Tag Archive for: fossils

Happy Friday! Take a minute to enjoy Discovery Canada’s short on our Paleontologists here at the Utah Geological Survey and their work on the nearly 9-ton fossil block containing a family of Utahraptor. See James Kirkland, Scott Madsen, Don DeBlieux, and help from others as they unravel their Utahraptor puzzle.

discovery.ca

SEE IT HERE

ksl.com

The original Utahns weren’t nearly as willing to bring you a casserole, but who wants to look at fossilized Relief Society presidents?

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smithsonianmag.com

Rays of ultraviolet light—the same wavelengths that stream from black lights to give funky fluorescence to a rave—can be used to uncover secrets usually invisible to human eyes. A UV camera can expose sun damage to skin, show how carnivorous plants lure ants and highlight hints of feathers still clinging to dinosaur fossils. Now researchers are using UV light to coax color from porcelain white seashell fossils.

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Make way for the tall, small, and furry! The Natural History Museum of Utah is presenting their latest exhibit “Extreme Mammals” this Saturday! Check out the article for more information on the exhibit.

sltrib.com

People take mammals for granted.

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phenomena.nationalgeographic.com

Dinosaurs are Mesozoic superstars. The largest literally overshadowed other forms of life during their prehistoric heyday, and even now they attract far more attention than any other group of ancient organisms. It’s easy to forget the diverse and disparate species that wove together the ecology that helped support the dinosaurs we are so enchanted by.

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smithsonianmag.com

Roughly a quarter of a billion years ago, an apocalypse struck the Earth. Known as the Great Dying, it claimed more lives than any other mass extinction known to science, including the one that did in the non-avian dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Over 90 percent of all species on the planet were wiped out, from armor-clad trilobites in the oceans to giant reptiles on land. The host of strange creatures vanished, giving way to the ancestors of modern flora and fauna.

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upr.org

Inside a nine-ton sandstone block pulled from a mesa outside of Moab could be the key to knowing how the carnivorous Utahraptor lived. But before paleontologists can figure that out, State Paleontologist James Kirkland says they are going to have to find a place where they can start chipping away at the block.

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perfscience.com

Paleontologists have unearthed the largest trove of fossils ever discovered from Utahraptor, a feathered dinosaur. According to the paleontologists, the fossils of six Utahraptor dinosaurs were trapped in a block of sandstone.

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Remember the family of Utah Raptors that arrived in a 9-ton ‘block’ in Salt Lake City a few months ago? Our Paleontologists here at the UGS have been working very closely on this project for years. Check out this wonderful highlight on their work so far, where you can see interviews from Utah State Paleontologist James Kirkland, and Paleontologists, Don DeBlieux and Scott Madsen.

news.nationalgeographic.com

A nine-ton block of sandstone that was pulled from a Utah mountain late last year holds the biggest fossil trove ever found of the giant predatory dinosaur known as Utahraptor. Covered in feathers, with a huge sickle claw on each second toe, Utahraptor looked like a pumped-up version of the Jurassic Park star Velociraptor.

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And further reading in this article below…

Fossil treasure trove in quicksand reveals ancient dinosaur death trap

washingtonpost.com

Reports of what looked like a human arm brought Utah state paleontologist James Kirkland to a particular sandstone hill in 2001. But it turned out that his graduate student had actually found something entirely different — a veritable mass grave of Utahraptor dinosaurs. Now they’ve found the remains of six individual dinosaurs, and there may still be more inside of the 9-ton sandstone block they’re excavating.

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washingtonpost.com

Gray-green plateaus and rock formations in a palette of fiery oranges and browns take up much of the landscape on the 400-mile drive from St. George, Utah, to Dinosaur National Monument. Arid and sprawling, it’s not the subtropical terrain that made up the late Mesozoic era, but that didn’t stop the 5-year-old aspiring paleontologist in the back seat from imagining a hungry allosaurus or herd of sauropods pounding across the land in search of dinner.

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