Fossils
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
Mammoths and Mastodons: All American Monsters
A mammoth discovery in 1705 sparked a fossil craze and gave the young United States a symbol of national might
April 2010 |
By Richard Conniff
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
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
Restoring One of New Jersey's Dinosaurs
When I was growing up, New Jersey seemed like the worst place to be for an aspiring paleontologist. If I wanted to go looking for dinosaurs, it seemed, I would have to go out West. It was not until much later that I learned that New Jersey was home to some of the most important dinosaur discoveries...
March 15, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Incisivosaurus, a Dinosaur With an Overbite
Over and over again the same dinosaurs show up in the news: Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops, Apatosaurus, Velociraptor, etc., etc., etc. Movies, books and television have made them into superstars, but we should not forget that these dinosaurs represent only a small part of the range of dinosaur diversi...
March 12, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Asteroid Strike Confirmed as Dinosaur Killer
Sixty-five million years ago, life on Earth suffered one of the worst mass extinctions of all time. It was an event that killed creatures across the spectrum of life's diversity, from tiny marine invertebrates to the largest dinosaurs, but what could have caused it?A number of hypotheses have been ...
March 10, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
New Fossils Suggest High Diversity Among Close Dinosaur Relatives
What were the very first dinosaurs like? This is one of the most vexing questions in vertebrate paleontology. Even though paleontologists have found a number of early dinosaurs in recent years, details about the very first dinosaurs and their close relatives have been hard to come by, but in a new ...
March 04, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
"Bird" Wrists Evolved Among Dinosaurs
If there is one persistent gripe that paleontologists have with dinosaurs on screen, it is that their hands are usually wrong. From Tyrannosaurus to Velociraptor, predatory dinosaurs are time and again shown with their hands in a palms-down position, something that would have been anatomically impo...
March 03, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Prehistoric Snake Fed on Baby Dinosaurs
When discussing dinosaurs, the topic of what they ate often comes up, but what about the creatures that ate them? Obviously some dinosaurs ate other dinosaurs, but the famous prehistoric archosaurs were not immune to predation from other kinds of hunters, especially when the archosaurs were babies....
March 02, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
New Sauropod From Dinosaur National Monument Gets a Name
Utah's Dinosaur National Monument is best known for the exquisite collection of Jurassic-age fossils that have been discovered there since the beginning of the 20th century, but what is less well known is that more recent Cretaceous critters can be found there, too. When I visited the national park...
March 01, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
The Human Family's Earliest Ancestors
Studies of hominid fossils, like 4.4-million-year-old "Ardi," are changing ideas about human origins
March 2010 |
By Ann Gibbons
The Skeletons of Shanidar Cave
A rare cache of hominid fossils from the Kurdistan area of northern Iraq offers a window on Neanderthal culture
March 2010 |
By Owen Edwards
A Closer Look at Evolutionary Faces
John Gurche, a “paleo-artist,” has recreated strikingly realistic heads of our earliest human ancestors for a new exhibit
February 25, 2010 |
By Abigail Tucker
A New Use for Blacklights: Finding Dinosaur Feathers
Since 1996 paleontologists have found so many feathered dinosaurs that it has been impossible to keep up with them all. There are scores of exceptionally preserved specimens that have yet to be fully studied and published upon, but, according to a new study in PLoS One, there is still plenty to le...
February 24, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Not Everyone is Happy With Feathered Dinosaurs
Time and again I have used this blog to describe what I think is one of the most fascinating recent discoveries in paleontology: that birds are dinosaurs.Not everyone is happy with this fact, though. The blog io9 recently posted sample images from a feathered dinosaur protest group who prefer their...
February 18, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
