Latest Dinosaurs Stories
Fossil experts say the stunning remains of a "four-winged" dinosaur have confirmed that birds owe their ancestry to two-footed dinosaurs that lived millions of years ago, AFP reported.The well-preserved fossil of a bird-like dinosaur called Anchiornis huxleyi may be the deciding factor, according to Xing Xu of the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing.Based on incomplete fossils, A. huxleyi was thought to have been a near contemporary of Archaeopteryx, the first recognized bird,...
The fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex may not have feasted on feisty adult game, but eyed smaller, more docile prey at chow time, German researchers reported. T-rex fossils indicate the large predatory dinosaurs preyed on juvenile dinosaurs, researchers at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat in Munich reported Thursday in a news release. Unlike their adult and well-armed relatives these young animals hardly posed any risk to the predators, Oliver Rauhut said. And their tender bones would have added...
Two titans fighting a bloody battle "“ that often turns fatal for both of them. This is how big predatory dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus are often depicted while hunting down their supposed prey: even larger herbivorous dinosaurs. The fossils, though, do not account for that kind of hunting behavior but indicate that theropods, the large predatory dinosaurs, were frying much smaller fish. Dr. Oliver Rauhut, paleontologist at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich, and his colleague...
Internationally renowned palaeontologist and Monash University Honorary Research Associate, Dr Anthony Martin has found evidence of a dinosaur burrow along the coast of Victoria, which helps to explain how dinosaurs protected themselves from climate extremes during the Cretaceous period "“ the final era for dinosaurs before their extinction.Dr Martin made the discovery of the 2 metre-long burrow in 2006 while researching dinosaur tracks at Knowledge Creek, west of Melbourne, and has had the...
Researchers at Oregon State University have made a fundamental new discovery about how birds breathe and have a lung capacity that allows for flight "“ and the finding means it's unlikely that birds descended from any known theropod dinosaurs.The conclusions add to other evolving evidence that may finally force many paleontologists to reconsider their long-held belief that modern birds are the direct descendants of ancient, meat-eating dinosaurs, OSU researchers say."It's really kind...
Data is conclusive, says Keller, who hopes to move on from decades-old controversy A Princeton University geoscientist who has stirred controversy with her studies challenging a popular theory that an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs has compiled powerful new evidence asserting her position.Gerta Keller, whose studies of rock formations at many sites in the United States, Mexico and India have led her to conclude that volcanoes, not a vast meteorite, were the more likely culprits in the...
A U.S. scientist says he's found evidence dinosaurs may have survived for 500,000 years in New Mexico and Colorado after the Cretaceous extinctions. Jim Fassett, an emeritus scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Santa Fe, N.M., said he based his conclusions on detailed chemical investigations of the dinosaur bones, and evidence for the age of the rocks in which they were found in the Ojo Alamo Sandstone in the San Juan Basin. The great difficulty with this hypothesis -- that these are...
The Lost World, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's account of an isolated community of dinosaurs that survived the catastrophic extinction event 65 million years ago, has no less appeal now than it did when it was written a century ago. Various Hollywood versions have tried to recreate the lost world of dinosaurs, but today the fiction seems just a little closer to reality. New scientific evidence suggests that dinosaur bones from the Ojo Alamo Sandstone in the San Juan Basin, USA, date from after the...
Impact didn't lead to mass extinction 65 million years ago, geologists findThe enduringly popular theory that the Chicxulub crater holds the clue to the demise of the dinosaurs, along with some 65 percent of all species 65 million years ago, is challenged in a paper to be published in the Journal of the Geological Society on April 27, 2009.The crater, discovered in 1978 in northern Yucutan and measuring about 180 kilometers (112 miles) in diameter, records a massive extra-terrestrial...
About 150 million years ago, an evolutionarily hybrid creature, a dinosaur on its way to becoming a bird, died in what is now Germany, and become fossilized in limestone.About 150 years ago, the fossil of this "dinobird" was discovered and celebrated as proof of Charles Darwin's new theory of evolution.Now fast forward to a few weeks ago: The famous fossil, the Thermopolis specimen of Archaeopteryx lithographica, made its way by truck from the Wyoming Dinosaur Center to the Stanford...
