Return of the Sandpiper

Thanks to the Delaware Bay's horseshoe crabs, the tide may be turning for an imperiled shorebird
October 2009 | By Abigail Tucker

A Swim Through the Ocean's Future

Can a remote, geologically weird island in the South Pacific forecast the fate of coral reefs?
September 17, 2009 | By Christopher Pala

Were the Dinosaurs too Spiny to Survive?

The extinction of the dinosaurs has long been a mystery. Generation after generation of paleontologists have proposed different mechanisms that could have sent the dinosaurs into oblivion. Today much of the debate over their extinction centers around the damage done by a large hunk of rock from out...
August 12, 2009 | By Brian Switek

Georgia Elementary School Trades One Dinosaur for Another

If the principal of Thomson Elementary School in Thomson, Georgia, thinks she has rid her school of dinosaurs, the joke's on her. According to the McDuffie Mirror, principal Anita Cummings recently decided to paint over a dinosaur mural and remove dinosaur tracks from the school because: The dinosa...
August 04, 2009 | By Brian Switek

Filling in the Dinosaur Family Tree

Dinosaurs are often mentioned in discussions about evolution, yet many people do not know how dinosaurs evolved. That birds are living dinosaurs has been a hot topic during the last decade or so, but what about all those other dinosaurs? How did they emerge and diversify during the ancient past? In...
June 15, 2009 | By Brian Switek

A Terrifying Iguanodon

Outside of Hollywood films, dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops never coexisted with humans, and no case can be made that The Flintstones is an accurate depiction of prehistory. That has not stopped young-earth creationists from maintaining otherwise, though, and this has led to some rathe...
May 20, 2009 | By Brian Switek

Much Ado About Chicxulub

Mass extinction is an extremely difficult subject to study. It is one thing to identify a mass extinction in the fossil record, but it is quite another to be able to fully explain its cause. It is not surprising, then, that the triggers for the great mass extinctions in earth's history are hotly de...
April 29, 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

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

Stegosaurus, Rhinoceros, or Hoax?

By the time that our ape ancestors split from the line that would produce chimpanzees, which happened about 4 million to 7 million years ago, non-avian dinosaurs had been extinct for more than 58 million years. Birds, the descendants of one group of small theropod dinosaurs, are the only dinosaurs ...
March 12, 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

Wolves and the Balance of Nature in the Rockies

After years as an endangered species, the wolves are thriving again in the West, but they're also reigniting a fierce controversy
February 2009 | By Frank Clifford

Requiem for the Redhead

The next great extinction—Carrot Tops
February 2009 | By Patricia McNamee Rosenberg

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

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

Wild Goose Chase

How one man's obsession saved an "extinct" species
January 02, 2009 | By Rob R. Dunn

What Good are Dinosaurs?

Among paleontologists, there is sometimes a feeling that dinosaur research is overhyped. Later this month at the Grant Zoology museum of University College London, paleontologist Mark Carnall will deliver a talk called “Dinosaurs are Pointless.” The description of the lecture describes dinosaur doc...
November 20, 2008 | By Brian Switek

Congrats to Walter Alvarez, extinction-by-impact theorist

Walter Alvarez, the guy who figured out that dinosaurs were doomed by a massive asteroid that slammed into the Earth, just won a big prize.The prize is Earth Science's answer to the Nobel, the Vetlesen Prize.The asteroid impact set off "a giant tsunami, continent-scale wildfires, darkness, and cold...
October 16, 2008 | By Laura Helmuth

Dinosaur Extinction Theories, Part I -- Could Vitamin D Supplements Have Saved the Triceratops?

What killed the dinosaurs? Paleontologists have been pondering that question since the late 19th century, when they recognized that a mass extinction occurred at the end of the Cretaceous Period, 65 million years ago.Extinction theories have spanned the spectrum from the inspired to the bizarre. Fo...
October 08, 2008 | By Mark Strauss

Dinosaurs 3D: Giants of the Patagonia

What is it about dinosaurs that make them so compelling? Why do people, and in particular kids, throng to dinosaur exhibits and collect all manner of ancient reptile paraphernalia? Other than the bubbly, purple Barney, these creatures are fearsome with their incredible bulk, jagged teeth and armor-...
October 07, 2008 | By Smithsonian Staff

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