Evolve or Perish is a new board game – not from the makers of Monopoly, but from ETE, the Evolution of the Terrestrial Ecosystems Program, at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. UCMP Faculty Curators Cindy Looy and Ivo Duijnstee designed the game in collaboration with illustrator Hannah Bonner. Hannah is well-known for her cartoon paleobooks When Bugs Were Big and When Fish Got Feet. The three enjoy collaborating -- Hannah created the logo for Cindy's lab's web site, and she is … [Read more...] about The game of prehistoric life
Cretaceous
Paleo Video: A modern day dinosaur extinction
During the Cretaceous, dome-headed pachycephalosaurs roamed through what is now the Hell Creek Formation, covering parts of Montana, Wyoming, and North and South Dakota. But UCMP Curator Mark Goodwin and Museum of the Rockies Curator Jack Horner argue that there were fewer pachycephalosaur species than we thought. Mark and Jack suggest that two species, Dracorex hogwartsia and Stygimoloch spinifer, are actually juveniles and teenagers of the species Pachycephalosaurus wyomingensis. Learn about … [Read more...] about Paleo Video: A modern day dinosaur extinction
Rudists
Not to be rude, but what in the world is a rudist? Well, rudists are invertebrates, and they lived in the world’s oceans during the late Jurassic and the Cretaceous, about 150-65 million years ago; they are now extinct. They are bivalves — the name means “two shells.” Today’s familiar bivalves, clams and mussels, have two shells that are more or less symmetrical. But rudists were a bit unusual: their two shells were very different from each other. One shell was either conical or coiled, … [Read more...] about Rudists
Meet a mosasaur
Imagine you are driving down I-5, just north of Bakersfield, in California’s hot and dusty central valley. Except that it’s the Cretaceous Period, 80-65 million years ago, and the central valley is actually an inland sea. And instead of seeing cows standing by the side of the highway, you see mosasaurs swimming through the salty water. Mosasaurs were marine reptiles that lived during the late Cretaceous, in oceans all over the world. They had fins on their long bodies, and sharp teeth in their … [Read more...] about Meet a mosasaur