According to CNN, the University of California, Merced biology student unearthed a 65 million-year-old skull while excavating in North Dakota.
College Student Discovers 65 Million-Year-Old Triceratops Skull
Ah, college. A time of learning, growth, and, mostly, eating bargain store ramen. Most of us are lucky to make it out with a diploma in hand and some great experiences. What almost all of us can agree on, though, is that it’s hard to achieve huge, monumental success while at university. College student Harrison Duran did manage a prehistoric achievement while still in school. The fifth year student managed to discover a partial Triceratops skull during his summer break.
In what could be considered a big win for the people rooting for a real-life Jurassic Park, an international team of scientists says it has, for the first time ever, extracted DNA from insects trapped in tree resin.
Even the best-laid plans of dinosaurs and men often go awry. But rarely were the stakes as high as when the dinosaur known as Borealopelta markmitchelli, “a plant-eating, armored dinosaur called a nodosaur that lived during the Cretaceous period,” was removed from the ground.
A group of paleontologists just announced it’s found “unambiguous evidence” suggesting that at least some species of Spinosaurus—a genus of theropod dinosaur that lived during the Cretaceous period in what is now North Africa—was fond of swimming.
Researchers in Canada have just announced the identification of a malignant tumor on a dinosaur fossil, marking the first time cancer has ever been detected in one of the prehistoric beasts.
Here’s a new addition to the growing catalog of awesome and bizarre dinosaur fossils people keep finding: a handful of oviraptor skeletons that have toothless beaks and only two fingers on each of their hands.