Free Republic

Nothing quite says 'look at me!' like an extravagant set of tail feathers. Plenty of modern birds sacrifice agility for a chance to grab attention, but examples among relatives in the fossil record have been harder to come by. Scientists have now described the remains of a 120-million-year-old feathered dinosaur roughly the size of a bluejay, with an extremely long and extravagant behind. The remarkably-detailed fossil was found in northeastern China and named Yuanchuavis (Yuanchuavis kompsosoura) after a phoenix-like bird in Chinese mythology. It's the first time a bird-like fossil from the Mesozoic era has been discovered with such a...

The Shiva Crater is discussed in a recent article in Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, an Australian scientific journal, by the two scientists. In the early 1990s, based on new geological evidence, Chatterjee surmised that a crater extending from the seabed off the city of Bombay into the state of Gujarat was created by a meteor fall. He named it after Shiva. He also argued that the Shiva Crater was actually one-half of a larger crater; the other part lay undersea near the Seychelle Islands, 2,800 km southeast of India. When pieced together, the original crater (split by continental shifting)...

EGS-AGU-EUG Joint Assembly, Nice, April 2003 Mass-extinction controversy flares again Core from asteroid crater fuels debate on what wiped out the dinosaurs. 10 April 2003 REX DALTON [photo] The dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago. © alamy.com A claim that the asteroid that struck Mexico 65 million years ago did not cause the mass extinction that wiped out dinosaurs triggered heated debate at a meeting this week. The announcement is based on preliminary analysis of the first core drilled into the 185-kilometre Chicxulub asteroid crater near the Yucatan Peninsula. Gerta Keller of Princeton University in New Jersey says...

The dinosaur-killing Chicxulub meteor might have ignited an oilfield rather than forests when it slammed into the Gulf of Mexico 65 million years ago, say geologists. Smoke-related particles found in sediments formed at the time of the impact are strikingly similar to those created by modern high-temperature coal and oil burning, as opposed to forest fires, says Professor Simon Brassell of Indiana University. He and colleagues from Italy and the UK publish their report on the discovery in the May issue of the journal Geology. ...What he and his colleagues have found instead are particles called cenospheres, which resemble the...

About 66 million years ago, an estimated 6-mile-wide (9.6 kilometers) object slammed into Earth, triggering a cataclysmic series of events that resulted in the demise of non-avian dinosaurs. Now, scientists think they know where that object came from. According to new research, the impact was caused by a giant dark primitive asteroid from the outer reaches of the solar system's main asteroid belt, situated between Mars and Jupiter. This region is home to many dark asteroids — space rocks with a chemical makeup that makes them appear darker (reflecting very little light) compared with other types of asteroids. "I had...

Artist’s impression of the fearsome Thapunngaka shawi. Credit: Adobe stock ============================================================================================================= Australia’s largest flying reptile has been uncovered, a pterosaur with an estimated seven-meter wingspan that soared like a dragon above the ancient, vast inland sea once covering much of outback Queensland. University of Queensland PhD candidate Tim Richards, from the Dinosaur Lab in UQ’s School of Biological Sciences, led a research team that analyzed a fossil of the creature’s jaw, discovered on Wanamara Country, near Richmond in North West Queensland. “It’s the closest thing we have to a real life dragon,” Mr. Richards said. “The new pterosaur, which we...

More Original Dinosaur Molecules Found July 5, 2021 | David F. Coppedge This time, eggshell fossils were analyzed by experts at the American Chemical Society Dinosaur soft tissue is so common now, it’s hard to make a splash in the media about it. But a funny thing happened on the way to falsifying the evolutionary timescale: the Darwinists decided to accept cognitive dissonance as a strategy. There’s no way the material could be over 60 million years old, but since the evolutionary timescale is true, it is. Watch how the moyboy strategy is performed in this June 30 press release...

A Florida woman might have proof of that. Cristina Ryan told WOFL-TV that she caught a glimpse of a "baby dinosaur" running through her yard on a home security camera. Advertisement "Maybe I've watched 'Jurassic Park' too many times, but I see a raptor or other small dinosaur!" she told the TV station. People who have seen the video have various theories about what the animal may be — perhaps a bird, a lizard or a dog dragging a leash? It's more likely that whatever it was will remain a mystery.

“The finest impression of a 215-million-year-old dinosaur print found in Britain in a decade”A four-year-old girl has stunned paelontologists after finding an “internationally important” dinosaur footprint on a trip to the supermarket. Lily Wilder, from Llandough, was walking along the coast between Barry and Sully with her father Richard when she spotted what experts from Archaeology Cymru are calling “the finest impression of a 215 million-year-old dinosaur print found in Britain in a decade”. The perfect print, which her family initially thought may have been created by an artist, was left by a small bipedal dinosaur. Experts call this type...

American conservatives know that after Democrats all but cheered on violence and rioting for months, the idea that Trump incited an insurrection is pure nonsense. It’s a lie and McConnell’s parroting of it is disqualifying for leadership. So why is McConnell playing along with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s charade of impeachment? He thinks he can get the conservative movement back on his and the Chamber of Commerce’s team. He can’t. If he pushes this impeachment conviction, as he seems to be, he should have no place in Republican leadership. It is nothing short of a betrayal of Republican voters.

With 2020 being such a chaotic year, we'd think that things can't get any more bizarre than they already are. However, this viral video of a realistic-looking dinosaur has proven us wrong. In a 30-second clip circulating on Twitter this week, The video comes with the caption "Alhamdulillah piaraan baru udah nyampe", which translates to "Praise God, the new pet has arrived". While the Triceratops looks unnervingly realistic, it is actually a very elaborate costume that was done up for Mojosemi Forest Park's promotional holiday video, and hidden underneath the dinosaur were a bunch of park employees, Indonesian media reported....

With a mane of yellow and brown fur down its back and long ‘needles’ growing from its shoulders, a peacock-like elaborate dinosaur has been identified. The neck spines of the creature are rare in the fossil record and made of keratin, which is the same protein that makes up parts of our hair, nails and skin. Dubbed Ubirajara jubatus, indigenous Indian for ‘Maned Lord of the Spear’ Experts led from the University of Portsmouth believe the flamboyant spines may have been used to impress prospective mates, and that the dinosaur may have indulged in ‘elaborate dancing’ to show them off.

When the paper was published, many mainstream publications were intrigued by the story and wrote about the findings, giving the team from China, the U.S. and Canada a bit of notoriety. But shortly thereafter, others in the field began questioning the categorization of the fossil—many suggested it appeared to be a lizard, which is a different group of reptiles from the dinosaurs. The specimen in question is a very small skull embedded in amber, believed to be approximately 100 million years old—dating it to the time of the dinosaurs. The researchers described the specimen as a bird-like skull less than...

Dinosaur DNA Found! February 28, 2020 | David F. Coppedge Deep-timers had a big enough problem with collagen and melanosomes. But DNA should be long gone. 75 million years? No way! Could this be the last straw? For two decades now, especially since 2005, creationists have been challenging deep-timers (those who believe life is hundreds of millions of years old, and earth is 4.5 billion years old) with dinosaur soft tissue. Secular reports have been coming in regularly about soft tissue in fossils: feathers, melanosomes, collagen, various proteins, and materials in dinosaur bones that look like stretchy blood vessels and...

A new species of tyrannosaur that stalked North America around 80 million years ago has been discovered by scientists in Canada. The dinosaur lived in the late Cretaceous Period, making it the oldest known tyrannosaur from North America. Another species of tyrannosaur, a Daspletosaurus, was found in Canada in 1970, a study says. Researchers say the new discovery has given them insights into the evolution of tyrannosaurs. Standing roughly 8ft (2.4m) tall, the predator would have cut an intimidating figure. Like its tyrannosaur relatives, the carnivorous dinosaur had a long, deep snout, bumps on its skull and large steak-knife-like teeth...

Dog walker Jon Gopsill, 54, was stunned when his pups led him to five-foot-long remains The fossil was left exposed by recent storms on the coast of Stolford, Somerset The amateur archaeologist believes the skeleton is that of a Jurassic reptile known as an ichthyosaur =============================================================== A dog walker claims to have stumbled across a 65 million-year-old skeleton on a Somerset beach – thanks to the sharp noses of his dogs. Jon Gopsill, 54, was walking his two pets on the coast of Stolford, Somerset on Saturday when they sniffed out a bone that turned out to be part of...

Dinosaur eggs point to the global Genesis Flood by Mike Oard 10-10-19 The first well-known discovery of dinosaur eggs was in Mongolia during the early 1920s. Then in the 1970s, Marion Brandvold found more dinosaur eggs, a few even containing embryos, in Montana, USA, at a 9-metre-high hill called ‘Egg Mountain’. This was later excavated by famous dinosaur paleontologist John Horner and colleagues. Researchers have now discovered eggs on almost all the continents of the world (figure 1). New egg sites are found each year and the estimated number of fossil dino eggs is in the millions. The best-known sites...

(Video at source)A group of international researchers say they have uncovered possible evidence of a warmer climate in Alaska — dating back to when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Dr. Tony Fiorillo of the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas, Texas, and his team are fresh back from a three-week, remote expedition to Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve. During that time, Fiorillo says the researchers discovered what appeared to be a crayfish burrow. How do crayfish fit in with dinosaurs? We wondered that too. "They lived with the dinosaurs," Fiorillo explained. "As you can imagine, in Anchorage, there aren't...

Showdown: Is Dino Soft Tissue Just Bacteria? June 18, 2019 | David F. Coppedge By dismissing dinosaur soft tissue as bacteria, Field Museum scientists may have given creationists a selling point. Scientists at Chicago’s prestigious Field Museum of Paleontology have made a frontal assault on claims of original dinosaur proteins in dinosaur bones. The claims, made primarily by Mary Schweitzer at North Carolina State University, and by others, have invigorated young-earth creationists with alleged proof that the bones are only thousands of years old, not tens of millions. Are they wrong? Were they looking at bacterial biofilms masquerading as dinosaur...

An international team of paleontologists has found a piece of amber containing the beautifully preserved ammonite, several marine and land organisms that lived 99 million years ago (Cretaceous period).The 99-million-year-old piece of amber from northern Myanmar. Image credit: Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology.