Imagine Looking Down Into Dark Water… and Seeing This Rise Up Not every prehistoric giant walked on land. Some ruled the oceans. Mosasaurus was a massive marine reptile with jaws full of sharp teeth, a powerful tail, and the kind of presence that would make even modern ocean predators look twice. MOS-uh-SOR-us — “MOH-suh-SORE-us” Fast … Read more
It Was So Big, a Farmer Thought Its Bones Were Trees In 1987, a rancher near Plaza Huincul in Argentina dug up what he assumed was a very large piece of petrified wood. It wasn’t wood. It was a single vertebra — one bone — belonging to an animal so large that its full skeleton, … Read more
Don’t Let the Small Size Fool You — This Dinosaur Was Armed to the Teeth. And the Shoulders. And the Tail. Kentrosaurus wasn’t the biggest dinosaur in its neighbourhood. It wasn’t the fastest, the most powerful, or the most famous. What it was was almost impossible to safely attack. Plates, spikes, shoulder spears, and a … Read more
The Jurassic Underdog Had a Horn, Armour, and a Chip on Its Shoulder Picture Late Jurassic North America: a fern savanna stretching to the horizon, giant sauropods thundering past, and Allosaurus — the apex predator — ruling everything in sight. Now picture a slightly smaller carnivore with a blade-like horn on its nose, bony armour … Read more
Introduction Maiasaura was a large herbivorous ornithopod dinosaur that lived during the Late Cretaceous Period. It is classified within the hadrosaurid group, commonly known as duck-billed dinosaurs. Fossils of this species have been found primarily in North America and date to approximately 76–74 million years ago. Maiasaura is known from abundant fossil material, including adults, … Read more
The Dinosaur That Existed Before “Dinosaur” Was a Word Plateosaurus was named in 1837. Richard Owen invented the word “dinosaur” in 1842. For five years, Plateosaurus existed as a scientific genus without belonging to any named group, because the group didn’t have a name yet. It is one of the oldest, best-understood, and most scientifically … Read more
It Evolved Ten Inches of Solid Bone on Its Head Pachycephalosaurus carried a dome of solid bone up to 25 centimetres thick — roughly the depth of a house brick — on the top of its skull. Few animals in the fossil record evolved anything quite comparable. Why it did this has been argued about … Read more
The Largest Predator That Ever Lived in the Ocean A tooth the size of a human hand. A jaw wide enough to swallow two people standing side by side. A body that may have stretched as long as a blue whale. Megalodon was not the largest animal that ever lived — blue whales hold that … Read more
The Dinosaur With a Greek Helmet on Its Head Corythosaurus wore one of the most distinctive headpieces in the dinosaur world: a tall, semicircular crest that looked almost exactly like the plume of an ancient Corinthian warrior’s helmet. It wasn’t decorative armour. It was hollow, connected to the nasal passages, and strongly believed to have … Read more
The Only Carnivore With Horns Every large predatory dinosaur known to science — every single one — lacked horns. Then there’s Carnotaurus. Two thick brow-horns, a snout like a bulldog, arms so short they make T. rex look well-equipped, and legs built for speed. It looks like something designed by someone who ignored the rules. … Read more