Open access publication has, for the most part, long since ceased to be controversial. Although it certainly isn’t without its minor issues…

Those poor tail bones, always getting shortened and lost during the course of evolution. A long tail is the default condition for…

Every living thing has a remarkable evolutionary history, stretching back through the eons. Sometimes it’s fun to think about common plants and…

Just yesterday, a group of 2nd graders asked me what color dinosaurs were. I was pretty excited to tell them we actually…

Fossils are part of our planet’s natural heritage. These traces of organisms that lived long before the founding of any nation are…

Tomorrow I’ll post an interview with Dr. Randall Irmis, a geologist and paleobiologist working on the Colorado Plateau Coring Project. Today, I…

(I tried to make the title of the post sound like a SyFy movie title, let me know how I did) Obdurodon…

This week and next at PLOS Blogs, we are doing a focus on climate change. This is leading up to a great…

Science depends on the ability to make observations, repeat experiments, test hypotheses, and share knowledge. When a new study comes out, other…

Recently I helped name a new species, an animal we think is the oldest dinosaur found to date—if not, it’s the closest…

In these times of budget cuts and belt-tightening, you might wonder why our government, universities, and museums should fund paleontological research. After…

While writing your dissertation, you come across many fascinating tidbits written as passing remarks. They are so interesting that you happily spend…