Paleontology
Dinosaur Sighting: Frozen Triceratops
There has been virtually no snowfall where I live this year, dashing my hopes of making a snow dinosaur. One of our readers, Wim, has had better luck. In a comment on our last Dinosaur Sighting, Wim included the above picture and wrote:I spotted a “Snowceratops belgicae” in my garden last week.Unf...
December 22, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Pass the Salad, Please: Many Theropods Ate Plants
Coelurosaurs were one of the strangest groups of dinosaurs. In addition to the famous predators Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor, the coelurosaurs included the small, fuzzy Sinosauropteryx; "ostrich-mimics" such as Struthiomimus; the long-necked, sickle-clawed giant Therizinosaurus; the tiny, ant-ea...
December 21, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
The Kem Kem Beds: A Paradise For Predators?
Ninety-five million years ago, in what is now southeastern Morocco, giant predators ruled the land. The reddish Cretaceous rock of these arid localities—called the Kem Kem Beds—has yielded the remains of the theropods Deltadromeus, Carcharodontosaurus (seen in Mark Hallett's exquisite painting "Thu...
December 20, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Juravenator: Germany's Other Feathered Dinosaur
In 1861, as debates about evolution were brewing among naturalists, two important skeletons were discovered from the Late Jurassic limestone quarries of Germany. Both would be relevant to ideas about how birds evolved. Although not recognized as such until the late 20th century, Archaeopteryx was t...
December 17, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Geminiraptor Helps Set Utah Dinosaur Record
2010 has been a bumper crop year for Utah's dinosaurs. No fewer than eight new species have been named, including the iguanodonts Hippodraco and Iguanacolossus; the ceratopsids Utahceratops, Kosmoceratops and Diabloceratops; the sauropodomorph Seitaad and the sauropod Abydosaurus. (A few other Uta...
December 16, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Dinosaur Sighting: Crated Up
How do you ship a dinosaur? If this photo taken by reader Sheryl Todd outside a Victoria, British Columbia museum is any indication, a traditional wooden box works fine. True, a steel cage would probably be safer, but what is the fun in transporting a dinosaur if there isn't at least the possibilit...
December 15, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
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
Did Dinosaurs Build Stonehenge?
Situated in the English county of Wiltshire, Stonehenge is one of the most famous archaeological monuments in the world. It is also one of the most mysterious. The culture that made it left no written records behind, so, as Nigel Tufnel has said, "No one kn...
December 13, 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
G.I. Joe vs. Dinosaurs
Dinosaurs versus the Army. I spent many childhood hours pitting my green plastic army figures against the reptilian horde of my dinosaur toy collection. It didn't matter which side won—it was good fun either way.Comic books and B movies depicted similar bat...
December 08, 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
Dinosaur Sighting: Frosty the Tyrannosaurus
We typically think of dinosaurs as warm-weather creatures, but, as seen in this photo taken outside Bozeman, Montana's Museum of the Rockies by University of Utah graduate student Carrie Levitt, sometimes dinosaurs like to play in the snow, too.True, the Montana of Cretaceous times was a bit differ...
December 06, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Dinosaur Drive-In: Triassic Attack
The most telling moment in SyFy's latest installment of Saturday night schlock - Triassic Attack - comes fairly early on in the film. Dismayed and angered by the expansion of a nearby college, a Native American protester named Dakota (played by Raoul Trujil...
December 03, 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
Blog Carnival #26: Career Advice, Pink Floyd, Colorado Fossils and More...
Publish or Perish: At SV-POW!, Mike Taylor presents a tutorial on “How to become a palaeontologist.” His central message: write papers. “I know a whole bunch of people who should be published palaeontologists, but aren’t. Some of them know far, far more about extinct animals than I do, and I am fra...
November 29, 2010 |
By Mark Strauss
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
