So, 2020 has been off to an interesting start. The “OpenCon saga” pretty much crippled me professionally. I have spent the last 5 months in isolation mode to recover physically and emotionally from that. Thankfully, while this rather vicious and intentional attempt to harm me was quite successful, it also provided me with a brilliant […]
Everyone loves dinosaurs, right? There’s a new podcast episode out with Joel Werner at the Sum of all Parts where Steve Brusatte and I chat about the ongoing explosion in dinosaur discoveries, and what this means for science. Enjoy!
“Fundamentally, research works best when it is free to share, access, and re-use. Strangely, despite this being so clear, this is for the most part not the case. The vast majority of scholarly research, often produced using public funds, is privatised by commercial companies, and out of the researchers’ control. This is not an effective […]
The latest species to be added to the oviraptorosaur family tree is Gobiraptor minutus, described by scientists this week. This absolutely adorable new species is known from a juvenile specimen, and the reconstruction below by Do Yoon Kim reveals just how cute this little proto-thief could be. Source: Mongolian proto-thief dinosaur had egg-crushing jaws | […]
Welcome to your usual roundup of interesting stuff that happened in the last month from the worlds of Open Science and Palaeontology! Enjoy, and let me know if I’ve missed anything out. Previous time. Palaeontology News Nikolov: Osteohistology of the hadrosauroid (Dinosauria: Ornithopoda) from Labirinta cave, Bulgaria: An example of insular dwarfism or simply young giant? Lowery […]
Welcome to your usual roundup of interesting stuff that happened in the last month from the worlds of Open Science and Palaeontology! Enjoy, and let me know if I’ve missed anything out. Previous time. Palaeontology News Rudenko: Prehistoric Body Theater: Bringing Paleontology Narratives to Global Contemporary Performance Audiences. This is just a special bit of magic! Brocklehurst: Vertebral […]
Welcome to your usual weekly roundup of interesting stuff that happened in the last week! Enjoy, and let me know if I’ve missed anything out. Previous week. Palaeontology News Lessner et al: New insights into Late Triassic dinosauromorph-bearing assemblages from Texas using apomorphy-based identifications. Xu et al: A new Middle Jurassic diplodocoid suggests an earlier dispersal and […]
Welcome to your usual weekly roundup of vaguely interesting stuff that happened in the last week! Enjoy, and let me know if I’ve missed anything out. Previous week. Palaeontology news Montanari: Cracking the egg: the use of modern and fossil eggs for ecological, environmental and biological interpretation. Yin et al: Cranial morphology of Sinovenator changii (Theropoda: Troodontidae) on […]
Everything we know about dinosaurs comes from their fossil record, and how we as humans document and interpret that. As such, our understanding of their evolution is based on what is known at any given point in time, and subject to change as new discoveries are made. As any science should be! Alessandro Chiarenza, Matt […]
This article was originally posted here. While artistic reconstructions of dinosaurs preying on each other are a fantastic way of illustrating the real-life behaviours of these fantastic creatures, direct evidence of dinosaur-food interactions in the fossil record are surprisingly rare. In modern ecosystems, it’s quite easy to establish ecological interactions between predators, prey, and plants […]