My friends know me as a theropod fanboy, which should come to no surprise, as I am a massive cliché of a palaeontologist (unashamedly so, as theropods are beyond cool). However, give me a weird archosauromorph and I might crack out a few lines from Django Unchained: “you had my curiosity, but now you have my attention”. The Middle Triassic saw a flurry of evolution following the catastrophic, and borderline biblical, Permian-Triassic extinction event. The…

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Biology is full of exciting avenues, and some of the finest, in my opinion, are the morphological and behavioural adaptations that define the split seconds whether an animal lives or dies, eats or starves. Predator-prey interactions are extremely exciting- not only visually (I strongly recommend watching the BBC’s The Hunt)- but they also play an important role in the dynamics of biological systems. Some of you may remember the announcement of an exquisitely preserved nodosauid…

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Biology is full of exciting avenues, and some of the finest, in my opinion, are the morphological and behavioural adaptations that define the split seconds whether an animal lives or dies, eats or starves. Predator-prey interactions are extremely exciting- not only visually (I strongly recommend watching the BBC’s The Hunt)- but they also play an important role in the dynamics of biological systems. Some of you may remember the announcement of an exquisitely preserved nodosauid…

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The transition of fins to limbs is one of the most significant in the history of vertebrate evolution. These were the first steps that would eventually allow tetrapods to go on to dominate so many terrestrial ecosystems. Fossils that help fill the gaps in this crucial time are invaluable, so how do we go about finding them and what happens when we do discover one? Joining us to give an overview of some of the…

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The Palaeocast art competition is back and we’ve got another great selection of prizes up for grabs this year. We have five models from Paleozoo, five prints from palaeoartist Bob Nicholls and some VNHM posters! We’ll be running the competition on Facebook and Twitter for the whole month of August using #palaeocastart. To enter, simply: Email your original artwork to us, along with a name and title (please state if you are <16). Palaeocast then uploads it to Facebook…

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Titanosaurs include some of the largest terrestrial organisms to walk the Earth: globally distributed, multi-tonne behemoths representing the last of the sauropods at the end Cretaceous extinction event. Much about their biology is known, ranging from nesting behaviour to the skin texture of their embryos. Yet the impact of pathologies on these animals is enigmatic; despite the completeness of their fossil record, there are very few documented instances of disease and injury in this clade.…

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The Late Cretaceous rocks of Ganzhou, China, are rife with oviraptorids. We have seen these strange theropods before here at Palaeocast, when we looked at the very high temperatures at which they incubated their eggs. The Ganzhou rocks, which range from Campanian to Maastrichtian in age, have six oviraptorid species, and their ranks have been bolstered by a new addition: Corythoraptor jacobsi. Fig. 1. Artist representation of Corythoraptor jacobsi, with a clear nod to modern…

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 “Must go faster!” yells Dr Ian Malcolm, as his mangled, yet rather toned, body was hauled away in the Jurassic Park jeep, his lovely hair swaying in the wind as they fled from the Tyrannosaur paddock, chased by a particularly hungry and particularly nimble T. rex. He needn’t have worried. Today’s news brings with it a novel attempt to calculate the king of the tyrant lizard’s preferred gait and maximum speeds, combining two established methodologies…

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Implications for Dinosaur Nesting Behaviour and Thermophysiology Oviraptorosaurs had received a pretty bad reputation when they first popped onto the scene. Initially, palaeontologists branded these creatures as “egg plunderers”, due to the discovery of an individual, Oviraptor, atop of a pile of eggs that were thought to belong to Protoceratops, a sheep-sized, desert-dwelling ceratopsian. Henry Osborn, describing the animal in 1924, gave the supposed egg-thieving theropod its ignominious name, although he did note that despite…

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