Fossils
Minotaurasaurus: A New Ankylosaur?
During the Late Cretaceous, 100 to 65 million years ago, the area now known as the Gobi Desert was a dangerous place, stalked by small hunters like Velociraptor and massive tyrannosaurs like Tarbosaurus. But one group of herbivorous dinosaurs appears to have done well in this harsh place. Several k...
January 22, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
How did the Siberian Dinosaurs Die?
Imagine, for a moment, an ideal habitat for a dinosaur. What does it look like? Many people think of them crashing through tropical forests and wallowing in swamps, but in truth dinosaurs inhabited a wide range of ecological settings. That includes the temperate forests of the cold northern latitud...
January 12, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
The Tell-Tale Armor
Even though museums all over the world are filled with dinosaur skeletons, it is very rare for paleontologists to find a complete, articulated specimen. Scraps and fragments of dinosaur bone are far more common, and often only the hardest parts of the skeleton become fosslized. In the case of the a...
January 08, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
A Giant Winged Platypus?
Announcements of new fossil discoveries are always exciting, and remains found from a site in eastern Shandong Province in China are no exception. Among the recovered fossils is part of the six-feet-wide skull of a horned dinosaur like Styracosaurus as well as bones of other dinosaur types seen fro...
January 02, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Our Relatives, the Dinosaurs
When visitors stroll among the remains of ancient beasts in the dinosaur halls of museums, they often focus on how bizarre they were. With the exception of the more bird-like forms, there is nothing like them alive today: immense sauropods with tails and necks that stretched to the horizon, armor-p...
December 30, 2008 |
By Brian Switek
Dino Day Care
When paleontologists Jack Horner and Bob Makela named a large hadrosaur that had been found among eggshells and nests in 1979, they called it Maisaura, the “good mother reptile.” The name suggested that the young of this genus were raised with motherly love. Producing eggs would be energetically ex...
December 22, 2008 |
By Brian Switek
Austroraptor: A giant, sickle-clawed killer
When Jurassic Park was released into theaters, scientists were quick to point out that the film featured super-sized Velociraptor. Even the largest of the dromaeosaurs then known, like Deinonychus, were puny compared to their on-screen cousins. The same year that the film was released, however, the...
December 19, 2008 |
By Brian Switek
Taking a Closer Look at Archaeopteryx
Ever since the first skeleton was found in 1861, the remains of the feathered dinosaur (and earliest known bird) Archaeopteryx have been highly prized for their potential to shed light on the origin of birds. There are about eight specimens presently known, many of which possess feather impressions...
December 17, 2008 |
By Brian Switek
A New Discovery: Skorpiovenator, the Scorpion Hunter
A group of snub-nosed theropods called the Abelisauridae aren't as famous as predators such as Allosaurus or Tyrannosaurus, but they were every bit as scary. Aucasaurus, Rajasaurus, Rugops, and Kryptops lived in what is now South America and Africa, often alongside other predatory dinosaurs such as...
December 10, 2008 |
By Brian Switek
Dinosaur Death Trap
About 90 million years ago, in what is now Mongolia, the ground collapsed beneath a group of immature Sinornithomimus that had been walking on the edge of a drying lake bed. The ostrich-like dinosaurs struggled to free themselves, clawing at the thick mud and calling out in desperation, but to no a...
December 04, 2008 |
By Brian Switek
The Dinosaur Vanishes
At many excavation sites, paleontologists find more material than they are able to dig out during one field season. Large skeletons, in particular, may require years of work, and there is always the risk that when the scientists return next year, the precious bones will be missing. Sometimes this i...
December 02, 2008 |
By Brian Switek
Annual Dinosaur Dissection Day
According to paleontological lore, the 19th century naturalist T.H. Huxley was carving a goose for a holiday feast when he noticed something peculiar. The anatomy of the cooked bird was very similar to that of some dinosaurs, and soon afterwards Huxley proposed that dinosaurs were the animals from ...
November 27, 2008 |
By Brian Switek
T. Rex: The other white meat?
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! The Smithsonian staff will be taking the day off tomorrow to gather with family and eat our preferred turkey variant (turkey, tofurkey, turducken, etc.).So, with food on everyone’s minds, now seemed as good a time as any to address the inevitable question: What did din...
November 26, 2008 |
By Mark Strauss
What Good are Dinosaurs?
Among paleontologists, there is sometimes a feeling that dinosaur research is overhyped. Later this month at the Grant Zoology museum of University College London, paleontologist Mark Carnall will deliver a talk called “Dinosaurs are Pointless.” The description of the lecture describes dinosaur doc...
November 20, 2008 |
By Brian Switek
A Kerfuffle Revisited, and an Update on Tracks
The past few weeks have been busy for paleontologists; it's hard to keep up with all the new discoveries and announcements! Even "old" stories are still making waves on the web and in the media.Last week I wrote about the controversy over the new PLoS paper describing the dinosaur Aerosteon. In the...
November 14, 2008 |
By Brian Switek
Bone Wars in the Blogosphere
When a scientific paper is published, it is not the last word on the topic. It is truly only the beginning, and that new research becomes widely available for debate and discussion. Normally comments are traded between experts, and arguments take place in the halls of symposia, but blogs and open a...
November 06, 2008 |
By Brian Switek
Dino Blog Carnival: Edition #1
Welcome to our inaugural Blog Carnival, a monthly round up of dinosaur-related news and analysis on the blogosphere. If you’d like to submit a post for consideration in our forthcoming Carnivals, leave your blog's URL in the comments here.Taking Flight: “New research on the feathered dinosaur Micro...
October 31, 2008 |
By Mark Strauss
Dinosaurs of a Feather, Flock Together
What features define a bird?It seems like a fairly simple question, especially since birds are very different from other living groups of vertebrates like reptiles, but over the past decade a flood of new fossils has shown that many of the features we think of as being unique to birds first evolved...
October 30, 2008 |
By Brian Switek
How Much for a Mummy Dinosaur?
In the summer of 1908, the freelance fossil hunter Charles H. Sternberg and his three sons, George, Levi, and Charles, were on the hunt for dinosaur fossils in Wyoming. George and Levi found a skeleton in sandstone. When the duo made the discovery, however, the family had only potatoes left to eat,...
October 28, 2008 |
By Brian Switek
The Dinosaur in Winter
Happy migration season, everyone!The one consolation of fall's creeping cold and darkness is that you might see very weird birds this time of year. Birds you wouldn't normally see because they nest far to the north and spend the winter far to the south.And birds, of course, are just latter-day dino...
October 27, 2008 |
By Laura Helmuth
