For some time now, there has been much debate about whether our beloved dinosaur, Triceratops, is a distinct species, or a younger version of a bigger ceratopsian, Torosaurus – the great Toroceratops’ debate. Proponents of both sides of the argument have made detailed quantitative and qualitative points, and there doesn’t really seem to have been …[Read More]
dinosaurs
Double-whammy signifies the demise of the dinosaurs
The meteoric impact that wiped out the non-bird-line dinosaurs is an iconic image of life and death on Earth. It signifies a point in time when life changed forever. It took from us animals that we will never see again. But was it just a single strike that created these winds of permanent change? The …[Read More]
New dinosaur competes to be Europe’s largest ever land predator
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 identification of this new species plays an important role in developing …[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 …[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 …[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 …[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, …[Read More]
Were dinosaurs the masters of social integration?
Back in the Late Cretaceous, the USA was divided. Not politically, but by a vast continental sea called the Western Interior Seaway, splitting the continent into two separate landmasses. The western one of these, known as Laramidia, played host to some of the popular dinosaurs like Parasaurolophus, or ‘Elvis’ in Pete Postlethwaite dialect, and the …[Read More]
To bird or not to bird..
In 2012, the controversial case over whether or not Archaeopteryx lithographica, perhaps the most iconic dinosaur species of all time, was a bird was settled. Apparently. (free pdf) This was an important analysis for two reasons. Firstly, it countered a previous study showing that Archaeopteryx was more closely related to dinosaurs like Velociraptor and Deinonychus, and secondly used advanced, …[Read More]
The underworld thief returns from the dead
So I don’t normally blog whenever a new dinosaur pops out the pages, but a new one, Acheroraptor temertyorum received quite a welcome back to the living world with this exquisite illustration by Danielle Dufault. I’ve asked for her permission to post on here, and it’ll appear on the front cover of Naturwissenschaften (December issue, probably), …[Read More]