The Dinosaur Museum News

65 million years ago prehistoric mammals filled the ecological niche that was created by the extinction of the dinosaurs. Many of these mammals grew to large sizes and probably the best known is the woolly mammoth. It has always been believed that early humans had hunted mammoths to extinction. However Continue Reading…

New footprints discovered in a quarry in Poland show that the important evolution of fish to four-legged animals was 20 million years earlier than previously thought. The footprints are from about 395 million years ago from the Devonian geological period. Dozens of prints were discovered clearly showing ‘hand’ and ‘foot’ impressions and belonged to a lizard-like animal that could have grown up to 2.5 metres long. This is a key episode in evolution and all further land animals, including the dinosaurs, mammals, and humans, evolve from these early tetrapods.

Several trackways and some individual footprints were discovered in a disused quarry in the Holy Cross Mountains of south-eastern Poland. There are no marks of the body of the animals being dragged on the ground because they would have been partially supported by water. Previously it had been thought that lakes and river deltas were the necessary environment Continue Reading…

Discovered in 2007 Lyuba is the superbly preserved remains of a baby mammoth. The mammoth had been frozen in the permafrost of Siberia and its body had been mummified. It was then exposed and washed down stream until it was found by a herdsman. Now a team of top scientists have been assembled to study the remains of the mummy.
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A leading geneticist professor has claimed that modern man and Neanderthals would have had sex across the species barrier. Fossils have been found with both Neanderthal and modern human characteristics. In other animals, such as lions and tigers, where sex between species is known any offspring have always been infertile. Was the same true of modern man and Neanderthals?
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Scientists have discovered a new species of fly never before seen that lived 100 million years ago. It has been dubbed the ‘unicorn fly’ because of the small horn protruding from the head, capped by three eyes that would have enabled it to see predators approaching. The fly has been extremely well preserved in amber. Amber is the sap of trees that has been fossilised over geological time.
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The hit sci-fi television series Primeval that features a group of scientists battling against prehistoric animals including dinosaurs is set to return. In June ITV announced that the show would be cut because of a large reduction in its overall production budget. The series will be co-produced by ITV and UKTV in a deal that is also partly funded by BBC Worldwide.
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In May this year the science world was rocked by the news of Ida, one of the most complete primate fossils ever found. Scientists believe that it is a unique missing link between our evolutionary branch of life and the rest of the animal kingdom. Nicknamed Ida, she was originally discovered in 1983 at the world renowned fossil site of Messel, in Germany. It was not until 20 years later that Dr Jorn Hurum of Oslo’s University’s Natural History Museum took possession of the fossil and assembled an international team to study it.
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For the first time in its 69 year history the Society of Vertebrate Palaeontology is meeting outside of the USA. The society started with just 34 members in 1940 and now has over 2000 worldwide. This reflects both the diversity of palaeontological finds and their worldwide nature. Continue Reading…

Work on the new Weymouth relief road has revealed a huge cutting from the Ridgeway through to the south side of Southdown Ridge, south of Littlemoor. The area has offered up a rich array of fossil finds from a land of 150 million years ago. These range from small insects to bones from Ichthyosaurs, marine reptiles that inhabited the sea during the time of the dinosaurs.
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The 190 million year old footprints are the size of a 10 pence piece and were discovered in the Dinosaur National Monument, USA. The area was experiencing desert conditions at that time. The small mammals scurried over the sand dunes during the night when conditions were cooler. The following day the footprints were covered by more fine sand and preserved.
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