“There’s nothing new under the sun” goes a famous saying and these words are very apt when trying to understand Earth’s climate trends. Thanks to numerous discoveries made about Earth’s ancient past, we now know […]
The Magazine on Fossils, Geology & Minerals. Deposits is both a printed and online magazine featuring articles by high profile authors.
Category: dinosaurs
The tongue-twisting horror – or beauty – of the names of organisms: a Linnaean heritage
Sometimes, your name is a tell-tale sign of who you are, or your heritage if you wish. Not too long ago, the surname Andersson logically enough meant “the son of Anders” in my native frozen […]
Discovering dinosaurs in Britain –the significance of the British dinosaur record
Palaeontology and Britain In its simplest form, palaeontology is the study of prehistoric life, through examination of fossils. Palaeontology is, however, not just dinosaurs. Dinosaurs constitute a miniscule portion of what palaeontology is. After all, […]
Highlights from the Museum am Löwentor in Germany
The Museum am Löwentor in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, is one of the world’s greatest depositories of fossils. The museum was founded in 1985 and, since then, it has built up a vast collection of over 4.1 […]
Giant trilobites and biotite nodules in Portugal
The generally accepted reason for the fame of Arouca is Princess Mafalda, born 1195, who was responsible for the convent becoming Cistercian. Here is an interesting story – she was beatified in 1793. However, I […]
A new look for Utahraptor
One hundred and twenty eight million years ago, a killer stalked eastern Utah. Known as Utahraptor, this distant relative of Velociraptor of Jurassic Park fame was also equipped with a sickle-claw on its hind feet. […]
A dinosaur track investigation
My “Fossil Grandpa” took me to visit this neat site when I was in Texas last summer (2013). We drove to a small rural community, where it seemed there wasn’t anything to find. However, my […]
Dinosaurs footprints on the Isle of Skye, Scotland
If you think of dinosaur hunting, you probably imagine trekking through a parched landscape, reaching the crest of a low hill and catching the first glimpse of a complete skeleton lying half exposed in the […]
Dinosaur quarries of Hastings
For over two hundred years, dinosaur bones and other fossils have been found along the beach to the east of Hastings, between Rock-a-Nore and Pett, but by far the most spectacular specimens were collected from […]
Dinosaur mines of the Kem Kem
The great transgressions that occurred in the mid part of the Cretaceous have had a profound influence on the geology of many parts of the world. In North America, the seas flooded the central part […]
Sands of Gobi Desert yield new species of nut-cracking dinosaur
Plants or meat – that’s about all that fossils ever tell palaeontologists about a dinosaur’s diet. However, the skull characteristics of a new species of parrot-beaked dinosaur and its associated gizzard stones indicate that the […]
Fleshing-out a dinosaur-eating snake
In the March 2010 issue of the open-access journal, PLoS Biology, palaeontologist Jeff Wilson and colleagues give an account of a truly unique and amazing fossil discovery. In their article entitled Predation upon Hatchling Dinosaurs […]
Meat-eating dinosaur from Argentina had bird-like breathing system
Mendoza, Argentina. The remains of a new ten-meter-long predatory dinosaur discovered along the banks of Argentina’s Rio Colorado are helping to unravel how birds evolved their unusual breathing system. In September 2008, palaeontologists, led by […]
Denizens of the Oxford Clay
In many ways, Britain is the birth-place of palaeontology, and the heady years of the 19th century saw the discovery of creatures that have inspired the imagination of small boys ever since – myself included. […]
An introduction to aetosaurs
The Triassic Period was one of the key episodes in the evolutionary history of life. It marks the transition from the Palaeozoic to the Mesozoic Era, preceded by the Permian/Triassic mass extinction – the greatest […]
Dinosaur Farm museum on Dinosaur Island
The Isle of Wight has long been regarded as a world famous fossil locality. It is now called Dinosaur Island, with no less than 29 different species having been found along the southern coast. Indeed, […]
Dinosaurs in Scotland
The existence of dinosaurs in Scotland is not something that is generally well known. Yet, there are at least three different families represented from fossil bones and a number of different footprint types from the […]
A brief flight with Pterosaurs
Planet Earth was a busy place 225mya. The super-continent, Pangaea, in the Northern Hemisphere started rifting, creating the beginnings of the North Atlantic Ocean. Dinosaurs began their campaign for global dominance of Mesozoic terrestrial ecosystems […]
Visiting the Zigong Dinosaur Museum
During the 8th International Congress on the Jurassic System 2010, which was held in Shehong, Sichuan Province in China, I had an opportunity to visit several palaeontological museums, exhibitions and geoparks. However, one of them […]
Predator “dawn runner” dinosaur found in the Valley of the Moon
A lanky predator roamed South America in search of prey as the age of the dinosaurs began, approximately 230mya. This dinosaur, named Eodromaeus (the “dawn runner”), sported a long neck and tail, and weighed only […]
The world’s smallest dinosaur?
The ‘Ashdown maniraptoran’ Most palaeontologists now accept that birds are descended from non-avian dinosaurs and are therefore the only living representatives of otherwise terrestrial animals that ruled the world during the Mesozoic. That being the […]
Jurassic Park meets the US presidential race 2016
Back here in the United States, the blockbuster movie Jurassic World still plays in theatres, while presidential candidates hit the campaign trail. This confluence of events reminds me of a crazy idea I had back in 1992, a couple years after Michael Crichton published his novel. This tongue-in-cheek essay explores the idea to its full absurdity.
Barry’s secret dinosaurs
I have always been curious about footprints and trackways made by prehistoric animals, especially dinosaurs, due to the concept that the ground has captured the process of an animal, which is now long dead and […]
Iguanodon is older than you think
The public and private announcements of Gideon Mantell’s giant prehistoric herbivorous reptile. The details of how the nineteenth century Sussex surgeon and palaeontologist Gideon Mantell came to acquire, describe and announce to the world a […]
