Dinosaurs News

November 20, 2024

Top Headlines

Thanksgiving Special: Dinosaur Drumsticks and the Story of the Turkey Trot

Nov. 20, 2024 — Wings may be the obvious choice when studying the connection between dinosaurs and birds, but a pair of paleontologists prefer drumsticks. That part of the leg, they say, is where fibular reduction among some dinosaurs tens of millions of years ago ...

Bird Brain from the Age of Dinosaurs Reveals Roots of Avian Intelligence

Nov. 13, 2024 — A 'one of a kind' fossil discovery could transform our understanding of how the unique brains and intelligence of modern birds evolved, one of the most enduring mysteries of vertebrate ...

Did the World's Best-Preserved Dinosaurs Really Die in 'Pompeii-Type' Events?

Nov. 4, 2024 — Extraordinarily well preserved fossils of feathered dinosaurs and other creatures got that way after being frozen in time by by volcanic eruptions, researchers have long suggested. Not so fast, says ...

Paleontologists Discover Colorado 'Swamp Dweller' That Lived Alongside Dinosaurs

Oct. 23, 2024 — The new mammal lived in Colorado 70 to 75 million years ago -- a time when a vast inland sea covered large portions of the state, and animals like sharks, turtles and giant crocodiles ...

Latest Headlines

updated 11:27pm EST

Chemists Explain Why Dinosaur Collagen May Have Survived for Millions of Years

Sep. 4, 2024 — Chemists offer a new explanation for how collagen in dinosaur bones may have survived millions of years: An atomic-level interaction prevents its ...

Matching Dinosaur Footprints Found on Opposite Sides of the Atlantic Ocean

Aug. 26, 2024 — An international team of paleontologists has found matching sets of Early Cretaceous dinosaur footprints on what are now two different ...

Komodo Dragons Have Iron-Coated Teeth to Rip Apart Their Prey

July 24, 2024 — Scientists have discovered that the serrated edges of Komodo dragons' teeth are tipped with iron. The study gives new insight into how Komodo dragons keep their teeth razor-sharp and may provide ...

Scientists Assess How Large Dinosaurs Could Really Get

July 24, 2024 — A study looks at the maximum possible sizes of dinosaurs, using the carnivore, Tyrannosaurus rex, as an example. Using computer modelling, experts produced estimates that T. Rex might have been 70% ...

Research Tracks 66 Million Years of Mammalian Diversity

July 17, 2024 — New research has examined the fossil record going back 66 million years and tracked changes to mammalian ecosystems and species diversity on the North American ...

A New Species of Extinct Crocodile Relative Rewrites Life on the Triassic Coastline

July 10, 2024 — The surprising discovery of a new species of extinct crocodile relative from the Triassic Favret Formation of Nevada, USA, rewrites the story of life ...

Research Reveals the Most Complete Dinosaur Discovered in the UK in a Century

July 10, 2024 — The most complete dinosaur discovered in the UK in the last 100 years, with a pubic hip bone the size of a 'dinner plate', has been described in a ...

Life Underground Suited Newly Discovered Dinosaur Fine

July 9, 2024 — A newly discovered ancestor of Thescelosaurus shows evidence that these animals spent at least part of their time in underground burrows. The new species contributes to a fuller understanding of life ...

Sixty-Million-Year-Old Grape Seeds Reveal How the Death of the Dinosaurs May Have Paved the Way for Grapes to Spread

July 1, 2024 — Scientists discovered the oldest fossil grapes in the Western Hemisphere, which help show how after the death of the dinosaurs, grapes spread across ...

New Study Finds Dinosaur Fossils Did Not Inspire the Mythological Griffin

June 20, 2024 — For centuries, scientists thought they knew where the griffin legend came from. A new study takes a closer look at the data and folklore's influence on ...

Newly Discovered Dinosaur Boasts Big, Blade-Like Horns

June 20, 2024 — A new dinosaur has been identified and named. The dinosaur's name, Lokiceratops rangiformis, translates roughly to 'Loki's horned face that looks like a ...

Ancient Polar Sea Reptile Fossil Is Oldest Ever Found in Southern Hemisphere

June 17, 2024 — An international team of scientists has identified the oldest fossil of a sea-going reptile from the Southern Hemisphere -- a nothosaur vertebra found on New Zealand's South Island. 246 million ...

Origins of 'Welsh Dragons' Finally Exposed by Experts

May 30, 2024 — A large fossil discovery has helped shed light on the history of dinosaurs in ...

Musankwa Sanyatiensis, a New Dinosaur from Zimbabwe

May 30, 2024 — Fossils found on the shoreline of Lake Kariba in Zimbabwe represent a completely new dinosaur species. This remarkable find, named Musankwa sanyatiensis, marks only the fourth dinosaur species named ...

Researchers Discover Hidden Step in Dinosaur Feather Evolution

May 21, 2024 — Scientists discover 'zoned development' in dinosaur skin, with zones of reptile-style scales and zones of bird-like skin with feathers. A new dinosaur skin fossil has been found to be ...

First 'Warm-Blooded' Dinosaurs May Have Emerged 180 Million Years Ago

May 15, 2024 — The ability to regulate body temperature, a trait all mammals and birds have today, may have evolved among some dinosaurs early in the Jurassic period about 180 million years ago. The new study ...

T. Rex Not as Smart as Previously Claimed

Apr. 29, 2024 — Dinosaurs were likely as smart as reptiles but not as intelligent as ...

Do Some Mysterious Bones Belong to Gigantic Ichthyosaurs?

Apr. 9, 2024 — Several similar large, fossilized bone fragments have been discovered in various regions across Western and Central Europe since the 19th century. The animal group to which they belonged is still the ...

Dinosaur Study Challenges Bergmann's Rule

Apr. 5, 2024 — A new study calls into question Bergmann's rule, an 1800s-era scientific principle stating that animals in high-latitude, cooler climates tend to be larger than close relatives living in warmer ...

Early Dinosaurs Grew Up Fast, but They Weren't the Only Ones

Apr. 3, 2024 — The earliest dinosaurs had rapid growth rates, but so did many of the other animals living alongside them, according to a new ...

Alaska Dinosaur Tracks Reveal a Lush, Wet Environment

Mar. 12, 2024 — A large find of dinosaur tracks and fossilized plants and tree stumps in far northwestern Alaska provides new information about the climate and movement of animals near the time when they began ...

Higher Carnivorous Dinosaur Biodiversity of Famous Kem Kem Beds, Morocco

Mar. 12, 2024 — An international team of palaeontologists applied recently developed methods to measure theropod (carnivorous) dinosaur species diversity. The newly applied method uses both traditional phylogenetic ...

Fossils of Giant Sea Lizard With Dagger-Like Teeth Show How Our Oceans Have Fundamentally Changed Since the Dinosaur Era

Mar. 5, 2024 — Fossils of a strange new species of marine lizard with dagger-like teeth that lived 66 million years ago, show a dramatically more biodiverse ocean ecosystem to what we see ...

Fossil Named 'Attenborough's Strange Bird' Was the First in Its Kind Without Teeth

Mar. 5, 2024 — A new fossil, named 'Attenborough's strange bird' after naturalist and documentarian Sir David Attenborough, is the first of its kind to evolve a toothless beak. It's from a ...

A Lighthouse in the Gobi Desert

Feb. 14, 2024 — A new study explores the weight great fossil sites have on our understanding of evolutionary relationships between fossil groups and quantified the power these sites have on our understanding of ...

The Hidden Rule for Flight Feathers -- And How It Could Reveal Which Dinosaurs Could Fly

Feb. 12, 2024 — Scientists examined hundreds of birds in museum collections and discovered a suite of feather characteristics that all flying birds have in common. These 'rules' provide clues as to how the ...

Dinosaurs' Success Helped by Specialized Stance and Gait, Study Finds

Feb. 7, 2024 — Dinosaurs' range of locomotion made them incredibly adaptable, researchers have ...

Scientists Pinpoint Growth of Brain's Cerebellum as Key to Evolution of Bird Flight

Jan. 30, 2024 — Evolutionary biologists report they have combined PET scans of modern pigeons along with studies of dinosaur fossils to help answer an enduring question in biology: How did the brains of birds evolve ...

Student Discovers 200-Million-Year-Old Flying Reptile

Jan. 22, 2024 — Gliding winged-reptiles were amongst the ancient crocodile residents of the Mendip Hills in Somerset, England, researchers at the have ...

New Research Sheds Light on an Old Fossil Solving an Evolutionary Mystery

Jan. 10, 2024 — Picrodontids -- an extinct family of placental mammals that lived several million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs -- are not primates as previously ...