NY Times story on Italian Dino "scipionyx "

["D.I.G." <dinosaur@interport.net>]

Fossil Reveals a 113-Million-Year-Old Secret: the Inside Story of
Dinosaurs

By MALCOLM W. BROWNE 

The fossil of a baby dinosaur has come to light in which details of soft
anatomy never seen before in any dinosaur are preserved. Scientists
expect
the fossil, which was found in Italy, to yield important information
about
the anatomy of dinosaurs in general.

 Only very rarely are the fragmentary remains of soft tissue found in
dinosaur fossils, and it is all the more remarkable that in this
specimen,
major portions of the animal's intestines, colon, liver, muscles,
windpipe
and other parts are discernible. The find is reported in today's issue
of
the journal Nature, which devoted its cover to a color photograph of the
fossil.



 Dr. Michael J. Benton, a paleontologist at the University of Bristol,
England, who is familiar with the fossil, said in an interview that the
position of the dinosaur's liver might be particularly important.

 ''The lungs are not preserved,'' Dr. Benton said, ''but the position of
the liver may help define where the lungs were in this animal. The
primitive respiratory system of present-day crocodiles differs
significantly from that of birds, which have a much more efficient
system.
This Italian fossil might give an indication of whether the dinosaur's
breathing system was closer to that of crocodiles or birds, a question
that
bears on the controversy over the kinship of dinosaurs.''

 Many biologists regard birds as the descendants of dinosaurs, but
others
believe birds and dinosaurs evolved separately from some distant common
ancestor.

 ''This animal's gut was shorter than might have been expected, so it
probably was able to process food very efficiently,'' Dr. Benton said.

 The fossil was iscovered and excavated a decade ago but only recently
was
it examined by qualified paleontologists who recognized its great
importance. It is believed to be the only dinosaur ever found in Italy. 

 The two paleontologists who separated the fossil from rock, examined it
in
detail and wrote its formal scientific description for today's article
in
Nature, are Cristiano dal Sasso of the Museo Civico di Storia in Milan
and
Marco Signore of the Universita degli Studi di Napoli in Naples.

 ''This little dinosaur was found about a decade ago by an amateur named
Giovanni Todesco,'' Mr. Signore said in an interview. ''He thought it
was a
bird, and only years later, after he had seen the movie 'Jurassic Park,'
did he take it to a museum for a professional examination. News of the
discovery of the dinosaur was briefly reported in 1993, but it was not
realized at the time that this fossil is absolutely unique.''

 The nine-inch-long fossil, which is now housed at the Archeological
Administration in Salerno, was found about 30 miles northeast of Naples
in
the Pietraroia limestone formation in Benevento province. This formation
has been known since the 18th century for its unusually well-preserved
fossil fishes. 

 About 113 million years ago, during the mid-Cretaceous period, the area
was covered with shallow lagoons that were often deficient in oxygen,
Mr.
Signore said, and the fine limestone deposited in these lagoons
frequently
led to exceptional preservation of fossilized soft tissue of fishes.

 The little dinosaur's jaws are lined with sharp teeth, and it belongs
to
the dinosaur group called theropods (''beast feet''), which also include
Tyrannosaurus rex and many other meat eaters. The Italian scientists
named
the new dinosaur Scipionyx samniticus in honor of Scipione Breislak, the
geologist who wrote the first scientific description of the limestone
formation in which the fossil was found, and also to celebrate the
ancient
Roman general Scipio Africanus. (Samnium is the ancient name of the
region
that includes Beneento province.)

 Mr. Dal Sasso and Mr. Signore concluded that scipionyx had hatched from
an
egg only a short time before dying; all its teeth were original and none
had yet been replaced. 

 The scientists found a mixture of features in scipionyx that made the
creature somewhat difficult to classify. It has some of the features of
the
dromeosaurs -- small and medium-size dinosaurs with daggerlike claws --
a
group that included the ferocious velociraptors depicted in ''Jurassic
Park.'' But scipionyx, they found, also bears some resemblances to the
dinosaurs known as troodonts: flesh-eating dinosaurs that some
scientists
say may have been unusually intelligent.

 A remarkable feature of the scipionyx fossil, Dr. Benton said, is that
the
part believed to be its fossilized liver is faintly tinted a dark
purple, a
coloring that may have survived from life.

 ''The animal's fossilized gut is also amazing,'' Dr. Benton said. ''You
can clearly see its surface texture, which is lumpy and shiny, almost as
you would see it after dissecting a modern animal.''

 Dinosaur fossils generally consist purely of mineralized bone, Dr.
Benton
said, but occasionally the texture of skin patterns is preserved. (The
American Museum of Natural History in New York displays a mummified
hadrosaur fossil in which such patterns are visible.) Small, bony scutes
--
''the equivalent of chain mail armor,'' Dr. Benton called them -- are
also
sometimes found within fossilized skin.

 ''Only in two or three cases, one in a dinosaur found in China and
another
in Spain, have remnants of fossilized internal organs been found,'' he
said, ''so scipionyx is really something special.''

Illustrations: Photo: A full-size taxidermists' model of the dinosaur
fossil found in Italy. (Nature Magazine)

               
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
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