Pachycephalosaurs - The Bone-Headed Dinosaurs

Pachycephalosaurs (Greek for thick-headed lizards) were an unusually small family of dinosaurs with an unusually high entertainment value. As you can guess from their name, these two-legged herbivores were distinguished by their skulls, which ranged from the mildly thick (in early genera like Wannanosaurus) to the truly dense (in later genera like Stegoceras). Some later pachycephalosaurs sported almost a foot of solid, albeit slightly porous, bone on top of their heads! (See a gallery of bone-headed dinosaur pictures and profiles.) However, its important to understand that big heads, in this case, didnt translate into equally big brains. Pachycephalosaurs were about as bright as the other plant-eating dinosaurs of the late Cretaceous period (which is a polite way of saying not very); their closest relatives, the ceratopsians, or horned, frilled dinosaurs, werent exactly natures A students, either. So of all the possible reasons pachycephalosaurs evolved such thick skulls, protecting their extra-big brains certainly wasnt one of them. Pachycephalosaur Evolution Based on the available fossil evidence, paleontologists believe that the very first pachycephalosaurs--such as Wannanosaurus and Goyocephale--arose in Asia about 85 million years ago, only 20 million years before the dinosaurs went extinct. As is the case with most progenitor species, these early bone-headed dinosaurs were fairly small, with only slightly thickened skulls, and they may have roamed in herds as protection against hungry raptors and tyrannosaurs. Pachycephalosaur evolution really seems to have taken off when these early genera crossed the land bridge that (back during the late Cretaceous period) connected Eurasia and North America. The largest boneheads with the thickest skulls--Stegoceras, Stygimoloch and Sphaerotholus--all roamed the woodlands of western North America, as did Dracorex hogwartsia, the only dinosaur ever to be named after the Harry Potter books. By the way, its especially difficult for experts to untangle the details of pachycephalosaur evolution, for the simple reason that so few complete fossil specimens have ever been discovered. As you might expect, these thick-skulled dinosaurs tend to be represented in the geological record mainly by their heads, their less-robust vertebrae, femurs and other bones having long since been scattered to the winds. Pachycephalosaur Behavior and Lifestyles Now we get to the million-dollar question: why did pachycephalosaurs have such thick skulls? Most paleontologists believe male boneheads head-butted each other for dominance in the herd and the right to mate with females, a behavior that can be seen in (for example) modern-day bighorn sheep. Some enterprising researchers have even conducted computer simulations, showing that two moderately sized pachycephalosaurs could ram each others noggins at high speed and live to tell the tale. Not everyone is convinced, though. Some people insist that high-speed head-butting would have produced too many casualties, and speculate that pachycephalosaurs instead used their heads to butt the flanks of competitors within the herd (or even smaller predators). However, it does seem odd that nature would evolve extra-thick skulls for this purpose, since non-pachycephalosaur dinosaurs could easily (and safely) butt each others flanks with their normal, non-thickened skulls. (The recent discovery of Texacephale, a small North American pachycephalosaur with shock-absorbing grooves on either side of its skull, lends some support to the head-butting-for-dominance theory.) By the way, the evolutionary relationships among different genera of pachycephalosaurs are still being sorted out, as are the growth stages of these strange dinosaurs. According to new research, its likely that two supposedly separate pachycephalosaur genera--Stygimoloch and Dracorex--in fact represent earlier growth stages of the much bigger Pachycephalosaurus. If the skulls of these dinosaurs changed shape as they aged, that may mean that additional genera have been classified improperly, and were in fact species (or individuals) of existing dinosaurs.

Why Study Humanities - 2444 Words

I want to take this occasion to address one of the most prominent criticisms of the humanities today. I am not referring to criticism of more recent vintage, which takes to task the humanities for a supposed excess of political correctness; this complaint we can set aside as the ideologically motivated lament that it surely is. Rather, I’m speaking of the more long-standing critique that takes the humanities to task for its inconsequence, its uselessness. The presumption that underwrites this critique is simple: its claim is that we do not learn anything by attending to the objects of humanities research. These objects – a poem, a film or play, a piece of music, or what have you – do not furnish our minds with information we can use.†¦show more content†¦Even if we are not prepared to go quite so far as Plato did, and denounce the poet for actively obstructing the search for truth, we may still need to answer to the charge that the objects of humani ties research – I’ll follow Plato in taking poetry as the paradigmatic example – teach us nothing. We need to ask then: what does the poet, or what does the humanist, know? I now want to turn to two poems of the British Romantic period that offer perspectives on this very question. We will recognize that in neither case is an unequivocally affirmative answer provided to the question of what the poet knows. Indeed, both poems would seem to confirm the premises of Plato’s criticism, inasmuch as they give expression to a type of knowledge that can barely be called knowledge as such, since it remains necessarily speculative, provisional, and incomplete. As I’ve suggested, this has been the ground on which the humanities has long seemed weakest in the eyes of its critics. Whereas Plato regards this kind of poetic thinking as useless and worse, however, we find in these poems a qualified defense of not-knowing, and a concomitant claim on behalf of what the poet John Keats called â€Å"half-knowledge.† Both poems make a brief for the importance of attending to thoughts principally characterized by their incompletion and open-endedness; they embrace a kind of thinking that pointedly does not resolve into determinate knowledge. And bothShow MoreRelatedThe Humanities And Its Impact On Education Essay1750 Words   |  7 Pagesinstitutions are cutting the humanities from curricula. 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Summary †Automotive Supply Synchronization Free Essays

Operations Management â€Å"Automotive Supply Chain Synchronization† Summary The article, â€Å"Automotive Supply Chain Synchronization† by Matthias Berlit, Ulrich Dorndorf, and Hans Jurgen Zimmerman, discussed the importance of logistics planning in the management of automotive supply chains, and namely the role the transport management system SynroTESS played in the optimization of supply chains for Audi and Volkswagen (VW) Mexico. The article began by explaining that the unregulated inbound, internal and outbound movements within a given automotive supply chain were not only inefficient, but also led to significant wasted time evidenced by the queuing of vehicles and the congestion that results from waiting. The authors argued that this waste of resources could be overcome by the proper synchronization of movements with the use of a computer program called SyncroTESS. We will write a custom essay sample on Summary – Automotive Supply Synchronization or any similar topic only for you Order Now SyncroTESS was developed by a German IT company called INFORM and was described as a system that â€Å"intelligently synchronizes time-critical transport operations. The system is immensely capable of optimizing operations like the allocation of material handling resources within a plant to scheduling the trucks used for internal and inter-factory movements. The authors then went on to provide two case studies in which SyncroTESS was able to successfully optimize the synchronization of auto supply chains for Audi and VW Mexico. The first case study involved the Audi Ingolstadt production facility in Germany. The Ingolstadt factory is Audi’s largest production facility and produces roughly 850 built to order cars from its assembly lines daily. As we learned from the Marshall Fisher Harvard Business Review article â€Å"What is the right supply chain for your product,† these built to order vehicles are considered an innovative product must employ a market responsive supply chain to meet it’s demand properly. In order to optimize this sort of supply chain, the SyncroTESS system manages â€Å"the internal material flow† of at least 3 days worth of stock, â€Å"optimizes the execution of 60,000 internal transport orders per day,† including â€Å"up to 3,000 stock-in and 4,000 stock-out movement per day† and â€Å"the flow and transport of materials from the parts warehouse to the assembly line. As of 2006, the SyncroTESS system has been fully integrated into Audi’s IT system and is still currently in use. In fact, SyncroTESS’s responsibilities have been expanded to include the scheduling of about 500 inbound truck movements a day. The second case study showcased the impact of t he SyncroTESS system in the optimization of controlling finished auto inventory in the yards of VW Mexico. The vehicle yards in Mexico distribute about 350,000 vehicles to dealers worldwide yearly. The inventory is specifically tailored to store 2 types of production vehicles; built to order, hence innovative products, for the European market and built to stock, otherwise known as functional products, for the Mexican and North American markets. Although VW Mexico was dealing with essentially two types of products, the fact that these products were already completed and ready for shipment, this case study focused on SyncroTESS’s ability to handle an efficient supply chain for otherwise functional products. VW Mexico successfully implemented the optimization of its supply chain by marrying the SyncroTESS transport management system with VW’s proprietary TOMCADS system. This action allowed VW to rely on a single all encompassing logistical operation system and eliminated the confusion created from the use of the 3rd party logistic providers (3PLs) of the past. SyncroTESS and TOMCADS worked in concert through a process called â€Å"intelligent yard management. VW’s TOMCADS system would inform SyncroTESS of a vehicle’s impending arrival. At that time, the car would be inspected and â€Å"in the event of any defects† the car would be â€Å"returned to production and SyncroTESS (would) re-plan the car’s route allowing for repairs. † Otherwise, the synchronization system would work to optimize the flow of the vehicle inventory from each yard in great detail; from the flow of each vehicle within specific yards, to the order in which vehicle would be l oaded as cargo to reduce wasted movement. The successful impact of the synchronization of transport management systems was made evident when Bjorn Beckmann, head of Logistics Planning group at VW Mexico, explained that, â€Å"As a result of the (now) large number of cars leaving and entering our operations, most cars do not remain longer than 1. 5 days in the yards. † This lower lead-time in delivering the finished inventory is beneficial to both responsive and efficient supply chains, satisfying the demand of both types of production vehicles. The authors would then go on to describe how SyncroTESS has evolved to nclude GPS technology to further track the movement of inventory in real time. The full integration of the logistical system has allowed VW Mexico to create a more complete picture of its inventory flow. In fact, In addition to Audi and VW, BMW and Daimler have also adopted synchronization technology to optimize the execution of their supply chain with a typical â€Å"break-even period of two years. † The conclusion drawn from the authors essentially reinforced Fisher’s stance that the implementation of the proper supply chain for a given product, despite the cost, is ultimately more beneficial to a company than focusing on cost alone. How to cite Summary – Automotive Supply Synchronization, Essay examples