Tag: palaeontology

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…)

The Spookiest Thing About Bats

Posted on by Rhys

With Halloween only two days away, I thought we should turn our attentions to an animal which has become synonymous with the holiday. The word ‘Halloween’ conjures up a series of distinctive shapes in our minds; a pumpkin, a ghost, the far too early Christmas tree in the shops, and the silhouette of a flying bat. But how long could it have been this way? Would a bat have been a symbol of Halloween in the Mesozoic (if dinosaurs had been capable of celebrating this autumnal festival or been dextrous enough to craft decorations to mark it)?

(more…)

The Grass Divide

Posted on by Rhys

How often do we as regular humans, living on this planet, think about grass? We don’t ever really. Grass is just there and, as far as most are concerned it always has been and always will be. But grass is a living organism, subject to all the same rules of life as everything else. Grass had to evolve which means, by definition, there was a time, a very long time, when it didn’t exist.

(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…)

WiS – Chloe Jones

Posted on by Rhys

Guest Author – Chloe Jones
Palaeobiology MSc Graduate

When I was younger (and trying to figure out what to do with my life), I never thought I’d end up with a career in science, and yet here I am as a research technician at the University of Bristol working on microfossils. (more…)

WiS – Rhiannon Jones

Posted on by Rhys

Guest Author – Rhiannon Jones
Environmental Geosciences MSci Graduate

Happy Women in Science day readers! And thanks to the BDP for making the first blog release a WiS special. I’m feeling very positive about Women in Science. With the odd exception at undergraduate, the only fossils I have come across so far in the industry (more…)