Dinosaurs
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A Closer Look at Ankylosaur Armor
Many dinosaurs were adorned with spikes, horns and plates, but it was the ankylosaurs that took armor to the extreme. These dinosaurs were covered in bony armor from snout to tail-tip, yet, as a new study suggests, there may have been more to some of these structures than just attack and defense.As...
May 20, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Diabloceratops Gets Ready for its Debut
At the end of last summer, on my way out of Salt Lake City, Utah, I encountered a dinosaur I had never seen before in the halls of the Utah Museum of Natural History. Lying on its side was an impressive skull bristling with horns, and the placard identified it as an as-yet-unpublished creature info...
May 19, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Exceptional New Fossil Find Reveals Fearsome Triassic Predator
It's not a dinosaur, but it may have eaten some of their ancestors.Last week paleontologists from Lutheran University discovered the nearly complete skeleton of the 238-million-year-old predator Prestosuchus chiniquensis in the Late Triassic rock near the Brazilian town of Dona Francisca. The excep...
May 18, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Fossil Skeleton Preserves Signs of Shark Buffet
According to a short communication recently published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, an ancient marine reptile provided a feast for hungry sharks.In 2006 paleontologists Tamaki Sato, Yoshikazu Hasegawa and Makoto Manabe described the remains of a previously-unknown kind of elasmosaurid,...
May 14, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
X-Rays Give a New Look at Archaeopteryx
Scientists have known about the feathered dinosaur Archaeopteryx for over a century and a half, but scientists are using new techniques to get a better look at this creature and its close relatives. Within the past few months alone, paleontologists have described how they have used laboratory techn...
May 12, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Barnum Brown: The Man Who Discovered Tyrannosaurus Rex
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
Tracking the Origin of Dinosaurs
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
The Dwarf Dinosaurs of Haţeg Island
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
Dinosaur Sighting: Granger's Dinosaurs
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
Bone-Hunter Biographies
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
Blog Carnival #19: New Blogs, Ichythyosaurs, Bacteria, Comic Strips and More...
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
What Are the Best Dinosaur Movies Ever Made?
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
Exceptional Fossils Record Dinosaur Feather Changes
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
Dinosaur Sighting: Dental Dinosaur
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
Tyrannosaurus rex, the "Prize Fighter of Antiquity"
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
Digging Up Dinosaurs in South Africa
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
Was "Jack the Ripper" Really a Tyrannosaurus?
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
Tracks of Giants Created Dino Death Traps
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
Dinosaur Sighting: Campground "Brontosaurus"
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
A New "Bonehead" Dinosaur From Texas
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
