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Page 28 of 43

I love B-grade monster movies, and one of my all time favorites is the 1980 creature feature Alligator. As its title suggests, the film's protagonist is a 40-foot-long alligator, literally pumped up on steroids from consuming the bodies of medical research lab animals which had been dumped in the s...
April 06, 2010 | By Brian Switek

A few weeks ago my friend Jason Schein, natural history assistant curator at the New Jersey State Museum, told me I had to come down to the museum sometime. They had just acquired an exquisite new fossil reptile, he said, and so I took the short drive to Trenton to see the specimen for myself.It wa...
April 05, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Paleontologist David Hone has been on a hot streak lately. Earlier this month he and his colleagues described the new predatory dinosaur Linheraptor, and just last week he was part of another team of researchers who described another new dinosaur, Xixianykus zhangi.As presented in the journal Zoota...
April 02, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Back From the Dead: Catalogue of Organisms asks readers, “if you could bring any organism back from extinction, what would you choose and why?” (One commenter suggests “Utahraptor, for human population control.”)Just Another Day at the Office: “Some things that are commonplace in the world of palae...
April 01, 2010 | By Brian Wolly

Sometimes, while driving down the highway, I imagine what it would be like if dinosaurs came back to life. Would drivers have to watch out for Hadrosaurus and Dryptosaurus in addition to deer, raccoons, and opossums? Of course we will never know (and that's probably a good thing), but a sculpture t...
March 31, 2010 | By Brian Switek

It is going to be a long time before the Jurassic Park franchise returns to the big screen, but if you really need your JP fix, comic publisher IDW will be launching a new series this summer. Called "Jurassic Park: Redemption," the new story will bring back some characters from the first film that ...
March 30, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Almost every tyrannosaur ever discovered, from the feather-covered Dilong to the gargantuan Tyrannosaurus, has come from the northern hemisphere, but a new discovery announced last week in the journal Science suggests that tyrant dinosaurs may have roamed ancient Australia, too.As reported by paleo...
March 29, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Earlier this week I reported on the discovery of a new, 190 million year old sauropodomorph dinosaur Seitaad ruessi from southern Utah, and scientist Mark Loewen of the Utah Museum of Natural History (one of the paleontologists who described the fossil) was kind enough to answer a few of my questio...
March 26, 2010 | By Brian Switek

I know next to nothing about fashion, but I have to say it was pretty neat when designer Giles Deacon released some metallic Triceratops handbags earlier this year. As with just about any other piece of designer apparel, though, getting one can cost a pretty penny, so Sara Zucker of the Styleite bl...
March 25, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Even though the first dinosaurs had evolved by 228 million years ago, it was not until the early Jurassic (about 201 million to 176 million years ago) that they were established as the dominant large vertebrates on land. It was during this time that various groups of dinosaurs diversified and began...
March 24, 2010 | By Brian Switek

It looks like, outside of museums, mini golf courses are a good place to find dinosaurs. After last week's sighting from a defunct Maryland course, the owner of Sudbury, Ontario's Dinosaur Valley Mini Golf let us know that their course boasts more than 20 skeletons of prehistoric animals. Not all o...
March 23, 2010 | By Brian Switek

In reaction to my post about Dryptosaurus the other week, paleo-artist Michael Skrepnick told me about the efforts of his colleague Tyler Keillor to create a fleshed-out restoration of the dinosaur. I immediately e-mailed Tyler about the project, and he was kind enough to answer a few of my questio...
March 22, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Between 84 million and 75 million years ago, near the end of the Cretaceous, part of the land now known as the Gobi Desert was host to a variety of raptors. There were two species of Velociraptor, a similar predator named Tsaagan mangas, a tiny feathered dinosaur called Mahakala omnogovae, and, as ...
March 19, 2010 | By Brian Switek

It is not easy being a paleontologist. Even though innumerable museums have dinosaur exhibits and filmmakers are almost constantly calling paleontologists to appear on television documentaries, it is extremely difficult for researchers to find jobs and secure funding for their research. Indeed, the...
March 18, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Miniature golf can be a lot of fun, and it is even better if the course is decorated with dinosaurs. This week's Dinosaur Sighting, sent to us by Chip Ohlhaver, is of one such dinosaur sculpture that still decorates a now-defunct mini golf course in Maryland. Even better, Chip reports that the cour...
March 17, 2010 | By Brian Switek

For the dinosaur lover who has everything, watchmaker Louis Moinet recently debuted the "Jurassic Tourbillon" watch. Said to contain fragments of "authenticated dinosaur bones," this gold-cased, diamond-encrusted watch is meant for high-class buyers with cash to burn (it costs over $140,000!), but ...
March 16, 2010 | By Brian Switek

When I was growing up, New Jersey seemed like the worst place to be for an aspiring paleontologist. If I wanted to go looking for dinosaurs, it seemed, I would have to go out West. It was not until much later that I learned that New Jersey was home to some of the most important dinosaur discoveries...
March 15, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Over and over again the same dinosaurs show up in the news: Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops, Apatosaurus, Velociraptor, etc., etc., etc. Movies, books and television have made them into superstars, but we should not forget that these dinosaurs represent only a small part of the range of dinosaur diversi...
March 12, 2010 | By Brian Switek

After two decades, the "Dinosaucers" might be coming back. No, I am not talking about a line of collectible plates with dinosaurs emblazoned on them, but a 1987 cartoon that starred dinosaurs from space. Even though scores of episodes were created only the first season was actually aired, but rumor...
March 11, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Sixty-five million years ago, life on Earth suffered one of the worst mass extinctions of all time. It was an event that killed creatures across the spectrum of life's diversity, from tiny marine invertebrates to the largest dinosaurs, but what could have caused it?A number of hypotheses have been ...
March 10, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Today's Dinosaur Sighting comes to us from science blogger Mo Hassan ("The Disillusioned Taxonomist"). Mo spotted this topiary brachiosaur while visiting the Van Hage Animal Centre in Ware, Hertfordshire, England,  though it was nowhere near as large as some of the real brachiosaurs got millions of...
March 09, 2010 | By Brian Switek

I may be completely wrong, but somehow I get the feeling that somewhere on a wall at SyFy Channel headquarters there is a special dartboard. On it are the names of large, predatory animals like "Shark," "Smilodon," "Giant Squid" and "Dinosaur," and when the company executives run out of ideas they ...
March 08, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Steven Spielberg, the director of the first two Jurassic Park films,  may not be done with dinosaurs yet. Even though plans for another JP film have only just begun to come together, rumor has it that the famous producer and director will be helming a new television project called "Terra Nova." Lit...
March 05, 2010 | By Brian Switek

What were the very first dinosaurs like? This is one of the most vexing questions in vertebrate paleontology. Even though paleontologists have found a number of early dinosaurs in recent years, details about the very first dinosaurs and their close relatives have been hard to come by, but in a new ...
March 04, 2010 | By Brian Switek

If there is one persistent gripe that paleontologists have with dinosaurs on screen, it is that their hands are usually wrong. From Tyrannosaurus to Velociraptor, predatory dinosaurs are time and again shown with their hands in a palms-down position, something that would have been anatomically impo...
March 03, 2010 | By Brian Switek

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