Four of the top ten fossil finds for 2009 involved dinosaur stories. Highest at number 5 was the discovery of a carnivorous dinosaur and two large herbivorous dinosaurs in the Australian outback. At number 7 was the discovery of Raptorex kriegsteini – a small ancestor of the mighty T rex. Then at number 8 is the new research that suggested that at least a third of all dinosaur species had never existed. Finally in ninth place was the study, which showed that a small group of dinosaurs survived the mass extinction.

The top discovery of last year was that of ‘Ida”, the 47 million year old primate of exceptional preservation and a possible missing link between humans and lemurs. In second place was another human related story. This time the discovery of the oldest skeleton of a human, which shows that humans underwent a further stage in evolution some 1 million years before Lucy existed in the Olduvai cradle.