By examining the type of rock in which dinosaur fossils were embedded, an often unappreciated part of the remains, scientists have determined that different species of North American dinosaurs from the Late Cretaceous period 65 million years ago occupied different environments separated by just a few miles. Hadrosaurs or duck-billed dinosaurs, along with the small ornithopod Thescelosaurus, preferred to live along the edge of rivers, according to the research. Ceratopsians, on the other hand, which include the well-known Triceratops, preferred to be several miles inland. Read more
Announced today in PLoS ONE, the online open-access journal produced by the Public Library of Science, two new species of horned dinosaurs--Utahceratops gettyi and Kosmoceratops richardsoni -- have been found in Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument in southern Utah. Close relatives of the famous Triceratops, these giant plant eaters were once inhabitants of the "lost island continent" of Laramidia, a swampy, subtropical setting formed when a shallow sea flooded the central region of North America, isolating the eastern and western portions of the continent for millions of years during the late Cretaceous period.
Fires and floods which raged across the Isle of Wight some 130 million years ago made the island the richest source of pick 'n' mix dinosaur remains of this age anywhere in the world. A new study has revealed the Island's once violent weather explains why thousands of tiny dinosaur teeth and bones lie buried alongside the huge bones of their gigantic relatives. The research was carried out by University of Portsmouth palaeontologist Dr Steve Sweetman and Dr Allan Insole from the University of Bristol. It is published in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. Read more
Mojoceratops: New Dinosaur Species Named for Flamboyant Frill
When Nicholas Longrich discovered a new dinosaur species with a heart-shaped frill on its head, he wanted to come up with a name just as flamboyant as the dinosaur's appearance. Over a few beers with fellow paleontologists one night, he blurted out the first thing that came to mind: Mojoceratops. Read more
A new species of horned dinosaur unearthed in Mexico has larger horns that any other species - up to 4 feet long - and has given scientists fresh insights into the ancient history of western North America, according to a research team led by paleontologists from the Utah Museum of Natural History at the University of Utah. The 72-million-year-old rhino-sized creature - Coahuilaceratops magnacuerna - was a four- to five-ton plant-eater belonging to a group called horned dinosaurs, or ceratopsids. The name Coahuilaceratops magnacuerna (Koh-WHE-lah-SARA-tops mag-NAH-KWER-na), refers to the Mexican state of Coahuila where it was found, and to the Greek word "ceratops" meaning "horned face." The second part of the name, magnacuerna, is a combination of Latin and Spanish meaning "great horn," in reference to the huge horns above the eyes of this dinosaur. Read more
Horned dinosaurs 'island-hopped' from Asia to Europe
Horned dinosaurs previously considered native only to Asia and North America might also have roamed the lands of prehistoric Europe, say scientists. Read more
The new dinosaur, Ajkaceratops kozmai, has been evaluated from just three skull bones, but they show "clear diagnostic features of horned dinosaurs" and obvious ties to coronosaurians, the same group to which Triceratops belongs, Xu noted. Read more
The discovery in Europe of fossils of a small horned dinosaur, a member of a group previously known only from Asia and North America, will prompt a rethink of biogeography at that time in the past.
Reconstructing the historical distribution of Earth's fauna and flora is a challenging task, not least because of the incomplete, often poorly dated, nature of the fossil record. Such problems are particularly severe with respect to European biogeography in the Late Cretaceous period (about 100 million to 65 million years ago), when Europe was an archipelago. Read more
Caltech-Led Team First to Directly Measure Body Temperatures of Extinct Vertebrates
Was Tyrannosaurus rex cold-blooded? Did birds regulate their body temperatures before or after they began to grow feathers? Why would evolution favour warm-bloodedness when it has such a high energy cost? Questions like these - about when, why, and how vertebrates stopped relying on external factors to regulate their body temperatures and began heating themselves internally - have long intrigued scientists. Now, a team led by researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has taken a critical step toward providing some answers. Reporting online this week in the early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), they describe the first method for the direct measurement of the body temperatures of large extinct vertebrates - through the analysis of rare isotopes in the animals' bones, teeth, and eggshells. Read more