First Triceratops Bonebed

March

Although Triceratops is the most common dinosaur in the terminal Cretaceous Hell Creek Formation (White et al., 1998), known from over 50 singleton specimens collected since the late nineteenth century, no bonebeds or associations of multiple individuals have previously been reported. A new locality in the latest Maastrichtian Hell Creek Formation of southeastern Montana, discovered in the summer of 2005 by a field crew from the Burpee Museum of Natural History (BMR) in Rockford, Illinois, contains the remains of three juvenile-sized Triceratops. This is the first occurrence of multiple individuals of Triceratops in the same quarry and raises potentially interesting questions regarding Triceratops paleobiology.

BioOne: The First Triceratops Bonebed and its Implications for Gregarious Behavior

 

World's Smallest Carnivore: Hesperonychus elizabethae

March 16

Nick Longrich

"Hesperonychus is currently the smallest dinosaur known from North America. But its discovery just emphasizes how little we actually know, and it raises the possibility that there are even smaller ones out there waiting to be found," said Nick Longrich, a paleontology research associate in the University of Calgary's Department of Biological Sciences. "Small carnivorous dinosaurs seemed to be completely absent from the environment, which seemed bizarre because today the small carnivores outnumber the big ones," he said. "It turns out that they were here and they played a more important role in the ecosystem than we realized. So for the past 100 years, we've completely overlooked a major part of North America's dinosaur community."

Eurekalert.org: Mini dinosaurs prowled North America

Bird-Footed Theropod: Limusaurus inextricabilis

June 17

Portia Sloan

Scientists who discovered a beaked, plant-eating dinosaur in China called Limusaurus inextricabilis ("mire lizard who could not escape") say it demonstrates that theropod, or bird-footed, dinosaurs were more ecologically diverse in the Jurassic period than previously thought.  Even more, they write in Nature that it offers important evidence about how the three-fingered hand of birds evolved from the hand of dinosaurs.

"This new animal is fascinating, and when placed into an evolutionary context it offers intriguing evidence about how the hand of birds evolved," said scientist James Clark of George Washington University.  Clark, along with Xu Xing of the Chinese Academy of Science's Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, made the discovery.

Scientific Blogging: Limusaurus Inextricabilis - Birdlike Dinosaur May Have Clues To Finger Evolution

 

Parrot Reptile: Psittacosaurus gobiensis

June 17

Todd Marshall

The 3-foot-long (0.9-meter-long) Cretaceous creature had a boxlike skull and beaklike jaw that resemble those of modern parrots, which have beaks that can crack open nuts, a new study found.

The 110-million-year-old skull—as well as "a huge pile" of 50 stomach stones found with the fossil—suggests that the beast was chewing hard, fibrous nuts and seeds, the researchers say. Stomach stones are rocks ingested by some animals to grind food in their digestive systems.

If confirmed, Psittacosaurus gobiensis ("parrot reptile of the Gobi") and its close cousins would be the world's first known nut-eating dinosaur.

National Geographic: New Dinosaur Was Nut-Cracking "Parrot"

 

"Feathered" Herbivore: Tianyulong confuciusi

March 18

Li-Da Xing

A primitive form of feather may have evolved much earlier than was previously thought, according to an analysis of a dinosaur fossil that is more than 100 million years old. The specimen supports arguments that dinosaurs may have used feathers for display.

Finding feathers in dinosaurs is becoming a common occurrence. This is especially true in China's Liaoning Province, where fine-grained sedimentary rocks often contain fossils with exquisite details still intact. But all of these feathered fossils have been of the bipedal, carnivorous theropod lineage, which includes Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor.

Now, Xiao-Ting Zheng at the Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature in China suggests that feathers were not limited to the theropods. He and his colleagues have discovered a dinosaur fossil in Liaoning that has long feather-like structures sticking up from its body. Based on the bones present, it looks like it was small, active, agile, and probably eating a mix of insects, small vertebrates and plants.

Smithsonian: Tianyulong: An Unexpectedly Fuzzy Dinosaur

 

Giant Ostrich-Mimic: Beishanlong grandis

June 22

Nobu Tamura

The team also discovered three specimens of a remarkable, second theropod from the Yujingzi basin during the 2006 and 2007 field seasons. Beishanlong grandis (bay-SHAN-long gran-DIS) is a new species of ornithomimosaur, or ostrich-mimic dinosaur. Ornithomimosaurs are a lineage of theropods that evolved a toothless beak and were likely omnivorous or herbivorous, superficially resembling present day ostriches.

EurekAlert.org: Field Museum paleontologist leads study on two new dinosaurs from China

 

Tiny T. Rex: Raptorex kriegsteini

September 17

Todd Marshall

A miniature Tyrannosaurus rex of sorts that walked the Earth 125 million years ago may have been tiny but was equipped with all of the fierce features of its infamous descendant.

While the newly discovered dinosaur was not a T. rex, it was a tyrannosaurid species related to T. rex that lived tens of millions of years earlier than its mighty cousin. And it's a nearly exact scaled-down version of the larger paleo-beast, according to an examination of the dinosaur remains unearthed in northeast China.

Until now, scientists had thought T. rex and its oversized kin evolved predatory adaptations — such as a large head and puny arms — as a result of, or perhaps in tandem with, their large size. The new finding, however, suggests a T. rex blueprint for taking down prey evolved, and was successful, in the pint-size, well before the giant tyrannosaurs emerged.

Weighing in at a measly 150 pounds with a body length of just 9 feet (2.7 m), the newly discovered dinosaur, Raptorex kriegsteini, was 100 times smaller than T. rex, said Sereno, who along with his colleagues details the finding on Sept. 17 in Science Express, the online edition of the journal Science.

LiveScience: Man-Sized Dinosaur Was a Tiny T. Rex

 

Horned Tyrannosaur: Alioramus altai

October 5

Steve Brusatte

The tyrannosaur family tree just got a little bigger. A newfound relative of Tyrannosaurus rex was a smaller, and more graceful, carnivore than its fearsome cousin, but it sported some bizarre features, including a horn and a long snout.

The newly-described T. rex cousin, described in the Oct. 5 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is named Alioramus altai. The exceptionally well-preserved fossil sheds light on a previously poorly understood genus of tyrannosaurs and a new suite of adaptations for meat eating.

LiveScience: Newfound Tiny Tyrannosaur Had Horns

 

Tank-like Ankylosaur: Tatankacephalus cooneyorum

October 30

Bill Parsons

A new species of dinosaur, an ankylosaur, that lived 112 million years ago during the early Cretaceous of central Montana has been described by paleontologists writing in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences and the Bulletin of the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences.

Ankylosaurs are the biological version of an army tank; they were protected by a plate-like armor with two sets of sharp spikes on each side of the head, and a skull so thick that even 'raptors' such as Deinonychus could leave barely more than a scratch.

Bill and Kris Parsons, Research associates of the Buffalo Museum of Science, found much of the skull of the newly described Tatankacephalus cooneyorum resting on the surface of a hillside in 1997. Because the skull was 90% complete, it was possible to justify this fossil as a new species.

Scientific Blogging: Tatankacephalus Cooneyorum - New Ankylosaur Dinosaur Species Discovery

 

Lost world of bizarre crocs discovered

November 19

A "saber-toothed cat in armor" and a pancake-shaped predator are among the strange crocodile cousins whose bones have been found beneath the windswept dunes of the Sahara, archaeologists say.

The diverse menagerie of reptiles ruled Gondwana—a landmass that later broke up into the southern continents—about a hundred million years ago, during the Cretaceous period.

"There's an entire croc world brewing in Africa that we really had only an inkling about before," said Paul Sereno, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago and leader of a new study.

National Geographic: 5 "Oddball" Crocs Discovered, Including Dinosaur-Eater