As tropical forests are cleared for agriculture and coral reefs overheat from rising temperatures, thousands of species vanish into oblivion, unable to survive the rapid climatic and environmental changes of the Anthropocene—the age of the sixth mass extinction. The Anthropocene epoch is an unofficial unit of geological time used to[Read More…]
Tag: Dinosaurs
Gliding, bat-winged dinosaurs surprise scientists
When most people picture flying dinosaurs, they picture beasts like pterodactyls and the pterosaurs. Although iconic to fossils of the Jurassic period, these flying reptiles were not dinosaurs at all, but instead a distant dinosaur cousin called archosaurs that flapped their forelimbs to achieve flight. However, scientists have recently found[Read More…]
Which came first: The chicken or the dinosaur?
At first glance, a chicken and a dinosaur may seem as distantly related as any two species could be. For Hans Larsson, McGill associate professor of paleontology and biology and director of the Redpath Museum, the correlation between the two could not be clearer. In his presentation on Sept. 14,[Read More…]
Say hello to the chickensaurus
Instead of building a time machine to travel back to prehistoric times, scientists might be able to engineer dinosaurs out of chickens to live in our own backyards. In a study published this past January in the Journal of Organic Evolution, researchers were able to genetically modify chicken embryo legs[Read More…]
Science fiction: Jurassic Park
Two velociraptors stalk through the kitchen as the children crouch. What little light there is shines upon what should be the feathers of these mysterious predators. Somehow, dinosaurs have returned from extinction.
