Fossils
Paleontologists Announce "Thunder Thighs"
"Brontosaurus" was a great dinosaur name. The great "thunder reptile" of the Jurassic, there was no better moniker for the stoutly-built sauropod. Unfortunately, the name had to be tossed out in favor of Apatosaurus, but a different dinosaur just described by Michael Taylor, Mathew Wedel and Richa...
February 23, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
Walking With Raptors
A little more than a year ago, paleontologists working in Niger announced the discovery of Spinophorosaurus, a sauropod dinosaur with a wicked tail club. Its bones were not the only traces of dinosaurs to be found in the desert area. About three hundred feet from the exceptionally well preserved s...
February 15, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
How Parasaurolophus Set the Mood
It's Valentine's Day, and that means that millions of people will be riffling through their record and CD collections to find the right music to set the proper mood with their special someone. Seventy five million years ago, though, there was no Barry White, and so some deep-voiced dinosaurs made ...
February 14, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
Scientists Uncover One of the Smallest Dinosaurs Ever
Another month, another alvarezsaur. In January, paleontologists announced the discovery of a small, one-fingered dinosaur from Inner Mongolia named Linhenykus, and another team of paleontologists has just published the description of a related, slightly older creature in the latest Journal of Vert...
February 11, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
Tapuiasaurus Gets a Head
Sauropod skulls are rare. As big as impressive as these long-necked giants were, they often lost their heads after death. There were decades of confusion over what the skull of Apatosaurus looked like. This makes the discovery of any complete sauropod skull cause for celebration, and I was delighte...
February 09, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
Masiakasaurus Gets a Few Touch-Ups
Masiakasaurus was a weird-looking dinosaur. The paper that first described it was titled "A bizarre predatory dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Madagascar." What made it so strange were its teeth. At the front of its lower jaw, this six-foot theropod had forward-tilted teeth much different fro...
February 07, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
Willo the Dinosaur Loses Heart
At first glance, Willo was not an especially impressive dinosaur. A well-preserved Thescelosaurus, this herbivorous dinosaur was one of the mid-sized ornithischians that lived about 66 million years ago. What made Willo special was its heart. Preserved inside a concretion cradled within the dinosau...
February 03, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
The Great Triceratops Debate Continues
What is Nedoceratops hatcheri? That depends on whom you ask.For over 120 years the problematic skull of this horned dinosaur has been bounced around the literature under different names and attributions. While it was originally described as a distinct genus, Diceratops, some paleontologists later ...
January 31, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
Teratophoneus: Utah's Monstrous, Murderous New Tyrannosaur
It missed the 2010 Utah dinosaur rush by nearly a month, but a new tyrannosaur from the southern part of the beehive state makes up for its tardiness by helping to fill a gap in the famous group's evolutionary history.Almost one year ago, paleontologists Thomas Carr and Thomas Williamson described...
January 28, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
Linhenykus: A weird, one-fingered dinosaur
When it was first described in 1993, Mononykus was one of the strangest dinosaurs known. It had the slender, light build of some of the "ostrich mimic" dinosaurs, yet it possessed two stubby, one-clawed hands and a few other subtle characteristics that placed it in a new group called the alvarezsa...
January 25, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
Pterosaurs Were Born to Fly
Just a few hours after yesterday's post on dinosaur embryos went up, another major egg-based discovery was announced, in the journal Science.In October of 2009, paleontologists first described the flying reptile Darwinopterus, a pterosaur that lived in what is now China over 160 million years ago....
January 21, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
Exceptional Eggs Preserve Tiny Dinosaurs
Baby dinosaurs are hard to find. While the bones of large, adult dinosaurs were often sturdy enough to survive the processes involved in fossilization, the bones of young dinosaurs were small and delicate and have rarely made it into the fossil record. In many cases we just don't know what baby di...
January 20, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
Eodromaeus Adds Context to Dinosaur Origins
Tracking the origin of the dinosaurs has been one of the most difficult tasks paleontologists have faced, but since the 1990s, multiple discoveries in South America have provided scientists with a look at what some of the earliest dinosaurs were like. Eoraptor, Herrerasaurus and the recently-descr...
January 14, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
Where Have All the Sauropods Gone?
For the past century, paleontologists have been trying to figure out one of the most puzzling disappearing acts in the fossil record.In both Europe and North America, the Jurassic was the heyday of the sauropod dinosaurs. After the beginning of the Cretaceous period 145 million years ago, however, ...
January 06, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
A Giant From New Mexico: Titanoceratops
Many unknown dinosaurs await discovery in rock formations all over the world, but some new species are hiding in plain sight. One such animal, described in an in-press Cretaceous Research paper, had one of the largest heads of any dinosaur.As recounted in the study by Yale paleontologist Nicholas L...
January 04, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
The Top Dinosaur Discoveries of 2010
2010 has been a good year for dinosaurs. Numerous new species have been named, long-awaited conference proceedings have been published, new techniques for studying the past have been devised, and scientists finally allowed us to answer one of the most confounding questions in dinosaur science. The...
December 30, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
"Capitalsaurus," A D.C. Dinosaur
When I think of North American dinosaurs, my mind immediately jumps to the impressive giants like Diplodocus and Tyrannosaurus scattered in rock formations around the West. But there were East Coast dinosaurs, too. One of them, an enigmatic creature discovered at the close of the 19th century, even...
December 28, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
The Kem Kem Beds: A Paradise For Predators?
Ninety-five million years ago, in what is now southeastern Morocco, giant predators ruled the land. The reddish Cretaceous rock of these arid localities—called the Kem Kem Beds—has yielded the remains of the theropods Deltadromeus, Carcharodontosaurus (seen in Mark Hallett's exquisite painting "Thu...
December 20, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Juravenator: Germany's Other Feathered Dinosaur
In 1861, as debates about evolution were brewing among naturalists, two important skeletons were discovered from the Late Jurassic limestone quarries of Germany. Both would be relevant to ideas about how birds evolved. Although not recognized as such until the late 20th century, Archaeopteryx was t...
December 17, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Geminiraptor Helps Set Utah Dinosaur Record
2010 has been a bumper crop year for Utah's dinosaurs. No fewer than eight new species have been named, including the iguanodonts Hippodraco and Iguanacolossus; the ceratopsids Utahceratops, Kosmoceratops and Diabloceratops; the sauropodomorph Seitaad and the sauropod Abydosaurus. (A few other Uta...
December 16, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
