Paleontology
Christopher Lee Doesn't Know Much About Dinosaurs
I can't say I am a huge fan of British actor Christopher Lee, but he has done some good work. From his role as Lord Summerisle in the original Wicker Man to his more recent appearances as Saruman in the Lord of the Rings, he has brought a number of challenging roles to life. In his gig hosting the ...
April 15, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Did Sauropods Hold their Heads High?
In museums all over the world, skeletons of sauropod dinosaurs are reconstructed with their heads held high. It seems like the most natural position for these animals, but a short letter recently published in Science has questioned whether it is correct. According to biologist Roger Seymour, saurop...
April 14, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
The Second Secret Dinosaur War
During the 1960s, DC Comics ran a series called The War That Time Forgot. It was based on a simple concept, banking on the idea that soldiers + dinosaurs = entertaining action, but the stories quickly grew repetitive. In 2008, however, the series was rebooted, but this time the story is much strang...
April 13, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Did Juvenile Triceratops Hang Out in Gangs?
Many years ago I recall seeing an arresting illustration by paleo-artist Mark Hallett in a magazine. It was of a group of Triceratops forming a protective circle to ward off a pair of Tyrannosaurus, but I would later learn there was a substantial problem with this picture. Even though Triceratops i...
April 10, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
The Best Dinosaur Movie That Never Was
Looking back on it now, Disney's 2000 film Dinosaur was pretty impressive. It melded CGI dinosaurs with real landscapes in a convincing way and generally looked good as a film. The problem was that the film execs felt that the dinosaurs needed to talk (except for all the "bad" dinosaurs) and this m...
April 09, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Book Review: Footprints of Thunder
When I was growing up I used to watch lots of old, cheesy monster movies. None of them are what I would call classic cinema, but many fell into the "so bad it's almost good" category. The same could be said of James David's novel Footprints of Thunder.As in many B-movies, much is made of the "scien...
April 06, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Mammoths are Dwarfed by Dinosaurs in Ice Age 3
I have written about arctic dinosaurs a few times over the last several months, but I don't think this is what paleontologists are thinking of when they consider polar dinosaurs:This trailer for Ice Age 3 shows a little more of what to expect from the film than the first one, but it looks like it's...
April 02, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Dating a Dinosaur
It could certainly be said that I have a great affection for dinosaurs, but it is more of a deep fascination than what you could truly call "love." The character Melanie on the 2008 BBC series The Wrong Door, however, had a much stronger draw to dinosaurs:I am well aware that today is April 1st, bu...
April 01, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
The Dinosaur Fossil Wars
Across the American West, legal battles over dinosaur fossils are on the rise as amateur prospectors make major finds
April 2009 |
By Donovan Webster
Blog Carnival Edition #6 -- Extinction, Tokyo Museums, and the Official State Dinosaur of Texas
Visit to a Small Planet: io9 has compiled science fiction’s best dinosaur-extinction theories. (Time-traveling hunters? Alien cyborgs?) Personally, I blame Chuck Norris.: At Archosaur Musings, David Hone takes us on a grand tour of the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo: “A series of ce...
March 31, 2009 |
By Mark Strauss
All the Dinosaurs That are Fit to Print
Last weekend I had the pleasure of meeting paleobiologist Michael Brett-Surman at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. I was glad to have the chance to chat with him about dinosaurs, but I am even more pleased to pass along a wonderful resource that he has created.In the 1980s...
March 30, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Book Review: The Awesome Short Stories of "Dinosaurs"
So you have read Jurassic Park and The Lost World but are hungry for more dino-fiction. What else is there to read? There is plenty of fiction that features dinosaurs but, truth be told, much of it is not very good. (The time-traveling big game hunter genre has been worn a bit thin.) Thankfully the...
March 27, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
A Dinosaur Opera
Paleontologists have long wondered about the symphony of sounds some dinosaurs might have made, but could they have sung opera? Such an event would certainly be more interesting to me than a regular performance of Don Giovanni, and poet Katy Evans-Bush recently put her idea of a dinosaurian perform...
March 26, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
See Tyrannosaurus Take a Bite out of Alamosaurus
Earlier this week, I wrote about how the sauropod Alamosaurus lived alongside and may have been preyed upon by Tyrannosaurus. At the time I could not think of any illustrations of Tyrannosaurus going after the long-necked dinosaur, but a few readers were able to find some.Reader ian remembered seei...
March 25, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Commercial Collectors and the Plight of Paleontology
In paleontology, "amateur" can be a dirty word. Even though the term is meant to describe someone with a great affinity for a topic or activity, it all too often is used to signify a lack of knowledge, standards, or other values considered to mark professionals. This is not necessarily true, and th...
March 24, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Tyrannosaurus vs. Alamosaurus
For years, one of the cardinal sins of paleontology illustration was showing a Tyrannosaurus attacking a sauropod dinosaur. Most of the long-necked earthshakers had disappeared from North America by the time the most famous of carnivorous dinosaurs came along, and so any scene depicting them togeth...
March 23, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Tianyulong: An Unexpectedly Fuzzy Dinosaur
Over the past decade so many feathered dinosaurs have been discovered that it almost comes as no surprise when a new one is announced. What paleontologists did not expect, however, was to find "feathers" on a dinosaur that should not have had them. In a paper published this week in Nature paleontol...
March 20, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Book Review: How to Build a Dinosaur
When the film adaptation of the science fiction novel Jurassic Park premiered in the summer of 1993, scientists and the public alike wondered if it was possible to bring dinosaurs back from the dead. It was a tantalizing prospect, but the general consensus was that even if dinosaur DNA could be rec...
March 19, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
A First Grader Catches a Dino Mistake
Kids really know their dinosaurs. If you don't believe me, just try to tell a young dino-phile that the big, long-necked one is called "Brontosaurus" and you are sure to get an earful. Indeed, children can be extremely attentive in their study of the prehistoric world, and sometimes they catch mist...
March 18, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Race to the Cinema: Dinobots vs. Dinotrux
When I was very young I loved all things big and noisy. Trucks, elephants, and (of course) dinosaurs were my favorite things. Once I discovered dinosaurs my fondness for trucks faded, but I still loved dinosaur-machine hybrids like the "Dinobots" on the Transformers television show.After the succes...
March 18, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
