All posts tagged: dinosaur

The bizarre-looking dinosaur challenging what we know about the evolution of fingers

The bizarre-looking dinosaur challenging what we know about the evolution of fingers

Published by skeptic

Oviraptorosaurs are weird dinosaurs, which look a bit like flightless birds. But these ancient animals aren’t just funny looking fossils. As my team’s new research shows, they can help us understand how our own forelimbs evolved and challenge what scientists think about the T rex. Covered in feathers and equipped with a strong, sharp beak, oviraptorosaurs ranged in size from a house cat to a giraffe. They could easily be mistaken for birds if not for the sharp claws on their hands. The oviraptorosaurs lived during the Cretaceous period (between 145 and 66 million years ago) and belonged to a group of dinosaurs called theropods. This is a group of mainly meat-eating dinosaurs with hollow bones that includes the T rex and velociraptor. Theropod dinosaurs and humans share a common feature: we walk on two legs and use our front limbs for functions other than walking. Although some dinosaurs – the birds – stretched their forelimbs into wings and used them for flight, others, shrunk them instead. Short forelimbs, missing one or more fingers are …

What is a dinosaur?

What is a dinosaur?

Published by skeptic

Visit your local natural history museum gift shop and you’ll probably find a container of dinosaur toys for sale. Dump out its contents, though, and you’ll likely find some imposters, says Nathan Smith. He should know. He’s director and curator of the Dinosaur Institute in California. It’s part of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. Winged pterosaurs are a common fraud. So is the sail-backed carnivore, Dimetrodon. The word “dinosaur” isn’t a catch-all term for just any scaly, prehistoric giant. “There’s kind of a misconception that any big extinct thing was a dinosaur,” Smith says. In fact, dinos are a specific group of reptiles. They have been around continuously for more than 200 million years. They include everything that’s descended from the earliest common ancestor of avian (bird) and nonavian dinosaurs, Smith explains. Nonavian dinosaurs include such iconic beasts as Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus rex. Emerging in the Triassic, nonavian dinosaurs dominated the planet during the Mesozoic Era. This later era — also known as the Age of Dinosaurs — lasted until the close of …

200 million year old dinosaur tracks discovered hidden in schoolyard boulder

200 million year old dinosaur tracks discovered hidden in schoolyard boulder

Published by skeptic

For over a decade, a large boulder sat unnoticed in the foyer of a Queensland high school. Students walked past it every day, unaware of the incredible history it held. Now, researchers have confirmed that this seemingly ordinary rock contains one of the highest concentrations of dinosaur footprints ever found in Australia, offering an extraordinary glimpse into the prehistoric past. A Hidden Treasure in Plain Sight University of Queensland paleontologist Dr. Anthony Romilio identified 66 fossilized footprints in the boulder, revealing an unprecedented record of dinosaur activity in Central Queensland during the Early Jurassic period, nearly 200 million years ago. An impression of the dinosaur footprints on the rock from the Biloela State High School. (CREDIT: University of Queensland) “The footprints come from 47 individual dinosaurs that walked across a patch of wet clay, likely near a waterway,” Dr. Romilio said. “Each track has three toes, indicating they belong to the ichnospecies Anomoepus scambus. These small plant-eating dinosaurs had long legs, short arms, a stocky body, and a small head with a beak.” The tracks …

Dozens of dinosaur footprints found in rock at Australian school

Dozens of dinosaur footprints found in rock at Australian school

Published by skeptic

Anthony Romilio examines the slab at Biloela State High School in Queensland, Australia University of Queensland A slab of 200-million-year-old rock that has been on display for 20 years at a school in Queensland, Australia, contains 66 footprints from 47 individual dinosaurs. The rock was gifted to Biloela State High School by the nearby Callide mine, where it was found by coal miners. Although it was recognised as containing numerous dinosaur footprints, no one realised its true significance until a team led by Anthony Romilio at the University of Queensland visited the school. “I could see there were a lot of dinosaur footprints,” says Romilio. “I knew it was a highly significant discovery.” The slab is so heavy that it took several strong people to lift it into a position where it could be studied. Romilio also had to remove chewing gum that had been stuck onto it by school students. But it wasn’t until he had cast a 3D silicon model, taken photographs and processed them that the full extent of the find was …

How we uncovered the UK’s biggest site of dinosaur tracks in a quarry in Oxfordshire

How we uncovered the UK’s biggest site of dinosaur tracks in a quarry in Oxfordshire

Published by skeptic

In 2024, researchers from the universities of Oxford and Birmingham excavated a huge expanse of a quarry floor in Oxfordshire filled with hundreds of dinosaur footprints. Dating to the Middle Jurassic period (around 166 million years ago), the extensive trackways are part of what has been described as a huge “dinosaur highway”. They form the largest dinosaur tracksite in the UK today. It’s among the largest in the world. The tracks were made as dinosaurs walked across mudflats surrounded by warm tropical lagoons. As the feet of the giant animals, some up to 10 tonnes, pressed on the mud, they left behind both an impression of the foot and in some cases a large rim of displaced mud around the track. The surface was then rapidly flooded and the tracks were filled in and buried by a clay-rich mud, which acted to preserve them. Over time and further burial these sediments turned into rock. Unlike body fossils, tracks give us a glimpse into a moment in the life of the dinosaur. The size, shape and …

Watch Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo and Gertie the Dinosaur, and Witness the Birth of Modern Animation (1911-1914)

Watch Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo and Gertie the Dinosaur, and Witness the Birth of Modern Animation (1911-1914)

Published by José

“Con­sid­er­ing that, in a car­toon, any­thing can hap­pen that the mind can imag­ine, the comics have gen­er­al­ly depict­ed pret­ty mun­dane worlds,” writes Calvin and Hobbes cre­ator Bill Wat­ter­son. “Sure, there have been talk­ing ani­mals, a few space­ships and what­not, but the comics have rarely shown us any­thing tru­ly bizarre. Lit­tle Nemo’s dream imagery, how­ev­er, is as mind-bend­ing today as ever, and Win­sor McCay remains one of the great­est inno­va­tors and manip­u­la­tors of the com­ic strip medi­um.” And Lit­tle Nemo, which sprawled across entire news­pa­per pages in the ear­ly decades of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, pushed artis­tic bound­aries not just as a com­ic, but also as a film. When first seen in 1911, the twelve-minute short Lit­tle Nemo was titled Win­sor McCay, the Famous Car­toon­ist of the N.Y. Her­ald and His Mov­ing Comics. A mix­ture of live action and ani­ma­tion, it dra­ma­tizes McCay mak­ing a gen­tle­man’s wager with his col­leagues that he can draw fig­ures that move — an idea that might have come with a cer­tain plau­si­bil­i­ty, giv­en that speed-draw­ing was already a suc­cess­ful part of …

University settles lawsuit with researcher who found soft tissue inside a dinosaur bone – OpentheWord.org

University settles lawsuit with researcher who found soft tissue inside a dinosaur bone – OpentheWord.org

Published by skeptic

Triceratops skeleton at the Smithsonian MuseumCredit: Robert Herschede, Wikipedia, Flickr, CC BY 2.0 California State University Northridge (CSUN) has settled with its former employee, Mark Armitage, after he sued the University alleging it had fired him because of his religious beliefs, College Fix reports. Armitage a graduate of Liberty University is a Christian. In 2010, he was hired by CSUN to manage and train students at its hi-tech microscope lab. He has written 30 articles involving his work. In 2012, Armitage was part of a dig at Montana’s Hell Creek Formation where paleontologists have uncovered thousands of dinosaur bones. While working at the site, Armitage found a massive triceratops horn believed to have gone extinct 65 million years ago. When Armitage brought that find back to his CSUN lab and examined it through a microscope, he discovered soft tissue inside the horn. This was tissue that had not fossilized, and of course, instantly brought into question the evolutionary theory because how could a fossil that was 65 million years old still have soft tissue inside …

Ancient seafloor discovery from the dinosaur era could rewrite Earth’s history

Ancient seafloor discovery from the dinosaur era could rewrite Earth’s history

Published by skeptic

University of Maryland researchers have found intriguing new evidence of ancient seafloor deep beneath the Earth’s surface. This discovery, made with seismic waves, suggests a complex and layered history of our planet, offering insight into processes that occurred during the age of dinosaurs. Using innovative techniques, the scientists explored a mysterious part of Earth’s mantle that has remained hidden from view—until now. The study, led by geology postdoctoral associate Jingchuan Wang, focused on the East Pacific Rise, where two segments of the planet’s crust meet in the southeastern Pacific Ocean. This previously unexamined area revealed the presence of a dense patch of seafloor that had sunk hundreds of kilometers into Earth’s interior. The findings, published in the journal Science Advances, not only add to our understanding of plate tectonics but also challenge previous theories about the structure and behavior of Earth’s interior. Wang’s team utilized seismic imaging, a powerful tool that works like a CT scan for the Earth. Seismic waves generated by natural events like earthquakes travel through the planet, allowing scientists to map …

Boris Johnson Caught Playing A Dinosaur Slide At Children’s Party

Boris Johnson Caught Playing A Dinosaur Slide At Children’s Party

Published by skeptic

Boris Johnson was seen zooming out of the mouth of an inflatable dinosaur – which doubled as a bouncy castle – on Sunday. Yes, while Westminster nervously waits for major political news from Holyrood, the ex-PM was a world away, attending at his children’s birthday party. A company called Kids Play Bouncy Castles posted a series of photos and videos to their Instagram story at the weekend, once of which included the former Tory MP looking rather bewildered as he clambered out of a slide. Boris Johnson on the bouncy castle at his son Wilf’s birthday party Instagram, @kidsplaybouncycastles Other posts showed the company had set up an elaborate play area – complete with both a truck theme and one with a dinosaur theme – to their Instagram story, and tagged the former prime minister. Despite Johnson’s willingness to participate in the fun, it seems this party was not actually for him. It seemed to be a celebration for his son Wilf’s fourth birthday, according to a separate post from Johnson’s wife, Carrie Johnson. She …

Argentine scientists find speedy 90-million-year-old herbivore dinosaur

Argentine scientists find speedy 90-million-year-old herbivore dinosaur

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BUENOS AIRES : Paleontologists from Argentina announced the discovery of a new medium-sized herbivorous dinosaur, which was a fast runner and lived about 90 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous period in present day Patagonia. The animal, named Chakisaurus nekul, was found in the Pueblo Blanco Natural Reserve, in the southern province of Río Negro, an area rich in fossils where many mammals, turtles, and fish have been found along with other species of dinosaur. It is estimated that the largest Chakisaurus reached 2.5 or 3 meters long and was 70 centimeters high (8 to 10 feet long and 27 inches high). Studies of Chakisaurus yielded new findings indicating that it was a fast runner and had its tail curved unusually downward. “This new species, Chakisaurus nekul, was a bipedal herbivore that among its most important characteristics had a tail that, unlike other dinosaurs, which was horizontal, had a downward curvature,” said Rodrigo Álvarez, author of the study. “It is something super new for these animals. In addition, it is known that it was …