Saturday, May 28, 2005

New Dinosaur Exhibit in Texas Offers a Unique Experience

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

A Sleeping Dinosaur

The first fossil of a sleeping non-avian dinosaur has been described by a pair of American Museum of Natural History paleontologists. The small bird-like dinosaur is preserved in a remarkable life-like pose, with its head tucked between its forearm and trunk with its tail encircling its body. The pose matches the typical sleeping or resting posture found in living birds and thereby supports the already established evolutionary connection between extinct dinosaurs and modern birds (which are living dinosaurs) and the occurrence of bird-like features in early dinosaurian evolution. It also supports the hypothesis that non-avian dinosaurs, like the modern birds that evolved after them, were warm-blooded..........

ScienceDaily, May 23, 2005

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Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Pleistocene Park

During the last ice age northeastern Siberia remained a grassy refuge for scores of animals, including bison and woolly mammoths. Then, about 10,000 years ago, this vast ecosystem disappeared as the Ice Age ended.
Now, though, the Ice Age landscape is on its way back, with a little help from the Russian scientists who have established "Pleistocene Park."
The scientists hope to uncover what killed off the woolly mammoth and other Ice Age animals. To do so, they're restoring the prehistoric ecosystem once found in what is now the remote Sakha region of eastern Russia..........

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-- Stefan Lovgrenfor, National Geographic News, May 17, 2005

Monday, May 16, 2005

60,000-Year-Old Mammoth Bones Uncovered in Russia

A group of workers was surprised to see a large bone in the excavator bucket

Specialists spend many months, looking for remnants of ancient animals that used to inhabit planet Earth. Scientists uncover bones of prehistoric animals, meticulously removing the ground from them. Paleontologists rejoice even if they find just several fragments of an animal carcass. However, common people can make such discoveries as well, albeit incidentally. Workers that were digging a pit in the ground not far from the village of Vlasikha in the Altay region of Russia, discovered a perfectly preserved skeleton of a mammoth. The workers did not treat their finding carefully and uncovered the bones with an excavator.........

Pravda, May 16, 2005

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Sunday, May 08, 2005

Amateur Fossil Hunters Discover New Flat-Headed Dinosaur

The discovery of a new species of dinosaur, which made news from Bangkok to Sydney this week, began two years ago with three amateur dinosaur hunters from Sioux City.


The lawyer, doctor and veterinarian were on one of their regular fossil hunts in May 2003 when the lawyer spotted something curious in the western South Dakota dirt......

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Friday, May 06, 2005

New Dinosaur Discovery Shows Changes in Diet

First noticed by a black market fossil dealer, a new species found in a Utah boneyard may be a missing link in dinosaurs' trend toward vegetarianism. The 125-million-year-old fossils, from the dinosaur Falcarius utahensis, were discovered in a graveyard of hundreds, if not thousands, of individuals. Though it may have eaten meat, Falcarius's teeth and guts show the first signs of the species's change toward a leafy, green diet..........

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