colours to change to at all?

This has puzzled biologists for decades but a father/son team of scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard University think the unusual shape of their pupils holds the key, and they can see colour after all.

Cephalopods have wide U-shaped or dumbbell-shaped pupils, which allow light into the lens from many directions.

When light enters the pupils in human eyes it gets focused on one spot, cutting down on blur from the light being split into its constituent colours.

The scientists believe cephalopod eyes work the opposite way – the wide pupils split the light up and then individual colours can be focused on the retina by changing the depth of the eyeball and moving the pupil around.  

The price for this is blurry vision, but it does mean they could make out colours in a unique way to any other animals.

Processing colour this way is more computationally intensive than other types of colour vision and likely requires a lot of brainpower, which might explain in part why cephalopods are the most intelligent invertebrates on Earth.

Read the paper

Images:  Roy Caldwell, Klaus Stiefel, Alexander Stubbs

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