Dinosaurs News

July 19, 2024

Top Headlines

Research Tracks 66 Million Years of Mammalian Diversity

July 17, 2024 — New research has examined the fossil record going back 66 million years and tracked changes to mammalian ecosystems and species diversity on the North American ...

A New Species of Extinct Crocodile Relative Rewrites Life on the Triassic Coastline

July 10, 2024 — The surprising discovery of a new species of extinct crocodile relative from the Triassic Favret Formation of Nevada, USA, rewrites the story of life along the coasts during the first act of the Age ...

Research Reveals the Most Complete Dinosaur Discovered in the UK in a Century

July 10, 2024 — The most complete dinosaur discovered in the UK in the last 100 years, with a pubic hip bone the size of a 'dinner plate', has been described in a new ...

Life Underground Suited Newly Discovered Dinosaur Fine

July 9, 2024 — A newly discovered ancestor of Thescelosaurus shows evidence that these animals spent at least part of their time in underground burrows. The new species contributes to a fuller understanding of life during the mid-Cretaceous -- both above and below ...

Latest Headlines

updated 11:15pm EDT

Sixty-Million-Year-Old Grape Seeds Reveal How the Death of the Dinosaurs May Have Paved the Way for Grapes to Spread

July 1, 2024 — Scientists discovered the oldest fossil grapes in the Western Hemisphere, which help show how after the death of the dinosaurs, grapes spread across ...

New Study Finds Dinosaur Fossils Did Not Inspire the Mythological Griffin

June 20, 2024 — For centuries, scientists thought they knew where the griffin legend came from. A new study takes a closer look at the data and folklore's influence on ...

Newly Discovered Dinosaur Boasts Big, Blade-Like Horns

June 20, 2024 — A new dinosaur has been identified and named. The dinosaur's name, Lokiceratops rangiformis, translates roughly to 'Loki's horned face that looks like a ...

Ancient Polar Sea Reptile Fossil Is Oldest Ever Found in Southern Hemisphere

June 17, 2024 — An international team of scientists has identified the oldest fossil of a sea-going reptile from the Southern Hemisphere -- a nothosaur vertebra ...

Origins of 'Welsh Dragons' Finally Exposed by Experts

May 30, 2024 — A large fossil discovery has helped shed light on the history of dinosaurs in ...

Musankwa Sanyatiensis, a New Dinosaur from Zimbabwe

May 30, 2024 — Fossils found on the shoreline of Lake Kariba in Zimbabwe represent a completely new dinosaur species. This remarkable find, named Musankwa sanyatiensis, marks only the fourth dinosaur species named ...

Researchers Discover Hidden Step in Dinosaur Feather Evolution

May 21, 2024 — Scientists discover 'zoned development' in dinosaur skin, with zones of reptile-style scales and zones of bird-like skin with feathers. A new dinosaur skin fossil has been found to be composed of ...

First 'Warm-Blooded' Dinosaurs May Have Emerged 180 Million Years Ago

May 15, 2024 — The ability to regulate body temperature, a trait all mammals and birds have today, may have evolved among some dinosaurs early in the Jurassic period about 180 million years ago. The new study ...

T. Rex Not as Smart as Previously Claimed

Apr. 29, 2024 — Dinosaurs were likely as smart as reptiles but not as intelligent as ...

Do Some Mysterious Bones Belong to Gigantic Ichthyosaurs?

Apr. 9, 2024 — Several similar large, fossilized bone fragments have been discovered in various regions across Western and Central Europe since the 19th century. The animal group to which they belonged is still the ...

Earlier Headlines

Dinosaur Study Challenges Bergmann's Rule

Apr. 5, 2024 — A new study calls into question Bergmann's rule, an 1800s-era scientific principle stating that animals in high-latitude, cooler climates tend to be larger than close relatives living in warmer ...

Early Dinosaurs Grew Up Fast, but They Weren't the Only Ones

Apr. 3, 2024 — The earliest dinosaurs had rapid growth rates, but so did many of the other animals living alongside them, according to a new ...

Alaska Dinosaur Tracks Reveal a Lush, Wet Environment

Mar. 12, 2024 — A large find of dinosaur tracks and fossilized plants and tree stumps in far northwestern Alaska provides new information about the climate and movement of animals near the time when they began ...

Higher Carnivorous Dinosaur Biodiversity of Famous Kem Kem Beds, Morocco

Mar. 12, 2024 — An international team of palaeontologists applied recently developed methods to measure theropod (carnivorous) dinosaur species diversity. The newly applied method uses both traditional phylogenetic ...

Fossils of Giant Sea Lizard With Dagger-Like Teeth Show How Our Oceans Have Fundamentally Changed Since the Dinosaur Era

Mar. 5, 2024 — Fossils of a strange new species of marine lizard with dagger-like teeth that lived 66 million years ago, show a dramatically more biodiverse ocean ecosystem to what we see ...

Fossil Named 'Attenborough's Strange Bird' Was the First in Its Kind Without Teeth

Mar. 5, 2024 — A new fossil, named 'Attenborough's strange bird' after naturalist and documentarian Sir David Attenborough, is the first of its kind to evolve a toothless beak. It's from a ...

A Lighthouse in the Gobi Desert

Feb. 14, 2024 — A new study explores the weight great fossil sites have on our understanding of evolutionary relationships between fossil groups and quantified the power these sites have on our understanding of ...

The Hidden Rule for Flight Feathers -- And How It Could Reveal Which Dinosaurs Could Fly

Feb. 12, 2024 — Scientists examined hundreds of birds in museum collections and discovered a suite of feather characteristics that all flying birds have in common. These 'rules' provide clues as to how the ...

Dinosaurs' Success Helped by Specialized Stance and Gait, Study Finds

Feb. 7, 2024 — Dinosaurs' range of locomotion made them incredibly adaptable, researchers have ...

Scientists Pinpoint Growth of Brain's Cerebellum as Key to Evolution of Bird Flight

Jan. 30, 2024 — Evolutionary biologists report they have combined PET scans of modern pigeons along with studies of dinosaur fossils to help answer an enduring question in biology: How did the brains of birds evolve ...

Student Discovers 200-Million-Year-Old Flying Reptile

Jan. 22, 2024 — Gliding winged-reptiles were amongst the ancient crocodile residents of the Mendip Hills in Somerset, England, researchers at the have ...

New Research Sheds Light on an Old Fossil Solving an Evolutionary Mystery

Jan. 10, 2024 — Picrodontids -- an extinct family of placental mammals that lived several million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs -- are not primates as previously ...

'Juvenile T. Rex' Fossils Are a Distinct Species of Small Tyrannosaur

Jan. 2, 2024 — A new analysis of fossils believed to be juveniles of T. rex now shows they were adults of a small tyrannosaur, with narrower jaws, longer legs, and bigger arms than T. rex. The species, Nanotyrannus ...

This Japanese 'Dragon' Terrorized Ancient Seas

Dec. 12, 2023 — Researchers have described a Japanese mosasaur the size of a great white shark that terrorized Pacific seas 72 million years ago. The mosasaur was named for the place where it was found, Wakayama ...

More Than a Meteorite: New Clues About the Demise of Dinosaurs

Dec. 4, 2023 — What wiped out the dinosaurs? A meteorite plummeting to Earth is only part of the story, a new study suggests. Climate change triggered by massive volcanic eruptions may have ultimately set the stage ...

Unknown Animals Were Leaving Bird-Like Footprints in Late Triassic Southern Africa

Nov. 29, 2023 — Ancient animals were walking around on bird-like feet over 210 million years ago, according to a new ...

New Study Reveals Surprising Insights Into Feeding Habits of Carnivorous Dinosaurs in North America

Nov. 14, 2023 — New research sheds light on the dining habits of ancient carnivorous dinosaurs from Jurassic rocks of the USA. A recent study explores the bite marks left on the ancient bones of the giant ...

Giant Dinosaur Carcasses Might Have Been Important Food Sources for Jurassic Predators

Nov. 1, 2023 — Carnivorous dinosaurs might have evolved to take advantage of giant carcasses, according to a new ...

Survival of the Newest: The Mammals That Survive Mass Extinctions Aren't as 'Boring' as Scientists Thought

Oct. 5, 2023 — For decades, scientists have assumed that mammals and their relatives that survived challenging times (like those during mass extinctions) made it because they were generalists that were able to eat ...

A Turtle Time Capsule: DNA Found in Ancient Shell

Sep. 28, 2023 — Paleontologists discover possible DNA remains in fossil turtle that lived 6 million years ago in Panama, where continents ...