Found: 'Jurassic Parkette' – The Prehistoric Island Ruled By Dwarf Dinosaurs

Zalmoxes Photo: Natural History Museum

From The Telegraph:

A prehistoric "lost world" ruled by miniature dinosaurs has been discovered by palaeontologists.

The creatures lived on an island – a kind of pigmy Jurassic Park – and were up to eight times smaller than some of their mainland cousins.

One of the island-dwelling dinosaurs, named Magyarosaurus, was little bigger than a horse, but was related to some of the largest creatures to ever walk the Earth – gigantic titanosaurs such as Argentinosaurus, which reached up to 100 feet long and weighed around 80 tons.

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45-Foot Ancient Snake Devoured Crocs

The extinct giant snake, called Titanoboa (shown in an artist's reconstruction), would have sent even Hollywood's anacondas slithering away. Credit: Jason Bourque.

From Live Science:

The largest snake the world has ever known likely had a diet that included crocodile, or at least an ancient relative of the reptile.

Scientists have discovered a 60-million-year-old ancient crocodile fossil, which has been named a new species, in northern Columbia, South America. The site, one of the world's largest open-pit coal mines, also yielded skeletons of the giant, boa constrictor-like Titanoboa, which measured up to 45 feet long (14 m).

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New Tyrannosaur Species Discovered

Scientists have describe a new dinosaur species, Bistahieversor sealeyi, which belongs to the same lineage as Tyrannosaurus Rex. Here, an image of the adult fossil skull. The animal had a deep snout (as seen vertically from the side), like T. rex, but many subtle distinguishing features set it apart as a new species. Credit: David Baccadutre, New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.

From Live Science:

T. rex's family tree just got one member larger. Scientists unearthed bones from a new dinosaur species, including an adult specimen and bones from a "teenager" that lived some 75 million years ago.

Called Bistahieversor sealeyi, the dinosaur lived about 10 million years before Tyrannosaurus rex appeared on the scene. Even so, B. sealeyi belongs to the same dinosaur linage as the famous T. rex.

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Dino Extinction Brought Birds Back To Earth

Flightless birds owe their success to the demise of the dinosaurs. Credit: Wikimedia

From Cosmos:

SYDNEY: Large, flightless birds such as ostriches and emus, originated in the northern hemisphere, according to an Australian study that suggests they became grounded after dinosaurs went extinct.

Reconstructed migration patterns have raised questions about whether flightless birds could have their evolutionary origins in the planet's north.

Until now, most scientists thought these birds originated in the southern behemoth Gondwanaland, according to the study published in Systematic Biology.

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Rise And Fall Of A Dinosaur Hunter

Nate Murphy doing what he did best - unearthing dinosaurs
(Image: James Woodcock/Billings Gazette)

From New Scientist:

ANYONE who met Nate Murphy would think he had lived and breathed dinosaurs all his life. He's the sort of man who stands out in a crowd: stocky, outgoing and invariably wearing a straw hat and shorts. He never claimed to be a dinosaur scientist, just a regular guy with a love for fossils and a knack for finding them.

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Using Airplane Know-How To Harness Wave Energy

This fleshed-out reconstruction of a newly identified theropod dinosaur, called Tawa hallae, shows the dog-sized beast had claws for snagging meaty prey. Credit: Jorge Gonzalez.

From Live Science:

Long, long ago, some of the first dinosaurs walked the Earth. But scientists have not known with any confidence where those initial dino prints were made. Much more recently, hikers stumbled across a few bits of bone at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, leading to the discovery of a game-changing dinosaur that reveals where it all began.

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Strange Ancient Crocodiles Swam the Sahara

Paleontologist Paul Sereno and his colleagues unearthed a bizarre bunch of crocodile remains in the Sahara. The crocs sported snouts and other traits that resembled some modern-day animals and inspired nicknames, including SuperCroc (weighed 8 tons), BoarCroc (upper right), PancakeCroc (lower right), RatCroc, DogCroc and DuckCroc. Credit: Photo by Mike Hettwer, courtesy National Geographic.

From Live Science:

From a crocodile sporting a boar-like snout to a peculiar pal with buckteeth for digging up grub, an odd-looking bunch of such reptiles dashed and swam across what is now the Sahara Desert some 100 million years ago when dinosaurs ruled.

That's the picture created by remains of three newly identified species of ancient crocs plus fossils from two species previously named.

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The Top 8 Dinosaur Discoveries of 2009

(Torsten Blackwood/AFP/Getty Images)

From Popular Mechanics:

Paleontologists have had a good year, bringing a slew of new dinosaurs to the books. We pored through the many finds to bring you the best horned, bird-footed, feathered and, of course, ferocious new dinosaurs unveiled this year.

In science, it's exceedingly rare when the naked eye usurps modern technology—powerful telescopes offer humans unprecedented views of celestial phenomena, surgeons can send tiny cameras inside your intestinal tract and even iPhone apps can spot public restrooms before you can. However, for the paleontologists who routinely discover new dinosaurs, a good set of eyes, geological know-how and a little luck remain the best tools.

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Dinosaur Discovered In South Africa... And May Reveal How They Grew To Be So Big

Bridging the gap: A graphic released by Australian paleontologist Adam Yates shows the newly discovered dinosaur species - with the fossil bones found by the team marked on the outline

From The Daily Mail:

A new dinosaur named the 'Earth Claw' has been discovered in South Africa.

The discovery of the Aardonyx celestae marks a breakthrough in understanding how creatures began walking on all fours - and why they grew so large, scientists claimed yesterday.

Researchers believe the near-perfect skeleton bridges the gap between the earliest two-legged specimens and those who later walked on four limbs.

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Dinosaurs Could Have Been Hot To Trot, Say US Scientists

From The Scotsman:

LARGE two-legged dinosaurs, such as Tyrannosaurus rex, were energetic athletes with warm blood running through their veins, it was claimed today.
New evidence suggests that the ancient reptiles were endothermic – or warm-blooded – like their modern descendants, birds.

Far from being lumbering slow beasts, they were likely to have been agile and active.

But warm blood would have come at a price, because it requires more food. If food became scarce 65 million years ago, this could have been a contributory factor in their extinction.

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T. Rex Teens Fought, Disfigured Each Other

Dino Fight. This graphic illustration depicts the moment that "Jane," the T. rex found at Montana's Hell Creek Formation in 2001, was disfigured by another teenage T. rex.
Illustration by Erica Lyn Schmidt

From Discovery:

Tyrannosaurus rex's reputation as a fierce, battle-hungry carnivore can now also apply to teenagers of this Late Cretaceous dinosaur, according to a new study.

The evidence comes from "Jane," who died when she was just a T. rex teen. Her fossils, found at Montana's Hell Creek Formation in 2001, reveal that another T. rex teenager severely bit her in the head, breaking her snout to the point of disfigurement.

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New Dinosaur Built Like A Sherman Tank

A newfound species of armored dinosaur, now called Tatankacephalus cooneyorum, may have showed off skin colored with subdued colors, the researchers speculate. Credit: Bill Parsons.

From Live Science:

A husband and wife team of paleontologists has discovered a newfound species of armored dinosaur that lived 112 million years ago in what is now Montana.

The duo, Bill and Kris Parsons of the Buffalo Museum of Science in New York, spotted the dinosaur's skull on the surface of a hillside in Montana in 1997. Over the next few years, they retrieved more of the now nearly complete skull along with skin plates, rib fragments, a vertebra and a possible limb bone from the dinosaur species.

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Colossal 'Sea Monster' Unearthed

From The BBC:

The fossilised skull of a colossal "sea monster" has been unearthed along the UK's Jurassic Coast.

The ferocious predator, which is called a pliosaur, terrorised the oceans 150 million years ago.

The skull is 2.4m long, and experts say it could belong to one of the largest pliosaurs ever found: measuring up to 16m in length.

The fossil, which was found by a local collector, has been purchased by Dorset County Council.

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Toxic Algae 'Wiped Out Dinosaurs'

From The Telegraph:

Toxic algae rather than a massive asteroid may have wiped out the dinosaurs, scientists have claimed.

Previous studies had claimed an asteroid impact produced devastating climate changes and rising sea levels which caused the mass extinctions over the earth's 4.5 billion year existence.

But a team of American geologists and toxicologists claim algae commonly found naturally around the world could be the culprit that led to the demise of the dinosaurs.

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New Dinosaur Extinction Theory Causes Debate

An artist rendering of a space rock streaking toward Earth. Most experts think an impact off the Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago was the primary cause of the dinosaur demise. Others think volcanism and climate change may have played a role. A new and controversial idea suggests there was another, larger impact in India that was responsible. Stockxpert

From MSNBC:

The extinction of the dinosaurs has often been traced to a giant space rock impact on the Earth 65 million years ago. But now a scientist is saying experts have blamed the wrong impact. The new thinking was met with sharp criticism from other researchers, however.

Paleontologist Sankar Chatterjee of Texas Tech University says a giant basin in India called Shiva could also be an impact crater from the time of the dinosaurs' demise, and the crash that created it may have been the cause of the mass extinction scientists call the KT (Cretaceous–Tertiary) event, which killed off more than half the Earth's species along with the dinos. This argument runs counter to the widely-held wisdom that the Chicxulub impact on the Yucatan Peninsula off Mexico was behind the cataclysm.

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Flying Reptile May Have Snatched Dinosaurs In Midair

The newly discovered remains of the flying reptile, now called Darwinopterus modularis, suggest the animals may have been an aerial predator, hunting small feathered dinosaurs (such as the one depicted here) and tiny gliding mammals some 160 million years ago. Credit: Mark Witton, University of Portsmouth.

From Live Science:

A crow-sized reptile sporting a lengthy tail likely soared through the skies some 160 million years ago, snatching feathered dinosaurs and tiny flying mammals from the air, suggest fossils of a newly identified pterosaur.

While paleontologists can't go back in time to watch the in-flight meal capture, the reptile's fossils, discovered recently in China's Liaoning Province, left behind compelling clues, the researchers say this week in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

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A Third of Dinosaur Species Never Existed?

Many fossils of young dinosaurs, including T. rex relatives (above, a computer-generated image of a young T. rex), have been misidentified as unique species, paleontologists said in October 2009. That means up to a third of all dinosaur species may have never existed, experts say. Photograph © NGC

From National Geographic:

Many dinosaurs may be facing a new kind of extinction—a controversial theory suggests as many as a third of all known dinosaur species never existed in the first place.

That's because young dinosaurs didn't look like Mini-Me versions of their parents, according to new analyses by paleontologists Mark Goodwin, University of California, Berkeley, and Jack Horner, of Montana State University.

Instead, like birds and some other living animals, the juveniles went through dramatic physical changes during adulthood.

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'First Bird' Not Very Bird-Like

The bones of the primitive bird Archaeopteryx had flattened and parallel bone cells, one of the signs that this bird grew slowly, more like non-avian dinosaurs, researchers report in the journal PLoS ONE. Credit: Gregory Erickson.

From Live Science:

A feathered beast that lived some 150 million years ago and which is considered the first bird likely grew more like its sluggish ancestors, the dinosaurs.

That's according to new analyses of tiny bone chips taken from Archaeopteryx and detailed this week in the journal PLoS ONE. The study researchers estimate a 970-day period from baby Archaeopteryx to an adult. For comparison, birds reach adult size in a matter of weeks.

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Paleo-Case Solved: Ancient Sharks Fed on Giant Reptile

This artist's rendering reveals what an ancient marine reptile called a plesiosaur discovered in Antarctica may have looked like. The plesiosaur described in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, though not the same species, also sported four fins and a long neck. Analyses of shark teeth embedded in the reptile's bones suggest a feeding frenzy of sorts once the reptile died. Credit: Nicolle Rager, National Science Foundation.

From Live Science:

This artist's rendering reveals what an ancient marine reptile called a plesiosaur discovered in Antarctica may have looked like. The plesiosaur described in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, though not the same species, also sported four fins and a long neck. Analyses of shark teeth embedded in the reptile's bones suggest a feeding frenzy of sorts once the reptile died. Credit: Nicolle Rager, National Science Foundation.

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Mighty T. rex Killed by Lowly Parasite, Study Suggests

A reconstruction of the Trichomonas-like infection of the T. rex commonly known as "Peck's Rex." Note the yellowing at the back of the mouth and the lesions in the jaw that penetrate the full thickness of the bone. Credit: Chris Glen, University of Queensland

From Live Science:

The famous dinosaur known as Sue — the largest, most complete and best preserved T. rex specimen ever found — might have been killed by a disease that afflicts birds even today, scientists now suggest.

The remains of Sue, a star attraction of the Field Museum in Chicago, possess holes in her jaw that some believed were battle scars, the result of bloody combat with another dinosaur, possibly another T. rex.

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