Best of the Worst Roadside Dinosaurs

From New York to California, America’s roads are haunted by bad dinosaurs

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Stephen Fry Inside the World of Dinosaurs

British actor Stephen Fry narrates a new interactive dinosaur encyclopedia

After decades of space exploration, there are now more than 500,000 pieces of artificial debris greater than half an inch in size.

Space Garbage: The Dark Cloud Above

A mass of debris from satellites and space missions is orbiting our planet—and it may be growing all the time

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This Week’s Breathtaking Aurora Borealis

Recent solar storms have triggered northern lights of unprecedented color and intensity

A parent Massospondylus attends to its hatchlings

Paleontologists Uncover Oldest Known Dinosaur Nest Site

The “lay ‘em and leave ‘em” strategy might not have been the ancestral state for these dinosaurs

The reconstructed shoulder and arm of Majungasaurus

Fearsome Dinosaur Had Ridiculously Short Arms

The forelimbs of this animal look like an evolutionary joke

A dragon statue in Ljubljana, Slovenia

Ask Smithsonian 2017

Where Did Dragons Come From?

In honor of the Year of the Dragon, we take a look at some potential inspirations for the dragon myth

A clutch of sauropod eggs at the geothermal nesting site in Argentina. Eggs are outlined by black dashes.

Some Dinosaurs Used Natural Heat for Their Nests

The sauropod site may have resembled Yellowstone National Park, with geysers, hot springs and mud pots

The C/2011 N3 comet is caught on a coronagraph, an image that blocks out the sun to reveal its corona.

A Comet’s Death Caught on Camera

Comets dive into the sun frequently, but previous ones had been too small and dim to be seen against the glaring backdrop

One of the sad dinosaurs at Stewart's Petrified Wood near Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona.

What Are the Worst Roadside Dinosaurs?

The concrete and plastic dinosaurs beside America’s highways are often sad, malformed creatures. What do you think is the best of the worst?

Ceratosaurus nasicornis at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

The Largest Ceratosaurus

How many species of this rare, ornamented genus were there?

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Inside Dr. Who’s Dinosaur Invasion

Dr. Who sported some of the worst dinosaurs on television. This video explains why

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Nine Ways to Lure a Lover, Orchid-Style

Beauty, mystery and deceit—the Smithsonian’s collection of nearly 8,000 live orchids has it all

The hips of the ornithischian dinosaur Stegosaurus (left) and the saurischian dinosaur Allosaurus (right)

Dinosaur Division is All in the Hips

Thanks to one 1888 paper, paleontologists still divide dinosaurs between the bird-hips and lizard-hips

A specimen of the non-avian dinosaur Sinosauropteryx, showing the ruff of simple protofeathers along the back and tail.

Dinosaurs of a Feather

Some researchers insist that birds are not dinosaurs, but do they have any evidence?

Perceptions of wealth are often more complicated than just net worth, a new study indicates.

Money is in the Eye of the Beholder

A new study shows that our perceptions of wealth don’t always match up with reality

Triceratops was one of the last dinosaurs. What would the descendents of this ceratopsid look like if they were alive today?

The Dinosaurs That Never Were

If the non-avian dinosaurs hadn’t died out 65 million years ago, what would they look like today?

Cro-Magnon was one of the first fossils of an ancient human ever discovered.

Meet the Contenders for Earliest Modern Human

Scientists have several candidates for the title of earliest Homo sapiens

Tyrannosaurus faces off against Triceratops at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. Some early 20th century paleontologists thought the size and weapons of these creatures indicated that dinosaurs were degenerates due for extinction.

The Way of the Dinosaur

“Going the way of the dinosaur” is a popular phrase, but one drawn from bizarre 20th century ideas that dinosaurs were due for an extinction

Could the Death Star Destroy a Planet?

Students in England concluded that the Star Wars space station could easily have destroyed an Earth-like planet

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