* Astronomy

A hoard of dinosaur bones has been discovered at the site of a planned desalination plant meant to deliver Australia's second biggest city from drought, forcing a re-think of the A$3 billion ($2.7 billion) project.
The fossilised bones, estimated to be 115 million years old and belonging to dinosaurs and ancient marine reptiles, were found on a windswept beach in front of the planned project at Powlett River, southeast of Melbourne.

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Movie Files
All files are Quicktime format (.MOV)

	Flesh To Bones Movie © C. Gudanowski , courtesy Project Exploration 300 x 400 - 3.5 mb 480 x 640 - 4.7 mb 600 x 800 - 5 mb
	Nigersaurus Skull, Downturned Movie © L. Witmer, courtesy Project Exploration 600 x 800 - 12 mb
	Nigersaurus Skull, Intermediate Posture Movie © L. Witmer, courtesy Project Exploration 600 x 800 - 12 mb
	Nigersaurus Maxilla Tooth Battery Movie © L. Witmer, courtesy Project Exploration 600 x 800 - 6 mb
	Nigersaurus Premaxilla Tooth Battery Movie © L. Witmer, courtesy Project Exploration 600 x 800 - 6 mb
	Nigersaurus Endocast Roll Movie © L. Witmer, courtesy Project Exploration 600 x 800 - 32 mb
	Nigersaurus Endocast Yaw Movie © L. Witmer, courtesy Project Exploration 600 x 800 - 32 mb

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Title: Structural Extremes in a Cretaceous Dinosaur
Authors: Paul C. Sereno, Jeffrey A. Wilson, Lawrence M. Witmer,  John A. Whitlock,  Abdoulaye Maga4, Oumarou Ide, Timothy A. Rowe

Fossils of the Early Cretaceous dinosaur, Nigersaurus taqueti, document for the first time the cranial anatomy of a rebbachisaurid sauropod. Its extreme adaptations for herbivory at ground-level challenge current hypotheses regarding feeding function and feeding strategy among diplodocoids, the larger clade of sauropods that includes Nigersaurus. We used high resolution computed tomography, stereolithography, and standard molding and casting techniques to reassemble the extremely fragile skull. Computed tomography also allowed us to render the first endocast for a sauropod preserving portions of the olfactory bulbs, cerebrum and inner ear, the latter permitting us to establish habitual head posture. To elucidate evidence of tooth wear and tooth replacement rate, we used photographic-casting techniques and crown thin sections, respectively. To reconstruct its 9-meter postcranial skeleton, we combined and size-adjusted multiple partial skeletons. Finally, we used maximum parsimony algorithms on character data to obtain the best estimate of phylogenetic relationships among diplodocoid sauropods. Nigersaurus taqueti shows extreme adaptations for a dinosaurian herbivore including a skull of extremely light construction, tooth batteries located at the distal end of the jaws, tooth replacement as fast as one per month, an expanded muzzle that faces directly toward the ground, and hollow presacral vertebral centra with more air sac space than bone by volume. A cranial endocast provides the first reasonably complete view of a sauropod brain including its small olfactory bulbs and cerebrum. Skeletal and dental evidence suggests that Nigersaurus was a ground-level herbivore that gathered and sliced relatively soft vegetation, the culmination of a low-browsing feeding strategy first established among diplodocoids during the Jurassic.

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Outback Queensland has become the focus of an international research project that is helping to decipher the evolution of Australian dinosaurs and their relationships to those of other southern continents.
In a unique Australian-American project, researchers from The University of Queensland and Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, are hoping recent fossil finds may put dinosaurs from Down Under on the international map.
Palaeontologists Dr Steve Salisbury, from UQ, and Dr Matt Lamanna, from Carnegie Museum of Natural History, have begun excavations of rich fossil beds near the central-western Queensland town of Winton that they believe may shed new light on the evolution of Southern Hemisphere dinosaurs.

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