Research published today in the peer-reviewed Journal of Systematic Palaeontology describes the discovery of three new species of ancient creatures from the dawn of modern mammals, and hints at rapid evolution immediately after the mass extinction of the dinosaurs.
A joint Sino-Brazilian research team led by Dr. WANG Xiaolin from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has reported new dinosaur fossils from the Early Cretaceous Hami Pterosaur Fauna.
Australia’s largest flying reptile has been uncovered, a pterosaur with an estimated seven-metre wingspan that soared like a dragon above the ancient, vast inland sea once covering much of outback Queensland.
Newly-hatched pterosaurs may have been able to fly but their flying abilities may have been different from adult pterosaurs, according to a new study. Researchers found that hatchling humerus bones were stronger than those of many adult pterosaurs, indicating that they would have been strong enough for flight.
Using a well-preserved Heterodontosaurus skeleton and high-powered x-rays, an international team of researchers has discovered that not all dinosaurs breathed in the same way. The findings give scientists more insight into how a major group of dinosaurs, including well-known creatures like the triceratops and stegosaurus, evolved.
Dinosaurs were generally huge, but a new study of the unusual alvarezsaurs show that they reduced in size about 100 million years ago when they became specialised ant-eaters.
The tiny beetle Triamyxa coprolithica is the first-ever insect to be described from fossil faeces. The animal the researchers have to thank for the excellent preservation was probably the dinosaur ancestor Silesaurus opolensis, which 230 million years ago ingested the small beetle in large numbers.
University of Alaska Fairbanks and Florida State University scientists have found that nearly all types of Arctic dinosaurs, from small bird-like animals to giant tyrannosaurs, reproduced in the region and likely remained there year-round. The findings counter previous hypotheses that the animals migrated to lower latitudes for the winter and laid their eggs in those warmer regions. It’s also compelling evidence that they were warm-blooded.
Footprints from at least six different species of dinosaur - the very last dinosaurs to walk on UK soil 110 million years ago - have been found in Kent, a new report has announced.
An international research team has described a new species of Oculudentavis, providing further evidence that the animal first identified as a hummingbird-sized dinosaur was actually a lizard.
Jack Tseng loves bone-crunching animals -- hyenas are his favorite -- so when paleontologist Joseph Peterson discovered fossilized dinosaur bones that had teeth marks from a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex, Tseng decided to try to replicate the bite marks and measure how hard those kids could actually chomp down.
Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaurs chomped through bone by keeping a joint in their lower jaw steady like an alligator, rather than flexible like a snake, according to a study being presented at the American Association for Anatomy annual meeting during the Experimental Biology (EB) 2021 meeting, held virtually April 27-30.
New research by the University of New England's Palaeoscience Research Centre suggests juvenile tyrannosaurs were slenderer and relatively faster for their body size compared to their multi-tonne parents.
Humans and animals have a preferred walking speed.
Embargoed press materials are now available for the virtual Experimental Biology (EB) 2021 meeting, featuring cutting-edge multidisciplinary research from across the life sciences. EB 2021, to be held April 27–30, is the annual meeting of five scientific societies bringing together thousands of scientists and 25 guest societies in one interdisciplinary community.
Reporters are invited to join a live Q&A discussion of exciting research announcements at the forefront of the life sciences during a virtual press conference for the Experimental Biology (EB) 2021 meeting. The press conference will be held online from 1–1:45 p.m. EDT on Monday, April 26, 2021 (RSVP by Friday, April 23).
For the first time, two researchers--one from the University of Copenhagen and the other from Columbia University--have accurately dated the arrival of the first herbivorous dinosaurs in East Greenland.
By closely examining the jaw mechanics of juvenile and adult tyrannosaurids, some of the fiercest dinosaurs to inhabit earth, scientists led by the University of Bristol have uncovered differences in how they bit into their prey.
"Everyone's unique" is a popular maxim. All people are equal, but there are of course individual differences. This was no different with dinosaurs.
A new study using leading edge technology has shed surprising light on the ancient habitat where some of the first dinosaurs roamed in the UK around 200 million years ago.
A new study using leading edge technology has shed surprising light on the ancient habitat where some of the first dinosaurs roamed in the UK around 200 million years ago.
It was tens of miles wide and forever changed history when it crashed into Earth about 66 million years ago.
New research from Queen Mary University of London and the University of Maryland, has reignited the debate around the behaviour of the giant dinosaur Spinosaurus.
They are among the largest predators ever to walk the Earth, but experts have discovered that some baby tyrannosaurs were only the size of a Border Collie dog when they took their first steps.
For the first time ever, a team of scientists, led by the University of Bristol, have described in detail a dinosaur’s cloacal or vent – the all-purpose opening used for defecation, urination and breeding.
It's known that the primary cause of the mass extinction of dinosaurs, about 66 million years ago, was a meteorite impact.
A pioneering reconstruction of the brain belonging to one of the earliest dinosaurs to roam the Earth has shed new light on its possible diet and ability to move fast.
The only dinosaur bones ever found on the island of Ireland have been formally confirmed for the first time by a team of experts from the University of Portsmouth and Queen's University Belfast, led by Dr Mike Simms, a curator and palaeontologist at National Museums NI.
A team of palaeontologists described two amber pieces found in sites in Teruel (Spain) with remains from vertebrates corresponding to the Early Cretaceous.
The fossil remains of several small mammals discovered in tightly packed clusters in western Montana provide the earliest evidence of social behavior in mammals, according to a new study co-authored by a Yale scientist.
A new study, ‘150 million years of sustained increase in pterosaur flight efficiency’, published in the journal Nature has shown that pterosaurs – a group of creatures that became Earth’s first flying vertebrates – evolved to improve their flight performance over their 150 million-year existence, before going extinct at the same time as dinosaurs 66 million years ago.
While dinosaurs ruled the land in the Mesozoic, the oceans were filled by predators such as crocodiles and giant lizards, but also entirely extinct groups such as ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs. Now for the first time, researchers at the University of Bristol have modelled the changing ecologies of these great sea dragons.
Scientists from the University of Bristol and the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) used three-dimensional computer modelling to investigate the hindlimb of Euparkeria capensis–a small reptile that lived in the Triassic Period 245 million years ago–and inferred that it had a “mosaic” of functions in locomotion.
It’s not often a new mass extinction is identified; after all, such events were so devastating they really stand out in the fossil record. In a new paper, published today in Science Advances, an international team has identified a major extinction of life 233 million years ago that triggered the dinosaur takeover of the world. The crisis has been called the Carnian Pluvial Episode.
From emus to woodpeckers, modern birds show remarkable diversity in skull shape and size, often hypothesized to be the result of a sudden hastening of evolution following the mass extinction that killed their non-avian dinosaur cousins at the end of the Cretaceous 66 million years ago.
New research using the most comprehensive study of feathered dinosaurs and early birds has revised the evolutionary relationships of dinosaurs at the origin of birds.
Northern Arizona University professor Marc Tollis was one of a dozen collaborators sequencing the genome of the tuatara, a lizard-like creature that lives on the islands of New Zealand. This groundbreaking research was done in partnership with the Māori people of New Zealand, as the tuatara is a sacred animal for many tribes.
Scientists from the University of Adelaide and South Australian Museum have collaborated with Otago University, New Zealand and a global team to sequence the genome of the tuatara – a rare reptile whose ancestors once roamed the earth with dinosaurs.
A collaboration led by the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and McMaster University has led to the discovery and diagnosis of an aggressive malignant bone cancer — an osteosarcoma — for the first time ever in a dinosaur. No malignant cancers (tumours that can spread throughout the body and have severe health implications) have ever been documented in dinosaurs previously. The paper was published August 3rd in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet Oncology.
A new study led by researchers at McGill University finds that people who get their news from social media are more likely to have misperceptions about COVID-19.
The classic dinosaur family tree has two subdivisions of early dinosaurs at its base: the Ornithischians, or bird-hipped dinosaurs, which include the later Triceratops and Stegosaurus; and the Saurischians, or lizard-hipped dinosaurs, such as Brontosaurus and Tyrannosaurus.
In a new study in the journal Gondwana Research demonstrated that the Carnian Pluvial Episode affected the southern hemisphere, specifically South America, which strengthens the case that it was a global climate event.
A small piece of fossil jawbone from Alaska represents a rare example of juvenile dromaeosaurid dinosaur remains from the Arctic, according to a study published July 8, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Alfio Alessandro Chiarenza of the Imperial College London, UK, and co-authors Anthony R. Fiorillo, Ronald S. Tykoski, Paul J. McCarthy, Peter P. Flaig, and Dori L. Contreras.
From movies to museum exhibits, the dinosaur Dilophosaurus is no stranger to pop culture. Many probably remember it best from the movie “Jurassic Park,” where it’s depicted as a venom-spitting beast with a rattling frill around its neck and two paddle-like crests on its head.
When most of us think of dinosaurs, we envision large, lumbering beasts, but these giants shared their ecosystems with much smaller dinosaurs, the smaller skeletons of which were generally less likely to be preserved.
North America had the T. rex, South America had the Giganotosaurus and Africa the Spinosaurus - now evidence shows Australia had gigantic predatory dinosaurs.
More than 110 million years ago, a lumbering 1,300-kilogram, armour-plated dinosaur ate its last meal, died, and was washed out to sea in what is now northern Alberta. This ancient beast then sank onto its thorny back, churning up mud in the seabed that entombed it--until its fossilized body was discovered in a mine near Fort McMurray in 2011.
The first ever specimen of a pterodactyl, more commonly found in China and Brazil, has been found in the United Kingdom.
Among dinosaurs of ancient Colorado, scavenging and possibly cannibalism were responses to a resource-scarce environment, according to a study published May 27, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Stephanie Drumheller of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and colleagues.
While smaller dinosaurs needed speed, huge predators like T. rex were optimized for energy-efficient walking, according to a study published May 13, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Alexander Dececchi of Mount Marty College, South Dakota and colleagues.
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