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I am a Professor of Palaeobiology working mainly on pterosaurs, theropod dinosaurs and exceptional preservation of fossil vertebrates. I am particularly interested in the Cretaceous with projects on the dinosaurs of the Isle of Wight, the Kem Kem Beds of Morocco and the palaeoecology of the Crato Formation, Brazil. In addition, I work on the vertebrate palaeontology of two Jurassic mud-rock sequences: the Oxford and Kimmeridge clay formations
My work in Morocco stems from a collaboration with Dr Nizar Ibrahim of the University of Chicago, who works on Cretaceous dinosaur faunas, and has a special interest in the gigantic fish-eating Spinosaurus. My work in Brazil in mainly in collaboration with Dr Paulo Brito of the Estadual University of Rio de Janeiro, with whom I have worked for more than twenty years.
Several years ago my daughter and I took a minivacation to Kelleys Island, home of the famous Glacial Grooves. While we were there the island experienced an explosion of mayflies – they were everywhere. A recent report from a famous fossil site in Brazil indicates they’ve been doing that for a long time.
The mayfly fossils were found in the Crato Formation, which formed in large lakes in what is now northeastern Brazil during the Cretaceous Period, the last period of the non-avian dinosaurs. The lakes may have been 30 miles wide and 60 miles long.
The Crato Formation is an example of what is known as a lagerstatte, a site that has a lot of fossils or fossils that are preserved exceptionally well, sometimes (but rarely) both. Another lagerstatte you might have heard of is the Burgess Shale, a 500-million-year-old Middle Cambrian site in the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia. Another is the 150-million-year-old Solnhofen Limestone of the Jurassic Period from the Bava
The recently-unveiled Cretaceous period dinosaur boasts some very unusual features (Credit: Luxquine, CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons)
When paleontologists discover a new dinosaur species, they usually marvel at the ancient creature s size or speed. However, a new species of a chicken-sized dinosaur is making headlines for a feature rarely associated with the primitive reptiles that dominated the world for over 140 million years dazzling looks!
The exotic, two-legged Cretaceous period animal, which roamed Earth about 110 million years ago, was unearthed in northeastern Brazil s Crato Formation in 1995 and exported to Germany shortly after. The dinosaur lay undisturbed among the collections of the State Museum of Natural History Karlsruhe until recently, when a team co-led by Professor David Martill at the University of Portsmouth in England, decided to take a closer look.
Ideas, Inventions And Innovations
Newly Discovered Dinosaur Dressed to Impress
S cientists have found the most elaborately dressed-to-impress dinosaur ever described and say it sheds new light on how birds such as peacocks inherited their ability to show off.
The new species, Ubirajara jubatus, was chicken-sized with a mane of long fur down its back and stiff ribbons projecting out and back from its shoulders, features never before seen in the fossil record.
It is thought its flamboyant features were used to dazzle mates or intimidate foe.
Ubirajara jubatus is named after a Tupi Indian name for ‘lord of the spear’, in reference to the creature’s stiffened, elongate integumentary structures, and jubatus from the Latin meaning ‘maned’ or ‘crested’.