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Imagine watching an interview on television and hearing a bald, blind, deaf, wrinkled, hunched-back, bedridden man claim that he is 130 years old. Although you might doubt such a claim, if ever there was a man in modern times to live 130 years on Earth, he likely would have looked as worn out as this man appeared. Imagine, however, if a quick-witted, muscular, marathon runner with fair skin, thick, dark hair, low blood pressure, and a good memory, claimed to be 130 years old. What reasonable person would believe such a claim? Everyone would doubt the statement, especially the doctors,...

EDMONTON - Experts are calling a dinosaur fossil unearthed in northern Alberta this week one of the “most complete finds in this part of the world in a long time.” Brian Brake, executive director of the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum, said the fossilized remains of a hadrosaur were discovered at an energy company’s work site near Spirit River. Officials from the pipeline firm contacted the museum, which sent paleontologists to assess the find. “What we have is a totally composed tail,” Brake said. “It’s beautiful.” The Currie Museum contacted its counterparts at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, which...

Pictures of Dinofuzz at Source.

SUGARCREEK, Ohio—The corn stands 5 feet tall, the temperatures are in the 90s and Johnny Byler got hooked on his head while fishing with a friend, reported Mrs. Jerry Ray Byler in a recent front-page article of the Budget. Mrs. Byler is one of about 860 correspondents for the Budget, a 123-year-old weekly newspaper, which carries the news of Amish and Mennonite communities, from Diagonal, Iowa to the three Minnesota outposts of Bertha, Clarissa and Lenora. They write about who got married, who went to church, who received dentures—and how 11 chickens went missing when Toby Schrocks of Cisne, Ill.,...

Was Tyrannosaurus rex a predator or scavenger? The question has been a point of controversy in the scientific community for more than a century. "You see 'Jurassic Park,' and you see T. rex as this massive hunter and killer, as incredibly vicious. But scientists have argued for 100 years that he was too big and too slow to hunt prey and that he was probably a scavenger, an animal that feeds only on dead things," University of Kansas paleontologist David Burnham said. Burnham and researcher Robert DePalma got what Burnham described as his "lucky break" when they found the fossil...

July 17, 2013 — Rapid tooth replacement by sauropods, the largest dinosaurs in the fossil record, likely contributed to their evolutionary success, according to a research paper by Stony Brook University paleontologist Michael D'Emic, PhD, and colleagues. This is an illustration of a skull of Diploducus alongside the research team’s CT scan-generated images of some teeth in the front of its jaws. Bone is transparent and teeth are yellow. The arrows show the direction of tooth replacement, which is back to front similar to a shark. (Credit: Image courtesy of Stony Brook University) Paleontologists have long wondered how sauropods digested...

Scientist Stumped by Actual Dinosaur Skin by Brian Thomas, M.S. * Being the first ever to examine a dinosaur fossil long buried in sedimentary rock is thrilling enough for a field researcher. But a team working in Canada found an exhilarating bonus on a hadrosaur fossil fragment—it had actual skin still attached. They found the duck-bill dinosaur fossil near Grand Prairie, Alberta. University of Regina physicist Mauricio Barbi operates state-of-the art synchrotron equipment that can detect and identify chemical signatures without destroying samples. He plans to use the technology to investigate the special fossil and its skin. He told Canadian...

The Utah reptiles belong to the horned-dinosaur family, which is known for outlandish anatomy, and are wowing seasoned fossil hunters. The species named Kosmoceratops had 15 horns decorating its massive head, giving it the most elaborate dinosaur headdress known to science. At 15 feet long, it was larger than a Ford Fiesta. Its name means "ornate horned-face" in Latin. The newly discovered dinosaurs, close relatives of the famous Triceratops, were announced today. Utah scientists believe most of the horns were used to attract mates and intimidate rivals of the same species. The dinosaur fossils were found in the Grand Staircase-Escalante...

Fossil hunters have unearthed the remains of two new dinosaur species that roamed Utah's swamps 76 million years ago. Here's a brief guide to what exactly they found: What are the two new species? Kosmoceratops and Utahceratops, which have been classified (for obvious reasons) in the horned-dinosaur family which also includes the Triceratops. What did they look like? Kosmoceratops, whose hulking head sprouted 15 horns, was about 15 feet long, the size of a small car. Scott Sampson, the study leader at the Utah Museum of Natural History, calls it "one of the most amazing animals known." Utahceratops was 30...

These extinct relatives of crocodiles sunk their sharp, serrated teeth into prey and then spun, ripping out chunks of flesh... The carnivores that evolved alongside dinosaurs hunted with quick, opportunistic strikes... marine mega meat-eaters ripped into prey with massive, serrated teeth some 171 to 136 million years ago to satisfy a diet of at least 70 percent flesh. What's more, metriorhynchids, the extinct relatives of today's crocodiles, had a killing skill that T. Rex lacked: The death roll. The creatures would sink their teeth into prey and then spin their bodies in the water to tear out large chunks of...

One of the best-known dinosaur species may not have really been a dinosaur species at all, according to new research. Scientists compared triceratops skulls to those of a lesser-known species, the torosaurus, and concluded that the triceratops were actually young torosauruses, New Scientist reports. They believe the three-horned dinosaur's skull changed shape as it aged. Researchers say the bones of the horns and neck frill in the young dinosaurs remained spongy until they became full adults. "Even in the most mature specimens that we've examined, there is evidence that the skull was still undergoing dramatic changes at the time of...

Palaeontologists have identified the oldest known dinosaur embryos, belonging to a species that lived some 190 million years ago. The eggs of Massospondylus, containing well-perserved embryos, were unearthed in South Africa back in 1976. The creature appears to be an ancestor of the family that includes the long-necked dino once known as Brontosaurus. The study in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology also sheds light on the dinosaurs' early development.

> The pterosaur's wingspan and size have spawned comparisons to dragons. But recently some scientists wondered whether the creature was too big to fly. A pair of papers recently asserted that the biggest pterosaurs may have been too heavy to get off the ground. That seemed implausible to Habib. After all, the biggest birds often have the longest flight range. And Quetzalcoatlus, with its 35-foot wingspan, certainly fits the bill for gigantic. So Habib teamed up with Mark Witton, a British paleontologist, to plug in factors like wingspan, weight and aerodynamics into a computer model. The results, which they presented...

Mammals around the world exploded in size after the major extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period 65 million years ago, filling environmental niches left vacant by the loss of dinosaurs, according to a new study published today (Nov. 25) in the journal Science. The maximum size of mammals leveled off about 25 million years later, or 40 million years ago, because of external limits set by temperature and land area, reported an international team led by paleoecologist Felisa Smith of the University of New Mexico. "For the first 140 million years of their evolutionary history, mammals were basically...

BANGKOK – A new species of crocodile that lived 100 million years ago has been identified from a fossil found in Thailand, researchers said Thursday. Komsorn Lauprasert, a scientist at Mahasarakham University, said the species had longer legs than modern-day crocodiles and probably fed on fish, based on the characteristics of its teeth.

Crocodiles can no longer be referred to as "living fossils", according to scientists.Members of the crocodilian family have previously been thought to have changed little since prehistoric times. However, new fossil analyses suggests that modern crocodilians actually evolved from a very diverse group. Recently discovered ancient ancestors include small cat-like specimens, giant "supercrocs" and a pug-nosed vegetarian species. Body structureModern crocodilians are adapted to aquatic environments with long snouts, strong tails and powerful jaws. Yet contrary to popular belief, scientists now suggest that the basic body structure of crocodiles, alligators and ghariels evolved from a diverse group of prehistoric reptiles...

By reconstructing the brains of extinct birds, researchers could shed light on when birds evolved into creatures of flight. Overwhelming evidence suggests birds evolved from dinosaurs some 150 million years ago, but one of the missing pieces to the evolutionary puzzle is how such birds took to the air. Scientists in Scotland are focusing on changes in the size of a part of the rear of the brain. This part of the cerebellum, known as the flocculus, is responsible for integrating visual and balance signals during flight, allowing birds to judge the position of other objects in midflight. [3-D Image...

Careful dating of new dinosaur fossils and volcanic ash around them by researchers from UC Davis and UC Berkeley casts doubt on the idea that dinosaurs appeared and opportunistically replaced other animals. Instead -- at least in one South American valley -- they seem to have existed side by side and gone through similar periods of extinction. Geologists from Argentina and the United States announced earlier this month the discovery of a new dinosaur that roamed what is now South America 230 million years ago, at the beginning of the age of the dinosaurs. The newly discovered Eodramaeus, or "dawn...

A new TV series featuring dinosaur detectives from The University of Manchester looking at how dinosaurs once lived, looked and functioned begins in the UK this week. Presented by University of Manchester palaeontologist Dr Phil Manning, the series will be aired on the National Geographic Channel, starting in the UK on Thursday February 3rd, before being transmitted to many countries around the world. It is the first ever series on dinosaurs commissioned by National Geographic, as previously documentaries have only aired as one or two-hour specials. Jurassic CSI will for the first time provide a detailed forensic look at dinosaurs...

University of Alberta researchers determined that a fossilized dinosaur bone found in New Mexico confounds the long established paradigm that the age of dinosaurs ended between 65.5 and 66 million years ago. The U of A team, led by Larry Heaman from the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, determined the femur bone of a hadrosaur as being only 64.8 million years old. That means this particular plant eater was alive about 700,000 years after the mass extinction event many paleontologists believe wiped all non-avian dinosaurs off the face of earth, forever. Heaman and colleagues used a new direct-dating method...