Articles
Articles
Plain-language explainers about dinosaurs and fossils, with sources.
- 01 · Footprints
How dinosaur footprints form
How did prints that dinosaurs left in mud more than a hundred million years ago turn to stone, and what can footprints tell us that bones cannot?
Read more - 02 · Fossilization
Why we say "dinosaur fossils", not "dinosaur bones"
Most of what you see in a museum is no longer bone at all, but rock in the shape of bone. Here is how bone turns to stone.
Read more - 03 · Dating
How do we know how old a dinosaur is?
Numbers like "66 million years ago" aren't guesses. They come from reading the order of rock layers and from natural clocks in radioactive minerals.
Read more - 04 · History
The first dinosaur fossils (in the world and in Thailand)
Before the word "dinosaur" existed, people thought giant bones belonged to giant humans. A look back at the discoveries that changed how we see the world.
Read more - 05 · Naming
How dinosaurs get their names
Why are dinosaur names so long and hard to say, who chooses them, and where do Thai names like Kinnareemimus and Nagatitan come from?
Read more - 06 · Thai dinosaurs
How many Thai dinosaurs are there, and where were they found?
Since the first bone was found at Phu Wiang in 1976, Thailand has given the world 15 new dinosaur species, all from rocks in the Isan region. Here is which rock layer and which province each one came from.
Read more - 07 · Evolution
Are birds really dinosaurs?
Scientists say dinosaurs are not all extinct, because the birds around us are dinosaurs too. Here is the evidence behind that conclusion.
Read more - 08 · Extinction
The day the dinosaurs disappeared
66 million years ago an asteroid about 10 kilometers wide hit the Earth. How do scientists know, what happened after the impact, and why did some animals survive?
Read more - 09 · Not dinosaurs
Animals people think are dinosaurs, but aren't
Flying pterosaurs, mosasaurs in the sea, sail-backed Dimetrodon and Megalodon are often lumped in with dinosaurs, but none of them is one. So where is the line?
Read more - 10 · Film vs. fact
Jurassic Park: how much of it is true?
The 1993 film made the whole world fall for dinosaurs. But the real Velociraptor was turkey-sized and feathered, Dilophosaurus didn't spit venom, and dinosaur DNA almost certainly didn't survive. Here's what's real and what's made up.
Read more - 11 · Fossils and research
How do we know what colour dinosaurs were?
For decades dinosaur colours were pure guesswork, until scientists found that some feathers and skin keep tiny pigment packets for over a hundred million years. Here is what we know, and what we still don't.
Read more - 12 · Dinosaur life
Dinosaur eggs and babies
Every dinosaur hatched from an egg. Fossil nests, eggs and embryos tell us how long eggs took to hatch, whether parents looked after their young, and why even giant dinosaurs started life in fairly small eggs.
Read more - 13 · Dinosaur life
How did long-necked dinosaurs get so big?
Some long-necked dinosaurs were over 30 m long and weighed tens of tonnes, far bigger than any land animal today. Scientists think the secret was not one thing but several working together.
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