Exciting news for fans of Flying Dinosaurs, my new book – Weird Dinosaurs: The Strange New Fossils Challenging Everything We Thought We Knew – is coming very soon. Advance copies are hot off the press and have just arrived from my publisher NewSouth. It goes on sale in Australia on 1 November. The US/UK version … [Read more…]
Yi qi – China, Late Jurassic (160 million years ago), described 2015 This astonishing, 60-cm long dinosaur left experts gobsmacked when it was announced in April. A single fossil reveals that its very long fingers had a membrane of skin stretched between them, and attached to its body. This gave it wings akin to … [Read more…]
“I’ve never before assembled a formal end-of-year-list of what I consider to be the best bird books published but, inspired by Ian ‘Birdbooker’ Paulsen’s recent blog piece, “The Best Bird Books of 2014”, I decided to share my bird books choices for this year, too,” says Guardian blogger GrrlScientist. “Ian’s choices are aimed at ornithologists, … [Read more…]
The word ‘dinosaur’ conjures images of a massive T. rex or a stoic Stegosaurus, both members of a group that died out around 66 million years ago. But what if that wasn’t the case? The new book Flying Dinosaurs: How fearsome reptiles became birds challenges the widely held belief that there are no more dinosaurs … [Read more…]
Last week a new teaser poster for 2015’s Jurassic World (Jurassic Park IV) was released at the Comic-Con event in San Diego, California. It’s a moody looking image featuring a lone and disappointingly featherless Velociraptor (to see what a Velociraptor would really have looked like, click here) It’s caused some ripples of excitement across the … [Read more…]
Do you have backyard chooks? Have you ever looked at them and wondered if they were dinosaurs? New discoveries has found the humble chook, and it’s bird brothers, are closely related to dinosaurs. John Pickrell is the author of Flying Dinosaurs and ABC Central West Presenter Kia Handley spoke with him about this incredible connection
Anzu wyliei – United States, Late Cretaceous (66 million years ago), described 2014 From the Hell Creek formation of the Dakotas, Anzu has been described by the Smithsonian Institution and Carnegie Museum scientists who found it as the ‘chicken from hell’ and a cross between an emu and a lizard. Only the second feathered … [Read more…]
The fourth installation of the Jurassic Park movie series, Jurassic World, is being filmed in Hawaii and New Orleans right now, and is due to hit cinemas in June 2015. But the film has courted controversy for a number of reasons, not least for the suggestion that its representations of dinosaurs are inaccurate and … [Read more…]
The earliest specimen of Archaeopteryx – the ‘first bird’ – was discovered in 1861 and was recognised as a missing link between reptiles and birds. Though they are incredibly important fossils, Archaeopteryx specimens have been very hard to come by. Since 1861 only 11 full body specimens (most missing their skulls), and one lone … [Read more…]
In the early stages of evolving flight, feathered dinosaurs tried an interesting experiment: they developed four wings. These small dinosaurs – such as Microraptor, Anchiornis and Xiaotingia – had long flight feathers on their hind limbs as well as their fore limbs, and they had long bony tails, similarly replete with large feathers. It appears … [Read more…]