paleontology
Kingwood (United States) (AFP) - Before a T. rex can tower over museum visitors or a Triceratops can show off its huge horns, dinosaur fossils must first be painstakingly reconstructed -- cleaned, fit together and even painted. For US restorationist Lauren McClain, the process is like putting together a giant 3D puzzle. McClain's job begins at her home workshop near Houston, Texas, where she carefully clears away dirt stuck to the more than 60-million-year-old remains using a tiny drill with an air compressor, similar to a dentist's tool. Then, she must assemble this ancient puzzle -- even t...
AFP
Washington (AFP) - A whale skull fossil estimated to be some 12 million years old has been found on a beach in the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, according to a local museum. The discovery was made in October by a Pennsylvania man, Cody Goddard, who was searching for fossils and shark's teeth, the Calvert Marine Museum said in a statement. "It felt like we had won the World Cup of Paleontology!" said Stephen Godfrey, curator of paleontology at the museum in the eastern US state. "We don't yet know what species of Miocene baleen whale this is," he said. "That we will only know once it has been pre...
AFP
Washington (AFP) - A drought in Texas dried up a river flowing through Dinosaur Valley State Park, exposing tracks from giant reptiles that lived some 113 million years ago, an official said Tuesday. Photos posted on Facebook show three-toed footprints leading down a dry tree-lined riverbed in the southern US state. It is "one of the longest dinosaur trackways in the world," a caption accompanying the images says. Stephanie Salinas Garcia of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department said dry weather made the tracks visible. "Due to the excessive drought conditions this past summer, the river dri...
AFP
Washington (AFP) - Paleontologists said Thursday they had discovered a new giant carnivorous dinosaur species that had a massive head and tiny arms, just like Tyrannosaurus rex. The researchers' findings, published in the journal Current Biology, suggest that small forelimbs were no evolutionary accident, but rather gave apex predators of the time certain survival advantages. Meraxes gigas -- named after a fictional dragon in the Game of Thrones book series -- was dug up over the course of four years during field expeditions in the northern Patagonia region of Argentina, starting with the skul...
AFP
Washington (AFP) - A team of US scientists has demonstrated that the offspring of huge carnivorous dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex, who grew from the size of house cats to towering monsters, reshaped their ecosystems by outcompeting smaller rival species. Their study, published in the journal Science on Thursday, helps answer an enduring mystery about the 150-million-year rule of dinosaurs: why were there many more large species compared to small, which is the opposite of what we see in land animals today? "Dinosaur communities were like shopping malls on a Saturday afternoon, jam-packed with...
AFP
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