dinosaurs

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Nicolas Cage Returns Stolen Dinosaur Skull

He bought the fossil, smuggled from Mongolia, for $276K

(Newser) - Remember that dinosaur skull in Nicolas Cage's collection? It's now in the hands of US authorities who say it was stolen from Mongolia. Cage isn't accused of stealing the Tyrannosaurus bataar skull himself; his publicist says he bought it from a Beverly Hills gallery in March 2007...

One of the Biggest Raptors Found in South Dakota

Meet Dakotaraptor

(Newser) - Archaeologists have found one of the biggest raptors ever, one that used to roam what is now Hell Creek in South Dakota. Hence, the name: Dakotaraptor. Discover reports that this beast was about 16 feet long with sickle-like claws of nearly 10 inches, making it one of the largest raptors...

Rare Dino Skull Excavated in Most Unusual Way

It was the only way out for Pentaceratops remains

(Newser) - This was something that had never been seen before—the full skeletal remains of a baby Pentaceratops, a plant-eating dinosaur with large horns that once roamed what's now North America tens of millions of years ago. The fossils first caught the attention of paleontologists with the New Mexico Museum...

Scientists Finally Stop Fighting About Dinosaur Deaths

Study says asteroid and volcanos killed the dinosaurs

(Newser) - After 35 years of intense scholarly debate—and probably some name calling—scientists have agreed to compromise: Both a giant asteroid and massive volcanic eruptions were responsible for killing off the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. Time reports this agreement comes after researchers used a new technique to more precisely...

T. Rex Had Vicious Teeth, the Better to Shred You With

This feature is only seen in the Komodo dragon today

(Newser) - The Komodo dragon is the only known creature on the planet today to boast teeth that are serrated, like a jagged-edged steak knife. But now researchers have discovered that the mighty T. rex not only sported serrated teeth, but also secret folds hidden toward the bottom of those teeth that...

Dinos Issued a Climate Warning 215M Years Ago
Dinos Issued a Climate Warning 215M Years Ago
NEW STUDY
Jun 17, 2015 12:40 PM CDT

Dinos Issued a Climate Warning 215M Years Ago

Sauropods avoided volatile tropics in Triassic

(Newser) - Scientists have long been baffled by a lack of Triassic period fossils from large, herbivorous dinosaurs known as sauropods near the equator. A new study offers some illumination: It suggests a hot, unpredictable climate and high carbon dioxide levels kept some of the world's first dinosaurs away—and may...

In 'Crap' Dinosaur Fossils, Scientists Strike Gold

If 75M-year-old soft tissue has survived, could DNA, too?

(Newser) - The fossils may be in such poor shape that scientists are calling them "crap," but the 75-million-year-old fragments are golden in another sense. A theropod claw, triceratops-like toe bone, and duck-billed dinosaur limb and ankle bones first unearthed in Canada 100 years ago appear to retain soft tissue,...

Scientists Find First Evidence of Dinosaurs in Wash. State

80M-year-old femur belonged to a theropod

(Newser) - It appears that around 80 million years ago, a theropod dinosaur roughly the size of a transit bus died near the sea and was jostled by waves, and at some point part of its femur became wedged into a rocky outcrop alongside clam fossils in Washington state's San Juan...

Scientists Grow Chicken Embryos With Dino Snouts

As part of an effort to learn about beak evolution

(Newser) - It sounds straight out of Jurassic Park: Researchers have successfully created chicken embryos with what LiveScience frames as Velociraptor-like snouts. It's an end that has its beginning in a bird-dino quandary described by Carl Zimmer at the New York Times : "Even the most exquisitely preserved fossil can't...

Dinosaur-Age Cockroach Was Fearsome Predator

100M-year-old insect also had swiveling head, took flight

(Newser) - A mean-looking cockroach that lived alongside the dinosaurs had a long neck, swiveling head, and elongated legs that enabled it to surprise prey, New Scientist reports via Gizmodo . Found embedded in amber in Myanmar, the 100-million-year-old insect resembles a cross between a roach, a crane fly, and a praying mantis:...

Tiny Dinosaur Had Wings Like a Bat

They were made of skin, not feathers

(Newser) - A pint-sized dinosaur has a big surprise: It apparently sported a pair of bizarre wings. Dinosaurs normally used wings mostly made of feathers for flight. But the newly discovered creature evidently had wings made of skin instead, like those of a bat or some ancient flying reptiles. It's not...

Researcher Says He's First to Tell Male, Female Dinos Apart

It all comes down to a stegosaurus's plates

(Newser) - If the sight of broad, wide plates along the back of a stegosaurus fails to drive you wild with desire, that's probably because you're not a female stegosaurus. In what the University of Bristol calls the "first convincing evidence for sexual differences in a species of dinosaur,...

4-Year-Old's Big Find in Texas: a Dinosaur

Wylie Brys discovered what may be a 100M-year-old nodosaur

(Newser) - Imagine being a 4-year-old boy who loves dinosaurs, digging in the dirt, and spending time with your dad. For Wylie Brys, those three passions intertwined for the best day ever last September when he made an astounding discovery behind a shopping center in Mansfield, Texas: the fossil of what scientists...

The Brontosaurus Really Did Exist, Study Says

Scientists say it's deserving of its own genus after all

(Newser) - It's big news, quite literally. New research indicates that the Brontosaurus really did exist, some 112 years after scientists declared the opposite was true. The backstory: Paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh and his team discovered the fossils of two long-necked dinosaurs in the Western US in the 1870s and had...

Did Dinosaurs Hallucinate After Chewing Grass?
Did Dinosaurs Hallucinate After Chewing Grass?
NEW STUDY
Feb 11, 2015 9:15 AM CST

Did Dinosaurs Hallucinate After Chewing Grass?

Oldest grass specimen ever found was topped with fungus linked to LSD

(Newser) - If you're glad you weren't on the planet in the days when Stegosaurus was whipping its spiked tail around in agitation, imagine the dino stumbling around with its eyes ablaze on the prehistoric equivalent of an acid trip, courtesy of newly discovered fungus-tipped grass. A perfectly preserved, 100-million-year-old...

'Dragon' Dino Had Neck Like a Crane

Qijianglong might have inspired tales of dragons in ancient China

(Newser) - Scientists are seriously excited about a new long-necked dinosaur species found near China's Qijiang City. For one thing, fossils of the beast, which lived 160 million years ago in the Late Jurassic period, show a skull still attached to its neck—a rare find among dinosaurs like this as...

N. America's Oldest Horned Dino Was Size of Bunny

Triceratops relative from early Cretaceous period also picky eater: scientists

(Newser) - When paleontologists on a National Geographic Society expedition dug up a 100-million-year-plus sample sticking out of the dirt in Montana in 1997, they initially thought it was a rock—until they saw it had teeth. Now, 17 years later, they've finally gotten around to naming and describing the creature,...

Eggs' Shape May Have Helped Birds Outlive Dinosaurs

Study suggests differences played a role

(Newser) - So why did birds survive the mass extinction that wiped out their dinosaur relatives? A new study suggests that the shape of their eggs played a role, reports the BBC . Scientists aren't sure exactly what that role was, but they do know that eggs of survivor birds were shaped...

'Punxsutawney Phil on Steroids' Is Unearthed

'Vintana sertichi' dwarfed other mammals of its day

(Newser) - Back in the dinosaurs' day, mammals were the size of mice. But towering above them was one beefy rodent that one scientist calls "Punxsutawney Phil on steroids"—with super senses to boot. The 20-pound Vintana sertichi was accidentally found in a giant slab of sandstone in Madagascar, reports...

Scientists Introduce Bizarre Dinosaur

Meet Deinocheirus, even stranger than expected

(Newser) - A half-century ago, researchers found two arms in the Mongolian desert that clearly belonged to a big dinosaur—they were eight feet long and ended in nasty claws. But that was it, and so they named the mysterious creature Deinocheirus mirificus, which roughly translates into “unusual horrible hand,"...

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