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Dinosaurs have captured people’s imaginations more than any other ancient creature. These reptiles – some big, some small; several carnivores and other herbivores – rose and dominated the world’s landscapes for more than 135 million years during the period known as the Mesozoic. Today, dinosaur fossils can be found in many parts of the world, contained in a succession of rocks. It is a series of rock strata or units in chronological order. South Africa and the main Karoo Basin in Lesotho, for example, contain many dinosaur fossils in a succession of rocks formed between 220 million and 183 million years ago during the Late Triassic-Early Jurassic period. These ancient relics include body fossils (bones) and trace fossils, which are signs in ancient sediments in the form of footprints and burrows in the ground. Body fossils can help in re-creating ancient life forms, understanding what they looked like, their sizes, and even how they grew and evolved. The problem is, i...

Gorgosaurus dinosaur skeletons will be auctioned for the first time and are expected to sell for between $5 million and $8 million. Sotheby’s auction house will place a specimen 3m high and 6.7m long under the hammer* in New York on 28 July. Sotheby’s described the skeleton as “one of the most valuable dinosaurs ever to appear on the market”. Gorgosaurus roamed the earth about 77 million years ago. A typical adult weighed about two tons, slightly smaller than its more famous relative, Tyrannosaurus rex. Paleontologists* say it’s fiercer and faster than the T-rex, with a stronger bite of about 42,000 newtons* compared to the T-rex’s 35,000 newton. The skeleton was found in the Judith River Formation near Havre, in the US state of Montana in 2018. The sale will mark the first time Sotheby’s has auctioned a complete dinosaur skeleton since selling Sue the T-rex in 1997 for $8.36 million. “All the other Gorgosaurus specimens that have been fo...

Dinosaurs are often thought of as creatures that thrived in warm climates and lush tropical forests. But now, new research is challenging this idea: Instead, dinosaurs experienced freezing temperatures, which eventually allowed them to rule in the Jurassic. The study’s lead author, paleontologist Paul Olsen, ventured into China’s Junggar basin in 2016, an area rich in dinosaur fossils and footprints. On day one, and on their first stop, Olsen’s team came across something much rougher than sand and gravel. It seemed very unusual to Olsen. “We didn’t budge for three hours debating what this was,” Olsen, who led the study published in the journal Science Advances to Mashable. “The whole dinosaur picture was underdeveloped. They were primarily cold-adapted animals.” The research team narrowed down the strange deposits to “ice raft debris,” which are gravel-bearing sediments that formed about 206 million years ago. (Ice accumula...