Bruce Rubidge, University of the Witwatersrand et Mike Day, University of the Witwatersrand
The Karoo provides not only a historical record of biological change over a period of Earth’s history but also a means to test theories of evolutionary processes over long periods of time.
Plenty of action in the new dinosaur movie Jurassic World, in cinemas from Thursday. But how realistic are the dinosaurs and who are the real monsters when we play around with nature?
Jurassic World is opening in cinemas this Thursday and again raises the idea of resurrecting extinct creatures. But there’s plenty of other contenders before we even think of recreating dinosaurs.
Since 1903, pop culture has been struggling to catch up with the fact that there was no such creature as a Brontosaurus. But now it turns out that there was, so thank goodness for that.
Metoposaurus algarvensis, aka toilet jaws, was all over our early ancestors. The thing that got us off the hook? A big hot interception 200m years ago.
The Natural History Museum’s plan to remove “Dippy”, the cast of a diplodocus skeleton, from its entrance hall, and replace it with a genuine skeleton of a blue whale has been met with outrage. The #savedippy…
The Natural History Museum in London is replacing its skeleton of the long-necked dinosaur Diplodocus – an iconic denizen of the main entrance hall for nearly four decades – with a blue whale skeleton…
My colleagues and I recently had the great privilege to announce a remarkable new discovery: a dolphin-like reptile that prowled the Middle Jurassic waters 170 million years ago. When you think of scientists…
Almost all natural history museums and recognised public collections of fossils have in the past relied on finds purchased from private collectors, and many still do. But the role of amateur fossil collectors…
Everywhere scientists look it seems like they are finding dinosaurs. A new species is emerging at the astounding pace of one per week. And this continues with the announcement of perhaps the strangest…
Some 220m years ago, the Triassic Period marked the beginning of the age of dinosaurs. But by the time the earliest dinosaurs were just starting to appear in the fossil record, it was distant relatives…