Tag Archive for: fossils

usatoday.com

For a dinosaur, celebrity status is usually achieved by being big, belligerent or both. The big headliners of 2014 were a dinosaur as massive as a 747 and a sharp-toothed predator that outweighed T. rex.

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nbcnews.com

This was a great year for dinosaurs. Dreadnoughtus, “Jar Jar Binks,” and a swimming Spinosaurus all made headlines — and 2015 could hold even more surprises.

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nationalgeographic.com

Birds are dinosaurs. This fact is easily understood by looking at the scaly feet of a chickadee or by comparing a chicken wing to a Velociraptor arm. But given that birds are the only “terrible lizards” around today, it’s easy to forget that they also thrived alongside their non-avian kin for 84 million years. The first birds evolved in the Late Jurassic, roundabout 150 million years ago, and they became a widespread and successful branch of the dinosaur family tree.

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While the weather has been warm, and there’s not a lot of snow or ice around, it’s a great time of year to look at the Ice Age animals of Utah. Did you know that Great Salt Lake is the remnant of Ice Age lake, Lake Bonneville? Read more about this different age in Utah in our “Popular Geology” subjects HERE.

Check out the latest dino news! One of our paleontologists, Scott Madsen, discovered this little guy in 1997 in what is called the Cloverly Formation in southern Montana. Utah State Paleontologist, James Kirkland, talks more about the fossil’s significance in this article.

cbsnews.com

Paleontologists have identified the fossil of a horned dinosaur the size of a house cat that is the oldest of its kind ever discovered in North America – by 15 million years.

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news.nationalgeographic.com

Which came first, the feathers or the birds? Feathers first, scientists now say definitively.  Yet this feathery revelation doesn’t arise from discoveries of ancient birds, but of birds’ ancestors—dinosaurs.

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ksl.com

A fossil damaged by vandals in September has been removed from its place along the monument’s popular Fossil Discovery Trail so it can be used as a teaching tool.

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Good morning, everyone! Here’s a great read to start the day out with—despite failed efforts to find any leads in the vandalism of a dinosaur fossil, Dinosaur National Monument managers are moving the remaining piece of a damaged sauropod dinosaur’s humerus bone to be preserved as an educational display. Check it out!

sltrib.com

The remaining piece of a sauropod dinosaur’s humerus bone damaged by vandals will be moved and preserved as an educational display.

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Check out this read for your mid-morning break—last week Utah State Paleontologist James Kirkland and UGS Paleontologist Don DeBlieux led the move of a 150-million-year-old petrified tree from nearby BLM land to the visitor center in Escalante Petrified Forest State Park. Stay tuned as we compile footage from the move!

sltrib.com

Escalante Petrified Forest State Park has one of the best collections of petrified wood in a natural setting in the country. But not everyone who stops at the park has the time, or the desire, to make a relatively short hike to see the collection.

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time.com

Scientists in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert have unearthed fossils that have allowed them for the first time to build a complete picture of one of the more bizarre-looking dinosaurs.

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