Paleobiogeography

The Fighting Dinosaurs!

this incredibly important fossil preserves a moment in time of a Velociraptor fighting a Protoceratops! the raptor had its foot shiv embedded in the protoceratop's neck and the protoceratops had the raptor's arm caught in its beak when they were both buried by sand and died together.

Paleontologists believe different waves of ceratopsians immigrated from Asia into North America during the Cretaceous period, and Aquilops was the first of them.

In the remote Russian Arctic, an aging scientist and his son are trying to recreate the Ice Age. They call their experiment Pleistocene Park – a perfect home for woolly mammoths, resurrected by modern genetics. But the mammoths are only a means to a bigger end: defusing a carbon timebomb frozen in the permafrost to slow the effects of global warming.

Film by Grant Slater

grant-slater.com

Based on “Pleistocene Park” by Ross Andersen of The Atlantic

This Triassic “coastal crocodile” was an armored, aquatic, ambush predator.

Source: [x]

A new Gondwanan reconstruction

Over 150 million years ago, the continents of South America, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica, along with other slices of land such as the Indian subcontinent, were joined together in a single giant landmass known as Gondwana. Since that time, that landmass has progressively been torn apart by the opening of new rift zones and creation of new ocean, as is happening today at the Red Sea rift.

The fit between Africa and South America is so good that it was recognized over a century ago by Alfred Wegener when he first proposed the concept that plates could migrate across the surface of the Earth.

If you’ve ever tried to fit together puzzle pieces shaped like the African and South American coasts, you’ve probably found that they come very close to fitting together, but there are some indentations that just don’t match up well. If they were puzzle pieces the shapes wouldn’t be quite right, there’s just a little more complexity.

The king, the crown, and the magnolia

Based on fossil findings of related animals, it is now accepted that the “tyrant lizard king” from the Cretaceous of North America was clad in feathers. It lived in an environment filled with familiar plants, such as Ginkgo, Araucaria, and Magnolia.

Illustrated as one of several exclusive images for the launch of @252mya while spreading the dinofluff propaganda with pinky awesomeness. Special thanks to Fabrizio De Rossi for his assistance on things.

Available as prints and other products from 252MYA.com

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“Wing to Wing”