State of the Planet

News from the Columbia Climate School

dinosaurs

  • You Asked: Dinosaurs Survived When CO2 Was Extremely High. Why Can’t Humans?

    You Asked: Dinosaurs Survived When CO2 Was Extremely High. Why Can’t Humans?

    Our expert says: Although carbon dioxide levels have been much higher in the past, they generally increased slowly, giving plants and animals time to adapt. When the rate of climate change was staggeringly fast, like today, there were big problems.

  • Dinosaurs Took Over Amid Ice, Not Warmth, Says a New Study of Ancient Mass Extinction

    Dinosaurs Took Over Amid Ice, Not Warmth, Says a New Study of Ancient Mass Extinction

    There is new evidence that ancient high latitudes, to which early dinosaurs were largely relegated, regularly froze over, and that the creatures adapted—an apparent key to their later dominance.

  • CO2 Dip May Have Helped Dinosaurs Walk From South America to Greenland

    CO2 Dip May Have Helped Dinosaurs Walk From South America to Greenland

    A new study identifies a climate phenomenon that may have helped sauropodomorphs spread northward across the Pangea supercontinent.

  • Sailing Stone Track Discovered ‘Hiding in Plain Sight’ in Dinosaur Fossil

    Sailing Stone Track Discovered ‘Hiding in Plain Sight’ in Dinosaur Fossil

    The “walking rock” track suggests that a massive volcanic winter may have frozen the tropics during the dawn of the dinosaur age.

  • Dreadnoughtus

    Dreadnoughtus

    If you, like me, are something of a paleo-romantic, Swooning over dinosaurs both fearsome and gigantic, Come feast your eyes on new reports the bone-hunters have brought us: “Fearing nothing” means its name – the mighty beast Dreadnoughtus!

  • Amid a Fossil Bonanza, Drilling Deep into Pre-Dinosaurian Rocks

    Amid a Fossil Bonanza, Drilling Deep into Pre-Dinosaurian Rocks

    On a high ridge in Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park, paleontologist Paul Olsen sits on the fallen trunk of a 215-million-year-old tree, now turned to stone. The tree once loomed 70 or 80 feet above a riverine landscape teeming with fish, turtles, giant crocodilians and tiny, early species of dinosaurs.

  • Photo Essay: Unearthing the Lost World Below a Petrified Forest

    Photo Essay: Unearthing the Lost World Below a Petrified Forest

    In Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park, researchers are scouring the fossil-rich surface and drilling deep into ancient rocks to learn what happened during the late Triassic, some 201 million to 235 million years ago.

  • Hell’s Chicken

    Hell’s Chicken

    From our great, wild west, those rusty, dusty hills, Bones of a beast who would give a cowboy chills. A fierce-looking crest – a mohawk made of bone! Claws, beak, bony tail, locked within hard stone.

  • Seeking the Deadly Roots of the Dinosaurs’ Ascent

    Seeking the Deadly Roots of the Dinosaurs’ Ascent

    Over the past 450 million years, life on earth has undergone at least five great extinctions, when biological activity nosedived and dominant groups of creatures disappeared. The final one (so far) was 65 million years ago, when it appears that a giant meteorite brought fires, shock waves and tsunamis, then drastically altered the climate. That killed off…

Colorful banner image over Earth with text "Open House Discover Science, October 19, 2024, 10am to 4pm

Join us on Saturday, October 19, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. for the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Open House! Celebrate 75 years of science with us at our beautiful Palisades, NY campus. The event is free and open to everyone, with a suggested $5 donation. Learn More and RSVP

  • You Asked: Dinosaurs Survived When CO2 Was Extremely High. Why Can’t Humans?

    You Asked: Dinosaurs Survived When CO2 Was Extremely High. Why Can’t Humans?

    Our expert says: Although carbon dioxide levels have been much higher in the past, they generally increased slowly, giving plants and animals time to adapt. When the rate of climate change was staggeringly fast, like today, there were big problems.

  • Dinosaurs Took Over Amid Ice, Not Warmth, Says a New Study of Ancient Mass Extinction

    Dinosaurs Took Over Amid Ice, Not Warmth, Says a New Study of Ancient Mass Extinction

    There is new evidence that ancient high latitudes, to which early dinosaurs were largely relegated, regularly froze over, and that the creatures adapted—an apparent key to their later dominance.

  • CO2 Dip May Have Helped Dinosaurs Walk From South America to Greenland

    CO2 Dip May Have Helped Dinosaurs Walk From South America to Greenland

    A new study identifies a climate phenomenon that may have helped sauropodomorphs spread northward across the Pangea supercontinent.

  • Sailing Stone Track Discovered ‘Hiding in Plain Sight’ in Dinosaur Fossil

    Sailing Stone Track Discovered ‘Hiding in Plain Sight’ in Dinosaur Fossil

    The “walking rock” track suggests that a massive volcanic winter may have frozen the tropics during the dawn of the dinosaur age.

  • Dreadnoughtus

    Dreadnoughtus

    If you, like me, are something of a paleo-romantic, Swooning over dinosaurs both fearsome and gigantic, Come feast your eyes on new reports the bone-hunters have brought us: “Fearing nothing” means its name – the mighty beast Dreadnoughtus!

  • Amid a Fossil Bonanza, Drilling Deep into Pre-Dinosaurian Rocks

    Amid a Fossil Bonanza, Drilling Deep into Pre-Dinosaurian Rocks

    On a high ridge in Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park, paleontologist Paul Olsen sits on the fallen trunk of a 215-million-year-old tree, now turned to stone. The tree once loomed 70 or 80 feet above a riverine landscape teeming with fish, turtles, giant crocodilians and tiny, early species of dinosaurs.

  • Photo Essay: Unearthing the Lost World Below a Petrified Forest

    Photo Essay: Unearthing the Lost World Below a Petrified Forest

    In Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park, researchers are scouring the fossil-rich surface and drilling deep into ancient rocks to learn what happened during the late Triassic, some 201 million to 235 million years ago.

  • Hell’s Chicken

    Hell’s Chicken

    From our great, wild west, those rusty, dusty hills, Bones of a beast who would give a cowboy chills. A fierce-looking crest – a mohawk made of bone! Claws, beak, bony tail, locked within hard stone.

  • Seeking the Deadly Roots of the Dinosaurs’ Ascent

    Seeking the Deadly Roots of the Dinosaurs’ Ascent

    Over the past 450 million years, life on earth has undergone at least five great extinctions, when biological activity nosedived and dominant groups of creatures disappeared. The final one (so far) was 65 million years ago, when it appears that a giant meteorite brought fires, shock waves and tsunamis, then drastically altered the climate. That killed off…