Riley Black

Riley Black

 

Riley Black is the author of The Last Days of the Dinosaurs and many other books. She is a science correspondent for Smithsonian magazine covering fossils and natural history, and she writes about the prehistoric past for a variety of publications. 

Trixie the Triceratops

Dinosaur Sighting: Triceratops Topiary

The reader is correct that Trixie is technically a "real, live dinosaur"

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Arthur Conan Doyle’s Ethereal Dinosaurs

Prior to the 1925 debut of The Lost World, the novelist pulled a stunt to make people think dinosaurs might still be alive in a distant jungle

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Excavating the River of Giants

Rare footage shows how paleontologist R.T. Bird diverted a river to excavate a set of Texas dinosaur tracks in 1938

Microraptor, covered in iridescent plumage

Microraptor Was a Glossy Dinosaur

The feathered, four-winged dinosaur had a glorious sheen

Newlyweds Scott and Amanda Peters inside the mouth of Cabazon Dino Park's Tyrannosaurus.

Dinosaur Sighting: The Most Dangerous Place for a Wedding

Two dinosaur fans decided to get married inside one of the world's most famous roadside dinosaurs

Terra Nova's dopey Carnotaurus. Despite being sold as a prehistoric extravaganza, the show never really delivered on the promise of fantastic dinosaurs.

Time for Terra Nova to Evolve or Go Extinct

The dinosaur-haunted drama has been cancelled. But could—and should—the show live on?

The chest cavity of Velociraptor MPC-D100/54. The white arrow indicates a broken rib, and the black arrows point to pterosaur bones preserved inside the dinosaur's skeleton.

A Dinosaur’s Pterosaur Lunch

Styracosaurus at the American Museum of Natural History

The Last Styracosaurus Standing

Within just a few years, three species of Styracosaurus were cut down to just one

Triceratops (left) and Torosaurus (right)

The Torosaurus Identity Crisis Continues

Was Torosaurus really just a grown-up Triceratops? A new paper says "no"

Possible postures of Triceratops

Did Triceratops Slouch or Stand Tall?

A new study investigates whether old "three-horned face" held its forelimbs straight down like other dinosaurs or waddled around with its elbows out

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Jetpacks and Dinosaurs

Orion: Dino Beatdown is another run-and-gun dinosaur shooter, with a little extra hardware to help gamers jump around the battlefield

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Dinosaur Robots Return with a Vengeance

A new concept album by MJ Hibbett & The Validators envisions an invasion of alien cyborg dinosaurs

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How to Make Sense of Dinosaur Variation

Paleontologist Jordan Mallon describes how he figured out how many Anchiceratops species actually existed

The known skeleton of Juratyrant (black outline) compared to the dinosaur Guanlong for size. The scale bar is one meter.

England’s Jurassic Tyrant

Meet the mysterious small predators that set the stage for the later rise of more imposing tyrants

A polka-dot Triceratops in Jordan, Montana

Dinosaur Sighting: Polka-Dot Triceratops

This week we meet a dinosaur that looks as if a clown exploded all over it

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Whose Tooth is That?

Smithsonian paleontologist Matthew Carrano explains how to identify dinosaurs from isolated teeth

A silhouette of the dinosaur Nemegtomaia barsboldi, indicating the dinosaur's bones and the nest it was sitting on. Much of the skeleton was lost to beetles.

When Beetles Ate Dinosaurs

Even the world's most formidable consumers eventually became food themselves

A very wrinkly dinosaur outside California's Jurupa Mountains Discovery Center

Dinosaur Sighting: Wrinkles

A reader spots what may be the wrinkliest dinosaur of all time

A pair of Tyrannosaurus restored in the act at Spain’s Jurassic Museum of Asturias

The Anatomy of Dinosaur Sex

Despite the rarity of direct evidence, paleontologists know quite a bit about dinosaur gonads

A restoration of Lambeosaurus magnicristatus, a dinosaur once thought to represent the male form of Lambeosaurus lambei, but now known to be a distinct species.

Intimate Secrets of Dinosaur Lives

Scientists are searching for dinosaur sex differences in features like size, ornamentation and bone structure—not the bits actually used during mating

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