Cretaceous

Insects preserved in an amber piece from El Soplao in Cantabria (Spain). Credit: Xavier Delclòs, UB-IRBioNew research delves into the enigma of the mass production of resin during the <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="<div class=glossaryItemTitle>Cretaceous</div><div class=glossaryItemBody>The Cretaceous is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago. It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era. It ended with…

Illustration of White Rock spinosaurid by Anthony Hutchings. A new study by paleontologists at the University of Southampton’s EvoPalaeoLab shows that several distinct groups of spinosaurs inhabited Cretaceous Britain. Credit: UoS/A HutchingsA recent study by the University of Southampton indicates that distinct spinosaur groups lived in <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="<div class=glossaryItemTitle>Cretaceous</div><div class=glossaryItemBody>The…

Behold the newest snarling, scurrying, foraging, and feasting dinosaurs and other extinct creatures of Prehistoric Planet.The show’s second season begins May 22 on Apple TV+, featuring over two dozen new species from various branches of the tree of life as it existed some 66 million years ago, give or take a few million (well, don’t take more than a couple.)I spoke with showrunner Tim Walker and Darren Naish, a paleozoologist and the series’s chief scientific consultant, to learn what to expect from the new season and,…

The concurrent subduction of the Pacific and Atlantic plates resulted in the formation of a mantle plum and the ascent of magma. Credit: Nicolas Riel Earthquakes and volcanism occur as a result of plate tectonics. The movement of tectonic plates themselves is largely driven by the process known as subduction. The question of how new active subduction zones come into being, however, is still under debate. An example of this is…

Stratigraphic section at Utahraptor Ridge. Important contacts in bold black numerals 1–3 are: (1) top of the Brushy Basin Member of the Jurassic Morrison Formation (Jm); (2) top of a thick and prominent “calcrete” or horizon of large to very large carbonate nodules, described by Kirkland et al. (their figure 19); and (3) approximate position of Stikes Quarry, also described by Kirkland et al. (their figure 19). Kirkland et al. (their figure 19) placed…

Dinosaur egg illustration. Credit: University of TsukubaFossilized eggshells from Gifu Prefecture, Japan, dating back to the Early <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="<div class=glossaryItemTitle>Cretaceous</div><div class=glossaryItemBody>The Cretaceous is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago. It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era. It ended with the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction…

Bedrock map of Northern and Southern Victoria Land, Antarctica, showing the distribution of outcrop and location of the Butcher Ridge Igneous Complex (BRIC) and other localities referred to in the text with demonstrated mid to late-Cretaceous alteration ages. Basemap constructed using Quantarctica v3.2 from the Norwegian Polar Institute (Matsuoka, K. et al. Quantarctica, an integrated mapping environment for Antarctica, the Southern Ocean, and…

The huge Deinocheirus in Prehistoric Planet.Image: AppleThink about all the dinosaur content you’ve ever consumed: books, movies, perhaps a Far Side cartoon. Consider how realistic each dinosaurian depiction was, to your best understanding of how dinosaurs lived. Now, I suggest you compare all that you’ve seen about dinosaurs before to Apple TV+’s newest five-part series, Prehistoric Planet, which shows the true lives of dinosaurs as they were 66 million years ago, to our best current understanding.There are reptiles that…