Paleontology
Setting Up a Paleozoic Park in New Mexico
In the spring of 2009, the United States government added a 280-million-year-old fossil site to its list of national monuments: a 5,280-acre parcel of land in southern New Mexico that will be called Paleozoic Trackways National Monument. The national park, which has been studied by scientists and q...
February 02, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
New, Bird-Like Dinosaur Solves Evolutionary Puzzle
About a year and a half ago, as my first post on Dinosaur Tracking, I wrote about the discovery of a tiny, termite-eating dinosaur called Albertonykus. It belonged to one of the strangest groups of dinosaurs recognized to date. Called the Alvarezsaurids, these dinosaurs were covered in feathers, ha...
February 01, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
A Dinosaur Graveyard in the Smithsonian's Backyard
At a new dinosaur park in Maryland, children and paleontologists alike have found fossils for a new Smithsonian exhibit
February 2010 |
By Abby Callard
Blog Carnival #16: Draw a Dinosaur Day, Reporter Guidelines, Jurassic Parka and More...
Calling All Artists: ART Evolved spreads the word about “Draw a Dinosaur Day,” which will be celebrated tomorrow on January 30th. See the entries at the official website.News You Can Use: Fed up with constant errors in the media, David Hone at Archosaur Musings has written “A Guide for Journalists ...
January 29, 2010 |
By Brian Wolly
Fossil Feathers May Preserve Dinosaur Colors
At one point or another, almost every general book about dinosaurs I have ever seen has said the same thing: we cannot know what color dinosaurs were. Scientists have found the skin impressions of some specimens, but as far as we know these traces contain nothing that might tell us what color those...
January 28, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Dinosaur Sighting: South of the Border Dinosaur
Anyone who has driven I-95 over the North Carolina/South Carolina state line is familiar with the tourist trap South of the Border (the numerous billboards advertising it make it hard to miss), but unless you look carefully you might miss the dinosaur there. That is what our own Brian Wolly found w...
January 27, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
The Best Dinosaur Books for Kids
I read too many dinosaur books when I was a kid. It was so bad that the school librarian even called in my parents to express concern over my reading habits. If there was a book about dinosaurs in the library, I'd read it and then read it again.That was a long time ago, though, back when many of th...
January 26, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Controversial Raptor to Go Up for Sale
It is not every day that authorities hold a dinosaur as evidence of a crime.In 2002 a team of paleontologists organized by amateur fossil hunter Nate Murphy discovered the bones of a small, nearly complete raptor dinosaur on a ranch in Montana. Murphy could tell immediately that it was something ne...
January 25, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Why We Need Another Paleontology Book
Now that it is 2010 and the "Darwin Year" is over, we can expect the tide of evolution-themed documentaries and books to ebb. A notable exception, however (if I do say so myself), is my forthcoming book about evolution and the fossil record called Written in Stone. After years of hard work it will ...
January 22, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Another Look at Asia's "Shark-Toothed Dragon"
Several months ago paleontologists Stephen Brusatte, Roger Benson, Dan Chure, Xu Xing, Corwin Sullivan, and David Hone described the dinosaur Shaochilong, the first representative of the group of large predatory dinosaurs called carcharodontosaurids to be definitively identified from Asia. Now memb...
January 21, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
New Study Suggests Alligators Breathe Like Birds
On the surface, a pigeon and an alligator could hardly seem more different. While the pigeon is a flying, feather-covered creature that pecks its food with a toothless beak, an alligator is an amphibious, armored predator that crushes its prey in jaws studded with conical teeth. Despite the dispara...
January 20, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Paleo Poetry by Charles H. Sternberg
A Story of the Past, or A Romance of Science is a very unusual book. In it readers will find frequent references to Jesus, the American West, fossil mammals, and extinct marine reptiles, often all in the same poem. Who else but one of the greatest fossil hunters who ever lived, Charles H. Sternberg...
January 15, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Dinosaur Sighting: a Superior Dinosaur
Of all the places I would expect to find a dinosaur sculpture, the north shore of Lake Superior just outside of Duluth, Minnesota would be one of the last on the list. As shown by this photo sent in by reader Mark Ryan, though, there are definitely dinosaurs there. Among the group of stylized metal...
January 13, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Face-to-Face With Dinosaurs in the "Morning of Time"
Even though there has never been any evidence that humans and non-avian dinosaurs lived alongside one another (the first hominids, after all, did not evolve until about 6 million years ago), there have been many fictional stories that pit "cavemen" against dinosaurs. Indeed, it is difficult to look...
January 12, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
New Web Site Has the Scoop on Pterosaurs
The great thing about the Internet is that it makes it easy to find out about just about anything. The drawback is that not all that information is accurate. Sites like Wikipedia are handy but are only as good as the information being put into them, but if you are a fan of the prehistoric flying re...
January 11, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Poor, Dumb, Infected Dinosaurs
Every bone tells a story. It is easy to think of a bone as a static thing, a part of an animal's body that does not change, but in truth bones are constantly being remodeled throughout the life of an organism. This was true of dinosaurs just as much as any vertebrate living today, and the fossil bo...
January 08, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Drawing an Allosaurus, Step by Step
About a year ago I tried my hand at drawing a Tyrannosaurus according to a how-to DVD. I thought it wasn't too shabby, but to paraphrase the response of my editor, it seems that my talents are better suited to writing.Artist Ronnie Tucker, however, is more skilled with pencil and paper than I, and ...
January 07, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Dinosaur Sighting: Roadside Dinosaurs in Israel
Most of the Dinosaur Sightings featured on this blog come from the United States, but I am always pleased when a submission comes in from abroad. Our latest photo comes from Jeremy Price and his son Eitan, who spotted this pair of dinosaurs outside of a restroom at a roadside attraction along Isra...
January 06, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Mary Anning, an Amazing Fossil Hunter
Though she had little formal education, Mary taught herself geology, paleontology, anatomy and scientific illustration, and her finds were key to the development of the theory of evolution
January 05, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Top Dino Discoveries of 2009
It has been a good year for dinosaurs. Every month multiple new, interesting discoveries have been announced that either introduce us to new dinosaurs or tell us something new about those already familiar to us. I have been able to cover only a small fraction of all these stories here on Dinosaur T...
December 31, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
