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Munch

Eurekasaurus! Pterry here. I was getting ready for the big 4th of July party this Sunday when I came across this magnificent new finding! In the modern age, most animals you see are miniature compared to ancient creatures. Even modern day birds don’t even come close to my size and wingspan! With the exception of the blue whale, the largest animal ever known, ancient animals were beasts.

The latest find by paleontologists is no exception. Recently they uncovered the remains of Leviathan melvillei, one of the biggest predators ever measuring over 50 ft (15.2 cm) long! Their teeth alone were about 15 inches (36 cm) long and 5 in (12.7 cm) thick. My, those are giant teeth. They were situated perfectly to grab prey and rip the flesh right from their bodies with powerful jaw muscles. Not to mention that the mouth itself was 9 feet (2.7 m) long and 7 feet (2.1 m) wide. Yes, it could swallow you humans in one bite.

These giants beasts were the ancestors of the modern day killer whale, living about 12 to 13 million years ago in the Neogene time period. This means they likely would have competed with the ferocious Megalodon. There is no fossil evidence to support this, but I’m sure they did battle from time to time. What do you think?

For now I’m signing out, see you at the party!

-Pterry

The Chicxulub crater, site of the Cretaceous asteroid impact

Good day dino friends! Pterry here with some extremely exciting news for my feature column, “Pterry’s True Science.” Sometimes Rex let’s me stop by the blog to tell you about new information coming out in the world of paleontology and prehistory. This is a big one. The biggest one so far.

Recently a group of 41 paleontologists and scientists made a decision on what really caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. We’ve discussed this on the blog before and it has been one of the biggest debates about dinosaurs ever. Now it is put to rest as the universally accepted explanation for the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Their decision had a lot to do with the Chicxulub crate in Mexico and the strange iridium layer between Cretaceous and Tertiary aged rocks. The asteroid that wiped out the dinos measures abotu 7.5 miles wide and had the destructive power of a nuclear bomb (times 1 billion, literally).

Well with that debate back to rest, scientists can go back to arguing about whether or not dinos were warm blooded or cold blooded.As for me on the other hand, I’ll be arguing with Horns about who the smarter dino is. That should be an obvious one!

If Conan were a dinosaur...

EUREKASAURUS! Pterry here with another edition of Pterry’s True Science! This week we have a particularly incredible discovery that I had to share with you. Rex had stated before in a Daily Dino Fact that humans didn’t know anything about the color of dinosaurs. They didn’t, until now!

For the first time ever in the history of paleontology, humans have solid evidence of dinosaur color. The evidence comes from a recent discovery of a dinosaur called Sinosauropteryx that was found in China. A reddish-orange color was found in the tail feathers of a recent specimen, giving scientists their first proof about pigment in dinosaurs. Artists renditions of dinosaurs have been around for a while but up until now the coloring has always been made up completely by the artist.

Sinosauropteryx was a smallish theropod who relied on eating fast little creatures (maybe rodents) for their meals. They existed during the Early Cretaceous and may have been a close relative of the Compy. This is such an exciting discovery, I wonder what they will find out next?

-Pterry

A flesh model of the PancakeCroc with its 3ft long skull

Eurekasaurus! Paleontologists have just discovered a large group of crocodiles in the Saharan desert in Africa. They have found many new species of ancient crocodiles that challenge the way people think of crocs today. They have been given colorful nicknames such as PancakeCroc, DuckCroc, RatCroc, BoarCroc and DogCroc.

Each of them show strange characteristics of crocodiles. PancakeCroc had a long, wide mouth that probably ate medium sized dinosaurs. Some of these fossils show that a few species could stand upright and run down dinosaurs! Yuckasaurus! Good thing I can fly.

Others such as BoarCroc sported large tusks that came out of their mouth. The new crocodiles also had brains that were different from modern ones, suggesting that they could have been much smarter.

One last important thing about this discovery is the kind of area they found these fossils in. The Saharan desert is now dry and harsh but these fossils show it was once a swampy, marshland with lots of water. Strange how the Earth changes over the years…. millions of years!

-Pterry

Hello Webosaurs crew! Pterry here and I’m back yet again with another news story for Pterry’s True Science. When we think of dinosaurs we always think of the past and things that happened long ago. However, a beautiful thing about the field of paleontology is that we are learning new things all the time. Recently, a group of paleontologists in South Africa have found a new species of dinosaur no one has ever seen before.

Aardonyx celestae was a 23 ft (7 m) long plant eater that scientists believe is a missing link in the evolution of small dinosaurs to the mammoth creatures we think of. Aardonyx celestae was likely an early sauropod who could walk on its back two legs but also drop down on all fours. As these kind of dinosaurs eventually ended up on all fours like the sauropods we know of today, the finding of this dino is extremely important to understanding their evolution.

We’re lucky to have found this dinosaur since the paleontologists were almost ready to give up digging in the area they found it!

Hope you all have enjoyed my True Science fact for today. Back to the lab for me but enjoy your time on the island.

-Pterry

Good day Webosaurs, Pterry here. Just about had my latest invention all finished until Horns and Stretch fell into the lab and broke everything. Next time I’ll have both of them saying Uncle-saurus.

Anyways, got just wind of a new discovery from northeastern China. Paleontologists have just found a new dinosaur nicknamed “Raptorex,” which displayed all the same features of a T-Rex but at a fraction of the side. Raptorex stood only 9 feet tall and weighed about 143 lbs. T-Rex, in contrast, weighed about 5 tons.

Raptorex lived about 60 million years before T-Rex came about. This is an extremely exciting discovery for scientists as it gives a new link in the chain of understanding how T-Rex came to be in its evolutionary development. Strange that it would come from such a small dinosaur!

You’ll have to excuse me. Horns is sleeping now and I have a firecracker with his name on it!!

(Not a real dinosaur)

Hello and good day to you! I’m Pterry and this is Pterry’s True Science. I’ll be stopping by the blog from time to time to share news and information about dinosaurs like me and my pals.

Today I’ve come to tell you about a scientist that is working on creating dinosaurs by manipulating genetics. Hans Larsson, the Canada Research Chair in Macro Evolution at Montreal’s McGill University wants to develop dinosaur traits that disappeared through evolution into birds.

It’s not as hard as you might think, birds are essentially dinosaurs and they have a lot of the same genes that dinosaurs did. It’s a matter of turning the right ones on to make them a dinosaur. There is a splendid video with the famous Jack Horner discussing this on the Discovery Channel video page called “The Futurist: Engineering Dinosaurs.”

Well thanks for your time, I have a new invention I’m whipping up and need to get back to!