Edward D. Cope | Boneblogger: Science and the outdoors

Dinosaurs dragging their bellies—Huh?

Greg — Thu, 27 May 2010 00:38:03 +0000

Isaac Newton famously wrote in 1676,“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” This gets to the heart of the scientific process—a gradual addition and refinement of human knowledge and understanding of the natural world. But, of course, sometimes even giants had wacky ideas. The particular “giant” to whom […]

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Giant Short-Faced Bear Reexamined

Greg — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:44:49 +0000

As the old saying goes, looks can be deceiving. That is the theme of a new paper on the Giant Short-Faced Bear (GSFB), Arctodus simus, recently published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology (Figueirido et al., 2010). We have explored this beast in other posts (see below), and will no doubt do so in the […]

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Bonnerichthys

Greg — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 23:30:30 +0000

In modern oceans, the very largest organisms specialize in filter feeding, or living on the very small plankton in the water. (Read more about the filter feeding niche). Up until now, it has appeared to researcher that during the Age of Dinosaurs, when the oceans were dominated by large, toothy reptiles, there were no marine […]

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Giant Short-Faced Bear: a Northern California Original

Greg — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:55:59 +0000

In 1878, James D. Richardson explored Potter Creek Cave in Shasta County, California. He found the skull of a bear beneath several inches of cave dirt, and he sent the specimen to Edward D. Cope, who determined that it was the type specimen for a new species of American “cave bear” (Cope, 1879). When a […]

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