The 2-name system (genus and species) for naming organisms was developed in the 1700s by Linneaus, who was so into standardized latin roots that he latinized his own name (his real last name was Linne). At the time, Latin was a more common and pervasive language among the educated. Today, we still use the general system, but not all dinosaur names are Latin. For example, Masiakasaurus, a small meat-eating dino from madagascar has a Malagasy word as the root of its genus name (Masiaka is the Malagasy word for vicious). Latinizing is the norm, but it's not used 100% of the time these days.

My job is actually less about dinosaurs than about evolution and the history of life on earth. Dinosaurs provide lots of opportunities to study evolution (especially when we consider their modern relatives, the birds). But dinosaurs are also just a piece of the puzzle, and like all paleontologists, I have to use tools from a number of science and math disciplines to understand how dinosaurs made their living. The really cool thing is that a lot of times, studying the past helps inform us about what's going on today. Vice versa, studying things in modern animals can often shed important light on questions of dino biology. My work spans the animal kingdom, and also spans geological time. Since I work at the Science Museum, my job is also seriously about sharing what I do and discover in a way that people can understand and get excited about.

I guess that I've never had a field season when I didn't find ANYTHING, but I have certainly had field seasons that didn't yield the motherlode of fossils that my team was hoping for. It's funny, but it doesn't really feel bad when that happens. Instead, I tend to think "good...we can mark that spot off of our list of places to check out." or "there's gotta be something here....I'll just have to let erosion do it's thing and check back next year." I think that it's harder when you DO find something, but little can be done to retrieve it. Several years ago my husband and I ran an expedition to Zimbabwe in search of early dinosaurs. We found some really cool stuff, but shortly after we left, Zimbabwe was thrown into political turmoil and the landowners on the large tract of land on which we worked and discovered fossils were evicted as veterans of the Zimbabwean Civil War occupied the land, and will not allow foreigners access. We're still dreaming about those bones, and wishing that we could head back to Zimbabwe to collect the rest of our discovery, but it doesn't look as though it will be possible anytime soon.

Well it's hard to know how many more might be out there. Here are some stats that might shed light on the question. In 1990, there were only 300 dinosaur genera known. Since 1990, nearly 200 more new dinos have been discovered/described! New dinos can be found in the field when we dig them up, but they can also exist on museum shelves, when we take second looks at old bones. With erosion, more paleontologists on the hunt, and dinosaurs lucky enough to live and die in the right place at the right time, it's easy to imagine that our understanding of dinosaur ecosystems and the dinosaurs that inhabited the earth is still very far from complete.

Hi Molly!
It really depends on how rich the fossil beds we are working in are. In Madagascar, we find hundreds of bones each summer. When you think about how many bones there are in a single skeleton (over 200), that's not so hard to do.

Kristi Curry Rogers, Ph. D.
Curator of Paleontology
Science Museum of Minnesota

Thanks for your interest, Beatrice! So far, it has proven fairly difficult for us to get members of the public to Madagascar to help on the ground. Usually the trouble is logistical - it's pretty remote and difficult to get enough trucks to carry lots of people, volunteers (like those medical and dental volunteers we had last summer) have to stay in the closest big town (Mahajanga), just cause Berivotra isn't big enough to support a big influx of foreigners. The biggest help at present is financial. The cool thing is that most of the funds that the MAF has garnered thus far have come from school-age kids. Girl Scout Troops and Boy Scouts have raised funding via garage sales and bake sales, and schools have been instrumental in supporting the MAF - in fact, I just received a contribution from grade-school kids in Isanti, MN, who did chores to raise $ for the MAF! You can also check out the MAF website for more information (www.ankizy.org).

Scientists aren't really sure what kinds of noises that dinosaurs made, though some of us have tried to model dino-sounds after studying the specialized noses of the crested, duckbilled dinosaurs. At this point, your guess is as good as ours. Next time you're in the SMM's Dinosaurs and Fossils Gallery, head to the special diorama on the Wannagan Creek Quarry - there is a kiosk there that allows you to listen to all the sounds crocodiles make. When you listen to that, AND think about the calls of birds living today - you can imagine that dinosaur sounds were likely incredibly diverse!

Most paleontologists are either more geological or more biological in their research interest, but either way - you need to take as much of these subjects as possible! You also have to employ other disciplines to interpret how extinct organisms made their livings, including physics, chemistry, and math. Good writing skills are also really important - it is through research papers that cool discoveries are conveyed to our fellow researchers and the public, so being adept at writing is also key.

The oldest DINO fossils that I've discovered date from the Jurassic Period, and are about 186 million years old. I've also found lots of older fossils, many from invertebrate animals. Minnesota is a great place to hunt for these non-backboned creatures, and we can find fossils here that are over 450 million years old!

There aren't really any dinosaurs that resembled whales, because ALL dinosaurs lived on land. Some dinosaurs were as BIG as whales (100 tons and 100 feet long). I think that you are probably thinking about the giant reptiles, like plesiosaurs, ichthyosaurs, and mosasaurs, that lived in the sea during the age of dinosaurs. Plesiosaurs basically looked like the loch ness monster (a long neck and tail, and four flippers). Icthyosaurs looked kinda like dolphins, with football shaped bodies and huge eyes, and mosasaurs were like huge, overgrown lizards (their bodies even moved side-to-side like reptiles do when they walk). Even though lots of people think that these giant sea reptiles were dinosaurs, they actually were very distant relatives of dinos. Whales didn't even evolve until long after the dinosaurs went extinct!

You have to be REALLY careful when you dig. Bones are fragile, though they are often a little harder than the rocks that preserve them. When we are working above the bone-bearing layer, removing what we call "overburden" (all the rock and dirt that lie on top of the layer where bones are exposed), we use heavy tools like picks, shovels, and sometimes even jack hammers. Once we get down close to the bone layer, we have to be more careful, and do a lot of sweeping, scooping, and hammering with rock hammers to keep the area clean and clear. Once we "hit bone" we go even slower, usually using ice picks and paintbrushes, and carefully searching each piece of rock that we remove to make sure that there are no fossils inside. Everyone occasionally breaks bones in the field, but we use glues to keep things in place. Sometimes breaking a bone results in its discovery. In fact, that's how the braincase of the longnecked titanosaur that we found in Madagascar was discovered. I hit it with an icepick!

In Greek, "deinos" means "fearfully great" and "sauros" means "lizard." The very first scientist to coin the term "Dinosaur" used these greek roots to name a group of giant animals that seemed to resemble reptiles in some ways, but were distinctive enough to deserve a new group (for example, dinosaurs don't walk with their legs sprawled to the side - their legs are directly underneath their bodies like ours). Lots of paleontologists (including me) retain the "saurus" as a part of dino names - it instantly associates the name with dinos in the minds of most scientists and people like you! Now we know that dinosaurs aren't really very much like general reptiles at all, so the name doesn't work as well as it used to!

Out of the animals that live today, which one would you say is most like a dinosaur? I was thinking the crocodile.

IZY

It depends on where you are in the country. Remember, Madagascar is nearly 1000 miles long, from north to south; and over 350 miles wide from east to west. That means that Madagascar lies at a latitude between 12-25 degrees south, which gives it a generally tropical climate. The length of the island along with differences in altitude have resulted in different microclimates around the island. The eastern part of Madagascar is rainy and warm, and is principally covered in rainforest, with an average temperature of about 70 degrees farenheit (20C). In western and southwestern Madagascar the climate is really different, with mountains keeping the warm wet air to the east, and leaving these areas dry and arid, with an average temp of 75 degrees F (24 C). The plants in this part of Madagascar are succulents and other drought-resistant plants, as well as grasses. The north and southeast are struck by cyclones annually. In the center of Madagascar, the area is termed the "central highlands" because of the higher elevations. Here, the landscape is dominated by grassland, and can even freeze during the austral winter (e.g., August). In the part of Madagascar where I work, it is arid and dry, with annual heavy rains during cyclone season. When I am there working the temperature is usually 70 degrees in the morning and evening, but might reach an afternoon high over 100 degrees F. It's only rained on us in Madagascar one time at our dino digs!

You don't have to know how much was originally present, you just have to know how much of the parent isotope and how much of the daugther isotope (the product of decay) are present now. In a closed system, the ratio between these 2 can be measured to determine how much time has transpired.

I had an interest in fossils, biology, nature, and geology even at the age of 6. In fact, I studied up on fossils and did mini "expeditions" to the rock garden next door. At that time, I didn't really know what fossils WERE, but looked for wierd rocks, and rocks with strange patterns or colors in the gravel that made up my neighbor's front yard garden. Since I lived in an area that was once covered by a shallow, warm sea, there were tons of fossils in the gravel - I found the remains of shells, coral, and sponges, and even had my own collection organized in a tackle box in my bedroom. I was SO into it! As I got older, I got more and more into science, and loved the idea of discovering new things, and figuring out the answers to my own burning questions (like...what did dinosaurs eat??). I was lucky to have parents who supported my passion (even though one of them wanted me to be a professional french horn player, and one wanted me to be a teacher). I think that I knew I wanted to be a scientist because of all the cool things that scientists get to see and do, and I loved paleontology from the first moment that I was exposed to it.

Finding dino bones isn't hard, but you definitely have to be in the right place at the right time. First, you have to know what kinds of rocks to look in - these rocks aren't rocks that are formed by volcanoes (igneous rocks - like granite) or rocks that are modified by great heat and pressure (metamorphic rocks - like slate). Dinosaur bones are usually found in sedimentary rocks - most often in sandstones or mudstones that represent ancient rivers, floodplains, or deserts. Once you're in the right type of rock, you have to make sure that the rocks are the right age. Since dinos were mostly around in the Mesozoic Era, from 228-65 Million years ago, if you are in sedimentary rocks that are older or younger, you'll be out of luck when it comes to finding bones. Once you've nailed down rocks and time, you start prospecting. This just means - keep your eye to the ground and LOOK! Bones look really different than rocks almost all the time (though I know that once in awhile it's easy to mistake a stick or a shiny seed for a bone or a tooth). Once you get the hang of seeing bones, they are easy to find.

Sure, Lucia! Brachiosaurus is one of my favorite dinosaurs. Brachiosaurus, like other sauropods or "long-necked" dinosaurs, is one of the biggest animals ever to walk on the planet. The best known samples of Brachiosaurus come from Africa, though we know of a few good specimens from the United States as well. One of the most interesting things about Brachiosaurus is it's superlong neck. Most of the time, Brachiosaurus reconstructions show Brachiosaurus with it's neck held high up in the air like a giraffe, with the idea that those long necks helped Brachiosaurus eat from the tops of the trees. Recent research has shown that sauropod necks may have actually normally extended more horizontally, away from the body, and that feeding might have been more commonly aimed at the ground rather than at the tops of tress. In terms of breathing - Brachiosaurus may have breathed a lot like birds. Birds are unique among living animals in filling their bones with air - basically, extensions of the lungs penetrate arm bones, and vertebrae, and result in a very efficient breathing method for birds. We don't know whether or not Brachiosaurus employed a similar method of utlizing oxygen, but we do know that the vertebrae of Brachiosaurus were also infiltrated with special air sacs.

The REAL Velociraptor (not the "Hollywood version that you may remember from Jurassic Park) was around 5 feet long from head to tail, and stood about 3 feet tall. In spite of its small stature, it was equipped with lots of sharp teeth and a sickle-shaped claw on its hind feet that made it a formidable predator.

No one knows how big the eggs of T. rex are. Dinosaur eggs come in lots of shapes and sizes, but only a handful of eggs have been definitively identified as belonging to particular species of dinosaurs. That's because, in order to know for sure which dino laid the eggs, you have to find the embryonic dinosaur bones preserved in a recognizable state inside the fossil egg. As you can imagine, it's hard to preserve soft, embryonic bones, and we just don't know which kinds of dinos would've hatched from the eggs we find abundantly fossilized. T. rex eggs are still a mystery, but other meat-eating dinosaurs, like Oviraptor, Citipati, and Troodon have all been found sitting on their eggs, just like modern birds!

Kristi Curry Rogers, Ph. D.
Curator of Paleontology
Science Museum of Minnesota

If you mean age in years (like "I'm a 12 year old T. rex"), we can test for the age of a dinosaur bone by looking deep inside the bone for special "rings," kinda like tree rings, that we can count. These rings indicate a time each year when growth dramatically slowed down, or stopped, and is a great indicator of age.

If you mean the age in millions of years, we have to study the rocks that surround dinosaur bones. Dinosaur bones can't be radiometrically dated directly, but the rocks that surround them often can. Testing the rocks gives us a "bracket" for the age of the dinosaur bones (and rocks that preserve them).

Kristi Curry Rogers, Ph. D.
Curator of Paleontology
Science Museum of Minnesota

Hmmmm....it depends on where I'm working. In the US I eat regular stuff. Bagels or granola bars for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, and fancier stuff for dinner (like spaghetti). In other countries (like in Madagascar, Zimbabwe, or Argentina), I eat what the people there eat for their staples, and sometimes get a special treat thrown in. For example - in Madagascar, we usually have coffee and baguettes for breakfast. At lunch it's fruit and bread, and "La Vache Qui Rit" aka. Laughing Cow cheese. At dinner, every night, without fail, it is some variety of beans and rice. This is fine with me - I'm a vegetarian! But sometimes, the carnivores on our team crave meat, and we occasionally buy chickens in the market. A special treat in Madagascar might include really good chocolate bars, or bat soup, and once I even got to try worms and grasshoppers!

Kristi Curry Rogers, Ph. D.
Curator of Paleontology
Science Museum of Minnesota

You know, we'll never know for sure until we can travel back in time and observe spinosaurs interacting with one another. To date, spinosaur fossil occurences are solitary, and we think that they probably spent at least some parts of their lives alone. They had to get along at times (like when they were mating), and they most assuredly fought each other at other times, just like all modern animals do when it comes to staking out territory, finding a mate, etc.

Hmmmmm...that's an interesting question. T. rex couldn't really eat a person at all, since T. rex and people never lived alongside one another. But, hypothetically speaking, a T. rex probably couldn't really eat more than one squirmy person at a time.

Who knows if Minnesota will be covered in ice again on a human timescale? Sometimes the climate varies erratically just before an ice age (and sometimes it can even get hotter just before an ice age), but with the human impact on global temperatures, it's hard to say what might happen to Minnesota's climate as ice all over the world is melting. On a geological time scale, you can bet that sometime in the future Minnesota will likely be covered in ice again, but it may take millions of years!

Most of the dinosaurs that are in science museums get there by the collection efforts of curators like me. We spend lots of time during the summer months (or winter months, if we're working in places like Argentina) out in the field collecting dino bones to bring back to the museum. Sometimes we receive donations of fossils as well.

I have two favorite things about working in Madagascar: 1) the fossils are incredibly preserved, new to science, and in rock that is usually so soft that its like being on the beach (but with no water). 2) I love working with people there. A lot of the colleagues that I work with on this project are among my closest friends, and we have lots of fun shared experiences. I love meeting the local people, too, and meeting kids and seeing them grow up has been one of the coolest parts of my time in Madagascar.

Yes - in fact, you may not know this, but one of the primary qualifications of a vertebrate paleontologist is comparative anatomy - basically, knowing a lot about the anatomy of all sorts of animals. In fact, my Ph. D. is in HUMAN anatomy. When I was working on my degree, I taught human gross anatomy courses to medical students! Now, I sometimes teach a course in comparative vertebrate anatomy, where we dissect all sorts of animals, including things like snakes, frogs, turtles, cats, etc. I've also done some experimental work on growth rates in ostriches and emus. In reality, it's impossible to study the evolution of extinct animals like dinosaurs without knowing a great deal about modern animals!

The wierdest thing I ever "found" wasn't a real fossil at all. When I was an undergraduate crew chief at a dino dig in Montana, a bunch of my volunteers headed into town for showers on Saturday, and hit the local flea market. Unbeknownst to me, they returned to the site, and buried a flourescent green, hawaiian shirt-wearing, sunglassed little green stuffed dinosaur in the area of the quarry where I was digging. They did such a good job covering it up that you couldn't tell that the site had been disturbed at all. It took days for me to make it over to that part of the quarry, and as I brushed the area clean with a broom, you can imagine my shock as I unearthed a chunk of brilliant green FUR -- in a dino dig! The guys were all cracking up - they'd been waiting for nearly a week for me to discover their special surprise. We ended up "collecting" it, and it's probably still encased in a plaster jacket at the warehouse in Montana. See - paleontologists have a sense of humor!

I really love studying the biology of dinosaurs. I like thinking about them as living creatures, not just a bunch of bones. I like studying things like histology, to help chip away at the big questions of how dinosaurs made their living. And of course, I love hunting for bones!

Kristi Curry Rogers, Ph. D.
Curator of Paleontology
Science Museum of Minnesota

The biggest fossil that I've ever found was the femur of a long-necked, sauropod dinosaur from Madagascar. It was longer than I am tall (but, that may not be saying much - I'm only 5 ft, 3 inches tall!!).

Hi Grace and Lily!!
My summer plans are still a little up in the air for this year - I'm waiting to find out about a possible trip to Mongolia, and will almost certainly be going to Montana for awhile with my husband, Ray, and 2-year old daughter, Lucy. I would love it if you visited me sometime! In fact, I think it would be GREAT if Ray and I can find the right kind of site - we'd like to start a summer dig program for kids....it all depends on finding just the right kind of place. Stay tuned!

There are two possible answers to your question. Dinosaurs evolved over 230 million years ago from small, bipedal archosaurs (modern archosaurs are things like crocodiles and birds). The first dinosaurs and their relatives had a few very special skeletal features, many associated with an upright posture (rather than sprawling like other reptiles). The oldest known dinosaurs are 228 million years old, and their first complete skeletons were found in the 1990s in Argentina. These earliest dinosaur fossils were both meat-eaters, and were named Herrerasaurus and Eoraptor.

Even though I love Madagascar, and culturally speaking it's an incredibly interesting place..I think my most interesting field experience was in Zimbabwe, when I camped for three weeks on the borders of a Tribal Trust Land, and saw evidence of leopards (their kill hung in the trees just outside camp and their tracks were fresh on the road in the morning), heard lions hunting at night (well...heard the death "shouts" of the impala they were preying upon), and ran into elephants. It was amazing!

YES. My job is sometimes TOO much fun! I love making discoveries (who doesn't), and in my field, there's always more to be discovered. I love traveling, and since the group of dinos that I specialize in were globally distributed, I get to travel all over the planet to study their skeletons. I love meeting new people, and collaborating, and in my field this is essential. I even learned to speak Malagasy last year so that I could communicate better with people that I work with there. There's more to my job as well - I love engaging kids in science and there's virtually no better way to do it than with dinosaurs. I get to teach a dinosaurs course at Macalester College, and I love that too! Best of all, my family gets to come with me - my husband is a geologist and we collaborate on nearly all of our projects., and my 2 year old daughter, Lucy has already been in the field every summer since she arrived (she's even been to Patagonia to dig up dinos!).

Yes! There are definitely dinosaurs from Morrocco, as well as from other parts of North Africa. The dinosaur fossils known from Morrocco span dinosaur time. The oldest dinosaur remains there are Late Triassic in age (near the beginning of the "Age of Dinosaurs). From this time period there is a prosauropod called Azendohsaurus, and a BUNCH of meat-eating and plant-eating dinosaur tracks. The Jurassic-aged rocks in Morrocco have also yielded abundant tracks, which give us a lot of information on the distribution and diversity of dinosaurs at this relatively early time in dinosaur history. Later Jurassic rocks yield the remains of an early long-necked sauropod called Atlasaurus. Cretaceous rocks in Morrocco have provided us with some amazing fossils (most of them have been studied by Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago, and his graduate students), including the theropods Carcharodontosaurus, Deltadromeus, and Spinosaurus, as well as sauropods like Jobaria and and Rebacchisaurus.

Sometimes it takes multiple summers to find all the parts of a single dinosaur, sometimes it takes a few hours, and sometimes we can't find all the parts! Dinosaur skeletons are usually pretty incomplete, and we're left with holes in what we know about their anatomy. Finding a completely articulated dinosaur (with all the bones connected as they would have been in life) is extremely rare. Patience is a virtue if you are a paleontologist in search of dinosaurs!

There have been amazing dinosaur fossils found throughout India. The Khyber Pass, in the mountains between Pakistan and Afghanistan, do not contain dinosaur fossils. This is largely due to the uplift of the Himalayas, which results from the impact of the Indian Subcontinent with Asia. Rocks associated with this mountain building are generally metamorphic (which means that they've been subjected to intense heat and pressure) - if there were fossils, they've likely been obliterated by this longterm mountain building.

Hi Robin, you and your collaborators are putting together. You might try getting in touch with the Science Museum of Minnesota's education department - they have some material in their educational collection, and may have follks equipped to help out. Another place to go might be the Bell Museum of Natural History - they also have large biological collections, and may have the fur, feathers, and bones you need for this project.

Good luck!
Kristi Curry Rogers, Ph. D.
Curator of Paleontology
Science Museum of Minnesota

You can think of the three types of rocks and how they are formed to understand why metamorphic rocks and igneous rocks don't contain fossils. Igneous rocks are formed by volcanism. Except in the rare case of an ashfall, igneous rocks are just too hot to fossilize things - anything getting covered by igneous rocks will be incinerated! Metamorphic rocks have kindof the same problem. Metamorphic rocks are "recycled" igneous and sedimentary rocks, and are formed at high temperatures and lots of pressure. Think of places like mountain ranges and fault zones. There are times when sedimentary rocks that contain fossils are subjected to heat and pressure, and become metamorphic rocks as they recrystallize - when that happens, any fossils contained within the original sedimentary rocks get obliterated.

Kristi Curry Rogers, Ph. D.
Curator of Paleontology
Science Museum of Minnesota

Technically there is no Allosaurus anywhere near the size of T. rex. There are, however, close relatives of Allosaurus, like Giganotosaurus (from Argentina) and Charcharodontosaurus (from North Africa) that can get even bigger than T. rex. You might be able to catch a glimpse of Charcharodontosaurus in Chicago, since one of the researchers who spent a lot of time studying works there (Paul Sereno). You'd have to go all the way to Argentina to see a skeleton of Giganotosaurus!
Allosaurus has pretty short, but strong, arms. Recent studies of the skull of Allosaurus have indicated that the bite force was much weaker than that of tyrannosaurs and living predators. The scientists who studied the bite of Allosaurus concluded that Allosaurus may have fed by striking a hatchetlike blow with the upper jaws, and then using the lower jaw to tear off a chunk of meat. No matter what, with a mouth full of teeth and all the skull specializations of Allosaurus, you can be sure that it's mouth was an active part of its modus operandi!

Yes! There are some really wonderful dinosaurs from India. The best preserved dino fossils there are from the Deccan Traps, and date to about 70 million years old (the very end of the "Age of Dinosaurs"). Long-necked herbivorous sauropods are found there, as are meat-eating theropods. It's pretty cool - the dino fossils in Madagascar and India are almost identical - for at least part of the Cretaceous Period Madagascar and India were connected to one another, and their faunas could intermingle as one.

The answer to this question depends on what you mean by "common". In terms of numbers of different species, here's the breakdown at last calculation:
Meat-eaters - 282 species.
prosauropods (early plant-eaters) - 23 species
Long-necked sauropods - 121 species.
Armored/plated dinos (like Stegosaurus) - 68 species.
Duckbilled dinos and their relatives - 107 species.
Horned, frilled, and domed dinos - 56 species.

If you mean the most common dinosaurs in dinosaur ecosystems, the answer would likely be any of the plant-eaters. In general, plant-eaters by far outnumber the meat-eaters. Just think about the Serengeti today - you don't see a world populated by lions. You see a few lions and a million wildebeest and zebra. It was probably similar in dinosaur times, but impossible to say exactly what dinosaur group/species was most common at any given time period.

That's EASY (kindof). My favorite group of dinosaurs are the long-necked, gargantuan, plant-eating sauropods (like of "brontosaurus"). This is the group of dinosaurs that I study, and they're my favorites because they are so amazingly wierd. They are the largest animals to ever walk on the planet (some of them rival the sizes of modern whales), they are around from the beginning of dinosaur times until the end (that's over 160 million years!), and they are biological marvels - I love trying to understand how these animals made their livings. If I had to choose a particular favorite among this bigger group, I'd have to say Rapetosaurus krausei, a sauropod from Madagascar that I got to name as a part of my Ph. D. You gotta love the dino that you name!! It's name is derived from the Malagasy world 'rapeto' (pronounced ruh - pay- too), which is the name of a giant creature in Malagasy folklore that could walk the entire length of Madagascar in a single step. The specimen that we discovered in Madagascar was the most complete and best-preserved dinosaur from this group ever found.

There aren't that many other dinosaurs found in Madagascar. So far, we've discovered one kind of large meat-eating dinosaur, Majungatholus atopus, and one smaller meat-eating dinosaur, Masiakasaurus knopfleri (that's right - it's species name is knopfleri, after the guitar player from the rock band Dire Straits - Mark Knopfler). We've also found just two kinds of plant-eating dinos. Both are long-necked sauropods. One is Rapetosaurus krausei, and the other one is so new that we haven't even named it yet! There are also several birds, which are of course, the living descendants of dinosaurs!

I think that we've only begun to scratch the surface with regard to what we can learn about dinosaurs. Every year, new discoveries are made, but even more interestinly, scientists take new looks at old bones - we spend lots of our time in museums and in laboratories developing new ways of looking at dinosaurs. Just last month a group of scientists discovered that some long-necked dinosaurs ate grass! Before that fossil find, we didn't even think grass was around until the end of dinosaur time.and finding grass in the fossilized feces of a long-necked dino forces re-evaluation of what those long necks were for. Maybe not for top of the trees dining after all!! That's what is so cool about being a dinosaur paleontologist. There is ALWAYS more to know and more to discover.

The most common dinosaur fossils found are teeth. Teeth are more resistant than bones to chemical and physical degradation, so they are more apt to stick around in the fossil record. Even better, dinosaurs have continual tooth replacement while they're alive. If they break a tooth off, there's a new one underneath to replace it. If they wear a tooth down to a nub, it falls out and a nice, sharp one grows right back in its place. That means that teeth can just be more common in the fossil record - in Madagascar, teeth of meat eating dinos that sometimes dined on members of their own species are among the most common fossils that we find.

I think that it's possible that some dinosaurs definitely cared for their young. In fact, we have direct evidence for parental care for a few rare dinosaurs. In Mongolia, a meat-eating dinosaur called Oviraptor was found "brooding" a nest of eggs containing the embryos of Oviraptor, in just the way that modern birds brood their eggs. Some large "duck-billed" dinosaurs (otherwise known as hadrosaurs) are even named after their "parenting skills." Maiasaura is a dinosaur found in Montana. It's name translates to "Good Mother Lizard". Nests of Maiasaura hatchlings were discovered with bones that weren't yet fully ossified (hardened), leading researchers to think that some parent had to be taking care of them after they hatched. For other dinosaurs, like sauropods, we think that parental care was probably fairly minimal, at least while the the babies were still in the nest. As for most things dino-related, there's probably not a general rule, but both crocs and birds (the living relatives of dinosaurs) take care of their babies. That pattern makes it even more likely that dinosaurs did too.

Hi Cody,
Most paleontologists and geologists now agree that an asteriod impact centered off the coast of Mexico in the Gulf of Mexico is to blame for dinosaur extinction. The extinction event was one of the big ones in earth history, and wiped out a diverse array of life on land and life in the seas. Not just dinosaurs bit the dust. So did tiny marine microorganisms called foraminifera. So did the giant marine reptiles (like mosasaurs and plesiosaurs) and ammonites (animals kinda like the chambered nautilus of today). Pterosaurs went extinct too, as did some mammals. With the somewhat limited geological record on hand, it seems as though dinosaurs and these other creatures weren't in any sort of gradual decline, but were wiped out in a "geological instant."

The amount a paleontologist makes each year varies dramatically depending on the kind of work that we do. For example, some paleontologists work for the government - they don't make that much. Some of us, like me, work for museums - we don't make very much either. Some paleontologists work for universities or colleges. They might make up to $100,000 by the end of their careers. Other paleontologists write books and are independently employed - some of them probably make the most!!

The funny thing about being a paleontologist is that you DON'T get more money if you discover a big dinosaur, and you don't get paid to find new dinosaurs. The currency of paleontology is writing papers, and you don't get paid for that either!!

Primary bone is the scientific term for the first bone that is laid down - during life, all bones get remodelled. Once bone is remodelled it is secondary. A special pattern of remodelling centers around blood vessels embedded within bone, and results in lifesaver shaped rings that we call "Haversian osteons" (named after the guy that discovered them). Growth rings are temporary slow downs or stops in bones that are recorded as actual rings (kinda like tree rings). In dinosaurs, like in many other animals that produce these growth marks, we think that they occur annually. All three of these types of bone tissues in dinosaurs have patterns that indicate that most dinosaurs grew quickly for their young lives, and only slowed down once they reached adult size. For those dinosaurs (like the meat-eating theropods) that commonly deposit growth rings in their bones, these rings didn't occur like they do in crocodiles (in the context of slow growth). Instead, in dinosaurs, most of the time these rings occur in the context of fast growth. All these types of bones tell us that ALL dinosaurs grew faster than modern reptiles, but how much faster depended on what kind of dinosaur they were - the smallest dinosaurs only grew 2 x faster than reptiles, while the biggest (the sauropods) grew up to 56 x faster!