Category Archives: Fossils
THE FOOT OF T.REX
October 2007 Our very own Dr Phil Manning strikes again. This time, he has identified the first footprint of T. rex. A team from BBC North-West was on hand! BBC News page; watch the programme here (may not work outside the UK).
Filed under Dinosaurs, Fossils, Manchester, Videos
EAT YOUR HEART OUT DOCTOR WHO
October 2007 Go back in time 510 Myr, shortly before a mudslide trapped and preserved an amazing array of soft-bodied fauna in a shallow sea in what is now called the Burgess Shale. This video – an extract from a 5-minute long … Continue reading
SABRETOOTHS AND DUCK-BILLED DINOSAURS
October 2007 Two studies of the biomechanics of biting in extinct animals. The first shows that the sabretooth tiger’s bite wasn’t as bad as its yawn, while the second shows that duck-billed dinosaurs could probably chomp their way through some pretty … Continue reading
A FEATHERY VELOCIRAPTOR?
September 2007 Velociraptors were those aggressive, smart, hunting dinosaurs at the end of the first Jurassic Park movie. Spielberg got two things wrong – they were nowhere near as big as in the film (dramatic licence) and it now appears they may have had … Continue reading
DINOSAUR RECONSTRUCTION
May 2007 The Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh has been assembling a number of new dinosaur skeletons (including a Stegosaur!), and has put up some journals to describe the progress.
T. REX WAS A CHICKEN
April 2007 Soft tissue in fossils can now be analysed. Two groups reported work, published in Science, in which they examined remains of collagen in T. rex fossils and come up with identical conclusions – the dinosaur collagen is closest to that found … Continue reading
MORE ARGUMENTS ABOUT HUMAN EVOLUTION
April 2007 Did humans come out of Africa, as most people think, or did we evolve separately in various places round the planet (the “multi-regional hypothesis”)? A new fossil discovered in China seems to add weight to the latter argument. BBC summary, original … Continue reading
Filed under Fossils, Human evolution
BURROWING DINOSAURS
March 2007 Recent discovery in Montana (where else?) of burrowing dinosaurs (pretty hefty ones at that, but no, not stegosaur size). BBC News article, original article in Proceedings: Biology (open access!)
BIPLANE DINOSAURS
February 2007 It appears that early feathered dinosaurs also had ”wings” on their feet! BBC summary here, original PNAS article here (open access).
ZOOLOGY PUB QUIZ QUESTION: DID HUMANS AND TERROR BIRDS MEET?
February 2007 Terror birds were massive 2m tall flightless birds with big beaks that lived in North America. They looked like their name suggests. It was thought that they lived around 10,000 years ago, in which case, we might have met up. … Continue reading
Filed under Birds, Fossils, Human evolution
