smooshingaround:

Thought I’d put a picture up without the presence of blood :D She is called sue after this Tyrannosaur.

Just wanted to share with you my tattoo in honour of my love for Dinosaurs [particularly tyrannosaurs]

theropod:

Replica of the nearly 1 foot long claw of Megaraptor namunhuaiquii

jtotheizzoe:

sciencecenter:

Pregnant fossil reveals lots about plesiosaurs

A recently discovered fossil of a plesiosaur (think a marine turtle crossed with a giraffe) with a fetus still inside sheds quite a bit of light on the ancient creature. The dinosaur is pretty clearly pregnant - the fetus is too large to have been swallowed, of the exact same species, and doesn’t appear to have been chewed or digested. The find does reveal that plesiosaurs laid live young and invested heavily in a few young. The authors of the finding also speculate that plesiosaurs may have lived in social groups, like pods of dolphins.

Brian Switek goes into great detail about this awesome fossil discovery at his blog on Wired, too:

According to the traditional typology I was taught in my elementary school days, reptiles lay eggs and mammals give birth to live young. Yet monotremes – mammals such as the platypus and the echidna – lay eggs, and clearly reptiles have evolved the ability to produce to live young multiple times. Once again, nature defies our attempts to squeeze everything into neat conceptual boxes.

(via jtotheizzoe)

Evolution, sex and dinosaur necks.

They are among the largest and most fascinating creatures ever to have walked the Earth.

I’m talking about sauropods, the group of four legged dinosaurs that are almost instantly recognisable due to their long necks, each of which reaches out to a small head, and long tails.

Among the sauropods is the famous Diplodocus, and less well known, but even more remarkable species such as Argentinosaurus, which holds the record for being both the heaviest land animal ever, and the longest.

But what have these giants got to do with sex?

Read on

Animatronic dinosaurs set in their world

COULD you identify T. rex in a dinosaur line-up? Easy? Ok then, how about naming the prehistoric period they lived in, how and what the giant beasts ate, and what other creatures shared the landscape?

If you got stuck after the first question, the new Age of the Dinosaur exhibition at London’s Natural History Museum will remedy that. Unlike other big dinosaur shows that can focus narrowly on the usual suspects while skimping on context, this aims higher, surrounding the dinosaurs with the animals, plants, marine life and flying reptiles of their era.

The idea was to create an immersive and accurate landscape, says museum palaeontologist Paul Barrett. “It’s like a time machine with the dial set to 70 million years BC.”

At the start of their journey back in time, visitors are greeted with a huge replica of a T. rex footprint - a hint at the size of things to come. Working through the Jurassic period and then into the Cretaceous era, the exhibition features giant fossils, interactive games, video footage and of course - the part the kids go mad for - life-sized animatronic models.

 

Meticulously designed, much of the content of the exhibition is based on research conducted at the museum and reflects new discoveries about what dinosaurs looked like, how they heard, ate and behaved. Visitors learn, for example, that researchers in Bhutan and China have discovered melanosomes - parts of pigment cells - in fossilised feathers and feather-like structures of birds and dinosaurs, and used electron microscopy to study the cells and determine what colour these were.

Barrett hopes that showing the scientific method behind such discoveries will prompt visitors to question commonly accepted wisdom about these prehistoric beasts. “We wanted to tell people how we decided what we think, and ask them to make their own minds up.”

The exhibition isn’t extensive, and with only two rooms of animatronics, some visitors might feel short-changed compared with some of the more technologically advanced dino-shows. But this content-rich, immersive and thought-provoking exhibition is well judged - it’s the perfect length to hold your attention throughout, and adds up to a whole lot more than a mug shot of T. rex.

(via CultureLab: Animatronic dinosaurs set in their world)

I think this calls for a trip to London :D