It's been an interesting week! Lots of new discoveries have come out this week! Very very very exciting!

Two New Dinosaur Documentaries Tonight!

Tonight, October 11th at 8:00 P ET, National Geographic's "Bizarre Dinosaurs" will be airing! Read more about it at ABC News and check out NatGeo's "Bizarre Dinosaurs" website!

After "Bizarre Dinosaurs", "Dinosaurs Decoded" will air, showing off Mark Goodwin and Jack Horner's new ideas about how many of our favorite dinosaurs might just be young versions of our other favorite dinosaurs. Check out the article on NatGeo!

First Bird Grew Slower than Thought

It seems that the first bird, Archaeopteryx, had more in common with its dinosaur ancestors than previously thought. Biologist, Greg Erickson, found through looking at the slices of its bones under a microscope that its growth was not as a rapid as modern birds, but more similar to other dinosaurs. This doesn't mean of course that dinosaurs were very slow growers, they just weren't as fast as modern birds, but they still grew faster than most reptiles, in the range of some mammals, in fact. Read more at Science Daily or you can read the ACTUAL paper that published this information FOR FREE courtesy of the PLoS.

 New Horned Relative of Tyrannosaurus rex: Alioramus altai

Steve Brusatte and his co-researchers published a description of a new species of Alioramus, a relative of Tyrannosaurus from Mongolia. Alioramus altai is unique due to the eight small horns and bumps which cover its snout, and it also has two small cheek horns. Although the describers are claiming it is a new species, there are some researchers who think Alioramus is just a juvenile of Tarbosaurus, another larger species of tyrannosaurid that lived in the same area. Time will tell! There is a life reconstruction and a skull drawing at the article about this discovery on NatGeo.

Villagers steal rare dinosaur eggs

Recently a new fossil site with dinosaur eggs was discovered in India. India does not have very many good fossil sites, so this was a very big deal. Sadly however after it was announced, the site was looted and now the fossils have been lost to science.... the indian scientists researching the site had asked for more security at the site but their requests were rejected. Thanks to this bumbling and the greed of souvenir hunters, we'll never know how much valuable data could have been gained from this discovery! Truly a sad and tragic story...

(source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/6269163/Villagers-steal-rare-dinosaur-eggs.html)

Bird hipped (ornithischian) dinos and theropod dinos didn't climb the same

A new trackway study in South Africa finds that bird hipped dinosaurs or ornithischians did not climb steep slopes the same way that theropod dinosaurs did. It seems that ornithischian dinosaurs climbed steep slopes by going on all fours, using their hands for balance and then resumed walking on their hindlegs after climbing the slope, whereas meat eating dinosaurs or theropods gripped to the steep slope using their claws to balance, staying up on their hind legs only. This is good comparative information that we did not previously know about and it i sinteresting because bird hipped dinosaurs evolved into four legged forms from two legged ancestors... it may also give new information on the evolution of feathers as stabilizing organs, some young birds (called chukars) use wing beats to stabilize themselves while climbing steep (or even nearly vertical) surfaces.

Read more at Science Daily!

New bird hipped dinosaur from Japan: Albalophosaurus

A new bird hipped dinosaur from Japan was recently described by Japanese scientists. Called Albalophosaurus, researchers are not excatly sure which group of bird hipped dinosaurs it is most closely related to. It may have even originated from a lineage that split away before other groups split away from each other, since it appears to be similar to both early ceratopsians (horned dinosaurs) and ornithopods (bird footed dinosaurs like Hypsilophodon and duck bills).
 

Tyrannosaurus and kin may have been cannibals

 A new study by researchers at the University of Alberta suggests that relatives of Tyrannosaurus, known as Albertosaurus, may have eaten each other, explaining why the tooth of a tyrannosaur was found in the bone of another tyrannosaur! Meat eating dinosaur cannibalism is not entirely new to science, it has also been suggested for the small theropod Coelophysis from the American Southwest and a larger theropod called Majungasaurus from Madagascar. Cannibalism might have been widespread throughout theropods. Read more at the Calgary Herald