#Mesozoic Monthly

[killdeercheer]

Today Marks 200 Years of Dinosaurs!!

Photo by Paul Barrett (image link here).

On this day, February 20th, 1824, bones from the Stonesfield Slate in Oxfordshire, England were described by William Buckland. Dinosaur fossils have likely been known since time immemorial, but that day was the first time a dinosaur had been described by western science (being the predatory Megalosaurus). Two decades later, Richard Owen would use the three fossils shown above - belonging to three separate animals Megalosaurus (leg), Iguanodon (tooth), and Hylaeosaurus (spine) - to formally recognize Dinosauria as a lineage of animals. Today over a thousand Mesozoic dinosaur genera are known, with many being described on a monthly basis, and our understanding of these animals has grown tremendously since the 1820s. We now recognize that dinosaurs were sophisticated, highly active reptiles with diverse behaviors of which one lineage survived the great Cretaceous Mass Extinction Event: the birds. Paleontologist Darren Naish has said that dinosaurs are popular "because they look neat, because they're awesome in every sense of the word, because they ruled a vast, chaotic, complex wilderness, and because they're the source of a myriad of big, really interesting questions". And I'm sure we all couldn't agree more.

So here's to 200 Years of Dinosaurs! How will you celebrate one of the world's most popular and incredible animals?

[carnegiemuseumnaturalhistory]

Mesozoic Monthly: Aspidorhynchus

As we all seek out responsible ways to enjoy our summer months while the world continues to respond to COVID-19, many of us are embracing the therapeutic effects of the great outdoors. One popular activity, especially in and around the Three Rivers, is fishing. Some modern fishes look positively primeval, as if they were hooked straight out of the Age of Dinosaurs and reeled into the present day. For July’s edition of Mesozoic Monthly, our star is Aspidorhynchus, one of the weird and wonderful fishes that inhabited the oceans of the Mesozoic Era.

Let’s start with a quick lesson on fish, for context. There are two main groups of bony fishes. One group, the class Sarcopterygii, are called the lobe-finned fishes because they have fleshy, limb-like fins that they use to paddle through the water like oars. The first vertebrates to go on land were sarcopterygians, and the descendants of these adventurous fish eventually evolved into amphibians, reptiles, and mammals – including us! Despite their prolific limbed descendants, sarcopterygians make up only a small fraction of fishes today. The vast majority of fish belong to the other class: Actinopterygii, or the ray-finned fishes. These fishes have delicate ray-like bones supporting thinly webbed fins instead of the meaty fins of the sarcopterygians. Actinopterygians are so successful that they dominate both freshwater and saltwater ecosystems, thrive in a variety of habitats, and fill various ecological niches. Such diverse lifestyles mean that actinopterygians come in many shapes and sizes. Nemo (a clownfish) is an actinopterygian. So is the barracuda that ate his mother, the catfish in the Monongahela River, and the unfortunate goldfish you won at the carnival as a kid. Most fossil fishes, like Aspidorhynchus for example, are also actinopterygians.

Aspidorhynchus is an extinct member of the order Holostei, nested, in diagrams of relatedness, within the class Actinopterygii. The only members of the Holostei today are gars and bowfins. Superficially, Aspidorhynchus looks like a gar, but it is more closely related to bowfins. Its name means “shield snout,” in reference to its pointy, swordfish-like upper jaw. Unlike swordfish, which lack teeth as adults, this snout was filled with many sharp teeth. The limited flexibility of its skull restricted its diet to tiny fish, two inches (5 centimeters) in diameter at the largest. Aspidorhynchus was not very large itself, its slender body only growing to approximately two feet (60 centimeters) in length. It was covered with ganoid scales, which are hard, diamond-shaped scales made with a shiny compound called ganoin. Only a few types of modern fishes have ganoid scales, including gar, sturgeon, and paddlefish.

Jurassic feeding frenzy: the pterosaur (flying reptile) Rhamphorhynchus and the predatory fish Aspidorhynchus attack a school of smaller fish. Usually, the baitfish were the only casualties here, but once in a while, everybody lost (see below!). Art by RavePaleoArt on DeviantArt, reproduced with permission.

Although species of Aspidorhynchus lived in the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, we know that it encountered the same struggles as some modern fish due to several remarkable fossils. Just like swordfish, the pointy snout of Aspidorhynchus frequently got it into trouble by impaling other animals! The abundance of fossil evidence for this was provided by the unique conditions of the habitat preserved in the famous Solnhofen Limestone of Germany. In the Late Jurassic, this area was an isolated series of lagoons that accumulated a bottom layer of anoxic brine, which is extra-salty, low-oxygen water where oxygen-dependent (aerobic) life cannot survive. Despite this, the surface still teemed with life: fishes and marine reptiles dominated the water, small non-avian dinosaurs scurried along the shore, and pterosaurs (flying reptiles) and archaic birds flew overhead. The fish-eating pterosaur Rhamphorhynchus seems to have been a fairly frequent victim of the snout of Aspidorhynchus, with multiple fossils documenting unfortunate collisions in which the fish’s snout pierced and became entangled in the wing membrane of the pterosaur. (For a summary of pterosaur wings, check out the March edition of Mesozoic Monthly, on Nemicolopterus.) It’s obvious from the size of the animals that neither was trying to eat the other, but somehow, they became stuck together. As the two animals struggled to survive, they slowly drifted downward into the anoxic brine, where they suffocated and settled onto the bottom of the lagoon. If any other animals had tried to eat or otherwise disturb the corpses, they would have died in the brine as well, so the fossils of the Solnhofen Limestone are typically pristine and undisturbed by scavengers.

Three views of the most famous (and probably the most beautiful) Aspidorhynchus vs. Rhamphorhynchus fossil from the Upper Jurassic Solnhofen Limestone of southern Germany. Avid fisherman Matt Lamanna, the head of Vertebrate Paleontology at Carnegie Museum of Natural History (CMNH), jokes that the Aspidorhynchus looks angry, as if it’s mad about getting its snout stuck in the Rhamphorhynchus and dooming them both. Sorry Matt, this is just a quirk of preservation – the compression of the Aspidorhynchus skull during fossilization gave it the appearance of having grouchy eyebrows that weren’t there in life. You can learn more about this specimen in a paper by Frey and Tischlinger (2012). And if you want to see real fossils of both of these animals in person (albeit preserved separately), come visit the Solnhofen case in CMNH’s Dinosaurs in Their Time exhibition.

Because Aspidorhynchus lived only during the Mesozoic, there’s no chance that a modern-day angler will ever hook one. But should you find yourself fishing in one of Pennsylvania’s rivers or lakes this summer, and manage to land a gar or bowfin, pause for a moment and reflect on the ancient legacy of these fishes – a heritage that dates to the Age of Dinosaurs.

Lindsay Kastroll is a volunteer and paleontology student working in the Section of Vertebrate Paleontology at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum staff, volunteers, and interns are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

[iplanetsacademy]

[ledenews]

NEW People's University Launches on July 21 

It's the summer of dinosaurs, and the Ohio County Public Library in Wheeling invites patrons to learn all about the amazing prehistoric creatures in an eight-week series.  The new dinosaur series will feature paleontologists and students of paleontology from Pittsburgh's venerable Carnegie Museum of Natural History, discussing topics ranging from defining what dinosaurs actually were, to how they are related to modern birds and reptiles, to  how and why they became extinct. The series will conclude with a behind-the-scenes field trip guided by the museum's principal dinosaur researcher himself, Dr. Matthew Lamanna. For inquiries and to register for the series, call the library at 304-232-0244, visit www.ohiocountylibrary.org, send us an email, or visit the Library's Reference Desk. Class 1: Thursday, July 21 — 7PM - What is a Dinosaur? A fun, interactive introduction into what is and isn't a dinosaur. Many people exclude things like birds from their definition of a dinosaur, but include things like crocodiles, turtles, pterosaurs, and sometimes even mammoths. This lecture would clarify misunderstandings of what makes something a dinosaur, like the fact that something doesn't have to be extinct to be a dinosaur but they do need their legs to be positioned beneath their bodies. Instructor: Lindsay Kastroll is a paleontology student and museum volunteer with a special interest in dinosaurs. Following her recent graduation from California University of Pennsylvania with degrees in Biology and Geology, she will be attending a master’s program in Biological Sciences at the University of Alberta starting in Fall 2022 where she will complete research on ornithischian dinosaurs: think things like Triceratops, Ankylosaurus, and Stegosaurus. She got her start volunteering with the Carnegie Museum of Natural History writing “Mesozoic Monthly,” a series of deep dives on prehistoric creatures for the museum blog.  Read the full article

[wigmund]

From Earth Science Picture of the Day; April 7, 2018:

Encore - Painted Desert Photographer and Summary Author: Nick Zantop

Today and every Saturday Earth Science Picture of the Day invites you to rediscover favorites from the past. Saturday posts feature an EPOD that was chosen by viewers like you in our monthly Viewers' Choice polls. Join us as we look back at these intriguing and captivating images.

The Painted Desert of northeastern Arizona is an aptly named land of colorful, stratified rock layers and easily erodible soils. Much of the Painted Desert is contained in Arizona's Petrified Forest National Park, where this photograph was taken. This magnificent desert badlands was formed by the erosion of siltstone and shale from the Triassic Chinle Formation. Abundant iron and manganese compounds in these finely-grained layers pigment the soil in vibrant hues.

The Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Park are also famous for their rich fossil history. Beginning about 60 million years ago, the Colorado Plateau was pushed upward by tectonic forces, exposing what's now Petrified Forest National Park to increased erosion. Virtually all the rock layers above the Chinle Formation have been eroded by wind and water, exposing many of the fossils preserved in the Chinle sediment. In addition to huge quantities of colorful petrified logs, Triassic faunal remains have been found here as well, including Buettneria, salamander-like amphibians that grew to 10 ft (3 m) in length and phytosaurs, semi-aquatic, Late Triassic archosaurs, related to modern-day crocodilians. Note the glaciating cloud and fall streak at top left. Photo taken on September 8, 2011.

Photo Details: Canon 5d camera; 16-35mm f/2.8L lens; ISO 350, f/13, 1/500th sec. exposure; polarizing filter.

Painted Desert, Arizona Coordinates: 34.946841, -109.77515

Related Links

Vermillion Cliffs

Student Links

Petrified Wood

Earth Observatory

Two Views of the Painted Desert

[growinstablog]

Top Social Networking Sites How You Can Use Them for Better and Bigger Goals

Social media is a paradise for people who are too afraid of being social.

Yes, we all know that it opens a window into new possibilities, new social circles and even a new life. Whether that life will be one fake AF or one based on the ashes of your real-life choice is certainly yours.

However:

There are people who use social media for more than flirting or venting IT out. Think of the cause you’re sincere to and there is no limit to what you can do.

If that cause is a political one do know that Arab spring couldn’t spring without social media.

If that cause is religion you shouldn’t even ask how many people converted to new religion or opt for atheism only because of social media.

And if that cause is business  you should thank your stars, because all of your ideal customers hang out on this or that social media forum.

This is a guide on top social networking sites and how you can use them for your goals.

1. Facebook

Think of the devil and devil is here. When you talk about social media or digital media, you can describe the history of them in two stages.

Time before Facebook  the Mesozoic age where dinosaurs like Orkut and Myspace roamed the world without fear.

And

Time after Facebook  the time that we live in. Now we have all kind and size of animals.

And in case you wonder what kind of animal Facebook is  it is not an animal; it is the big, yuge meteor that hit the planet internet and killed all the dinosaurs.

Facebook is the biggest social network today. Facebook reached to a whopping 2.45 billion monthly active users in 2019.

Also, as per Statista, Facebook messenger is the second most popular messenger  after WhatsApp: winner of the category.

However, in USA, the most popular mobile messaging app by reach and by audience, is Facebook Messenger.

What’s Good:

Massive community from all walks of life

Social media advertising IS Facebook

Easy to find lost friends and relatives

A very independent but integrated messenger app

A complete hub with profiles, pages and groups

What’s Bad:

The most addictive social media network

Advertising is expensive when compared to other networks

Complicated settings

How to Use it for Bigger Purposes:

Facebook page/profile is where personal branding begins

Advertising on Facebook is best advertising forum for 97% advertisers/companies

Every big influencer, YouTuber and celebrity has a page or fan page on Facebook

Facebook groups are the place where a massive amount of free advertising, business and conversion goes on.

2. Twitter

Every social media networking website is different. A twittering bird’s tweet is not a long one.

Same goes for this social networking forum  you cannot write make a status update or post as long as you do on Facebook or other forums.

Twitter is for those who know how to say a lot in a few words. These days, the maximum characters allowed in a tweet are 280.

And in terms of popularity, in 2019 the monthly active users of Twitter (website and app) have been 330 million.

As per an estimate, in 2019 500 million tweets are made everyday from Twitter users all over the world.

In case you want to choose a social media forum that where every CEO, hedge fund owner, anger investor  in short, every successful person is found, Twitter is the place to go.

Couldn’t pay $1,000 for a mastermind group on Facebook? Screw that, go to Twitter and read tweets from everyone  including POTUS. Absorb as much wisdom as you can.

What’s Good:

Find everyone and read everyone from Kardashians to POTUS

Best quality community for everyone

Get updates from anyone you are curious about

Super easy to use easiest settings

What’s Bad:

Based on followership  most of the people have a small list of followers and a big list of those they followed

Limit on how many characters can be in a tweet

How to Use it For Bigger Purposes

Use Twitter cards

Build followers by creating engaging content

Be communicative, be talkative and retweet a lot

Identify influencers in your field and follow them best thing is to make them follow you by quality of your work

Use your hashtags wisely.

3. LinkedIn

Now here comes a social media network that is best known for professional networking. If Facebook or Instagram is your personal/private life, LinkedIn is your professional/business life.

From Bill Gates to your toughest competitor, you can find just about everyone on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is the best forum for professional connections and as far as advertising is concerned, $1.46 billion was spent in terms of ads budget only in 2018.

And in case you wonder about monthly active users from all over the world, in 2019 LinkedIn reached the highest number ever: 467 million monthly active users.

LinkedIn can be best used in the incognito mode. Make sure that you hide your ID from people whose profiles you visit. Then talk on every successful person whose success you want to replicate.

The words they use, how they showcase their qualifications, skills and experience.

Another important thing to do is to keep constant check on the companies and persons who you think can be your potential clients. Take a look at the posts they make. Find out the work-related problems they face and then present a solution to those.

This exercise will help you understand the target audience and from web content to getting things done and making them your clients, you’d be able to do everything.

What’s Good:

Number one professional networking forum even better than Twitter

Find Bill Gates or anyone with a promising career

Free Premium for 30 days  many perks

Easiest way to reach out to influencers, employers and big companies

Easiest way to find out friends with benefits

What’s Bad:

You cannot send message to some people without having premium account

Complicated settings and options

Not an intense networking experience  it’s cold out there

How to Use It for Bigger Purpose

Send connect request ALWAYS with a custom pitch/message

Use the free premium account for 30 days and visit all profiles that mean to you, they’d notice and check your profile. It is the time to pitch them your idea (because a somewhat mutual interest exists)

Have a company profile

Make connections with influencers and industry kings and queens/learn from them

Use recommendations and endorsements to attract the clients that matter.

4. Instagram

Instagram is Facebook’s sassy and classy cousin that it is married to.

Not a pleasant metaphor, but since Instagram is owned by Facebook and very similar to Facebook in many terms, this is what I could think of.

Instagram  as the name suggests  is for those who love pictures (and short videos) more than words.

However, this does not mean that you cannot use words on this forum. It’s just the focus is on snaps.

As far as stats are concerned, only in 2018, Instagram reached 1,000 million monthly active users from all over the world.

From 2016 95 million+ posts are made everyday on Instagram.

Now, in case you want to use Instagram for business or fame, there are certain tips that can help you.

Instagram is a world of show-off. You need to be more revealing about your life, your goals, your achievements and everything.

For starters, you need a routine. How about a daily limited duration video (coz Instagram does not allow long-duration videos) about what you are going to do in that day or what you have done?

Also, you can make really good use of Instagram story. On Instagram you can do a lot if other/have-been influencers help you or mention you.

You can share their stories in your story and in your posts. This way you will win their attention and praise.

What’s Good:

Visually appealing platform

Best social media network for young people

A peep into the life of people you love  actors, social media influencers, business people etc.

From Gary Vee to Tom Cruise you can find everyone on Instagram

Best marketing and advertising forum if target audience is teens to middle age people

What’s Bad:

Everyone is an influencer and showoff at its peak

Limited functions on website

Copyright issues

How to Use itfor Bigger Purpose:

Use the best hashtags for your niche

Attract people who own businesses in the niche you serve

Then cold pitch your services/products to them once they follow you/like posts

Follow the tips, tricks and hacks of experts and big shots in your niche.

5. YouTube

YouTube is world’s biggest video-sharing network. It is a whole organism in itself  so much so that Google had to acquire it (back in 2006). As per Statist, number of monthlyglobal logged-in viewers of YouTube in 2019 were around 2 billion.

YouTube is a massive forum for video sharing and while people compare it to other sites like Vimeo, for example, neither in terms of monthly users nor in terms of business model both are the same.

What’s Good:

Endless entertainment

Tons of courses, how to videos and tutorials

Very active comment community

Video updates/news about everything you’re interested in

What’s Bad:

Time consuming

Addictive

How to Use it for Bigger Purpose

Everything worth learning has tutorials on YouTube

YouTube video ads are used by biggest digital entrepreneurs

Customize your channel for the target audience

Make sure you understand YouTube’s algorithm and how to Rank youtube video in 2020.

6. Snapchat

Snapchat is a multimedia messaging app. Take Snapchat like a WhatsApp with a lot of filters and lenses with which you can add a lot of fun to chatting.

To get an idea of how big is Snapchat community, you need to take a look at the number of daily active users of Snapchat.

As per Statista, daily active users of Snapchat from all over the world were 210 million in 3rd quarter of 2019.

And the total number of global active users in 2019 has been around 293 million. The biggest group of American users that uses Snapchat is between the ages of 18 and 24.

Also, a lot of us think that Snapchat is made purely for teenagers and it cannot be taken serious while actually Snapchat is a goldmine for any business whose target audience is made of teenagers and young people.

What’s Good:

Made for a narrowed down target audience

Full of fun, filters and lenses

Not just any chat app

More personal and intimate relationship

What’s Bad:

Short-lived content

Shallow relationship

How to Use it For Bigger Purpose:

Port promotions as your story

Ideal if you have an ecommerce business and your target audience is teenagers and people below 30

Create sponsored lenses

Use social influencers

Have a big ad budget and optimize ads wisely.

7. WhatsApp

Well, you know this was coming.

In a list of top social networking sites, I could not not mention WhatsApp. WhatsApp is the only app that has almost replaced SMS or MMS.

Let’s take a look at the stats.

As per statistics, in year 2019, WhatsApp crossed the barrier of 1.5 billion monthly active users.

Also, as we have covered this already, WhatsApp beats Facebook messenger in terms of worldwide popularity. Facebook Messenger stands second in this race.

Even WhatsApp status, a function that most of the people do not use (including yours truly), is actually used by over 500 million people  on daily basis.

What’s Good:

Audio/Video Calls & Messages

Best alternative to SMS & MMS

Ad Free

Very vibrant groups community

100% encrypted and secure conversation

What’s Bad:

Addictive

Limit on file transfer

Phone number is required for user as well as those they want to add

How to Use it For Bigger Purpose

Use WhatsApp Business

Set a business name

Set a profile

Make groups of buyers & interested audience

Sell all your products at a minimal discount in the groups you made.

8. SoundCloud

SoundCloud is YouTube of audio lovers. People who love to sing, record their voice and share it, love SoundCloud.

There are so many unsung artists and singers that you can find on SoundCloud. Just like on YouTube you can share videos, on SoundCloud, you share and promote audio files.

And SoundCloud has a big fan following. It has got more than 175 million monthly active users.

As per The Verge over 200 million tracks have been uploaded to SoundCloud so far. While SoundCloud is not 100% similar to Snap Chat, users of this social networking site are also mostly from teen age to around 30.

What’s Good:

Community of people who love audio

High quality audio player

Feature-rich app

Audio podcasts and messages uploading facility

User friendly

What’s Bad:

Limited freemium model

Limited uploading time

How to Use it For a Greater Purpose:

Start a radio show or niche podcast

Host audio banners and spread awareness

An audio intro to your business can help a lot

Use SoundCloud ads

9. TikTok

TikTok is also a video sharing app  but a very different kind of them. It is for short lip-sync comedy videos.

And it is more viral than flue. So much so that there are a lot of controversies related to TikTok. For example, it got banned in India because of how TikTok impacted the youth of that country.

However, do not let this distract you from the fact that TikTok has more than 500 million monthly active users worldwide.

Also, back in 2018, in Apple App store, TikTok has been the most downloaded app from all over the world.

Things are tricky in case of TikTok. On surface, it looks more like Snapchat; young people, mostly from teenage to below 30 use it.

But then, don’t forget the unparalleled business opportunity that you enjoy on Snapchat; while rest of the businesses/marketers, are busy targeting audience on Facebook and Google, you can target your audience on apps like Snapchat and TikTok.

Definitely, in case the age group of your ideal audience is the same that can be found on TikTok.

What’s Good:

Lip-sync videos are fun

One of the best entertainment social media networks

55 minutes plus time given by average visitor

Strong community

Good for ecommerce business

What’s Bad:

Addictive

Can make you anti-social

How to Use it For a Bigger Purpose

TikTok is one of the biggest forums where you can find youth

Best for products or services related to youth

Learn how to use advertisement on TikTok with a minimum budget and maximum impact

Get partnerships with the best influencers on TikTok

10. Medium

Which social media forum suits you the best?

Well, it depends all on what you’re made of.

If you’re a photographer at heart you would love Instagram more than any other forums on the internet.

And:

If you’re a writer a thinker and in impact maker, then you’d love Medium. It is a content publishing and sharing website/app.

It is sort of social network for not only writers, but all those who achieved something big in life and know how to express what they learned.

It is brimming with readers who go to Medium for the love of writing or to pick golden nuggets related to their field of interest or work.

In terms of global internet engagement, this site has an Alexa ranking of #85 which makes it 10x bigger than any niche blog that you look up to.

And as far as monthly active users are concerned, they’re already more than 60 million.

What’s Good:

Exposure to a huge number of readers

Exposure to a huge number of peers and industry blogs, media, reporters etc.

Exposure to a huge number of publishers and prospective clients

Keep the ownership of content and import it from your blog

Medium pays to writers as per the number of claps

What’s Bad:

Complex payment-per-claps system

Publishing directly on Medium reduces

How to Use it For a Bigger Purpose

Publish content on your blog

Import it in Medium and keep the ownership

Make sure that the title of the content is SEO friendly

Make sure that the content is about the major service you offer e.g. how to draw retro logo

Connect with other influencers and clap for their content

Build a network

11. Pinterest

The reason why I listed Pinterest after all these apps is not because Pinterest has lost its charm, but because it is dangling between being a very important source of visual media sharing and marketing or being totally kicked to the curb by Instagram.

It is a matter of fact, that while many marketers like Gary Vaynerchuk still use Pinterest as yet another platform for content marketing  there are those who believe in keeping it limited to one or two sites and making a big impact there.

And the second type of people now lean more and more towards LinkedIn and Twitter (Facebook is an obvious thing) when it comes to social networking platforms of their choice.

And if they have to consider one visual forum that is focused on photos, they mostly pick Instagram. But hey, stats prove that the pin sharing system of Pinterest retained the loyal users.

In the third quarter of 2019, Pinterest reached a total number of 322 million monthly active users.

And if you want to gauge the internet users interest, only in one month of 2018, Pinterest lens visual searches from all over the world were more than 600 million.

What’s Good:

A very different network based on photos saving and sharing

Very active community

Best for many professionals e.g. copywriters, photographers, graphic designers etc.

Loaded with inspiration, motivation and ideas

Ease of use

What’s Bad:

Losing users to Instagram

Not made for intense interaction with others

How to Use it For a Bigger Purpose:

Create Pinterest for Business account

Use your Pinterest for Business Page to boards

Start curating, sharing and making pins

Make sure to use hashtags smartly

12. Tumblr

Have you heard of microcopy?

Copywriters call a text microcopy if it is small and it persuades people to do something.

Tumblr is neither related to copywriting nor to microcopy  but it is a microblogging and social networking platform.

It can be accessed via website as well as app.

While Tumblr has refused to change with the passage of time and it is losing traffic rapidly, as per an report, the desktop and mobile traffic to Tumblr has been around 336 million in the month of October 2019.

As per Tumblrs own sources, monthly active users of Tumblr are more than 800 million.

What’s Good:

Best for people who love micro-content

Big community of active users

Twitter of Micro-bloggers

Ease of use

What’s Bad:

Losing visitors

Age restrictions

How to Use it For a Bigger Purpose

Customize your Tumblr account just like your own blog

Use Tumblr ads to reach out to target audience

Use your hashtags wisely

Create content as per trending topics

Reach out to other micro-blog influencers

13. Reddit

They call their forum the front page of the internet

I don’t know what it mean, because reddit is not a search engine for websites, but I know that reddit is a goldmine for many different kind of people.

Even if you’re a no one who does not want to do anything, but pass their time on internet, you would be amazed to find out the size of community and content on this so platform.

And for those who want to use it for business  especially for marketers, copywriters and advertisers etc. this forum is a gold mine full of data that they can make use of.

So, I’m talking of the massive size of community and content again and again? Let us see what stats say about it.

As per Statista, only in the month of October 2019, the desktop and mobile app traffic to Reddit was roughly 1,270 million people.

By its 10th anniversary, back in 2015, Reddit was receiving 470,000 comments per day.

Reddit is one of the biggest social bookmarking sites and how you use it depends solely on you. There are people who use it for fun and then there are those who make **** load of cash only because data on Reddit helps them.

What’s Good:

Huge and super-active community

Tons of data and help available

Good content organization

Karma keeps things moving

Best for customer research

What’s Bad:

1990’s Interface

Unmoderated content

How to Use it For a Bigger Purpose:

Use Reddit paid ads  they helped sites like TIWIB

Pay attention to subreddits

Use all posts and comments for voice of/customer research

Create/share viral content

Use your hashtags wisely

Get help from influencers

So:

Here was our super roundup of the top social networking sites that one can use for fun or for business.

We hope you loved the ideas shared with you  do not forget that using these platforms, thousands of people changes their lives for good.

They either became famous or super rich and mostly  both of them. If they can do this, you can do it too.

  https://growinsta.xyz/top-social-networking-sites-how-you-can-use-them-for-better-and-bigger-goals/

[dragnews]

Special Report: As Mexico oil sector sputters, crime and violence…

PARAISO, Mexico (Reuters) – Until recently, Edgar Barrera enjoyed a life many Mexicans could only hope for.

In a few short years, the 36-year-old bookkeeper rose from handyman to white-collar worker at what seemed to be one of the most stable companies in Latin America: state-owned oil firm Pemex.

Thanks to Pemex, Barrera met his wife, vacationed on the Mayan Riviera and envisaged a rewarding career without leaving his hometown in Tabasco, a rural state at the southern hook of the Gulf of Mexico where more than half the population lives on less than roughly $92 a month.

Then everything changed.

Oil prices plummeted, forcing Pemex to cut his and thousands of other jobs across Mexico. An energy reform, meant to spur business with private competitors, struggled to attract immediate investment. And the gang violence that has crippled Mexico over the last decade finally spread to Tabasco, previously a relatively peaceful corner of the country.

Mounting consequences, from an economic recession to soaring murder rates, have rapidly made Tabasco one of Mexico’s most troubled states. Its small, but once seemingly solid, middle-class now struggles with a downturn and lurid violence.

Barrera himself, after brushes with extortionists and kidnappers who may have once been Pemex colleagues, recently sought asylum in Canada.

Paraiso, or “paradise,” is the Tabasco town where Barrera grew up and worked at a Pemex port. It is “now a hell,” he said.

It’s little surprise that industry turbulence would hurt Tabasco, home to Mexico’s first petroleum discovery and a state where more than half the economy, and nearly half the jobs, rely on the oil sector.

But the extent of the problems has caught locals, industry executives and government officials off guard, especially as criminals increasingly exploit what’s left of any prosperity by targeting Pemex resources, equipment and employees.

“The oil debacle hit us hard,” said Tabasco Governor Arturo Nunez. “It caused social problems that without question are contributing to higher crime.”

President Enrique Pena Nieto, now in his last year in office, made an overhaul of the energy industry his signature initiative, ending Pemex’s longstanding grip on exploration, production, refining and retail fuel sales. Proponents long argued that operators besides Pemex are needed to reverse more than a decade of declining crude output and unlock potential in untapped deposits.

But the reform, finalized in 2014, came into law just as global oil prices collapsed, dampening companies’ willingness to invest. Despite a recent rebound, the price of crude in global markets plummeted by as much as 76 percent as of June of that year.

Since then, Pemex has slashed nearly 18,000 jobs across Mexico, about 13 percent of its workforce, according to company figures. In Tabasco, Pemex let go 1,857 workers, or roughly 12 percent of the 16,000 jobs the state shed between 2014 and 2016, according to government data. Many of the other layoffs were among suppliers and other businesses that rely on Pemex.

Combined, the cutbacks gave Tabasco Mexico’s highest unemployment rate and mired the state in recession. In 2016, the most recent year for which data is available, Tabasco’s economy shrank by 6.3 percent. It is the only state where both poverty and extreme poverty, defined by the government as monthly income of less than about $50, have risen in recent years.

Compounding troubles nationwide, the woes have eroded support ahead of a July 1 presidential election for Pena Nieto’s successor as the candidate of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party. Instead, a leftist former Mexico City mayor – and native son of Tabasco – dominates polls. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the 64-year-old frontrunner, promises to build a refinery in his home state.

Although Pemex has recently begun to hire back a few workers, other companies have been reluctant to invest in states like Tabasco, where oil production is now nearly 70 percent below a peak in the early 1990s. With supply abundant worldwide, and an ever-growing flow of crude from U.S. shale, would-be investors are wary of Mexico’s crime, corruption and violence.

“We decided not to start,” said Javier Lopez, a Texas-based attorney who recently scrapped plans to launch a business trucking fuel from the United States into Mexico. “We really were afraid we’d get a truck stolen, a driver killed.”

For more than a decade, Mexico’s government has deployed police, the military and intelligence forces to topple powerful drug kingpins. As they fell, cartels morphed and moved into new rackets, including theft and extortion of businesses in industries from agriculture to mining and oil.

Earlier this year, Reuters reported how fuel thieves are crippling Mexico’s refineries and unleashing bloodshed in formerly calm centers of Pemex operations.

In Tabasco, police registered 388 murders last year, over triple the number in 2012. Despite a population of 2.4 million people, small compared with many of Mexico’s 30 other states and giant capital district, Tabasco had the fourth-highest kidnapping tally and sixth-highest number of extortions reported last year.

Current and former Pemex workers are at both ends of the crimes – some as victims but others as instigators, participants or informants. Emboldened by the impunity and graft that have enabled crime nationwide, some locals have turned to illicit businesses, joining or seeking to start gangs that steal Pemex fuel, machinery and supplies. Others are targeting relatively well-off current and former Pemex workers, such as Barrera.

In a statement, Pemex said it “has zero tolerance with any worker involved in any crime.” The company said it cooperates with local, state and federal police to investigate illegal activity, but declined to comment on specific episodes or cases involving individual workers mentioned in this story.

During a recent interview, Carlos Trevino, Pemex’s chief executive, conceded that employees are increasingly at risk because of their jobs and pay. “Petroleros have a better salary than many other people,” he said, using the Spanish term for oil industry workers.

Across Mexico, Trevino added, the company is increasing measures to ensure the security of personnel and property. It has taken its name and logo off trucks. It told workers to stop wearing Pemex uniforms off site.

Still, he said, “it’s hard to have a completely safe operation.”

“This thing in Tabasco,” he added, “it’s not good.”

CRUDE HISTORY

Mexico’s first known oil discovery took place in Tabasco in 1863. Manuel Gil y Saenz, a priest, was rushing to see his ill mother when his horse’s hoof got stuck in black sludge, according to a local history of the find.

Despite warnings by natives that a witch there turned people into salt, the priest returned and began tapping the oil. With partners, he later sold his venture to a British oil company.

In 1938, Mexico expropriated foreign-owned oil assets and created Petroleos Mexicanos, as Pemex is formally known. Over the following decades, production grew in other regions along the Gulf coast. In 1972 prospectors found a giant deposit known as the Mesozoic Chiapas-Tabasco oilfield, prompting a rush to develop the state.

To handle growing output from Tabasco, Pemex in 1979 began building the Dos Bocas port and terminal in Paraiso, a hot, marshy town of 94,000 people surrounded by cacao and coconut plantations.

For locals, who previously subsisted on small-scale agriculture and fishing, “Pemex came and changed our lives,” said Ricardo Hernandez Daza, head of a local union of roughly 3,000 workers who staff many industry sites.

Barrera, the auditor now seeking asylum, joined Pemex in 2004.

That year, the country’s oil output reached a record high and opportunities seemed boundless. Mexico was one of many producers poised to benefit from steadily climbing prices as the global industry, before the shale boom, faced “peak oil,” the assumption that most of the world’s supply was known and diminishing.

First hired as a maintenance worker, Barrera worked his way up through other positions, got on-the-job training and eventually began reviewing company accounts for a salary of about $2,000 a month. He married a fellow Pemex auditor, bought two cars and enjoyed regular seafood outings with his wife, their daughter and two stepsons.

Until oil prices plunged.

Barrera weathered initial Pemex layoffs, but in November 2015 was let go. He immediately sought other jobs, but with many others already scrambling for work, he found only occasional freelance assignments.

Soon, Paraiso was reeling.

Two brothers, Mario and Pedro Maciel, emerged as local crime bosses, according to state prosecutors. Rumors swirled they had set up a branch of the Jalisco New Generation cartel, known for drug trafficking, fuel theft and countless other crimes across Mexico.

Some Gulf of Mexico oil workers, many of whom come from inland states, were already getting extorted by the cartel on trips into Jalisco New Generation territory.

Alayn Herver, a 28-year-old native of the central state from which the cartel took its name, until last year worked on offshore oil rigs that dot the Tabasco shoreline. Because of the intense schedules required there, Herver would spend two weeks on the rigs and then two weeks on leave back home in Jalisco.

In October 2016, while in a bar in his hometown of Ciudad Guzman, a stranger approached him and demanded roughly $1,000, about half his monthly salary. “We know you earn well,” the man said. “Do you want something to happen to you?”

A dock is seen in Paraiso, Tabasco, Mexico April 24, 2018. Picture taken on April 24, 2018 REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

At first, Herver thought the man was joking. Outside, though, some of the man’s colleagues awaited in an SUV, ready to take him to an ATM. Herver realized they were members of the Jalisco cartel.

He paid the men, who told him a similar payoff would be expected each month. For half a year, Herver complied. The transaction became so routine that the gang members appeared to lose interest.

Herver didn’t report the extortion. Like many Mexicans, he was wary of widespread corruption in police ranks and feared they would only make matters worse.

The following April, he decided to skip a payment.

On his next trip home, in May 2017, local police pulled him over, Herver said. They handcuffed him and put him in their patrol car. “You’ve got yourself into trouble,” he recalled one officer telling him.

Alejandro Romero, a senior officer with the Ciudad Guzman police force, declined to comment on the incident. The Jalisco state attorney general’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment.

As another policeman followed in Herver’s car, a 2007 Mini Cooper, the officers drove to a spot near the city dump, he said. There, six armed men, including the gang member who first approached him, pummeled Herver.

“Pull his pants down,” one of the gangsters said.

They beat his bare buttocks with a paddle and repeatedly threatened to rape him. One of the assailants put a gun to his head, while another grabbed his cell phone and began posting live video to Herver’s own Facebook feed.

Horrified, friends and family watched, the raw footage shifting from Herver’s drained expression to close-ups of his bloody behind.

“I thought they were going to kill me,” Herver said.

Instead, they let him go, keeping the Mini as payment.

“A PIECE OF THE ACTION”

In Paraiso, the Maciel brothers denied connections to the cartel or any such crimes. They published an open letter on Facebook stating they were law-abiding citizens.

“We are a family,” they wrote in the letter, “dedicated to its work for Pemex at Dos Bocas,” the port.

A worker named Pedro Maciel did, in fact, work for Pemex in Tabasco as recently as 2017, according to a database of company workers reviewed by Reuters. Mario’s name didn’t appear in the registry.

For locals, the brothers’ reassurances made little difference.

It was already apparent that a Pemex job wasn’t what it once was. Others besides the Maciel brothers were suspected across Paraiso of using their oil-industry positions as perches from which to steal fuel, extort workers and commit other crimes.

Those familiar with the industry say it makes sense that criminals, not just victims, could emerge from the Pemex payroll. Even if not committing atrocities themselves, some employees are believed to cooperate with gangs for their own cut of the proceeds or, merely, out of fear.

“They know the guts of the place, so they can provide information,” said Raul Munoz, a former Pemex chief executive, who now has private business with the company in Tabasco and says he faces regular security problems. “Everyone wants a piece of the action.”

Barrera, the auditor, and his family soon were swept up in the action. Last October, kidnappers captured a brother-in-law. Days before, after three decades of Pemex service, he had received a retirement bonus of roughly $20,000.

Within days, the family cobbled together a ransom of about $30,000. The kidnappers released him. With contact information stolen from his telephone, though, they began calling friends and family, demanding more.

The brother-in-law declined to speak with Reuters about the kidnapping.

Like Herver, the family opted not to go to the police.

“Pemex’s workforce is contaminated,” Barrera said, echoing family members who believe the kidnapping was planned with inside information. “The workers are feasting on one another.”

Last November, Barrera secured a few weeks’ work as a Pemex contractor. The threats grew closer.

A colleague told Barrera’s wife, who still works at Pemex, that suspicious men had been asking about her outside the office gates. Colleagues then told Barrera that armed men were waiting outside the office for him, too.

Terrified, he slept in the office that night.

Enough, he thought.

Barrera booked a ticket to Canada, where Mexicans can travel with no visa. He landed in Toronto last Christmas and applied for asylum. He hopes to bring his family, who moved to Villahermosa, Tabasco’s capital, in order to avoid the gangsters in Paraiso.

Herver, the rig worker whose beating was streamed live on Facebook, also fled to Canada.

“I was doing well at Pemex,” he said. But after the assault, “my only alternative was to leave.”

He, too, applied for asylum.

A spokeswoman for the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada declined to comment on either case, citing privacy laws.

On January 31, coordinated shootings erupted overnight across Paraiso.

Among the dead: the Maciel brothers. Local prosecutors said they were killed in a fuel-theft dispute. Their assassins, prosecutors added, died two months later in a shootout with police.

Even what should be legitimate business is getting more violent.

Daza, the local union boss, said his sprawling collective of construction, welding, tubing and other laborers has grown aggressive to protect its share of dwindling oil work. The union is one of many independent labor groups that represent workers and compete with one another for industry jobs.

Among other tactics, he admits to assaulting rival union members to keep them from job sites. They wield baseball bats, not firearms or knives, to avoid felony charges, he said.

When strangers in out-of-state rental cars arrive in Paraiso, the union and others like it send members to their hotel to demand work at whatever project they’re planning. If they don’t deliver, the unions sometimes shut sites down.

The tactics are not out of the ordinary in a country and industry where corrupt labor leaders are known to bribe both companies and members in exchange for keeping positions filled.

But they have also fueled job losses.

Because of the unions’ demands, oil services companies Oro Negro and Constructora y Perforadora Latina left, depriving Paraiso of 300 jobs, according to a local newspaper report. Neither of the companies, based in Mexico City, responded to requests for comment.

Daza said he has little choice but to use force at a time when the oil business is both the root of Paraiso’s problems and its only hope of recovery. “We’re in danger of extinction,” Daza said. “If nobody comes to save us, we’re screwed.”

Slideshow (18 Images)

Additional reporting by Shadia Nasralla in London. Editing by Paulo Prada.

The post Special Report: As Mexico oil sector sputters, crime and violence… appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2N6O6Cj via Today News

[dani-qrt]

Special Report: As Mexico oil sector sputters, crime and violence…

PARAISO, Mexico (Reuters) – Until recently, Edgar Barrera enjoyed a life many Mexicans could only hope for.

In a few short years, the 36-year-old bookkeeper rose from handyman to white-collar worker at what seemed to be one of the most stable companies in Latin America: state-owned oil firm Pemex.

Thanks to Pemex, Barrera met his wife, vacationed on the Mayan Riviera and envisaged a rewarding career without leaving his hometown in Tabasco, a rural state at the southern hook of the Gulf of Mexico where more than half the population lives on less than roughly $92 a month.

Then everything changed.

Oil prices plummeted, forcing Pemex to cut his and thousands of other jobs across Mexico. An energy reform, meant to spur business with private competitors, struggled to attract immediate investment. And the gang violence that has crippled Mexico over the last decade finally spread to Tabasco, previously a relatively peaceful corner of the country.

Mounting consequences, from an economic recession to soaring murder rates, have rapidly made Tabasco one of Mexico’s most troubled states. Its small, but once seemingly solid, middle-class now struggles with a downturn and lurid violence.

Barrera himself, after brushes with extortionists and kidnappers who may have once been Pemex colleagues, recently sought asylum in Canada.

Paraiso, or “paradise,” is the Tabasco town where Barrera grew up and worked at a Pemex port. It is “now a hell,” he said.

It’s little surprise that industry turbulence would hurt Tabasco, home to Mexico’s first petroleum discovery and a state where more than half the economy, and nearly half the jobs, rely on the oil sector.

But the extent of the problems has caught locals, industry executives and government officials off guard, especially as criminals increasingly exploit what’s left of any prosperity by targeting Pemex resources, equipment and employees.

“The oil debacle hit us hard,” said Tabasco Governor Arturo Nunez. “It caused social problems that without question are contributing to higher crime.”

President Enrique Pena Nieto, now in his last year in office, made an overhaul of the energy industry his signature initiative, ending Pemex’s longstanding grip on exploration, production, refining and retail fuel sales. Proponents long argued that operators besides Pemex are needed to reverse more than a decade of declining crude output and unlock potential in untapped deposits.

But the reform, finalized in 2014, came into law just as global oil prices collapsed, dampening companies’ willingness to invest. Despite a recent rebound, the price of crude in global markets plummeted by as much as 76 percent as of June of that year.

Since then, Pemex has slashed nearly 18,000 jobs across Mexico, about 13 percent of its workforce, according to company figures. In Tabasco, Pemex let go 1,857 workers, or roughly 12 percent of the 16,000 jobs the state shed between 2014 and 2016, according to government data. Many of the other layoffs were among suppliers and other businesses that rely on Pemex.

Combined, the cutbacks gave Tabasco Mexico’s highest unemployment rate and mired the state in recession. In 2016, the most recent year for which data is available, Tabasco’s economy shrank by 6.3 percent. It is the only state where both poverty and extreme poverty, defined by the government as monthly income of less than about $50, have risen in recent years.

Compounding troubles nationwide, the woes have eroded support ahead of a July 1 presidential election for Pena Nieto’s successor as the candidate of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party. Instead, a leftist former Mexico City mayor – and native son of Tabasco – dominates polls. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the 64-year-old frontrunner, promises to build a refinery in his home state.

Although Pemex has recently begun to hire back a few workers, other companies have been reluctant to invest in states like Tabasco, where oil production is now nearly 70 percent below a peak in the early 1990s. With supply abundant worldwide, and an ever-growing flow of crude from U.S. shale, would-be investors are wary of Mexico’s crime, corruption and violence.

“We decided not to start,” said Javier Lopez, a Texas-based attorney who recently scrapped plans to launch a business trucking fuel from the United States into Mexico. “We really were afraid we’d get a truck stolen, a driver killed.”

For more than a decade, Mexico’s government has deployed police, the military and intelligence forces to topple powerful drug kingpins. As they fell, cartels morphed and moved into new rackets, including theft and extortion of businesses in industries from agriculture to mining and oil.

Earlier this year, Reuters reported how fuel thieves are crippling Mexico’s refineries and unleashing bloodshed in formerly calm centers of Pemex operations.

In Tabasco, police registered 388 murders last year, over triple the number in 2012. Despite a population of 2.4 million people, small compared with many of Mexico’s 30 other states and giant capital district, Tabasco had the fourth-highest kidnapping tally and sixth-highest number of extortions reported last year.

Current and former Pemex workers are at both ends of the crimes – some as victims but others as instigators, participants or informants. Emboldened by the impunity and graft that have enabled crime nationwide, some locals have turned to illicit businesses, joining or seeking to start gangs that steal Pemex fuel, machinery and supplies. Others are targeting relatively well-off current and former Pemex workers, such as Barrera.

In a statement, Pemex said it “has zero tolerance with any worker involved in any crime.” The company said it cooperates with local, state and federal police to investigate illegal activity, but declined to comment on specific episodes or cases involving individual workers mentioned in this story.

During a recent interview, Carlos Trevino, Pemex’s chief executive, conceded that employees are increasingly at risk because of their jobs and pay. “Petroleros have a better salary than many other people,” he said, using the Spanish term for oil industry workers.

Across Mexico, Trevino added, the company is increasing measures to ensure the security of personnel and property. It has taken its name and logo off trucks. It told workers to stop wearing Pemex uniforms off site.

Still, he said, “it’s hard to have a completely safe operation.”

“This thing in Tabasco,” he added, “it’s not good.”

CRUDE HISTORY

Mexico’s first known oil discovery took place in Tabasco in 1863. Manuel Gil y Saenz, a priest, was rushing to see his ill mother when his horse’s hoof got stuck in black sludge, according to a local history of the find.

Despite warnings by natives that a witch there turned people into salt, the priest returned and began tapping the oil. With partners, he later sold his venture to a British oil company.

In 1938, Mexico expropriated foreign-owned oil assets and created Petroleos Mexicanos, as Pemex is formally known. Over the following decades, production grew in other regions along the Gulf coast. In 1972 prospectors found a giant deposit known as the Mesozoic Chiapas-Tabasco oilfield, prompting a rush to develop the state.

To handle growing output from Tabasco, Pemex in 1979 began building the Dos Bocas port and terminal in Paraiso, a hot, marshy town of 94,000 people surrounded by cacao and coconut plantations.

For locals, who previously subsisted on small-scale agriculture and fishing, “Pemex came and changed our lives,” said Ricardo Hernandez Daza, head of a local union of roughly 3,000 workers who staff many industry sites.

Barrera, the auditor now seeking asylum, joined Pemex in 2004.

That year, the country’s oil output reached a record high and opportunities seemed boundless. Mexico was one of many producers poised to benefit from steadily climbing prices as the global industry, before the shale boom, faced “peak oil,” the assumption that most of the world’s supply was known and diminishing.

First hired as a maintenance worker, Barrera worked his way up through other positions, got on-the-job training and eventually began reviewing company accounts for a salary of about $2,000 a month. He married a fellow Pemex auditor, bought two cars and enjoyed regular seafood outings with his wife, their daughter and two stepsons.

Until oil prices plunged.

Barrera weathered initial Pemex layoffs, but in November 2015 was let go. He immediately sought other jobs, but with many others already scrambling for work, he found only occasional freelance assignments.

Soon, Paraiso was reeling.

Two brothers, Mario and Pedro Maciel, emerged as local crime bosses, according to state prosecutors. Rumors swirled they had set up a branch of the Jalisco New Generation cartel, known for drug trafficking, fuel theft and countless other crimes across Mexico.

Some Gulf of Mexico oil workers, many of whom come from inland states, were already getting extorted by the cartel on trips into Jalisco New Generation territory.

Alayn Herver, a 28-year-old native of the central state from which the cartel took its name, until last year worked on offshore oil rigs that dot the Tabasco shoreline. Because of the intense schedules required there, Herver would spend two weeks on the rigs and then two weeks on leave back home in Jalisco.

In October 2016, while in a bar in his hometown of Ciudad Guzman, a stranger approached him and demanded roughly $1,000, about half his monthly salary. “We know you earn well,” the man said. “Do you want something to happen to you?”

A dock is seen in Paraiso, Tabasco, Mexico April 24, 2018. Picture taken on April 24, 2018 REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

At first, Herver thought the man was joking. Outside, though, some of the man’s colleagues awaited in an SUV, ready to take him to an ATM. Herver realized they were members of the Jalisco cartel.

He paid the men, who told him a similar payoff would be expected each month. For half a year, Herver complied. The transaction became so routine that the gang members appeared to lose interest.

Herver didn’t report the extortion. Like many Mexicans, he was wary of widespread corruption in police ranks and feared they would only make matters worse.

The following April, he decided to skip a payment.

On his next trip home, in May 2017, local police pulled him over, Herver said. They handcuffed him and put him in their patrol car. “You’ve got yourself into trouble,” he recalled one officer telling him.

Alejandro Romero, a senior officer with the Ciudad Guzman police force, declined to comment on the incident. The Jalisco state attorney general’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment.

As another policeman followed in Herver’s car, a 2007 Mini Cooper, the officers drove to a spot near the city dump, he said. There, six armed men, including the gang member who first approached him, pummeled Herver.

“Pull his pants down,” one of the gangsters said.

They beat his bare buttocks with a paddle and repeatedly threatened to rape him. One of the assailants put a gun to his head, while another grabbed his cell phone and began posting live video to Herver’s own Facebook feed.

Horrified, friends and family watched, the raw footage shifting from Herver’s drained expression to close-ups of his bloody behind.

“I thought they were going to kill me,” Herver said.

Instead, they let him go, keeping the Mini as payment.

“A PIECE OF THE ACTION”

In Paraiso, the Maciel brothers denied connections to the cartel or any such crimes. They published an open letter on Facebook stating they were law-abiding citizens.

“We are a family,” they wrote in the letter, “dedicated to its work for Pemex at Dos Bocas,” the port.

A worker named Pedro Maciel did, in fact, work for Pemex in Tabasco as recently as 2017, according to a database of company workers reviewed by Reuters. Mario’s name didn’t appear in the registry.

For locals, the brothers’ reassurances made little difference.

It was already apparent that a Pemex job wasn’t what it once was. Others besides the Maciel brothers were suspected across Paraiso of using their oil-industry positions as perches from which to steal fuel, extort workers and commit other crimes.

Those familiar with the industry say it makes sense that criminals, not just victims, could emerge from the Pemex payroll. Even if not committing atrocities themselves, some employees are believed to cooperate with gangs for their own cut of the proceeds or, merely, out of fear.

“They know the guts of the place, so they can provide information,” said Raul Munoz, a former Pemex chief executive, who now has private business with the company in Tabasco and says he faces regular security problems. “Everyone wants a piece of the action.”

Barrera, the auditor, and his family soon were swept up in the action. Last October, kidnappers captured a brother-in-law. Days before, after three decades of Pemex service, he had received a retirement bonus of roughly $20,000.

Within days, the family cobbled together a ransom of about $30,000. The kidnappers released him. With contact information stolen from his telephone, though, they began calling friends and family, demanding more.

The brother-in-law declined to speak with Reuters about the kidnapping.

Like Herver, the family opted not to go to the police.

“Pemex’s workforce is contaminated,” Barrera said, echoing family members who believe the kidnapping was planned with inside information. “The workers are feasting on one another.”

Last November, Barrera secured a few weeks’ work as a Pemex contractor. The threats grew closer.

A colleague told Barrera’s wife, who still works at Pemex, that suspicious men had been asking about her outside the office gates. Colleagues then told Barrera that armed men were waiting outside the office for him, too.

Terrified, he slept in the office that night.

Enough, he thought.

Barrera booked a ticket to Canada, where Mexicans can travel with no visa. He landed in Toronto last Christmas and applied for asylum. He hopes to bring his family, who moved to Villahermosa, Tabasco’s capital, in order to avoid the gangsters in Paraiso.

Herver, the rig worker whose beating was streamed live on Facebook, also fled to Canada.

“I was doing well at Pemex,” he said. But after the assault, “my only alternative was to leave.”

He, too, applied for asylum.

A spokeswoman for the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada declined to comment on either case, citing privacy laws.

On January 31, coordinated shootings erupted overnight across Paraiso.

Among the dead: the Maciel brothers. Local prosecutors said they were killed in a fuel-theft dispute. Their assassins, prosecutors added, died two months later in a shootout with police.

Even what should be legitimate business is getting more violent.

Daza, the local union boss, said his sprawling collective of construction, welding, tubing and other laborers has grown aggressive to protect its share of dwindling oil work. The union is one of many independent labor groups that represent workers and compete with one another for industry jobs.

Among other tactics, he admits to assaulting rival union members to keep them from job sites. They wield baseball bats, not firearms or knives, to avoid felony charges, he said.

When strangers in out-of-state rental cars arrive in Paraiso, the union and others like it send members to their hotel to demand work at whatever project they’re planning. If they don’t deliver, the unions sometimes shut sites down.

The tactics are not out of the ordinary in a country and industry where corrupt labor leaders are known to bribe both companies and members in exchange for keeping positions filled.

But they have also fueled job losses.

Because of the unions’ demands, oil services companies Oro Negro and Constructora y Perforadora Latina left, depriving Paraiso of 300 jobs, according to a local newspaper report. Neither of the companies, based in Mexico City, responded to requests for comment.

Daza said he has little choice but to use force at a time when the oil business is both the root of Paraiso’s problems and its only hope of recovery. “We’re in danger of extinction,” Daza said. “If nobody comes to save us, we’re screwed.”

Slideshow (18 Images)

Additional reporting by Shadia Nasralla in London. Editing by Paulo Prada.

The post Special Report: As Mexico oil sector sputters, crime and violence… appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2N6O6Cj via Online News

[party-hard-or-die]

Special Report: As Mexico oil sector sputters, crime and violence…

PARAISO, Mexico (Reuters) – Until recently, Edgar Barrera enjoyed a life many Mexicans could only hope for.

In a few short years, the 36-year-old bookkeeper rose from handyman to white-collar worker at what seemed to be one of the most stable companies in Latin America: state-owned oil firm Pemex.

Thanks to Pemex, Barrera met his wife, vacationed on the Mayan Riviera and envisaged a rewarding career without leaving his hometown in Tabasco, a rural state at the southern hook of the Gulf of Mexico where more than half the population lives on less than roughly $92 a month.

Then everything changed.

Oil prices plummeted, forcing Pemex to cut his and thousands of other jobs across Mexico. An energy reform, meant to spur business with private competitors, struggled to attract immediate investment. And the gang violence that has crippled Mexico over the last decade finally spread to Tabasco, previously a relatively peaceful corner of the country.

Mounting consequences, from an economic recession to soaring murder rates, have rapidly made Tabasco one of Mexico’s most troubled states. Its small, but once seemingly solid, middle-class now struggles with a downturn and lurid violence.

Barrera himself, after brushes with extortionists and kidnappers who may have once been Pemex colleagues, recently sought asylum in Canada.

Paraiso, or “paradise,” is the Tabasco town where Barrera grew up and worked at a Pemex port. It is “now a hell,” he said.

It’s little surprise that industry turbulence would hurt Tabasco, home to Mexico’s first petroleum discovery and a state where more than half the economy, and nearly half the jobs, rely on the oil sector.

But the extent of the problems has caught locals, industry executives and government officials off guard, especially as criminals increasingly exploit what’s left of any prosperity by targeting Pemex resources, equipment and employees.

“The oil debacle hit us hard,” said Tabasco Governor Arturo Nunez. “It caused social problems that without question are contributing to higher crime.”

President Enrique Pena Nieto, now in his last year in office, made an overhaul of the energy industry his signature initiative, ending Pemex’s longstanding grip on exploration, production, refining and retail fuel sales. Proponents long argued that operators besides Pemex are needed to reverse more than a decade of declining crude output and unlock potential in untapped deposits.

But the reform, finalized in 2014, came into law just as global oil prices collapsed, dampening companies’ willingness to invest. Despite a recent rebound, the price of crude in global markets plummeted by as much as 76 percent as of June of that year.

Since then, Pemex has slashed nearly 18,000 jobs across Mexico, about 13 percent of its workforce, according to company figures. In Tabasco, Pemex let go 1,857 workers, or roughly 12 percent of the 16,000 jobs the state shed between 2014 and 2016, according to government data. Many of the other layoffs were among suppliers and other businesses that rely on Pemex.

Combined, the cutbacks gave Tabasco Mexico’s highest unemployment rate and mired the state in recession. In 2016, the most recent year for which data is available, Tabasco’s economy shrank by 6.3 percent. It is the only state where both poverty and extreme poverty, defined by the government as monthly income of less than about $50, have risen in recent years.

Compounding troubles nationwide, the woes have eroded support ahead of a July 1 presidential election for Pena Nieto’s successor as the candidate of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party. Instead, a leftist former Mexico City mayor – and native son of Tabasco – dominates polls. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the 64-year-old frontrunner, promises to build a refinery in his home state.

Although Pemex has recently begun to hire back a few workers, other companies have been reluctant to invest in states like Tabasco, where oil production is now nearly 70 percent below a peak in the early 1990s. With supply abundant worldwide, and an ever-growing flow of crude from U.S. shale, would-be investors are wary of Mexico’s crime, corruption and violence.

“We decided not to start,” said Javier Lopez, a Texas-based attorney who recently scrapped plans to launch a business trucking fuel from the United States into Mexico. “We really were afraid we’d get a truck stolen, a driver killed.”

For more than a decade, Mexico’s government has deployed police, the military and intelligence forces to topple powerful drug kingpins. As they fell, cartels morphed and moved into new rackets, including theft and extortion of businesses in industries from agriculture to mining and oil.

Earlier this year, Reuters reported how fuel thieves are crippling Mexico’s refineries and unleashing bloodshed in formerly calm centers of Pemex operations.

In Tabasco, police registered 388 murders last year, over triple the number in 2012. Despite a population of 2.4 million people, small compared with many of Mexico’s 30 other states and giant capital district, Tabasco had the fourth-highest kidnapping tally and sixth-highest number of extortions reported last year.

Current and former Pemex workers are at both ends of the crimes – some as victims but others as instigators, participants or informants. Emboldened by the impunity and graft that have enabled crime nationwide, some locals have turned to illicit businesses, joining or seeking to start gangs that steal Pemex fuel, machinery and supplies. Others are targeting relatively well-off current and former Pemex workers, such as Barrera.

In a statement, Pemex said it “has zero tolerance with any worker involved in any crime.” The company said it cooperates with local, state and federal police to investigate illegal activity, but declined to comment on specific episodes or cases involving individual workers mentioned in this story.

During a recent interview, Carlos Trevino, Pemex’s chief executive, conceded that employees are increasingly at risk because of their jobs and pay. “Petroleros have a better salary than many other people,” he said, using the Spanish term for oil industry workers.

Across Mexico, Trevino added, the company is increasing measures to ensure the security of personnel and property. It has taken its name and logo off trucks. It told workers to stop wearing Pemex uniforms off site.

Still, he said, “it’s hard to have a completely safe operation.”

“This thing in Tabasco,” he added, “it’s not good.”

CRUDE HISTORY

Mexico’s first known oil discovery took place in Tabasco in 1863. Manuel Gil y Saenz, a priest, was rushing to see his ill mother when his horse’s hoof got stuck in black sludge, according to a local history of the find.

Despite warnings by natives that a witch there turned people into salt, the priest returned and began tapping the oil. With partners, he later sold his venture to a British oil company.

In 1938, Mexico expropriated foreign-owned oil assets and created Petroleos Mexicanos, as Pemex is formally known. Over the following decades, production grew in other regions along the Gulf coast. In 1972 prospectors found a giant deposit known as the Mesozoic Chiapas-Tabasco oilfield, prompting a rush to develop the state.

To handle growing output from Tabasco, Pemex in 1979 began building the Dos Bocas port and terminal in Paraiso, a hot, marshy town of 94,000 people surrounded by cacao and coconut plantations.

For locals, who previously subsisted on small-scale agriculture and fishing, “Pemex came and changed our lives,” said Ricardo Hernandez Daza, head of a local union of roughly 3,000 workers who staff many industry sites.

Barrera, the auditor now seeking asylum, joined Pemex in 2004.

That year, the country’s oil output reached a record high and opportunities seemed boundless. Mexico was one of many producers poised to benefit from steadily climbing prices as the global industry, before the shale boom, faced “peak oil,” the assumption that most of the world’s supply was known and diminishing.

First hired as a maintenance worker, Barrera worked his way up through other positions, got on-the-job training and eventually began reviewing company accounts for a salary of about $2,000 a month. He married a fellow Pemex auditor, bought two cars and enjoyed regular seafood outings with his wife, their daughter and two stepsons.

Until oil prices plunged.

Barrera weathered initial Pemex layoffs, but in November 2015 was let go. He immediately sought other jobs, but with many others already scrambling for work, he found only occasional freelance assignments.

Soon, Paraiso was reeling.

Two brothers, Mario and Pedro Maciel, emerged as local crime bosses, according to state prosecutors. Rumors swirled they had set up a branch of the Jalisco New Generation cartel, known for drug trafficking, fuel theft and countless other crimes across Mexico.

Some Gulf of Mexico oil workers, many of whom come from inland states, were already getting extorted by the cartel on trips into Jalisco New Generation territory.

Alayn Herver, a 28-year-old native of the central state from which the cartel took its name, until last year worked on offshore oil rigs that dot the Tabasco shoreline. Because of the intense schedules required there, Herver would spend two weeks on the rigs and then two weeks on leave back home in Jalisco.

In October 2016, while in a bar in his hometown of Ciudad Guzman, a stranger approached him and demanded roughly $1,000, about half his monthly salary. “We know you earn well,” the man said. “Do you want something to happen to you?”

A dock is seen in Paraiso, Tabasco, Mexico April 24, 2018. Picture taken on April 24, 2018 REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

At first, Herver thought the man was joking. Outside, though, some of the man’s colleagues awaited in an SUV, ready to take him to an ATM. Herver realized they were members of the Jalisco cartel.

He paid the men, who told him a similar payoff would be expected each month. For half a year, Herver complied. The transaction became so routine that the gang members appeared to lose interest.

Herver didn’t report the extortion. Like many Mexicans, he was wary of widespread corruption in police ranks and feared they would only make matters worse.

The following April, he decided to skip a payment.

On his next trip home, in May 2017, local police pulled him over, Herver said. They handcuffed him and put him in their patrol car. “You’ve got yourself into trouble,” he recalled one officer telling him.

Alejandro Romero, a senior officer with the Ciudad Guzman police force, declined to comment on the incident. The Jalisco state attorney general’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment.

As another policeman followed in Herver’s car, a 2007 Mini Cooper, the officers drove to a spot near the city dump, he said. There, six armed men, including the gang member who first approached him, pummeled Herver.

“Pull his pants down,” one of the gangsters said.

They beat his bare buttocks with a paddle and repeatedly threatened to rape him. One of the assailants put a gun to his head, while another grabbed his cell phone and began posting live video to Herver’s own Facebook feed.

Horrified, friends and family watched, the raw footage shifting from Herver’s drained expression to close-ups of his bloody behind.

“I thought they were going to kill me,” Herver said.

Instead, they let him go, keeping the Mini as payment.

“A PIECE OF THE ACTION”

In Paraiso, the Maciel brothers denied connections to the cartel or any such crimes. They published an open letter on Facebook stating they were law-abiding citizens.

“We are a family,” they wrote in the letter, “dedicated to its work for Pemex at Dos Bocas,” the port.

A worker named Pedro Maciel did, in fact, work for Pemex in Tabasco as recently as 2017, according to a database of company workers reviewed by Reuters. Mario’s name didn’t appear in the registry.

For locals, the brothers’ reassurances made little difference.

It was already apparent that a Pemex job wasn’t what it once was. Others besides the Maciel brothers were suspected across Paraiso of using their oil-industry positions as perches from which to steal fuel, extort workers and commit other crimes.

Those familiar with the industry say it makes sense that criminals, not just victims, could emerge from the Pemex payroll. Even if not committing atrocities themselves, some employees are believed to cooperate with gangs for their own cut of the proceeds or, merely, out of fear.

“They know the guts of the place, so they can provide information,” said Raul Munoz, a former Pemex chief executive, who now has private business with the company in Tabasco and says he faces regular security problems. “Everyone wants a piece of the action.”

Barrera, the auditor, and his family soon were swept up in the action. Last October, kidnappers captured a brother-in-law. Days before, after three decades of Pemex service, he had received a retirement bonus of roughly $20,000.

Within days, the family cobbled together a ransom of about $30,000. The kidnappers released him. With contact information stolen from his telephone, though, they began calling friends and family, demanding more.

The brother-in-law declined to speak with Reuters about the kidnapping.

Like Herver, the family opted not to go to the police.

“Pemex’s workforce is contaminated,” Barrera said, echoing family members who believe the kidnapping was planned with inside information. “The workers are feasting on one another.”

Last November, Barrera secured a few weeks’ work as a Pemex contractor. The threats grew closer.

A colleague told Barrera’s wife, who still works at Pemex, that suspicious men had been asking about her outside the office gates. Colleagues then told Barrera that armed men were waiting outside the office for him, too.

Terrified, he slept in the office that night.

Enough, he thought.

Barrera booked a ticket to Canada, where Mexicans can travel with no visa. He landed in Toronto last Christmas and applied for asylum. He hopes to bring his family, who moved to Villahermosa, Tabasco’s capital, in order to avoid the gangsters in Paraiso.

Herver, the rig worker whose beating was streamed live on Facebook, also fled to Canada.

“I was doing well at Pemex,” he said. But after the assault, “my only alternative was to leave.”

He, too, applied for asylum.

A spokeswoman for the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada declined to comment on either case, citing privacy laws.

On January 31, coordinated shootings erupted overnight across Paraiso.

Among the dead: the Maciel brothers. Local prosecutors said they were killed in a fuel-theft dispute. Their assassins, prosecutors added, died two months later in a shootout with police.

Even what should be legitimate business is getting more violent.

Daza, the local union boss, said his sprawling collective of construction, welding, tubing and other laborers has grown aggressive to protect its share of dwindling oil work. The union is one of many independent labor groups that represent workers and compete with one another for industry jobs.

Among other tactics, he admits to assaulting rival union members to keep them from job sites. They wield baseball bats, not firearms or knives, to avoid felony charges, he said.

When strangers in out-of-state rental cars arrive in Paraiso, the union and others like it send members to their hotel to demand work at whatever project they’re planning. If they don’t deliver, the unions sometimes shut sites down.

The tactics are not out of the ordinary in a country and industry where corrupt labor leaders are known to bribe both companies and members in exchange for keeping positions filled.

But they have also fueled job losses.

Because of the unions’ demands, oil services companies Oro Negro and Constructora y Perforadora Latina left, depriving Paraiso of 300 jobs, according to a local newspaper report. Neither of the companies, based in Mexico City, responded to requests for comment.

Daza said he has little choice but to use force at a time when the oil business is both the root of Paraiso’s problems and its only hope of recovery. “We’re in danger of extinction,” Daza said. “If nobody comes to save us, we’re screwed.”

Slideshow (18 Images)

Additional reporting by Shadia Nasralla in London. Editing by Paulo Prada.

The post Special Report: As Mexico oil sector sputters, crime and violence… appeared first on World The News.

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Mesozoic Monthly: Champsosaurus

Good news everyone: it’s September! We’ve made it to month nine of 12! Sometimes it feels like this year will never end. I take comfort in the idea that if life can survive the traumatic Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction that killed the non-avian dinosaurs, I can make it through 2020. One of the survival champs of the K-Pg extinction was Champsosaurus, a superficially crocodile-like reptile belonging to the extinct group Choristodera.

The skeleton of Champsosaurus laramiensis looks superficially like that of a crocodilian, but this is the result of convergent evolution. Choristoderes (like Champsosaurus) and crocodilians lived contemporaneously for at least 150 million years, until the choristoderes said “after a while, crocodile!” and went extinct. Photo by Triebold Paleontology, Inc., used with permission.

The class Reptilia encompasses an incredible variety of animals: lizards, snakes, turtles, crocodilians, pterosaurs, dinosaurs, and even birds are just a few of its members. In addition to the familiar reptiles that live today, many other reptile groups thrived for millions of years before eventually going extinct. It’s easy to think of dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus or Triceratops when we talk about extinct reptile groups, but in reality, many extinct groups of animals with no living relatives escape the public eye. Choristodera, an order within the class Reptilia, is one of these groups. Choristoderes were semi-aquatic or aquatic carnivorous reptiles that evolved during the Mesozoic Era (the Age of Dinosaurs) and died out in the Cenozoic Era (the Age of Mammals). Just because they went extinct does not mean they were unsuccessful; the group survived for at least 150 million years! Like many animals, a rapidly shifting environment was probably the source of their demise. Until that point, choristodere evolution was able to ‘keep up’ with the changing times, including the monumental global changes that came with the K-Pg extinction. The combination of a massive asteroid impact in what’s now Mexico, extensive volcanic activity in India, and worldwide climatic shifts resulted in the extinction of over 75% of all species. Research on choristodere teeth suggests that they beat the odds by adapting to new prey.

When you think of an aquatic carnivorous reptile, you probably think of a crocodilian – and that’d be right! The crocodilian body plan is a very successful build for hunting prey in the water. As another aquatic carnivorous reptile, Champsosaurus evolved similar traits. This is an example of convergent evolution, in which unrelated species develop similar characteristics to deal with comparable circumstances. (You can read about more examples of convergent evolution in the January edition of Mesozoic Monthly about the sauropodomorph dinosaur Ledumahadi.) Some of the shared features between Champsosaurus and crocodilians include long, muscular jaws for catching fish, eyes at the top of the head for peering out of the water, and a flattened tail that was paddled side-to-side for propulsion. Of course, Champsosaurus and the rest of the choristoderes had many features that set them apart as well. Unlike crocodilians, which have bony armor called osteoderms embedded in their skin, choristoderes just had skin covered with tiny scales. In addition, crocodilians have nostrils on top of their snouts so that they can breathe while lurking beneath the surface of the water; choristodere nostrils were at the end of their snouts, so that they could stick the tip of their nose out of the water like a snorkel and breathe from down below.

A right dentary (tooth-bearing lower jaw bone) of Champsosaurus sp. from the Upper Cretaceous of Wyoming in Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s Vertebrate Paleontology collection (specimen number CM 96509). The bone is facing upwards, so you’re looking down on the teeth. Check out the dark ‘stripes’ on the enamel of each tooth. These unusual enamel striations are a hallmark of neochoristoderes, the particular choristodere subgroup to which Champsosaurus belongs. Photo by Joe Sawchak.

The traits we see in the skeleton of Champsosaurus help paleontologists paint a picture of its behavior. Instead of lurking at the surface of the water, Champsosaurus would wait on the bottom of a shallow lake or stream for prey to come close, lifting the tip of its snout out of the water to breathe. When a tasty fish approached, it would spring off the bottom with its powerful legs and snatch it with its toothy jaws. Despite having strong legs, Champsosaurus was not adapted to a terrestrial lifestyle. In fact, adult males may not have been able to leave the water at all! Fossils attributed to females have more robust hips and hind limbs, allowing them to crawl onto land to lay eggs. According to this hypothesis, the less-robust males would have been restricted to an aquatic-only lifestyle.

Some of the freshwater environments that Champsosaurus inhabited were relatively cold, but that wasn’t a big deal; choristoderes may have been able to regulate their body temperature (a talent known as endothermy or ‘warm-bloodedness’). Crocodilians, by contrast, live in warm, tropical habitats because they are not capable of regulating their body temperature and rely on the sun to warm their bodies (aka ectothermy or ‘cold-bloodedness’). This would explain why choristoderes were able to live further north than crocodilians. However, it seems that crocodilians had the right idea; temperatures around the tropics change less during cooling and warming periods than those at higher latitudes. So, when the current Antarctic ice sheets began to form and the planet started cooling, the temperate choristoderes had to deal with more environmental change than the tropical crocodilians, and finally went extinct. I think the moral of the story is, we would all be handling 2020 better if we lived in the tropics!

Lindsay Kastroll is a volunteer and paleontology student working in the Section of Vertebrate Paleontology at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum staff, volunteers, and interns are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

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Illinois' Dryptosaurus Stalks Lake County Museum

Illinois’ Dryptosaurus Stalks Lake County Museum

Due to erosion, fossils from the Mesozoic Era are largely missing from my native Illinois. Despite no dinosaur discoveries, Paleontologists are still pretty sure they were here – reinforced by species of the same dinos found above and below us. One of these is a theropod called Dryptosaurus; a dinosaur I’d never heard of until last week after receiving my monthly newsletter from national horror…

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Mesozoic Monthly: Gryposaurus

The Late Cretaceous-aged (~75 million-year-old) large-nosed North American hadrosaur (aka duck-billed dinosaur) Gryposaurus by ginjaraptor on DeviantArt.

Anyone who frequents the Pittsburgh area is familiar with ‘Pittsburghese,’ the regional dialect given full voice in what was once voted America’s ugliest accent (a fact that does not diminish our pride for it). One of my personal favorite Pittsburghese words is “nebby,” which translates to “nosy” for any non-local readers. “Nebby” can be used in a variety of contexts: the distant relative asking prying questions about your love life at Thanksgiving dinner is nebby, the pet cat trying to crawl under the bathroom door to see what you’re doing is nebby, and even the statue of Carnegie Museum of Natural History mascot Dippy the Diplodocus, silently judging your driving on Forbes Avenue, is nebby. We can assume other dinosaurs were nebby too, since so many had huge noses to stick into things. One of the biggest noses in the fossil record belongs to Gryposaurus notabilis, the star of this edition of Mesozoic Monthly.

Gryposaurus belongs to a group of dinosaurs called hadrosaurs, which are commonly referred to as duck-billed dinosaurs. Hadrosaurs were herbivores that got their nickname from the flat, toothless, somewhat duck-like beaks at the tips of their jaws. These beaks were used to bite through tough vegetation so that it could be ground up by the numerous teeth embedded in the rear half of the jaws. There are two main groups of hadrosaurs, both of which are featured in CMNH’s Dinosaurs in Their Time exhibition. Probably the more famous group is the Lambeosaurinae, known for their distinctive head crests that housed extra-long nasal passages. Virtually everyone can recognize the incredible backward-curving crest of Parasaurolophus (featured multiple times in the Jurassic Park franchise), and visitors to CMNH will also know the helmet-like crest of Corythosaurus. The second group is the Saurolophinae (traditionally known as the Hadrosaurinae), which typically lack bony crests. You can find a simulated carcass of the saurolophine Edmontosaurus (lovingly known to those of us in CMNH’s Section of Vertebrate Paleontology as “Dead Ed”) between the two imposing Tyrannosaurus skeletons in Dinosaurs in Their Time.

A gallery of hadrosaur heads. Top left: the lambeosaurine Parasaurolophus at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago (photo by the author). Top right: the lambeosaurine Corythosaurus at Carnegie Museum of Natural History (photo from Wikimedia Commons). Bottom left: the saurolophine Edmontosaurus at the Houston Museum of Natural Science (photo from Wikimedia Commons). Bottom right: the saurolophine Gryposaurus at the Natural History Museum of Utah in Salt Lake City (photo from Wikimedia Commons).

As a crestless hadrosaur, Gryposaurus was a saurolophine. Despite its lack of crest, its skull still had pizzazz: its nasal bone arched dramatically, giving the impression of a ‘Roman nose’ (which is very noticeable if you compare the skulls of Edmontosaurus and Gryposaurus in the image above). The name Gryposaurus notabilis means “notable hooked-nose lizard” in homage to this feature. G. notabilis is the type species of Gryposaurus; type species are typically the first ones to be named in a genus, and therefore become the reference to which all new specimens that may belong to that genus are compared. The other species (such as G. monumentensis, shown in the photo montage above) are similar enough to the type species that they can be referred to the genus Gryposaurus, but they differ in too many ways to be assigned to G. notabilis itself.

Occasionally, paleontologists will revisit a fossil species or genus and decide that it is either too similar to another to justify its own name or that certain specimens are too different to be grouped under the same name. Kritosaurus, another saurolophine with a ‘Roman nose,’ has fallen victim to both of these circumstances. It was originally considered its own genus, but was subsequently revisited by paleontologists who decided that it was so similar to Gryposaurus that the two genera were lumped together under the name Gryposaurus (when combining taxonomic groups, the first name that was published is the one that gets used). However, later paleontologists reviewed the evidence again and split a single species of Kritosaurus back out of Gryposaurus. The famous sauropod (giant long-necked herbivorous dinosaur) Brontosaurus underwent a similar series of changes over the years: originally, it and Apatosaurus were considered different animals, but after a review they were lumped together under Apatosaurus. Recently, the two were split apart again and the name Brontosaurus was revived (to the delight of fans of that name around the world).

It is not uncommon in paleontology for species to be lumped or split based on new or revisited evidence. When you consider that the decision to name new fossil species is often based on fragmentary, highly incomplete skeletons, you can see why it might be difficult to get things right the first time! These changes sometimes give people the impression that paleontologists “can’t make up their minds” or “contradict themselves,” but we must remember two things. First, that science is meant to change based on new evidence. Second, there have been thousands of paleontologists over the course of history, and every one of them is an individual person who can draw their own conclusions based on the same evidence. Although the resulting changes can disappoint fans of a specific animal or hypothesis, revision is normal and beneficial for the field as a whole. Scientists are supposed to be nebby – it’s how we make new discoveries!

Lindsay Kastroll is a volunteer and paleontology student working in the Section of Vertebrate Paleontology at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum staff, volunteers, and interns are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

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Mesozoic Monthly: Sophogramma

Welcome to April! Have you seen any flowers blooming yet? Often, when we think of flowers, we also think of their pollinating buddies, the bees. However, bees are not the only pollinating insects around today, and the same was true during the Mesozoic Era (the ‘Age of Dinosaurs’). One interesting prehistoric pollinator is Sophogramma lii, a beautiful pollen-eating lacewing from the Cretaceous, the third and final time period of the Mesozoic.

Sketch of Sophogramma lii alongside the Jurassic/Cretaceous seed plant Cycadeoidea by ginjaraptor on DeviantArt. Cycadeoidea was not a flowering plant, even though it looks like one; the flower-like structures are known as strobili and are actually types of cones!

Modern lacewings, for those who aren’t familiar, are a group of small flying insects with two pairs of wings of about equal size. They get their common name from the net-like pattern of veins on their wings. Most of today’s lacewings are predators that eat other small insects. Sophogramma, however, belongs to an extinct group of relatively large lacewings called the Kalligrammatidae, which were not predators but rather pollen eaters and juice drinkers. This group is commonly called the “butterflies of the Jurassic” due to several similarities with modern butterflies: their mouthparts formed long, tube-like siphons for drinking plant juices; their feeding habits resulted in the transference of pollen between plants; and their wings had scales and were distinctly patterned to ward off predators. Astoundingly, we know that kalligrammatids had patterned wings because these patterns are actually preserved in their fossils! Sophogramma lii had whimsical winding stripes along the edges of all four wings. Although we don’t know the exact color of the wings, we do know that these stripes were lighter in color than the rest of the wing. Other kalligrammatids had large eyespots adorning their wings, like many butterflies today.

Beautifully preserved fossil of Sophogramma lii clearly showing the light-colored wavy stripes along the edges of its wings. Image from a research paper by Yang et al. (2014).

The plants that Sophogramma snacked on (and incidentally, pollinated) almost certainly lacked flowers. Flowering plants, technically called angiosperms, didn’t evolve until early in the Cretaceous, roughly 130 million years ago, but kalligrammatids had been around since at least the middle part of the preceding Jurassic Period, about 160 million years ago. So what plants were kalligrammatids eating for all that time? And why did these insects die out just as angiosperms were becoming common? Well, kalligrammatids’ host plants probably consisted of spore-bearing vascular plants such as ferns and non-flowering seed plants including conifers, cycads, ginkgos, and a variety of extinct forms. Before angiosperms burst onto the scene, these types of plants dominated land ecosystems. Despite lacking flowers, these plants would still have used spores and pollen to reproduce, providing kalligrammatids with plenty of food. Once angiosperms evolved their flowers, these plants rapidly diversified and presumably outcompeted the host plants that kalligrammatids such as Sophogramma would have relied upon.

With a wingspan of six inches (15.3 cm), Sophogramma lii was a relatively large insect. Its fossils have been found in the Yixian Formation, an Early Cretaceous-aged rock unit that crops out in northeastern China. The Yixian represents a forested environment that many dinosaurs, archaic birds, pterosaurs, and other hungry critters called home. The distinctive stripes of Sophogramma likely helped it survive attacks by drawing these predators’ attention to its relatively ‘expendable’ wingtips instead of vital parts such as the head or body. I wouldn’t personally be inclined to eat one of these ancient lacewings, but with so many of those polarizing Peeps® on the shelves at this time of year, I think some people might actually prefer a seasonal Sophogramma snack!

Lindsay Kastroll is a volunteer and paleontology student working in the Section of Vertebrate Paleontology at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum staff, volunteers, and interns are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

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Mesozoic Monthly: Citipati

The month of May that we’re living in is very different from the one we all anticipated at the start of the year. However, society somehow manages to march on. College students are still graduating, moms are still being celebrated, and Mesozoic Monthly continues! Our honoree for the month of May is known to have been a dedicated parent due to several specimens that show adults guarding eggs. Say hello to Citipati osmolskae!

A devoted Citipati parent guarding its nest. Some evidence suggests that the Citipati skeletons found atop nests may have been males (rather than females as was originally thought). Also, recent research indicates that—believe it or not—oviraptorid eggs were blue! Art by ginjaraptor on DeviantArt.

It might not look like it, but Citipati is a theropod, like the more famous dinosaurs Tyrannosaurus, Allosaurus, and Velociraptor. Most theropods were carnivores, sporting skulls with big toothy grins, but not all theropods were ravenous predators! There are several groups of theropods that evolved toothless beaks for specialized diets. One of the stars of Jurassic Park, Gallimimus, was part of a predominantly herbivorous group of beaked theropods called Ornithomimidae. Citipati belongs to another group of beaked theropods called Oviraptoridae. “Oviraptor” means “egg thief,” in reference to an old hypothesis that oviraptorids stole and ate eggs from other dinosaurs’ nests. The discovery of a Citipati skeleton perched in a brooding position atop a nest of eggs was pivotal in changing this idea. We now know that instead of stealing others’ eggs to eat, fossilized oviraptorids preserved near eggs were actually protecting their own eggs! The eggs in an oviraptorid’s nest were arranged in circles with a space in the center for the parent to sit and spread their feathered arms over their incubating young.

Citipati and other oviraptorids are closely related to one of Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s most bizarre dinosaurs, the ‘Chicken from Hell’ Anzu wyliei, shown here on display in the museum’s Dinosaurs in Their Time exhibition.

So, instead of eggs, what would the toothless beak of Citipati have been used to eat? Because most oviraptorid beaks are very deep, like those of modern parrots, most paleontologists infer that these dinosaurs ate mostly plants. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that meat was off the menu; it would still have been possible for oviraptorids to have eaten small animals, making them omnivores. On top of its thick skull, Citipati possessed a tall, triangular crest that gave its small head a square-shaped profile. This crest was not as impressive as those on some other dinosaurs, but since Citipati grew to ten feet (three meters) long, the animal would still have been quite imposing. I certainly wouldn’t want to get between a Citipati parent and its eggs!

Citipati fossils are found in the modern Gobi Desert of Mongolia, in rocks known as the Djadokhta Formation. The Djadokhta rocks are made of sediments that were deposited late in the Cretaceous Period, preserving details of the ecosystem that existed there roughly 80–75 million years ago. The name Citipati means “funeral pyre lord,” which is fitting due to the hot environment in which this oviraptorid lived. Also, Citipati shares its name with a Buddhist deity that is believed to protect cemeteries from thieves, which is an appropriate parallel considering how the skeleton of this dinosaur was found guarding its fossilized nest.

Although the habitat Citipati lived in was a desert, like the Gobi Desert that is there today, this prehistoric desert was probably not as dry. In the event of rain, water gathered in temporary streams that drained the water to basins and oases. Since desert rain events are by definition few and far between, any animals that did not live near these oases would have needed to have adaptations for going without water for a long period of time. Some of the animals that lived in this unwelcoming environment alongside Citipati included everyone’s favorite small theropod Velociraptor, the hornless ceratopsian Protoceratops, and the tail-club wielding ankylosaur Pinacosaurus.

Lindsay Kastroll is a volunteer and paleontology student working in the Section of Vertebrate Paleontology at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum staff, volunteers, and interns are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

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Mesozoic Monthly: Nemicolopterus

Welcome back to Mesozoic Monthly! Spring has sprung, and you know what that means: baby animals are coming! It only makes sense that the star of this month’s post should be as small and cute as chicks or puppies. With a wingspan of less than 10 inches (25 centimeters), Nemicolopterus crypticus is one of the tiniest known pterosaurs – about the size of an American Robin!

Life reconstruction of the adorable little pterosaur (flying reptile) Nemicolopterus crypticus by paleoartist Connor Ashbridge, used with permission. You can find Connor’s other work on Instagram @pantydraco.

Nemicolopterus is a pterosaur, a kind of prehistoric animal that is commonly called a “pterodactyl” or “flying dinosaur.” However, pterosaurs are not dinosaurs! Dinosaurs are all animals within a specific group of reptiles known as the Dinosauria. Pterosaurs comprise a separate group of reptiles that were specialized for flight, called the Pterosauria. These flying reptiles are extraordinary; they not only represent the earliest-known flying vertebrates (animals with backbones), but they also achieved flight in a different manner than did modern flying vertebrates (birds and bats)! Over half the length of a pterosaur’s wing was made up by a single super-long finger (specifically, the fourth finger, aka the ‘ring finger’ of a human) that anchored a broad skin membrane. It might seem like it’d be impossible to fly on just one finger, but many pterosaurs managed to grow to gargantuan sizes. Cousins of Nemicolopterus known as azhdarchids (one of which, Quetzalcoatlus, soars above T. rex in Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s Dinosaurs in Their Time exhibition) could reach estimated wingspans of 39 feet (12 meters). That’s as big as a small airplane!

Tiny, fuzzy, and adorable, Nemicolopterus would have looked a lot like a baby bird if you could take a trip back to the Cretaceous and see this pterosaur in the wild. In fact, the only specimen we have of Nemicolopterus may have been a baby! It’s often difficult to tell just based on its fossilized skeleton whether a prehistoric animal was fully mature or still in the process of growing and changing when it died. One way of telling if a fossil reflects an adult is whether certain bones have completely fused together (the technical term is coossified). You may know that humans have more separate bones as babies than we do as adults; this is because, as a person grows, certain bones like the ones that make up your skull fuse together along lines called sutures. Many baby bones also tend to be soft and flexible because they start out as cartilage, which is replaced by solid bone over time through a process called ossification. Several important bones in the Nemicolopterus fossil are ossified, so we can be sure that it was not a hatchling. However, since paleontologists agree that this specimen was still young when it died, and also that baby pterosaurs were precocial (i.e., able to effectively move about and find food on their own shortly after hatching), there’s still a significant chance that the Nemicolopterus fossil represents a young life stage of another, larger pterosaur.

There’s a good candidate for which pterosaur might be the adult form of Nemicolopterus, if indeed the only known fossil is just a baby of another species: Sinopterus is a tapejarid pterosaur that lived at the same time and place as the little fellow. Tapejarids are unique because they were likely arboreal and had beaks that appear useful for eating plants or fruit. Nemicolopterus crypticus was named the “hidden flying forest dweller” as an homage to the forested wetlands in which it lived roughly 120 million years ago, in what is now Liaoning Province in northeastern China. It spent its time in the trees, attempting to avoid predatory dinosaurs such as the famously bird-like dromaeosaurid Microraptor or the distant T. rex relative Sinotyrannus.

Lindsay Kastroll is a volunteer and paleontology student working in the Section of Vertebrate Paleontology at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum staff, volunteers, and interns are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

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Mesozoic Monthly: Ledumahadi

January brings with it a new year and a new installment of Mesozoic Monthly! At the start of a new decade, perhaps the perfect prehistoric creature to honor this month is the dinosaur Ledumahadi mafube, the “giant thunderclap at dawn.”

Ledumahadi was an early sauropodomorph, a group of herbivorous dinosaurs that ultimately produced the famous sauropods. Sauropods such as Brachiosaurus or Diplodocus are popular dinosaurs because of their often monstrous sizes, long necks, and lengthy, sometimes whip-like tails. One of the traits that paleontologists believe helped sauropods get so big was their pillar-like legs. Their legs were straight, like stilts, and heavily constructed so that they could support the weight of the animal. Modern elephants also have columnar legs, similar to those of sauropods, because this style of limb is so efficient for big animals. Non-sauropod sauropodomorphs tended to be smaller than their sauropod cousins, and could walk on either two legs or four. Quadrupedal early sauropodomorphs such as Ledumahadi did not have the columnar legs of sauropods, but instead walked with their forelimbs partially bent.

Life reconstruction of Ledumahadi by Nobu Tamura with a human silhouette for scale. This was a big beast! Note how, unlike its sauropod kin, this early sauropodomorph walked with its forelimbs flexed at the elbow. Read the 2018 scientific paper that described it (for free) here.

The largest known dinosaur of its kind, Ledumahadi weighed over 13 tons (12 metric tons), and reconstructions estimate that it grew over 30 feet (9 meters) long! This size is noteworthy, because it shows that it was possible for sauropodomorphs to reach gigantic sizes without columnar legs. This demonstrates that terrestrial animals can get big due to a variety of adaptations. In this case, the tremendous size of both sauropods and Ledumahadi is an example of convergent evolution, a process in which unrelated animals can evolve similar features. One classic example of convergent evolution is wings. Birds, bats, and pterosaurs are unrelated, yet all evolved similar structures that increase surface area for flying. But they all did it in different ways: birds have feathers anchored to the forearm and a fused hand, bats have skin stretched across five fingers, and pterosaurs had skin stretched along one long finger. Although we may not definitively know how Ledumahadi achieved its status as a “great thunderclap,” we do know that it did so along a different evolutionary pathway than its sauropod relatives.

The name Ledumahadi mafube means “great thunderclap at dawn,” referring to the massive size of the animal and its early place in the rock record. Unlike many dinosaur names, it is not derived from Latin or Greek; instead, it is from Southern Sotho, one of the languages spoken in South Africa, where the creature’s fossils were discovered.

Not many well-known animals lived in the Early Jurassic of southern Africa alongside Ledumahadi; the most famous dinosaurs are other sauropodomorphs such as Massospondylus, the small bipedal herbivores Heterodontosaurus and Lesothosaurus, and the small carnivore Coelophysis (formerly called Syntarsus) rhodesiensis. They all lived in an arid floodplain that was crisscrossed by meandering streams. Every so often, after a long period of stability, these water channels would flood, depositing new soil and nutrients and rejuvenating the ecosystem. A great deal of plant growth occurs after floodplains drain, reflecting a cycle of renewal that is familiar to us during each and every new year.

Lindsay Kastroll is a volunteer and paleontology student working in the Section of Vertebrate Paleontology at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum staff, volunteers, and interns are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.