Everyone has encountered a T. rex in books, movies or museums. Besides its size and menacing jaws one of the most striking features of a T. rex is its diminutive arms. So why were the arms of T. rex so short? There have been many hypotheses including: 1) they had no use and... Continue Reading →
A story is breaking today of a significant fossil find made almost a year ago but kept under wraps until the data could be properly evaluated. What has now been revealed is that over 100 footprints were found in newly uncovered rocks along a shoreline of England. Study of these footprints has led to... Continue Reading →
Imagine trawling for fish and when you pull up your nets you find a massive bone or a huge tooth along with your catch. For over 100 years fishermen in the North Sea between Britain and Denmark have found such items in their nets but it wasn’t until the 1980s that their value, monetarily and... Continue Reading →
We live in a new golden age of fossil discoveries. It seems that every week a new and dramatic fossil find is revealed. This fossil renaissance can be attributed to the opening up of new fossil sources, particularly China and Mongolia but also South America and to improved technology for retrieving and analyzing fossil remains.... Continue Reading →
A visit to Badlands National Park in South Dakota feels a bit like going to see a miniature replica of the Taj Mahal instead of seeing the real thing after you have hung out for a week in Moab UT and traveled around southeastern Utah. But that isn't to say that it isn't worth seeing. On... Continue Reading →
One of the great privileges of my job is that I get to participate on committees of graduate students. This allows me to get up close and personal with data from sub-disciplines of biology that often extend far from those of my particular expertise. You know by now that I carry a particular fondness for... Continue Reading →
A colleague has a fossil scallop in his office that he collected while teaching a field course on Chesapeake Bay biology. He pulled this scallop from the cliff wall at Calvert Cliffs near Calvert, Maryland. It is particularly impressive not only for its size (more than 5 inches in diameter) but also for its condition.... Continue Reading →
Down a 43 foot vertical shaft, another 40 foot slope, and buried under thousands of cave bear, lion and lynx bones, lies the partially fossilized bones of at least 30 individual humans. Welcome to a chamber of horrors otherwise known as Sima de los Huesos (the pit of bones). This pit is but a small... Continue Reading →
A mummified fossil of common species of hadrosaur was found recently in South Dakota that showed that this particular hadrosaur had a rooster-like fleshy comb on its head. Many hadrosaurs have exotic extensions of their cranial bones but this evidence that even the “boring” hadrosaurs had fleshy projections suggests that the hadrosaurs were an even... Continue Reading →
One headline reads “Giant Prehistoric Toilet Found” another refers to the discovery of an ancient latrine. Don’t know how I missed those a few weeks ago. Surely had I seen that headline I would have had to clicked on it to find out what that was all about. The actual title, The oldest known communal latrines... Continue Reading →
The process of discovery in science can be as fascinating to follow as a sporting event: if we knew how it was going to end we would be much less likely to watch. The Rising Star Expedition has the drama but not the finality, fortunately!, of a sporting event where there is a final score. ... Continue Reading →
Update (Nov 2013): Please be aware this article was written as a first impressions of an ongoing expedition as an outsider onlooker. I updated this information (Rising Star Update) as more data came to light a few weeks later. It now seems fairly clear that this location will become a significant one in the study of... Continue Reading →
A new hominid skull find is making news today. The headlines are predictable over-dramatic but the skull nonetheless is quite impressive in its state of preservation. I don’t have time for a detailed report of this find but I have read the paper (Lordkipanize et al. 2013 see references) and several other papers about this... Continue Reading →
What museum can you go to where you can see real dinosaur bones, you don't pay any fees, you can touch all the exhibits and there are no security cameras watching your every move (at least I don't think there are:-)? The answer is The Mill Canyon Dinosaur Trail near Moab, Utah. This outdoor "museum"... Continue Reading →
Image you are living in 200 BC in the Middle East region and you come by the skull to the right as you plow your field or when you explore the local cave complex. What if you are wandering the desert in Egypt and happen upon the bones in the second figure. Or what about... Continue Reading →
Naturalis Historia 