Free Republic

The researchers say they found evidence in North Dakota of the asteroid hit in Mexico, including fish with hot glass in their gills from flaming debris that showered back down on Earth. They also reported the discovery of charred trees, evidence of an inland tsunami and melted amber. Additionally, University of Amsterdam professor Jan Smit said he and his colleagues found footsteps from dinosaurs moments before they met their untimely death. Smit said the footprints — one from a plant-eating hadrosaur and the other of a meat eater, maybe a small Tyrannosaurus Rex — is "definite proof that the dinosaurs...

66 million-year-old deathbed linked to dinosaur-killing meteor By Robert Sanders, Media relations| March 29, 2019March 29, 2019 Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)Click to print (Opens in new window) A meteor impact 66 million years ago generated a tsunami-like wave in an inland sea that killed and buried fish, mammals, insects and a dinosaur, the first victims of Earth’s last mass extinction event. The death scene from within an hour of...

Scientists have debated whether the dinosaurs were already in decline before a massive asteroid impact finished them off 66 million years ago. New research shows they were thriving in their final days. Help EarthSky keep going! Please donate what you can to our annual crowd-funding campaign.Dinosaurs once reigned on Earth, until a cataclysmic event – now thought to have been a massive asteroid impact, or possibly intense volcanic activity – wiped them out about 66 million years ago during the Maastrichtian age at the end the Late Cretaceous epoch. This mass extinction event was sudden and brutal, powerful enough to...

It is the closest we may ever get to being face to face with a T. rex. The American Museum of Natural History has unveiled a new exhibition showing the giant through its life with a series of models it boasts are 'the most accurate ever created'. They range from a fluffy hatchling to a gigantic 43-foot-long model of the full grown killer - complete with feathers and 'useless' arms.

The Tyrannosaurus rex may be among the most well-known and terrifying dinosaurs to walk the Earth, but a newly discovered 4-foot cousin was likely just as scary. Known as Moros Intrepidus (which means "harbinger of doom"), this tiny tyrannosaur lived 100 million years ago. Despite its diminutive size, it was still lethal, North Carolina State University paleontoloist Lindsay Zanno said. “Moros was lightweight and exceptionally fast,” Zanno said in a statement. “These adaptations, together with advanced sensory capabilities, are the mark of a formidable predator. It could easily have run down prey, while avoiding confrontation with the top predators of...

Titanosaurs were the most speciose and widespread group of sauropod dinosaurs, the largest terrestrial animals in Earth history. They reached their peak diversity in the Late Cretaceous after all other sauropod groups vanished, but their early evolution is poorly understood due to a scarcity of well-preserved titanosaur fossils from before the Late Cretaceous, especially outside of South America. In this study, the authors describe a newly-discovered middle Cretaceous titanosaur from southern Africa. The researchers named the new dinosaur Mnyamawamtuka moyowamkia. It is known from a single specimen excavated from a quarry along the Mtuka River in southwest Tanzania. It is...

A new oviraptorosaur species from the Late Cretaceous was discovered in Mongolia... Oviraptorosaurs were a diverse group of feathered, bird-like dinosaurs from the Cretaceous of Asia and North America. Despite the abundance of nearly complete oviraptorosaur skeletons discovered in southern China and Mongolia, the diet and feeding strategies of these toothless dinosaurs are still unclear. In this study, Lee and colleagues described an incomplete skeleton of an oviraptorosaur found in the Nemegt Formation of the Gobi desert of Mongolia. The new species, named Gobiraptor minutus, can be distinguished from other oviraptorosaurs in having unusual thickened jaws. This unique morphology suggests...

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...