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Abundant dinosaur footprints in Alaska reveal that high-latitude hadrosaurs preferred tidally influenced habitats... Dinosaur fossils are well-known from Alaska, most famously from areas like Denali National Park and the North Slope, but there are very few records of dinosaurs from the Alaskan Peninsula in the southwest part of the state. In this study, Fiorillo and colleagues document abundant dinosaur trackways from Aniakchak National Monument, around 670km southwest of Anchorage. The trackways were preserved in the Chignik Formation, a series of coastal sediment deposits dating back to the Late Cretaceous Period around 66 million years ago. Survey work from 2001-2002 and...

EDMONTON - Experts are calling a dinosaur fossil unearthed in northern Alberta this week one of the “most complete finds in this part of the world in a long time.” Brian Brake, executive director of the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum, said the fossilized remains of a hadrosaur were discovered at an energy company’s work site near Spirit River. Officials from the pipeline firm contacted the museum, which sent paleontologists to assess the find. “What we have is a totally composed tail,” Brake said. “It’s beautiful.” The Currie Museum contacted its counterparts at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, which...

A fossil tooth found buried inside the healed tailbones of a duckbill dinosaur suggests the animal survived a close encounter with a Tyrannosaurus rex about 65 million years ago, according to a new study. Scientists say the embedded tooth, discovered in the Hell Creek Formation in Montana, is the first conclusive proof that T. rex was not just a scavenger, but also a predator that hunted and killed prey... But not everyone agrees. Jack Horner, a paleontologist at Montana State University who has long argued that T. rex was incapable of hunting healthy adult prey, remains unconvinced... The fossil evidence...

One of the only well preserved dinosaur skin samples ever found is being tested at the Canadian Light Source (CLS) synchrotron to determine skin colour and to explain why the fossilized specimen remained intact after 70-million years. University of Regina physicist Mauricio Barbi said the hadrosaur, a duck-billed dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous period (100-65 million years ago), was found close to a river bed near Grande Prairie, Alberta. The area has a robust "bone bed" but Barbi is not yet sure why the fossil preserved so well. "As we excavated the fossil, I thought that we were looking at...

Although creation-based organizations have reported for over a decade on the technical scientific journal articles published about soft tissue found inside dinosaur remains, mainstream media outlets have largely been silent on the subject. But a recent segment that aired on CBS’s 60 Minutes finally broke the news to a broader audience. The soft tissue issue may be gaining more traction, and even “may be changing the whole dino ballgame,” according to correspondent Lesley Stahl.[1] The program is currently viewable online at the CBS website. In a field test demonstration to determine whether a dinosaur fossil was real bone, and not...

A dinosaur bone buried for 80 million years has yielded a mix of proteins and microstructures resembling cells. The finding is important because it should resolve doubts about a previous report that also claimed to have extracted dino tissue from fossils...

MOST of what we know about dinosaurs has been pieced together from fossilised bones and teeth. But the unearthing of a mummified dinosaur in the US, with preserved skin and apparent soft tissue, has the potential to unlock biological secrets millions of years old.The remains of the duck-billed hadrosaur are in such good condition - with its skin almost entirely intact - that it has already revealed the creature ran faster and was far more muscular than previously thought. But the remains could offer an even greater insight into the evolution and biology of dinosaurs. [snip]

Amazing find of dinosaur 'mummy' Scientists now think these dinosaurs were more muscular than previously thought Fossil hunters have uncovered the remains of a dinosaur that has much of its soft tissue still intact. Skin, muscle, tendons and other tissue that rarely survive fossilisation have all been preserved in the specimen unearthed in North Dakota, US. The 67 million-year-old dinosaur is one of the duck-billed hadrosaur group. The preservation allowed scientists to estimate that it was more muscular than thought, perhaps giving it the ability to outrun predators like T. rex. The researchers propose that the dinosaur's rump was 25%...

WASHINGTON - One of the most complete dinosaur mummies ever found is revealing secrets locked away for millions of years, bringing researchers as close as they will ever get to touching a live dino. The fossilized duckbilled hadrosaur is so well preserved that scientists have been able to calculate its muscle mass and learn that it was more muscular than thought, probably giving it the ability to outrun predators such as T. rex. While they call it a mummy, the dinosaur is not really preserved like King Tut was. The dinosaur body has been fossilized into stone. Unlike the collections...

According to the going theory, a six-mile-wide asteroid slammed into the Yucatán Peninsula 65 million years ago, throwing enough dust up into the atmosphere to dim the sun for years, killing off green plants and triggering a famine that wiped out all the dinosaurs in the geologic blink of an eye. Not so fast, says U.S. Geological Survey geologist emeritus James Fassett. A few years ago, Fassett’s colleagues were digging in a fossil-rich area of New Mexico when they uncovered the four-foot-long fossilized thighbone of a duck-billed, plant-eating hadrosaur in a sandstone cliff. When Fassett dated the bone to half...