Tag: dinosaurs
-
Video for ESCONI April 2026 Paleontology Meeting – “Digging the Marl of the Lance Formation”
The April 2026 Paleontology Study Group Meeting featured Keith Robitschek and his presentation “Digging the Marl of the Lance Formation”.
-
The revolution in dinosaur science started 50 years ago—here’s what we have learned
Phys.org has a story about the dinosaur renaissance that started about 50 years ago. Before the research that led to the revolution in dinosaur science, dinosaurs were thought to dumb, slow, lumbering animals that went extinct because mammals were faster and smarter. Bone histology, birds as dinosaurs, feathers, lifespan, diet, and behavior are just a…
-
New ‘scimitar-crested’ Spinosaurus species discovered in the central Sahara
Phys.org has a story about a new species of spinosaurus. Spinosaurus mirabilis was found in Niger at a remote locale in the central Sahara by a team of 20 researchers led by Paul Sereno, Ph.D., Professor of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at the University of Chicago. The animal is described in the paper “Scimitar-crested Spinosaurus species from…
-
Throwback Thursday #305: The Sinclair Dinosaurs at the New York World’s Fair in 1964-1965
This is Throwback Thursday #305. In these, we look back into the past at ESCONI specifically and Earth Science in general. If you have any contributions, (science, pictures, stories, etc …), please send them to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! email:esconi.info@gmail.com. The Sinclair Oil company was formed by Harry Sinclair in 1916. The dinosaur known as “Dino” first appeared…
-
Netflix: “The Dinosaurs”… Coming March 6th, 2026
Netflix has a new dinosaur documentary “The Dinosaurs”, which premiers on March 6th, 2026. The trailer is on Youtube. Welcome to The Dinosaurs – an epic journey into a lost world. From executive producer Steven Spielberg, Amblin Entertainment, and the award‑winning team behind Our Planet, this groundbreaking documentary series follows the rise and fall of…
-
Throwback Thursday #303: Looking Back At ESCONI For February 2026
A look back at February 1956, 1976, and 2001
-
PNAS: Can paleontologists pinpoint the dawn of the dinosaurs?
PNAS has an interesting news feature about the origin of the dinosaurs. When and where did they first appear? Evidence points to an amimal known as Lewisuchus admixtus that lived in what is now Argentina about 236 million years ago. There’s a small, but fierce, jawbone in Argentina’s national natural science museum in Buenos Aires.…
-
You Wouldn’t Want to Butt Heads With This Small Dinosaur
The New York Times’ Trilobites column has a story about the discovery of a new dinosaur in Mexico. The animal, Xenovenator espinosai, was discovered in 2000 in the Cerro del Pueblo formation in northeastern Mexico by Martha Aguillón-Martinez. It lived about about 73 million years ago when the area was a marshy coastline. The animal’s…
-
PBS: Inside the Vault Where They Keep the Dinosaur Apocalypse
PBS has an interesting video about the K-Pg extinction. Check it out! A giant asteroid impact ended the age of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. How did this mass extinction play out, moment by moment? In this video we meet a geologist who has explored the asteroid crater and learn what the rocks tell…
-
Throwback Thursday #301: Century of Progress – Sinclair Exhibit
This is Throwback Thursday #301. In these, we look back into the past at ESCONI specifically and Earth Science in general. If you have any contributions, (science, pictures, stories, etc …), please send them to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! email:esconi.info@gmail.com. Ran across an interesting post on the Original Chicago Group on Facebook last month (December 2025). In…
-
This Dinosaur Really Knew How to Get a Grip
The New York Times Trilobites column has an interesting story about a tiny egg stealing dinosaur that lived about 67 million years ago in what is now Mongolia. Manipulonyx reshetovi had a strange spike-covered hand, which provided its genus name meaning “manipulating claw”. The animal’s fossil was discovered in 1979 and described in the journal…
-
NPR Short Wave: The dinosaur secrets found in the archives of a natural history museum
NPR’s Short Wave show has an episode about dinosaurs at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. What happens behind the scenes of a dinosaur exhibit? Short Wave host Regina Barber got to find out … by taking a trip to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. In the museum’s basement, she talked to…
-
WHY DINOSAURS? Award-Winning Dinosaur Documentary!
The award winning documentary “Why Dinosaurs” is now available on Youtube! The documentary covers quite a bit of the history and the science of paleontology. Did I mention that ESCONI’s own Rob Sula has his own segment? Oh, there’s also a great website – whydinosaurs.com. The website has extended interviews and other extras! Check it…
-
Adam Savage at the American Museum of Natural History
The AMNH has a new exhibit called “Impact: The End of the Age of Dinosaurs”. Adam Savage visited the museum just before the exhibit opened in November, There are a series of videos on Youtube. How do you come up with the physical representation of animals we know lived on Earth, when the evidence of…
-
Spinosaurus relative longer than a pickup truck stalked Thailand’s rivers 125 million years ago
LiveScience has a story about a spinosaur that lived in Thailand 125 million years ago, during the early Cretaceous Period. The animal was about 25 feet long (7-8 meters) and likely ate the fish that swam in the rivers. The new dinosaur has yet to be named and was discovered in the Sam Ran locality…
-
Giant sea monsters lived in rivers at the end of the dinosaur age
ScienceDaily has a story about mosasaurs. It seems that giant mosasaurs didn’t just live in the oceans… they also prowled rivers. A large tooth found in a North Dakota deposit along with a Tyrannosaurus rex tooth and a jawbone from a crocodylian revealed an isotope signature consistent with a live in fresh water. See the…
-
“Bones Almost on Top of Each Other” – Extraordinary Dinosaur Fossil Site Discovered in the Hațeg Basin
SciTechDaily has a story about an extraordinary dinosaur fossils site in Transylvania. The Hateg Basin is famous for its dinosaur fossils. The site dates to the late Cretaceous Period, some 72 million years ago. So far, thousands of fossils have been found, including bones of amphibians, turtles, crocodiles, dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and mammals. A recent paper in…
-
CBC Radio’s Quirks & Quarks… Smaller tyrannosaur solves decades-long debate about the T. Rex
CBC Radio’s Quirks & Quarks has a great segment about Nanotyrannus. There’s an interview with James Napoli of Stony Brook University, who was coauthor on “Nanotyrannus and Tyrannosaurus coexisted at the close of the Cretaceous”, which was published in the journal Nature. Small tyrannosaur fossils belonging to a dinosaur about half the size and a tenth…
-
National Geographic: New Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi features two fighting T. rexes
National Geographic has a story about the new Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi, which opened on November 22nd, 2025. The videos for the story are stunning. It huge with not one, but four sauropods on display. They have two T-rexes, which are displayed fighting. The museum also documents the natural history of the region and…
-
Fossils of Some of the Last Dinosaurs in North America Have a Story to Tell
The New York Times “Trilobites” column has a story about the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs some 66 million years ago. A long standing question about the extinction has been whether the age of dinosaurs came to a sudden end or were dinosaurs in decline when the asteroid struck the Yucatan Peninsula. The diversity of…
-
NPR: Scientists thought this fossil was a teen T. rex. Turns out it’s a new tyrannosaur
NPR has a story about Nanotyrannus lamcensis and why it’s a separate species from Tyrannosaurus rex. When the “Dueling Dinosaurs” fossil, which consists of two entangled dinorsaur skeletons, was discovered in 2006, it launched a quite a bit of debate as to whether the tyrannosaur was a juvenile T. rex or a new species of…
-
SciAm: Fossilized Skin on Dinosaur ‘Mummies’ Isn’t Skin at All
Scientific American has an interesting article about dinosaur “mummies”. In 1908, Charles Sternberg found the “first dinosaur mummy”. It was an Edmontosaurus dinosaur with what looked like fossilized flesh and skin. It was found in the sandstone rocks of the Lance Formation in eastern Wyoming. New research shows that the “skin” is actually a clay mold,…
-
‘Shockingly Beautiful’ Fossil Reveals Oldest Dome-Headed Dinosaur
The New York Times has a fascinating look at beautiful pachycephalosaur specimen from Mongolia. The animal was recently described in a paper in the journal Nature. Zavacephale rinpoche was found in the Gobi Desert by Tsogtbaatar Chinzorig, a paleontologist at North Carolina State University. The name means “root” and “jewel” in Tibetan, which is a…
-
Digging Wyoming: People Flock To Glenrock To Dig for Dinosaurs In The Dark
Want to dig for dinosaurs? Well… there a place near Glenrock, Wyoming that might be perfect for a vacation next year! Cowboy State Daily has a nice article about it. A plethora of paleontological discoveries continues to shed light on the world of Converse County 67 million years ago. Most of that light is coming…
-
ESCONI September 2025 Paleontology Meeting – “Show and Tell”
There were some very interesting things on display at the September 2025 Paleontology Meeting. The theme of the night was “Show and Tell”. We had over 20 attendees with everything from Mazon Creek to crinoids to nautiloids to a large model of a Velociraptor. John Catalani, Paleontology Study Group chairman, gave us a preview of…
-
How evolution works | Dave Hone and Lex Fridman | on Youtube
David Hone was on the Lex Fridman podcast discussing evolution. Dave Hone is a paleontologist, expert on dinosaurs, co-host of the Terrible Lizards podcast, and author of numerous scientific papers and books on the behavior and ecology of dinosaurs. He lectures at Queen Mary University of London on topics of Ecology, Zoology, Biology, and Evolution.
-
Paleontologist Mark Norell (Coolest Dude Alive) RIP (1957-2025)
This announcement is from the Witmer Lab at Ohio University. I’m shaken by the news of Mark Norell’s passing—a good friend, a trusted colleague, and a giant in our field. Coincidentally, I got the news as I was working on my talk for the International Symposium on Asian Dinosaurs in Fukui later this month. Here’s…
-
Field Museum: After the Age of Dinosaurs
The Field Museum has a new exhibit that looks at the time after the non-avian dinosaurs went extinct during the K-Pg Event about 66 million years ago. How did the world recover? And, how long did it take? Chicago-based illustrator Jay Ryan created original artwork for the Field Museum’s “After the Age of Dinosaurs” exhibition.
-
PBS Eons: Why Paleontologists Can’t Stop Fighting About Spinosaurus
PBS Eons has a new episode on Youtube. This one is about the controversy surrounding how Spinosaurus lived…. how much time did they spent in the water? What does it mean to be a “semi-aquatic” dinosaur? Was it wading in the shallows, or could it have been a skilled swimmer? Each scenario paints a very…
-
Natural History Museum: New dinosaur species on display in our Earth Hall
The Natural History Museum in London has a new video on Youtube about their new dinosaur, Enigmacursor mollyborthwickae. Meet Enigmacursor mollyborthwickae, our new dinosaur! Now on display in our Earth Hall, Enigmacursor is a species new to science and would have roamed North America in the Late Jurassic 145-150 million years ago. Measuring only 1.5…
