Fossils
What Do We Know About Spinosaurs?
When I was a kid, Spinosaurus was one of my favorite dinosaurs. There was something so wonderfully odd about a massive predator with a sail on its back, but the trouble was that no one had a good idea what this animal looked like.Spinosaurs have been known to paleontologists since 1820. The troubl...
December 14, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Nearly Complete Dimetrodon Found in Texas
From place to place and year to year, it is a fact of paleontology that some of the best discoveries are made at the very end of the field season. This is not so common that it is some kind of natural law, but it happens quite often, and there is more to it than just luck...
December 10, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Thomas Henry Huxley and the Dinobirds
Evolution never got much time in my elementary school science classes. When the topic came up, inevitably near the end of the term, the standard, pre-packaged historical overview came along with it. Charles Darwin was the first person to come up with the idea of evolution, and, despite the ravings ...
December 07, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Need a Hand? Don't Ask an Abelisaurid
As mighty as Tyrannosaurus rex was, its tiny forelimbs have also made it one of the most mocked dinosaurs of all time. The stubby arms of this predator once seemed mismatched to its enormous frame, and some of the hypotheses put forward to explain their function just made the "tyrant king" seem sil...
December 02, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
How to Turn a Tyrannosaur Into a Iguanodont
Fossilized dinosaur tracks can be exceptionally informative traces of prehistoric life, but figuring out what dinosaur made a particular set of footprints can be tricky. Unless an animal literally dies in its tracks, the best we can do is to match the skeletal anatomy of dinosaur feet with the anat...
December 01, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Dinosaurs' Living Descendants
China's spectacular feathered fossils have finally answered the century-old question about the ancestors of today's birds
December 2010 |
By Richard Stone
How Did Whales Evolve?
Originally mistaken for dinosaur fossils, whale bones uncovered in recent years have told us much about the behemoth sea creatures
December 01, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
A "Perverted" View of Bird Evolution
Among the many recurring themes on this blog, the evolution of birds from feathered maniraptoran dinosaurs is probably the most prevalent. Hardly a month goes by without a new study relevant to this major evolutionary transition, and as paleontologists discover more they continue to find that many ...
November 30, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
This Thanksgiving, Make a Wish on a Dinosaur
Tomorrow families all over the United States will be taking part in the ritualized, yearly tradition of dinosaur dissection. Granted, "Thanksgiving" is a much better name than "Annual Dinosaur Dissection Day", but the fact of the matter is that the turkey on the table has a lot in common with its ...
November 24, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Two New Dinosaurs From Utah: Hippodraco and Iguanacolossus
The parade of new dinosaur species continues this week with the description of two new iguanodont dinosaurs from Utah: Hippodraco and Iguanacolossus.Iguanodont dinosaurs were among the first to be discovered by scientists. The genus Iguanodon itself was described by the English naturalist Gideon M...
November 23, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Koreaceratops—A Swimming Ceratopsian?
Hot on the heels of a team of researchers who described Zhuchengceratops from the Cretaceous of China, paleontologists Yuong-Nam Lee, Michael J. Ryan and Yoshitsugu Kobayashi have just announced the discovery of another ceratopsian dinosaur—Koreaceratops hwaseongensis—from the 103-million-year-old...
November 22, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
A New View of Ankylosaur Feet
Last Friday I wrote about a new study by paleontologist Phil Senter that revised the arrangement of bones in the front feet of Stegosaurus. Despite being only a distant relative of the sauropod dinosaurs, Stegosaurus had convergently evolved a semi-circular pattern of bones which would have given ...
November 19, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Tyrannosaurus Had Extra Junk in the Trunk
Almost everyone has a pretty good idea of what Tyrannosaurus rex looked like. The massive head, scrawny arms, and the bird-like posture are all iconic parts of prehistory's most famous dinosaur, but its tail would probably be tacked on as an afterthought.You can't have a good Tyrannosaurus without ...
November 16, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Two New Theropod Dinosaurs From China
Paleontologists are discovering dinosaur species at a dizzying pace. These days it seems that a new species is announced almost every other week. Many of these new dinosaurs are being found in China, and two different teams of scientists have recently described a pair of unique species from two lo...
November 15, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Stegosaurs Walked Like Sauropods
Paleontologists certainly have their hands full finding and describing new dinosaurs, but there is still much to learn about the already familiar species. The configuration of different parts of dinosaur anatomy, for one thing, is an area of research in which scientists are constantly re-examining...
November 12, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Unexpected Horned Dinosaur Reveals Complex Evolutionary Pattern
In many of the books about dinosaurs I read as a child, the evolution of horned dinosaurs (ceratopsians) looked pretty straightforward. Early, lanky forms such as Psittacosaurus were succeeded by a miniature precursor of later types—Protoceratops—before generating the array of large, spiky ceratops...
November 11, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
A Dinosaur in an Italian Church?
Despite all that we have learned about the fossil record and the evolution of life on earth, some people believe that the world was created, in more or less its present state, about 6,000 years ago. Dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus and Apatosaurus did not live millions and millions of years ago, the...
November 10, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Paleontologists Take Another Look at a Square-Mouthed Sauropod
Sauropods were exceptionally strange creatures. With tiny heads mounted at the tip of ludicrously long necks anchored on a massive body with tapering tails on the other end, they were truly marvels of evolution. As odd as the basic sauropod body plan was, though, many sauropods had armor, clubs, sa...
November 05, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Cretaceous Croc Bones Were Dinosaur Table Scraps
The traditional, simplified recipe for how to make a fossil goes something like this: take a dead animal, keep it safe from scavengers, cover it up with sediment, add a heaping dollop of time and presto!, you have a petrified skeleton. The second step is often cited as being especially important—a...
November 04, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Southern Raptors Had Weird Teeth
Thanks to plenty of good press from movies, documentaries, books and toys, over the past thirty years, Deinonychus and Velociraptor have become the quintessential dromaeosaurid ("raptor") dinosaurs. They even rival the "Prize Fighter of Antiquity"—Tyrannosaurus rex—in fame these days. But these t...
November 03, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
