Paleontology

Tetrapods Not Fingered Alone- Panderichthys Fish Had Them First, Says Study

Tetrapods, the first four-legged land animals, have also been considered the first organisms that had fingers and toes but researchers at Uppsala University say that is not the case. Using medical x-rays, they found rudiments of fingers in the fins in foss ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 23 2008 - 4:11pm

Dasornis Emuinus: Prehistoric Goose Was The Size Of A Small Plane And Had Bony Teeth

This kind of Mother Goose is no fairy tale. A 50 million year old skull reveals that huge birds with a 5 meter wingspan once skimmed across the waters that covered what is now London, Essex and Kent. These giant ocean-going relatives of ducks and geese als ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 26 2008 - 4:08pm

Aerosteon Riocoloradensis: Meat-Eating Dinosaur Had Bird-Like Breathing

The remains of a 30-foot-long predatory dinosaur discovered along the banks of Argentina's Rio Colorado is helping to unravel how birds evolved their unusual breathing system. Birds have a breathing system that is unique among land animals. Instead of ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 29 2008 - 4:38pm

570 Million Year Old Tracks In Nevada Are Earliest Animal Footprints Ever Found

The fossilized trail of an aquatic creature suggests that animals walked using legs at least 30 million years earlier than had been thought. The tracks, two parallel rows of small dots, each about 2 millimeters in diameter, date back some 570 million year ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 15 2011 - 3:04pm

Infinite Footprints Tour

Welcome. Can you stay for our Infinite Footprints Tour? The beat is on. Do you remember your first thoughts of footprints? I do. Animal tracks in deep winter snow. Not as intriguing as the Anasazi footprints on volcanic rocks. Those ancient footmarks would ...

Blog Post - Hatice Cullingford - Oct 22 2008 - 9:57pm

What Do You Call A Huge Concentration Of Jurassic Footprints? A Dinosaur Dance Floor, Of Course

University of Utah geologists identified an amazing concentration of dinosaur footprints that they call “a dinosaur dance floor,” located in a wilderness on the Arizona-Utah border where there was a sandy desert oasis 190 million years ago. The three-quart ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 19 2008 - 11:32pm

Were Polar Dinosaurs The First Nomads?

Contrary to popular belief, polar dinosaurs may not have traveled nearly as far as originally thought when making their bi-annual migration. University of Alberta researchers Phil Bell and Eric Snively have suggested that while some dinosaurs may have migr ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 21 2008 - 6:50pm

Heterodontosaurus- Tiny Two Inch Dinosaur Has Big Insight Into Evolution Of Plant Eaters

One of the smallest dinosaur skulls ever discovered has been identified and described by a team of scientists from London, Cambridge and Chicago. The skull would have been only 45 millimeters (less than two inches) in length. It belonged to a very young He ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 23 2008 - 9:06pm

How Swell Was The T Rex Sense Of Smell?

We know a lot about the lifestyles of dinosaur- where they lived, what they ate, how they walked- but not much was known about their sense of smell.  Until now. Scientists at the University of Calgary and the Royal Tyrrell Museum are providing new insight ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 28 2008 - 9:19pm

'Dinosaur Dance Floor' In Doubt

You may recall reading a few weeks ago about a collection of Jurassic footprints so extensive it was being called a 'dinosaur dance floor'.   Another group of paleontologists visited the northern Arizona wilderness site and said it looked like a ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 7 2008 - 4:21pm