Tag Archives: Cretaceous

For Some Dinosaurs, it Wasn’t the Asteroid, but the Aftermath

Image by Don Davis/NASA.

The recent solar eclipse plunged a swath of the U.S. into two minutes of gloom, but it’s nothing compared to the years-long night that almost wiped out life on Earth 66 million years ago.

Read/listen to my full story at KJZZ’s Arizona Science Desk:
Years-Long Darkness Doomed Survivors Of Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid

Cloning, Hubris and the Dino-DNA “Use By” Date

Be careful what your wish for. Photo by MathKnight and Zachi Evenor.

We know surprisingly little about juvenile dinosaurs, so every time a paleontologist uncovers a clutch of eggs or embryos, it is cause for celebration – at least until someone in the media gets hold of the story and asks The Dreaded Question: “Is Jurassic Park only a few years away?” or some variant thereof.

Being a member of said media, I am occasionally assigned one of these stories. And, although I don’t much care for sensationalism in science coverage, I’m generally too thrilled to be researching dinosaurs and cloning to complain very much. Instead, I see it as an opportunity to tell a deeper story, like this one.

Could we resurrect dinosaurs from fossil embryos?