Blog topic
Dinosaurs & Prehistoric Life articles
What killed the dinosaurs, whether they had feathers, how big Tyrannosaurus really was, why pterosaurs were not dinosaurs, and what the Cambrian explosion and the ice ages were. Every claim here rests on named evidence, because in this subject the evidence is the story.
34 explainers, newest first. Each one ends with real questions from the unit that teaches it, so you can read the explanation and then check whether it stuck.
These are the readable companion to the Dinosaurs & Prehistoric Life track, which holds 18 units and 1,953 practice questions. If you are starting the subject rather than looking something up, the study guide is the better place to begin.
Did Dinosaurs Live in the Arctic? Fossils From Months of Darkness
Fossils sit well inside both polar circles, where winter ran dark for months. How they coped, and what newly hatched bones in Alaska settled.
October 20, 20267 min readWhat Was the Giant Ground Sloth? Megatherium and the Animal That Pulled Down Trees
Megatherium was an elephant-sized sloth that reared up to browse the trees of South America until 10,000 years ago. How it lived, and why it vanished.
October 19, 20267 min readWhat Was Velociraptor Really Like? Turkey-Sized, Feathered and Nothing Like the Film
The Velociraptor of the films is a two-metre scaly pack hunter; the real one was the size of a turkey and covered in feathers. What the fossils say.
October 19, 20267 min readWhat Was Megalodon? The Largest Shark That Ever Lived, and Why It Is Gone
Megalodon was a shark up to 20 metres long that hunted whales for fifteen million years and vanished 3.6 million years ago. What teeth tell, and why it is gone.
October 17, 20268 min readWhat Was Triceratops? Horns, Frill and the Last Great Plant-Eater
Triceratops was a three-horned, frilled dinosaur the size of an elephant that lived at the very end of the Cretaceous. What the horns were for, and its enemy.
October 15, 20267 min readWhat Was Stegosaurus? Plates, Spikes and a Brain the Size of a Plum
Stegosaurus was a nine-metre Jurassic plant-eater with a double row of plates on its back and four tail spikes. What the plates were for.
October 14, 20266 min readWhat Was Dunkleosteus? The Armoured Fish With Jaws Like Shears
Dunkleosteus was a Devonian predator with a bone-cased head and blades of bone for teeth, one of the first big animals with jaws. Why its kind died out.
October 14, 20267 min readWhat Was Spinosaurus? The Dinosaur That Went Into the Water
Spinosaurus was longer than Tyrannosaurus, carried a sail and a crocodile's snout, and its only skeleton was bombed in 1944. What has been found since.
October 12, 20267 min readHow Did Whales Evolve? From Wolf-Sized Walkers to the Largest Animals Ever
Whales are mammals whose ancestors walked on land fifty million years ago, and fossils of every stage on the way back to the sea have been found. The sequence.
October 12, 20267 min readWhy Did the Woolly Mammoth Go Extinct? Climate, Hunters and the Last Island Herd
Mammoths survived several ice ages and then vanished, the last herd on an Arctic island 4,000 years ago. The evidence for climate, for hunting, and for both.
October 10, 20267 min readWhat Was Ankylosaurus? The Living Tank of the Late Cretaceous
Ankylosaurus was a six-tonne plant-eater armoured from nose to tail and carrying a bone club that could break a predator's leg. How the club worked.
October 9, 20267 min readWho Were the Neanderthals? Our Closest Relatives and What Became of Them
Neanderthals lived across Europe and western Asia for 350,000 years before vanishing. What they were like, how they lived, and why most of us carry their genes.
October 8, 20267 min readHow Did Dinosaurs Reproduce? Eggs, Nests and the Evidence for Parents
Every dinosaur hatched from an egg, and fossil nests, embryos and brooding adults show how. What the eggs were like, who brooded, and how fast the young grew.
October 7, 20268 min readWhat Were Trilobites? The Animals That Ruled the Seas for 270 Million Years
Trilobites were armoured sea creatures with the first complex eyes, and they outlasted almost every other animal group. What they were and why they vanished.
October 6, 20267 min readWhat Were the First Mammals? Two Hundred Million Years in the Shadows
Mammals appeared alongside the first dinosaurs, not after them, and spent their first 150 million years small and mostly nocturnal.
October 5, 20267 min readHow Are Dinosaurs Named? Latin, Greek and the Rules of Giving a Fossil a Name
Every dinosaur has a two-part scientific name, coined by whoever describes it under rules that go back to 1758. Where the names come from, and the errors.
October 5, 20266 min readDid Dinosaurs Live in Herds? Bone Beds, Trackways and the Social Lives of Giants
Some dinosaurs died together by the hundred, walked in groups and nested in colonies, and some did not. What the fossils show about herds, packs and families.
October 3, 20269 min readHow Did Life Begin on Earth? What Science Can and Cannot Say
Life appeared soon after the oceans formed. The chemistry that may have started it, where it may have happened, and what is still unknown.
October 2, 20267 min readWere Dinosaurs Warm-Blooded? What Bones, Feathers and Growth Rings Suggest
For a century dinosaurs were pictured as sluggish reptiles. Bone structure, growth rates, feathers and chemistry now point to warm blood in most of them.
October 1, 20268 min readHow Are Fossils Dated? Layers, Isotopes and Index Fossils
A fossil's age comes from the rock around it. Layers give the order, radioactive decay gives the numbers, and the two combine to date a bone.
September 30, 20268 min readHow Big Did Dinosaurs Get? The Sauropods and the Limits of Size
The largest sauropods weighed as much as ten elephants. How they grew so big, what their bodies had to solve, and why nothing on land has matched them since.
September 29, 20267 min readWhat Was the Permian Extinction? The Day Life Nearly Ended
About 252 million years ago most species on Earth vanished in the worst extinction known. What caused it, how long recovery took, and what it says about carbon.
September 9, 20267 min readWhat Killed the Dinosaurs?
The asteroid impact, the crater it left, what happened in the months afterwards, and why birds survived when almost nothing else did.
August 28, 20269 min readDid Dinosaurs Have Feathers?
What the fossil evidence shows, which dinosaurs were feathered, and how the discovery changed how we picture them.
August 28, 202610 min readHow Do We Know What Dinosaurs Looked Like?
From bones to muscles to skin and colour, here is how palaeontologists rebuild an animal nobody has ever seen.
August 28, 202610 min readHow Big Was a Tyrannosaurus Rex?
Real measurements for length, height, weight and bite force, and how we work them out from fossil skeletons.
August 28, 20269 min readWere Pterosaurs Dinosaurs?
Why flying reptiles are not dinosaurs, how their wings worked, and where they actually sit on the family tree.
August 28, 20269 min readWhat Are the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods?
The three chapters of the age of dinosaurs, what lived in each, and how they ended.
August 28, 202610 min readHow Did Birds Evolve From Dinosaurs?
The fossil evidence, the shared anatomy, and how flight developed in a group of small feathered theropods.
August 28, 202610 min readWhat Are Trace Fossils?
Footprints, burrows, nests and droppings tell us how extinct animals behaved, which bones alone can never show.
August 28, 20269 min readWhat Lived in the Seas During the Age of Dinosaurs?
Meet ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs and mosasaurs, the marine reptiles that were not dinosaurs at all.
August 28, 202610 min readWhat Was the Cambrian Explosion?
The rapid appearance of complex animals half a billion years ago, the Burgess Shale, and what may have triggered it.
August 28, 202610 min readWhat Was the Ice Age?
How glaciers covered much of the north, which animals lived through it, and why we are technically still in one.
August 28, 202610 min readWhat Were the First Animals to Live on Land?
How arthropods arrived before vertebrates, and how fish developed limbs and crawled out of the water.
August 28, 202610 min read