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Page 26 of 43

During the 1970s a major debate erupted among paleontologists. On the basis of new evidence, from the anatomy of the recently-discovered dinosaur Deinonychus to the microscopic bone structure of dinosaurs, paleontologists such as John Ostrom and Bob Bakker proposed that dinosaurs may have been endo...
June 18, 2010 | By Brian Switek

After entertaining guests for over half a century, Ohio's "Prehistoric Forest" will soon be closing. The roadside attraction—filled with fiberglass dinosaurs and other miscellaneous tourist-trap draws—has had a successful run, but at the end of this year the owners of the park will be putting the d...
June 17, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Since the time dinosaurs were first recognized by science in the early 19th century, naturalists have puzzled over why they disappeared. Everything from hungry, hungry caterpillars to asteroid strike (the present favored hypothesis) have been proposed as extinction triggers, but an ad for a new ani...
June 15, 2010 | By Brian Switek

On a very superficial level, the skulls of the carnivorous theropod dinosaurs might look very much the same from species to species—big jaws filled with lots of pointy teeth. If they are examined in even a little bit of detail, however, it is quickly apparent that meat-eating dinosaurs were diverse...
June 14, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Although he’s been dead for nearly 500 years, Leonardo da Vinci is still remembered as the quintessential Renaissance man, a polymath whose curiosity and creativity ranged widely among the arts and sciences. One of his interests was the study of fossils. In a new paper in the journal Palaios, Andre...
June 11, 2010 | By Brian Switek

By now most everybody knows that the old restorations of snub-nosed, tail-dragging, swamp-dwelling "Brontosaurus" were woefully incorrect, but I have to admit I have a soft spot for such out-of-date dinosaur imagery. It was part of my introduction to dinosaurs, and I am glad that when the North Car...
June 10, 2010 | By Brian Switek

On July 4, 1899, the steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie finally got his Diplodocus. He had set his eye on this fossil prize in the fall of the previous year when the New York Journal ran a fanciful illustration of the giant dinosaur peeping into a 10th story skyscraper window, and after some initial disa...
June 09, 2010 | By Brian Switek

How high did the sauropod dinosaurs hold their heads? It is a simple question, but for years it has been part of an ongoing controversy about the evolution and habits of these long-necked, large-bodied vegetarians. Depending on whom you ask, sauropods either kept their heads down to vacuum up low-l...
June 08, 2010 | By Brian Switek

The National Showcaves Center in Wales has put its "Brontosaurus" (the outdated name for an Apatosaurus) up for grabs, but who will go home with it is still up in the air.Late last month the park announced that its collection of life-size dinosaurs was becoming a bit crowded, and so the drab saurop...
June 04, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Last month a group of nine students from Montana State University, Dawson Community College and Rocky Mountain College left for China to study dinosaur eggs, and they have been chronicling their experiences on the new blog MSU China Paleontology Expedition. About two weeks into their six-week stay...
June 03, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Ceratopsians, or the "horned dinosaurs" such as Triceratops and Centrosaurus, were among the most distinctive members of dinosaur communities in North America and eastern Asia during the Cretaceous. Even so, bits and pieces of fossil bone collected by paleontologists over the years have hinted that...
June 02, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Ten years ago Chicago's Field Museum unveiled the skeleton of "Sue," the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex yet discovered. She has been a sensation ever since. Tyrannosaurus skeletons are the stars of many fossil halls, but Sue is something special, and to honor her the Field Museum has launched a ne...
June 01, 2010 | By Brian Switek

The Film Before Time: Palaeoblog commemorates the May 19, 1915 premiere of the movie The Dinosaur and the Missing Link: A Prehistoric Tragedy, which you can watch in two parts on YouTube, thanks to the Library of Congress. (One of the characters is named—I kid you not—Miss Araminta Rockface.) It f...
May 28, 2010 | By Mark Strauss

Early dinosaurs and other Triassic creatures have been in the news quite a bit lately. From a new review of the origin of dinosaurs to the recognition of a mistaken dinosaur and the discovery of the skeleton of a fearsome predator closely related to crocodiles, some of the most interesting recent p...
May 27, 2010 | By Brian Switek

This ironic graffiti tag on the Carrboro, North Carolina was photographed by reader Jason Adams. The impact of an asteroid in what is now the Yucatan Peninsula was a bit of a bad day for them, but we are probably much better off without having to worry about tyrannosaurs wandering the suburbs or sa...
May 26, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Last week the Canadian Museum of Nature celebrated its 100th anniversary, and the Royal Canadian Mint has issued a new dinosaur coin to honor the venerable institution. The commemorative 50-cent coin features the tyrannosaur Daspletosaurus, which rushes the viewer when the coin is turned, and it is...
May 25, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Without a doubt, the sauropod dinosaurs were the largest animals to have ever walked the earth. Even the largest land mammal, the prehistoric rhino-relative Paraceratherium, would have been dwarfed by the biggest sauropods such as Diplodocus, Sauroposeidon, and others. How did these giants get to b...
May 24, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Parsing the origins and early history of dinosaurs is a challenging task. A number of prehistoric creatures were a lot like some of the earliest dinosaurs, and sometimes evolutionary cousins of early dinosaurs have been mistaken for dinosaurs on the basis of fragmentary material. As a study publish...
May 21, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Many dinosaurs were adorned with spikes, horns and plates, but it was the ankylosaurs that took armor to the extreme. These dinosaurs were covered in bony armor from snout to tail-tip, yet, as a new study suggests, there may have been more to some of these structures than just attack and defense.As...
May 20, 2010 | By Brian Switek

At the end of last summer, on my way out of Salt Lake City, Utah, I encountered a dinosaur I had never seen before in the halls of the Utah Museum of Natural History. Lying on its side was an impressive skull bristling with horns, and the placard identified it as an as-yet-unpublished creature info...
May 19, 2010 | By Brian Switek

It's not a dinosaur, but it may have eaten some of their ancestors.Last week paleontologists from Lutheran University discovered the nearly complete skeleton of the 238-million-year-old predator Prestosuchus chiniquensis in the Late Triassic rock near the Brazilian town of Dona Francisca. The excep...
May 18, 2010 | By Brian Switek

For years the New Jersey State Museum has displayed the cast of a complete Tyrannosaurus rex skull collected by Barnum Brown at the beginning of the 20th century, but now it may be getting a T. rex of its very own.As reported last week in the Press of Atlantic City, paleontologists from the New Jer...
May 17, 2010 | By Brian Switek

According to a short communication recently published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, an ancient marine reptile provided a feast for hungry sharks.In 2006 paleontologists Tamaki Sato, Yoshikazu Hasegawa and Makoto Manabe described the remains of a previously-unknown kind of elasmosaurid,...
May 14, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Every now and then I stop and ask myself "Why dinosaurs?" Why spend 400 posts (and counting) tracking them across our cultural landscape, from B-movies to new discoveries? What is it about them that keeps me coming back?As a child, I was enthralled by dinosaurs. They were real-life monsters that we...
May 13, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Scientists have known about the feathered dinosaur Archaeopteryx for over a century and a half, but scientists are using new techniques to get a better look at this creature and its close relatives. Within the past few months alone, paleontologists have described how they have used laboratory techn...
May 12, 2010 | By Brian Switek

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