Arctic, feathered … or simply bizarre: what have we discovered since Walking with Dinosaurs aired 25 years in the past

It introduced dinosaurs stomping and roaring into the sitting rooms of hundreds of thousands of audience. Now, 25 years after the collection first aired, a brand new, up to date Walking With Dinosaurs is again at the BBC this weekend.

In the intervening years, science has no longer stood nonetheless. About 50 species were found out each and every yr since 1999 and the appearance of tough imaging ways and virtual reconstruction have resulted in main advances in our figuring out of what dinosaurs seemed like and the way they lived. Here are one of the greatest trends.

Feathered dinosaurs

By the 1990s, a handful of feathered dinosaur fossils were known however they weren’t neatly preserved and their wider importance remained unclear.

“The public wasn’t ready for it,” stated Dr Dave Hone, a palaeontologist at Queen Mary, University of London. “Now we’re at the point where we’ve got dozens of species definitively feathered and probably a hundred plus where we’re very confident they had feathers because all their relatives do. That pushes feathers right down the family tree, which is a pretty big shift.”

Feathers topic, no longer simplest in the case of look, however they’ve added weight to the argument that some dinosaurs had been warm-blooded and form our figuring out of dinosaur behaviour and evolution.

“Undoubtedly the most surprising discovery regarding dinosaurs in the last 25 years has been the discovery of the feathered dinosaurs in Liaoning province in China, and the realisation that many of the theropod dinosaurs at least had a covering of feathers and not reptilian scales,” stated Dr John Nudds, a senior lecturer in palaeontology on the University of Manchester.

“These were probably initially for insulation of eggs, possibly also for display, and were later modified for flight. This has proved beyond reasonable doubt that birds evolved from dinosaurs and in fact are dinosaurs.

Arctic dinosaurs

Picture a Jurassic landscape and you’re probably thinking of a jungle with a few simmering volcanoes in the background. But scientists now believe that dinosaurs lived in much more varied climates, including in the planet’s coldest extremes.

The recent analysis of hundreds of fossils, including those of baby dinosaurs, recovered from northern Alaska suggests that they reproduced in the region and that was probably their permanent home rather than a stop on a seasonal migratory route. The region would have been plummeted into darkness for four months of the year and experienced temperatures well below freezing.

Weird, big, new species

T-rex, diplodocus, stegosaurus: the top trumps of the dinosaur kingdom have remained unchanged in popular imagination for decades. But no shortage of unique and charismatic species have been unearthed in the past 25 years, many of which palaeontologists would like to see brought to wider attention.

“One of the weirdest ones is deinocheirus,” stated Prof Paul Barrett, a palaeontologist on the Natural History Museum in London. The species were tentatively known in accordance with the invention of a huge pair of fingers within the 1960s, however it was once simplest in 2014 when a couple of extra whole skeletons had been described that its odd options got here into complete focal point.

“It looks like the offspring of a night of passion between a radiator and a duck,” stated Barrett. “It’s got a duck-like head, a huge sail on its back, sideways claws, it looks like it has been put together by a committee.”

“Absolutely staggering numbers of new species have been found,” stated Hone, bringing up Yi qi, a feathered gliding dinosaur, as a non-public favorite. “It’s basically a hybrid of a bird and a flying squirrel,” he stated.

Discoveries right through the previous twenty years have additionally observed larger-than-ever species unearthed. Patagotitan (introduced in 2014) has an estimated period of 37 metres and estimated weight of 69 tonnes, taking the name for biggest recognized land animal, and Dreadnoughtus (unearthed in 2005) additionally lives as much as its battleship-scale body.

“Some of these things are pushing 60-70 tonnes in weight,” stated Barrett. “We’re having to figure out the challenges they would’ve faced moving around and eating.”

Dinosaurs taking to the seas

As outdated dinosaur debates were set to relaxation, new ones have opened up. The discovery of a chain of spinosaurus fossils has unfolded new battleground over whether or not those dinosaurs could have been tailored to residing and searching within the water. Dinosaurs have prior to now been assumed to just reside and hunt on land (plesiosaurs and pliosaurs are marine reptiles, no longer dinosaurs).

“The big question is was it a pursuit predator? Or did it hunt like an enormous heron and grab fish with its mouth?” stated Dr Jeremy Lockwood, a GP-turned-palaeontologist in accordance with the Isle of Wight who found out a related specimen nicknamed “the horned crocodile-faced hell heron”. “It’s a furious controversy that’s livened up the world of palaeontology.”

At 15-metre snout to tail, spinosaurus is longer than every other meat-eating dinosaur, has conical tooth like the ones observed in crocodiles, a protracted newt-like tail and dense bones that would possibly lend a hand it sink in an effort to swim underwater.

Computer simulations have raised questions on its hydrodynamic houses, alternatively, with one suggesting it will have rolled over on its aspect when submerged, in keeping with Lockwood. “I can see both points of view but I wouldn’t dream of settling on one,” he stated.

Lizards in a mushy shell

Among crucial discoveries of the previous decade is that of soft-shelled eggs, whole with fossilised embryos, as outdated as 200m years. “All the eggs we’d had until then were like hen eggs,” stated Hone. The newest proof means that many dinosaur species laid soft-shelled eggs, one thing like the ones laid by means of lizards or crocodiles lately.

Even extra intriguingly, research of the tooth of embryos inside of one of the eggs, means that they gestated for as much as six months. This opens up a brand new vista at the reproductive lives of dinosaurs, suggesting that they are going to have buried eggs in nests or burrows.

“Are they looking after a nest for months at a time? Or digging a hole and buggering off and coming back a year later to see if their babies have hatched?” stated Hone. “All of the options are really weird.”