Paleontology

The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP), an international organization of 2,200 members, has urged Louisiana legislators to repeal the Louisiana Science Education Act, sometimes referred to as the creation law, and to “prohibit the injection of religious content in America’s public school classrooms.”   The SVP is one of numerous scientific organizations to publicly oppose the law, including the National Association of Biology Teachers, American Institute of Biological Sciences, and the...Read Full Story

Paleontology is as we know it is the study of ancient llife . Paleontology has reached a new and powerfull potential in the 21 first century , but what did the Romans or Greeks do when they found these monstrous bones of the creatures that lived before them?They used there imagination ! Thats why we have  stories of Cyclopes  and sea serpents  being defeated  by brave and heroic heroes . The  Roman General  Quintus came to  Tangeir , Morocco around 81B.C   and was told by the  the people of...Read Full Story

A 60-million-year-old relative of crocodiles described this week by University of Florida researchers in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology was likely a food source for Titanoboa, the largest snake the world has ever known. read moreRead Full Story

VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY, ESPECIALLY OF NONHUMAN PRIMATES, IN CHINA Eric Delson INTRODUCTION As will be abundantly clear to all readers of this compilRead Full Story

What is the Paleontology Option in Earth Sciences? The Paleontology Option offers students a general geology degree with an emphasis in paleontology. ...Read Full Story

Copyright Š 1998 by Edward F. Frank and Richard Benson. Journal of Cave and Karst Studies, August 1998 • 103. Edward F. Frank and Richard Benson-Vertebrate ...Read Full Story

I do like old science fiction B-movies. Rather than filling my time with life-enriching literature or culture, I’ve spent far too many evenings watching ‘classics’ like The Giant Claw, Attack of the Killer Leeches and T he Brain that Wouldn’t Die , laughing at the often not-entirely-subtle propaganda and wondering why we don’t say things like ‘oh boy!’ and ‘swell!’ as much any more. Of course, the main reason to watch such flicks are the monsters: gigantic stop motion octopuses, aliens that...Read Full Story

Fossils from a 9-foot-long dinosaur believed to have lived 125 million years ago have all the anatomical features of the full-size Tyrannosaurus rex but one. Dubbed Raptorex , the mini T. rex is about 100th the size of the full size Tyrannosaurus that scientists have been studying since the late 1800s. The Raptorex weighed about 150 pounds (60 kg) compared to the 6-ton T. rex. The discovery has some researchers puzzled because there are no known examples of a specimen that “has been so...Read Full Story

Paleontologists Paul Sereno and Hans Larsson today unveiled five ancient African crocodyliforms in the November National Geographic and in an extensive scientific paper published in the open access journal ZooKeys . Named BoarCroc, RatCroc, DogCroc, DuckCroc and PancakeCroc after their physical characteristics, the crocs were discovered in the Sahara by Sereno, a University of Chicago professor and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, and Larsson, associate professor at McGill...Read Full Story

Paranthropus appeared in his remains a southern man robust in cheek and jaw who gathered nourishment from nature’s grains and picking leaves and nuts then ate them raw. His face did not seem gentle, yet contained an intricate design to fit a niche untouched by wilder creatures that remained a coarsened treasure only in his reach. But in his teeth, the hardest parts he grew, we see the signs that adaptation, bland, had led him to eat softer foods to chew a niche abandoned for...Read Full Story