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Paleontologists

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The Double Dinosaur Brain Myth

Contrary to a popular myth, dinosaurs didn’t have butt brains

A fragment of the lower jaw of Megalosaurus, the first dinosaur to be scientifically named in 1824. Long before this, though, people puzzled about the nature of dinosaur bones.

A Brief History of Hidden Dinosaurs

Even though scientific interest in dinosaurs is relatively new, our species have been puzzling about the prehistoric creatures for centuries

A reconstructed Acrocanthosaurus at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

In the Steps of a Hungry Acrocanthosaurus

A special set of footprints may record a dinosaur attack in progress

Disease has often been blamed for the extinction of the last dinosaurs, such as this Edmontosaurus at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles.

Disease and the Demise of the Dinosaurs

Cataracts, slipped discs, epidemics, glandular problems and even a loss of sex drive have all been proposed as the reason non-avian dinosaurs perished

A reconstruction of the Edmontosaurus skull LACM 23502, with a beak based on a natural mold.

Shovel-Beaked, Not Duck-Billed

A rare fossil shows that duck-billed dinosaurs were not so duck-like after all

Even familiar dinosaurs, such as this Allosaurus at Utah's Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry, still raise many questions about dinosaur biology.

The Dinosaurs They are a-Changin’

Paleontologists are describing new dinosaurs at an unprecedented pace, but there’s much we still don’t know about the biology of these animals

The original AMNH mount of Brontosaurus, reconstructed in 1905

Brontosaurus Returns

Paleontologists may have killed the dinosaur a century ago, but it was revitalized in the King Kong remake

A gliding Stegosaurus

The Fantastic Gliding Stegosaurus

Stegosaurus was as aerodynamic as a brick, but one writer thought the prickly dinosaur used its huge plates for gliding

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Tarbosaurus on Trial

An almost certainly poached tyrannosaur skeleton kicks off a legal dispute over Mongolia’s fossil heritage

The microstructure of Smets' "dinosaur" revealed the fossils to be petrified wood.

The Demise of a Wooden Dinosaur

A Victorian-era naturalist thought he’d found a new kind of dinosaur, and he threw a fit when other naturalists disagreed

Camarasaurus, as envisioned by Erwin Christman

Wading With Sauropods

Before the Dinosaur Renaissance moved sauropods out of the swamps, paleontologists recognized that some of these dinosaurs were better suited to land

The original AMNH mount of Brontosaurus, reconstructed in 1905

Why Brontosaurus Still Matters

Though it never actually existed, Brontosaurus is an icon of just how much dinosaurs have changed during the past century

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Arthur Conan Doyle’s Ethereal Dinosaurs

Prior to the 1925 debut of The Lost World, the novelist pulled a stunt to make people think dinosaurs might still be alive in a distant jungle

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Excavating the River of Giants

Rare footage shows how paleontologist R.T. Bird diverted a river to excavate a set of Texas dinosaur tracks in 1938

The backside of Diplodocus, photographed at the Utah Field House of Natural History

How Did the Biggest Dinosaurs Get it On?

Of all the dinosaur mysteries, how dinosaurs like the 23-ton Apatosaurus mated is one of the most perplexing

A restoration of Hypselosaurus, a sauropod dinosaur which may have laid some of the eggs found in Cretaceous rock of Southern France.

Who Was the First to Discover Dinosaur Eggs?

Despite an immense wave of publicity heralding the discovery of dinosaur eggs in 1923, French paleontologists had discovered them decades earlier

A restoration of the Cretaceous snake Sanajeh about to gulp down a baby sauropod.

Scrambled Eggs and the Demise of the Dinosaurs

Did egg-eating lizards and snakes contribute to the dinosaurs’ extinction?

Ceratosaurus nasicornis at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

The Largest Ceratosaurus

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

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

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

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