fossils

The geologist who dated what appear to be the world’s oldest fossils on what it took to make the discovery in Quebec

Working with dinosaur fossils is a dream come true for these Jurassic junkies. Find out what it’s like to work at Royal Ontario Museum’s Dino Lab in Toronto where you’re making history—well, unearthing it at least.

University of Calgary researchers dug up an ostrich-like dino that famously appeared in ‘Jurassic Park’

Drunk vandals attacked a dig called ‘a spectacular local find’

A team of paleontologists from China and Canada has discovered the fossils of a gigantic, previously unknown dinosaur with feathers—the largest known feathered animal ever to exist. The three 125-million-year-old fossils, which are mostly complete, were found in Liaoning Province in northeast China, the New York Times reports. This meat-eating dinosaur was at least 30-feet long and weighed a ton and a half. The species name—partly in Latin and partly in Mandarin—is Yutyrannus huali, which translates to “beautiful feathered tyrant.” The animal is 40 times bigger than any other feathered dinosaur that’s yet been found, and was probably “downright shaggy,” according to Canadian paleontologist Corwin Sullivan, who was on the team that discovered it. The creatures would have been downy, he added, with their feathers looking “more like hair than the feathers of modern birds,” which may have protected them from cooler temperatures. They would have been a fearsome predator, Sullivan added: “I wouldn’t want to meet one in a dark alley.”

A scientist can discover 10,000 fossils, but that’s not what gets us talking

Pride of the Prairies