Fresh out of Alberta: New Research on Dinosaur Babies

Back in 2010, the remarkably complete remains of a juvenile Chasmosaurus was found in Dinosaur Park in Alberta, and a paper has just come out describing it, complete with a new reconstruction made by the authors and Michael Skrepnick (the paleoartist who lent us his wonderful Diplodocus for our cover art!).

What makes the find exciting is the amount of detail we can now have about a ceratopsid while it grows. There's been a recent trend in dinosaur paleobiology to emphasize the amount of anatomical (and thus perhaps physiological, behavioral and ecological) changes that happen during the animal's life - and so getting a good look at dinosaurs during growth is imperative. Also, baby dinosaurs!

See here for the news item (and reconstruction!)

Here's the journal article

Wherein 5 (FIVE!) Papers About Historical Reconstruction are Published Simultaneously!

Our own Adrian Currie has edited a special section of Studies in HPS, "Scientific Knowledge of the Deep Past", featuring Maureen O'Malley, Lindell Bromham, and our own Derek Turner, here. What's more, for the next 50 days you can download each paper FOR FREE, here are the papers in the collection and links to your free copy!

Adrian & Derek's Introduction: Scientific Knowledge of the Deep Past

Derek Turner's A Second Look at the Color of Dinosaurs

Lindell Bromham's Testing Hypotheses in Macroevolution

Maureen O'Malley's Histories of Molecules: Reconciling the Past

Adrian Currie's Ethnographic Analogy, the Comparative Method, and Archaeological Special Pleading

Dirty dancing

A research team led by Martin Lockley and Karen Houck of the University of Colorado Denver have found new evidence for courtship behavior in theropod dinosaurs. According to Lockley et al, "scraping" traces associated with theropod footprints are morphologically similar to those left by modern ground-nesting birds in leks. If the behavior was indeed similar, then we can add courtship displays to the ever-growing list of similarities between avian and non-avian dinosaurs.

The relevant paper can be found here.

Patient(s) Zero of the K-Pg Event?

A paleontologist in New Jersey is looking close to home for evidence of the K-Pg event. Kenneth Lacovara of Rowan University hopes to find an assemblage that can be directly associated with the proximate cause of the non-avian dinosaurs' extinction. More at the New York Times.

A beautiful beetle preserved in amber, 99 million years old

Very nice images are available here, at The Artful Amoeba, a Scientific American blog.

A very large duckbilled dinosaur with a very small cranial crest

Scientists are calling it the "superduck."

But the really interesting thing is the suggestion that heterochrony (or changes in developmental timing) might explain the evolution of duckbill cranial crests. 

Welcome to the News section!

Here in Extinct Blog's news section, we'll post the latest palaeontology and philosophy of palaeontology research with minimal editorial commentary. Posts will go up as the news comes in, so check back frequently!