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All tagged dinosaurs
Another year, another headline along the lines of “The T. Rex may have been a lot smarter than you thought.” That one appears in the Washington Post this week, for an article written by the aptly named Dino Grandoni.
Evolutionary biologists have something called the “island rule,” which posits that organisms that evolve on islands will, over time, become smaller than their mainland counterparts. A new dwarf dinosaur species discovered in western Romania – which long, long ago featured tropical islands – supports the theory.
Christie’s was about to auction off a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton in Hong Kong this month, looking to fetch between $15 million and $25 million, but canceled the sale when doubts were raised about how much of the fossilized bones were really old and how the critter was described in marketing materials.
The fossilized gorgosaurus skeleton has fetched a whopping $6.1 million in auction at Sotheby’s. The sale is the latest in a disturbing trend, as more and more dinosaur fossils become monetized and lost to research.
This week Sotheby’s will auction off a fossilized skeleton of a gorgosaurus, an apex predator that terrorized North America 77 million years ago. The “exhibition-ready mounted skeleton” is over nine feet high and almost 22 feet long. It has 79 actual fossil elements, with some additional cast pieces to complete the specimen. The fossils were excavated in 2018 in Choteau County, Montana.
Paleontologists have discovered the oldest known belly button. Using high-tech imaging to examine the remains of a bipedal horned dinosaur of the genus Psittacosaurus, the scientists noticed the thin trace of an umbilical scar in the 125-million-year-old fossilized skin.
