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Page 30 of 43

It is not every day that authorities hold a dinosaur as evidence of a crime.In 2002 a team of paleontologists organized by amateur fossil hunter Nate Murphy discovered the bones of a small, nearly complete raptor dinosaur on a ranch in Montana. Murphy could tell immediately that it was something ne...
January 25, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Now that it is 2010 and the "Darwin Year" is over, we can expect the tide of evolution-themed documentaries and books to ebb. A notable exception, however (if I do say so myself), is my forthcoming book about evolution and the fossil record called Written in Stone. After years of hard work it will ...
January 22, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Several months ago paleontologists Stephen Brusatte, Roger Benson, Dan Chure, Xu Xing, Corwin Sullivan, and David Hone described the dinosaur Shaochilong, the first representative of the group of large predatory dinosaurs called carcharodontosaurids to be definitively identified from Asia. Now memb...
January 21, 2010 | By Brian Switek

On the surface, a pigeon and an alligator could hardly seem more different. While the pigeon is a flying, feather-covered creature that pecks its food with a toothless beak, an alligator is an amphibious, armored predator that crushes its prey in jaws studded with conical teeth. Despite the dispara...
January 20, 2010 | By Brian Switek

When I visited Utah's Dinosaur National Monument this past summer the main visitor center (containing the famous rock wall speckled with fossils) was closed, but when it reopens in a few years it will feature a brand new piece of art. Over the course of three months, scientific illustrator Liz Brad...
January 19, 2010 | By Brian Switek

A Story of the Past, or A Romance of Science is a very unusual book. In it readers will find frequent references to Jesus, the American West, fossil mammals, and extinct marine reptiles, often all in the same poem. Who else but one of the greatest fossil hunters who ever lived, Charles H. Sternberg...
January 15, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Like many other children, when I was young I had one of those "mix and match" books that allowed me to combine parts of one animal with parts from other animals to make new creatures. Even though such books promised "hours of fun!" I usually got bored with them after a few minutes, but they have re...
January 14, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Of all the places I would expect to find a dinosaur sculpture, the north shore of Lake Superior just outside of Duluth, Minnesota would be one of the last on the list. As shown by this photo sent in by reader Mark Ryan, though, there are definitely dinosaurs there. Among the group of stylized metal...
January 13, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Even though there has never been any evidence that humans and non-avian dinosaurs lived alongside one another (the first hominids, after all, did not evolve until about 6 million years ago), there have been many fictional stories that pit "cavemen" against dinosaurs. Indeed, it is difficult to look...
January 12, 2010 | By Brian Switek

The great thing about the Internet is that it makes it easy to find out about just about anything. The drawback is that not all that information is accurate. Sites like Wikipedia are handy but are only as good as the information being put into them, but if you are a fan of the prehistoric flying re...
January 11, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Every bone tells a story. It is easy to think of a bone as a static thing, a part of an animal's body that does not change, but in truth bones are constantly being remodeled throughout the life of an organism. This was true of dinosaurs just as much as any vertebrate living today, and the fossil bo...
January 08, 2010 | By Brian Switek

About a year ago I tried my hand at drawing a Tyrannosaurus according to a how-to DVD. I thought it wasn't too shabby, but to paraphrase the response of my editor, it seems that my talents are better suited to writing.Artist Ronnie Tucker, however, is more skilled with pencil and paper than I, and ...
January 07, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Most of the Dinosaur Sightings featured on this blog come from the United States, but I am always pleased when a submission comes in from abroad. Our latest photo comes from Jeremy Price and his son Eitan, who spotted this pair of dinosaurs outside of a restroom at a roadside attraction along Isra...
January 06, 2010 | By Brian Switek

Though she had little formal education, Mary taught herself geology, paleontology, anatomy and scientific illustration, and her finds were key to the development of the theory of evolution
January 05, 2010 | By Sarah Zielinski

Every once in a while I like to order out from my favorite local Chinese restaurant, and I can't help but always get my favorite dinosaur dish: sesame chicken. Admittedly I often eat it with the help of a fork, but I might have to switch to a different kind of utensil. The company 4physics is now s...
January 04, 2010 | By Brian Switek

It has been a good year for dinosaurs. Every month multiple new, interesting discoveries have been announced that either introduce us to new dinosaurs or tell us something new about those already familiar to us. I have been able to cover only a small fraction of all these stories here on Dinosaur T...
December 31, 2009 | By Brian Switek

That’s Entertainment: In the wake of the “Clash of the Dinosaurs” fiasco, David Hone at Archosaur Musings, has drafted a brief “manifesto” on the dumbing-down of dino documentaries. “If you want your show to be a trashy dinosaurs fighting show then fine, do it,” Hone writes, “but please don’t pret...
December 30, 2009 | By Mark Strauss

Like many other people over the holiday break, I saw James Cameron's blockbuster film Avatar. It was absolutely amazing. Set on a far-off world in the not-too-distant future, the film is a sort of Last Samurai or Dances With Wolves in space, but what really grabbed my attention were the creatures t...
December 29, 2009 | By Brian Switek

Finding an articulated fossil skeleton is always a delight for paleontologists. Not only do such specimens illustrate how all those bones went together, but sometimes there are little associated bonuses that could not be seen if the skeleton had been scattered. In the case of a 161- to 155-million-...
December 28, 2009 | By Brian Switek

Every year there is a new "must have" Christmas toy that kids can't do without, but dinosaurs never go out of style.  I am not just talking about the latest roaring, stomping, glow-in-the-dark action figure that will drive parents nuts, but a real dinosaur. I wanted one as a kid (ok, ok, I still wo...
December 23, 2009 | By Brian Switek

Though its dinosaurs looked pretty good, Jurassic Park was not particularly accurate as far as science was concerned. One of the real howlers that sent paleontologists reeling was the decision to make Dilophosaurus, one of the largest of the early predatory dinosaurs, the dinosaur equivalent of a s...
December 22, 2009 | By Brian Switek

Earlier this month, the Discovery Channel premiered the four-part documentary miniseries Clash of the Dinosaurs. I was not all that impressed. It was good to see some scientists get some air time, but overall the hyperbole and repetitiveness of the show made watching it a bit of a chore.Some of the...
December 21, 2009 | By Brian Switek

Who's up for a fossil road trip? In 2007  paleoartist Ray Troll and paleobotanist Kirk Johnson published a travelogue of their journey to check out the fossils of the American west called Cruisin' the Fossil Freeway. It is not your average paleo book. Filled with Troll's whimsical pop-art illustrat...
December 18, 2009 | By Brian Switek

Part of what so fascinates us about dinosaurs is that they came in such a wide array of forms. Stegosaurus, Velociraptor, Brachiosaurus, Triceratops, Spinosaurus and more; they were all very different creatures. Yet we also know that dinosaurs share a common ancestry. If we had the bones of every d...
December 17, 2009 | By Brian Switek

One of the most important insights Charles Darwin had was that evolution does not follow a pre-ordained path. There is no evolutionary endpoint that organisms are striving toward. The "endless forms most beautiful" we observe in nature are both shaped by adaption to local conditions and constrained...
December 16, 2009 | By Brian Switek

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