Fossils
Did Wee Little Sauropods Stand Up to Run?
When the term "sauropod" comes up in discussion, I most often think of the lumbering giants from the Late Jurassic of North America—Apatosaurus, Diplodocus, Barosaurus and Brachiosaurus. They were some of the largest terrestrial animals ever to have evolved, yet each individual dinosaur among these...
November 02, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
How Vagaceratops Moved
Did ceratopsid dinosaurs like Triceratops and Styracosaurus walk with their forelimbs held straight beneath their bodies or splayed out to the side? According to 3-D models created by artist Alex Tirabasso for the Canadian Museum of Nature, the truth lies ...
November 01, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Tracking the Emergence of Birds
Since the description of the fuzzy-feathered dinosaur Sinosauropteryx in 1996, paleontologists have been inundated with a still-flowing flood of fossil evidence confirming that birds are living dinosaurs. More than that, many of the characteristics we once thought were unique to birds—from air-sacs...
October 27, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Ancient Archosaur Arthritis
When we envision prehistoric life, we often picture long-extinct animals in the most healthy state possible. Each restored individual is the acme of its particular species—be it Allosaurus or a woolly mammoth—but we know that things in the natural world are never so clean and neat. Not only do indi...
October 21, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Tracking a Dinosaur to the NJSM
The New Jersey State Museum (NJSM), where I am a research associate, has a new dinosaur exhibit, and it has been placed outside for all passers-by to see. It's an enormous chunk of rust-red rock recently removed from a quarry in Woodland Park, New Jersey, and on its top is the track of a predatory ...
October 20, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
SVP Dispatch, Part 3: Raptorex—To Be, or Not to Be?
One of the biggest dinosaur stories of 2009 was the discovery of a pint-sized tyrant called Raptorex. Described by a team of paleontologists led by Paul Sereno and dated to about 126 million years ago, the dinosaur showed that many definitive tyrannosaur characteristics—such a puny forearms—evolved...
October 14, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Dispatch, Part 1
The first day of the 70th annual Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting was chock-full of dinosaur talks. Fans of ornithischian dinosaurs—the hadrosaurs, ankylosaurs, stegosaurs, pachycehpalosaurs, horned dinosaurs and their kin—had a lot to cheer about. There is a flood of new species, and ne...
October 12, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Sarahsaurus Helps Revise Ideas of Dinosaurian Success
Compared to some of its later, gargantuan cousins, the 190-million-year-old sauropodomorph dinosaur Sarahsaurus aurifontanalis was a rather tiny herbivore. Only 14 feet long, this dinosaur lived in the early days of the Jurassic, and, according to a team of paleontologists led by Jackson School of...
October 08, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Earth’s Worst Extinction May Have Been Key to Dinosaur Origins
From the emergence of the first of their kind about 228 million years ago to the modern abundance of birds (their living descendants), dinosaurs have been one of the most successful groups of organisms on the planet. Why they originated in the first place, however, has been a much trickier subject ...
October 06, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
It's All in the Hips: the Feathered Dinosaur Microraptor
Ever since the announcement of an exquisitely-preserved specimen of the feathered dinosaur Microraptor gui in 2003, paleontologists have been debating how it might have flown and what relevance it might have to the origin of birds. How did it hold its legs? Could it really fly, or just glide? Is is...
October 01, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
New Horned Dinosaurs From America's Lost Continent
At the height of the golden era of dinosaur science, it takes something special for a newly described dinosaur species to stand out. Dinosaurs with dual sickle claws, humps, or unexpected bristles more readily grab the attention of the public than more familiar-looking forms, but looks aren't eve...
September 22, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
The Making of a Tyrant
Tyrannosaurus rex was an obligatory inclusion in every book and documentary about dinosaurs I saw as a kid. It was the tyrant king of all dinosaurs, the supreme predator of the end-Cretaceous, but for all its majesty no one could explain where it had come from. Along with its kin—such as Albertosa...
September 20, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Stegosaurus Week: The Many Postures of Kentrosaurus
Since the early days of paleontology, the posture of dinosaurs and the range of motion they were capable of have been contentious subjects for paleontologists. During the 19th century, especially, the general view of what dinosaurs would have looked like changed no less than three times, and inves...
September 16, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Stegosaurus Week: Tracking Cryptic Stegosaurs
The first trace of the plated, spiky stegosaurian dinosaurs was found in Early Cretaceous rock near Grahamstown, South Africa. Uncovered by W. G. Atherstone and A. G. Bain in 1845, the dinosaur was represented by a partial skull and several limb bones. The naturalists felt unqualified to study the...
September 15, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Stegosaurus Week: A Rare Look at Soft Tissue
Dinosaur skin impressions are pretty rare, and, even among the known collection of these soft-tissue traces, not all dinosaurs are equally well-represented. There are plenty of skin impressions from hadrosaurs, but stegosaurs are among the dinosaurs in which the skin texture is still largely unkno...
September 13, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
A Strange Sail-Backed, Bristly-Armed Dinosaur
When I logged on to Facebook Wednesday morning, one of the first things I saw was a cryptic status update from University of Maryland paleontologist Thomas Holtz. He speculated that the paleo community at large would be "duly impressed" by something set to debut later in the day, but what was it? ...
September 10, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
In Southern Utah, a Hadrosaur Left Quite an Impression
When Charles H. Sternberg and his sons excavated one of the first hadrosaur mummies ever found, in the summer of 1908, it was a major discovery. For nearly a century naturalists and paleontologists could only imagine what a dinosaur's skin was like, but the Edmontosaurus the Sternbergs collected g...
September 03, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Say Hello to Sinoceratops
It has been a good year for horned dinosaurs. The recent description of Mojoceratops, the discovery of a ceratopsian in Europe, and the long-awaited publication of the New Perspectives on Horned Dinosaurs volume have all given paleontologists reason to celebrate, and a new study led by Xu Xing repo...
September 02, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Balaur bondoc: A Raptor Unlike Any You Have Ever Seen
Thanks to their prominent appearances in museum displays and the Jurassic Park film franchise, many people are very familiar with what dromaeosaurid dinosaurs looked like. Relatively small and lightly-built, these predators had long, grasping hands and a hyperextendable second toe on each foot tip...
August 31, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Debate Over Identity of an Australian Tyrant
Last March a team of paleontologists led by Roger Benson described what appeared to be a partial hip of a tyrannosauroid dinosaur from Australia—the first-ever trace of this group of dinosaurs on the southern continent. Now, in a comment and reply printed in last week's Science, Matthew Herne, Jay ...
August 30, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
