Paleontology
Everyone's Favorite Irradiated Dinosaur: Godzilla
In 2004, Godzilla: Final Wars was released to mark the 50th anniversary of the first on-screen appearance of the famous radioactive mutant dinosaur. Everyone knew that it would not be the last time audiences would see the monster trash Tokyo, but the studio that owned Godzilla felt that the franchi...
March 10, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Hard Economic Times Hit Dinosaur Auctions
Auctions of dinosaurs are very controversial affairs. Many of these fossils are beautiful specimens that have remained in private hands for years ("Cliff" the Triceratops is an exception). With the economic downturn, it seems that it is easier than ever to walk off with a priceless fossil for cheap...
March 09, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Getting a Handle on Theropod Arms
Earlier this week a new paper in the journal PLoS One reported a set of fossilized impressions that showed how theropod dinosaurs held their hands. Scientists were able to confirm that theropods' palms faced each other. But paleo-artist Michael Skrepnick reminded me of another trackway that confir...
March 06, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Gertie on Tour
Gertie the dinosaur, an animated Diplodocus, was one of the first dinosaurs ever to appear on film. She originally appeared as part of a vaudeville-like act in which a host would "command" Gertie to perform tricks, and she was such a hit that she was featured in a sequel.Titled "Gertie on Tour", th...
March 05, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
An Early Theropod Leaves an Impression on Scientists
If there is one top complaint paleontologists have about restorations of dinosaurs in movies, it is that the filmmakers never get the hands right. Theropods, be they Tyrannosaurus or Velociraptor, are always shown with their "palms" facing downwards—even though this would have been anatomically imp...
March 04, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
The Dinosaur Name Game
Everybody is familiar with the dinosaur Tryannosaurus rex, but did you know that it was a tyrannosaurine tyrannosaurid tyrannosauroid? It's true, and you really did read that last line correctly. Understanding how this makes any sense, though, requires a bit more explanation.Most of us are familiar...
March 03, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Tracking Dinosaurs in New Jersey
You can find dinosaurs in New Jersey, but you have to know where to look. Even though my home state is known for suburban sprawl and peculiar odors today, a little over 65 million years ago much of it was covered by the ocean. Marine crocodiles, plesiosaurs, and gigantic mosasaurs prowled the near-...
March 02, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Blog Carnival Edition #5 -- Unbelievable Organisms, Titanoboa, Animatronics and More!
Believe it or not: At Catalogue of Organisms, Christopher Taylor serves up a list of the ten “Most Unbelievable Organisms Evah!” The winning dinosaur on the list is Argentinosaurus huinculensis: “There's no other way to say it —sauropods were just stupidly huge. And Argentinosaurus was one of the m...
February 27, 2009 |
By Mark Strauss
Miragaia, the Long-Necked Stegosaur
With small heads, thick limbs, spiked tails, and backs decked with plates, stegosaurs were among the most bizarre creatures ever to have evolved. A new discovery, however, shows that some were even stranger than the weird genera already known. Yesterday a new paper in Proceedings of the Royal Socie...
February 26, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Which Dinosaur Would You Clone?
When the film adaptation of Jurassic Park came out in 1993 the idea that scientists may one day be able to clone dinosaurs had everybody talking. It is still more science fiction than science fact (check out The Science of Jurassic Park and the Lost World), but suppose for a moment that there was s...
February 25, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Dinosaurs in the Ice Age?
I have already mentioned the upcoming Land of the Lost movie a few times on this blog, but there's another dinosaur movie coming out this summer. The third installment of the Ice Age franchise is subtitled "Dawn of the Dinosaurs," and the first trailer gives us a look at how the film re-imagines Ty...
February 24, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Book Review: Feathered Dinosaurs
When paleo-artist Gregory S. Paul published Predatory Dinosaurs of the World in 1989, the idea that many theropod dinosaurs might have been covered in feathers was still controversial. The hypothesis that birds evolved from small, predatory dinosaurs was still being hotly debated, and it would be a...
February 23, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Building a Better Dinosaur
We all know dinosaurs were big, but how massive were they, exactly? A complete skeleton can give scientists a good idea of the height, length, and general size of a dinosaur, but figuring out the mass carried by those skeletal frames has been a difficult question to answer. A study just published i...
February 19, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
A New Early Dinosaur, Panphagia protos
The long-necked sauropod dinosaurs were among the most massive creatures to have ever evolved (their immensity only surpassed by the blue whale), but like all dinosaurs their early relatives were quite small. A newly announced early sauropodomorph dinosaur, Panphagia protos, is one of these early r...
February 18, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
The Sauropods of Star Wars
I have probably seen the first Star Wars film (Episode IV by George Lucas’ count) a dozen times or more, but I had never noticed the hidden sauropod in it until Matt Wedel of SV-POW! pointed it out. While the android C-3P0 wanders around the desert at the beginning of the film, the bones of a larg...
February 13, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Darwin and the Dinosaurs
Today marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, whose book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection forever changed our understanding of the natural world. Although his father wanted him to become a surgeon or a clergyman, as a young man Darwin was more intent on col...
February 12, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Give Me a Mesozoic Mind
Long before Walking With Dinosaurs made CGI dinosaurs television stars, most of the dinosaurs on television were models, puppets, or hand-drawn cartoons. One kid-oriented documentary, Dinosaurs!: A Fun-Filled Trip Back in Time, featured all three methods of bringing dinosaurs back to life and i...
February 10, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Abel’s Tyrannosaurus
Perhaps no illustrations of Tyrannosaurus rex are as famous as the paintings of it made by Charles R. Knight at the beginning of the 20th century. Even though they are outdated, Knight’s paintings are still widely reprinted and cherished for their artistic detail. There are plenty of other illustra...
February 06, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Triceratops v. Triceratops
Every dinosaur enthusiast can immediately recognize Triceratops by its bony frill and three horns, but what did it actually use those horns for? The horns might have been used for defense against predators, for display, in combat between rival Triceratops, or even all three, but it has been difficu...
February 05, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Superman vs. the Arctic Giant
Twelve years before Godzilla first stomped across the screen, the animators of Fleischer Studios set the iconic hero Superman against a “Tyrannosaurus” that threatened the citizens of Metropolis. In the cartoon “The Arctic Giant,” a dragon-like creature found frozen in Siberia is transported to t...
February 04, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
