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Scientists have discovered an ancient, giant, crocodile-like creature in Madagascar that had T-Rex-sized teeth it used for crunching bones,. The discovery helps to fill in the evolutionary gaps of a 74 million year long crocodilian “ghost lineage.” Researchers first discovered fossils of a giant predator on the island over a decade ago. At the time, scientists believed they had discovered a large predator from the Jurassic period and they named the creature Razanandrongobe sakalavae, meaning “giant lizard ancestor from Sakalava region.”

Life will find a way, as Jeff Goldblum's character puts it in Jurassic Park. Researchers at the University of Kent in the U.K. say they’ve discovered the genetic secret of how dinosaurs came to dominate Earth for 180 million years. The team of scientists used mathematical techniques to identify possible genetic characteristics of the first dinosaurs. They worked backwards from birds and turtles, which are the closest modern-day relatives of dinosaurs. The results of their work, published in Nature Communications in May, suggest that birds today have very similar DNA to ancient dinosaurs. Dinosaur DNA was likely organized into chunks...

This June the staff of the "Geology and Geophysics" Department of Samara Polytech took part in a scientific expedition of the Triassic and Jurassic deposits in the southeast of the Samara region. One of the findings, made with the participation of the Flagship University scientists, was the skull of a Wetlugasaurus. Then it was just a piece of rock with bones protruding from it and it was difficult to identify anything valuable. In the process of studying the skull, it was prepared from the palate side. The teeth and internal nasal apertures - the choanae - became clearly visible. "Experts...

Discovered in the early 80s, the Ellisdale fossil site of New Jersey has become well-known for preserving an unusually complete record of terrestrial animals from the eastern coast of North America from 75 million years ago, when the continent was divided as two landmasses by a large interior sea. Yet, the dinosaur fossils of the site have never been formally described. Since 2014, researcher Chase Brownstein of the Stamford Museum and Nature Center has been tracking down elusive eastern North American dinosaurs.Recently, Brownstein has been working on describing the ample assemblage of bones from one group of dinosaurs, the theropods,...

Researchers at the University of Kent say their groundbreaking studies unlock one of the greatest mysteries about the prehistoric monsters – why they came in such varied sizes and shapes. It is also said the team’s work will explain how dinosaurs were able to be the most dominant species on Earth for nearly 200 million years. Professor Darren Griffin, who led the research, said they were able to map out the creatures’ genetic code by studying the DNA of their closest living relatives, turtles and birds. It is believed that dinosaurs were so varied in their appearances because they had...

Named Eorhynchochelys sinensis, the newly-discovered turtle lived approximately 228 million years ago (Triassic period) in what is now southwestern China.“This creature was over 6 feet long, it had a strange disc-like body and a long tail, and the anterior part of its jaws developed into this strange beak. It probably lived in shallow water and dug in the mud for food,” said Dr. Olivier Rieppel, a paleontologist at Field Museum.“Eorhynchochelys sinensis isn’t the only kind of early turtle that paleontologists have discovered — there is another early turtle with a partial shell but no beak. Until now, it’s been unclear...

Pterosaurs were giant flying reptiles that flew over the heads of the dinosaurs. Soaring on skin wings supported by a single huge finger, they were the largest animals ever to take wing. Originating in the Late Triassic epoch (around 215 million years ago), they thrived to the end of the Cretaceous period (66 million years ago).Triassic pterosaurs are extraordinarily rare and are known exclusively from marine deposits in the Alps (Italy, Austria and Switzerland), except for Arcticodactylus cromptonellus from fluvial deposits in Greenland.The new Triassic pterosaur is from the Saints & Sinners Quarry near Dinosaur National Monument in Utah.Named Caelestiventus...

mammoth some 12,900 years ago. A team of two dozen scientists say the culprit was likely a comet that exploded in the atmosphere above North America. The explosions sent a heat and shock wave across the continent, pelted the ground with a layer of telltale debris, ignited massive wildfires and triggered a major cooling of the climate, said nuclear analytic chemist Richard Firestone of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, one of the scientists who presented the controversial new theory Thursday at a conference of the American Geophysical Union in Acapulco. At least 15 species, mostly large mammals including mammoths, mastadons, giant ground...

"[The theory] is essentially a more eloquent way of saying what I and many other palaeontologists have been saying for many years," says Professor Gerta Keller of Princeton University. "Namely that the impact-kill hypothesis is all wrong. Impacts alone could not have been the killing mechanism for the K-T [Cretaceous-Tertiary event] or any of the other major mass extinctions." ... "I'm very happy they have done the analysis based on the literature and come up with the same conclusions that palaeontologists have been preaching all along," Keller says.

The asteroid that slammed into the ocean off Mexico 66 million years ago and killed off the dinosaurs probably rang the Earth like a bell, triggering volcanic eruptions around the globe that may have contributed to the devastation, according to a team of University of California, Berkeley, geophysicists. Specifically, the researchers argue that the impact likely triggered most of the immense eruptions of lava in India known as the Deccan Traps, explaining the "uncomfortably close" coincidence between the Deccan Traps eruptions and the impact, which has always cast doubt on the theory that the asteroid was the sole cause of...

PARIS (AFP) - Ninety-three million years ago, Earth was a reshuffled jigsaw of continents, a hothouse where the average temperature was nearly twice that of today. Palm trees grew in what would be Alaska, large reptiles roamed in northern Canada and the ice-free Arctic Ocean warmed to the equivalent of a tepid swimming pool. So our planet was balmy -- but hardly a biological paradise, for it was whacked by a mass die-out. The depths of the ocean suddenly became starved of oxygen, wiping out swathes of marine life.

Scientists may have destroyed the well-established theory that a single, massive asteroid strike killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. New data suggests the Chicxulub crater in Mexico, supposedly created by the collision, predates the extinction of the dinosaurs by about 300,000 years. The controversy over what killed the dinosaurs may run and run The authors say this impact did not wipe out the creatures, rather two or more collisions could have been responsible. The report is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. An international group of scientists led by Professor Gerta Keller, of Princeton University,...

September 15, 2003 Could an enormous volcanic eruption have killed the dinosaurs? Cardiff University -- The extinction of the dinosaurs -– thought to be caused by an asteroid impact some 65 million years ago –- was more likely to have been caused by a 'mantle plume' -– a huge volcanic eruption from deep within the earth's mantle, the region between the crust and the core of the earth. This theory, already supported by a significant body of geologists and palaeontologists, is strengthened by new evidence to be presented at an international conference at Cardiff University on 11-12 September. Research by...

Earth's volcanism linked to meteorite impacts 14:31 13 December 02 Exclusive from New Scientist Print EditionSpace rocks are blamed for violent eruptions (Image: GETTY) Large meteorite impacts may not just throw up huge dust clouds but also punch right through the Earth's crust, triggering gigantic volcanic eruptions. The idea is controversial, but evidence is mounting that the Earth's geology has largely been driven by such events. This would also explain why our planet has so few impact crater remnants. Counting the number of asteroids we see in the sky suggests that over the past 250 million years, Earth should have...

...But Keller doesn’t buy any of it. “It’s like a fairy tale: ‘Big rock from sky hits the dinosaurs, and boom they go.’ And it has all the aspects of a really nice story,” she said. “It’s just not true.” ...Keller’s resistance has put her at the core of one of the most rancorous and longest-running controversies in science. “It’s like the Thirty Years’ War,” says Kirk Johnson, the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Impacters’ case-closed confidence belies decades of vicious infighting, with the two sides trading accusations of slander, sabotage, threats, discrimination, spurious data, and...

It had been thought that aftershocks — smaller magnitude quakes that occur in the same region as the initial quake as the surrounding crust adjusts after the fault perturbation — were the only seismic activity an earthquake could lead to. But the team’s analysis of seismic data from 1973 through 2016 provided the first discernible evidence that in the three days following one large quake, other earthquakes were more likely to occur. Each test case in the study represented a single three-day window ‘injected’ with a large-magnitude (6.5 or greater) earthquake suspected of inducing other quakes, and accompanying each case...

Paleontologists have discovered the first North American co-occurrence of hadrosaur and therizinosaur tracks, providing more evidence that Alaska was the ‘superhighway’ for dinosaurs between Asia and western North America 65-70 million years ago (Late Cretaceous epoch). In 2012-2014, Dr. Anthony Fiorillo from the Perot Museum of Nature and Science and colleagues discovered distinct footprints in Denali National Park, central Alaska Range, that they determined to be made by therizinosaurs, unusual predatory dinosaurs thought to have become herbivores. What surprised the team most was the co-occurrence of dozens of hadrosaurs, also known as duck-bill dinosaurs. “Hadrosaurs are very common and found...

Ferocious carnivores like the Tyrannosaurus tend to take top billing when it comes to dinosaur pop culture, but the colossal plant-eaters known as sauropods are just as worthy of acclaim. This group of long-necked beasts include the brachiosaurus, brontosaurus, apatosaurus, and diplodocus as well as many others, and paleontologists in China are now ready to add another new species to the list. The creature’s long-still bones were discovered in a handful of different fossil sites in China, and with as many as 10 partial skeletons to draw from, researchers have been able to classify it as a new species. It...

This father transported his daughter to the prehistoric era by setting up projection screens on the windows of the family home. Father Lyle Coram wowed his seven-year-old daughter Shelby by playing animations on screens around the windows of his home in Las Vegas. Footage shows how Shelby escapes her living room after spotting a T-Rex before encountering Raptors in her kitchen. The footage was filmed in June 2018.Video Here

Researchers have unearthed a new armored dinosaur in Utah, a new species of ankylosaur, known as Akainacephalus johnsoni. The catch? It lived on the lost continent known as Laramidia. A. johnsoni, a member of the ankylosaurid family, lived 76 million years ago in what is now southern Utah, but was once a land mass known as Laramidia, an island continent that split North America in two. Eventually, the sea shrank and the two parts combined to form what is now known as North America. ..." Measuring between 13 and 16 feet in length and 3.5 feet tall, Akainacephalus jonhnsoni is...