Nearly 70 million years ago, mosasaurs were the stuff of nightmares. Multiple…
Category: Paleontology
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Scientists Confirm Nanotyrannus Was Fully Grown Not a Baby T. rex
New research has overturned decades of uncertainty by showing that Nanotyrannus was a fully grown predator, not a juvenile T. rex. For many years, paleontologists have debated whether the single skull used to define the species Nanotyrannus…
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Hobbits May Have Been Victims of Climate Change
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The branches of the human family tree have grown a lot more convoluted over the…
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Millions of Years Ago These Animals Shaped the Arabian Sea
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The sands of Qatar have yielded a secret 21 million years in the keeping. The…
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A Lost Sea Cow World Resurfaces Beneath Qatar’s Desert
More than 20 million years ago, ancient sea cows shaped the Arabian Gulf’s seagrass meadows much like dugongs do today. A vast fossil bonebed in Qatar—one of the richest ever found—reveals a newly discovered miniature species, Salwasiren…
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Fossil brain scans show pterosaurs evolved flight in a flash
A research group led by an evolutionary biologist at Johns Hopkins Medicine reports that giant reptiles living as far back as 220 million years ago may have developed the ability to fly at the very start of their evolutionary history. This…
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This rare bone finally settles the Nanotyrannus mystery
For many years, paleontologists have debated whether the single skull used to define the species Nanotyrannus represented a true species or simply a young Tyrannosaurus rex. A new study in Science has now resolved this question. The research…
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You Don’t Need a Big Brain to Fly
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For terrestrial organisms, the ability to fly opens up a skyful of…
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Two Species of Coelurosaurs Co-Existed in Cretaceous-Era Brazil
Paleontologists have performed a comprehensive anatomical reassessment of the fossilized remains of two coelurosaurian theropod dinosaurs from the Early Cretaceous of South America: Santanaraptor placidus and Mirischia asymmetrica.
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Nanotyrannus Represents Distinct Species of Tyrannosaurid Dinosaur, New Research Confirms
Nanotyrannus lancensis — long thought by many to be a teenage Tyrannosaurus rex — was in fact a fully mature, distinct species of smaller tyrannosaurid, according to a team of U.S. paleontologists who analyzed the ceratobranchial (hyoid…
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