Utah’s world-famous red rocks have yielded a rare skeleton of a new species of plant-eating dinosaur that lived 185 million years ago and may have been buried alive by a collapsing sand dune.
Well-preserved, nearly complete skeleton is a relative of the Velociraptor; will help scientists further describe the physical appearance of other closely-related dinosaurs within the Dromaeosauridae family. Research led by Dr. Xu Xing.
Fossilized feces and ancient bite marks discovered in Georgia are providing new details about a giant crocodile – so big it could take down dinosaurs as big as a T-rex – that roamed the Southeast United States about 79 million years ago.
The remains of an extraordinary fossil unearthed in 67-million-year-old sediments from Gujarat, western India provide a rare glimpse at an unusual feeding behavior in ancient snakes.
The remains of a new herbivorous sauropod dinosaur, discovered near the world-famous Carnegie Quarry in Dinosaur National Monument, may help explain the evolution of the largest land animals ever to walk the earth.
A life-sized reconstruction of the “devil frog,” the largest frog known to ever exist; a cast of the complete skeleton of a small meat-eating dinosaur named after Mark Knopfler, the lead singer from the rock band Dire Straits; a skeleton and life-sized reconstruction of a rare, 2.5 foot long pug-nosed vegetarian crocodile; and a pristinely preserved skull of a large dinosaur predator still partially entombed in sandstone are among the 65 million year old fossils from Madagascar that were publicly unveiled for the first time at Stony Brook University on Tuesday, February 9, 2010.
Bistahieversor sealeyi (pronounced: bistah-he-ee-versor see-lee-eye) is a brand new species of tyrannosaur discovered in the Bisti/De-na-zin Wilderness of New Mexico.
A proposed coal mining project on Ellesmere Island (Nunavut) in Canada's eastern High Arctic is currently under review. The area includes some of the most significant fossil sites in the world, and the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology is deeply concerned over the possible loss of these valuable resources.
University of Utah scientists discovered that air flows in one direction through alligators' lungs, just as it does in birds. That suggests this breathing method may have helped dinosaurs’ ancestors dominate after Earth’s worst mass extinction.
From Scotland’s Midland Valley to Wyoming’s Beartooth Butte to Grahamstown, South Africa, Michael Coates scours sediments hundreds of millions of years old for the deepest branches of vertebrate evolution in the tree of life’s shadowy recesses.
A newly discovered dinosaur that lived approximately 215 million years ago (Triassic Period) in the region of New Mexico in the United States is providing a team of paleontologists new information on early dinosaur evolution.
Discovery of a new species of 213-million-year-old meat-eating dinosaur in New Mexico suggests the first dinosaurs wandered between parts of the Pangea supercontinent that later became North and South America, according to a team of researchers from the several institutions, including the Utah Museum of Natural History at the University of Utah.
A new dinosaur was discovered in Early Jurassic South Africa that provides clues to the question of how dinosaurs grew to be so big, were able to support their weight and were able to walk on all-fours like the giant sauropods of Late Jurassic.
In a study published this week in the journal PLoS ONE, a team of researchers, including Herman Pontzer, Ph.D., assistant professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences, has found strong evidence that many dinosaur species were probably warm-blooded.
Supervolcanoes and cosmic impacts get all the terrible glory for causing mass extinctions, but a new theory suggests lowly algae may be the killer behind the world's great species annihilations.
A mysterious basin off the coast of India could be the largest, multi-ringed impact crater the world has ever seen. And if a new study is right, it may have been responsible for killing the dinosaurs off 65 million years ago.
The raptor-like Archaeopteryx has long been viewed as the archetypal first bird, but new research reveals that it was actually a lot less “bird-like” than scientists had believed.
On October 3, the skeleton of a 40-foot-long, 7.5 ton dinosaur was put up for auction in Las Vegas. The dinosaur was a skeleton of Tyrannosaurus rex, the iconic flesh-eating dinosaur that lived some 66 million years ago. The sale at auction of fossils such as this and others is a matter of deep concern to the profession of vertebrate paleontology.
When pondering the demise of a famous dinosaur such as 'Sue,' the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex whose fossilized remains are a star attraction of the Field Museum in Chicago, it is hard to avoid the image of clashing Cretaceous titans engaged in bloody, mortal combat.
The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, the organization representing professional vertebrate paleontologists worldwide, has called for a reversal of the decision to close the University Geological Museum in Laramie.
Researchers have discovered a unique beaked, plant-eating dinosaur in China that offers new, important evidence about how three-fingered hands of birds evolved from the hand of dinosaurs.
Plants or meat: That's about all that fossils ever tell paleontologists about a dinosaur's diet. But the skull characteristics of a new species of parrot-beaked dinosaur and its associated gizzard stones indicate that the animal fed on nuts and/or seeds.
A new study published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology uses high-resolution computed tomography (CT) imaging to guide sampling of bone lesions in the vertebrae of a hadrosaur ("duck-billed") dinosaur for histological and isotopic analysis.
A herd of young birdlike dinosaurs met their death on the muddy margins of a lake some 90 million years ago, according to a team of Chinese and American paleontologists that excavated the site in the Gobi Desert in western Inner Mongolia.
The annual meeting of GSA's South-Central Section will feature a presentation on the Arlington Archosaur Site in Texas. Among the site's 95 million-years-old rocks is a rich deposit of fossils, not only of an as-yet-unnamed carnivorous theropod, but also of a large, herbivorous "duck billed" hadrosaur, prehistoric crocodiles, turtles, sharks, and a new species of lungfish.
Ken Dial at The University of Montana has unveiled a major new theory for the evolution of flight that is changing textbooks around the world. It involves wing-assisted incline running and a fundamental bird wing angle.
Sure, they're polygamous, but male emus and several other ground-dwelling birds also are devoted dads, serving as the sole incubators and caregivers to oversized broods from multiple mothers. It is rare behavior, but research described in the Dec. 19 Science found that it runs in this avian family, all the way back to its dinosaur ancestors.
A group of paleontologists visited the northern Arizona wilderness site nicknamed a "dinosaur dance floor" and concluded there were no dinosaur tracks there, only a dense collection of unusual potholes eroded in the sandstone. So the scientist who leads the University of Utah's geology department says she will team up with the skeptics for a follow-up study.
Scientists from London, Cambridge and Chicago have identified one of the smallest dinosaur skulls ever discovered as coming from a very young Heterodontosaurus, an early dinosaur. This juvenile weighed about 200 grams. This skull suggests how and when the family of herbivorous dinosaurs that includes Heterodontosaurus made the transition from eating meat to eating plants.
University of Utah geologists identified an amazing concentration of dinosaur footprints and rare tail-drag marks that they call "a dinosaur dance floor," located in a wilderness on the Arizona-Utah border where there was a sandy desert oasis 190 million years ago.
The remains of a new 10-meter-long predatory dinosaur discovered along the banks of Argentina's Rio Colorado is helping to unravel how birds evolved their unusual breathing system.
The remains of a 30-foot-long predatory dinosaur discovered along the banks of Argentina's Rio Colorado is helping to unravel how birds evolved their unusual breathing system.
Paleontologists have found a previously unknown amphibious predator that probably made the Antarctica of 240 million years ago something less than a hospitable place.
Paleontologists in 2005 hailed research apparently showing that soft tissues had been recovered from dissolved dinosaur bones, but new research suggests the supposed recovered tissue is really just biofilm "“ or slime.
The International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University and an international committee of taxonomists "“ scientists responsible for species exploration and classification "“ today announce the top 10 new species described in 2007 and an SOS "“ State of Observed Species report card on human knowledge of Earth's species.