Sixty-seven million years ago, when dinosaur hatchlings first scrambled out of their eggs, their first — and last — glimpse of the world might have been the open jaws of a 3.5-meter-long snake named Sanajeh indicus, based on the discovery in India of a nearly complete fossilized skeleton of a primitive snake coiled inside a dinosaur nest.
Giant plankton-eating fishes roamed the prehistoric seas for over 100 million years before they were wiped out in the same event that killed off the dinosaurs, new fossil evidence has shown.
Paleontologists have discovered a new dinosaur species that they’ve named Abydosaurus. The discovery includes the rare recovery of four sauropod skulls.
A new study provides yet more evidence that birds did not descend from ground-dwelling theropod dinosaurs, experts say, and continues to challenge decades of accepted theories about the evolution of flight.
Picture a dinosaur. Huge, menacing creatures, they ruled the Earth for nearly 200 million years, striking fear with every ground-shaking stride. Yet these great beasts were no match for a 6-mile wide meteor that struck near modern-day Mexico 65 million years ago, incinerating everything in its path. This catastrophic impact — called the Cretaceous-Tertiary or K/T extinction event — spelled doom for the dinosaurs and many other species. Some animals, however, including many small mammals, managed to survive.
Deciphering microscopic clues hidden within fossils, scientists have uncovered the vibrant colors that adorned a feathered dinosaur extinct for 150 million years.
A 60-million-year-old relative of crocodiles was likely a food source for Titanoboa, the largest snake the world has ever known. Paleontologists found fossils of the new species of ancient crocodile in the Cerrejon Formation in northern Colombia. The site, one of the world’s largest open-pit coal mines, also yielded skeletons of the giant, boa constrictor-like Titanoboa, which measured up to 45 feet long.
An expedition to the Gobi Desert has enabled researchers to solve the puzzle of how one group of dinosaurs came to look like birds independent of birds. Until now, there was no direct evidence that dinosaurs of the Alvarezsauridae family lived during the Late Jurassic, approximately 160 million years ago. The newly discovered species of dinosaur was named Haplocheirus sollers (meaning simple, skillful hand).
The color of some feathers on dinosaurs and early birds has been identified for the first time. The research found that the theropod dinosaur Sinosauropteryx had simple bristles — precursors of feathers — in alternate orange and white rings down its tail, and that the early bird Confuciusornis had patches of white, black and orange-brown colouring. Future work will allow precise mapping of colours and patterns across the whole bird.
An abundance of food and lack of predators following the extinction of dinosaurs saw previously flighted birds fatten up and become flightless, according to new research from Australia.
