How Did Snakes Lose Their Legs?
How did snakes lose their legs? A fresh clue as to how and why has been found deep in an ancient snake’s inner ear.
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Dakotaraptor: Giant Raptor Straight Out of Hell Creek
By Emily Willoughby For centuries, dinosaurs have captured the public’s imagination through their massive proportions and power, and their ancestral connection to birds has more recently brought a new fascination to paleontology. But when a newly discovered dinosaur is both huge and covered in feathers, it becomes the stuff of legend—a true dragon shaped by evolution instead of mythos. Meet Dakotaraptor steini, one of the largest “raptor” dinosaurs known to science. This 17-foot-long predator was described by Robert DePalma, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Palm Beach Museum of Natural…
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Large Hunters Dominated the Pleistocene
For years, evolutionary biologists have wondered about the ecosystems of the Pleistocene epoch. How did so many species of huge, hungry herbivores, such as mammoths, mastodons, and giant ground sloths, not wipe out the plant life? Observations of modern elephants suggest that large concentrations of those animals could have essentially destroyed the environment, but they didn’t. Now, life scientists believe that the ecosystem was kept in balance by predatory carnivores that kept the population of large herbivores in check. Scientists have found fossil evidence of intense, violent attacks by packs…
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Dinosaur Fossils of Ghost Ranch
In more than a century of fossil collecting, paleontologists from the American Museum of Natural History have unearthed fossils from every corner of the globe. But there are some sites so fruitful in dinosaur fossils that they are visited again and again by the Museum’s fossil hunters, with each generation turning up new and unexpected finds. One of those sites is New Mexico’s Ghost Ranch, home to four quarries that paleontologists from the Museum have excavated for decades. The remains of animals from the Triassic era, including dinosaurs, reptiles, and…
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Jurassic Celebrity: Early Bird Gets the Spotlight
By Steven Spence A Lasting Impression For its sheer beauty, the Berlin specimen of Archaeopteryx has been described as a “paleontological Mona Lisa” by Dr. Luis M. Chiappe of the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles. Without a doubt it is one of the most attractive fossils that I have ever seen. It is striking because it clearly has avian features, yet it is so different from modern birds. Clawed Wings and Teeth A previous article on the reference specimen of Archaeopteryx (London Natural History Museum) mentioned both the claws and…
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Mounting a Monument to a Mesozoic Monster
Renowned paleontologist Dr. Dave Hone explains how the largest mounted dinosaur skeleton in the world was put together. Photography by Steven Spence. By David Hone Dr. Dave Hone is a lecturer at Queen Mary, University of London, specialising in dinosaurs and pterosaurs. In addition to writing for The Guardian, he blogs at Archosaur Musings, is a contributor to Pterosaur.net, created Ask A Biologist, and has published more than 50 academic papers on dinosaur biology. His latest book, The Tyrannosaur Chronicles, is now available from Bloomsbury Publishing. Few visitors to the…
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Friendly Neighborhood Raptor Dinosaurs
Raptor dinosaurs large curved talons on the second toes of their feet. A similar feature is seen on some modern raptors such as eagles and hawks. Why? By Steven Spence Raptor dinosaurs, formally known as dromaeosaurids, had very large curved talons on the second toes of their feet. A similar feature is seen on some modern raptors (eagles and hawks), and some scientists believe this is an example of a similar functional evolution. Meet the Raptor Dinosaurs Instead of using the “killing claw” as a slashing weapon, as suggested in…
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Piecing Together the Archaeopteryx Puzzle
The scientific consensus today is that Archaeopteryx is one of the earliest birds. Find out why these fossils have had such a big impact.
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The Tiniest Fossils of All
This episode of the Shelf Life video series explores the fossils of tiny marine organisms known as foraminifera. That name is a mouthful, so even scientists often shorten it to forams. These single-cell organisms still live in Earth’s oceans today. The fossilized shells left behind by their foram forefathers serve as tiny time capsules for climate data from bygone eras. Finding Clues in Fossils Ammonite fossils also contain clues to past climates. Ammonites are a group of ancient mollusks related to modern animals like nautiluses, which most closely resemble squid and…
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Shelf Life Episode 1: 33 Million Things
About Shelf Life Episode 1: 33 Million Things Can’t get to New York to visit the American Museum of Natural History? No problem! EH Science invites you to take a virtual trip behind the scenes. In this the first episode of the museum’s brand new original series, Shelf Life, you can walk in the shoes of a research scientist and explore the enormous collection of specimens, many of which aren’t on public display. Shelf Life is a video series for curious minds—opening doors, pulling out drawers, and taking the lids off some…
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