Why it’s not a problem that dinosaurs are sold for millions of dollars – art historian: Sotheby's publicity photograph for the _Ceratosaurus_ fossil. Sotheby's, CC BY-SA A juvenile dinosaur fossil, Ceratosaurus nasicornis, has sold at Sotheby’s New York for US$ 30.5 million (£22.7 million). It is part of a recent resurgence of art-market interest in …
If an asteroid hit Earth and all the humans died, would the dinosaurs come back? The Conversation’s Curious Kids podcast: Warpaint/Shutterstock Many, many years ago dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Six-year-old Aga knows that a meteorite wiped them out… but could another meteorite bring them back? You can read a print version of this story here. …
Could dinosaurs be the reason humans can’t live for 200 years?: Rattana/Shutterstock All human beings age. It is part of our biology and limits our lifespan to slightly over 120 years. Not all animals experience ageing during their lives. Some animals’ bodies do not gradually degenerate as they get older the way our bodies do. …
Did our mammal ancestors live alongside dinosaurs? New research hopes to end long-running debate: david.costa.art/Shutterstock If you were asked to think of a mammal, chances are high you would think of a placental mammal – horses, dogs, cats, humans, even bats and rats all fall into that category. It includes some 6,000 species who live …
Bones like Aero chocolate: the evolution adaptation that helped dinosaurs to fly: Dinosaurs once dominated Earth's landscapes AmeliAU/Shutterstock It’s sometimes difficult to imagine how the planet we call home, with its megalopolis cities and serene farmlands, was once dominated by dinosaurs as big as buses and five-storey buildings. But recent research has helped deepen our …
Fossil study brings us one step closer to revealing how ‘flying dinosaurs’ took flight: Pterosaurs are not dinosaurs Warpaint/Shutterstock If you think of flying dinosaurs, you probably picture an animal with long, leathery wings, sharp claws and a big beak. The animal you are imagining is not a dinosaur, it’s from a group of flying …
What if the dinosaurs hadn’t gone extinct? Why our world might look very different: Ajnabia odysseus lived 66 million years ago, making it one of the last dinosaurs on Earth Raul Martin Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid hit the Earth with the force of 10 billion atomic bombs and changed the course of evolution. …
Footprints take science a step closer to understanding southern Africa’s dinosaurs: A site in Tsiokane (Lesotho) where diverse tridactyl theropod tracks are preserved. Author supplied Dinosaurs have captured people’s imaginations more than any other ancient creatures. These reptiles – some large, some small; some carnivores and others herbivores – rose and dominated the world’s landscapes …
What did dinosaurs actually look like? Podcast: As the latest Jurassic World film hits cinemas, we’re re-running a story from The Conversation Weekly’s archives about what dinosaurs really looked liked – and how our understanding of their appearance keeps evolving. Since the release of the first Jurassic Park film nearly 30 years ago, scientists have …
Jurassic World Dominion: a palaeontologist on what the film gets wrong about dinosaurs: The T-Rex is a popular Jurassic World character Alamy Almost 30 years after Jurassic Park first screened, the beloved franchise is back with its latest film Jurassic World Dominion, released in the UK on Friday. Our favourite characters, such as the Tyrannosaurus-rex …
Prehistoric Planet: TV show asked us to explore what weather the dinosaurs lived through: Apple TV+, CC BY-NC-SA When conjuring up images of when dinosaurs ruled the planet we often think of hot and humid landscapes in a world very different from our own. However, the new TV series Prehistoric Planet, narrated by Sir David …
Crystal Palace dinosaurs: how we rediscovered five missing sculptures from the famous park: The iconic _Iguanodon_ sculptures of the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs. Witton and Michel (2022), CC BY-SA This summer sees our love for dinosaurs manifest in two major releases: the David Attenborough documentary Prehistoric Planet, and Jurassic World: Dominion. Such multi-million dollar projects are …
Farm vehicles are now heavier than most dinosaurs – here’s why that’s a problem: Braslavets Denys/Shutterstock What does a modern combine harvester and a Diplodocus have in common? One answer, it seems, may be their big footprints on the soil. A new study led by researchers from Sweden and Switzerland has found that the weight …
Does Tanis reveal the last day of the dinosaurs? An expert explores the evidence: Buried in the rocks in North Dakota lies evidence of the exact day the dinosaurs were obliterated from the planet, some 66 million years ago. That’s the claim of palaeontologist Robert DePalma and colleagues, whose work was captured by the BBC …
We discovered how the largest dinosaurs walked – and it was more like rhinos than elephants: Kostiantyn Ivanyshen/shutterstock While our knowledge of dinosaurs and other extinct animals has dramatically increased during the last couple of decades, their gaits – the order and timing of how animals move their legs – have remained a blind spot. …
Fish bones and water lilies help pin down the month the dinosaurs died: Herschel Hoffmeyer/Shutterstock The dinosaurs were killed by a meteorite impact on the Earth some 66 million years ago in what has become known as the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event. At what time of the year this occurred has long generated debate among palaeontology …
Dinosaur embryo discovery: rare fossil suggests dinosaurs had similar pre-hatching posture to modern birds: Julius Csotonyi, Author provided Dinosaur embryos are key to our understanding of how dinosaurs developed. But they’re also very rare. While remains of dinosaur embryos have been discovered occasionally over recent decades, most of them have been incomplete, with the bones …
A social species? Newly discovered fossils show early dinosaurs lived in herds: Jorge Gonzalez Were dinosaurs unfeeling scaly brutes or caring, well behaved and intelligent? This debate has continued since dinosaurs were first discovered 200 years ago, and has spilled over into the movies and popular consciousness. In seeking to answer questions like this, palaeontologists …