Blog Carnival #27: Mammoths, Stegosaur Wars, Shrink-Wrapped Dinosaur Syndrome and More…

March of the Mammoths: How do you draw a woolly mammoth? Peter Bond walks us through his step-by-step process, and the final version stomped its way over to the ART Evolved elephant gallery. Woolly mammoths dominate the assemblage, but I was glad to see some of my shovel-tusked favorites, like Amebelodon, in there, too.

Everything You Wanted to Know About the Triassic (But Were Afraid to Ask): I have always felt a bit bad for the Triassic. Despite being an important period of change in life's history, it just doesn't enjoy the same popularity as the dinosaur-dominated Jurassic and Cretaceous. Nonetheless, our understanding of Triassic life is rapidly increasing, and Chinleana's Bill Parker has put together an extensive list of academic papers about the Triassic published in 2010. Time to start reading.

A Scrappy Pterosaur: In an Archosaur Musings guest post, paleontologist Victoria Arbour recounts how she discovered and described the first-known pterosaur from British Columbia, Gwawinapterus.

You've Got Something in Your Teeth, There: What did ammonites eat for breakfast? Find out at Everything Dinosaur.

One Stegosaur Special, Please: We had a look at the special Swiss Journal of Geoscience stegosaur issue a few months ago (Part I, II, III, IV, V), but Darren Naish of Tetrapod Zoology has offered his own opinions and insights into the new research on the spiky, plated dinosaurs. Check out his take on the Stegosaur Wars, Kentrosaurus posture, and how stegosaurs went about making more stegosaurs (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

What is it?: Over at Ediacaran, paleontologist Chris Nedin goes on a highly-informative tear about enigmatic animal fossils said to be 770 million years old. Add that to two follow-up posts about other fossil mysteries, and you'll see why the early history of life is so difficult to study!

That's a Mating Display if Ever I Saw One: What would the giant Sauroposeidon have looked like in life? SV-POW!'s Matt Wedel uses a restoration by Brian Engh to dive into the soft-tissue anatomy of this dinosaur and explain how to avoid "shrink-wrapped dinosaur syndrome."

Jurassic Classics: As much time as I spend on this blog nitpicking about dinosaur restorations, I have to admit that I have a soft-spot for drab-colored, anatomically weird, vintage dinosaurs. Those are the dinosaurs I grew up with. If you have an affinity for horribly wrong dinosaurs, too, make sure you check out David Orr's vintage dinosaur art linkfest at Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs.

Godzilla and Friends: Speaking of disfigured dinosaurs, all this week Monster Brains is featuring posters from all the Godzilla films, as well as those from related man-in-suit monster epics (Rodan, Gappa, Gamera, the Space Amoeba, etc., etc., etc.)

Riley Black | | READ MORE

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.