New research on the Albertosaurus shows dinosaurs actually went through the teenage phase. The teenage phase is classified as sudden growth spurts, not puberty (at the moment). Researcher Philip Currie from University of Alberta believes they are more human (mammal-like) than reptilian. Gregory Erickson from Florida State University confirmed the discovery while putting together the first non-avian (non-bird related) dinosaur growth chart.

The chart compared twenty-two Albertosaurus fossils from a bone bed in southern Alberta, where the ages of the creature ranged from two to twenty-eight years old when they died. They plotted measurements of weight and size of the Albertosaurus. They have concluded that the growth and death patterns did not fit reptiles at all.

The explanation for this is simple—throughout a reptile’s life, say a snake, they continue to grow. Reptiles never cease to stop growing, which is why they can become so big before they die. In the case of dinosaurs they, they reach a certain point and stop growing, just like mammals.

This is an amazing discovery among itself, and will possibly pave the way for us to revamp our outlook on dinosaurs. Possibly prompt Spielberg and his dinosaur expert to take this new discovery into consideration for Jurassic Park IV. It makes me wonder if inGen would have discovered this when they were manipulation the dinosaur DNA in an essence to make them grow faster for a profit. Read more about it at CNEWS – Research confirms dinosaurs had teenage phase, making them more like mammals.

I’m all pretty sure most Jurassic Park fans remember the heart-stopping incident with Alan Grant and Lex. A few days ago, July 1 to be extract, a good friend of mine CyborgCompy pointed me to an article at sciencenews.org. It would seem scientists at University of Oregon in Eugene have discovered that the Tyrannosaurus probably had the best vision in its class. This creature had an ability to see non-moving objects and a focal length of up to 3.7 miles. It would go to show that Alan Grant and Lex would be in for a world of trouble. Here is an excerpt:

 T. rex had a binocular range of 55°, which is wider than that of modern hawks, Stevens reports in the summer Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Moreover, over the millennia, T. rex evolved features that improved its vision: Its snout grew lower and narrower, cheek grooves cleared its sight lines, and its eyeballs enlarged.

“It was a selective advantage for this animal to see three-dimensionally ahead of it,” Stevens says.

Stevens also considered visual acuity and limiting far point—the greatest distance at which objects remain distinct. For these vision tests, he took the known optics of reptiles and birds, ranging from the poor-sighted crocodile to the exceptional eagle, and adjusted them to see how they would perform inside an eye as large as that of T. rex. “With the size of its eyeballs, it couldn’t help but have excellent vision,” Stevens says.

He found that T. rex might have had visual acuity as much as 13 times that of people. By comparison, an eagle’s acuity is 3.6 times that of a person.

T. rex might also have had a limiting far point of 6 kilometers, compared with the human far point of 1.6 km. These are best-case estimates, Stevens says, but even toward the cautious end of the scale, T. rex still displays better vision than what’s needed for scavenging.

This article is definitely worth the read. To read more about our friend, the Tyrannosaurus, click here. It might save your life if you ever end up on Isla Sorna (again).

I woke up this morning and decided I was going to release version 11 of JPdb to the public today, regardless if I have all the content I wanted to publish with or not. As you can see from the links we have, we have a lot of content on the way. Most of which are being written up by myself and co-webmaster Samfan. Sadly, Samfan had to fly home to Hawaii this week and will be back in approximately 3 weeks. I’ll make the best of it now, so if you find any errors on this new design please contact any one of us. Also, free free to join the forum and post about.

Welcome to the prototype of version 11.x. You have probably found your way to database.jpdatabase.net because I (Jon) or one of the other administrators of JPdb linked you to it. Please take a moment to comment on the design and some of the content that can be viewed already through the site. Please take note that this site is not complete. There still might be problems in the way some browsers display the page. So far I’ve been able to get the page to view perfectly on Internet Explorer 6.0, but there is a problem when viewing this page on Internet Explorer 7.0 Beta 2. I’ve also gotten this page to view almost right on Firefox 1.5.

As for the content it’s coming. I am having problems with my current ISP (OOL) when it comes to uploading. They turned off my FTP and SSH ports for uploading too much in a single day (a big 300 mb to this site) and cut off my access to my SMTP server for JPdb (along with anyone else who uses an external mail service to conduct business without notice). They wont let me get my access back through their service unless I upgrade to a better package (an extra $45 a month), so forget that. I’ll find a way around it. Don’t worry. Just remember to comment about the new prototype!

If you like what you see here and want to help out please contact me at jon [at] jpdatabase.net! Any help at all is a big help when it comes to this place.