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Turtles have always been kind of a mystery in paleontology. Their fossil record is not very good, so the first fossil turtles we discovered already looked like modern turtles. Have you ever thought about how weird turtles are? They are so different from all other vertebrates. First, they have a

Now that the summer is here, many paleontologists are out in the field and the time between paleontological articles gets bigger. This week, we’re going to talk about an article that was published back in May 2016. The authors wanted to see if the diet of theropod dinosaurs changed

If you were thinking Tyrannosaurus rex, you would be right. But today we are talking about a brand new dinosaur, not related to T. rex, that also has little arms with two fingers. This new dinosaur was discovered in the Neuquén Basin of Argentina and it’s from the Late

This week an article was published describing an unusual growth on the face of a hadrosaur. Hadrosaurs were duck-billed dinosaurs, like the well-known “Ducky” from The Land Before Time. The dinosaur in question is a specimen of Telmatosaurus transsylvanicus, a hadrosaur from the Cretaceous of central Romania, in the region

This week an exciting new article was published: two bird wings trapped in amber. The specimens were found in Myanmar. Amber forms when tree sap (resin) becomes fossilized. Anything that gets stuck in the liquid resin can be preserved in remarkable detail once it hardens and fossilizes. The sediments are

This week there was an announcement about a new mammal from the Mesozoic (around 250–65 million years ago) discovered in Japan. There isn’t yet a scientific paper describing the find, so for now I’ll just summarize what’s been reported. The mammal is a multituberculate (mul-ti-tu-BER-cu-late). These