New Scientist Adds Dinosaur Special Section

Posted on April 29, 1998

For the past century dinosaurs have dominated our imaginations, from the schlock-horror nightmares of the 1950s to the Jurassic Parks of the 1990s. But beyond all the fun and the hype, there's a lot of science out there. And the past decade has been especially good for dinoresearchers who've come up with no end of theories on everything from dino DNA to weird illnesses they suffered from to the chances of reconstructing a real one in your garden.

Some of the science has definitely upset old ideas. It now looks, for instance, as if birds didn't descend from dinos, but that they shared an aunty many millions of years ago. And there are now two distinct and very rival camps:
1) with a vision of a quick and nasty end (asteroid impact)
2) and the other see a slow and nasty end (deadly gases from outer space, huge volcanic explosions on Earth).

While these big questions are still waiting to be solved, answers are emerging to lots of smaller, equally intriguing ones:
- What colour were dinos?
- And how did they sound?
- How did they live?
- Were they always the fierce loners of fiction?

Take Tyrannosaurus rex. Without doubt the most popular of all the dinos, the home life of this king of the tyrant lizards is beginning to look downright homely. New Scientist Planet Science has the new picture of T.rex is which is now a great big paradox: a deadly giant, who mated for life and cared for his or her young.

New Scientist Planet Science provides Internet users with news, features, reviews and comment drawn weekly from the pages of New Scientist magazine, as well as extra material exclusive to the website. The site can be found at http://www.newscientist.com.