When people think of “armored dinosaurs”, they generally think of two kinds of creature: the stegosaurs and the ankylosaurs. Both of these groups belong to the dinosaur sub-order Thyreophora, which means “armor-bearing” in ancient Greek. The dinosaur group Ankylosauria or… Read More ›
America
Zephyrosaurus
Zephyrosaurus was a small ornithopod dinosaur which lived in Montana during the middle Cretaceous Period. The first fossils of this animal were discovered by Charles R. Schaff, who worked at Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. Schaff was prospecting for… Read More ›
Deinonychus: The Dinosaur that Changed the World
The skull of Deinonychus. This is the very first thing that appears on-screen in the first episode of the 1992 PBS documentary series The Dinosaurs! It’s a great series, by the way. You should watch it. Right now. Seriously. Get… Read More ›
Microvenator
In North America, dinosaur fossils are found in profusion in rocks dated to the late Triassic, late Jurassic, and late Cretaceous Periods. However, much of the rest of the Mesozoic Era’s time scale contains much sparser remains. The middle part… Read More ›
Brachiosaurus
There are some dinosaurs that everybody thinks of when they hear the word “dinosaur”. Among these is a very large sauropod which was the reptilian analog of a giraffe. I am, of course, talking about Brachiosaurus. Brachiosaurus is one of… Read More ›
Ceratodus: The Iconic Lungfish of the Mesozoic Era
Ceratodus was a genus of prehistoric lungfish which existed on Earth for a surprisingly long time, from the middle of the Triassic Period approximately 227 million years ago to the beginning of the Eocene Epoch of the Tertiary Period about… Read More ›
Fruitachampsa, the crocodile-bear-cat of the Morrison Formation
Meet the Jurassic Period’s analog of the common house cat. This is Fruitachampsa callisoni, a prehistoric reptile which inhabited western North America during the late Jurassic Period. However, this was not a dinosaur. In fact, Fruitachampsa was a distant relative… Read More ›
Caturus
This is Caturus, a prehistoric fish which swam in the oceans during the Mesozoic Era. Fossils of this saltwater fish have been found in North America, Europe, northern Africa, and as far as China within rocks spanning from the beginning… Read More ›
Pantosaurus
Hello everyone. Several years ago, I wrote a short article for Prehistoric Times magazine about the Sundance Sea. This was a shallow saltwater sea which covered much of central North America during the middle to late Jurassic Period. One of… Read More ›
Baptanodon
This is Baptanodon, an ichthyosaur which lived during the late Jurassic Period about 160-155 million years ago. During this time, the central part of North America was covered with a body of saltwater known as the Sundance Sea, and Baptanodon… Read More ›
DINOSAURS AND BARBARIANS 