Hi Dino Gang,
Hope your month has been extra special!
Two months into 2026 and I’m wondering where the time went. It felt like we just had Christmas! Yet despite moving fast, life has been so fun. My kids dug around our house and found some playing cards and board games that have been collecting dust. Now all of our evenings are spent playing Go Fish, Battleship, and Candyland. Slowing down, turning my brain off, and playing simple with the family has been a great antidote to all the hustle and bustle of life.
Speaking of hustle and bustle, this month in paleontology saw eight new species of dinosaurs, which is quite a lot in a single month. Chief among these new species was a new species of Spinosaurus! It has had the entire paleontology community talking about it because of how it changes our understanding of these animals. I won’t spoil too much, but it finally adds some clarity to whether Spinosaurus swam or not. Besides that, each new dinosaur is actually quite important to the field and reveals a bit of surprising new information!
And finally, you’ve probably seen the news that I’m going on tour for my book, Surviving Climate and Chaos! It’s so crazy that my book is going to be in stores! I couldn’t have done this without you though! By liking my posts, commenting, and reading these newsletters, your support has taken this dream across North Carolina to give people the opportunity to learn more about how climate change has affected dinosaur evolution and how climate change can be affected in a positive way. If you live in North Carolina, save these dates below so I can see you in person and sign your copy of my book:
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March 7th
12:00–4:00 PM
Barnes and Noble, Friendly Center, 3102 Northline Ave, Greensboro, NC 27408
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March 14th
1:00–3:00 PM
Barnes & Noble Asheville Mall, 3 S Tunnel Rd, Asheville, NC 28805
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March 21st
1:00–4:00 PM
Barnes & Noble Morrison Place, 4020 Sharon Rd, Charlotte, NC 28211
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March 28th
1:00–3:00 PM
Barnes & Noble Crabtree Mall, 4325 Glenwood Avenue Suite 3015, Raleigh, NC 27612
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May 16th
2:15 – 4:00 PM
Barnes & Noble, 1311 Kildaire Farm Rd, Cary, NC, 27511
If you don’t live in North Carolina and want a signed copy of my book: don’t worry! I didn’t forget about you! In order to prepare for these book signings, I set aside a few copies to ship out directly to you. You’ll get a signed copy plus a personalized message from me as my way of saying thank you! However, I only have less than 10 and signed copies always sell really quick, so don’t wait around. Click the link below to grab yours now.
In this month’s Dino Digest, you’ll find:
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A new species of unicorn-crested Spinosaurus
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A dinosaur covered in porcupine-like quills
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A strange snaggle-toothed plant eater
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And how high early dinosaurs could jump
So scroll on, because if you thought you knew how dinosaurs lived, adapted, and evolved… think again. 👇
A new Spinosaurus species was just described and once again it totally changes everything about this dinosaur. Spinosaurus mirabilis is the second species of this genus and it lived in Niger 95 million years ago. What makes this large-crested species of Spinosaurus so interesting is that it provides evidence that it wasn’t an exclusive diving animal. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know that one of the most heated debates in paleontology has been whether Spinosaurus was a diving predator or a shoreline wading predator. Every single fossil up until this point has been found on the North African coast, which suggested it lived by the coasts because it swam. But Niger is in the dead center of Africa and was never even near a coast for all of Earth’s history. So this new species shows it wasn’t a dedicated deep swimmer, despite looking like one, and could live more inland in lakes and rivers.
This new dinosaur is the first and only dinosaur known so far to be covered in porcupine-like spines! Haolong is a new Iguanodont that lived in China 125 million years ago. This dinosaur is so well preserved that paleontologists were able to not just find most of the skeleton, but they also found that it was still covered in tons of different soft tissue. First off, its head, neck, chest, and back were covered in these thick spines of various sizes. Plus it also had overlapping shield-like scutes on its tail. This totally changes paleontology because it was never thought that these types of dinosaurs - or any dinosaurs for that matter - even had spines. Therefore, we still have a lot more to learn about what dinosaurs actually looked like.
This new dinosaur was one of the smallest dinosaurs in the world. This is Alnashetri and it lived in Argentina 90 million years ago. As I said, this thing is tiny. It was less than a foot and a half or half a meter long. Yet when the paleontologists counted the growth rings in its bones, they realized it was four years old AND slowing its growth. That means it wasn’t a juvenile, it really was one of the smallest dinosaurs to exist. Because it was so small yet it had relatively large claws on each hand, it was probably well adapted to hunt bugs, early mammals, or even the eggs of dinosaurs.
This new dinosaur had the weirdest face I've ever seen! This is Foskeia, and it lived in Spain 125 million years ago. This dinosaur is very mysterious because this new skull was found showing that it had these snaggle-teeth on its upper jaw and a beak-like structure only on its lower jaw. Even though it was clearly a plant eater, this jaw structure is unlike any other dinosaur to have lived. It's so different that the paleontologists who found it don't even really know how it ate its food. Additionally, we know that as it grew, it went from walking on four legs to two, further suggesting it had a very strange lifestyle. So this new dinosaur leaves us with more questions than answers.
This dinosaur may have been able to jump higher than you! Dinosaurs standing on two legs made them faster, more agile, and run longer, but we’ve never really known whether they could jump or not. To figure this out, scientists ran simulations on the early dinosaur, Coelophysis, to see how high it could jump and what controls its jumping ability. They found that it could jump about three and half feet (1.06 m) in the air, which is pretty impressive for an early dinosaur. But even more interesting was the paleontologists realized that the tail was crucial in helping it jump and a heavier tail, rather than a lighter one, helped it jump higher! Given that birds lost their tails yet are able to jump pretty easily, it leaves the door open as to why dinosaur tails and muscles evolved the way they did.
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Q: What's the most obscure dinosaur you can name off the top of your head?
A: The most obscure (and weirdest) dinosaur I can think of is Brachytrachylopan. It’s a sauropod dinosaur that actually had a really short neck, even though all sauropods are known for having long necks. We don’t know exactly why it had such a small neck, but by looking at its teeth and jaws it was better suited for eating soft plants close to the ground. Therefore, it probably didn’t need to have such a long neck.
Q: What is the biggest dinosaur to exist?
A: Most people agree that Argentinosaurus was the biggest dinosaur to ever exist. It’s estimated to have been up to 115 feet (35 meters) long and weighed up to 88 tons (80 metric tons)! However, we haven’t found a full skeleton of this dinosaur so we can’t say for certain. We’ve found other dinosaurs, like Patagotitan and Dreadnoughtus, which were fragmentary but around the same size. Yet, the majority of estimates put them slightly smaller, even though they were still massive animals!
Q: I’m a student that’s interested in paleontology. What are the best sources to learn about them from?
A: I have a ton of books on my website that are perfect for learning about dinosaurs regardless of how much you know! A good place to start would probably be either Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte or Uncovering Dinosaur Behavior by David Hone. Some other really awesome resources to gather data and learn more about prehistory are the Paleobiology Database and Climate Archive. And finally, this newsletter also gathers up all the scientific papers of the past month; that way you can stay up to date on all the research happening and focus on the subjects you’re interested in.
New Fossils from Antarctica Rewrite the Origin of Modern Birds
Watch the full video now 👆🏻
THANKS FOR BEING A PART OF THE DINO GANG,
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