Abused Ichthyosaur Fossil Deepens Mystery Of Dolphin-Like Dinos
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A fossil previously used as a stepping stone for mules has deepened the mystery surrounding the evolution of ichthyosaurs, dolphin-like marine reptiles that were contemporaries of the...
Latest Mesozoic Stories
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online First mentioned in two dialogues (Timaeus and Critias) by Plato in 360 BC, the legendary island of Atlantis has long been sought by historians, archaeologists, and explorers alike. Said to have originally existed between South America and Africa, this sunken island has been searched for in no less than dozens of locations worldwide, from Bimini to the Black Sea. In a new twist, a team of scientists from Brazil and Japan say they...
[ Watch the Video: Scientists Name New Species of Dinosaur ] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Scientists writing in the journal Nature Communications have identified a new species of dog-sized bone-headed (pachycephalosaur) dinosaur. The team was able to identify the new dinosaur species using both recently discovered and historically collected fossils. The dinosaur, Acrotholus audeti, represents the oldest bone-headed dinosaur in North America, and possibly the...
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Nearly a year after a dinosaur fossil was first reported stolen from Mongolia it is finally being returned to its rightful owner. US authorities in New York have returned the remains of the 70-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus bataar to the Mongolian government. The skeleton, which was looted from the Gobi Desert, was illegally smuggled into the US by Eric Prokopi, who later sold the fossil at an auction in NYC for a cool $1.1...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The Microraptor was a small flying dinosaur known to prey on birds and tree-dwelling mammals. New research led by a team of researchers at the University of Alberta reveals that the Microraptor was a capable aquatic hunter as well and was able to swoop down and pluck fish out of the water. Scott Persons, a paleontology graduate student at the University of Alberta, says that fossilized remains in China provided evidence of the...
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Researchers have found new evidence that dinosaurs were excellent swimmers, according to a study published in Monday’s edition of Chinese Science Bulletin, an academic journal co-sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Natural Science Foundation of China. In fact, an international team of experts, which included University of Alberta graduate student Scott Persons, located what is being called “strongest...
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A team of American scientists believe they have solved a geological mystery buried about 100 miles below California. According to a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, geologists from Brown University, Columbia University, the University of Rhode Island and the University of Oregon identified the source of anomalous seismic readings as a fragment of the Farallon tectonic plate, which was pushed deep into the...
Alan McStravick for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A trip to the Galapagos islands will bring you face to face with 14 closely related species of finch that Charles Darwin discovered on his adventure abroad in the 1830s. The finches he noted, still referenced in essentially every biology textbook, had beak sizes of varying lengths and sizes. This was true of both the ground- and tree-dwelling birds, and Darwin postulated that differing diets might have required the birds’ unique...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Eric Prokopi, a Florida fossils dealer, has pled guilty to smuggling charges. He has agreed to give up the $1 million Tyrannosaurus bataar skeleton seized by the U.S. government earlier this year after he attempted to auction it through Heritage Auctions. Prokopi is giving up "Ty," the T. bataar that will eventually be returned to Mongolia, along with six other dinosaurs and various other bones in a deal that might win him a little...
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A pair of U.K. biologists has revived an older and heavily debated theory that suggests sauropod dinosaurs reached their massive sizes due to the plants they ate. About ten years ago, plant ecologists from South Africa originally formulated this theory; however their ideas have fallen out of favor with many dinosaur researchers. According to a paper from David Wilkinson of Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) and Graeme Ruxton...
Alan McStravick for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The heaviest flying bird tops out at between 40-42 pounds. And sure, some of the flightless birds can grow to upwards of 300 pounds. But to imagine ancestors of these modern day creatures tipping the scales at upwards of 7,000 pounds is hard to do, indeed. A recent study out of North Carolina State University (NCSU) and the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois, looks specifically at the feathered herbivores of the Cretaceous period...
Latest Mesozoic Reference Libraries
Styracosaurus, meaning “spiked lizard” from the Ancient Greek styrax “spike at the butt-end of a spear-shaft” and sauros “lizard” was a genus of herbivorous ceratopsian dinosaur from the Cretaceous Period, about 76.5 to 75 million years ago. It had four to six long horns, stretching from its neck frill, a smaller horn on each cheek, and a single horn jutting out from its nose, which may have been up to 2 feet long and 6 inches wide. The function/functions of these horns and frills...
Thescelosaurus, meaning “godlike”, “wondrous”, or “marvelous” and “lizard” was a genus of small ornithopod dinosaur that appeared at the very end of the Late Cretaceous period in North America. It was a member of the last dinosaurian fauna before the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event around 65.5 million years ago. The completeness and preservation of many of its specimens illustrate that it might have preferred to live near streams. This bipedal ornithopod is known from...
Daspletosaurus, meaning “frightful lizard” is a genus of tyrannosaurid theropod dinosaur that resided in western North America between 77 and 74 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous Period. Fossils of the only named species were found in Alberta, although other possible species from Alberta and Montana wait for description. Daspletosaurus is closely related to the much larger and more current Tyrannosaurus. Like most of the known tyrannosaurids, it was a multi-ton bipedal...
Megalaosaurus, meaning “Great Lizard”, from Greek megalo, meaning ‘big’ or ‘tall’ and sauros, meaning “lizard”, is a genus of large and meat-eating theropod dinosaurs of the Middle Jurassic period of Europe. It’s significant as the first genus of dinosaur, outside of birds, to be described and named. Megalosaurus might have been the first dinosaur to be described in scientific literature. Part of a bone was recovered from a limestone quarry at Cornwell by Chipping Norton,...
Velociraptor, meaning “swift seizer” is a genus of dromaeosaurid theropod dinosaur that lived about 75 to 71 million years ago during the later part of the Cretaceous Period. There are two species that are presently recognized. The type species is V. mongoliensis; fossils of this particular species have been uncovered in Mongolia. A second species, V. osmolskae, it was named in 2008 for some skull material from Inner Mongolia, China. They are smaller than other dromaeosaurids such as...
![\"Awakening of Hunger\"](/media/gallery/national-science-foundation-gallery/thumbs/thumbs_hallett_scn_h.jpg "\\"Awakening of Hunger\\"")
