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Page 37 of 43

During the past decade, numerous discoveries have been made that have confirmed the hypothesis that birds evolved from dinosaurs. These fossils have given paleontologists important insight into how adaptations like feathers evolved, but one of the most hotly debated topics in paleobiology is how bi...
May 07, 2009 | By Brian Switek

One of the first things I learned about dinosaur fossils was that soft tissues are never preserved. Impressions of skin, hair, and even internal organs can leave their mark in the fossil record, but no one is ever going to find an intact, non-fossilized Tyrannosaurus heart. Like many of the things ...
May 06, 2009 | By Brian Switek

It may never be possible to create a real-life Jurassic Park, but if I were given the task of picking which dinosaurs to bring back to life, there are a few that would be at the top of my list. I would love to be able to see all dinosaurs in the flesh, of course, but here are five (in no particular...
May 05, 2009 | By Brian Switek

Follow a paleontology team as they dig up dinosaurs in Wyoming's Bighorn Basin

In 1904 the city of St. Louis, Missouri hosted the grand Louisiana Purchase Exhibition. It was a chance to celebrate the centennial of the grand acquisition of the midwestern states, and many states contributed exhibits to the festival. The Smithsonian Institution was represented there, too, and as...
May 04, 2009 | By Brian Switek

Since its inception, the science of paleontology has been closely tied to art. Be it illustrations of bones or restorations of what extinct animals might have looked like, art has been essential to this science. That is why Jane Davidson's A History of Paleontology Illustration is such a valuable b...
May 01, 2009 | By Brian Switek

Down in the Valley: In the 1930s, residents near the Berkshire Mountains in Massachusetts named a strip of land “Pioneer Valley” in a bid to attract tourists with imagery of colonial frontier life. But, I guess with everyone struggling in a tough economy, settler life doesn’t quite hold the escapis...
April 30, 2009 | By Mark Strauss

Mass extinction is an extremely difficult subject to study. It is one thing to identify a mass extinction in the fossil record, but it is quite another to be able to fully explain its cause. It is not surprising, then, that the triggers for the great mass extinctions in earth's history are hotly de...
April 29, 2009 | By Brian Switek

Of all the people who have said they wanted to be paleontologists someday, how many have actually realized their dream? Probably very few. Some people develop other interests or find a career that they feel better suits them, but of the pool of "would-be" paleontologists there are quite a few who s...
April 28, 2009 | By Brian Switek

Even though Tyrannosaurus has been a dinosaur celebrity for a century, we have only recently begun to understand how it evolved. For many years it seemed to be a larger and deadlier version of earlier carnivorous dinosaurs like Allosaurus, but recent discoveries have placed Tyrannosaurus and its re...
April 27, 2009 | By Brian Switek

I was cleaning out some old boxes yesterday when I happened upon dinosaurs in an unexpected place. A few years ago a cousin of mine gave me all of his old comic books, most of which wound up in a box for safe keeping. When I dug up the dusty old container yesterday, I noticed that some of Marvel's ...
April 24, 2009 | By Brian Switek

Time is running out for paleontologists studying a Cretaceous fossil site in North Arlington, Texas. As reported by CBS 11, paleontologists from the University of Texas only have about five months to finish their work before they will have to make way for a huge development project. This is unfortu...
April 23, 2009 | By Brian Switek

Digging up fossils can be hard work, and it is important for any fossil hunter to pack a hearty lunch to keep their strength up. Apparently that is what the 19th century amateur paleontologist William Parker Foulke did. As reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Foulke's lunchbox has recently been f...
April 22, 2009 | By Brian Switek

If you live in the vicinity of Frankston, Victoria in Australia, you still have a few days to see gigantic dinosaurs made from sand. This year the theme for the Sand Sculpting Austrlia exhibition was "DinoStory," and an international team of sand sculptors has etched dinosaurs into the sand. They a...
April 21, 2009 | By Brian Switek

Summertime is quickly approaching, and I look forward to sitting on my porch with a glass of lemonade. This year, though, I am not going to have just any old ice in my glass. Anyone can make ice cubes, but what about ice dinosaurs?The creators of Fossiliced have provided dino fans with a cool way t...
April 20, 2009 | By Brian Switek

Right about this time in 2007, the creationist cartoonist Johnny Hart, creator of the "The Wizard of ID" and "B.C.," passed away. While many people have placed cavemen and dinosaurs together out of ignorance or artistic laziness, Hart truly believed that his cartoon B.C. contained at least a minor...
April 17, 2009 | By Brian Switek

There are a lot of great paleo-artists these days, but one of my favorites is Douglas Henderson. His illustrations transcend the medium used to create them and look like snapshots from deep time. I'm not kidding—Henderson's art really looks like photos from a paleo-safari.Many times such beautiful ...
April 16, 2009 | By Brian Switek

I can't say I am a huge fan of British actor Christopher Lee, but he has done some good work. From his role as Lord Summerisle in the original Wicker Man to his more recent appearances as Saruman in the Lord of the Rings, he has brought a number of challenging roles to life. In his gig hosting the ...
April 15, 2009 | By Brian Switek

In museums all over the world, skeletons of sauropod dinosaurs are reconstructed with their heads held high. It seems like the most natural position for these animals, but a short letter recently published in Science has questioned whether it is correct. According to biologist Roger Seymour, saurop...
April 14, 2009 | By Brian Switek

During the 1960s, DC Comics ran a series called The War That Time Forgot. It was based on a simple concept, banking on the idea that soldiers + dinosaurs = entertaining action, but the stories quickly grew repetitive. In 2008, however, the series was rebooted, but this time the story is much strang...
April 13, 2009 | By Brian Switek

Many years ago I recall seeing an arresting illustration by paleo-artist Mark Hallett in a magazine. It was of a group of Triceratops forming a protective circle to ward off a pair of Tyrannosaurus, but I would later learn there was a substantial problem with this picture. Even though Triceratops i...
April 10, 2009 | By Brian Switek

Looking back on it now, Disney's 2000 film Dinosaur was pretty impressive. It melded CGI dinosaurs with real landscapes in a convincing way and generally looked good as a film. The problem was that the film execs felt that the dinosaurs needed to talk (except for all the "bad" dinosaurs) and this m...
April 09, 2009 | By Brian Switek

Like many other kids, I collected trading cards when I was little, and one of my favorite sets was the Dinosaurs Attack! series by Topps. In retrospect I cannot image why my parents purchased them for me. They were absolutely revolting and featured gory scenes of mindless carnage. A few cards laid ...
April 08, 2009 | By Brian Switek

Yesterday was opening day for Major League Baseball, and many teams usually try to find someone prestigious to throw the ceremonial first pitch. The problem is that not everyone asked to throw the first pitch has particularly strong arms, like the juvenile Tyrannosaurus the Chicago White Sox once p...
April 07, 2009 | By Brian Switek

When I was growing up I used to watch lots of old, cheesy monster movies. None of them are what I would call classic cinema, but many fell into the "so bad it's almost good" category. The same could be said of James David's novel Footprints of Thunder.As in many B-movies, much is made of the "scien...
April 06, 2009 | By Brian Switek

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