This was originally posted at: https://theconversation.com/new-dinosaur-competes-to-be-europes-largest-land-predator-23997 Say hello to Torvosaurus gurneyi, the newly discovered theropod dinosaur that lived in Europe around 157-145 million years ago. It is potentially the largest land predator discovered in Europe and one of the largest carnivorous dinosaurs from the late Jurassic period. The iden ...[Read More]
Erlikosaurus, the little dinosaur experiment
The evolutionary line from theropod dinosaurs is absolute. There is no question that this is one of the greatest stories that life on Earth has ever told us, But evolution is not linear; it’s chaotic. It’s bizarre. Along this theropod line, dinosaurs were experimenting – they were the evolutionary scientists of their time. One of the weirdest things that theropods did was become herbivores again – ...[Read More]
How do the chemical ghosts of dinosaurs help their preservation?
For some years now, Mary Schweitzer and her team have been researching the idea that organic molecules can be preserved for millions of years, specifically within dinosaurs. They have used a plethora of chemical and biotechnological techniques to demonstrate that, within animals like Tyrannosaurus rex, it is possible to find the residue of structures such as blood vessels and even proteins. Natura ...[Read More]
Where did all the mammoths go?
Let’s go meta. Recently, ecologist extraordinaire Dr. Jacquelyn Gill (or is it Professor cos of that weird American system?) wrote a wonderful review article on the extinctions that affected many large mammal species during the last 50-10,000 years. This period is known as the Quaternary, and was a time when ice ages were running rife between warmer periods, and herds of enigmatic mammals ro ...[Read More]
Citizen science in ecology and evolution? Sounds apps-olutely fantastic.. *tumbleweed*
There’s a lot of talk these days about science communication. Some people spend their lives debating the differences between outreach, public engagement, and science communication, and how they all mean different things. As a scientist, and I’m quite sure I can speak on behalf of the entire community, we don’t give a toss what you call the model – let us interact with peopl ...[Read More]
What are the key questions in palaeoecological research?
Last year, a throng of palaeoecologists from the world around descended into Oxford to discuss what the 50 most pressing questions in palaeoecology are. I was happy to see some great scientists and communicators among them, including Anson Mackay, Jacquelyn Gill, and Gavin Simpson, which gives me real hope that these questions were crafted with more than just ‘science for the sake of science ...[Read More]
Diving too deep?
A new initiative has just been announced that could help to revolutionise palaeontology. PaleoDeepDive is essentially an automated version of the Paleobiology Database, which is an online, professionally crowd-sourced and curated database of fossil occurrences pulled from the literature. They have a launch video here: I have a couple of reservations about this. Firstly, how do they expect to mine ...[Read More]
That’s no cloud..
Science is a deadly serious subject. Well, actually, no it’s not. In the slightest. Scientists are actually pretty fun people, despite their common depictions, and sometimes they have been known to publish smile-inducing articles. Take one Radagast the Brown of Bristol University (UK). This may or may not be a pseudonym, but either way he’s published a cool paper late last year on the ...[Read More]
Your poop or mine?
Back in the Mesozoic, lavatories probably didn’t exist. In fact, dinosaurs and other animals were probably pretty poorly mannered and just pooped wherever they felt like. But what or who cleaned up after them? In modern biomes, poop is decomposed by insects and bacteria of all breeds, and actually forms quite an important part of energy flow within ecosystems. But was it the same million of years ...[Read More]
Absolutely no sniggering – the dinosaur that looked like a cock
Dinosaur skeletons are a thing of pure beauty. Being able to see and touch something that has been dead for millions of years instills a sense of wonder; what did they look like, how did they behave, were they like anything we see today? Palaeontology is a science that raises more questions than it answers, but these questions are the ones that drive the science, but also maintain that sense of fa ...[Read More]