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A 52-million-year fossil of a "perching bird" has been found in Wyoming with its feathers still attached, a discovery that "no one's ever seen before." Also known as passerines, the perching bird was discovered in Fossil Lake, WY. Passerines are well-known for eating seeds, as most modern-day birds do and account for approximately 65 percent of the 10,000 different species of birds alive today. "This is one of the earliest known perching birds. It's fascinating because passerines today make up most of all bird species, but they were extremely rare back then. This particular piece is just exquisite," said Field...

A new dinosaur species, notable for a row of two-foot spines protruding from its neck, has been discovered by scientists in Argentina. Scientists have dubbed the new dinosaur, “Bajadasaurus,” an herbivore that lived 140 million years ago, according to the scientific journal Nature, which first revealed the findings. Its name is an amalgam of Spanish, Greek, and Latin, meaning “lizard from Bajada with forward-bending spines.” The dinosaur's unusual "spines" have fueled a wave of speculation about what purpose they may have served. Pablo Gallina, a paleontologist who first came across a set of its teeth in 2010, said the “long and sharp...

When we had the Senate and the House and the presidency, what did McConnell do on the border issue?” Levin asked. “Nothing.” Levin played an audio clip of McConnell at a presser earlier Tuesday, at which McConnell declared, “I’m for whatever works, which means avoiding a shutdown and avoiding the president feeling he should declare a national emergency.” “Let me tell you something, it’s not really dysfunction,” Levin said. “It’s the speaker of the House and the Democrats in the House: They have decided they don’t want a wall.” “McConnell is as power-hungry as Nancy Pelosi. You need to understand...

Scientists recently discovered a rare and important hagfish fossil that includes traces of preserved slime dating to 100 million years ago. Eyeless, jawless hagfish — still around today — are bizarre, eel-like, carrion-eating fishes that lick the flesh off dead animals using their spiky tongue-like structures. But their most well-known feature is the sticky slime that they expel for protection. And now, scientists know that hagfish slime is robust enough to leave traces in the fossil record, finding remarkable evidence in a fossilized hagfish skeleton excavated in Lebanon. ..." The fossil dates to the late Cretaceous period (145.5 million to...

Just like the modern platypus, this 250-million-year-old, Triassic-age marine reptile likely used its cartilaginous bill to discover and seize its next meal, a new study finds. "This animal had unusually small eyes for the body, only rivaled by some living animals that rely on senses other than vision and feed in the dusk or darkness — for example some shrews, badgers and the duck-billed platypus," said study lead researcher Ryosuke Motani, a paleobiologist at the University of California, Davis. "So, it most likely used tactile senses [with its] platypus-like bill to detect prey in the dusk or darkness." ..." Previously,...

Pterosaurs may have scared frenzied tourists in 2015's "Jurassic World," but a newly classified species of the ancient reptile may have scared the wits out of its prey during the Jurassic era because of its massive fangs, a trait largely unseen in any of its relatives. Known as Klobiodon rochei (which means "cage tooth"), the species was discovered after bone fragments were taken from Stonefield Slate — an area, approximately 10 miles northwest of Oxford, described as a "rich source of Jurassic fossils." It was where the Megalosaurus, the first dinosaur discovered in Britain, was found. "Klobiodon has been known...

Many secular scientists consider so-called “feathered dinosaurs” to be evidence of dinosaurs evolving into birds. Clearly defined anatomy-based categories exist for both “bird” and “dinosaur,” but evolution requires a bird-to-dinosaur transition.1 In living creatures, only birds—not mammals or reptiles—have feathers. Furthermore, with a few controversial exceptions,2 all extinct feathered animals are acknowledged as birds. Even bird-feather proteins called keratins are unique.3The use of feathers to fly “affects virtually every aspect of feather design and construction.”4 A flight feather has a long, slender central shaft called a rachis. From this extend the barbs, and from these extend the even smaller barbules....

Paleontologists have excavated a mighty meat-eating, four-fingered dinosaur from an unexpected spot: the Italian Alps. The newly identified beast — dubbed Saltriovenator zanellai — lived about 200 million years ago, and it's the first-known Jurassic dinosaur discovered in Italy, the researchers said. It's also the oldest-known ceratosaurian, as well as the largest (it weighed 1 ton), predatory dinosaur known from the earliest part of the Jurassic. S. zanellai's journey to fossilization and discovery thrilled scientists, who deduced that the dinosaur's body ended up in the sea, where marine critters nibbled on its bones before it was buried. Then, it was...

Being a gigantic dinosaur presented some challenges, such as overheating in the Cretaceous sun and frying your brain. Researchers from Ohio University and NYITCOM at Arkansas State show in a new article in PLOS ONE that the heavily armored, club-tailed ankylosaurs had a built-in air conditioner in their snouts. "The huge bodies that we see in most dinosaurs must have gotten really hot in warm Mesozoic climates," said Jason Bourke, Assistant Professor at the New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine at Arkansas State and lead author of the study. "Brains don't like that, so we wanted to...

A "treasure trove" of dinosaur footprints — from at least seven different species, including a species of stegosaur — that date back about 100 million years have been uncovered by storm surge in the United Kingdom, researchers from the University of Cambridge revealed on Monday. More than 85 "well-preserved" dinosaur prints from the Cretaceous period were recovered in East Sussex, along cliffs near Hastings, from 2014 through 2018, the researchers said. Their impressive findings were recently published in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. "Many of the footprints — which range in size from less than 2 cm to over 60 cm across — are...

A team of paleontologists recently announced the discovery of a new horned dinosaur — a "cousin" of the Triceratops — in southern Arizona. The new species, Crittendenceratops krzyzanowskii, was named after the rock formation the fossils were buried under (Fort Crittenden Formation) as well as the late amateur scientist Stan Krzyzanowski, who first found the fossils. The bones of the dinosaur were uncovered underneath 73-million-year-old rocks about 20 years ago southeast of Tucson, but a team from the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science (NMMNH) recently studied the specimen and determined it was a new species. Their findings were published in NMMNH's bulletin. ..." The...

The fossil of a 180-million-year-old ichthyosaur from the Jurassic era has been discovered and it contains evidence of blubber and skin, making the creature more similar to modern-day dolphins than previously thought. The team of researchers from North Carolina State University and Sweden’s Lund University used molecular and microstructural analysis to determine that the creature, described by National Geographic as a "sea monster," was likely warm-blooded and potentially could use its coloration to help it hide from predators. “Ichthyosaurs are interesting because they have many traits in common with dolphins, but are not at all closely related to those sea-dwelling...

The new Australian dinosaur, named Weewarrasaurus pobeni, was about the size of a large dog. The ancient creature was an ornithopod dinosaur, part of a group of small plant-eating species that moved around on two legs and that were particularly abundant on the Cretaceous floodplains of eastern Australia.A fragment of the jawbone of Weewarrasaurus pobeni was found deep in an underground mine at the Wee Warra locality close to the Grawin/Glengarry opal fields, approximately 25 miles (40 km) southwest of Lightning Ridge, central-northern New South Wales.The fossil was analyzed by a team of paleontologists from the Australian Opal Centre and...

...Due to the principles of gravity, mass, and the limitations of muscular anatomy in any life form, it would not be possible for any animal weighing more than 20,803 pounds to be able to lift its own weight (Holden, 1994). However, the Brontosaurus is supposed to weigh over 70,000 pounds, and other so-called sauropods are supposed to be many times larger than that. Then there is the issue of neck size - a long necked animal of that size would not even be able to lift its neck. Additionally, their blood pressure would be way too high to be able...

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Fossils of a previously undiscovered species of dinosaur have been found in slabs of Utah sandstone that were so hard that explosives had to be used to free some of the remains, scientists said Tuesday. The bones found at Dinosaur National Monument belonged to a type of sauropod—long-necked plant-eaters that were said to be the largest animal ever to roam land. The discovery included two complete skulls from other types of sauropods—an extremely rare find, scientists said.

Imagine if you crossed a rhino with a giant turtle and then supersized the result: You might get something like Lisowicia bojani, a newly discovered Triassic mammal cousin that had a body shaped like a rhinoceros, a beak like a turtle, and weighed as much as an African elephant, about 9 tons. Paleontologists say this startling creature offers a new view of the dawn of the age of the dinosaurs. "Who would have ever thought that there were giant, elephant-sized mammal cousins living alongside some of the very first dinosaurs?" marvels Stephen Brusatte, a vertebrate paleontologist at The University of...

A new species of sauropod dinosaur that stretched 39 feet (12 m) from head to tail has been unearthed in Patagonia, ArgentinaDubbed Lavocatisaurus agrioensis, the new dinosaur is thought to have lived approximately 110 million years ago (Cretaceous period).The creature was a type of sauropod, a group of huge plant-eating dinosaurs that includes the largest animals ever to walk the Earth.One adult and two immature specimens of Lavocatisaurus agrioensis were recovered near the locality of Agrio del Medio, a small town in the central part of the province of Neuquén, Patagonia.“We found most of the skull bones of Lavocatisaurus agrioensis:...

University of Oregon scientists have found the first confirmed dinosaur bone in Oregon, Fox 12 Oregon reports. The toe bone belonged to a plant-eating, bipedal dinosaur known as an ornithopod and is estimated to date back 103 million years to a geological period that also gave rise to Tyrannosaurus Rex, the university said. “This bone was sitting out there with all the rocks. It was pretty surprising,” University of Oregon scientist Greg Retallack told the Eugene Register-Guard. “No excavation was needed. It was just sitting among the ammonites and coil fossils.”Retallack found it in eastern Oregon near the tiny town of...

About 66 million years after two dinosaurs died apparently locked in battle on the plains of modern-day Montana, an unusual fight over who owns the entangled fossils has become a multimillion-dollar issue that hinges on the legal definition of “mineral.” The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that the “Dueling Dinosaurs” located on private land are minerals both scientifically and under mineral rights laws. The fossils belong both to the owners of the property where they were found and two brothers who kept two-thirds of the mineral rights to the land once owned by their father, a...

A new species of dinosaur has been discovered, known as Ledumahadi mafube, the largest animal that walked the Earth during its lifetime. Ledumahadi mafube, which means "a giant thunderclap at dawn," in the South African language Sesotho, walked in an unusual way. It did not walk on straight limbs, but rather with a "crouched" stance, causing scientists to believe L. mafube was an "evolutionary 'experiment'." "The first thing that struck me about this animal is the incredible robustness of the limb bones," said lead author Dr. Blair McPhee in a statement. "It was of similar size to the gigantic sauropod dinosaurs,...