Tag archives for dinosaurs
Posted by Dino-fanatic author Brian Switek grew up in New Jersey, dreaming of Jurassic celebrities like Stegosaurus and Brontosaurus (now known as Apatosaurus). An imaginary pet Brontosaurus figured in carefully crafted crayon portraits of his family. He discusses his passion in the new book My Beloved Brontosaurus. Switek, who writes the Laelaps blog for National Geographic online,…
Posted by The top 10 new stories on our radar today: Small eruptions have been detected at a volcano in Alaska, moles in the UK are helping archaeologists dig up ancient Roman artifacts, and…
On our radar today: The Cassini spacecraft has snapped a photo of an enormous hurricane raging on Saturn, a lost Egyptian city has been revealed in new photos and video, and…
Posted by In 1993, as a dinosaur-obsessed 13-year-old, I saw Jurassic Park in surround sound—the first movie released with the technology. For months I’d anticipated the film: reading fan magazines, making clay dinosaurs, and of course rereading Michael Crichton’s best-selling novel. This week, nearly 20 years later, I saw the film in IMAX with a new twist…
The Sixth Great Extinction: A Silent Extermination
Posted by IZILWANE on March 28, 2012 
LONESOME GEORGE Lonesome George is a large, mud-loving Pinta tortoise (Geochelone elephantopus abingdoni), living out his long life in the Galapagos Islands. In 1971, George was found alone on Pinta Island and taken to the Charles Darwin Research Station, where scientists theorized that he was the last of his subspecies on the planet. When he dies,…
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Dr. Phil Manning answers questions about his recent work showing that x-rays can reveal information about the colors of fossilized creatures, continuing to shed light on an aspect of the ancient world scientists once believed to be lost forever.
Posted by The last four decades have witnessed a revolution in the study of dinosaurs. Scientists no longer examine just the structure of the skeletons and the relationships of these fascinating animals, but have started probing issues of their biology. How did dinosaurs move? How did they feed? What was their circulatory system like? How did they…
In recent decades paleontologists have been able to document in ever-greater detail the evolution of birds from small predatory dinosaurs. After establishing the broader outlines of this transition, researchers are now focusing on specific adaptations. It is widely believed that birds have no or at most a poorly developed sense of smell. A new study…
What’s in an animal’s scientific name? Tributes to dead presidents, professions of love, and sometimes even adolescent humor.
Posted by Ancestors of dinosaurs and other animals from the Haţeg Basin in Transylvania may have arrived from what was once a continent of Asiamerica by “island hopping,” suggests a fossil discovery published today. By Hans-Dieter Sues Islands are wonderful natural laboratories for the study of evolutionary change and for that reason have long attracted the attention…
By Hans-Dieter Sues A lively debate continues regarding the cause(s) of the extinction of dinosaurs (other than their descendants, birds), along with many other organisms, at the end of the Cretaceous Period some 65 million years ago. While this subject has tremendous appeal, the biologically interesting issue of the origin and early evolution of these…
The 230-million-year-old animal known as Azendohsaurus just shed its dinosaur affiliation, the American Museum of Natural History and the University of California in Santa Barbara announced today. “A careful new analysis of Azendohsaurus madagaskarensis–this time based on the entire skull rather than on just teeth and jaws–aligns this 230-million-year-old animal with a different and very…
By Hans-Dieter Sues In recent years, discoveries of a spectacular array of Jurassic and Early Cretaceous “missing links,” mostly from China, have allowed scientists to map the evolutionary transition from small predatory dinosaurs to birds in astonishing detail. The ancient lake deposits of the Yixian Formation in the northeastern corner of China have yielded a…
The city-size asteroid that slammed into Earth with the force of a million nuclear bombs is what snuffed out the dinosaurs and half of all other species on Earth 65 million years ago, an international group of scientists who reviewed all available evidence said today. The asteroid that ended the 160 million-year reign of the dinosaurs was about 10,000…
Raptors have powerful taloned feet they use to seize and immobilize prey. By studying how talons vary in length and curvature of the claws, and comparing that with how different raptors kill their prey, researchers at Montana State University are hoping to get new insights into how dinosaurs with similar feet hunted and ate. “A journey…
A fly that buzzed around during the time of dinosaurs is being described as a new family, genus and species of fly never before observed. This artist’s rendering of a 100-million-year old insect shows the unusual horn on its head topped by three eyes. Image by George Poinar/Courtesy OSU “A single, incredibly well-preserved specimen of…
The city-size rock that impacted Earth sixty-five million years ago, in what is now Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula at a site known as Chicxulub, may not have been the main cause of the great extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs and as much as 80 percent of the rest of life on the planet. Instead,…
Nut-Cracking Dinosaur Had Parrot-Like Beak
Posted by Ford Cochran on June 18, 2009 Polly want a triceratops? Probably not. But University of Chicago paleontologist and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Paul Sereno reports this week in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B that a dinosaur whose 110-million-year-old skull was found in Mongolia‘s Gobi desert ate nuts and seeds using a beak like a parrot’s. Full story in National…
Photo copyright Project Exploration, all rights reserved Among the thousands of students participating in the Indiana Dunes BioBlitz was a small group from Project Exploration. Founded in 1999 by paleontologist Paul Sereno and educator Gabrielle Lyon to make science accessible, Chicago-based Project Exploration inspires minority youth and girls with the wonders of science and discovery.…
Crown of the Continent
Posted by Amy Bucci of NG Staff on May 12, 2009 We were checking out the guide for Crown of the Continent, a region spanning the U.S.-Canada border and surrounding Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park in southwestern Alberta, southeastern British Columbia, and northwestern Montana. The site’s a compendium of the best parks and wilderness areas, hiking and skiing trails, restaurants, lodges, festivals, and more, with native perspectives…
Posted by It’s our closest neighbor in the solar system and the only one we’ve set human feet on so far. But there’s still plenty of mystery surrounding our orbital partner, the moon. —Image courtesy NASA Perhaps one of the biggest questions is why we have a lone natural satellite, and a pretty big one at that.…
As luck would have it, the weather just did not feel like playing nice with me today. I was super excited to see the rain clear up over Washington, D.C., this morning, and I got a couple nice peeks of tonight’s biggest full moon of the year as I was walking home. By the time…
Just about every house has a room where projects go to die. The old computer that you were going to refurbish and give to charity, that set of fabric swatches that were meant to be a quilt, your brief and ill-advised fling with oil painting—all the remnants of things that could have been, but were…
3-D computer rendering courtesy Pipestone Creek Dinosaur Project Fossils of an entire herd of dinosaurs that died in a flood or some other catastrophe 73 million years ago in what today is Alberta, Canada, have been named after the science teacher that found them. Pachyrhinosaurus lakustai is the name of the new species, Philip Currie, a…
