Re-examination of a sparrow-sized fossil from China has led researchers to challengethe commonly held belief that birds evolved from ground-dwelling dinosaurs that gained the ability to fly. Researchers Stephen Czerkas of the Dinosaur Museum in Utah, and Alan Feduccia of the University of North Carolina, say that the birdlike fossil is actually not a dinosaur, […]
The fossilized remains of an extinct giant bird with a wingspan of 24 feet place the creature above theoretical upper limits for powered flight in animals, leaving scientists to wonder how the enormous bird managed to take to the air. Named Pelagornis sandersi, the new species was more than twice as big as the Royal […]
A University of Alberta scientist says that fossilized dinosaur tail bones provide strong evidence that feathered dinosaurs used tail plumage to attract mates, much like modern-day peacocks. The fossil evidence, detailed in the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, centers on a peculiar fusing together of vertebrae at the tip of the tail of four different species […]
Widely credited to have wiped out the dinosaurs, the giant asteroid that smashed into the Yucatán Peninsula 65 million years ago may have been preceded by a volcanic extinction event that warmed the planet dramatically and killed nearly all of the life on the ocean floor. University of Washington researchers say they have evidence that […]
Birds and dinosaurs are more closely related than previously thought, say scientists who claim that modern birds are, essentially, living juvenile dinosaurs. According to Harvard’s Arkhat Abzhanov, Associate Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, the evolution of birds is the result of a drastic change in how dinosaurs developed. Rather than taking years to reach […]
Mesozoic methane emissions from dinosaurs could, according to new calculations, have produced more of the notorious greenhouse gas than all modern sources – both natural and man-made – put together. The research, published inCurrent Biology, suggests the emissions could have significantly heated the already wet and warm climate. Sauropod dinosaurs, say the researchers, were similar […]
The cinematic cliché of two huge dinosaurs battling to the death may be nothing but fantasy if German scientists are correct in their assessment that large carnivorous dinosaurs were opportunistic hunters who picked on much smaller prey. Dr. Oliver Rauhut, paleontologist at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich, and his collegue Dr. David Hone contend that fossil […]
New evidence suggests that dinosaur bones found in the San Juan Basin date from after the supposed dino-doomsday, and that dinosaurs may have survived in what is now New Mexico and Colorado for up to half-a-million years. This controversial new research, published in the journal Palaeontologia Electronica, is based on detailed chemical investigations of the […]
The extinction of the dinosaurs – thought to be caused by an asteroid impact some 65 million years ago – was more likely to have been caused by a ‘mantle plume’ – a huge volcanic eruption from deep within the earth’s mantle, the region between the crust and the core of the earth. This theory, […]
