The New York Times’ Trilobite column has an interesting story about a fierce crocodile that lived alongside the dinosaurs during the Cretaceous Period about 72 million years ago. Kostensuchus measured about 11½ feet long and weighed 551 pounds. The fossils were found in March 2020 in Santa Cruz, a province in Argentina. The animal was described in a paper in the journal PLOS One. While North America and Asia had their share of Cretaceous crocodiles, they were mostly from families that had evolved a semiaquatic lifestyle. But crocodiles took a different trajectory in South America and Africa, where several families walked…

SciTechDaily has a story that highlights a new dinosaur discovery that might rewrite the evolution of flight.  New research by a team led by James Napoli, from the Department of Anatomical Sciences in the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, found that some theropod dinosaurs had a bird-like carpal bone, or pisiform.  The existance of this write bone might shift views on how flight evolved.  The research was published in the journal Nature. For a long time, scientists were uncertain about the identity of a particular carpal bone in the bird wrist, until it was confirmed to be the…

The Isle a la Cache Museum in Romeoville, IL has a new exhibit “Souvenirs From the Silurian Sea: Fossils of Will County” opening on Wednesday, September 3rd, 2025.  It’s a free exhibit that runs through November 30th, 2025.  The museum is open Wednesday through Sunday from 10 AM to 4 PM.  WJOL has a nice announcement. “This is a rare opportunity to see prehistoric life up close, not just in textbooks, but through real fossils found right here in Will County,” said Jen Guest, facility supervisor at Isle a la Cache. “It’s a surprising adventure for all ages.” Visitors will…

LiveScience has a story about a new species of plesiosaur.  Plesionectes longicollum, which means to “long-necked near-swimmer”, lived during the early Toarcian age (183 million to 174 million years ago), which is the early Jurassic.  The fossil specimen measures about 10 feet long and was found in 1978 from a quarry in Germany, part of the Posidonia Shale formation, known for its “exquisitely preserved fossils.”  Details were published in the journal PeerJ. “This specimen has been in collections for decades, but previous studies never fully explored its distinctive anatomy,” study lead author Sven Sachs, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Natural History…