Welcome back to Toy Aisle, io9's round up of all the delightful toys hurtling around the internet demanding our attention this week. This time, everything is giant! (Except for the very tiny lightsaber remote!) But apart from that, if you want large robots, large dinosaurs, and large Jason Momoas, we’ve got the toys…
Large plant-eating dinosaurs are typically thought of as strict vegetarians, but an analysis of fossilized dino poop from the Cretaceous Period suggests some of these creatures also feasted on crustaceans. The study, published this week in Scientific Reports, suggests these occasional lapses in vegetarianism might…
In the spring, you might find fragmented blue eggshells sitting on the sidewalk, a sign that baby robins hatched somewhere up above. Taking the same walk 66 million years ago, you may have found a giant version of those same blue eggs. Except a much larger, sillier-looking dinosaur was probably sitting nearby.
During the Cretaceous Era some 70 to 100 million years ago, long-necked sauropods ruled the Earth. But in Africa, not so much. The discovery of a previously-unknown species of titanosaur in Tanzania expands what we know about dinosaurs on this continent, while revealing the surprising degree to which these creatures…
Welcome back to Toy Aisle, io9's gathering of the most wonderful, and often most ludicrous, merchandise we’ve seen on the web this week. This time, we’ve got our best look yet at the new anime Godzilla, some very funky Star Wars and Star Trek coasters, and yes, a rather large T-Rex.
Paleontologists uncovered a strange new dinosaur a few years ago—a crazy, patchwork quilt of a creature dubbed Chilesaurus diegosuarezi. Its bizarre and often conflicting characteristics defied classification, forcing scientists to make an educated guess about its place on the dino family tree. New research suggests…
If you have to smash your head all the time, you’d hope that your body had some mechanism to prevent your brain from rattling out. Knock that noggin around enough, and eventually (on evolutionary scales, that is), you might end up looking, well, very silly.
The origin of flight remains a perplexing topic in the scientific community, as tends to be the case with any origin story. Flight probably evolved multiple times in different groups. Insects probably started flying over 300 million years ago, and pterosaurs, large flying reptiles, evolved 230 million years ago. Add…
Four years after six specimens were discovered in Argentina, scientists have finally given a name to what is now considered the largest animal to ever have walked the Earth. Say hello to Patagotitan mayorum—a Cretaceous-era dinosaur that weighed an astonishing 152,000 pounds.
On a fateful day in the Early Cretaceous, a large, four-legged armored dinosaur dropped dead on a beach in what is now modern day Alberta. The remains of this 18-foot-long beast drifted out to sea and eventually sank, where it became buried in a thick layer of mud. Over time, the dinosaur became petrified, its soft…
Charlie is 10 years old and loves paleontology. According to his mom, he has Asperger syndrome, so when he likes something he will “try and find out everything about it.” Recently, he visited Britain’s Natural History Museum and schooled the curators on their dino-knowledge.
As virtually every school-aged child knows, birds are descended from dinosaurs. But holy toledo, does this newly discovered oviratporid ever look like a modern cassowary—right from the dramatic crest atop its head through to its long neck and ostrich-like shape. The paleontologists who discovered the dino are now…
Films like Jurassic Park have led us to believe that Tyrannosaurus rex was capable of chasing down its prey at full tilt. New research done with simulations suggest this dino was no sprinter, and that it couldn’t move any faster than a brisk walk. Well, a brisk walk for a nine ton carnivore. At a top speed of 12 miles…
The fossilized remains of a tiny bird that lived 62 million years ago suggests that birds burst out of the evolutionary gates once their dinosaur cousins were gone, rapidly diversifying into most of the lineages we see today.
Frogs have been around for nearly 200 million years, but it wasn’t until a 10-mile-wide asteroid struck our planet, wiping out three-quarters of all life on Earth—including the dinosaurs—that these crafty amphibians were able to make their big evolutionary move, according to new research.
Yes. The genius illustrator Jen Lewis has taken the two pinnacles of dinosaur entertainment—Jurassic Park and that disturbing ‘90s sitcom about prehistoric suburban dino-puppets—and combined their DNA to create something both wonderful and terrifying. Life truly has found a way!
Roughly 165 million years ago during the mid-Jurassic, Madagascar is an alien place. The famously large island has yet to fully cleave itself tectonically from India and Africa, still crammed together with the rest of the southern supercontinent of Gondwana. Primates have yet to evolve, and flowers aren’t even a thing…
The estate of M.C. Escher may have just lost its lucrative stranglehold on the dorm room poster market thanks to artist Chris Rodley, who used a deep learning algorithm to merge a book of dinosaurs with a book of flower paintings. The results are magnificent, and deserve a spot on the walls of our finest art galleries.
There’s something about dinosaurs that makes them strangely endearing, despite murdering humans in an umpteen number of films, having big teeth, and being related to one of the meanest types of living animal, birds. So lots of people (us, mainly) got excited about evidence showing that Tyrannosaurus rex might look…
Shit’s wild. No, seriously, there’s so much you can learn about animals, their lifestyles, and the world they interacted with based on what shows up in their poo. Especially if the poo is over 200 million years old.
