Paleontology
Will the Dinosaurs Return?
When the American Museum of Natural History's paleontologist William Diller Matthew published his book Dinosaurs in 1915, no one understood how the famous Mesozoic creatures originated or went extinct. Both the beginning and end of the "Age of Dinosaurs" were mysterious. Yet, tucked away in a foot...
April 22, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
Come Into My Parlor, Said the Spider to the Dinosaur
Just in time for Halloween 2008, several gruesome spider photographs popped up in the news. The shots recorded two incidents—both of which took place in Queensland, Australia—of huge golden orb weaver spiders eating birds that had flown into the webs of the arachnids. Birds aren't exactly a staple...
April 21, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
Dinosaur Sighting: Miniature Mesozoic Battle
Most of the dinosaur sightings readers have sent in are of big creatures, but this week we have dinosaurs on a smaller scale.Following up her last submission of a giant pliosaur—which wasn't a dinosaur, but a fearsome Mesozoic marine reptile—former Food & Think blogger Amanda Bensen (now Fiegl)...
April 20, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
Just When You Thought Velociraptor Couldn't Get Scarier
Randall Munroe, the creator of the webcomic XKCD, isn't going to like this one bit. Fear of attack by Velociraptor is a running theme in the science-themed series—lazy computer programmers should be especially wary—and two separate discoveries announced last week gave those with a phobia of raptor...
April 19, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
The Long-Awaited Return of 'Prehistoric Beast'
When I opened my email inbox this morning, I was met with a pleasant surprise. Phil Tippett's exquisite short film Prehistoric Beast has finally been released in its entirety.I had only seen bits and pieces of Tippett's stop-motion story as a kid. The short's dinosaurs - a Monoclonius and a tyranno...
April 15, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
Birds Inherited Strong Sense of Smell From Dinosaurs
Feathers, air sacs, nesting behavior—the earliest birds owed a lot to their dinosaurian ancestors. The first birds also inherited a strong sense of smell.Modern birds have not been thought of as excellent scent-detectors, save for some super-smellers such as turkey vultures, which detect the scent ...
April 14, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
Daemonosaurus Shakes Up the Early History of Dinosaurs
Evolution is not a constant march of onward-and-upward progress. Any organism is a mosaic of the ancient and the modern—old features can be modified and put to new uses over time—and the mechanism of natural selection accounts for both an apparent lack of change and dramatic evolutionary transforma...
April 13, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
The Deep History of Dinosaur Lice
Hunting dinosaurs is a dangerous business. Scores of fictional, time-traveling hunters have learned this lesson the hard way, but arguably the most unfortunate was the protagonist of Brian Aldiss' short story "Poor Little Warrior." All Claude Ford wanted to do was get away from his disappointing li...
April 12, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
How to Build a Dinosaur Den
Oryctodromeus isn't exactly a household name. A small, herbivorous ornithopod found in the Late Cretaceous rock of western North America, it was the sort of dinosaur most often depicted as being prey for charismatic carnivores. But there was at least one aspect of Oryctodromeus that made it particu...
April 11, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
Death of a Sea Monster
Old bones have many tales to tell. The fossilized skeleton of any prehistoric creature contains clues about that animal's evolution, as well as the world around it and—if we're lucky—what caused its death. One such skeleton is at the center of the National Geographic Channel program Death of a Sea ...
April 08, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
Pen and Ink Dinosaurs: Dinosaurs: A Celebration
Paleo, Age of Reptiles, Tyrant—this week I've been looking back at comics that tell the stories of dinosaurs in Mesozoic settings (no humans allowed). How dinosaurs have appeared in comics can tell us something about the way images of these creatures have changed and how science trickles into popul...
April 07, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
Pen and Ink Dinosaurs: Tyrant
Comic books about the day-to-day lives of dinosaurs pop up only every once in a while. More often than not, pen and ink dinosaurs threaten to stomp and chomp unlucky humans who cross their paths, and occasionally a dinosaur will make a cameo appearance in one of the more famous comic franchises. By...
April 06, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
Pen and Ink Dinosaurs: Age of Reptiles
Yesterday's post kicked off my look back at dinosaurs that stomped, roared and chomped their way through comics with Jim Lawson's Paleo. Rather than placing dinosaurs in the modern era or sending people back to the Cretaceous, Lawson's stories stood out because he considered dinosaurs in their own ...
April 05, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
Pen and Ink Dinosaurs: Paleo
The dinosaurs of the 1990s were a strange breed. Even though visions of the dinosaurs as highly active, dynamic animals had become the norm, some still dragged their tails and behaved like dim-witted monsters. Old interpretations hung on even as new discoveries changed our perspective, and one way ...
April 04, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
A New Giant Tyrant, Zhuchengtyrannus
"While 2010 was celebrated as the year of ceratopsians by many," paleontologist Dave Hone wrote at Archosaur Musings yesterday, "it should not be overlooked the huge number of tyrannosaurs that have cropped up in the last year or so." He's right. For a long time Albertosaurus, Gorgosaurus, Daspleto...
April 01, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
Dinosaur Sighting: In Our Nemesis' Front Yard
Pliosaurs are not technically dinosaurs, but they were fellow travelers. Both clades lived in the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods, went extinct about 65 million years ago and were gigantic, toothy and bizarre.Former Food & Think blogger Amanda Bensen (now Fiegl) left Smithsonian a few months ag...
March 31, 2011 |
By Laura Helmuth
Watch Out For That Thagomizer!
Stegosaurus had a formidable tail. Studded with four long spikes, this dinosaur's business end would have given Allosaurus and other Jurassic predators plenty of incentive to keep moving. But do we have any evidence that Stegosaurus really used its tail this way?Among paleontologists, the four-spi...
March 30, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
Blog Carnival #30: Italian Dinosaurs, Paleoart Controversy, Dino D-Day and More
How is a Saurpod Like a Vacuum Cleaner? Find out at Everything Dinosaur. Renaissance Reptiles: Art Evolved alerts us to the opening of Dinosauri in Carne e Ossa, the first large-scale paleoart exhibition in Italy. The event will be running through May 31 in Piacenza—a city renowned for its histori...
March 29, 2011 |
By Mark Strauss
Racing to Assemble a Dinosaur
Remember the Woodcraft dinosaurs? I loved playing with those skeletal plywood puzzles as a kid, and a giant-sized version of one recently made a guest appearance on the show The Amazing Race. A few of the competing teams were tasked with putting together pl...
March 28, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
The Tyrannosaur Tooth Toolkit
When I was in elementary school, I was told that mammals and reptiles could easily be told apart by their teeth. Mammals had a full, enamel-covered toolkit in their mouths—incisors, canines, premolars, and molars suited to different tasks—while reptiles had only one kind of tooth. The dental differ...
March 25, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
