Tag: dinosaurs
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Phys.org: New evidence suggests it was matter ejected from the Chicxulub crater that led to impact winter
Phys.org has a story on new research about the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs. Since it’s discovery 40 years ago by Walter and Luis Alvarez, this mass extinction, which occurred approximately 66 million years ago, has been a source for much research. The cause is generally thought to be the large meteor that struck the…
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BBC: Spinosaurus dinosaur was ‘enormous river-monster’, researchers say
BBC has a story about Spinosaurus. Some researchers believe they have settled the argument around Spinosaurus being an aquatic. This new evidence, which appeared in the journal Cretaceous Research, stems from over 1200 teeth discovered in a prehistoric river deposit. And it backs up another paper which was published in April. That research looked at…
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Smithsonian: Why This ‘Unicorn Baby Dinosaur’ Is the ‘Cutest,’ ‘Weirdest’ Ever
Smithsonian Magazine has a piece about the “cutest”, “weirdest” baby dinosaur ever. The embryo dinosaur is thought to be a Tapuiasaurus, a sauropod that grew to about 43 feet long. The egg was smuggled illegally out of Argentina about 20 years ago. Research published in the journal Current Biology has revealed some insights into the…
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First complete dinosaur skeleton ever found is ready for its closeup at last
Phys.org has a story about a complete dinosaur found on west Dorset’s Jurassic Coast. The skeleton was collected 160 years ago was sent to Richard Owen at the British Museum. The animal lived around 193 million years ago during the early Jurassic Period. The new research was published in the journal Zoological Journal of the…
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Throwback Thursday #20: Rediscovering a Dinosaur Named Elmer
This is Throwback Thursday #20. 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! The Field Museum has a blog post about a dinosaur named for Elmer Riggs. Elmer the man, was…
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Doctors diagnose advanced cancer—in a dinosaur
Science Magazine has an article out of the Royal Ontario Museum about a malignant dinosaur bone. The dinosaur, Centrosaurus, lived about 76 million years ago in what is now Dinosaur Park in southern Alberta, Canada. It suffered from osteosarcoma of the fibula, which is a lower leg bone. In humans, osteosarcoma primarily attacks teens and…
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PBS Eons: The Dinosaur Who Was Buried at Sea
There’s a new episode of PBS Eons. This one is about an amazing specimen of Nodosaur discovered in Canada in 2011. It was found in a siderite concretion which formed in the ocean. Paleontologists have been studying nodosaurs since the 1830s, but nobody had ever found a specimen like Borealopelta before. The key to…
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Sue the T. Rex gets life-like model to match skeleton
The SunTimes has a piece about a new exhibit at the Field Museum. It’s called “SUE in the Flesh” and features a life size model of SUE with a baby Edmontosaurus in her mouth. For two decades, Sue has drawn dinosaur lovers to the Field Museum so they can catch a glimpse of the largest…
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How to Outrun a Dinosaur
Wired has an informative article about how to outrun a dinosaur. It goes to the heart of the issue… allometry, which is the study of the relationship of body size to shape, anatomy, physiology and ultimately behavior. And, partial spoiler, we’d probably be safer than you think against the likes of T-rex and similarly sized…
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Palaeocast Episode 112: Extinction of the dinosaurs
Palaeocast has an episode on the extinction of the dinosaurs. The episode is an interview with Dr Alessandro Chiarenza about some very thorough analysis that compares the Chicxulub asteroid event with the volcanic eruptions at the Deccan Traps. The paper detailing this analysis can be found in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of…
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LiveScience: ‘Tiny bug slayer’ relative of dinosaurs and pterosaurs would have fit in the palm of your hand
LiveScience has a story about a cousin to both dinosaurs and pterosaurs. Kongonaphon kely, meaning “tiny bug slayer”, lived about 237 million years ago, during the Triassic period, in what is now Madagascar. It was discovered in 1998, but just recently described in a paper that appeared in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy…
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PBS Eons: The Story of the Dino Stampede
There’s a new episode of PBS Eons. It’s about trace fossils and the how we can use them to understand what happened in the past. To try to solve the puzzle of Lark Quarry, experts have turned to a special subfield of paleontology — paleoichnology, or the study of trace fossils — to reconstruct…
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NatGeo: ‘Jurassic Park’ got almost everything wrong about this iconic dinosaur
National Geographic has a post about the “best worst-known” dinosaur – Dilophosaurus. Adam Marsh, a paleontologist at the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona, led an effort to redescribe Dilophosaurus. That paper was published recently in the Journal of Paleontology. Now, the new analysis includes two previously unstudied fossil specimens from Arizona, providing the first…
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Behind a New Jersey Hardware Store, a Paleontological Bonanza
Atlas Obscura has an interesting story about a fossil site in southern New Jersey. The site dates to the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs about 66 million years ago. There is an episide of TED’s pindrop, that also tells the story. Learn about Ken Lacovara, discoverer of Dreadnoughtus in 2005 and dinosaurs in New Jersey!…
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New Dinosaur Podcast: “Terrible Lizards” With Dr. David Hone
If you like dinosaurs (who doesn’t?) and are looking for a new interesting podcast (sure, why not?), checkout the new Terrible Lizards podcast. It features hosts Dr. David Hone and Iszi Lawrence discussing dinosaurs. The podcast is aimed at adults but is clean, so kids can enjoy it too. Episode 1 is “Tyrannosaurus”, with subsequent titles…
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PBS Eons: When Dinosaurs Chilled in the Arctic
Check out the new PBS Eons episode over on Youtube. This one is about dinosaurs in the Arctic. All told, the Arctic in the Cretaceous Period was a rough place to live, especially in winter. And yet, the fossils of many kinds of dinosaurs have been discovered there. So how were they able to…
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Throwback Thursday #13: Field Museum Photo Archives
This is Throwback Thursday #13. 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! I recently found a Field Museum Tumblr blog called “Field Museum Photo Archives”. It has many great photos…
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First Soft-Shelled Dinosaur Egg Fossils Found
Smithsonian Magazine has a story about dinosaur eggs. Nature had two articles that found evidence that dinosaur eggs were soft-shelled. The first study found evidence of soft-shelled eggs by analyzing fossilized Protoceratops and Mussaurus egg shells. The evidence suggests eggs similar to those of turtles. The second paper identified an enigmatic fossil, commonly referred to…
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New Bird-Like Dinosaur Discovered: Overoraptor chimentoi
SciNews has a story about a new bird-like dinosaur. Discovered in Argentina, Overoraptor chimentoi lived about 90 million years ago, during the Cretaceous Period, in what is now Patagonia. All the details on this dinosaur can be read in a paper published in the journal Nature. The fossilized remains of Overoraptor chimentoi were recovered from the beds…
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PBS Eons: When Dinosaur Look-Alikes Ruled the Earth
There’s a new episode of PBS Eons. This one is about the crocodilians that evolved along side the dinosaurs during the Triassic Period. There were a huge number of croc-like animals that flourished during the Triassic Period. Dinosaurs had just arrived on the scene but it was these animals that truly ruled the Earth,…
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ESCONI June 2020 General Meeting – “Dino-Sores: Injury and Behavior in Cretaceous Dinosaurs” on June 12th, 2020
We have a remote speaker for our June meeting. He is Dr. Joe Peterson from the University of Wisconsin – Oshkosh. Joe earned a BS Geology at SIU-C and an MS/PhD Geology from NIU. Since, then, he worked and volunteered at Burpee for many years. The title of his program is “Dino-Sores: Injury and Behavior…
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Dinosaur-dooming asteroid struck earth at ‘deadliest possible’ angle
Phys.org has a story about the asteroid that took out the dinosaurs. A study at Imperial College London did simulations and found that the angle of attack for the asteroid that struck the Earth at the end of the Cretaceous Period hit at the “deadliest possible” angle. All the details are in a paper published…
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Court rules “Dueling Dinos” belong to landowners, in a win for science
Science Magazine has a story about the “Dueling Dinos”. Discovered in 2006, the “Dueling Dinos” is a specimen that consists of two dinosaurs, a ceratopsian and a tyrannosaur, lying next to each other in what seems like mortal combat. Over the last few years, a court battle has tried to determine who owns these priceless…
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New Dinosaur Unearthed in Australia
SciNews has an article about a new dinosaur discovery in Australia. This new dinosaur lived around 110 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period. It’s a rare type of dinosaur that belongs to the group Elaphrosaurinae, which are odd ceratosaurians known from fossils from Africa, Asia, and Argentina. The fossils were discovered by Dinosaur Dreaming volunteer…
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The Rise of Meat-Eating Dinosaurs Is More Complicated Than We Thought
Smithsonian Magazine has an interesting piece about carnivorous dinosaurs. The evolution of large meat eating dinosaurs is a long and complicated story. Dinosaurs evolved around 235 million years ago. At that time, they were lanky and small. One of the largest early meat eaters was Herrerasaursus. It was about 16 feet long and lived in…
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Phys.org: Jurrassic Park got it wrong: Research indicates raptors didn’t hunt in packs
Phys.org has a story about one the most favorite raptor dinosaurs. Raptors became popular after appearing in the 1993 blockbuster movie Jurassic Park. In that movie, where they were incorrectly called Velociraptors instead of Deinonychus antirrhopos, they are portrayed as hunting in packs similar to wolves. Because behavior doesn’t fossilize, there has been little evidence…
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Brontosaurus : reinstating a prehistoric icon
The NHM in London has an article about the reinstatement of Brontosaurus as a valid species name. Both animals we discovered in the American west in the 1970, during a period of time referred to as the “Bone Wars” or the “Great Dinosaur Rush”. Apatosaurus ajax was named by Othniel Charles Marsh in 1877 from…
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LiveScience: ‘Warrior’ dinosaur with nasty gouge mark on claw uncovered in New Mexico
LiveScience has a story about a new species of carnivorous dinosaur. This new animal is called Dineobellator notohesperus and is a cousin to Velociraptors. It lived about 70 million years ago in what is now New Mexico. This particular specimen has a couple injuries, a nasty rib injury and a gash on its sickle-shaped claw,…
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Three Ferocious Dinosaurs Featured on New U.K. Coins
Smithsonian Magazine has a story about some new coins in the U.K. There are three new coins that have Megalosaurus, Iguanodon, and Hylaeosaurus, which were the first dinosaurs discovered in modern-day Britain. Over the years, the United Kingdom’s 50 pence coin has paid tribute to an array of intriguing figures who have made an important…
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PBS Eons: A Short Tale About Diplodocus’ Long Neck
PBS Eons has a new episode up over on Youtube. This one is about Diplodocus and its long neck. Long necks gave sauropods a huge advantage when it came to food, but not in the way you think. And this benefit would allow them to become the biggest terrestrial animals of all time!
