Dreadnoughtus: A gigantic, exceptionally complete sauropod dinosaur

Kenneth Lacovara, PhD, with the 30-foot tail of Dreadnoughtus schrani, stretching along the length of the wall and around the corner in his lab. 

Beside Lacovara's hand is a set of chevron bones. 

Pairs of these chevrons run beneath each of the tail vertebrae and were found for each vertebra in the tail of Dreadnoughtus. 

In this animal the chevrons are noteworthy for the wide area for muscle attachment on the lower portion of the Y-shaped chevron. 

In Dreadnoughtus this attachment area is broad and spatula-shaped, allowing for extremely large tail muscles, giving this animal an extraordinarily powerful, 'weaponized' tail in Lacovara's description. 

Credit: Drexel University

Scientists have discovered and described a new supermassive dinosaur species with the most complete skeleton ever found of its type.

At 85 feet (26 m) long and weighing about 65 tons (59,300 kg) in life, Dreadnoughtus schrani is the largest land animal for which a body mass can be accurately calculated.

Its skeleton is exceptionally complete, with over 70 percent of the bones, excluding the head, represented. Because all previously discovered supermassive dinosaurs are known only from relatively fragmentary remains,

Dreadnoughtus offers an unprecedented window into the anatomy and biomechanics of the largest animals to ever walk the Earth.


"Dreadnoughtus schrani was astoundingly huge," said Kenneth Lacovara, PhD, an associate professor in Drexel University's College of Arts and Sciences, who discovered the Dreadnoughtus fossil skeleton in southern Patagonia in Argentina and led the excavation and analysis.

"It weighed as much as a dozen African elephants or more than seven T. rex. Shockingly, skeletal evidence shows that when this 65-ton specimen died, it was not yet full grown. It is by far the best example we have of any of the most giant creatures to ever walk the planet."

Lacovara and colleagues published the detailed description of their discovery, defining the genus and species Dreadnoughtus schrani, in the journal Scientific Reports from the Nature Publishing Group today.

The new dinosaur belongs to a group of large plant eaters known as titanosaurs. The fossil was unearthed over four field seasons from 2005 through 2009 by Lacovara and his team..

Over 100 elements of the Dreadnoughtus skeleton are represented from the type specimen, including most of the vertebrae from the 30-foot-long tail, a neck vertebra with a diameter of over a yard, scapula, numerous ribs, toes, a claw, a small section of jaw and a single tooth, and, most notably for calculating the animal's mass, nearly all the bones from both forelimbs and hindlimbs including a femur over 6 feet tall and a humerus.

A smaller individual with a less-complete skeleton was also unearthed at the site.

The 'gold standard' for calculating the mass of quadrupeds (four-legged animals) is based on measurements taken from the femur (thigh bone) and humerus (upper arm bone).

Because the Dreadnoughtus type specimen includes both these bones, its weight can be estimated with confidence.

Prior to the description of the 65-ton Dreadnoughtus schrani specimen, another Patagonian giant, Elaltitan, held the title of dinosaur with the greatest calculable weight at 47 tons, based on a recent study.

Overall, the Dreadnoughtus schrani type specimen's bones represent approximately 45.3 percent of the dinosaur's total skeleton, or up to 70.4 percent of the types of bones in its body, excluding the skull bones. This is far more complete than all previously discovered giant titanosaurian dinosaurs.

"Titanosaurs are a remarkable group of dinosaurs, with species ranging from the weight of a cow to the weight of a sperm whale or more. But the biggest titanosaurs have remained a mystery, because, in almost all cases, their fossils are very incomplete," said Matthew Lamanna.

A US-Argentinian team led by Drexel University's Kenneth Lacovara, PhD, excavated the skeleton of Dreadnoughtus schrani from southern Patagonia over four field seasons from 2005 through 2009. 

The completeness and articulated nature of the two skeletons they found are evidence that these individuals were buried in sediments rapidly before their bodies fully decomposed. 

Credit: Kenneth Lacovara

For example, Argentinosaurus was of a comparable and perhaps greater mass than Dreadnoughtus, but is known from only a half dozen vertebrae in its mid-back, a shinbone and a few other fragmentary pieces; because the specimen lacks upper limb bones, there is no reliable method to calculate a definitive mass of Argentinosaurus.

Futalognkosaurus was the most complete extremely massive titanosaur known prior to Dreadnoughtus, but that specimen lacks most limb bones, a tail and any part of its skull.

To better visualize the skeletal structure of Dreadnoughtus, Lacovara's team digitally scanned all of the bones from both dinosaur specimens.

They have made a "virtual mount" of the skeleton that is now publicly available for download from the paper's open-access online supplement as a three-dimensional digital reconstruction.

"This has the advantage that it doesn't take physical space," Lacovara said. "These images can be ported around the world to other scientists and museums. The fidelity is perfect. It doesn't decay over time like bones do in a collection."

"Digital modeling is the wave of the future. It's only going to become more common in paleontology, especially for studies of giant dinosaurs such as Dreadnoughtus, where a single bone can weigh hundreds of pounds," said Lamanna.

The 3D laser scans of Dreadnoughtus show the deep, exquisitely preserved muscle attachment scars that can provide a wealth of information about the function and force of muscles that the animal had and where they attached to the skeleton, information that is lacking in many sauropods.

Efforts to understand this dinosaur's body structure, growth rate, and biomechanics are ongoing areas of research within Lacovara's lab.

Of the 142 types of bones not including the skull, 100 types of bones, or 70.4 percent, are represented in the Dreadnoughtus skeleton. Skull bones from any titanosaur are extremely rarely recovered. Credit: Lacovara Lab, Drexel University

More information: Scientific Reports, dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep06196

GOES-R Instruments Complete Spacecraft Integration

Two of the six instruments that will fly on NOAA's first Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite - R (GOES-R) satellite have completed integration with the spacecraft.

The Solar Ultraviolet Imager (SUVI) and Extreme Ultraviolet and X-ray Irradiance Sensors (EXIS) were installed on the sun-pointing platform.

They will observe the sun and space weather, including coronal mass ejections, solar flares and ion fluxes that can disrupt power grids, communication and navigation systems and create radiation hazards.

"This development highlights the forward progress underway to complete the installation of the space weather instrument suite onto the GOES-R spacecraft," said Pam Sullivan, GOES-R Flight Project Manager at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland.

"It is critical we give our partners at NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center the tools they need to improve prediction capabilities and further our knowledge of space weather."

Understanding Space Weather
The space weather mission is an important part of not only the overall GOES-R Series Program, but also NOAA's National Weather Service (NWS), which is home to the Space Weather Prediction Center.

Space weather describes the conditions in space that affect Earth and its technological systems. Space weather storms originate from the sun and occur in space near Earth or in the Earth's atmosphere.

Space weather can be difficult to understand since it is unlike the weather we experience here on Earth. For example, one type of space weather, known as coronal mass ejections, can have changing polarities, which can make it more challenging to predict the impacts of the magnetic storm.

Watch here to learn more about how space weather impacts our everyday lives. To help kids understand space weather, the GOES-R Program partnered with NASA to create materials available here for students and teachers.

Installation of the SUVI and EXIS instruments moves the program another step closer to the launch of the GOES-R satellite in early 2016.

In addition to SUVI and EXIS, the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) and the Space Environment In-Situ Suite (SEISS) were delivered for integration earlier this year and will be installed on the spacecraft in the coming months.

The two remaining instruments that complete the GOES-R Series Program payload are the Magnetometer and Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM). Both instruments are scheduled for delivery later this year.

NOAA manages the GOES-R Series Program through an integrated NOAA-NASA office, staffed with personnel from both agencies and located at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Randolph Glacier Inventory (RGI): First globally complete glacier inventory

This image shows the Zhadang glacier south of lake Nam Tso on the nortern ridge of the Nyainqentanglha mountain range (Tibet). 

Credit: Tino Pieczonka (TU Dresden)

For the first time ever, we have a complete inventory of all the glaciers on Earth.

Now we know how many glaciers there are, where they are, and what their extents and volumes are.

The now available digital outlines allow for the first time reliable calculations of the glaciers' future development and hence their contributions to regional hydrology and global sea-level rise.

Thanks to the efforts of an international group of scientists, one of them is Tobias Bolch from Technische Universität Dresden, Germany, who have mapped all of the world's glaciers, glaciologists can now study with unprecedented accuracy the impacts of a changing climate on glaciers worldwide, and determine their total extent and volume on a glacier-by-glacier basis.

Nyainqentanglha mountain range

Overall, glaciers cover an area of about 730,000 km2 and have a volume of about 170,000 km3.

The scientists found nearly 200,000 of them, but they say that this is the least important result of the mapping exercise as the number constantly changes due to disappearing small and fragmenting larger glaciers.

More importantly, each glacier in the new inventory is represented by a computer-readable outline, making precise modelling of glacier–climate interactions much easier.

Graham Cogley

"This boost to the infrastructure means that people can now do research that they simply couldn't do properly before", said Graham Cogley of Trent University, one of the coordinators of the new Randolph Glacier Inventory (RGI), which is named after one of the group's meeting places in New Hampshire.

The now published article is presenting the RGI and first statistical analysis of the global glacier distribution.

The main stimulus for completing the inventory was the recently-published Fifth Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Several studies that relied on earlier versions of the RGI were essential sources for that assessment.

Tad Pfeffer

"I don't think anyone could have made meaningful progress on projecting glacier changes if the Randolph inventory had not been available", said the University of Colorado's Tad Pfeffer, lead author of the study just published in the Journal of Glaciology.

Like several of his co-authors, Tad Pfeffer was also involved in the IPCC assessment.

More information: Pfeffer, W.T., Arendt, A. A., Bliss, A., Bolch, T., Cogley, J. G., Gardner, A. S., Hagen, J.-O., Hock, R., Kaser, G., Kienholz, C., Miles, E. S., Moholdt, G., Mölg, N., Paul, F., Radic, V., Rastner, P., Raup, B. H., Rich, J., Sharp, M. J. and the Randolph Consortium: The Randolph Glacier Inventory (2014): a globally complete inventory of glaciers. Journal of Glaciology 60(221), DOI: 10.3189/2014JoG13J176

SKA South Africa: MeerKAT telescope foundations complete

The 64th and final foundation for the MeerKAT telescope antenna was poured yesterday (Tuesday, February 11th, 2014) at South Africa's SKA site in the Karoo. 

Close to 5 000 m³ of concrete and more than 570 tons of steel were used to construct the foundations over the last nine months.

MeerKAT is the South African precursor to the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope, to be built in Africa and in Australia.

The SKA Project is an international enterprise to build the largest radio telescope in the world.

"The completion of the foundations and the soon-to-be completed first antenna represents a major milestone on building of the MeerKAT which will become an integral part of the SKA project," says Derek Hanekom, South Africa's Minister of Science and Technology.

"I am very pleased with the progress and the quality of the work that our scientists and engineers are delivering on this challenging assignment and wish them well with the enormous task ahead of meeting the tight schedule in the next two years."

"The foundations were constructed to stringent specifications to ensure that the antennas will be exceptionally stable," said Tracy Cheetham, general manager for infrastructure and site operations at SKA South Africa.

"Even at wind gusts of up to 69 km/h scientists must be able to point the dishes at distant celestial objects in an exact manner, and the antennas must be able to survive wind speeds of up to 144 km/h".

To meet these stability requirements, each foundation consists of eight steel-reinforced concrete piles at depths of between 5 to 10 m, depending on the local soil conditions.

A square slab of concrete (5.2 m x 5.2 m, and 1.25 m thick) rests on top of the piles to add further stability.

The 32 "holding down" bolts are pre-assembled in a circle to form a steel ring cage, or so-called "bird's nest", into which the concrete is cast.

All other MeerKAT infrastructure should be complete by the end of March this year. "We are on the last leg now," said Cheetham, adding that finishing touches are underway in the Karoo Array Processing Building (KAPB) and the power facility.

The KABP, a specialised underground bunker protected from radio frequency interference, will house all the data processing racks and the power and back-up equipment required for MeerKAT.

The primary focus for the next two months will be on verifying that all infrastructure functions according to the required specifications.

Testing involves cold and hot commissioning - Cheetham explains: "During cold commissioning the power is connected without switching on the equipment. During hot commissioning the machines are turned on and tested for a period of time."

Cheetham also said the ducting for the fibre optic cable has been completed, so all that is left now is for the fibre optic contractor, Plessey, to pull through and connect the cable.

MeerKAT facts & figures:

• Each MeerKAT antenna will be 19.5 m high.
• Each reflector (or dish) will be 13.5 x 16 m.
• Each complete antenna (base, pedestal and dish) will weigh 42 tons.
• The configuration (placement) of the anntennas is determined by the science objectives of the telescope:
• 48 foundations are in the core area which is approximately 1 km in diameter;
• The longest distance between any two antennas (the so-called baseline) is 8 km.
• MeerKAT will be the most sensitive radio telescope in the southern hemisphere until the SKA comes online. 
• Once all 64 antennas are operational, the instrument will be sensitive enough to pick up a cell phone signal from Saturn!
• Leading radio astronomy teams around the globe have already signed up to use the instrument as soon as it is ready. 
• The 64 MeerKAT antennas will later also become part of the much larger SKA telescope which is co-hosted between South Africa and Australia.

ISS Astronauts complete Coolant Pump repair

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station have received a gift just in time for Christmas: a new pump module to repair their ailing cooling system and to restore the outpost to full power.

Rick Mastracchio and Mike Hopkins embarked on their second spacewalk together, setting out at 6:53 a.m. EST (1153 GMT) on Tuesday (Dec. 24) to complete the work they began Saturday to remove and replace an ammonia pump module with a faulty flow control valve.

NASA's Mike Hopkins holds the space station's new pump module while floating past a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. 

Hopkins is riding the orbiting outpost's robotic arm to install the new pump module and fix the laboratory's vital cooling system.

Astronauts Mastravvhio and Hopkins Complete First in Series of Spacewalks

On Sunday, Dec. 22, NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins tweeted this photo of Saturday's spacewalk, saying, "Wow... can't believe that is me yesterday. Wish I could find the words to describe the experience, truly amazing."

Expedition 38 Flight Engineers Rick Mastracchio and Mike Hopkins wrapped up a 5-hour, 28-minute spacewalk outside the International Space Station at 12:29 p.m. EST Saturday. 

They completed the first in a series of excursions aimed at replacing a degraded ammonia pump module associated with one of the station's two external cooling loops that keeps both internal and external equipment cool.

A second spacewalk to install a replacement pump module is scheduled for Tuesday, Dec. 24 at 7:10 a.m. EST, with NASA TV coverage beginning at 6:15 a.m. EST.

Credit: NASA

NASA Mars Curiosity Rover: New Software upgrade completed - Wheel checks

Click on the picture to see the full panorama image 

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity captured this 360-degree view using its Navigation Camera (Navcam) after a 17-foot (5.3 meter) drive on 477th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's work on Mars (Dec. 8, 2013). 

This drive brought the mission's total driving distance to 3.86 miles (4.61 kilometers). The rock-studded terrain Curiosity has traversed since October 2013 appears to have accelerated the pace of wear and tear on the rover's wheels. 

Future drives may be charted to cross smoother ground where available. 

This seam-corrected mosaic is presented in a cylindrical projection. The center of the scene faces south. North is as both ends. 

Credit: JPL/NASA

The team operating NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has completed a software upgrade on the vehicle and is next planning a check of wear and tear on the rover's wheels.

"Curiosity is now operating on version 11 of its flight software," said Jim Erickson of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, project manager for the NASA Mars Science Laboratory Project, which operates Curiosity.

This is the third upgrade version since Curiosity's landing on Mars16 months ago. Completing the switch from version 10 took about a week.

An earlier switch to version 11 prompted an unintended reboot on Nov. 7 and a return to version 10, but the latest transition went smoothly.

These upgrades allow continued advances in the rover's capabilities.

For example, version 11 brings expanded capability for using the Curiosity's robotic arm while the vehicle is on slopes.

It also improves flexibility for storing information overnight to use in resuming autonomous driving on a second day.

An upcoming activity will be driving to a relatively smooth patch of ground to take a set of images of Curiosity's aluminum wheels, using the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera at the end of the rover's arm.

NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope: Completes five years in space - mission extended

This view shows the entire sky at energies greater than 1 GeV based on five years of data from the LAT instrument on NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Brighter colors indicate brighter gamma-ray sources. 

Credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration

During its five-year primary mission, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has given astronomers an increasingly detailed portrait of the universe's most extraordinary phenomena, from giant black holes in the hearts of distant galaxies to thunderstorms on Earth.

But its job is not done yet. On Aug. 11, Fermi entered an extended phase of its mission—a deeper study of the high-energy cosmos. This is a significant step toward the science team's planned goal of a decade of observations, ending in 2018.

"As Fermi opens its second act, both the spacecraft and its instruments remain in top-notch condition and the mission is delivering outstanding science," said Paul Hertz, director of NASA's astrophysics division in Washington.

Paul Hertz

Fermi has revolutionized our view of the universe in gamma rays, the most energetic form of light.

The observatory's findings include new insights into many high-energy processes, from rapidly rotating neutron stars, also known as pulsars, within our own galaxy, to jets powered by supermassive black holes in far-away young galaxies.

The Large Area Telescope (LAT), the mission's main instrument, scans the entire sky every three hours.

The state-of-the-art detector has sharper vision, a wider field of view, and covers a broader energy range than any similar instrument previously flown.

Peter Michelson

"As the LAT builds up an increasingly detailed picture of the gamma-ray sky, it simultaneously reveals how dynamic the universe is at these energies," said Peter Michelson, the instrument's principal investigator and a professor of physics at Stanford University in California.

Fermi's secondary instrument, the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM), sees all of the sky at any instant, except the portion blocked by Earth.

This all-sky coverage lets Fermi detect more gamma-ray bursts, and over a broader energy range, than any other mission.

These explosions, the most powerful in the universe, are thought to accompany the birth of new stellar-mass black holes.

Bill Paciesas

"More than 1,200 gamma-ray bursts, plus 500 flares from our sun and a few hundred flares from highly magnetized neutron stars in our galaxy have been seen by the GBM," said principal investigator Bill Paciesas, a senior scientist at the Universities Space Research Association's Science and Technology Institute in Huntsville, Ala.

One of Fermi's most striking results so far was the discovery of giant bubbles extending more than 25,000 light-years above and below the plane of our galaxy.

Scientists think these structures may have formed as a result of past outbursts from the black hole—with a mass of 4 million suns—residing in the heart of our galaxy.

ESA ExoMars 2016 set to complete construction

ESA's mission to Mars in 2016 has entered the final stage of construction with the signature of a contract today with Thales Alenia Space at the Paris Air & Space Show.

ExoMars will fly two missions, in 2016 and 2018, in a partnership between ESA and the Russian space agency, Roscosmos.

Its main goal is to answer one of the outstanding scientific questions of our time: has life ever existed on Mars?

In addition, ExoMars will develop new European technical capabilities in landing, roving, drilling and preparing samples to pave the way for a future Mars sample-return mission in the 2020s.

The first mission will be launched in 2016 and will include the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) to search for evidence of methane and other atmospheric gases that could be signs of active biological or geological processes.

It will also deliver the Entry, Descent and Landing Demonstrator Module (EDM) to the surface of Mars, to demonstrate key technologies needed for the 2018 mission and future landing missions.

The 2018 mission will land a rover on Mars – the first with the capability of drilling to depths of 2 m to collect samples that have been shielded from the harsh conditions on the surface, where radiation and oxidants can destroy organic materials.

In addition, the 2018 mission carries a Surface Platform with scientific instruments to investigate the martian environment.

The agreement, signed today in the ESA pavilion at the Paris Air & Space Show, marks a major milestone for the mission and for Thales Alenia Space, the industrial prime contractor on ExoMars.

Signature of Rider 1 to ESA Contract for Exomars. Credit: ESA

The agreement was signed by the old brigade of European Space Programs; Prof Giménez and Vincenzo Giorgio, Vice President Exploration & Science of Thales Alenia Space during a ceremony attended by the Agency's Director General, Jean-Jacques Dordain.

Also attending were Maria Carrozza, the Italian Minister for Education, Universities and Research, Enrico Saggese, President of the Italian space agency, and Jean-Loïc Galle, CEO of Thales Alenia Space.

Energia Complete tech Design of Lunar Spacecraft - Soyuz TMA-16

Russian space company Energia has completed the technical design of the TMA-16, a manned spacecraft whose flight tests would be initiated in 2017, company officials say.

"We have completed the technical design project taking into account the fact that the new spaceship is to fly to the moon, among other places," Energia President Vitaly Lopota said Wednesday.

"If we get normal financing, we will start flight tests of the spaceship in 2017," he said.

Energia was awarded the spaceship design contract in April 2009, RIA Novosti reported.

Federal space agency Roscosmos head Vladimir Popovkin has said the new spaceship is intended to fly not only to the International Space Station but also to the moon.

A number of configurations of the spacecraft have been developed depending on mission requirements and whether a mission is to a terrestrial or lunar orbit, Energia said.

ISS Russian cosmonauts Complete First Expedition 24 Spacewalk

Flight Engineers Fyodor Yurchikhin and Mikhail Kornienko concluded a six-hour, 42-minute spacewalk Tuesday at 6:53 a.m. EDT.

The cosmonauts began their spacewalk when they opened the hatches of the Pirs docking compartment at 12:11 a.m.

This was the 147th spacewalk overall in support of International Space Station assembly and maintenance.

The cosmonauts wore their Russian Orlan spacesuits to outfit the new Rassvet module for a Kurs automated rendezvous system capability for future dockings of Russian vehicles arriving at the station to link up to Rassvet. They also routed and mated Command and Data Handling cables on the Zvezda and Zarya modules.

A video camera was removed and replaced on the aft end of Zvezda then successfully tested. The old camera was safely jettisoned away from the station. The new camera will be used to provide television views of the final approach and docking of future European Automated Transfer Vehicles carrying cargo to the complex.

During the spacewalk, two objects were detected floating away from the station. One was tentatively identified as a cable clamp, left outside the station from a previous Russian spacewalk. That object and another, not conclusively identified, both departed well below the vicinity of the complex and pose no threat to the orbiting laboratory.

This was Kornienko's first spacewalk and Yurchikhin's fourth. Yurchikhin's first three spacewalks occurred when he was commander of Expedition 15 in 2007.

The second spacewalk of Expedition 24 is planned for August 5 by Flight Engineers Doug Wheelock and Tracy Caldwell Dyson in U.S. spacesuits out of the Quest airlock. They will install
a power cable to the Unity module in preparation for the installation of the Permanent Multipurpose Module during the STS-133 mission in November.

NASA Shuttle Atlantis: First EVA Complete

US astronauts completed Monday the first of three planned spacewalks from the shuttle Atlantis a day after the craft docked with the International Space Station.

Astronauts Garrett Reisman and Stephen Bowen finished the seven-hour, 25-minute spacewalk at 3:19 pm (1919 GMT) after installing a second space-to-ground communications antenna and a spare parts platform on Dexter, the two-armed robotic device on the orbiting ISS.

It was the 237th spacewalk by US astronauts, the second for Reisman and the fourth for Bowen, NASA said.

The pair meanwhile loosened battery bolts on the port-6 backbone segment of the station in preparation for the other spacewalks.

Atlantis brought to the station six new 375-pound (170-kilogram) batteries to be installed during the second and third spacewalks.

The shuttle and its crew of six successfully docked with the orbiting space lab on Sunday about 220 miles (350 kilometers) above the South Pacific.

The mission is the 32nd and final scheduled voyage for Atlantis, which first launched in 1985 and has logged some 115 million miles in its career.