Dinosaur coloration has always been a source of wild speculation. Artistic renders have ranged from the conservative (battleship grey, lizard green) to the flamboyant, but all guesses appeared equally valid. While there are some wonderfully preserved examples of dinosaur skin texture, fossils have remained stubbornly monochromatic… until now. [more inside]
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul on Aug 11, 2009 - 62 comments

Let Us Now Praise Awesome Dinosaurs
posted by minifigs on Jul 14, 2009 - 43 comments

Hey: the Motion Picture. Featuring dinosaurs and a brief intermission for snacks. That is all.
posted by Naberius on Jun 19, 2009 - 13 comments

Michael Bay has never made a flash game, but if he did, it would probably be Robot Dinosaurs That Shoot Beams When They Roar. [more inside]
posted by Krrrlson on Apr 9, 2009 - 46 comments

Dinosaurs fucking robots.
posted by loquacious on Feb 17, 2009 - 74 comments

The popular image of dinosaurs is probably wrong. Is the dinosaur related to the chicken? [more inside]
posted by twoleftfeet on Jan 22, 2009 - 77 comments

Velociraptor Roulette. Click the button, win a Velociraptor, or not. [via a very dramatic mefi projects thread]
posted by silby on Jan 19, 2009 - 21 comments

The Jesus Christ dinosaur hypothesis for the evolution of flight (PDF).
posted by homunculus on Dec 25, 2008 - 40 comments

"It's 1863 and Union soldiers have discovered a hidden valley filled with dinosaurs. Now the Yankees plan to use the dinosaurs as weapons of mass destruction against the South." Presenting Professor Cline's Dinosaur Kingdom at Natural Bridge VA. Providing fun for the whole family, this is "not your father's dinosaur park." [via] [more inside]
posted by marxchivist on Nov 12, 2008 - 22 comments

Gary Owens (previously) and Eric Boardman on dinosaurs: "More Dinosaurs," 1, 2, 3. "Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs," 1, 2, 3. "Son of Dinosaurs," (featuring Jimmy Stewart) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Not dinosaurs, but still cool: "Prehistoric World," 1, 2, 3. [more inside]
posted by brundlefly on Sep 13, 2008 - 5 comments

Superstar Scottish comics writer Grant Morrison is about to tear the DC Universe apart again with Final Crisis, the latest in a series of apocalypses and world ending events he's inflicted on various comics worlds over the years. But there was a time before fame when he wrote the tie-in comic for ZOIDS, the robot dinosaur children's toy. So what did he do? Ushered in the apocalypse, in the form of THE BLACK ZOID.
posted by Artw on Apr 17, 2008 - 74 comments

Tetrapod Zoology just celebrated Ankylosaur Week. Days 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, and 1.
posted by mediareport on Feb 25, 2008 - 11 comments

The Strange Lives of Polar Dinosaurs: How did they endure months of perpetual cold and dark? See also Taking A Dinosaur's Temperature: Polar species heat up one of paleontology's great debates. And Bones To Pick: Paleontologist William Hammer hunts dinosaur fossils in the Antarctic. From Smithsonian Magazine.
posted by amyms on Jan 20, 2008 - 22 comments

Some say volcanoes killed them. Some people say an impact. Some say both. Coulda been bugs, actually. Lots of theories, some better than others. Not like it's that uncommon in the grand scheme of things.
posted by absalom on Jan 4, 2008 - 17 comments

Dinosaurs preach Young Earth creationism. "The Fossil Finders are a group of eight homeschooled children on a search for the [Biblical] truth on fossils." (This shorter excerpt cuts to the main argument, involving the discovery of flexible T. Rex tissue. Scientists remain interested in the find.) The video was produced by World's Biggest Dinosaurs, the people who now own the roadside landmark, Cabazon Dinosaurs -- and have turned it into a creation museum. [Previously]
posted by McLir on Dec 1, 2007 - 37 comments

John Updike writes about bizarre dinosaurs for National Geographic. "How weird might a human body look to them? That thin and featherless skin, that dish-flat face, that flaccid erectitude, those feeble, clawless five digits at the end of each limb, that ghastly utter lack of a tail—ugh. Whatever did this creature do to earn its place in the sun, a well-armored, nicely specialized dino might ask. " Besides the Updike essay there's a image gallery, an interview with John Updike [audio starts automatically], a dino IQ test, an audio critique of the way dinosaurs have been depicted in the latter half of the 20th Century [audio starts automatically], a closer look at the odder features of some of the stranger dinosaurs, an examination of the nigersaurus (images) as well as dinosaur wallpapers and jigsaw puzzles. [via MeFi's Own ed]
posted by Kattullus on Nov 30, 2007 - 26 comments

"Imagine, if you will, a load of horseshit." John Scalzi with everything you need to know about the $27 million Creation Museum.

"In the first room of the Creation Museum tour there’s a display of two paleontologists unearthing a raptor skeleton. One of them, a rather avuncular fellow, explains that he and the other paleontologist are both doing the same work, but that they start off from different premises: He starts off from the Bible and the other fellow (who does not get to comment, naturally) starts off from “man’s reason,” and really, that’s the only difference between them: “different starting points, same facts,” is the mantra for the first portion of the museum."

Don't forget the photo tour. [previously]
posted by Mikey-San on Nov 13, 2007 - 76 comments

Overdrift. A five-minute YouTube video, with dinosaurs and drifting.
posted by tumult on Aug 7, 2007 - 32 comments

Dinos' might in army sights. The Comanche National Grasslands located near The Sex Change Capital of the World is under threat by an expanding Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site [attached to Fort Carson]. Home to countless fossils, and Native American cave art, the Purgatoire River could end up like The Stronghold Unit of the Badlands in South Dakota with one of the largest dinosaur tracks site in the world damaged or destroyed and rendered inaccessible to scientists.
posted by Stynxno on May 31, 2007 - 12 comments

Claude Bell's giant Cabazon Dinosaurs sculptures have been bought by a Christian developer, Answers in Genesis. The LA Times (archived copy) discusses.
posted by lilithim on Apr 22, 2007 - 33 comments

Here is a nice site about dinosaurs and biscuits. Don't miss their answer to the age-old Jaffa cake controversy!
posted by thirteenkiller on Mar 29, 2007 - 26 comments

Jonson takes pictures of The Salton Sea, which is a strange place, like some kind of huge, perpetual, Burning Man, but by a huge, salty, polluted, manmade lake with distant shores, dying fish, has-been resort towns, Salvation Mountain, fundie dinos, fountains of youth, and nice churches. [via mefi projects] [previously] [howdy]
posted by brownpau on Jan 30, 2007 - 36 comments

Behind-the-scenes at the dinosaur factory. Creations for "Walking with Dinosaurs: The Live Experience," saurian puppetry (and animatronics) on a 1:1 scale. Who needs CGI? Check out Torosaur vs. Utahraptor.
posted by steef on Jan 10, 2007 - 16 comments

Spinner Disk A flash site with Einstein, penguins, ninjas, narwhals and a dinosaur. What more could one want?
posted by Serial Killer Slumber Party on May 10, 2006 - 20 comments

BustoBot, a modern pop-up book.
posted by monju_bosatsu on Jan 30, 2006 - 20 comments

Tracks of Swimming Dinosaur found in Wyoming The tracks of a previously unknown, two-legged swimming dinosaur have been identified along the shoreline of an ancient inland sea that covered Wyoming 165 million years ago, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder graduate student.
posted by hostile7 on Oct 19, 2005 - 15 comments

Did the Devil bury dinosaur bones to trick people? No longer the Devil's handiwork, dinosaurs are being embraced by Christians, who have reclaimed them for Jesus.
posted by The Jesse Helms on Aug 27, 2005 - 110 comments

Bone Wars is an educational game that "simulates the process of creating a scientific hypothesis and testing it against new data" (A good thing to teach kids with people like these guys running around). The game is based on the legendary Cope/Marsh feud: a conflict that caused one Dinosaur to be classified twice and could make for a really cool movie someday.
posted by brundlefly on Aug 16, 2005 - 17 comments

One fifth of all bird species are in danger of extinction. And right when we're finally understanding where they came from, too.
posted by jefgodesky on Jun 3, 2005 - 3 comments

T. rex soft tissue! No, not dino-kleenex -- scientists have extracted organic compounds from a fossilized Tyrannosaurus rex bone. Can Jurassic Park be far behind?
posted by jimray on Mar 24, 2005 - 42 comments

Coming soon, the Creation Museum. Tired of those pesky evolutionists getting all the natural history museums? Want to see dinosaurs threatening Adam or entering the ark? Then hie yourself to Petersburg, Kentucky, where what is billing itself as "the world's most unusual museum" will soon be opening its doors. "Uneasy answering questions about radiocarbon dating? Rock layers? Natural selection? Do you want to believe in six literal days, but you’re still confused about the big bang or Grand Canyon? You’ll find answers here!" Some background on founder Ken Ham and his theory that dinosaurs are "missionary lizards" who draw young minds to evolution and must be reclaimed.
posted by CunningLinguist on Dec 6, 2004 - 60 comments

When your list of "dinosaur movies" can include "Wizard of Oz", maybe you've gone too far. These people make a distinction between “Live-action with people dressed as dinosaurs and/or mechanical dinosaurs” and “Live action with lizards dressed as dinosaurs or prehistoric animals”. That’s beyond thorough. But for basic information even potentially remotely related to dinosaurs and/or movies, I can’t imagine a better starting point.
posted by GhostintheMachine on Nov 27, 2003 - 5 comments

Old purple frog danced with dinosaurs: "In a commentary accompanying the study, astrobiologist Blair Hedges of Pennsylvania State University called the discovery 'a once-in-a-century find.'"
posted by The God Complex on Oct 15, 2003 - 30 comments

First Birds with teeth in 70 million years . Vicious toothed, flying microraptors once darkened the Jurassic skies. Now, scientists have learned to activate the dormant, vestigal avian "tooth gene" and so coaxed chicken embryos into growing teeth. From the grave, Alfred Hitchcock enviously quips - "a messy thing indeed when toothed birds kill a man". Meanwhile the French are appalled: “quand les poules auront des dents”, which translates to “when hens have teeth”, is analogous to the English “pigs might fly”. Coming soon: flying pigs. But there might be a baldness cure in this new research. I'll remember that as the flocks of mutant raptor-fowl move in for the kill.
posted by troutfishing on Jun 4, 2003 - 18 comments

Aiee!!    Pelorosaurus by god knows who, Corythosaurus illustrated by Zdenek Burian, Ornitholestes by Charles Knight--Dinosaur Illustrations has led me to two wonderful sites: Early Image and Paper Dinosaurs, 1824-1969 - An Exhibition of Original Publications From the Collections of the Linda Hall Library, as well as many other little treasures.
posted by y2karl on Nov 22, 2002 - 3 comments

This Thursday, the Canadian Museum of Nature opens an exhibit of Asian dinosaur skeletons from the Russian Paleontological Institute. Putting Russian dinosaur collections on tour reportedly raises funds for cash-strapped scientific institutions back home, but others allege that Russia's own museums are the poorer for it, and that the money -- and fossils -- may be going astray.
posted by mcwetboy on Oct 1, 2002 - 3 comments

Jurassic Park III comes out today and is getting surprisingly good reviews (I'm going to see it in a couple of hours)! Most seem to have the tone of "Not great cinema, but a fun popcorn-chomper summer movie". Thank god, because this has been a mostly sucky year at the movies so far...
posted by hincandenza on Jul 18, 2001 - 41 comments

What dinosaur lived in your neighborhood?
posted by racer271 on Jul 12, 2001 - 13 comments

Stop the world, I want to get off: A group of scientists thinks that a "wobble" in the orbits of Earth and Mercury may have attracted an asteroid, and not a stray comet, to hit the Earth and wipe out the dinosaurs.
posted by logovisual on Jul 5, 2001 - 2 comments

Birds are not descended from Dinosaurs. The latest in the ongoing debate about the origin of birds and whether they evolved from dinosaurs or from a earlier common ancestor. Chinese scientists report the discovery of a 120 million year old bird fossil that had feathers and could clearly fly.
posted by lagado on Dec 10, 2000 - 3 comments

New dinosaur named for Michael Crichton Chinese researcher Dong Zhiming named a newly-identified Jurassic herbivore "Crichton's Ankylosaur". Jurassic Park is responsible for a great deal of the current interest in palaeontology, so this seems appropriate.
posted by Mars Saxman on Nov 16, 2000 - 5 comments