Free Republic

Once you know the shape of the melanosomes in a fossil, you can learn all sorts of things about the animal. For example, some dinosaurs with fearsome reputations were incredibly showy. "Many of the close relatives of Velociraptor — you know, that was chasing the kids around in the kitchen [in "Jurassic Park"]?" Vinther said. "First of all, that was covered in feathers. It was really bird-like, not like this naked thing that we see there. But furthermore, most of the relatives that we looked at that were close to it, they were iridescent. So they would have had a...

Bret Baier: I Hope "The Velociraptor" Screaming During Marco Rubio's Answers Doesn't Show Up At Next Week's Debate "Special Report" host Bret Baier commented on the same conspicuously excited Marco Rubio supporter at Thursday night's Republican presidential primary debate that MSNBC host Chris Matthews said appeared "unnatural," "phony" and "choreographed." BRET BAIER: Trump has these great rejoinders, these shoot-backs, right then when the audience is clapping that obviously gives him soundbites. I do think the audience was split. And whoever was the velocaraptor crying out during Rubio answers...

Birds are thought to have evolved from dinosaurs, but have very different jaws. Bird-like dinosaurs such as the velociraptor have two bones at the tip of their upper jaws. In birds, those bones are fused to form a beak. By blocking two proteins that are activated when chicken embryos grow their beaks, U.S. researchers caused their jaws to "revert" to a velociraptor-like snout. The changes were observed in chick embryos that developed until they were close to hatching. To their surprise, the birds' palates, on the roof of their mouths, also became dinosaur-like. "This was unexpected and demonstrates the way...

A team of researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) have created a new sprinting robot inspired by a velociraptor. The robot, dubbed the Raptor, runs on two legs, and is capable of running 46 kilometers per hour (kph), or 28 miles per hour (mph), on a treadmill, according to CNET. Raptor can run faster than Usain Bolt, Olympic sprinter and the fastest known human, who has a recorded top speed of 44.7kph (27.44 mph). The robot is almost as fast as Boston Dynamics' Cheetah, which can run at 47kph (29.3 mph). Both Raptor and Cheetah...

It's hot storage. Millions of years before volcanic ash entombed the Roman town of Pompeii, a group of dinosaurs succumbed to a similar fate. China's famous feathered dinosaur fossils owe their exquisite preservation to volcanic eruptions between about 130 and 120 million years ago. The Jehol fossils have transformed our understanding of dinosaurs by showing that the relatives of Velociraptor and T. rex had a feather-like body covering, like birds. The Jehol deposits also preserved soft tissue from early mammals and flowering plants. Baoyu Jiang of Nanjing University, China, and his colleagues think they know why the remains are so...

Look! Over There!

Ronald Reagan as the American Redeemer riding on his victorious velociraptor while spraying commies with depleted uranium ammo. Yeah ... this works for me.

What did Velociraptor have for dinner? Raptor skeleton discovered with bones in its gut If you lie awake at night wondering Velociraptor's favorite food was (and whether it tastes much like human flesh), you're in luck. For the first time, a Velociraptor skeleton has been observed with its last supper still filling its guts, and this little guy feasted on long-dead pterosaur. Paleontologist David Hone has published a new paper describing his findings in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, but for those who don't want to breach the paywall, he's also explaining them on his blog. This especially well preserved specimen was...

MONDAY, Oct. 10 (HealthDay News) -- Head to the American Museum of Natural History's Web site, and you'll see the major draw this fall is a splashy exhibit on dinosaurs. And not just any dinosaurs, but two-legged carnivorous, feathered "theropods" like the 30-inch-tall Bambiraptor -- somewhat less cuddly than its namesake. The heyday of the theropods, which included scaly terrors like T. rex and velociraptor, stretched from the late Triassic (220 million years ago) to the late Cretaceous (65 million years ago) periods.