dinosaurs

When I was a kid, the only animal I wanted for a pet was a dinosaur. Seeing as non-avian dinosaurs had been extinct for around 65 million years, I settled for an iguana. However, new research at McGill University in Canada may finally bring me that pet dino I've been waiting 20 years for.

While always keeping an eye forward to the future, Popular Science has had a fixation with all things prehistoric. Here, a look back through the archives at a selection of curated articles from the 1930's, 40's and beyond on everything from tar pit fossil traps to prehistoric humans.

Check out the gallery, and the Land of the Lost trailer, here!

The phrase “missing link” first appeared in print only four years after the publication of The Origin of the Species. By the end of that year, legendary paleontologist Richard Owen published a description of the fossil Archaeopteryx, the first specimen to carry that moniker. And with that, the concept of a “missing link” embedded itself in the popular imagination.

With missing links again thrust hastily and breathlessly into the spotlight again with the History Channel's hyped-through-the-roof unveiling of Ida, "the most important find in 47 million years," a look at missing links throughout history may help put things in perspective.

If it looks like a duck and flies like a duck, it must take off like a duck. Paleontologists long speculated that this was the case for pterosaurs, but new research shows that the prehistoric winged lizards employed a smarter launch strategy, using all four limbs to hop, skip, and jump their way into flight, instead of pushing off with two legs and flapping their wings as most birds do.

New evidence suggests the reign of the dinosaurs ended not with a whimper, but with a bang. Already, previous geological evidence of an apocalyptic meteor impact in what is now Mexico had led some paleontologists to believe in a massive extinction event. Now, the discovery of fossilized dinosaurs and eggshells in northeastern Russia supports the theory of a rapid extinction some 66 million years ago.

Paleontologists have excavated a plethora of feathered dinosaurs in China over the past few years have, but none of those dinosaurs had feathers like this. Scientists examining a news specimen of the dinosaur Beipiaosaurus have found imprints of a proto-feather that looks like the missing link between primitive downy feathers and the modern feathers seen on birds.

Four scientists are now disputing the recent discovery of rare dinosaur tracks in a remote area near the Utah-Arizona border. According to the original study, which was published in the October issue of the paleontology journal Palaios and widely reported around the world, a large concentration of dinosaur tracks and rare tail-drag marks was found in a dinosaur "trample surface" in the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument. But Brent Breithaupt of the University of Wyoming Geological Museum, Alan Titus and Rody Cox of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, and Andrew Milner of St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm believe the dinosaur tracks are actually just sandstone potholes, created by erosion and weathering.

He is greenish brown, has dragon scales for skin, grows up to 32 inches and is the world's last remaining lizard-like reptile that has a lineage dating back to about 225 million years when dinosaurs still roamed the earth—he's a tuatara and he's making a comeback. A species native to New Zealand, the tuatara was spotted nesting in a sanctuary close to Wellington last week, the first such sighting in 200 years. Staff at the 620-acre Karori Wildlife Sanctuary stumbled upon four white, leathery ping-pong sized tuatara eggs during routine maintenance work at the end of last week.

About 190 million years ago, during the Early Jurassic Period, a vast desert larger than the Sahara covered much of what is now Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada. Given that Jurassic time was the "Age of Dinosaurs," it's not surprising that fossil evidence of the great reptiles would show up there now and then. But recently, geologists from the University of Utah uncovered an exceptional find -- a large concentration of dinosaur tracks and rare tail-drag marks.