T. rex wasn’t the only dinosaur with stubby arms. Time and again, large carnivorous dinosaurs evolved to have relatively short forelimbs—including a new species of carcharodontosaur described this year called Meraxes. The shared anatomy hints that being a meat-eater with a big head led dinosaurs like Meraxes to evolve a similar body plan to T. rex, with small arms that could be kept out of the way of struggling prey. More importantly, however, the skull and skeleton of Meraxes are more completely known than those of related dinosaurs such as Giganotosaurus. By comparing the known remains of Giganotosaurus, Tyrannotitan and related dinosaurs to Meraxes, paleontologists can better estimate the body sizes and anatomical particulars of these dinosaurs. Dinosaurs likely ran hot and cold Many dinosaurs were once put in the Iguanodon genus, but recent assessments have led to some of the species being reassigned to new genera. One example is Mantellisaurus atherfieldensis, the dinosaur on display in our Hintze Hall. It was once known as Iguanodon atherfieldensis. We think it’s closely related, if not the same, as the ones previously found from this area. It’s coming from a bed very close to the ones that have been described.’ What is an Iguanodon? Imagine seeing a big tyrannosaur and thinking it must be the apex predator of its ecosystem. But nope, you'd be wrong — because an even larger dinosaur lumbers into view, and wow is it big! This beast, the newly described Ulughbegsaurus uzbekistanensis, was a so-called shark-toothed dinosaur, or carcharodontosaur, according to a September study in the journal Royal Society Open Science. Carcharodontosaurs were cousins and competitors of tyrannosaurs.

What fills this gap is still not known, but may include the 240-million-year-old partial fossil of an animal called Nyasasaurus parringtoni, discovered in Tanzania near Lake Nyasa in the 1930s. An illustration of the "shark-toothed" dinosaur Ulughbegsaurus uzbekistanensis, which lived in what is now Uzbekistan about 90 million years ago. (Image credit: Julius Csotonyi) Though they’re not directly related to birds, the alvarezsaurids continue to fascinate due to their unusual characteristics – most peculiarly of all, their hands. The researchers behind the current study have been working to improve this, having demonstrated that machine learning models can achieve up to 96% accuracy in identifying isolated teeth from known taxa.

For the most part, this book delivered everything I was looking for. The book is organized first by period (Triassic, Cretaceous, Jurrasic) and then by type of dinosaur (Sauropods, Ornithopods, Armor, Theropods, etc.) which was a neat way of seeing the different variety in the same family (like the Triceratopses and Ankylosaurs). In each brief description, there is information about the naming of the dinosaurs, where it has been discovered, and its scientific etymology. Dinosaurs are often celebrated for being big, fierce and tough. The truth, however, is that they suffered from many of the same injuries and maladies that humans do. A study published this year in The Lancet reported on the first well-documented case of malignant bone cancer in a non-avian dinosaur. The animal, a horned dinosaur known to experts as Centrosaurus, probably coped with declining health before its eventual death in a coastal flood that caught its herd off-guard. Dinosaurs Weren’t in Decline When the Asteroid Hit Previously, this posture has only been seen in a couple of dinosaurs, including a troodontid known as Mei,’ Paul explains. ‘As it comes later in the dinosaur lineages than other bird-like poses, such as brooding, it’s reasonable to assume that birds and their near relatives inherited their resting position from a common ancestor.’ Stegouros is a bizarre anatomical mosaic. The dinosaur’s skull, teeth, and club-like tail are classically ankylosaur, resembling Ankylosaurus and other late armored dinosaurs. However, the dinosaur’s slender limb bones and pelvis resemble those of stegosaurs such as Stegosaurus, which had been extinct for tens of millions of years by the time of Stegouros. ( See how Stegouros may shake up the armored dinosaurs’ family tree.) Silutitan and Hamititanadd to our knowledge of the sauropods that lived in what is now Asia during the early Cretaceous period, from 145 million to 100 million years ago. The discovery also refines scientists’ picture of how sauropod dinosaurs spread out and diversified across ancient Earth. 10. A Japanese dinosaur from the Mesozoic Era’s last chapter

Fossils are echoes of an ancient past. Find out about the two major categories of fossils, how fossilization occurs, and how fossils can help paint a picture of the planet's history. Similar models have now been applied to teeth from the Middle Jurassic held in the collections of the Museum and the Museum of Gloucester in an attempt to identify them.It is probable that they were either carnivores or omnivores, but they definitely were not herbivores,' says Paul. 'They were relatively uncommon, as even when you get the first definitive dinosaurs around 230 million years ago they are still rare members of the fauna.' The models were then applied to the unidentified, isolated teeth, which found that most of the teeth belonged to maniraptorans, and dromaeosaurids in particular. These teeth were split into three distinct groups based on their size and shape.

The use of machine learning in vertebrate palaeontology is still in its infancy,' Simon adds. 'This is partly because of the need to have a comprehensive training dataset for the models to learn how to identify the teeth of different dinosaurs, and partly because the models themselves can also be quite complex.' Largely ignored due to its scrappy nature, the fossil is composed of part of an arm bone plus a few vertebrae. Crucially, however, some of these vertebrae are from close to the hip and show that three of them were sacral vertebrae, and this three-vertebra sacrum is one of the defining features of dinosaurs.

1. Morocco’s “punk-rock” dinosaur with bizarrely spiky ribs

But even for a seasoned professional, finding a near complete dinosaur that could be a new species might be a once in a lifetime discovery. How do you discover a dinosaur? Spicomellus ended up in the U.K. museum through the legally complex commercial trade in Moroccan fossils. After passing through the hands of several Moroccan wholesalers, the rib bone reached Moussa Direct, a U.K.-based fossil dealer that sold the specimen to the museum.