SCIENCE BOND

The new assessment adds further fuel to a debate on how dinosaurs were doing when a 10km-wide space rock slammed into Earth 66 million years ago.  A team suggests the creatures were in long-term decline because they could not cope with the ways Earth was changing.  The study appears in PNAS journal.  Researchers analysed the fossil remains of dinosaurs from the point they emerged 231 million years ago up to the point they went extinct.  To begin with, new species evolved at an explosive rate. But things started to slow about 160 million years ago, leading to a decline in the number of species which commences at about 120 million years ago.Dr Manabu Sakamoto, a palaeontologist from the University of Reading, who led the research, said: "We were not expecting this result." "Even though they were wiped out ultimately by the impact of the asteroid, they were actually already on their way out around 50 million years before the asteroid hit."  Dr Sakamoto's a...

Scientists from the University of Edinburgh, along with US and Russian colleagues, discovered the fossilised remains of the animal in Uzbekistan.  They have named it Timurlengia.  A study of the 90-million-year-old beast suggested its ears and brain were crucial in Tyrannosaurs' dominance.  "We have a totally new species of dinosaur," explained lead researcher Dr Stephen Brusatte from the University of Edinburgh.  "It's one of the very closest cousins of T. rex, but a lot smaller - about the size of a horse.  "And it comes from the middle part of the Cretaceous period - a point where we have a huge gap in the fossil record." This "frustrating" gap has made T. rex - which was found later in the period and was up to 13m head to tail - something of an evolutionary mystery. That is what this find has helped to resolve."It has features of its bones that are also found in T. rex," said Dr Brusatte. "So this is evolving feat...

Loosely translated, the Dracoraptor part means "dragon thief" hanigani honours Rob and Nick Hanigan - the two fossil-hunting brothers who found it.  In a new analysis, scientists say the specimen is possibly the oldest known Jurassic dinosaur from the UK.  It also marks a key moment in dinosaur evolution, they tell PLoS One journal.  Dr Dave Martill from Portsmouth University and colleagues say some 40% of the animal was preserved, including its skull, claws, teeth and foot bones.  Forty percent is a lot in fossil terms and has allowed most of the animal to be reconstructed because of the symmetry that exists in the body.  The team says very precise dating was made possible in this case because the remains were sandwiched between well-documented fossils of ammonites (extinct molluscs) and conodonts (a tiny eel-like creature). This age - of 201.3 million years (plus or minus 200,000 years) - puts Dracoraptor hanigani right at the base of the Jurassic P...

Palaeontologist Diego Pol is talking about a very special fossil specimen, a giant dinosaur he excavated in the desert of central Argentina. This titan of the Cretaceous Period, or at least a fibreglass replica of its skeleton, has now taken up residence as an exhibit in New York's American Museum of Natural History (AMNH).  The cast is 122ft long (37.5m) and represents a giant plant-eating titanosaur that lived in the forests of Patagonia between 100 and 95 million years ago. It may well be the biggest dinosaur yet discovered, but is so new it doesn't yet have a formal scientific name.  The dinosaur cast was unveiled before a packed crowd of media on 14 January. The skeleton grazes the 19ft-high (5.8m) ceilings of the museum's Wallach Orientation Center and its head and neck stick out of the room, gazing towards the lifts. The story behind the exhibit is told in a new BBC One documentary presented by Sir David Attenborough. For Sir David, who is well known for...

PC reenactments recommend the plesiosaur traveled through the water like a penguin, utilizing its front appendages as oars and back appendages for guiding.   The animal's swimming walk has been a puzzle since bones of the first known example were uncovered from underneath a Dorset precipice 200 years prior.   The plesiosaur was found by the fossil seeker Mary Anning in 1821.  At the time even the name dinosaur had not been developed.   An experimental paper disclosing Anning's locate a couple of years after the fact brought up the issue of how the marine animal swam, given its strange sets of wing-like flippers. The open deliberation has proceeded until today, with a PC recreation in view of a Jurassic fossil example giving proof for penguin-like motion.Dr Adam Smith of Nottingham Natural History Museum chipped away at the study.  He clarified that scientistss were isolated on whether the marine animal utilized its four appendages as a part of a paddlin...