Paleontology
Mysterious Origins for Important Skull
Last month I wrote about a potentially new ankylosaur, Minotaurasaurus, that had been described in the journal Current Science. Unfortunately, paleontologists were unable to precisely determine how old the fossil is or where it exactly came from. The scientists who reported on it did not dig it out...
February 03, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Land of the Lost Trailer -- T. Rex is Looking Good
Last night, most people were watching the Super Bowl to see whether the Cardinals or the Steelers would take home the Vince Lombardi Trophy, but I was more interested in the commercials. Among the slew of advertisements was the first trailer for the upcoming Land of the Lost movie;I will have to wa...
February 02, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Hot and Cold Running Dinosaurs
Earlier this month I wrote about a new scientific paper that described an ancient, dinosaur-filled habitat that existed in what is now Siberia. Commenter Naruto raised a point of confusion to many;
I think there is a mistake in this article. The mistake is at the second paragraph, on the last line....
January 30, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Blog Carnival, Edition #4: Texas Troubles, Big Dinosaurs, and a Danny McBride Interview
Name that Fossil! Dinochick challenges readers to identify this specimen found in central Tennessee. Smart money suggests that it’s either a Cruziana or Larry King.Lone Star Dispute: Bob’s Dinosaur Blog reports that the official state dinosaur of Texas is experiencing an identity crisis. “According...
January 29, 2009 |
By Mark Strauss
Battle of the Giant Theropods
Who was the biggest predator of them all? For as long as I can remember, Tyrannosaurus rex has been the heavyweight champion of the meat-eating dinosaurs. But its reign would not go unchallenged. Starting in the mid-1990s, excavations in South America and Africa revealed creatures like Giganotosaur...
January 28, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
A Tiny Fossilized Treasure
On July 23, 2005, amateur paleontologist Tony Morris was looking for fossils with friends in a part of Oklahoma where a mining operation had uncovered a wealth of fossil fragments. He found a piece of rock with a jaw sticking out of it. Could there be more of the skull of this creature inside the r...
January 26, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
If You Found a Fossil on the Ground, What Would You Do?
The recent case of amateur paleontologist Nathan Murphy illustrates how complicated fossil-collecting can be. Murphy ran a for-profit organization called the Judith River Dinosaur Institute, which took paying customers to dig at fossil sites. According to a New York Times report, Murphy had an arra...
January 23, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Minotaurasaurus: A New Ankylosaur?
During the Late Cretaceous, 100 to 65 million years ago, the area now known as the Gobi Desert was a dangerous place, stalked by small hunters like Velociraptor and massive tyrannosaurs like Tarbosaurus. But one group of herbivorous dinosaurs appears to have done well in this harsh place. Several k...
January 22, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Edward Hitchcock’s Poetic Words
In 1836, the Amherst College geologist and natural theologian Edward Hitchcock published a description of strange, three-toed tracks found in the blood-red sandstone of the Connecticut Valley. The tracks were well-known to local residents; some members of the Lenape tribe believed that they had bee...
January 21, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Cell Phones at Field Camp
Even though the basics of finding fossils in the field has not changed much since the dawn of paleontology, today’s paleontologists have a few advantages over their 19th and early 20th century counterparts. Aside from being able to drive over tough terrain and transport large slabs of bones with he...
January 16, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Buddy’s Lost World
When new dinosaur documentaries and feature films come out, lots of dino-fans debate the accuracy of the re-created beasts. How the dinosaurs held their hands, what size they were, whether they were covered with feathers or not; it’s all grist for the mill among those who have carefully studied pal...
January 14, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
How did the Siberian Dinosaurs Die?
Imagine, for a moment, an ideal habitat for a dinosaur. What does it look like? Many people think of them crashing through tropical forests and wallowing in swamps, but in truth dinosaurs inhabited a wide range of ecological settings. That includes the temperate forests of the cold northern latitud...
January 12, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
New Song, Same Mistakes
When I first saw the video for “The Dinosaur Song” created for the PBS kids' show Big Green Rabbit, I really liked it. It was a catchy tune and the animation was good... but then little things started to bother me.In fact, you don’t get more than 15 seconds into the song before seeing a pliosaur (l...
January 09, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Dinosaur Tracking: How Did the Siberian Dinosaurs Die?
New research from a Russian site suggests that some dinosaurs were able to thrive in very cold temperatures
January 09, 2009 |
By Maura McCarthy
The Tell-Tale Armor
Even though museums all over the world are filled with dinosaur skeletons, it is very rare for paleontologists to find a complete, articulated specimen. Scraps and fragments of dinosaur bone are far more common, and often only the hardest parts of the skeleton become fosslized. In the case of the a...
January 08, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
A Giant Winged Platypus?
Announcements of new fossil discoveries are always exciting, and remains found from a site in eastern Shandong Province in China are no exception. Among the recovered fossils is part of the six-feet-wide skull of a horned dinosaur like Styracosaurus as well as bones of other dinosaur types seen fro...
January 02, 2009 |
By Brian Switek
Our Relatives, the Dinosaurs
When visitors stroll among the remains of ancient beasts in the dinosaur halls of museums, they often focus on how bizarre they were. With the exception of the more bird-like forms, there is nothing like them alive today: immense sauropods with tails and necks that stretched to the horizon, armor-p...
December 30, 2008 |
By Brian Switek
Blog Carnival, Edition #3
Scavenging Rights: Over at Archosaur Musings, David Hone muses over a common puzzle for paleontologists: the discovery of an otherwise intact skeleton that has a few bits mysteriously missing. One reason? In any ecosystem (whether Jurassic or contemporary), animal corpses are fodder for scavengers,...
December 29, 2008 |
By Mark Strauss
Not a Creature Was Stirring, Not Even a Microraptor
It’s traditional to leave out cookies and milk for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, but what do you do if Santasaurus is coming to town? I guess that depends on what kind of dinosaur he is. If he’s a predatory theropod, it might be a good idea to pick up some ground chuck and hide the cat, but if he’s...
December 24, 2008 |
By Brian Switek
Land of the Lost Returns: Will Ferrell, Dinosaurs and Sleestaks!
I was too young to have caught the original Land of the Lost television series, but I do remember the 90’s Saturday morning revamp. Who could forget the adventures of the Porter family in an alternate world stalked by dinosaurs and only helped by their cavewoman friend Christa and ape-man Stink? Ac...
December 23, 2008 |
By Brian Switek
