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Restoring Nedoceratops: Gored by a Horned Rival?
What is Nedoceratops? That depends on who you ask. The single known skull could represent a transitional growth stage between Triceratops and Torosaurus head shapes in a single species of dinosaur, or it might be a unique species of horned dinosaur that lived alongside its better-known relatives.T...
March 11, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
Hadrosaurus Was Real, After All
Described in 1858, the partial skeleton of Hadrosaurus foulkii was one of the most important dinosaur discoveries ever made. At that time, the few known dinosaurs were represented by a collection of scraps—paltry fragments that allowed paleontologists to reconstruct them first as giant lizards, an...
February 24, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
What Do We Really Know About Utahraptor?
When it was released in 1993, Jurassic Park turned Velociraptor into a household name. Agile and cunning, it was a type of predatory dinosaur theater audiences hadn't seen before. But paleontologists knew the movie's raptors were drawn with a bit of artistic license. For one thing, the dinosaurs h...
February 22, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
150 Years of Archaeopteryx
Over the past fifteen years, paleontologists have described more than twenty species of feathered dinosaurs. Even dinosaurs once thought to have dry, scaly skin, such as Velociraptor, have turned out to have feathers. But paleontologists have actually known of at least one feathered dinosaur since ...
February 16, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
Marine Archaeologists Find Shipwreck Linked to Moby Dick
George Pollard Jr. was not a very lucky sea captain. In 1819, he became captain of the whaling ship Essex, out of Nantucket, Massachusetts, and headed for the Pacific Ocean. Just four days out, though, a storm struck and damaged the ship. Still, Pollard pressed on, rounding Cape Horn in January 182...
February 15, 2011 |
By Sarah Zielinski
A Robot That Tells Jokes
The robot takeover steadily approaches: They're now figuring out humor. Carnegie Mellon Ph.D. student Heather Knight, who calls herself a "social roboticist," has created Data, an adorable robot who not only tells jokes but learns from the audience response and then adjusts its comedy routine. Data...
February 02, 2011 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Footsteps of a Dinosaur Deity
In 1999, construction workers creating a highway from Tibet's Bangda Airport to Changdu County uncovered a set of enormous tracks. They had been left more than 160 million years ago by a large sauropod dinosaur, but the local Tibetan people had other interpretations. Some believed that the tracks h...
February 01, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
The Great Triceratops Debate Continues
What is Nedoceratops hatcheri? That depends on whom you ask.For over 120 years the problematic skull of this horned dinosaur has been bounced around the literature under different names and attributions. While it was originally described as a distinct genus, Diceratops, some paleontologists later ...
January 31, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
Edgar Allan Poe and the World of Astronomy
I've read my share of short stories by Edgar Allan Poe, but I was nonetheless intrigued by a caption in an article in the latest Smithsonian special issue, Mysteries of the Universe. It read: "The hollow Earth theory inspired authors from Edgar Rice Burroughs to Edgar Allan Poe." I knew that Poe, l...
January 19, 2011 |
By Sarah Zielinski
The Tangled History of Connecticut's Anchisaurus
East Coast dinosaurs are relatively rare finds, often because the geological formations in which they rest have been built over. Dinosaurs surely remain to be found under parking lots, housing developments and city streets, and one of the now-lost dinosaur quarries is located in Manchester, Connec...
January 13, 2011 |
By Brian Switek
Finding Science in the Art of Arcimboldo
On a recent trip to the National Gallery of Art, I stopped in to see the Arcimboldo exhibit, which we feature in the magazine this month. When I saw the images in print, I had been fascinated by their weirdness—the artist made faces and heads out of compilations of images of fruit, flowers, books o...
January 07, 2011 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Looking Forward to the International Year of Chemistry
The United Nations has dubbed 2011 the International Year of Chemistry, with the unifying theme "Chemistry—our life, our future."The goals of IYC2011 are to increase the public appreciation of chemistry in meeting world needs, to encourage interest in chemistry among young people, and to generate...
December 30, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
"Capitalsaurus," A D.C. Dinosaur
When I think of North American dinosaurs, my mind immediately jumps to the impressive giants like Diplodocus and Tyrannosaurus scattered in rock formations around the West. But there were East Coast dinosaurs, too. One of them, an enigmatic creature discovered at the close of the 19th century, even...
December 28, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Top Dinosaur Books of 2010
Another year, another spate of dinosaur books. The following is a brief review of the major dinosaur and dinosaur-related books I reported on during the past year (plus one extra that I have not yet reviewed but that no "best of 2010 dinosaur books" list could be without):Barnum Brown: The Man Who ...
December 27, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Juravenator: Germany's Other Feathered Dinosaur
In 1861, as debates about evolution were brewing among naturalists, two important skeletons were discovered from the Late Jurassic limestone quarries of Germany. Both would be relevant to ideas about how birds evolved. Although not recognized as such until the late 20th century, Archaeopteryx was t...
December 17, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
What Do We Know About Spinosaurs?
When I was a kid, Spinosaurus was one of my favorite dinosaurs. There was something so wonderfully odd about a massive predator with a sail on its back, but the trouble was that no one had a good idea what this animal looked like.Spinosaurs have been known to paleontologists since 1820. The troubl...
December 14, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Caroline Herschel: Assistant or Astronomer?
After a recent visit to the National Air and Space Museum's "Explore the Universe" exhibit, a local astronomy post-doc, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, wrote the following about one of the displays:magine my dismay when I got to the section about Caroline and William Herschel, a sister-brother team of a...
December 08, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Thomas Henry Huxley and the Dinobirds
Evolution never got much time in my elementary school science classes. When the topic came up, inevitably near the end of the term, the standard, pre-packaged historical overview came along with it. Charles Darwin was the first person to come up with the idea of evolution, and, despite the ravings ...
December 07, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
A "Perverted" View of Bird Evolution
Among the many recurring themes on this blog, the evolution of birds from feathered maniraptoran dinosaurs is probably the most prevalent. Hardly a month goes by without a new study relevant to this major evolutionary transition, and as paleontologists discover more they continue to find that many ...
November 30, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Rare Science Books up for Auction Next Week
Are you having difficulty figuring out what to buy that special someone? Do you have $600,000 to $800,000 on hand? Well, then you can bid on a first edition of Galileo's Sidereus nuncius (Starry Messenger), which is just one lot in next week's auction "Beautiful Evidence: The Library of Edward Tuft...
November 22, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
