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Categories: Geoscience: Severe Weather, Paleontology: Dinosaurs

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Climate change, rather than competition, played a key role in the ascendancy of dinosaurs through the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic periods.

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Scratches on dinosaur teeth could reveal what they really ate. Dental microwear texture analysis (DMTA) has now been used to infer the feeding habits of large theropods, including Allosaurus and T. rex. By taking 3D images of individual teeth and analyzing the pattern of marks scratched into them, researchers could reason which dinosaurs may have frequently crunched on hard bone and which may have regularly eaten softer foods and prey. This technique opens up a new avenue of research for paleontology, helping us to better understand not only dinosaurs themselves but also the environment and communities in which they lived.

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Dinosaurs dominated the world right up until a deadly asteroid hit the earth, leading to their mass extinction, some 66 million years ago, a landmark study reveals. Fresh insights into dinosaurs' ecosystems -- the habitats and food types that supported their lives -- suggests that their environments were robust and thriving, right up until that fateful day, at the end of the Cretaceous period.

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Scientists have found new evidence for how armored dinosaurs used their iconic tail clubs. The exceptional fossil of the ankylosaur Zuul crurivastator has spikes along its flanks that were broken and re-healed while the dinosaur was alive -- injuries that the scientists think were caused from a strike by another Zuul's massive tail club. This suggests ankylosaurs had complex behavior, possibly battling for social and territorial dominance or even engaging in a 'rutting' season for mates.

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Fossilized fragments of a skeleton, hidden within a rock the size of a grapefruit, have helped upend one of the longest-standing assumptions about the origins of modern birds.

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The oldest Pterodactylus specimen was found near Painten, Germany. The fossil is about one million years older than other Pterodactylus specimens. The specimen is a complete, well-preserved skeleton of a small-sized individual. With a 5-cm-long skull, it represents a rare 'sub-adult' individual.

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Artificial intelligence has revealed that prehistoric footprints thought to be made by a vicious dinosaur predator were in fact from a timid herbivore.

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A fossil discovery from Scotland has provided new information on the early evolution of lizards, during the time of the dinosaurs.

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Piecing together the crushed skull of a fossil bird that lived alongside the dinosaurs helped researchers extrapolate what its brain would have looked like: big olfactory bulbs would have meant that this bird, the earliest known animal to eat fruit, had a better sense of smell than most modern birds. And the bones around its eye sockets revealed that it would have been better at seeing by day than at night.

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Ostrich-like dinosaurs called ornithomimosaurs grew to enormous sizes in ancient eastern North America, according to a new study.

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A new article adds a new chapter to the story of how some animals may respond to the warming oceans.

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A process of desiccation and deflation explains why dinosaur 'mummies' aren't as exceptional as we might expect, according to a study.

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Researchers have conducted a new analysis of the origins of 'bird-hipped' dinosaurs -- the group which includes iconic species such as Triceratops -- and found that they likely evolved from a group of animals known as silesaurs, which were first identified two decades ago.

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Researchers have discovered a new extinct species of lizard-like reptile that belongs to the same ancient lineage as New Zealand's living tuatara. A team of scientists describe the new species Opisthiamimus gregori, which once inhabited Jurassic North America about 150 million years ago alongside dinosaurs like Stegosaurus and Allosaurus. In life, this prehistoric reptile would have been about 16 centimeters (about 6 inches) from nose to tail -- and would fit curled up in the palm of an adult human hand -- and likely survived on a diet of insects and other invertebrates.

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Determining what killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period has long been the topic of debate, as scientists set out to determine what caused the five mass extinction events that reshaped life on planet Earth in a geological instant. Some scientists argue that comets or asteroids that crashed into Earth were the most likely agents of mass destruction, while others argue that large volcanic eruptions were the cause. A new study reports that volcanic activity appears to have been the key driver of mass extinctions.

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An international team of paleontologists has discovered and named a new, early dinosaur. The skeleton -- incredibly, mostly intact -- was found over the course of two digs, in 2017 and 2019.

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Fossils of a giant killer mosasaur have been discovered, along with the fossilized remains of its prey.

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Large dinosaur predators, such as Tyrannosaurus rex, evolved different shapes of eye sockets to better deal with high bite forces, new research has shown.

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Scientists have cracked an enduring mystery, discovering how sauropod dinosaurs -- like Brontosaurus and Diplodocus -- supported their gigantic bodies on land.

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Spinosaurid dinosaurs were able to develop up to three generations of teeth at the same time, a high replacement rate that explains why so many teeth of this type have been found in Cretaceous sites.