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Page 27 of 43

There are at least two stories behind every dinosaur skeleton you see at a museum. There is the story of the animal itself, its life and evolution, but there is also the story of its discovery, and at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City many of the fossils on display attest to t...
May 11, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Almost everyone is familiar with the ongoing debate surrounding the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs 65 million years ago, but the discussion over where dinosaurs came from in the first place is often overlooked. Hypotheses of dinosaur origins have been just as controversial as those of trigge...
May 10, 2010 | By Brian Switek

For hundreds of years, people have been finding the remains of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures in Romania's Haţeg basin. The Cretaceous-age deposits are remnants of prehistoric islands that sported their own unique faunas, but in the days before fossils were recognized as being the remain...
May 07, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Late last year, Maryland's Prince George's County got a new dinosaur park—a Cretaceous-age site which will continue to fuel the work of scientists and educate the public about the prehistory of the state. To help celebrate the establishment of this park, the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural...
May 06, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Past editions of Dinosaur Sightings have mentioned the numerous dinosaur sculptures that can be found in the state of Oregon, but the state's neighbor to the north can also boast a few dinosaurs. As pointed out by reader Marc Shecter, in 1993 the town of Granger, Washington decided to build a numbe...
May 05, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Finding, excavating, preparing, studying and mounting dinosaur skeletons is hard work. We marvel at the articulated bones of these creatures in museums, and while each skeleton tells the story of the creature it once belonged to, there is also the story of its discovery. These stories are often jus...
May 04, 2010 | By Brian Switek

New Blog on the Block: A hearty paleosphere welcome to Crurotarsi: The Forgotten Archosaurs, a blog devoted to the critters that ruled the Triassic alongside the dinosaurs: “Crurotarsans are some pretty amazing animals, having occupied almost every major ecological niche during the Triassic Period,...
May 03, 2010 | By Mark Strauss

As sorry as I am to admit it, most movies with dinosaurs in them are not very good. It is far easier for me to think of bad dinosaur movies (I still have nightmares from Theodore Rex, and that was meant to be a comedy) than good ones, but there are a few shining examples of what dino-cinema can be ...
April 30, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Over the past decade and a half paleontologists have found the remains of numerous feathered dinosaurs, but, as announced in this week's edition of Nature, a new pair of specimens may show how the feathers of some of these dinosaurs changed as they grew up.Among birds, feather growth is relatively ...
April 29, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Among other things, dinosaurs are well known for having big mouths full of teeth, so it is not altogether surprising that at least one orthodontist has taken a dinosaur as a mascot. Sent to us by reader Jason Brunet, this week's dinosaur sighting features a Jurassic Park-style Velociraptor outside ...
April 28, 2010 | By Brian Switek

It has now been 105 years since the famous dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex was described by the paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn, and just about every major dinosaur museum has at least one skeleton of the terrifying predator in their paleontology exhibits. Thanks to the discovery of numerous indiv...
April 27, 2010 | By Brian Switek

In November of last year paleontologists working in South Africa announced the discovery of Aardonyx celestae, a sauropodomorph dinosaur which has helped scientists better understand the evolution of the immense sauropod dinosaurs. It took quite a bit of work to get those bones out of the ground, t...
April 26, 2010 | By Brian Switek

It's pretty common that when a blockbuster film premieres, there's a cheesy direct-to-video version right on its heels, so it is not altogether surprising that the B-movie production company the Asylum recently released their own version of Sherlock Holmes. What is surprising, however, is that the ...
April 23, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Around 160 million years ago, an enormous sauropod dinosaur trudged across an ancient marsh in what is now Xinjiang, China. It was not easy going. The eruption of a nearby volcano coated the area in a layer of ash which formed a thin surface over a morass of mud and volcanic debris, and as it walke...
April 22, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Some of my favorite dinosaur sightings are ones in which a dinosaur was put in a certain place just for the heck of it. Photos from abandoned dinosaur sculpture parks are cool, but unexpected roadside dinosaurs are even better, and such was a photo sent to us by Callan Bentley. Just outside Elkton,...
April 21, 2010 | By Brian Switek

In the entire history of life on earth, there was nothing quite like the pachycephalosaurs, or the "bonehead" dinosaurs. These herbivorous, bipedal dinosaurs were most recognizable by the array of bumps, knobs, and spikes on their reinforced skulls, and a newly discovered species of this kind of di...
April 20, 2010 | By Brian Switek

In 1866, back when the scientific study of dinosaurs was only just beginning in North America, the naturalist E.D. Cope received word that workers at the West Jersey Marl Company in Gloucester County, New Jersey, had discovered the gigantic bones of an unknown fossil animal. As Cope did much of his...
April 19, 2010 | By Brian Switek

When it comes to animated films, Pixar is the best of the best, and now it appears that the famous movie studio is teaming up with the Discovery Channel to bring viewers a new dinosaur series. When the Discovery Channel announced their 2010-2011 schedule last week they included a few tidbits about ...
April 16, 2010 | By Brian Switek

In 1988, a little more than a century after O.C. Marsh first described it, Allosaurus was declared to be the state fossil of Utah. What fewer people know, however, is that seven years before Marsh named the famous theropod dinosaur, he had discovered the signs of another predatory dinosaur.Accordin...
April 15, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Here in the US, just about everybody knows about that annoying, purple dinosaur "Barney," but kids in Finland are more likely to be familiar with the hard-rockin' metal group Hevisaurus. Dressed up in green dinosaur costumes adorned with extra heavy-metal style spikes, the group produces original s...
April 14, 2010 | By Brian Switek

On December 6, 1916, two years into "the war to end all wars," a German naval crew destroyed a set of 75-million-year-old dinosaur skeletons
April 13, 2010 | By Brian Switek

While driving through Utah and Wyoming last summer, I regularly saw dinosaurs along the side of the road. Most of them were the mascot for the Sinclair Oil gas stations, the green "Brontosaurus" the company has used for the past century. Reader Mark Ryan has seen them too, and sends us this photo o...
April 12, 2010 | By Brian Switek

From movies to museum displays, the dinosaurs we most often see are fully mature animals. There are a few good reasons for this. The first is that the skeletons of adult dinosaurs are among the most impressive specimens in the whole of the fossil record, but it is also true that the bones of juveni...
April 09, 2010 | By Brian Switek

This year the Utah Museum of Natural History is celebrating its "Year of the Dinosaur," and part of the ongoing festivities is a new dinosaur show called "Live From Laramidia."The new children's show is centered on the life and times of a teenage horned dinosaur, represented by an elaborate 10-foot...
April 08, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Dinosaurs are famous, at least in part, for being some of the largest animals ever to have evolved, but a new set of models called "Tinysaurs" are taking them in the opposite direction.Available through Makers Market, the minuscule oak tag paper models come in tiny metal tins complete with glue and...
April 06, 2010 | By Brian Switek

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