I’m in Berlin. I’ve just managed to find a chicken donner kebab, and am pausing research briefly to write this. I’m currently on leave from London, with a ridiculously hectic couple of months ahead: I’ve just been to Munich to see a dwarf crocodile specimen, Alligatorellus beaumonti (from Bavaria), which conveniently happened to coincide with Oktoberfest, and am now here to ...[Read More]
That’s one small step for dinosaur-kind..
This is a guest post by Collin VanBuren. He’s currently starting his PhD at the University of Cambridge researching the effects of climate change on living and fossil frogs, as well as the relationship between the shape of anatomical structures and their function. He loves the outdoors, biomechanics, and conservation, and regularly tweets about these subjects on his Twitter account (@CollinV ...[Read More]
So you want to be a palaeontologist..?
Well, according to Sesame Street, all you need to do is sing the palaeontologist theme song! So forget studying, research, and years of training. Actually, it is pretty cool – it does show this; all you need to do to become a palaeontologist is have a fascination for the natural world, and get your hunting hat on! Found at: http://koprolitos.blogspot.it/2013/09/sesame-street-pa ...[Read More]
No Daily Mail, a 230 million year old amphibian is not a dinosaur..
The Daily Fail have struck again, this time the poor victim being the rather cool fossil, Metoposaurus diagnosticus. Metoposaurus is an amphibious, er, amphibian from Germany, Italy, Poland and Portugal, and a member of a group called temnospondyls. However, three times in an article published yesterday, the innocent amphibian is labeled as a ‘dinosaur’ – what did it ever to to d ...[Read More]
‘Meat was so sixty million years agAAAGHH…’
Some dinosaurs were utterly bizarre. You may have heard of them before, but one particular group called therizinosaurs belonged to the meat-eating theropod dinosaurs (those that led to birds), were really awesome. However, they actually at some point made a conscious evolutionary decision to stop being badasses, and become Cretaceous-cauliflower* munching pansies.
The greatest story ever told, by fossils
A lot of recent(ish) posts featured on this blog have been about the evolution of flight and feathered dinosaurs. I promised to kick this habit, and write about something different, but this video by Carl Zimmer adds a really nice narrative to the story and is quite a nice little overview for anyone interested. If you have any questions about bird-like fossils, feathers, their function, or dino-bi ...[Read More]
Fossil feathers are frickin’ sweet
The origin and evolution of dinosaur feathers, and their colour and function, has been high up on the pecking order for palaeontologists of late. The adaptive poetry that unfolds from fossil finds allows us to bear witness to one of the most beautiful transformations in the history of life on Earth, and the attention to this story is rightly deserved. I’ve devoted quite a bit of this blog to writi ...[Read More]
Om nom nom
What comes to mind when you think of dinosaur interaction? Large carnivores chomping on unsuspecting little ornithopods? Ceratopsians jousting for their next mate? Large hadrosaurs tenderly mothering their cute newborns? There are many possible images of community-level dinosaur interactions, and there is a host of evidence out there that take dinosaurs beyond the bones and breathe new life into h ...[Read More]
Dinosaurs of a feather?
Feathered dinosaurs might not still be the new boys in town in the fossil world, but there’s still a tonne of cool research being done on them. One of the main fields is trying to figure out if different species were capable of powered flight, like in most modern birds. The recent finding of Aurornis xui appears to have confined the ability to fly just to a single feathered lineage, the one leadin ...[Read More]
How did birds get their wings?
How many fingers do you have? Hopefully, 5. Do you think that’s the normal condition for all animals? Do you think that’s air you’re breathing right now? … OK, so I watched the Matrix last night, but still, do you think all tetrapods (dudes with 4 feet, including you, and anything else with four flippers, wings, or feet) have 5 digits on each limb? Actually, there’s a pattern within tetrapods of l ...[Read More]