Tuesday, December 31, 2013

The Petrified Forest National Park just got a little larger

Researchers say that beneath both finds, they've found the petrified and fossilized remains of a prehistoric pond ecosystem, full of prehistoric fish, amphibians, plants and reptiles.
Read more...

Saturday, December 28, 2013

Who says oil doesn't come from dinosaurs?

Researchers find first carnivorous dinosaur from Saudi Arabia
The discovery of seven caudal bones and two carnivore teeth in the Campanian-Maastrichtian sandstone deposits in the Adaffa Formation in northwestern Saudi Arabia date to 75 million years of age.
Read the article here

Thursday, December 19, 2013

Microsoft millionaire challenges dino scientists

We all know how thoroughly Microsoft investigates and tests their stuff, so when a former Microsoft employee who dabbles in food and patent law decides to criticize dino scientists, he'd better be right.

Read it here

Friday, December 13, 2013

Dino with a comb-over?



The structure above the fossil's head was so unexpected that Phil Bell put his chisel straight through the middle of it. "I was just expecting there to be rock, and all of a sudden there was skin underneath, and I thought to myself, 'Whoops,'" he said. What Bell had found was the first dinosaur fossil with a fleshy crest atop its head.

Article link

Thursday, December 12, 2013

Breathe deep. Exhale. What?

Lizard Has One-Way Breathing; Hints at How Dinosaurs Could Have Breathed

Air flows only one way through its lungs—other than the American alligator, it’s the only other known reptile found to have this trait.

More here

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Your Dinosaurs Are Wrong #7

Cons: Dry, bad lighting, bad dinos.
Pros: Dry, bad lighting, bad dinos.Very informative, geeky, and funny.

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Gonna need a submersible to check out this crater

The impact from this ancient meteorite created a crater over 99 miles across. The crater is buried beneath hundreds of feet of debris and at least half a mile of marine sediments, making it nearly invisible for modern geologists, however. The fallout from the impact has been found in rocks around the globe, although there has been surprisingly little research done on the rocks close to the impact site, partially because they are so deeply buried.

Read more here

Monday, December 9, 2013

Dinosaurs are the new economy

Brooke Hoerner says she decided to make something for a former boyfriend who loves dinosaurs. She ended up fashioning him a gold-colored planter made from a dollar store dinosaur.  Now she can’t stop making the silly things.
Read about her dollars for dinosaurs here

Friday, December 6, 2013

UTenn Prof catches crocks using twigs as camo to catch birds.

That's not a log looking back at you. Crocks have been found to put sticks on their snout during nest-building season to lure birds to their maw.

"Our research provides a surprising insight into previously unrecognized complexity of extinct reptile behavior,"said Dinets in a release. "These discoveries are interesting not just because they show how easy it is to underestimate the intelligence of even relatively familiar animals, but also because crocodilians are a sister taxon of dinosaurs and flying reptiles."

Read more here

Thursday, December 5, 2013

The scoop on dino poop

Photo of dino-age cockroach preserved in an amber deposit.
Woody Discovery
They cracked open a fossilized cockroach, which had been discovered in an amber deposit from Lebanon, and studied it with synchrotron x-ray microtomography, a technique that allowed them to create a virtual 3-D version of the cockroach instead of picking apart the original.

They were surprised to find wood particles that were large in comparison to other particles in the cockroach.

Get the scoop here

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

How it always starts is "Daddy, I want a T-Rex."

Rusty dinos in the desert funded by a millionaire patron. He wanted sculptures of illustrations from a book about dinosaurs in the Anza-Borrego Desert.
Read more here