Browsing: Paleontology

Scientists at  Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania have set on a path that promises to revolutionize the way paleontology is studied, and model reconstructions are made from fossils. By using 3D printers, the researchers intend on cheaply and efficiently replicate bones, without going through the hassle of casting with plaster molds. This way, they can actually build very […]

Casey Holliday, a University of Missouri researcher, was looking through some of the hundreds of unlabeled items kept in a storage facility when he come about a remarkable find –  a skull fragment from an ancient croccodile, dating back from the late Cretaceous, around 95 million years ago. What’s really interesting about the find is […]

The bond between man and dog has always been extremely evident, an unconditioned friendship, at least from the dog’s part, which has lead the latter to be rightfully often referred to as man’s best friend. But how, why, and when did dogs become such a significant part of our lives. By domesticating farm animals like cattle, pigs […]

Paleontologists have been familiar with the Alamosaurus for decades since the first fossil sample was discovered in 1922, however previous assessments regarding its size have proved to be inaccurate. A team of researchers, now claims that he Alamosaurus was significantly more massive than originally thought after examining fossils they collected in New Mexico between 2003 […]

New Jersey will soon be home to the closest thing to Jurassic Park so far, after yesterday the only press release in the world to feature dinosaurs announced that  Field Station: Dinosaurs, an new kind of innovative theme park which opens in Secaucus in May 2012. With the guidance of paleontologists from the New Jersey State […]

Paleontologists have found a link between cataclysmic volcanic eruptions around 252 million years and greatest mass extinction the Earth has ever seen, responsible for wiping out 90% of the biosphere in both land and sea. Paleontologists, led by Shu-zhong Shen of Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology in China, analyzed nine rock outcrops across Southern China which they […]

Fossilized moth wings, that are blue after death were yellow-green during lifetime, suggesting a colorful and creative method of camouflage. Camouflage and warning The moths lived in a difficult period, some 47 million years ago, in a period where life was still trying to fill the gaps left behind by the major dinosaur extinction; they […]

Paleontologists have unearthed the remains of numerous whale fossils, dating back from seven million years ago,  in Northern Chile. On further analysis it was revealed that the site in question is actually home to numerous other specimens, so far no less than 80 fossils have been recovered from the whale graveyard. “In 15 days, we […]

Hundreds of millions of years ago the Earth surface and oceans were inhabited by fierce predators of huge proportions by today’s standards. In those times, more than ever maybe, the saying that there’s always a bigger fish was cruelly true. For instance, a recent study of the fossils remains of an ichthyosaur, a giant school bus-sized […]

In a paper published in the journal Nature, Chinese paleontologists have detailed their impressions on the finding of a chicken-sized feathered dinosaur which might lead to a total reconsideration of the origin of birds on Earth. In 1861, just two years after Darwin published his infamous Origin of Species, scientists unearthed the fossils of Archaeopteryx, […]