Tag: dinosaur

Terrible Lizards, Terrible Injuries

Posted on by Rhys

Guest Author: James Ormiston
Palaeontology MSci Graduate

Disclaimer: The sketches made for this article were drawn before the extensive re-description of Dilophosaurus specimens by Marsh & Rowe (2020). As such they may no longer be as anatomically accurate, particularly regarding the robustness of the skull and shape of the crests.
You can find the “new look” for Dilophosaurus here.

Dilophosaurus: my favourite dinosaur and one of Jurassic Park’s only celebrity species to actually come from the Jurassic period. This is a dinosaur which, perhaps more so than any other to appear on screen, has suffered a persistent identity crisis thanks to some major creative liberties taken by Crichton and Spielberg to make it more intimidating (and it worked on me, as a child it was by far the one that scared me the most). But that part is already addressed in a previous article on the blog. Today we’re going to take a look at another intriguing aspect of Dilophosaurus which could tell us a lot about what it was like to walk in its…um…dino-shoes? Di-loafers-aurus? Maybe let’s leave the palaeo-puns in the ground…

(more…)

Palaeo Pop-Culture: The Inspiring (and Tragic) Story of the Pterosaur Ornithopter

Posted on by Rhys

Guest Author – James Ormiston
Bristol Palaeontology MSci Graduate / PalaeoArtist

The road to flight is littered with the snapped airframes, tangled control lines, burnt out engines, and the torn wing fabric of countless victims to gravity’s crushing hand. For every successful attempt by humanity to get a face-full of cloud, there are scores of attempts met with a face-full of mud, grass, tarmac, water, the list goes on.

(more…)

In The Field – Polish-Mongolia Expeditions 1963 – 1971 (Part 1)

Posted on by Rhys

Guest Author – James Ormiston
Bristol Palaeontology MSci Graduate / Palaeo Artist

Of the many countries around the world that have seen palaeontologists scouring their strata for fossils, Mongolia is one of the most intriguing and inspiring. Landlocked and sandwiched between its neighbouring geographical behemoths, Russia and China, Mongolia is itself a very large country. Across 1.5 million square kilometres The Country of Blue Sky’s expanse covers parts of the Altai Mountains in the north, the Gobi Desert in the south, and vast grassland steppes in between. Such a landscape, along with its sparse human population, certainly calls to mind the kind of place where you’d expect to see a small gaggle of sunburnt scientists under their wide-brimmed hats chipping away at nature’s time capsules. And since the early 20th Century that’s exactly what has happened.

(more…)

SUE the T. rex

Posted on by Rhys

Guest Author – Han Kemp
Palaeontology & Evolution MSci Graduate

Twitter is a great social media platform that’s allowed me to follow along with all kinds of palaeontologists and fossil aficionados. One such account is SUE (@SUEtheTrex), representing one of the largest and most extensive Tyrannosaurus rex specimens ever found. The 67-million-year-old enthuses over Jeff Goldblum, plays Dungeons and Dragons with their followers, and gets angry at people who mention meteors. This might sound a little confusing, so let me add some context.

(more…)

Dilophosaurus Duality

Posted on by Rhys

Today is the 5th November, the annual British holiday of blowing things up to celebrate things not being blown up. Seeing as it is such a flashy vibrant event, I’m turning my attention to what is perceived as one of the flashiest and showiest of the dinosaurs; a star of Jurassic Park, Dilophosaurus.

(more…)

Luckless Lobsters

Posted on by Rhys

Everyone knows about the great extinction at the end of the dinosaur age, but it was far from smooth sailing up until then. The Mesozoic era stretches out 180 million years, during which time many different groups of animals exploded into abundance and then died away. Even without anything so dramatic as an asteroid impact much of these were still significant catastrophes. One such time is the Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event (T-OAE). (more…)

Behind The Heavy Claw

Posted on by Rhys

When going from school to school talking about dinosaurs, it’s only natural that one of the most commonly asked questions I get is; “What is your favourite dinosaur?” Perhaps, being as I am part of the Bristol Dinosaur Project, I should say Thecodonotosaurus, but that wouldn’t be true. If I absolutely had to pick just one, my favourite dinosaur would be Baryonyx walkeri. (more…)