Dinosaurs
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How Dryptosaurus Got Its Name
In 1866, back when the scientific study of dinosaurs was only just beginning in North America, the naturalist E.D. Cope received word that workers at the West Jersey Marl Company in Gloucester County, New Jersey, had discovered the gigantic bones of an unknown fossil animal. As Cope did much of his...
April 19, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Discovery Channel and Pixar Team Up For New Dino Show
When it comes to animated films, Pixar is the best of the best, and now it appears that the famous movie studio is teaming up with the Discovery Channel to bring viewers a new dinosaur series. When the Discovery Channel announced their 2010-2011 schedule last week they included a few tidbits about ...
April 16, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Marsh's "Megalosaurus" From Utah
In 1988, a little more than a century after O.C. Marsh first described it, Allosaurus was declared to be the state fossil of Utah. What fewer people know, however, is that seven years before Marsh named the famous theropod dinosaur, he had discovered the signs of another predatory dinosaur.Accordin...
April 15, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Rock Out With Hevisaurus
Here in the US, just about everybody knows about that annoying, purple dinosaur "Barney," but kids in Finland are more likely to be familiar with the hard-rockin' metal group Hevisaurus. Dressed up in green dinosaur costumes adorned with extra heavy-metal style spikes, the group produces original s...
April 14, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
The Dinosaur Casualties of World War I
On December 6, 1916, two years into "the war to end all wars," a German naval crew destroyed a set of 75-million-year-old dinosaur skeletons
April 13, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Dinosaur Sighting: A Classic Mascot
While driving through Utah and Wyoming last summer, I regularly saw dinosaurs along the side of the road. Most of them were the mascot for the Sinclair Oil gas stations, the green "Brontosaurus" the company has used for the past century. Reader Mark Ryan has seen them too, and sends us this photo o...
April 12, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Rare Juvenile Diplodocus Skull Tells of Changing Dino Diets
From movies to museum displays, the dinosaurs we most often see are fully mature animals. There are a few good reasons for this. The first is that the skeletons of adult dinosaurs are among the most impressive specimens in the whole of the fossil record, but it is also true that the bones of juveni...
April 09, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Looking For a Challenge? Try Putting Together a Tinysaur
Dinosaurs are famous, at least in part, for being some of the largest animals ever to have evolved, but a new set of models called "Tinysaurs" are taking them in the opposite direction.Available through Makers Market, the minuscule oak tag paper models come in tiny metal tins complete with glue and...
April 06, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Fossil Fragments are Table Scraps of an Enormous Alligator
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
Museum Receives an Exquisite 215-Million-Year-Old Gift
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
A New Ant-Eating Dinosaur, Xixianykus
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
Blog Carnival #18: Resurrected Dinosaurs, Nostalgia for Kool-Aid and More From ArtEvolved
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
Dinosaur Sighting: I Think it Has Spotted Us!
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
New Comic Series Returns to Jurassic Park
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
A Tyrannosaur From Down Under?
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
Uncovering Seitaad: An Interview With Mark Loewen
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
Seitaad ruessi, the "Sand Monster" of the Navajo Sandstone
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
Dinosaur Sighting: Another Mini-Golf Dinosaur
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
Bringing a Dryptosaurus Back to Life
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
Exquisitely-Preserved Skeleton Introduces a New Velociraptor Relative
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
