Reconstruction of Regaliceratops peterhewsi (Julius T. Csotonyi. Courtesy of Royal Tyrrell Museum) Another new dinosaur has been described.  This one is called Regaliceratops peterhewsi.  CBC Radio’s Quicks & Quarks show has an interview with Dr. Caleb Brown, a paleontologist and Betsy Nichols PostDoctoral Research Fellow at the Royal Tyrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta, CA.  The animal, a ceratopsian, lived about 68 million years ago, and has been nicknamed Hellboy.  The name stems partially from its appearance and partially because of the hard rock in which it was entombed.  The original paper appeared in Current Biology.  

Soft tissue preservation in dinosaur bones is not a new topic.  CBC Quirks & Quarks has a segment on a paper that appeared in Nature Communications back in January.  Using a range of tools that are currently used to study nanostructures in living animals, the researchers, from the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London, think they have found blood cells and collagen remnants.  The best part of all this is that this whole field of paleo-bone histology is just getting started.  Who knows what will be discovered next…  Maybe, they can shed some light on that ago…

When viewed closely, most pieces of coal are composed of alternating bands of bright and dull material. Image by West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey. Geology.com has an interesting article about coal.   Here in Illinois, we have a huge amount of it.  Most, if not all, is from the Pennsylvanian and is closely associated with Mazon Creek fossils.  Next time you’re out hunting for fossils and you come across a lump of coal.  Have a closer look and appreciate the hidden beauty of coal!    

A distant relative of our friend T-rex has been discovered in Wales.  The animal lived about 201 million years ago and could represent the earliest dinosaur from the Jurassic.  It was found by brothers Nick and Rob Hanigan from Llantwit Major while fossil hunting along the Lavernock beach in the Vale of Glamorgan. The “discovery of a lifetime” was made by Nick and Rob Hanigan from Llantwit Major while fossil hunting along the Lavernock beach in the Vale of Glamorgan after storms in spring 2014. After a cliff fall on the beach, they spotted several loose blocks containing part of the…

A prehistoric turducken, of sort, was discovered in Egypt.  The story is in the “Weird News” column over at Huffington Post.  That really is weird! It’s like a prehistoric turducken, but on a colossal scale: Scientists in Egypt have discovered the remains of a 40 million-year-old whale with another whale inside it, and researchers believe the two were then eaten by sharks. The smaller whale found inside the fossils of the 60-foot-long basilosaurus may have been a fetus. However, basilosaurus had some pretty unusual dining habits. Like today’s orcas, this fierce and ancient predator was known to eat other whales,…

There is an interesting story over at the Washington Post about a 132 year old rifle that was discovered in Nevada’s Great Basin National Park.  Archaeologists were conducting surveys, when they came upon the rifle, which was propped up against a juniper tree. Archaeologists conducting surveys in Nevada’s Great Basin National Park came upon a gun frozen in time:  a .44-40 Winchester rifle manufactured in 1882. It was propped up against a juniper tree. “They just happened to notice the rifle under the tree,” said Nichole Andler, Basin National Park’s chief of interpretation. The public will get a chance to…

The discovery last year of Kulindadromeus, which had both scales and feathers, prompted speculation that this may have been the case for all dinosaurs. Photograph: Andrey Atuchin /SWNS.com Did dinosaurs have a feathery covering?  That’s what a story in The Guardian discusses.  In recent years, researchers have been discovering more and more evidence that feathers were more common than previously thought.  However, a new study led by Nicolas Campione of the  Uppsala University in Sweden shows that most of the dinosaurs were probably covered in scales.  The original paper was published in the journal Biology Letters of the Royal Society.…

The tongue worm parasite (orange) is attached to the host ostracod. (David Siveter) CBC Radio’s Quirks & Quarks has another interesting segment.  This one is about a 425 million year old parasite, a tongue worm, found attached to its host.  The host is an ostracod, which is a type of crustacean.  It was discovered in Herefordshire, England and is the first fossil of its kind.  The paper appeared in the journal Current Biology. Dr. David Siveter, Emeritus Professor of Paleontology at the University of Leicester, studied the fossil and discovered three tongue worms – one inside attached to eggs and…

(Javier Trueba / Madrid Scientific Films) CBC Radio’s Quirks & Quarks has a segment on what looks to be an ancient murder, the oldest one yet discovered.  The mystery dates back 400,000 years and even pre-dates the Neanderthal people.  The victim was found among 28 skeletons in a Spanish cave, known as the “pit of bones”.  The cause of death is unknown for most of the individuals, however one skull had wounds consistent with those caused by a spear or hand axe.  The original paper appeared in the journal PLoS One.  Here’s another story in National Geographic. The first known…

A microscopic image of the thigh bone (femur) of a dinosaur shows concentric rings. Like tree rings, they formed each year in the dinosaur’s bones during the season when resources were scarce. The rings represent unrecorded time, so an annual growth rate (dashed line in graph) is an underestimate relative to the true growth rate during the favorable growing season. Credit: Scott Hartman Science Daily has an interesting article about the metabolism of dinosaurs.  It’s an old controversy, were they cold-blooded (ectothermic) or warm-blooded (endothermic)?  The study was a re-analysis of a paper that appeared back in 2014 in the…

Phys.org has a story about the origin of sharks.  It has been thought that sharks had a more primitive beginning than other types of fish.  This was due to their distinctive, all-cartilage skeleton.  But now, a new fossil find from the Gogo in the Kimberly in Western Australia has revealed a surprise ‘missing link’ to earlier somewhat bony forms of fish.  The original paper appeared in the journal PLOS One. Published today in the scientific journal PLOS One, research by Flinders University palaeontologist Professor John Long substantially strengthens the theory that the modern shark is less primitive than previously believed. In…