Dinosaurs

Enter the fossil gallery of a natural history museum, and you're likely to encounter spectacular skeletons of some of the most manifestly awesome creatures ever to have walked our planet: dinosaurs. From towering sauropods and fearsome tyrannosaurs to tanklike ankylosaurs and horned ceratopsians, dinosaurs dominate our conceptions of the past. But to understand these animals and their world, scientists must look beyond the dazzling remains of Apatosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, and other icons to tiny fossils that appear, at…

A study using a robot dinosaur named Robopteryx to mimic ancient dinosaur behaviors has provided new insights into the evolution of feathered wings. Researchers found that small, feathered proto-wings may have been used by dinosaurs to startle prey, supporting the hypothesis that such wings evolved for reasons other than flight. Credit: SciTechDaily.comNew research suggests feathered dinosaurs used proto-wings and tail feathers to flush out prey, supporting the ‘flush-pursue hypothesis’ for the evolution of bird wings and…

Scientists have long puzzled over why some dinosaurs had feathers and wings long before they evolved the ability of flight. Experiments with a robot dinosaur may now have revealed the answer – they used them for hunting.Feathers show up in a range of dinosaur species, including icons like the velociraptor, but most of the time they were in a primitive form that would have only enabled the animals to hop short distances or glide at best. Only one group, known as Pennaraptora, sported plumage of pennaceous feathers, the…

Reconstruction of Tyrannosaurus mcraeensis. Credit: Sergei Krasinski, editedNewly discovered Tyrannosaurus mcraeensis, potentially T. rex’s closest relative, lived 71-73 million years ago in southern Laramidia, indicating the early evolution of giant tyrannosaurs.A new species of tyrannosaur from southern North America that may the closest known relative of Tyrannosaurus rex is described in a study published in Scientific Reports.Sebastian Dalman and colleagues identified the new species — which they have named…

Scientists have discovered mummified skin that is older than the dinosaurs. The skin, which they say likely belonged to a reptile, is estimated to come from the Paleozoic era, between 541 million to 252 million years ago. It dates back at least 290 million years.The skin was discovered by paleontologists in Oklahoma, and it appears to have a pebble-like, non-overlapping scales design, which is very akin to ancient reptile species, the researchers explain in their study. They say it mostly resembles the extinct…

Skeleton of the early dinosaur Coelophysis bauri from the Late Triassic. The protracted restructuring of Early Jurassic terrestrial ecosystems coincided with the diversification of dinosaurs. Credit: Courtesy of Natural History Museum of Los Angeles CountyA research team from USC Dornsife has made significant discoveries regarding the drastic changes caused by a surge in greenhouse gases and escalating temperatures, which resulted in a mass extinction event, paving the way for the emergence of Jurassic dinosaurs.Startling…

A family of Thescelosaurus emerges from safety to forage in the forests of the Hell Creek Formation, 66 million years ago. Credit: Anthony HutchingsA CT scan of a lesser-known, herbivorous dinosaur’s skull shows that although it might not have been particularly “brainy,” it possessed a distinctive set of characteristics similar to those seen in present-day animals that live partially underground, including a super sense of smell and outstanding balance. The work is the first to link a specific sensory fingerprint with…

January 17, 20243 min readPermian period petroleum helped to preserve minute scraps of pebbly hide that probably belonged to a lizardlike creatureBy Emma Marris & Nature magazineDarkened, pebbly scraps are the oldest known 3D fossils of the skin of amniotes, a group that includes birds, reptiles and mammals. A dark shred of fossilized material, just a few millimetres across, “shocked” palaeontologists when they realized what it was. It arrived in a tiny glass vial, sent by fossil collectors in Oklahoma. “We got very…

Reconstruction of Tyrannosaurus mcraeensis. Credit: Sergei Krasinski, editedRestudy of fossils collected in New Mexico digs up key clues about T. rex’s origins in North America.A new study published in Scientific Reports reshapes our understanding of how the most famous dinosaur to ever walk the earth – Tyrannosaurus rex – first arrived in North America by introducing its earliest known relative on the continent.The study identifies a newly discovered subspecies of tyrannosaur known as Tyrannosaurus mcraeensis. The newly…

Earlier this week, Volkswagen announced plans to augment its in-car voice assistant IDA with ChatGPT. I'll admit that I initially didn't quite understand the point, but I got a chance here at CES 2024 in Las Vegas to hear about the vision for this integration from Cerence, the company that already powers the back-end of VW's voice assistant. As usual, it's a bit of a rough demo, because it's hard to exactly see how ChatGPT will help you out when you're on the road when you're instead sitting in a stationary car inside of…