Dinosaurs, pterosaurs & marine reptiles of Isla Sorna

Looks sneaky, as if it's about to steal something.

She is so cute !!!!

Just a friendly reminder about this week's quiz question. You've been asked: True or False? Palaeontologists have been able to determine the colouration of some dinosaurs by studying fossilized pigment cells.


Today's dino:


Name: Titanomachya
Pronunciation: Tie-tan-oh-mah-key-ah
Meaning of name: Named after the 'War of the Titans' in Greek mythology.
Species: T. gimenezi
Size: Estimated to have measured around 6 metres long and weighing between 6 and 10 metric tonnes.
Family: Uncertain. Likely Titanosaurid.
Diet: Herbivore
First fossils found: Known only from a single, partial skeleton discovered in the La Colonia Formation of northern Patagonia, Argentina. Named by D. Pol, A. Otero, J. L. Carballido, A. Pérez-Moreno and L. Salgado in 2024.
Lived: 66 million years ago during the Maastrichtian stage of the Late Cretaceous in what is now northern Patagonia, Argentina.





Artist's impression of an adult and juvenile Titanomachya

Warm-blooded or cold-blooded? An international team of researchers claims that the ability to generate body heat like modern birds and mammals may have first evolved 180 million years ago. They found that two of the main groups of dinosaurs moved towards colder climates during the Early Jurassic - suggesting they could warm themselves. Throughout most of the 20th century, dinosaurs were still thought of as big, cumbersome reptiles, that would have needed to warm themselves in the sun, much like snakes and lizards. However, we now know that many dinosaurs had feathers which would have been excellent at keeping in heat. This suggests that some dinosaurs may have evolved the ability to make their own heat, known as endothermy, making them warm-blooded like birds and mammals are today. To unpack the history of how this ability might have evolved, scientists compared 1,000 fossils with a model of the prehistoric climate for where they were discovered and found that Theropods and Ornithischians spread out towards colder and wetter climates during the Early Jurassic, while Sauropods remained in warmer regions. The researchers propose that Theropods and Ornithischians were able to make this move because they had evolved the ability to regulate their body temperature.