Beyond Bones

Was it inevitable that mammals would rule the world after the dinosaurs went extinct? The rise of mammals is often depicted as a pretty smooth transition, but in reality things were a little more complicated. In the wake of the end Cretaceous extinction birds, reptiles and mammals all began to split and diversify to exploit ecological […]

Was there a dinosaur-equivalent of Santa Claus living at the North Pole a 110 million years ago? The lack of fossil evidence suggests not…. But don’t worry because there were definitely dinosaurs living in the South Pole during the early cretaceous! Leaellynasaura amicagraphica is probably the most famous South Polar dinosaur, it was a small (about 1 meter in […]

Often times the most unfortunate catastrophes can produce the finest, most well preserved specimens for scientists to uncover. Just think of Pompeii: a deadly volcanic eruption buried a Roman city in scolding ash, and in the process created a veritable time capsule for Archaeologists a millennium later to investigate. But it not just archaeologists that […]

In my years as a tour guide here at HMNS I encountered a lot of good questions. Most of the time the simplest questions were the best ones, like “what is a dinosaur?“. It’s a simple question but it has a complicated answer. For most people, the only prerequisite for being a dinosaur is being […]