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Page 31 of 43

I always feel a bit sorry for hadrosaurs. They are sometimes referred to as the "cows of the Cretaceous," herbivorous dinosaurs that lacked the impressive armor, spikes, and horns of their relatives the ankylosaurs and ceratopsians. This does not mean that hadrosaurs were entirely defenseless again...
December 15, 2009 | By Brian Switek

This past October, many paleontologists were worried about the fate of a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton nicknamed "Samson."With about 50 percent of his bones recovered, Samson is one of the most complete individual Tyrannosaurus skeletons found to date. This makes Samson a very important specimen. The ...
December 14, 2009 | By Brian Switek

For the past three years, the Walking With Dinosaurs live show has been entertaining arena audiences all over the world, but when the show stopped in Guadalajara, Mexico the crew noticed that one of their cast members was missing. A robotic baby Plateosaurus (which is devoured by the predatory dino...
December 11, 2009 | By Brian Switek

Apparently Oregon's dinosaur statue parks were where it was at in the 1980s.This week's sighting comes to us courtesy of the Barry family, who stopped by "Thunderbeast Park" back when it was still in operation. The park has since been shut down, but that rumor has it that this Tyrannosaurus still l...
December 10, 2009 | By Brian Switek

When the big-screen adaptation of Jurassic Park premeired in 1993, "raptors" instantly became some of the most popular dinosaurs. For scientists, though, they posed a troublesome problem. There were only a few types of raptor, technically called dromaeosaurs, known at the time, and paleontologists...
December 09, 2009 | By Brian Switek

I love discarded hypotheses for the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs. Some ideas, such as a global pandemic, sound at least somewhat reasonable, but others seem to have come out of left field. One particular paper, published in the Journal of Research on the Lepidoptera in 1962 by entomologist...
December 08, 2009 | By Brian Switek

Parents buying toys for their children this holiday season might want to be wary of a few dangerous dinosaurs.Last week the 24th annual "Trouble in Toyland" advisory was released, and among the potentially dangerous toys listed were at least two dinosaurs. One, "Stompers" the Triceratops by Playsko...
December 07, 2009 | By Brian Switek

Ever since the time of their discovery, dinosaurs have fascinated scientists with their arsenals of teeth, claws, spikes and armor. Clearly the extinct creatures often fought each other to the death, and for the past century and a half artists have been envisioning what such epic battles must have ...
December 04, 2009 | By Brian Switek

It is not very difficult to bring dinosaurs back to life anymore, at least in movies. Film special effects have progressed to the point where virtual dinosaurs can easily be built to spec on the computer and directed with precision. If anything, sometimes it seems like there are too many computer-g...
December 03, 2009 | By Brian Switek

Stegosaurus is one of the most immediately recognizable of all dinosaurs (it is hard to miss something with a tiny head, a back decked with bony plates, and a tail tipped in spikes), and this sculpture makes it even harder to ignore. Decked out in a top hat and stars and stripes, this piece of art...
December 02, 2009 | By Brian Switek

In the summer of 2008, the History Channel debuted Jurassic Fight Club, a blood-spattered ode to prehistoric violence. Not to be left out, the Discovery Channel is set to enter the ring with its own new series, Clash of the Dinosaurs, and it, too, will leave viewers awash in dinosaur gore.Unlike th...
December 01, 2009 | By Brian Switek

New Blog Takes Flight: Please join us in welcoming the latest addition to the paleosphere: Dragons of the Air, a blog published by Ross Elgin, a member of the “Pterosaur Flight Dynamics Group,” based in the Museum of Natural History, Karlsruhe, Germany. Be sure to check out this fascinating post ab...
November 30, 2009 | By Brian Wolly

Ah, Thanksgiving, the day when families across the United States sit down for a delicious feast of dinosaur with all the trimmings.You read that correctly. Scientists have recognized that birds and dinosaurs are closely related for over a century, and within the last thirty years a tidal wave of di...
November 25, 2009 | By Brian Switek

The vision of dinosaurs that I grew up with in the 1980s is very different from the one we are familiar with today. It is no longer appropriate to show a Brachiosaurus wallowing in a lake or a Tyrannosaurus dragging its tail on the ground. Yet these changes are relatively minor compared to the tran...
November 24, 2009 | By Brian Switek

When my wife and I pulled into the parking lot of Dinosaur National Monument we were greeted by a rather imposing figure. Standing in front of us was this sculpture of a strikingly-colored Stegosaurus. Just what color this dinosaur would be in real life is open to discussion, but I had never seen o...
November 23, 2009 | By Brian Switek

Usually when dinosaurs appear in comic books or on screen they are there to menace the human protagonists of the story. Rarely do we get to see tales in which dinosaurs themselves are main characters, but Ricardo Delgago's Age of Reptiles series is a notable exception.Age of Reptiles started off as...
November 20, 2009 | By Brian Switek

We just can't let dinosaurs stay dead. They were real dragons that (notwithstanding their bird descendants) lived and died millions and millions of years before our species evolved, and they are so fascinating that we keep finding new ways to bring them into our world. Among the various ways humans...
November 19, 2009 | By Brian Switek

Looking over our blogroll the other day I noticed that a number of the blogs have either moved, disappeared, or have not been updated with anything about dinosaurs in ages. It is high time for a blogroll revamp.In order to make sure that our blogroll represents the best of dino bloggers, though, I ...
November 18, 2009 | By Brian Switek

When will we humans ever learn? Many of us would love to see dinosaurs in the flesh, but if we ever actually got the chance it would probably be a terrifying experience.  Numerous movies, comic books, and video games have been based upon this love-hate relationship, and last week saw the release of...
November 17, 2009 | By Brian Switek

By the spring of 1916 it seemed inevitable that the United States would enter World War I. This prospect unsettled those opposed to our country's involvement, and there was no better symbol for the military buildup these people feared than the great armored dinosaurs.The papier-mâché Stegosaurus fe...
November 16, 2009 | By Brian Switek

While driving through northern Utah on the way to Dinosaur National Monument this past summer, my wife and I passed through Vernal, Utah. There were dinosaurs everywhere. Big ones, small ones, green ones, pink ones... it was hard to look in any direction and not see a dinosaur.One of the most promi...
November 13, 2009 | By Brian Switek

The sauropod dinosaurs were the largest animals to have ever walked on the earth. They were so incredibly huge, in fact, that they had to move about on four legs—but since the earliest dinosaurs were bipedal, paleontologists have long known that the ancestors of giants like Brachiosaurus and Apatos...
November 12, 2009 | By Brian Switek

When dinosaurs were first recognized by European naturalists during the early 19th century, they were interpreted as being immense, lumbering reptiles similar to iguanas and crocodiles. Since that time our understanding of dinosaurs has changed substantially; early paleontologists such as Gideon Ma...
November 11, 2009 | By Brian Switek

In the summer of 2008, "Einstein," one of the most complete Apatosaurus skeletons ever discovered, made its international debut in the arrivals hall of the Abu Dhabi International Airport. That is a long way from the Wyoming quarry in which it was found. What reason could there be for this unique s...
November 09, 2009 | By Brian Switek

This week's Dinosaur Sighting comes to us from David Williams, who snapped a shot of a cowgirl riding a rather threadbare dinosaur outside Stewart's Rock Shop in Arizona.Fortunately for her the dinosaur appears to be some sort of narrow-footed sauropod so she doesn't have to worry about being eaten...
November 06, 2009 | By Brian Switek

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