A couple of weeks ago a new paper came out of sauropod bone microstructure in sauropods, the latest in a series from the Bonn lab of Martin Sander. The lead author, Koen Stein is yet another ex-Bristolian who is now pursuing a PhD and here takes time out of the traditional student panic to write a bit about the growth of the dwarf dinosaur Magyrosaurus.
Blog: Dave Hone's Archosaur Musings

A while back I wrote a short post about the classic theropod overbite which used a photo of a Gorgosaurus specimen under preparation. That photo, and those here, came courtesy of Darren Tanke who has done a superb job of preparing this large and complex piece. He has now finished and the whole specimen is now on public display at the Royal Tyrrell Museum as part of their new exhibit ‘Alberta Unearthed‘ to celebrate their 25th anniversary.
Blog: Dave Hone's Archosaur Musings

As if the Triassic couldn't get any weirder. If this discovery does not finally demonstrate the peril of assigning isolated jaw fragments and teeth to various dinosaurian subgroups, I do not know what will. The placement of Azendohsaurus as a basal archosauromorph demonstrates that herbivory has evolved independently numerous times within Archosauromorpha and was actually much more common in this clade than previously believed.
Blog: Chinleana

Finally this is out, although presently only as an accepted manuscript in Earth Science Reviews. I was one of the reviewers for this paper and felt that it constitutes a very well written overview of early dinosaur work to the present, including many of the recent cool finds from the Chinle Formation of course. I was reviewing this manuscript last year about the time another early dinosaur review paper came out by Max Langer and colleagues (not sure why this paper is so delayed) and feel that these papers are nice complements to each other.
Blog: Chinleana

By now, everybody has heard about Jack Horner's attempt to KILL our beloved Torosaurus.
Blog: DinoGoss

Here’s the skull and life portrait of the carnivorous dinosaur Ceratosaurus, from the Late Jurassic of Colorado, Wyoming and Utah. It’s the only meat-eater with a tall, sharp-edged horn on its nose.
Blog: Beyond Bones

"What truly assured Cope's (July 28, 1840 – April 12, 1897; above right) place in the history of paleontology and even eclipsed his science was his bitter feud with Yale University paleontologist O.C. Marsh.
Blog: Palaeoblog

From movies to museum displays, the dinosaurs we most often see are fully mature animals. There are a few good reasons for this. The first is that the skeletons of adult dinosaurs are among the most impressive specimens in the whole of the fossil record, but it is also true that the bones of juvenile dinosaurs are relatively rare. Scientists are still learning about how dinosaurs grew up, and a long-forgotten discovery has shown how one of the most famous dinosaurs changed as it matured.
Blog: Dinosaur Tracking

Most people think of Janensch’s (1950b) plate VIII as being the first skeletal reconstruction of “Brachiosaurus” (although Janensch’s species “Brachiosaurus” brancai is now referred to the separate genus Giraffatitan).
Blog: Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week

Its name is Aletopelta coombsi. Aletopelta was found back in 1987 during a construction project (as many, many fossils are found in California) in Carlsbad, near San Diego. The front end was scraped away by a backhoe, but a substantial amount of the skeleton was recovered, allowing a description of the material.
Blog: A Central Coast Paleontologist

Tyrant dinosaurs - properly called tyrannosauroids - are most usually associated with the Late Cretaceous of North America. Of course, if you know anything about dinosaurs you'll also know that many tyrants were Asian. So, the most familiar tyrants - the big, short-armed kinds like Tyrannosaurus, Tarbosaurus, Albertosaurus and Daspletosaurus (all of which belong to the best-known tyrant clade, Tyrannosauridae) - were all animals of Laurasia, the northern landmass that split up during the Cretaceous to form North America and Eurasia.
Blog: Tetrapod Zoology

Some of you may have already spotted the new paper out covering the delightful little Seitaad ruessi – a brand new sauropodomorph from the Middle Jurassic of Utah. (Some coverage is here if you have missed it, and the paper is freely available here). Mark Loewen, one of the authors of the new paper, tells of how the material was found and then how they got the specimen out of the quarry.
Blog: Dave Hone's Archosaur Musings

We get so many great questions through our blog, and every now and then we can turn those responses into a blog post. One our readers favorite posts is “What would YOU ask a paleontologist?”
Blog: BEYONDbones

This new dinosaur gets my vote for one of the coolest names of 2010! In tomorrow’s (March 24th) issue of PLoS ONE the new sauropodomorph Seitaad ruessi will be unveiled [you can read it now here]! Seitaad is derived from Seit’aad, a sand-desert monster from the Navajo (Diné) creation legend that swallowed its victims in sand dunes.
Blog: Dinochick Blogs

Trio of New Early Jurassic Sauropodomorph Dinosaur Papers - Sertich, J. J. W., and M. A. Loewen. 2010. A New Basal Sauropodomorph Dinosaur from the Lower Jurassic Navajo Sandstone of Southern Utah. PLoS ONE 5(3)
Blog: Chinleana

With all the recent hubbub over Anchiornis and its coloration, have come several pretty cool life reconstructions showing the animal as it would, supposedly, look in life.
Blog: DinoGoss

These are the days of miracle and wonder, especially for all you right-minded people out there who are lovers of fine brachiosaurs. I heard yesterday evening about a new paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: You and Li’s (2009, duh) description of a new brachiosaur, the first one known from the Cretaceous of Asia: Qiaowanlong kangxii.
Blog: Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week

I know it’s a bit soon to follow up my own post, but I’ve been in correspondence with You Hai-Lu, lead author of the Proc. B paper describing the new putative brachiosaurid Qiaowanlong. He’s been very gracious in response to my questioning the new taxon, and I wanted to pass on the fruits of that exchange.
Blog: Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week

Dr. Richard Butler (Bayerische Staatssammlung für Paläontologie und Geologie, Munich), Dr. Octavio Mateus (University of Lisbon) and Steven Brusatte (American Museum of Natural History) have initiated a new field project to study terrestrial strata (Grès de Silves Formation) spanning the Triassic-Jurassic boundary in Portugal in hopes of recovering late surviving temnospondyls and possibly other Late Triassic vertebrates.
Blog: Chinleana

She’s not the weightiest herbivore in her Jurassic world. Her close kin Apatosaurus would be twice as heavy. Her neighbor Brachiosaurus would be four times her bulk. But no other dinosaur can exceed our Diplodocus in the combination of length and delicacy of architecture.
Blog: BEYONDbones

Could the African nation of Angola be the next hot spot for paleontology? According to the BBC, the recent cessation of Angola’s civil war has allowed paleontologists to start working in the country again. As the news company states, the country seems to be a new “fossil frontier” that is brimming with the petrified remains of ancient creatures as yet unknown to scientists.
Blog: Dinosaur Tracking

Here’s a skeletal reconstruction of Alamosaurus modified from Lehman and Coulson. I cloned the neck and rotated it a few degrees to see where it would put the head.
Blog: Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week

As soon as I arrived at the temporary visitor’s center in Utah’s Dinosaur National Monument two weeks ago, a ranger asked if I would like to go on a hike to an active fossil dig. “Sure!” I said, to which the ranger replied “Well then you had better get ready. We’re leaving in five minutes.”
Blog: Dinosaur Tracking

There are actually quite a few places out there where you can experience the Triassic. I've already briefly covered Ghost Ranch, New Mexico and of course the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. Another great place is Dinosaur State Park (DSP) in Rocky Hill Connecticut. Now before somebody shouts it out I am aware that the main feature, the track bed, is Early Jurassic in age; however, when I visited as a kid in the 1970s they still thought it was Triassic (I've just dated myself I think). Anyhow, DSP also has a Triassic mural and obviously the Triassic-Jurassic transition is an important topic for them.
Blog: Chinleana

Every dinosaur picture book aimed at kids comes with a disclaimer /slash/ incentive: "We don't really know what colors dinosaurs were." They were often depicted as green and drab, camouflage suited to their 1930s-era stint as lethargic reptilian swamp dwellers. But, the kid's books tantalizingly continue, "they could have been any color, with any pattern, even bright fuscha with purple polka dots!" (I'm guessing these books are to blame for Barney...).
Blog: DinoGoss