The toothy mega-albatross
Science Friday remembers the mysteriously vanished pelagornithids – birds that, we now know, once ruled the skies with toothy beaks and a wingspan twice the […]
paleontology
Defrosting a woolly rhino (and its last supper).
Siberian Times has breaking news from practically before modern humans existed, when a baby woolly rhino got frozen in the permafrost layer that’s only melting […]
SONG: Iron in the Sky
SONG: “Iron in the Sky” ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on Science News, 19 Nov 2020,
Science Art: Holcorpa Maculosa Scudder
Click to embiggen A scorpionfly from the Miocene shales of Colorado, as the caption says in the Annual report of the Board of Regents of […]
Scientists suspect magnetic fields in mass extinctions.
Science News looks at new research revisiting an old idea – that mass extinctions have something to do with reversals in Earth’s magnetic fields. The […]
Science Art: Hyneria, by ABelov2014
Click to embiggen A scene from the Devonian period, before dinosaurs ever emerged to rumble the earth. This lobe-finned fish measured between 8 and 15 […]
We’ve found the world’s oldest sperm. And it’s big.
Science News reports on an ostracod fossil that’s 100 million years old – and contains a a recognizable sample of its giant sperm: A single […]
Dinosaur cannibals.
Popular Science makes some of the most terrifying creatures of prehistory even more terrifying with reconstructed evidence that flesh-eating dinosaurs got hungry enough to eat […]
Science Art: Devonian Marine Organisms, by Aleksandra Arkhipova, 2015
Click to embiggen vastly From the “Scientific Illustration” collection on Wikimedia Commons, where this image of trilobites and prehistoric shellfish has the following in-depth description: […]
Spinosaurs were swimmers: “the only known aquatic dinosaur.”
Nature has a video up with paleontologist Nizar Ibrahim, who discusses tailbones from the Sahara that indicate this gigantic, prehistoric bird relative swam for its […]
Science Art: Elasmotherium by Alice B. Woodward, 1912.
Click to embiggen The so-called “Siberian unicorn,” the Elasmotherium, a noble critter here pictured in the pages of Evolution of the Past, by Henry R. […]
Burmese amber contains skull of hummingbird-sized dinosaur.
Science News reports on the discovery of the smallest known dinosaur in a Myanmar gemstone – and it was a tiny predator: A tiny, toothed […]
New “reaper of death” tyrannosaur discovered in Canada.
National Geographic revels in the grisly remains of a killer found in a museum cabinet – bones that turned out to belong to a prehistoric […]
Science Art: The evolution of the synapsid reptiles, by John C. Germann,1945
Click to embiggen These are not dinosaurs – they’re older than that – but they are in The Dinosaur Book, Edwin H. Colbert’s 1945 guide […]
Science Art: Coat of Arms of Dornogovi Aimag in Mongolia
Click to embiggen A dinosaur in a coat of arms for Dornogovi Province, Mongolia. It’s from Wikimedia Commons’ “Dinosaurs in Heraldry” section. As UNESCO reminds […]