Tag: dinosaurs
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Astonishing dinosaur mummy has ‘glittering’ skin that was punctured and ripped by ancient crocs
LiveScience has a story about “Dakota” a dinosaur mummy from North Dakota. “Dakota”, a duck-billed dinosaur that lived about 67 million years ago in what is now North Dakota, is a mummified dinosaur which exhibits evidence of predatory behavior in its remains. A paper in the journal PLOS One describes this evidence and proposes that…
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Dino death due to volcano-asteroid double whammy
EarthSky has a story about the K-Pg mass extinction. The Big Five Mass Extinctions all involved multiple events or conditions to bring about the destruction they wrought. Volcanoes were usually a part of it. A recent paper in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences proposes that it was both the flood basalt…
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‘Dinosaur mummy’: Researchers believe they’ve found one of the best preserved dinosaurs ever
Credit: Royal Tyrrell Museum, Drumheller, Canada Phys.org has a story about the discovery of another “dinosaur mummy”. A few years ago, a nodosaur found in Alberta, Canada was said to be the best preserved dinosaur ever. Now, researchers say they may have found an even better one. This specimen is a hadrosaur found in Dinosaur…
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Scientists shine light on 66-million-year-old meteorite wildfire mystery
Phys.org has a story about the K-Pg mass extinction event. It’s well established science that a meteorite struck the Yucatan peninsula about 66 million years ago. An event that brought about the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs, pterosaurs, ammonites, and many other animals that lived alongside them. There have been many theories and debates about…
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CBC News: Rare dinosaur skin fossil discovered in Alberta
CBC News has a story about the discovery of fossilized dinosaur skin. A dinosaur fossil recently discovered in Alberta’s badlands was so well preserved its skin was still in tact. The rare find is spreading excitement among paleontologists.
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The Latest Find as Water Levels Fall: Dinosaur Tracks in Texas
The New York Times has a story about the discovery of dinosaur footprints. Severe drought conditions across the world are revealing secrets long covered by water. Just outside of Fort Worth, Texas lies Dinosaur Valley State Park, where dinosaur footprints were recently found after the Paluxy River dried up. The footprints date to about 113 million years…
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The early bird gets the fruit: Fossil provides earliest evidence of fruit-eating by any animal
The Field Museum has a press release about some recently published research about birds. Associate Curator of Fossil Reptiles Jingmai O’Connor co-authored a paper called “Earliest evidence for fruit consumption and potential seed dispersal by birds”, which has been published in the journal eLife. The paper looks at an exquisitely preserved new skull of Jeholornis. Previously,…
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Big head, small arms: A newly discovered gigantic dinosaur evolved in a similar manner to Tyrannosaurus rex
The Conversation has a story about the evolution of meat-eating dinosaurs. Meraxes gigas is a recently named theropod dinosaur from Argentina. It was found near Villa El Chocon in the Huincul Formation and lived about 95 million years ago. Meraxes is a large theropod, the group of bipedal, often meat-eating, dinosaurs which also includes birds, and…
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All the better to better eat you with: Dinosaurs evolved different eye socket shapes to allow stronger bites
Phys.org has a story about the strength of a T-rex bite. A new study, published in the journal Communications Biology, looked at the shape of eye sockets to determine how it affected bite force. The skulls of about 500 different dinosaurs were analyzed and the researchers found that a circular eye socket was prone to…
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Mammal ancestor looked like a chubby lizard with a tiny head and had a hippo-like lifestyle
Live Science has a article about an mammal ancestor. Lalieudorhynchus gandi lived about 265 million years ago in what is now the Lodève Basin in southern France. At that time, southern France was part of northeastern Pangaea. Mammals had not evolved as a group yet. L. gandi was described in a paper in the journal Paleo…
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Splitting T. Rex Into 3 Species Becomes a Dinosaur Royal Rumble
The New York Times Science column has a story about Tyrannosaurus rex. Back in February 2022, a paper in the journal Evolutionary Biology proposed that Tyrannosaurus rex is actually three distinct species – Tyrannosaurus rex, Tyrannosaurus imperator, and Tyrannosaurus regina. The paper pointed to differences like number of “incisor” teeth and whether the animal was…
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Sharks are older than the dinosaurs. What’s the secret to their success?
Live Science has a shark story just in time for Shark Week. Yes, you read that correctly… sharks are much older than dinosaurs. Sharks evolved way back during the Ordovician Period, some 450 million years ago, while dinosaurs are relative youngsters at about 235 million years old. Sharks have made it though all the major…
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Dinosaurs took over the planet because they could endure the cold, scientists say
LiveScience has a post about how dinosaurs came to dominate in the early Jurassic. It’s long been theorized that dinosaurs were better adapted to hot weather and so took over from their crocodillian cousins around the Triassic/Jurassic extinction event about 202 million years ago. Now, a paper in the journal Science Advances proposes that it…
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For dinos like T. rex, puny arms may have been the price of a giant head
Science.org has a story about the discovery of a new theropod dinosaur. This one is called Meraxes gigas, after a Targaryen dragon from Game of Thrones. It lived about 95 million years ago in what is now the Patagonian Desert of Argentina. It belonged to a family of theropod dinosaurs called Carcharodontosauridae. All the details can…
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Meet Psittacosaurus, The Dinosaur That Keeps on Giving
Max’ Blogo-Saurus has a fantastic post about Psittacosaurus. Psittacosaurus means “parrot lizard”, which comes from it’s beaked face. It is related to all ceratopian dinosaurs like Triceratops and is classified near the base of Marginocephalia. There are at least 12 species of Psittacosaurus. Their abundance in Asia during the Cretaceous Period has lead to the…
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Massive bulldog-faced dinosaur was like a T. rex on steroids
Live Science has a post about a new dinosaur discovery. This new dinosaur is still unnamed and is known to be a meat-eater, which belonging to a group called the abelisaurids. This dinosaur lived during the Cretaceous Period about 98 million years ago in the famous Bahariya Formation in what’s now Egypt’s Sahara Desert. From…
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Dinosaur ‘reaper’ with massive claws found in Japan
Live Science has a post about a new dinosaur discovery in Japan. The animal is a therizinosaur and is called Paralitherizinosaurus japonicus. The genus means “reptile by the sea”. The large Edward Scissorhands-like claws were probably primarily used to slash vegetation not other animals as the animal was a herbivore. P. japonicus lived about 80…
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New Fossil Finds Track When Armored Dinosaurs Spread Around the World
Smithsonian Magazine has a story about armored dinosaurs. Recent discoveries are shedding light on the evolutionary history of the dinosaur group thyreophorans. That group includes dinosaurs favorites like stegasaurs and ankylosaurs. In popular depictions of paleontology, armored dinosaurs are often treated like icing on the Mesozoic cake. No Jurassic floodplain feels quite complete without a…
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New armless abelisaur dinosaur species discovered in Argentina
Phys.org has a story about an armless therapod dinosaur. Many of the large predatory dinosaurs had reduced arms and hands with Tyrannosaurs and South American Giganotosaurus and Carnotaurus as prime examples. Now, a new species of abelisaur, Guemesia ochoai, has taken it a step farther. G. ochoai lived about 70 million years ago in what…
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ESCONI May 2022 General Meeting – May 13th, 2022 at 8:00 PM In-person/Zoom – “Dinosaurs of Appalachia”
The May 2022 General Meeting will be held on May 13th at 8:00 PM. The presentation will be given by Chase Brownstein, Research Associate of the Stamford (CT) Museum and Nature Center. Chase is a student at Yale. He has 21 peer-reviewed publications to his name, 41 publications on his ResearchGate page, and he’s an…
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Throwback Thursday #109: Looking Back at ESCONI May 2022
This is Throwback Thursday #109. 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! 25 Years Ago – May 1997 50 Years Ago – May 1972 70 Years Ago – May 1952
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How the dinosaur extinction changed plant evolution
Phys.org has a story about plant evolution after the K-Pg mass extinction. Mass extinction always have irreversible effects on the evolution of life on Earth. The end Cretaceous extinction took out about 75% of species, including non-avian dinosaurs, pterosaurs, ammonites, and other countless others. The Plant Kingdom isn’t always discussed, but it suffered heavy losses,…
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The discovery of two giant dinosaur species solves the mystery of missing apex predators in North America and Asia
The Conversation has a piece about the discovery of a couple “missing” apex predators during the Cretaceous. The animals, Thanatotheristes degrootorum, a tyrannosaur from North America and Ulughbegsaurus uzbekistanensis, a carcharodontosaur from Uzbekistan, were found languishing in museum collections where they had sat for at least a decade. Both fill in gaps of our knowledge…
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Tanis: Fossil of dinosaur killed in asteroid strike found, scientists claim
Artwork: The thinking is that a water surge buried all the creatures at Tanis The BBC has an article about a fossil site that preserves a snapshot of what may have been the last day of the non-avian dinosaurs. Nicknamed Tanis and located in North Dakota, the site has fossils of exquisite detail that are…
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How did cockroaches survive the dino-killing asteroid strike?
Live Science has an article that discusses the heartiness of roaches. Three quarters of all plant and animal species went extinct after the meteor struck Chicxulub at the end of the Cretaceous Period, how is that roaches made it through the extinction that followed? When the rock now known as the Chicxulub impactor plummeted from outer space…
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Meet ‘Horridus,’ one of the most complete Triceratops fossils ever found
LiveScience has the story of a very large and nearly complete Triceratops in the land down under. A Triceratops, nicknamed “Horridus” after its species name Triceratops horridus, is now on display in a new exhibit “Triceratops: Fate of the Dinosaurs,” at the Melbourne Museum in Australia. The specimen is about 85% complete and died about…
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New species of spinosaurid dinosaur discovered in Portugal
Phys.org has a story about a new species of spinosaur. A paper published in PLOS ONE looks at some dinosaur fossils discovered 23 years ago in Portugal. The authors from both the NOVA School of Science and Technology and Museu da Lourinhã describe the bones as Iberospinus natarioi, a new species of spinosaur. Spinosaurids are…
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“I Know Dino” podcast
Roy Plotnick, long time ESCONI member and friend appears in a recent episode (#377) of the podcast “I Know Dino”. They usually discuss dinosaurs, but with Roy, they discuss paleontology in general and his book “Explorers of Deep Time: Paleontologists and the History of Life”. Roy gives ESCONI and rock clubs in general a very…
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Cretaceous Crocodiles Ate Ornithopod Dinosaurs, Fossil Evidence Shows
SciNews has a story about a new Cretaceous crocodile. The animal, Confractosuchus saurokonos, lived about 95 million years ago in what is now Queensland, Austrailia. As part of the skeletal remains, well preserved gut contents were found. With some analysis, those contents were found to be parts of a juvenile ornithopod dinosaur. This discovery was…
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CBC Quirks and Quarks: Darkness doomed the dinosaurs
The CBC Radio show/Podcast Quirks and Quarks has a segment entitled “Darkness doomed the dinosaurs — the extinction asteroid turned out the lights on Earth”. They speak with Peter Roopnarine from the California Academy of Sciences about the after effects of the meteor strike that took out the non-avian dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous.…
