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Ever wonder why the dinosaurs disappeared? HHMI BioInteractive investigates the cause of the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period—and the clues come from paleontology, chemistry, physics, and biology.This three-act film tells the story of the extraordinary detective work that solved one of the greatest scientific mysteries of all time. Explore the fossil evidence of these prehistoric animals, and other organisms that went extinct, through this lively educational video.The Day the Mesozoic Died: The Asteroid That Killed the Dinosaurs — HHMI BioInteractive Video | 33:50biointeractive | 237K subscribers | 14,149,800 views | August 26, 2014

Around 120 million years ago, four-winged dinosaurs roughly the size of crows called Microraptors stalked the ancient woodlands of what is now China.While researchers have studied several Microraptor specimens, there's still a lot we don't know about these feathered bird-like creatures – including what and how they ate.Now an incredibly rare fossil has revealed the preserved final meal of one individual: and unexpectedly, it was a mammal...The first Microraptor fossil was found in Liaoning, China, in 2000. There are three known species, which lived in the early Cretacious period, and the fossil in question belongs to Microraptor zhaoianus...The Microraptors were...

British and Moroccan scientists said Tuesday they had found the remains of two new species of extinct animals in the Saharan desert, describing the find as one of the most important of the past 50 years. The team of paleontologists said they had unearthed a new species of pterosaur, a flying reptile from the Mesozoic era, and a new type of sauropod, a giant four-legged herbivore from the Jurassic period.

Credit: skeleton by Maurício Silva Garcia; photo and composition by Rodrigo Temp MüllerPaleontologists from the Universidade Federal de Santa Maria (UFSM) published a study in the scientific periodic Gondwana Research describing the new fossilized specimen.The oldest dinosaurs have been excavated from fossiliferous layers with approximately 233 million years from Brazil and Argentina. Furthermore, some older Argentinean deposits revealed remains of dinosaur precursors, which provide crucial data on the origin of "true" dinosaurs. These creatures lived approximately 236 million years ago and were small, with no more than 1 meter in length.Whereas the fossil record of dinosaur precursors is relatively...

The study, led by scientists at the University of Bath and including collaborators from Bristol, Cambridge and Germany, used fossils and analysed genetic differences between modern snakes to reconstruct snake evolution. The analyses helped to pinpoint the time that modern snakes evolved.Their results show that all living snakes trace back to just a handful of species that survived the asteroid impact 66 million years ago, the same extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs.The authors argue that the ability of snakes to shelter underground and go for long periods without food helped them survive the destructive effects of the impact. In...

Lepidosaurs are scaled reptiles such as lizards, snakes, and New Zealand's tuatara, which together represent the most diverse group of land-living vertebrates alive today. Yet little is known about their early origins compared to the other arms of reptilian evolution which produced crocodiles, birds, and turtles... The fossil, found in Ischigualasto Provincial Park in northwest Argentina, is about 11 million years younger than the oldest known lepidosaurs from Europe, but one of the best-preserved specimens of its kind, which means the team can have more confidence in their analyses... It's a lucky find, especially considering the origins of lepidosaurs have...

Nothing quite says 'look at me!' like an extravagant set of tail feathers. Plenty of modern birds sacrifice agility for a chance to grab attention, but examples among relatives in the fossil record have been harder to come by. Scientists have now described the remains of a 120-million-year-old feathered dinosaur roughly the size of a bluejay, with an extremely long and extravagant behind. The remarkably-detailed fossil was found in northeastern China and named Yuanchuavis (Yuanchuavis kompsosoura) after a phoenix-like bird in Chinese mythology. It's the first time a bird-like fossil from the Mesozoic era has been discovered with such a...

Several complete skeletons hint at sudden, mass extinctionResearchers from the Whiteside Museum of Natural History in Seymour are unraveling an ancient mystery. "This is life," said Coleton Caldwell, assistant director of the museum. "The first time life is living on land, solely on land, and it's still trying to figure things out, you know? What works, what doesn't work? So it's just really, really, really unique." Working southwest of Wichita Falls, near the shore of Lake Kemp in Baylor County, the researchers have uncovered the skeletal remains of seven dimetrodons. The mammal-like finback reptiles roamed parts of North Texas 60...

Paleontologists have uncovered the remains of megaraptor that lived 70 million years ago, making it one of the last carnivorous dinosaur to roam the Earth. Discovered in Argentina, the team found vertebrae, ribs and part of what would have been the dinosaur's chest and shoulder girdle. After a further analysis, they determined the creature was approximately 33 feet in length -the largest megaraptor found to date. Unlike the Tyrannosaurus rex, this lethal dinosaur had extremely long, muscular arms with massive claws at the end that were used to attack prey.

The researchers say they found evidence in North Dakota of the asteroid hit in Mexico, including fish with hot glass in their gills from flaming debris that showered back down on Earth. They also reported the discovery of charred trees, evidence of an inland tsunami and melted amber. Additionally, University of Amsterdam professor Jan Smit said he and his colleagues found footsteps from dinosaurs moments before they met their untimely death. Smit said the footprints — one from a plant-eating hadrosaur and the other of a meat eater, maybe a small Tyrannosaurus Rex — is "definite proof that the dinosaurs...

66 million-year-old deathbed linked to dinosaur-killing meteor By Robert Sanders, Media relations| March 29, 2019March 29, 2019 Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)Click to print (Opens in new window) A meteor impact 66 million years ago generated a tsunami-like wave in an inland sea that killed and buried fish, mammals, insects and a dinosaur, the first victims of Earth’s last mass extinction event. The death scene from within an hour of...

The rare fossils are helping scientists understand how ancient bugs hatched from their eggs The insects became trapped in the sticky resin 130million years ago, shortly after bursting through the shell – and scientists aren't sure how the creatures met their grisly fate. The amazing fossils are helping researchers understand how ancient bugs hatched and took their first steps in the ancient world. Like many modern animals, the insects used a tool known as an egg-burster to smash through the egg shell. "The structures that make hatching possible tend to disappear quickly once egg-laying animals hatch, so obtaining fossil evidence...

Being a gigantic dinosaur presented some challenges, such as overheating in the Cretaceous sun and frying your brain. Researchers from Ohio University and NYITCOM at Arkansas State show in a new article in PLOS ONE that the heavily armored, club-tailed ankylosaurs had a built-in air conditioner in their snouts. "The huge bodies that we see in most dinosaurs must have gotten really hot in warm Mesozoic climates," said Jason Bourke, Assistant Professor at the New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine at Arkansas State and lead author of the study. "Brains don't like that, so we wanted to...

A 99-million-year-old beetle has been found, trapped in amber, stunning scientists. The new beetle, known as Propiestus archaicus, was found in Hukawng Valley in the northern part Myanmar, near China's southern border. P. archaicus is a distant relative of today's rove beetles, found in South America and the southern part of Arizona, revealing that the continents shifted rapidly millions of years ago to what we now see today. "This is a very rare find," Shuhei Yamamoto said, a Field Museum researcher and lead author of a paper in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, said in a statement. Thanks to the...

The newly-reported specimen was obtained from an amber deposit in the Angbamo area in Myanmar’s Kachin province.The fossil is a 1.6-inch (4.75 cm) long postcranial skeleton made up of 97 vertebrae; the snake’s head is missing. It dates from the Late Cretaceous epoch, approximately 99 million years ago.“This snake, named Xiaophis myanmarensis, is linked to ancient snakes from Argentina, Africa, India and Australia,” said University of Alberta’s Professor Michael Caldwell.“It is an important — and until now, missing — component of understanding snake evolution from southern continents, that is Gondwana, in the mid-Mesozoic.” “At 99 million years old, it dates...

MANSOURA, Egypt (AP) — A skeleton has been unearthed in Egypt’s Western Desert, whose ancient sands have long helped preserve remains, but unlike most finds this one isn’t a mummy — it’s a dinosaur. Researchers from Mansoura University in the country’s Nile Delta discovered the new species of long-necked herbivore, which is around the size of a city bus, and it could be just the tip of the sand dune for other desert dinosaur discoveries. “As in any ecosystem, if we went to the jungle we’ll find a lion and a giraffe. So we found the giraffe, where’s the lion?”...

Paleontologist Matthew Lamanna can still remember the day in 2014 when a colleague, Hesham Sallam, emailed him detailed pictures of fossils that had just been unearthed by his team in Egypt. From one photo, depicting the remains of a large lower jaw bone, Lamanna knew right away that Sallam had found a dinosaur. “No pun intended, my jaw did almost literally hit the floor when I saw that,” Lamanna, the principal dinosaur researcher at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, told The Washington Post. “When you stare at dinosaur bones for a lot of your life, you learn to recognize...

The vast majority of Cretaceous ants belong to stem-group Formicidae and comprise workers and reproductives of largely generalized morphologies... recent discoveries from the Cretaceous suggest relatively advanced social levels. Remarkable exceptions to this pattern of generalized morphologies are ants with bizarre mouthparts in which both female castes have modified heads and bladelike mandibles that uniquely move in a horizontal rather than vertical plane... with the mandibles apparently acting as traps triggered by sensory hairs in a way distinct from that of modern trap-jaw ants... some of the most effective predatory ants are solitary hunters with powerful trap jaws... Dr. WANG...

LUCKNOW: "Do you know that the evolution of mighty whales took place in India around 55 million years before present. And, though the Ostrich is not found in India anymore, but according to scientists, the bird also evolved here about 12 million years before present. Interestingly, these facts are part of a science curriculum in the West, but Indian students are largely unaware of the same. This was revealed by Ashok Sahni, emeritus professor, Chandigarh University, in his lecture delivered at a seminar on "Northward Flight of India in the Mesozoic - Cenozoic: Consequences on Biotic Changes and Basin Evolution",...

Dinosaur fossils don't come much more impressive than this. With 98 per cent of its skeleton preserved, this young predatory theropod from southern Germany may be the most complete dinosaur ever found. Oliver Rauhut, curator of the Bavarian State Collection for Palaeontology and Geology in Munich, announced the find yesterday. Although Chinese bird and dinosaur fossils are famed for delicate details such as their feathers, they don't match this 72-centimetre-long theropod in terms of clarity and completeness of preservation. The young dinosaur has been dated at 135 million years old, putting it in the early Cretaceous, but it has yet...