World's largest scorpion prowled UK 415 million years ago

I love prehistoric creatures, but this one is unsettling. I'm not a fan of scorpions, and this recent finding is about the largest (3 foot long!) prehistoric scorpion, who lived 415 million years ago in what is now the United Kingdom.

(Image:  A life reconstruction of the newly named giant scorpion, Praearcturus gigas, in its Early Devonian habitat. (Image credit: © Franz Anthony High Res)

 

World's largest scorpion had 6-inch pincers, and prowled UK land and waters 415 million years ago 

 LIVE SCIENCE, JUNE 5, 2026, Aristos Georgiou

The world's largest known scorpion lived at a time when other land animals were relatively small, around 415 million years ago in what is now the U.K., a new study finds.

The prehistoric creature, named Praearcturus gigas, is estimated to have grown to lengths of around 3.3 feet (1 meter) and was equipped with formidable pincers measuring roughly 6.2 inches (16 centimeters) long, according to a statement from the University of Manchester.

The scorpion would likely have been a fearsome apex predator that stalked floodplains during the Early Devonian Period, when life on land was still in its relatively early stages and dominated by small arthropods. Arthropods are now the most diverse animal group on Earth, as they include insects, crustaceans, scorpions and spiders.

The discovery that such a large scorpion was living 415 million years ago — long before the appearance of complex terrestrial ecosystems, such as forests — offers new insights into the evolutionary history of gigantism in arthropods.

"Confirming that this animal is a scorpion fundamentally changes our understanding of how and when these creatures evolved to such extraordinary sizes," study first author Richard Howard, curator of fossil arthropods at the Natural History Museum, London, said in the statement. 

Researchers initially suspected that the remains represented a large woodlouse-like crustacean. Then in the 1980s, research suggested that the fossils instead belonged to a scorpion. But that interpretation was subsequently challenged due to the fragmentary nature of the known remains and a lack of the characteristic scorpion tail.

In the latest study, published Tuesday (June 2) in the journal Palaeontology, the authors re-examined key P. gigas specimens held in the NHM's collections using modern imaging and analytical techniques. They also compared them with other fossil material and recently described prehistoric animals that were more confidently identified as scorpions.

Their analysis indicated that P. gigas is likely a scorpion, and the team also reassigned several other specimens found in the same geological formation to the species, the study reported. Furthermore, the researchers suggested that the creature may have been at least partially aquatic based on the presence of flap-like structures known as epimera — similar to those which provide support and protection to the hard upper shells of lobsters and crabs — in some of the fossils.

Discovery! A T.Rex of the Oceans in the Dinosaur Age

Despite living alongside dinosaurs and often being confused for one, Mosasaurs were giant aquatic lizards, closely related to modern snakes and lizards,. The newly described mosasaur Tylosaurus rex (and not a dinosaur named for our late dog, Tyler) spanned up to 43 feet (13 meters) long and may have been one of the fiercest marine predators of the dinosaur age. Today's blog is about the new species discovery! 

An artist's reconstruction of Tylosaurus rex swimming in the Cretaceous seas of North America.

(Image credit: Courtesy of Alderon Games/Path of Titans)

There's a new T. rex from the dinosaur age — and it ruled the seas with a skull-crushing bite 

By Kenna Hughes-Castleberry, Live Science, June 2026

There's a new T. rex in town, but this one didn't hunt on land. It ruled the ancient seas.

Scientists have described a new species of mosasaur, a member of a marine reptile group that lived at the same time as dinosaurs during the Cretaceous period (145 million to 66 million years ago). The newly named species fits into an already known genus: Tylosaurus. But its new species name, Tylosaurus rex — T. rex, for short — sets it apart from the other mosasaur species in the group.

The species name means "king of the tylosaurs," according to a new study published Thursday (May 21) in the journal Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History. The fossils are about 80 million years old and were discovered mostly in northern Texas decades ago.

The mosasaur T. rex measured up to 43 feet (13 meters) long, or about the length of a tour bus. It had finely serrated teeth, unusually powerful jaws, and evidence on its fossils of violent combat with its own species.

"Everything is bigger in Texas and that includes the mosasaurs, apparently," study first author Amelia Zietlow, a research associate of paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, said in a statement.

(Photo: Crusoe the Celebrity Dachshund as a dinosaur, who resembled our late black and tan dachshund, TYLER, who would have been a different kind of "Tylosaurus Rex!") 



A misidentified species 

While examining a fossil in the American Museum of Natural History's collection, Zietlow noticed that a specimen labeled as Tylosaurus proriger — a well-known mosasaur species first described in 1869 — didn't quite match others of its kind. The unusual fossil was discovered in 1979 near an artificial reservoir outside Dallas.

After comparing the specimen with the original name-bearing fossil of T. proriger held at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, Zietlow and her colleagues found that it belonged to a newfound species. This specimen wasn't the only misidentified specimen of this species; more than a dozen fossils at other institutions shared the same traits.

Compared with T. proriger, the newly described T. rex was 13 feet (4 m) longer, had finely serrated teeth (which T. proriger lacked) and lived several million years later. Most T. proriger fossils were discovered in what is now Kansas and are roughly 84 million years old, while the fossils now identified as T. rex are mostly from Texas and date to about 80 million years ago. At that time, the Western Interior Seaway stretched from the Gulf of Mexico up to the Arctic and was home to many sea creatures, including mosasaurs.

A violent tyrannical king 

The new T. rex's anatomy suggests that, like its mosasaur relatives, it was a formidable marine predator. In addition to its massive size, T. rex had strong jaw and neck muscles.

Some fossils show signs of brutal injuries. One specimen in the collection of the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas, nicknamed "the Black Knight," is missing the tip of its snout and has a fractured lower jaw. The researchers suspect the damage was caused by another individual of the same species.

A name to remember 

The name also nods to an earlier idea. In the late 1960s, paleontologist John Thurmond recognized that large tylosaurs from northeast Texas might represent an unknown species. He informally called them Tylosaurus thalassotyrannus, meaning "sea tyrant."

The new study also revisited another long-standing problem in mosasaur research: The dataset used to study mosasaur evolutionary relationships has changed little in nearly 30 years. By reanalyzing the evolutionary data on the species, the team also proposed a new evolutionary family tree among tylosaurs and argued mosasaur evolution needs a broader reassessment.

"This discovery is not just about naming a new species," Zietlow said. "It highlights the need to revisit long-standing assumptions about mosasaur evolution and to modernize the tools we use to study these iconic marine reptiles."

An Odd-Looking Prehistoric Fish: Sacabambaspis

One of the oddest looking prehistoric fish you will likely see lived during the Ordovician period about 470 million years ago. Today's blog teaches you about the fish, and explains about a discovery of a group of them discovered in Bolivia.

(Image credit: Model of Sacabambaspis   Sacabambaspis janvieri model was created by Estonian paleontologist dr. Elga Mark-Kurik. The model is currently on view at LUOMUS – The Finnish Museum of Natural History in Helsinki. Credit: https://www.sacabambaspis.eu/)

What is Sacabambaspis?

Sacabambaspis is named after the village of Sacabamba in Bolivia, where the first fossils of the genus were found.

Sacabambaspis was an extinct genus of armored jawless fish that lived approximately 470 to 450 million years ago during the Ordovician period. It was a marine animal so it lived and thrived in salt water. Sacabambaspis was a small, armored, jawless fish from the Ordovician period, measuring approximately 25–35 cm (10-14 inches) in length. It had no pectoral or ventral fins and was likely a weak swimmer. It fed on plankton and organic detritus. Sacabambaspis lived in shallow seas, waggling its tail weakly to move and sucking in food with its gaping jaws.

In recent years, it has garnered a lot of attention online for its cute face.

THE BOLIVIA DISCOVERY - It is known from fossils found in Bolivia.. The Sacabambaspis specimens found in Bolivia are believed to have died in a mass fatality event, likely caused by a sudden influx of fresh water and sediment from a massive storm or flood, which destroyed their marine habitat. Over 30 specimens were found huddled together, indicating a sudden environmental shock rather than gradual predation.

WHAT HAPPENED IN THE ORDOVICIAN PERIOD? - Sacabambaspis was a widespread genus during the Late Ordovician period. However, this period was characterized by rapid climate shifts and mass extinction events that eventually altered marine ecosystems.

SCIENCE: The fluffy fossil that finally showed the world that birds are dinosaurs

In the 1970s there was a theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs, and recently there have been a lot of findings that some dinosaurs had feathers, confirming that theory. That's today's blog.

(Images: model of an Archaeopteryx. The bird was discovered in the 1860s and provided the first hint that birds and dinosaurs may be related. Fossil of the bird to the right)

The fluffy fossil that finally showed the world that birds are dinosaurs 

In this excerpt from "The Story of Birds", author Steve Brusatte explores the moment where paleontologists realized they had critical evidence to show birds came from dinosaurs — a fluffy fossil from China. 

 By Steve Brusatte , April 29, 2026, Live Science

In the 1970s, paleontologist John Ostrom revived the theory that modern birds are evolved from theropod dinosaurs, a group that includes Tyrannosaurus rex. But a key piece of evidence was missing: feathered fossils. Then, a chance discovery in China upended our understanding of bird evolution.

In this excerpt from "The Story of Birds: An Evolutionary History of the Dinosaurs That Live Among Us" (Mariner Books, 2026), author and paleontologist Steve Brusatte looks at the monumental shift in dinosaur research after the first feathered dinosaur was discovered.

For well over a century, since its discovery in the Bavarian lithographic mines in 1861, the fossil bird Archaeopteryx was the oldest and most primitive creature known to have feathers. Then, in the autumn of 1996, this understanding was upended. Some revolutions start with a single shot; this one began with a chance encounter and a handful of photographs.

FOUND IN A BEIJING MUSEUM

Canadian dinosaur hunter Phil Currie had been in China, leading a group of tourists to dinosaur dig sites. While there, he spied something peculiar in the backroom of a Beijing museum, discovered by a farmer named Yumin Li two months prior. It was the skeleton of a small dinosaur, about the size of a chicken, fossilized as if frozen in time, in a muddy rock imbued with volcanic ash, a sign it was overcome by a sudden cataclysm.

Rapid burial had locked in the dainty details of the skeleton, but it was the stuff surrounding the bones that caught Currie's attention. The dinosaur's body was encircled by a halo of fluff. Thin, tufty, delicate strands ran along the dinosaur's back, from the top of its head to the tip of its tail. Some of the strands looked like they branched at their base. For all the world, the fuzz looked like the downfeathers of a bird.

But this wasn't a bird; it didn’t have wings, and obviously couldn't fly. It was a bona fide dinosaur — a small coelurosaur theropod, very similar to the German Compsognathus, which Huxley had held up in the 1860s as the type of transitional reptilian species birds might have evolved from.

Currie and his Chinese colleague Pei-ji Chen snapped photographs, which they printed out at the size of index cards and brought to the conference in New York. Once there, word spread fast; the rumors of a fluffy dinosaur billowed through the hallways and meeting rooms. Somebody tracked down John Ostrom, then in the twilight of his career, three decades after his discovery of the raptor Deinonychus had reignited the theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs. Currie and Chen handed him the photos. Ostrom looked shell-shocked. He began to cry, and almost fell to the floor. "I need to sit down," he stuttered, delirium taking hold.

Here it was, finally: a dinosaur with feathers. Just as Ostrom had predicted. Just as the doubters had demanded. The final piece of the puzzle, the strongest evidence that birds have dinosaur ancestry.

This was the key to the fine preservation: Normally soft bits like skin and feathers decay before a skeleton can harden into a fossil, but in this one remarkable place, feathers could easily fossilize. It was a dinosaurian Pompeii. As the new millennium dawned, the mounting Chinese discoveries transformed our image of dinosaurs.

One feathered dinosaur became ten, then hundreds, then thousands of skeletons, belonging to several dozen distinct species. Some, like the ostrich-size Beipiaosaurus, were adorned with simple filaments that looked like oversize versions of the bristle feathers of modern birds. Others, like the original Sinosauropteryx, had more complex feathers that resembled little paintbrushes, with many individual bristles branching from a root in an untidy tuft.

MORE DINOSAURS DISCOVERED WITH FEATHER-LIKE FEATURES  

Much more extravagant were the feathers of the turkey-size Caudipteryx and dromaeosaurid "raptors" like Sinornithosaurus, which had true quill pens with a central shaft and many barbs extending off the sides to form vanes. Sometimes, these pennaceous feathers lined up along the hand and arm, making what could only be described as a wing, like in the crow-size Microraptor.

The roster of feathered dinosaurs got richer and richer. Even tyrannosaurs were in on the makeover: two early cousins of T. rex called Dilong and Yutyrannus were found coated in bristle and tufty feathers. Most of these plumose dinosaurs were theropods, members of the great group of meat-eaters on the family tree, but a few plant-eaters like Psittacosaurus, a primitive cousin of Triceratops with tiny horns on its head, had mohawks of bristles along their tails. 

Initially, there was some skepticism that these wispy fossilized structures on the backs, tails, and arms of dinosaurs were true feathers. It was a legitimate question when Sinosauropteryx was first unveiled: Could its little strands and bristles have been something else, like degraded skin, or a freak by-product of decay and fossilization?

The discovery of full-on pennaceous quills — with shafts, barbs, and vanes — in species like Caudipteryx and Microraptor proved that many of these were genuine feathers. But what of those simpler filaments in other dinosaurs? We can be confident they are real. They not only look like the bristles and down feathers of birds today, but they share the same structure: They are hollow, chemical analysis shows they are formed of those rare CBP proteins, and when you look at them under powerful microscopes, you see they are full of melanosomes, the minuscule bubbles that hold pigments and give modern feathers their colors.

(Image: The species to which the tail belonged is uncertain but researchers say it was most likely a non-avian theropod – a group of dinosaurs including velociraptors and tyrannosaurs. Photograph: Royal Saskatchewan Museum/R.C. McKellar) 

DINOSAUR FEATHERS PRESERVED IN AMBER

Still doubt it? Then gander at one of the most improbable fossils ever discovered, from Myanmar, announced in 2016. It's a tail of a juvenile theropod embedded in amber, shrouded in feathers, their details preserved in stunning 3D. Suspended in yellow resin, like a bug frozen into an ice cube, the feathers seem almost alive.

They may as well be bundles of down that slipped out of a pillow and stuck onto your sofa. They have a small central shaft, which branches into barbs, which further branch into barbules. And they are clearly observed growing from follicles in the skin. They are absolutely feathers, and fulfill every definition we use to characterize feathers in modern birds — but they are plastered to a dinosaur.

This bounty of feathered dinosaurs, fundamentally, was that final piece of evidence to verify what has now become paleontological consensus: Today's birds evolved from dinosaurs.

DISCOVERY! Prehistoric water-dwelling weirdo with sideways teeth and a twisted jaw

Scientists have described Tanyka amnicola, a newly identified species of prehistoric creature that lived 275 million years ago and had a bizarre twisted jaw with sideways-facing teeth.

(image: An artist's illustration showing what the newly described species, Tanyka amnicola, may have looked like. (Image credit: Vitor Silva)

Prehistoric water-dwelling weirdo with sideways teeth and a twisted jaw was already a 'living fossil' 275 million years ago

Live Science News, By Aristos Georgiou, March 4, 2026

Paleontologists have revealed a bizarre prehistoric creature with a twisted jaw and sideways-facing teeth, and the water-dwelling weirdo was already a "living fossil" when it existed 275 million years ago.

The newly described species, named Tanyka amnicola, is an archaic member of the tetrapods — a large group of four-limbed vertebrates that today includes reptiles, birds, mammals and amphibians, according to a study published Wednesday (March 4) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Despite predating the dinosaurs, T. amnicola was already an evolutionary relic in its time, during the Permian period. Many of the earliest tetrapod lineages, known as stem tetrapods, had already disappeared by that time. But the lineage that T. amnicola belonged to seems to have persisted, while tetrapods as a group were diversifying.

"Tanyka is from an ancient lineage that we didn't know survived to this time, and it's also just a really strange animal," lead study author Jason Pardo, a research associate at the Field Museum in Chicago, said in a statement. "In the sense that Tanyka was a remaining member of the stem tetrapod lineage, even after newer, more modern tetrapods evolved, Tanyka is a little like a platypus. It was a living fossil in its time."

Researchers identified the new species from nine fossilized lower jawbones, each roughly 6 inches (15 centimeters) long, recovered from a dry riverbed in northeastern Brazil. Although the creature's lower jawbones were distinctive enough for the team to determine the fossils represented a new species, the lack of other fossilized remains means much about the animal remains unknown.

So it's not a deformation, it's just the way the animal was made.

Jason Pardo, Field Museum research associate Given what is known about its close relatives, however, T. amnicola might have resembled a salamander with a slightly longer snout. It possibly measured up to around 3 feet (around 91 centimeters) in length, Pardo said. The type of rocks in which the fossils were found also indicate that the creature lived in lake environments and presumably had "aquatic habits," according to the paper.

Analysis of the lower jawbones revealed some intriguing features — principally, that they were twisted so that the creature's teeth pointed outward to the sides, rather than upward as seen in virtually all other tetrapods.

When T. amnicola lived, Brazil was part of the supercontinent Gondwana.

Tyrannosaurus Rex, king of dinosaurs, may have had New Mexican cousin

New findings suggest there were Tyrannosaurs' much larger than previously known, roaming New Mexico 74 million years ago! Today's blog is about that research. 

(Photo: Anthony Fiorillo, New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science executive director, speaks Thursday in a collection hall about the shape of a tibia bone found in San Juan County that may be a close ancestor of T. rex. Gabriela Campos/The New Mexican) 

T. rex, king of dinosaurs, may have had New Mexican cousin

Santa Fe New Mexican, By Alaina Mencinger amencinger@sfnewmexican.com

ALBUQUERQUE — We know Tyrannosaurus rex, history’s most infamous carnivore, only ate meat. But did the top predator’s cousin prefer it with red, green or Christmas?

New analysis of a leg bone discovered in San Juan County found what may be a close ancestor of T. rex. The analysis raises new questions about the origin of the species — and indicates there were tyrannosaurs much larger than previously known roaming New Mexico 74 million years ago.

The findings, co-authored by two researchers at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, were recently published in Scientific Reports.

“It informs us about the ancient biodiversity of New Mexico, and that’s a big thing,” said museum executive director and paper co-author Anthony Fiorillo. “We now know more about the history of life in this state.”

T. rex is typically hypothesized to have evolved in Asia or North America. But the analysis of the New Mexico fossil might indicate the species originated in North America, as it’s not the only example of an early, large tyrannosaur in the American Southwest.

That raises questions about what in the environment at the time might have led to the larger body sizes, Fiorillo said.

“These really big tyrannosaurs may have originated in the southwestern part of the U.S., possibly Mexico,” Fiorillo said. “The follow-up question to that has to be: Why?”

The almost-complete tibia, found in the Bisti De-Na-Zin Wilderness, has an unusual shape and size for its age, estimated at 74 million years old. That’s between 6 million and 8 million years before T. rex roamed the Earth.

While most of the dinosaur’s contemporaries, and T. rex’s predecessors, would have weighed between 2 tons and 3 tons, this one is estimated to have weighed double that. T. rex, the largest of the tyrannosaurs, weighed in at around 10 tons; many animals evolve larger over time.

“Now we know there were tyrannosaurs this big living at 74 million years ago,” said Spencer Lucas, New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science curator and fellow co-author.

Lucas was part of a paleontological survey in the late 1970s that uncovered the leg bone.

It didn’t seem to be anything special at the time — Lucas, who was a University of New Mexico student when the bone was discovered, said he didn’t even recall finding it. The bone went into the university’s collection, then was moved to the museum’s a few years later.

(PHOTO: 031226_DinoTibia04rgb.jpg Spencer Lucas, New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science curator and part of a paleontological survey in the late 1970s that uncovered a dinosaur leg bone, walks through the collection hall Thursday toward a tibia that may belong a close ancestor of the T. rex. Gabriela Campos/The New Mexican)

But with a few decades more knowledge on tyrannosaurs and a pair of fresh eyes — in this case, Nick Longrich, lead author and senior lecturer at the University of Bath, England — researchers found this tibia was unusually large for the era and had a shape more like T. Rex than other tyrannosaurs.

Fiorillo pointed to a triangular shape near what would be the animal’s ankle and the straightness of the bone shaft, both of which are more characteristic of T. rex than its ancestors.

“Those are features that these highly derived tyrannosaurs, like tyrannosaurus and tarbosaurus, have,” Fiorillo said. “When we get into some of the more primitive kinds of tyrannosaurs, [the shaft] has a bow to it, and this shape is different.”

There are still questions about the bone. It’s unknown if the tyrannosaur was male or female, full-grown or juvenile. Lucas sees the need for additional fieldwork to uncover more samples. The badlands are constantly eroding, Lucas said, exposing new fossils.

“This bone has been here for about 40 years,” he said. “I want to believe it’ll be here 40 years from now. There may be a totally different understanding by then.”

95 million-year-old Spinosaurus , a "Hell Heron" had a scimitar-shaped head crest

Researchers have identified a new Spinosaurus species with a blade-like crest in Niger, changing our understanding of dinosaur evolution and behavior.

An illustration shows Spinosaurus mirabilis standing along a river's edge over its prey some 95 million years ago. (Image credit: Artwork by Dani Navarro)

 

95 million-year-old Spinosaurus had a scimitar-shaped head crest and waded through the Sahara's rivers like a 'hell heron'

By Kenna Hughes-Castleberry LIVESCIENCE, February 19, 2026

Around 95 million years ago, a Spinosaurus dinosaur with a tall, blade-like crest on its head and a large sail on its back lived in what is now Niger, a new study finds.

The newfound species, which the researchers have named Spinosaurus mirabilis ("astonishing Spinosaurus" in Latin), lived far inland, in river country — which could be the key to settling a debate about whether this dinosaur and its relatives were swimmers, the team reported Thursday (Feb. 19) in the journal Science.

"There's just no way that you're going to find … essentially an aquatic animal hundreds of miles from the shoreline, buried … right in a river deposit," study first author Paul Sereno, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago who led the team that found the fossil, told Live Science.

Sereno's team made the discovery thanks to a Tuareg guide, a member of a local nomadic population that live in the Sahara Desert, who led them to the remote site on an hours-long trek back in 2019. Upon seeing the fossils, the paleontologists noted a peculiarity: The bones were black, caused by an increased concentration of phosphate in the bone. Sereno said that, in his 25 years of fieldwork, he'd never seen fossils that color in the Sahara Desert.

The crest points to a new species 

At first, Sereno and the team couldn't figure out how some of the bones fit together with the rest of the skeleton. "We didn't recognize the crest," Sereno said." It was just so weird [and] asymmetrical."

When a larger team returned to the same site in 2022 and uncovered a skull with a partial crest attached, it all clicked. While running CT scans of the fossil and using computer models, the team found lots of fossilized blood vessels inside, plus a surface texture that suggested a keratin sheath covered the bone in real life, which would have made the crest stand up to 20 inches (0.5 meters) tall.

In the paper describing their findings, the researchers called it the tallest crest known in any meat-eating dinosaur and argued it played a decorative role, possibly allowing the animal to identify potential mates or rivals while wading along riverbanks.

A full body rendering of Spinosaurus mirabilis showing its scimitar-like crest and large back sail. (Image credit: Artwork by Dani Navarro)

 So … was Spinosaurus a swimmer? 

In recent years, some researchers have argued that Spinosaurus — a genus that includes S. mirabilis, as well as its relatives, such as S. aegyptiacus — chased prey underwater as a marine hunter. For instance, S. mirabilis has the iconic teeth of a fish hunter, with those on the lower jaw protruding outward and fitting neatly between the sharp teeth on the upper jaw, the team reported.

Yet, based on the fossil's location — buried next to two long-necked sauropods in a river bed, and its body shape — Sereno sees "this dinosaur as a kind of ‘hell heron’ that had no problem wading on its sturdy legs into two meters [6.5 feet] of water but probably spent most of its time stalking shallower traps for the many large fish of the day,” he said in a statement.

The back sail would have added so much weight to Spinosaurus' body that it would have made it difficult to move, Sereno noted. So it's unlikely that any members of the genus swam, he said. "It's sacrificing … aspects of its agility for this, but it's an important feature," Serano told Live Science.

In the paper, the researchers compared S. mirabilis' body shape with other living and extinct predators and placed it between semiaquatic waders like herons and aquatic divers like penguins.

"It shows the process of science evaluating evidence and new evidence appearing," Sereno said.

Wow! Wing-backed "dinosaur" Dimetrodons were not really dinosaurs, but more related to Mammals!

When is a dinosaur not a dinosaur? When it's a Synapsida. Today's blog will tell you what that means, and why I just learned that a "dinosaur" I've known about since I was a kid is more related to mammals than reptiles! I'm currently reading a book called "The Rise of Mammals" by Steve Brusatte and that's where I learned the Dimetrodon was a link to the first true mammals. You'll learn about that and how the Permian Period led to a mass extinction. 

(Image: Restoration of Dimetrodon grandis by Bogdanov. CC BY-SA 3.0)

Wing-backed "dinosaur" Dimetrodons were not really dinosaurs, but more related to Mammals! 

Often confused for a dinosaur, Dimetrodon is actually a prehistoric synapsid, making it more closely related to mammals (including humans) than to a Tyrannosaurus Rex. 

WHAT IS A SYNAPSIDA? It's a group of living things characterized by a single opening behind the eye socket in the skull. This lineage eventually led to the evolution of mammals. Because of this, Dimetrodon provides critical insights into the early development of mammalian traits, such as specialized jaw muscles and complex dental structures.

Riley Black of Smithsonian Magazine explained it this way: "There is a single large hole there called the temporal fenestra, and it was the place where some of the lower jaw muscles attached to the skull. The number of these holes in this part of the skull can immediately tell a paleontologist what kind of animal they are looking at. Dinosaurs have two holes in the same area and are called diapsids. The possession of just one of these holes defines a group of vertebrates called synapsids, the group to which modern mammals (including you and I) belong. As odd as it may seem, this means that Dimetrodon is a distant relative of ours."

This predator ruled the Earth roughly 295 to 272 million years ago during the Early Permian period—finishing its reign nearly 40 million years before the first dinosaurs ever appeared.

(Photo: Dimetrodon Skull. Credit: Wikimedia.Jeff Kubina Columbia, Maryland) 

ABOUT THE DIMETRODON

The Back Sail: Its most striking feature is a large dorsal sail formed by elongated neural spines extending from its vertebrae. While paleontologists once believed it was strictly for thermoregulation (warming up in the sun), current theories also suggest it served as a display to attract mates or intimidate rivals.

Unique Teeth: Its name means "two measures of teeth." Unlike the uniform teeth of reptiles, Dimetrodon possessed heterodont dentition— that is, different types of teeth used for different tasks, such as sharp canines for piercing and serrated teeth for shearing flesh.

Size:  Depending on the species, Dimetrodon could grow between 5.6 to 15 feet (1.7 and 4.6 meters) in length and weighed as much as 550 pounds (250 kg). It walked with a sprawling, four-legged gait similar to a modern crocodile.

What Dimetrodon's Ate:  A variety of prey including freshwater fish, amphibians like Eryops, and early land-dwelling herbivores.

******************************* 

ABOUT THE PERMIAN PERIOD- and WHY the "Great Extinction" 

The Permian Period, occurring 299–251 million years ago as the final, critical phase of the Paleozoic Era, saw the assembly of the supercontinent Pangea, massive climatic extremes, and the formation of the Permian Basin. It concluded with Earth's most severe mass extinction, wiping out over 95% of marine life and initiating a new era of life. 

Key Aspects of the Permian Period:

• Significance: It was a defining turning point in Earth's history, transitioning from a cooler early climate to extreme heat, arid deserts, and the assembly of the supercontinent Pangea (all continents combined into 1 massive landmass), which profoundly affected global weather patterns and habitats.
• The End Extinction: The Permian ended with the "Great Dying" (approx. 251.9 million years ago), the largest extinction event in history. 
• Causes likely involved massive volcanic eruptions in the Siberian Traps, releasing carbon dioxide and causing catastrophic global warming, ocean acidification, and oxygen depletion
  .  This d
  rastically altered from high-oxygen to low-oxygen levels, contributing to the mass extinction.
• Geography: Almost all landmasses gathered into the C-shaped supercontinent Pangea, surrounded by the global ocean, Panthalassa.

Discovery: First-ever 'mummified' and hoofed dinosaur discovered in Wyoming badlands

 New dinosaur discoveries fascinate me, and as a kid I collected plastic dinosaur figures and read every book I could find about them. As an adult, I love reading about new fossil discoveries and some of the higher-level science books. Today's blog is about a dinosaur "First." 

(Image: Edmontosaurus annectens as it appeared in life. | Credit: Artwork by Dani Navarro)

First-ever 'mummified' and hoofed dinosaur discovered in Wyoming badlands 

LIVE SCIENCE By Patrick Pester published October 29, 2025

Researchers have unearthed two dinosaur "mummies" in the badlands of Wyoming, confirming duck-billed dinosaurs had hooves, alongside a string of other discoveries.

Two extremely rare dinosaur "mummies" found in the badlands of Wyoming are the first examples of hoofed reptiles, according to a new study.

Researchers discovered the pair of 66 million-year-old duck-billed dinosaur (Edmontosaurus annectens) skeletons complete with skin, spikes and hooves, as if the creatures had been naturally mummified.

The fossils aren't true mummies, as their original tissues have been replaced with rock, but they give scientists an unprecedented look at duck-billed dinosaur biology, confirming they had hooves. The researchers reported their findings Oct. 23 in the journal Science.

"It's the first time we’ve had a complete, fleshed-out view of a large dinosaur that we can really feel confident about," study senior author Paul Sereno, a professor of organismal biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago, said in a statement.

(Image:  This mummified duck-billed dinosaur fossil is a juvenile Edmontosaurus annectens, nicknamed "Ed Jr." (Image credit: Photograph courtesy of Tyler Keillor/Fossil Lab)) 

Duck-billed dinosaurs used their hooves to stomp through mud at the end of the Cretaceous period (145 million to 66 million years ago). They lived alongside other large dinosaurs, such as Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops, just before the age of dinosaurs came to a crashing end when a massive asteroid hit Earth and wiped them all out (except for birds).

Dinosaur mummies are exceptionally preserved fossils that contain a clay copy of dinosaur skin and other organic tissues. Several of these fossils were discovered in Wyoming in the early 1900s, which inspired the new research. Sereno and his colleagues found the two new specimens by tracking down the locations of the historical discoveries, using old photographs and letters, and mapping out what they described as a "mummy zone."

One of the newly discovered Edmontosaurus specimens, nicknamed "Ed Jr.," was a late juvenile and estimated to be about 2 years old at the time of its death. The other specimen, nicknamed "Ed Sr.," was an early adult about 5 to 8 years old when it perished.

DISCOVERY: New species of elasmosaur (Prehistoric sea monster) Identified!

Dinosaurs have always fascinated me since I was a kid, when I received my first set of fossils. They were little fossils of sea life, like anemonies and trilobites (and I wish I knew what happened to them!)... so I've been reading books on dinosaurs since I was about 7 or so. When new species are discovered, it's exciting to me, and today's blog is about one prehistoric sea monster that was recently discovered.

(Image: Two individuals of Traskasaura sandrae hunt the ammonite Pachydiscus in the northern Pacific during the Late Cretaceous. Traskasaura sandrae, named today in the Journal of Systematic Paleontology, was declared the Provincial Fossil of British Columbia in 2023. (Image credit: Robert O. Clark)

 Giant 85 million-year-old mystery sea monster fossil finally identified 

 LIVE SCIENCE, Jess Thomson May 28, 2025

A brand new species of elasmosaur named Traskasaura sandrae has been identified from three specimens found on Vancouver Island.

Scientists have finally solved the mystery behind the identity of a prehistoric sea monster.

The marine reptile, which could grow to around 39 feet (12 meters) long and had heavy teeth for crushing prey, was previously known from several sets of fossils unearthed over the past two decades.

One key fossil was a complete but badly-preserved adult skeleton from about 85 million years ago, discovered in 1988 on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. It was thought to come from a group of long-necked reptiles known as plesiosaurs. However, until now, scientists weren't sure if it belonged to a new species or a previously discovered one.

"The identity of the animal that left the fossils has remained a mystery," F. Robin O'Keefe, a professor of anatomy at Marshall University in West Virginia, said in a statement. "Our new research published today finally solves this mystery."

In a new study published May 22 in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, O'Keefe and colleagues formally classified all the fossils as Traskasaura sandrae. 

This species is so different from other marine reptiles that researchers assigned it to a brand new genus, Traskasaura, within a subgroup of plesiosaurs called elasmosaurs.

Elasmosaurs, like other plesiosaurs, lived throughout the Cretaceous period (145 to 66 million years ago) alongside the dinosaurs and shared the oceans with other marine reptiles, including ichthyosaurs and mosasaurs.

Plesiosaurs were characterized by having small heads on long necks, broad bodies and four large, paddle-like limbs. The mythical Loch Ness Monster is usually depicted as a plesiosaur. They are thought to have breathed air and probably had to surface regularly, akin to modern-day marine mammals.

The first T. sandrae specimen was unearthed in 1988 in the Haslam Formation on Vancouver Island, was formally described by scientists in 2002 and dates back to between 86 and 83 million years ago. Other fossils found in the same region include a right humerus and an "excellently preserved" juvenile skeleton.

New pterosaur species with hundreds of tiny hooked teeth discovered!

If you enjoy reading about new dinosaur-era discoveries like I do, today's blog is for you, too. Recently a new Pterosaur (a flying reptile) named Balaenognathus maeuseri was discovered. Here's the story! 

(Image: An artist’s impression of Balaenognathus maeuseri. Credit: Megan Jacobs) 

New pterosaur species with hundreds of tiny hooked teeth discovered

by University of Portsmouth, Jan 23, 2023

An unusual new species of pterosaur has been identified, which had over 400 teeth that looked like the prongs of a nit comb.

The fossil was found in a German quarry and has been described by paleontologists from England, Germany and Mexico.

Professor David Martill, lead author of the research, from the University of Portsmouth's School of the Environment, Geography and Geosciences, said, "The nearly complete skeleton was found in a very finely layered limestone that preserves fossils beautifully.

"The jaws of this pterosaur are really long and lined with small fine, hooked teeth, with tiny spaces between them like a nit comb. The long jaw is curved upwards like an avocet and at the end it flares out like a spoonbill. There are no teeth at the end of its mouth, but there are teeth all the way along both jaws right to the back of its smile.

"And what's even more remarkable is some of the teeth have a hook on the end, which we've never seen before in a pterosaur ever. These small hooks would have been used to catch the tiny shrimp the pterosaur likely fed on—making sure they went down its throat and weren't squeezed between the teeth."

The discovery was made accidentally while scientists were excavating a large block of limestone containing crocodile bones.

Professor Martill said, "This was a rather serendipitous find of a well-preserved skeleton with near perfect articulation, which suggests the carcass must have been at a very early stage of decay with all joints, including their ligaments, still viable. It must have been buried in sediment almost as soon as it had died."

The pterosaur belongs to a family of pterosaurs called Ctenochasmatidae, which are known from the limestone in Bavaria, Germany, where this one was also found.

Since the first pterosaur was described from there in the 18th century, hundreds of remains of these flying reptiles have been discovered, making the quarries of the Franconian Jura in Bavaria one of the richest pterosaur localities in the world.

"This pterosaur had teeth in the upper and lower jaw, which are a mirror image of each other. There is one other pterosaur with more teeth—Pterodaustro from Argentina—but it has stubby teeth in its upper jaw and even longer teeth in its lower jaw, so this new specimen is very different from other ctenochasmatids," Professor Martill added.

The teeth of the new pterosaur suggest an extraordinary feeding mechanism while it waded through water. It would use its spoon-shaped beak to funnel the water and then its teeth to squeeze out excess liquid, leaving prey trapped in its mouth.

The animal likely dabbled as it waded through shallow lagoons, sucking in tiny water shrimps and copepods and then filtering them out through its teeth just like ducks and flamingos.

It has been named Balaenognathus maeuseri. The generic name roughly translated means whale mouth because of its filtering feeding style. The specific name is after one of the co-authors Matthias Mäuser who sadly passed away during the writing of the paper.

Findings: Dinosaurs took over the planet because they could endure the cold

 As someone who has had an affinity for dinosaurs since I was a kid, I never thought of dinosaurs thriving in cold environments. That's likely because all of the images and sketches I have seen had them in warm, jungle-like environments. Now, scientists have discovered that they thrived in cold, too. Here's the story...

(Image: A juvenile Edmontosaurus climbing out of the water next to an adult Edmontosaurus in “Prehistoric Planet.” (Image credit: Apple TV+)

Dinosaurs took over the planet because they could endure the cold, scientists say

By Ben Turner LIVE SCIENCE July 6, 2022

Their adaptation to cold environments gave them an edge during an early extinction event.

Dinosaurs took over the planet thanks to their surprising ability to endure freezing-cold temperatures, ancient footprints have revealed.

The dinosaur tracks, stamped into the sandstone and siltstone of ancient lake beds in the Junggar Basin of northwestern China, suggest that more than 200 million years ago, the reptiles had already adapted to survive the cold of the polar regions before a mysterious mass extinction event plunged the world into freezing darkness.

Dinosaurs first appeared in temperate southerly latitudes roughly 231 million years ago during the Triassic period (around 252 million to 201 million years ago), back when Earth's continents were still joined together to form a supercontinent called Pangea. By around 214 million years ago, dinosaurs had spread northwards toward Arctic regions, but they still remained a minor group compared to other species on Earth — such as the ancestors of modern crocodiles that ruled over the tropics and subtropics, scientists reported in a new study. At the time of Pangea, the Junggar Basin was about 71 degrees north of Earth's equatorial plane, falling comfortably within the Arctic Circle.

Then, 202 million years ago in an episode called the Triassic-Jurassic extinction event, a chain of massive volcanic eruptions cooled the planet dramatically, killing more than 75% of species on land and in the oceans, and paving the way for the cold-adapted dinosaurs to emerge from the Triassic period and dominate the Jurassic (around 201 million to 145 million years ago), researchers explained in a study published July 1 in the journal Scientific Advances.

How Dinosaurs Came to Rule the Jurassic Period

"Dinosaurs were there during the Triassic under the radar all the time," lead author Paul Olsen, a professor of biology and paleo environment at Columbia University's Columbia Climate School in New York City, said in a statement. "The key to their eventual dominance was very simple. They were fundamentally cold-adapted animals. When it got cold everywhere, they were ready, and other animals weren't."

Footprints in the basin in China, imprinted along the shorelines of shallow lakes that were once there, confirmed the presence of dinosaurs in the freezing region. The researchers also found small pebbles within the usually fine-grained sediments that they identified as ice-rafted debris — rocky material that winter ice sheets had carried from the shore out to the middle of the lake, depositing them there when the sheets melted in summer.

Dinosaurs Thrived in Freezing Weather

"This shows that these areas froze regularly, and the dinosaurs did just fine," study co-author Dennis Kent, an adjunct senior research scientist and geologist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said in the statement.

All this evidence suggests that dinosaurs didn't just survive freezing weather — they thrived in it, leaving them well placed to become the undisputed rulers of the planet by the end of the Triassic. But how did they do it? Prior research has suggested that many dinosaur groups were warm-blooded and had high metabolisms, and a growing body of evidence hints that many non-avian dinosaurs had a special kind of insulation that their cold-blooded crocodilian cousins lacked: feathers.

"Severe wintery episodes during volcanic eruptions may have brought freezing temperatures to the tropics, which is where many of the extinctions of big, naked, unfeathered vertebrates seem to have occurred," Kent said. "Whereas our fine feathered friends, acclimated to colder temperatures in higher latitudes, did OK."

The researchers' findings defy the popular notion of dinosaurs as animals that could only survive in warm climates, Stephen Brusatte, a professor of paleontology and evolution at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, who was not involved in the research, said in the statement.

"There is a stereotype that dinosaurs always lived in lush tropical jungles, but this new research shows that the higher latitudes would have been freezing and even covered in ice during parts of the year," Brusatte said. "Dinosaurs living at high latitudes just so happened to already have winter coats [while] many of their Triassic competitors died out."

Now that the researchers have documented signs that dinosaurs inhabited these chilly regions, they plan to look for more difficult-to-find fossils in former polar areas, to shed more light on how the ancient reptiles lived there.

Fantastic Science Book: Locked in Time: Animal Behavior Unearthed in 50 Extraordinary Fossils

As a meteorologist, I love all things science. In addition to weather, I'm especially fascinated by dinosaurs and fossils. So when I heard about "Locked in Time: Animal Behavior Unearthed in 50 Extraordinary Fossils" by Dean Lomax, I knew I had to read it. This book contains 50 amazing fossil finds, and each finding is accompanied by Amazing illustrations by paleoartist Bob Nicholls of the dinosaur, bird, marine animal or insect that is the topic of the finding. 

The author is brilliant in his explanations, and i was amazed that he could discuss details about the lives, structure and habits of mammals, dinosaurs, marine mammals, birds and snakes. Dean Lomax knows how to bring prehistoric creatures into the knowledge of modern mankind.

Even people who are remotely interested in paleontology will find this fascinating. 5 of 5 Stars! Here's the description of the book:

SUMMARY:

Fossils allow us to picture the forms of life that inhabited the earth eons ago. But we long to know more: how did these animals actually behave? We are fascinated by the daily lives of our fellow creatures―how they reproduce and raise their young, how they hunt their prey or elude their predators, and more. What would it be like to see prehistoric animals as they lived and breathed?

From dinosaurs fighting to their deaths to elephant-sized burrowing ground sloths, this book takes readers on a global journey deep into the earth’s past. Locked in Time showcases fifty of the most astonishing fossils ever found, brought together in five fascinating chapters that offer an unprecedented glimpse at the real-life behaviors of prehistoric animals. 

(Photo: Dr. Dean Lomax, author) 

Dean R. Lomax examines the extraordinary direct evidence of fossils captured in the midst of everyday action, such as dinosaurs sitting on their eggs like birds, Jurassic flies preserved while mating, a T. rex infected by parasites.

Each fossil, he reveals, tells a unique story about prehistoric life. Many recall behaviors typical of animals familiar to us today, evoking the chain of evolution that links all living things to their distant ancestors.

(Image: Illustration by paleoartist Bob Nicholls in the book); 

Locked in Time allows us to see that fossils are not just inanimate objects: they can record the life stories of creatures as fully alive as any today. Striking and scientifically rigorous illustrations by renowned paleoartist Bob Nicholls bring these breathtaking moments to life.