Paleontology
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 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
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
Blog Carnival #17: New Paleoblog, Sauropod Snow Sculpture, Young Earth Creationists and More...
Welcome a New Paleoblog: Why I Hate Theropods ironically calls our attention to a new site: The Theropod Database Blog. Going for Broke: What do you do if you break a bone? (A dinosaur bone, that is.) Well, once you get over the humiliation of breaking something that has remained intact for several...
February 26, 2010 |
By Mark Strauss
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
Dragons of the Past
Dinosaurs as depicted in museums, movies and art today are sleek, brightly-colored and often feathered. This was not always the case. When dinosaurs were first recognized by science at the beginning of the 19th century, naturalists like Gideon Mantell and William Buckland thought they looked like e...
February 22, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Dinolympics
Last week kicked off the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, and as we all know Canada has some really fantastic dinosaur deposits. In fact, one of my favorite dinosaurs, the tyrannosaur Albertosaurus, hails from the province right next door to the one in which this year's Olympics are being...
February 19, 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
Jurassic Park IV is Coming... Eventually
It is hard to know what to believe about the Jurassic Park franchise anymore. About 15 months ago the rumor was that the series had been dropped, but half a year later a studio exec stated that the prospect of bringing the dinosaurs back was still on life support. According to Hollywood scuttlebutt...
February 17, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
New Commentary Stirs Dino-Bird Brouhaha
The chicken on the table, the pigeon on the street, the parrot in the zoo: all of them are living descendants of dinosaurs. Over the past ten years a flood of fossil evidence, from evidence of bird-like breathing apparatus to remnants of pigments in preserved feathers, has confirmed beyond a reason...
February 16, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Swimming Spinosaurs
In 1986, paleontologists described a dinosaur unlike any that had been seen before. Named Baryonyx walkeri, it was a theropod with a long, crocodile-like snout and arms tipped in huge claws. Some preserved stomach contents confirmed that it was a fish-eater. It showed some similarities to another d...
February 12, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
When Tyrannosaurs Roamed New Mexico
For years paleontologists have been finding teeth and isolated scraps of tyrannosaurs in the southwestern United States, but figuring out which specific dinosaurs they belonged to has been another matter. Many of the best-known tyrannosaurs, including the famous Tyrannosaurus rex, lived farther to ...
February 10, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
"Primal Carnage" Sets Players on the Hunt for Dinosaurs
So you have played through Turok and Jurassic: The Hunted several times already; what are you going to do to get your dinosaur-hunting fix?While it probably will not be released until the end of this year, Primal Carnage will be the next entry into the ever-popular humans-gunning-down-dinosaurs su...
February 09, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Why Did Mammals Survive When Dinosaurs Perished?
Had the non-avian dinosaurs not been wiped out 65 million years ago, our species would probably never existed. The mass extinction that struck at the end of the Cretaceous was one of the major events in earth's history that greatly affected evolution by pruning back the tree of life, and it was in ...
February 08, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Dinosaurs, Now in Living Color
For the first time ever, paleontologists can look at dinosaurs in color.In last week's issue of the journal Nature, scientists described the discovery of melanosomes, biological structures that give feathers their color, in the wispy "dinofuzz" of the small theropod Sinosauropteryx. Not only did ...
February 05, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Bone vs. Stone: How to Tell the Difference
When I was a child, one of my uncles gave me what he said was a real dinosaur bone. The little black object certainly looked like some sort of bone, and I kept it in my little collection of shark teeth and other fossils in my closest. After a while I almost completely forgot about it, but when I to...
February 03, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
