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A 17-year-old swam out of her flooded home with her dog and waited for hours on a roof to be rescued

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Chloe, who lives with her grandfather in Whitesburg, Kentucky, was alone, with no one but her trusted companion, Sandy, the dog she’s had since she was a toddler.

“There was water as far as I could see,” she told CNN in a message. “I had a full-blown panic attack.”

But she was determined to make it out safely, and take her dog with her.

Chloe’s grandparents were at a home just a few feet away, separated from their granddaughter by the rushing waters. They yelled over to her, urging Chloe to stay inside until help arrived. But with little cell service and a 911 center which, likely overwhelmed, was unresponsive to her calls, Chloe said she realized she needed to get out to survive.

“My next thought was that we needed to swim out to my uncle’s house,” where the rest of her family was taking shelter, she said. “I put Sandy in the water momentarily to see if she could swim. But she couldn’t, so I scooped her up and went back inside, wading through the waist deep water to try to locate something that she could float to put her on.”

After experimenting with other pieces of furniture, Chloe placed her dog inside a plastic drawer from her closet to keep her dry — and then placed the drawer on a sofa cushion to keep her afloat.

“I finally had a plan that I believed … might work,” she said. “I knew the dangers of trying to swim in deep and moving water, but I felt I had no choice.”

She swam in the cold waters, pushing Sandy’s cushion in front of her, until she reached the slim roof of a nearby storage building; the only part of the structure not yet submerged.

There, the two sat for more than five hours before Chloe’s cousin rescued the teen and her dog with the help of a kayak. Nearby, Chloe’s family, sheltering in the second floor of her uncle’s home, watched over and talked to her as she waited for help.

When the teen returned to her grandmother’s home, she broke down, “from the relief of knowing Sandy and I survived the flood,” she said.

“My heart goes out to all the other people who lost and suffered so much more than I did in this horrific devastation,” Chloe added.

In a Facebook post after the rescue, Terry Adams, the teen’s father, called his daughter a “hero.”

“We lost everything today,” he wrote. “Everything except what matters most.”

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Science

A dinosaur bigger than T. rex swam and hunted its prey underwater

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This illustration shows a spinosaurus hunting a large underwater sawfish. (Davide Bonadonna)

Estimated read time: 5-6 minutes

CHICAGO — It’s long been thought that dinosaurs were land lubbers — terrestrial creatures that steered largely clear of water.

A groundbreaking discovery in 2014 of a Spinosaurus with features that pointed to an aquatic lifestyle — retracted nostrils, short hind legs, a finlike tail and paddle-like feet — challenged that view.

However, whether some dinosaurs were truly at ease in the water or just stood in the shallows and dipped their heads in to pursue prey as a heron would has divided paleontologists.

In an attempt to resolve this heated debate, a group of researchers has studied 380 bones belonging to 250 animals — some living and others extinct — including marine reptiles and flying reptiles, as well as mammals, lizards, crocodiles and birds.

“There are certain laws that are applicable to any organism on this planet. One of these laws regards density and the capability of submerging into water,” said Matteo Fabbri, a postdoctoral researcher at the Field Museum in Chicago, in a news release. He was the lead author of the study that published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Bone density can be used as evidence for adaptation to life in water, the study said, as even aquatic animals that are not clearly shaped for an aquatic lifestyle — such as the hippopotamus — have very dense bones.

The researchers found that spinosaurids — a family of predatory dinosaurs that can be up to 49 feet in length (larger than a T. rex) — had dense bones, suggesting they were adapted to life in the water. None of the other 39 dinosaurs the research team investigated as part of the study were likely at ease in water, they said.

Spinosaurids’ relationship with water

Within the spinosaurid family, they concluded that Spinosaurus, which has a distinctive sail-like feature on its spine, and its close relative Baryonyx had increased bone density and would have been able to swim and hunt while submerged underwater — a bit like a crocodile or hippo. Suchomimus, another related dinosaur, had lighter bones that would have made swimming more difficult. It likely lived by water and ate fish, as evidenced by its crocodile-like snout and conical teeth, but based on its bone density, it wasn’t actually swimming, the study found.

Thomas Holtz, a principal lecturer in vertebrate paleontology at the University of Maryland, said the study confirmed that the ancestors of Spinosaurus and Baryonyx spent enough time in water to evolve ballast, to provide stability, in the form of dense bones. However, he said his work on Spinosaurus showed it most likely struck at food from above — perhaps from shore, or while cruising lazily on the water’s surface — not from diving in the depths.

“The nostrils of Spinosaurus is not at all placed like it is in animals like hippos and crocs, which spend much of their time submerged; instead, it is placed back on the skull as it is in herons and other animals which feed by dipping their snout in the water to feed,” said Holz, who wasn’t involved in the study.

“The new evidence is consistent with it being able to submerge, at least sometime(s). But as we showed in a paper last year, it couldn’t have been a really fast swimmer with that large sail, at least not in shallow water.”

Jason Poole, an adjunct professor at Drexel University and the Bighorn Basin Paleontological Institute’s director of fossil preparation, said he would have liked to see more specimens related to Spinosaurus included in the study.

“Oddball dinosaurs tend to offer insight into the extremes of dinosaur evolution. The more specimens the better to understand how they got to be so odd,” said Poole, who wasn’t involved in the research.

“I think this study is a good one to keep the ball rolling but more work is always needed to get a better picture of the life of something so strange and far removed in time.”

Big data

The researchers, including scientists from the United States, Europe and Morocco, first compiled a database of sections of thigh bones and rib bones from a variety of animals to understand whether there was a universal correlation between bone density and behavior.

They cast a wide net. “We included seals, whales, elephants, mice, hummingbirds. We have dinosaurs of different sizes, extinct marine reptiles like mosasaurs and plesiosaurs. We have animals that weigh several tons, and animals that are just a few grams. The spread is very big,” Fabbri said.

They found that animals that submerge themselves underwater to find food have bones that are almost completely solid throughout, whereas cross sections of land-dwellers’ bones look more like donuts, with hollow centers.

They did find that other dinosaurs, such as the towering plant-eating sauropods, also had dense leg bones, but other bones were lightweight. Fabbri said this was a pattern also seen in very heavy living land animals like elephants and rhinos.

The research is an example of a big data approach to paleontology that has yielded intriguing insights into how dinosaurs experienced their world — something that is often hard to ascertain from studying fossils of individual animals.

Such studies, according to Jingmai O’Connor, a curator at the Field Museum and co-author of the bone density study, that draw from hundreds of specimens, are “the future of paleontology.”

“They’re very time-consuming to do, but they let scientists shed light onto big patterns, rather than making qualitative observations based on one fossil.”

A study published last year examined and reconstructed the inner ears of ancient fossilized beasts and compared them with the ear canals of living animals. The researchers were able to deduce from that exercise whether the creatures would have been nocturnal hunters, attentive parents or clumsy fliers.

However, this kind of research does have limitations, since one individual feature cannot give a complete picture about the lifestyle of an animal, Holz said.

“Each piece of evidence adds to the total picture. In this particular case, they have provided a great new database of bone density in a wide variety of animals of different life habits. So in the future we can now compare other animals with lifestyles which are not well understood,” Holz said.

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Science

A dinosaur bigger than T. rex swam and hunted its prey underwater

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However, whether some dinosaurs were truly at ease in the water or just stood in the shallows and dipped their heads in to pursue prey as a heron would has divided paleontologists.

In an attempt to resolve this heated debate, a group of researchers has studied 380 bones belonging to 250 animals — some living and others extinct — including marine reptiles and flying reptiles, as well as mammals, lizards, crocodiles and birds.

“There are certain laws that are applicable to any organism on this planet. One of these laws regards density and the capability of submerging into water,” said Matteo Fabbri, a postdoctoral researcher at the Field Museum in Chicago, in a news release. He was the lead author of the study that published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Bone density can be used as evidence for adaptation to life in water, the study said, as even aquatic animals that are not clearly shaped for an aquatic lifestyle — such as the hippopotamus — have very dense bones.

The researchers found that spinosaurids — a family of predatory dinosaurs that can be up to 15 meters (49 feet) in length (larger than a T. rex) — had dense bones, suggesting they were adapted to life in the water. None of the other 39 dinosaurs the research team investigated as part of the study were likely at ease in water, they said.

Spinosaurids’ relationship with water

Within the spinosaurid family, they concluded that Spinosaurus, which has a distinctive sail-like feature on its spine, and its close relative Baryonyx had increased bone density and would have been able to swim and hunt while submerged underwater — a bit like a crocodile or hippo. Suchomimus, another related dinosaur, had lighter bones that would have made swimming more difficult. It likely lived by water and ate fish, as evidenced by its crocodile-like snout and conical teeth, but based on its bone density, it wasn’t actually swimming, the study found.

Thomas Holtz, a principal lecturer in vertebrate paleontology at the University of Maryland, said the study confirmed that the ancestors of Spinosaurus and Baryonyx spent enough time in water to evolve ballast, to provide stability, in the form of dense bones. However, he said his work on Spinosaurus showed it most likely struck at food from above — perhaps from shore, or while cruising lazily on the water’s surface — not from diving in the depths.

“The nostrils of Spinosaurus is not at all placed like it is in animals like hippos and crocs, which spend much of their time submerged; instead, it is placed back on the skull as it is in herons and other animals which feed by dipping their snout in the water to feed,” said Holz, who wasn’t involved in the study.

“The new evidence is consistent with it being able to submerge, at least sometime(s). But as we showed in a paper last year, it couldn’t have been a really fast swimmer with that large sail, at least not in shallow water.”

Jason Poole, an adjunct professor at Drexel University and the Bighorn Basin Paleontological Institute’s director of fossil preparation, said he would have liked to see more specimens related to Spinosaurus included in the study.

“Oddball dinosaurs tend to offer insight into the extremes of dinosaur evolution. The more specimens the better to understand how they got to be so odd,” said Poole, who wasn’t involved in the research.

“I think this study is a good one to keep the ball rolling but more work is always needed to get a better picture of the life of something so strange and far removed in time.”

Big data

The researchers, including scientists from the United States, Europe and Morocco, first compiled a database of sections of thigh bones and rib bones from a variety of animals to understand whether there was a universal correlation between bone density and behavior.

They cast a wide net. “We included seals, whales, elephants, mice, hummingbirds. We have dinosaurs of different sizes, extinct marine reptiles like mosasaurs and plesiosaurs. We have animals that weigh several tons, and animals that are just a few grams. The spread is very big,” Fabbri said.

They found that animals that submerge themselves underwater to find food have bones that are almost completely solid throughout, whereas cross sections of land-dwellers’ bones look more like donuts, with hollow centers.

They did find that other dinosaurs, such as the towering plant-eating sauropods, also had dense leg bones, but other bones were lightweight. Fabbri said this was a pattern also seen in very heavy living land animals like elephants and rhinos.

The research is an example of a big data approach to paleontology that has yielded intriguing insights into how dinosaurs experienced their world — something that is often hard to ascertain from studying fossils of individual animals.

Such studies, according to Jingmai O’Connor, a curator at the Field Museum and co-author of the bone density study, that draw from hundreds of specimens, are “the future of paleontology.”

“They’re very time-consuming to do, but they let scientists shed light onto big patterns, rather than making qualitative observations based on one fossil.”

A study published last year examined and reconstructed the inner ears of ancient fossilized beasts and compared them with the ear canals of living animals. The researchers were able to deduce from that exercise whether the creatures would have been nocturnal hunters, attentive parents or clumsy fliers.

However, this kind of research does have limitations, since one individual feature cannot give a complete picture about the lifestyle of an animal, Holz said.

“Each piece of evidence adds to the total picture. In this particular case, they have provided a great new database of bone density in a wide variety of animals of different life habits. So in the future we can now compare other animals with lifestyles which are not well understood,” Holz said.

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Science

Fossils: First ever 3D visualisation of an ammonite’s muscles show how it swam and evaded predators

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The muscles and organs of an ammonite — an extinct relative of cuttlefish and squid with coiled shells and tentacles — have been reconstructed in 3D for the first time.

The achievement has allowed a team of researchers led from Cardiff University to show how the marine molluscs were able to swim around and evade predators.

For example, the arrangement and relative sizes of the muscles indicated that — just like modern squid and octopuses — ammonites swam by a sort of ‘jet propulsion’.

This involved the expulsion of water from a muscular tube-like funnel called the hyponome, which would have sent the shelled creature zipping away backwards.

Muscles linked to the ammonite’s soft body would have allowed it to retract into its shell for protection — making up for a lack of defences like hoods or ink sacs.

Previously, as ammonite soft tissues are rarely preserved in the fossil record, experts have relied on comparisons with living analogues to reconstruct ammonite biology. 

Specifically, palaeontologists draw comparisons with species of Nautilus, a family of modern cephalopods that also sport coiled, buoyant shells.

But the reconstruction, made using X-ray and neutron scans of a 165 million-year-old fossil from Gloucestershire, has shown the creatures to be less similar than assumed.

In fact, the team said that their findings add to evidence that the ammonites might be evolutionarily closer to so-called coleoids like cuttlefish, squid and octopuses.

Ammonites first evolved some 409 million years ago in the Devonian period, finally going extinct some 65 million years ago alongside the more famous dinosaurs.

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The muscles and organs of an ammonite — an extinct relative of cuttlefish and squid with coiled shells and tentacles — have been reconstructed in 3D for the first time. Pictured: the 3D reconstruction, left, with a labelled illustration of the key elements — including muscles and the siphuncle that links the various chambers of the ammonite’s shell

The achievement has allowed a team of researchers led from Cardiff University to show how the marine molluscs were able to swim around and evade predators. Pictured: a photograph of the outer shell of the exceptionally well-preserved specimen whose fossilised soft parts the team revealed using a combination of X-ray and neutron scans

Previously, as ammonite soft tissues are rarely preserved in the fossil record, experts have relied on comparisons with living analogues to reconstruct ammonite biology. Specifically, palaeontologists draw comparisons with species of Nautilus, a family of modern cephalopods that also sport coiled, buoyant shells. Pictured: a modern Nautilus

The new study — undertaken by palaeontologist Lesley Cherns of Cardiff University and her colleagues — relied on a rare fossil that was extraordinarily well-preserved.

‘Preservation of soft parts is exceptionally rare in ammonites, even in comparison to fossils of closely related animals like squid,’ Dr Cherns explained.

‘We found evidence for muscles that are not present in Nautilus, which provided important new insights into the anatomy and functional morphology of ammonites.’

The team were able to create a detailed reconstruction of the muscles and organs that would have occupied the ammonite’s body chamber — the part of the shell the creature lived in — based on remnant soft tissues and muscle attachment scars.

These were imaged using a combination of high-resolution X-ray and high-contrast neutron imaging on the fossil specimen. 

‘Our study suggests that combining different imaging techniques can be crucial for investigating the soft tissues of three-dimensional fossils,’ said paper author and palaeobiologist Imran Rahman of the Natural History Museum.

‘This opens up a range of exciting possibilities for studying the internal structure of exceptionally-preserved specimens. We will be busy.’

Once the team had mapped out the structure of the marine mollusc’s muscles, they were then able to infer the functions of each based on their relative size and layout.

But the new reconstruction, made using X-ray and neutron scans of a specimen from Gloucestershire, has shown the two creatures to be less similar than assumed. Pictured: a photograph of the ammonite shell cast seen with a strong backlight, revealing the preserved internal organs on the left-hand side of the photo

 The team were able to create a detailed reconstruction of the muscles and organs that would have occupied the ammonite’s body chamber — the part of the shell the creature lived in — based on remnant soft tissues and muscle attachment scars. These were imaged using a combination of high-resolution X-ray and high-contrast neutron imaging on the fossil

The Jurassic-aged ammonite — which was unearthed from Claydon Pike in Gloucestershire back in 1998 — is held in the National Museum Wales in Cardiff.  

‘Since the discovery of the fossil over 20 years ago, we have used numerous techniques to try to decipher the soft tissues,’ explained Dr Cherns.

‘[We] have resisted the option of cutting it apart and hence destroying a unique specimen to see what is inside. 

‘We preferred to wait for the development of new, non-destructive technology — as now used in this study —  to understand those internal features without harm to the fossil,’ she continued.

‘The result has rewarded patience and utilises outstanding advances in imaging technology for palaeontology.

‘It also highlights the exciting potential of such techniques for the wider study of well-preserved fossils.’

The full findings of the study were published in the journal Geology.  

The Jurassic-aged ammonite — which was unearthed from Claydon Pike in Gloucestershire back in 1998 — is held in the National Museum Wales in Cardiff

AMMONITES EXPLAINED 

Pictured: an artist’s impression of an ammonite in life position

Ammonites are an extinct group of cephalopods — marine molluscs — which lived from 409–65 million years ago.

They had tentacles and typically sported coiled shells, although later forms saw these uncoil into other, more bizarre shapes.

While resembling modern-day nautiloids, the ammonites are more closely related to cuttlefish (who have an internal shell) and the predominantly soft-bodied squid.

Experts believe that ammonites primarily lived in the last chamber of their shells, growing new ones as their soft bodies got bigger. 

The older chambers, meanwhile, would have been linked via a tube called a siphuncle, and filled with water or gases in order to adjust buoyancy. 

Their group name is derived from the resemblance of their shells to ram’s horns — with the Roman author Pliny the Elder calling them ‘ammonis cornua’ (or ‘horns of Ammon’) after the Egyptian god who is typically depicted wearing rams horns on his head. 

In medieval Europe, meanwhile, the fossils were believed to be the petrified remains of coiled snakes, earning them the name ‘serpentstones’ — and many ended up with a snakes’ head carved or painted onto them.

Ammonites’ rapid evolution, prevalence and distinctive shape have made them ideal ‘index fossils’ — species whose presence can be used to identify rocks belonging to a particular geological time period.

The ammonites went extinct at, or shortly after, the meteorite impact that notoriously killed the dinosaurs some 66 million years ago.

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