Oldest horned dinosaur found, according to reports in ScienceDaily 11 May 2021 and SciTech Daily 14 May 2021 and PalZ, 10 May 2021, doi: 10.1007/s12542-021-00555-w. Scientists in from the University of Pennsylvania and New Mexico Museum of Natural History have studied the fossil of a horned dinosaur originally found in 1966 in the Menefee Formation […]
A pterosaur neck is like a bicycle reports Cell Press via SciTech Daily and ScienceDaily 14 April 2021, and iScience 14 April 2021 doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2021.102338. Azhdarchid pterosaurs were the largest flying animals that ever lived, with a wingspan of up to 10 metres (33ft) and “ridiculously long necks” that could be longer than a giraffe […]
Dino frills for flirting, claim scientists in reports in Natural History Museum news and Science Focus 3 February 2021, Live Science 5 February 2021, and Proceedings of the Royal Society B 3 February 2021 doi: 10.1098/rspb.2020.2938. Dinosaurs known as Ceratopsians have distinctive bony frills projecting from the backs of their skulls. This has been thought […]
Dinosaur on wrong continent according to reports in Bath University 5 November 2020, Science Alert 6 November 2020, SciTech Daily 7 November 2020, and Cretaceous Research, 2 November 2020; doi:10.1016/j.cretres.2020.104678. An international team of scientists have found fossil jaws and the teeth of a hadrosaur (a “duckbill dinosaur”) in a phosphate mine in Morocco. Using […]
Blood parasites in dino bones found, according Smithsonian Magazine 18 November 2020 and Cretaceous Research 15 October 2020, doi: 10.1016/j.cretres.2020.104672. A group of scientists in Brazil were studying a deformity in a leg bone of a titanosaur, which they thought could be a bone tumour. When they examined it under a microscope they found microscopic […]
Feather Flop 1 – Archaeopteryx feather, according to reports in ScienceDaily and SciTech Daily 30 September 2020 and Scientific Reports 30 September, doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-65336-y. In 2019 a group of scientists from University of Hong Kong used a new laser scanning technique to study an isolated feather fossil found in the Jurassic rocks of Solnhofen, Germany. […]
Feather Flop 2 – Pterosaur “protofeather” according to reports in ScienceDaily 28 September 2020 and Nature Ecology and Evolution, 28 September 2020; doi: 10.1038/s41559-020-01308-9. In 2018 a group of scientists led by Zixiao Yang of Nanjing University claimed they had found evidence that pterosaurs (flying reptiles) had proto-feathers. Their claim was based on fine filaments, […]
Deadly dinosaur cancer found, according to reports in Science (AAAS) News, ScienceDaily and Smithsonian Magazine 3 August 2020, and The Lancet Onlcology, August 2020 doi: 10.1016/S1470-2045(20)30171-6. A group of scientists, including palaeontologists, pathologists, an orthopaedic surgeon, and a radiologist have studied a deformed bone found in the Dinosaur Park deposit in Alberta, Canada. The bone […]
Diseased dino tail bones found, according to reports in ScienceDaily 11 February 2020, Live Science 20 February 2020, and Scientific Reports 10 February 2020, doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-59192-z. An international team of researchers led by two scientists at Tel Aviv University have studied two dinosaur tail bones from a hadrosaur, and found evidence of a bone disease […]
Antarctic Notable Quotable from the Director of the British Antarctic Survey, Dame Jane Elizabeth Francis, broadcast on BBC 29 November 2019. Interviewer Martha Kearney asked: “Now your own work on ancient climates shows such a different world in Antarctica. Well we go back 100 million years to the age of the dinosaurs as you showed […]