Paleontology, books and other stuff.
Ekaterina (or Yekaterina) Vladimirovna Lermontova was born on February 11, 1889, in Saint Petersburg, Russia, into a distinguished intellectual family. Her lineage included the romantic poet Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov (1814–1841) and the chemist Julia Vsevolodovna Lermontova (1846–1919), the first Russian woman to earn a doctorate in chemistry. In the 19th century, women’s access to higher [ ]
Almost 100 million years ago, the Kokorkom Desert stretched across the region now occupied by the provinces of Río Negro and Neuquén in Argentina; it was a vast system of mobile dunes in a hot and arid climate, shaped by the wind. This fossil-rich zone, which is part of La Buitrera, discovered and studied over [ ]
On 20 February 1824, William Buckland published the first formal description of a giant carnivorous animal, the Megalosaurus. Just a year later, in 1825, the Iguanodon officially entered the scientific literature, followed by the description of the Hylaeosaurus in 1833. The famous Victorian anatomist Richard Owen erected the clade Dinosauria using these three taxa and [ ]
Brazil has yielded some of the most informative Spinosauridae specimens known to date, including Irritator challengeri, Angaturama limai, and Oxalaia quilombensis, which have significantly contributed to ongoing discussions on the biogeography and evolutionary transitions within the clade. Irritator challengeri, from the Romualdo Member of the Santana Formation (Lower Cretaceous, Aptian–Albian) in…
On March 24, 1976, Argentina’s armed forces took control of the government. The coup was part of Operation Condor, a coordinated system of political repression between South American dictatorships, with the support of the United States, to eliminate leftist opposition and consolidate authoritarian regimes throughout the region. Margarita Toro’s forced exile in 1976 was [ ]
Alvarezsauridae represents a distinctive lineage of small-bodied theropod dinosaurs, mainly known from the Jurassic to Cretaceous period of Asia and South America. Initially interpreted as flightless stem birds, the clade is characterized by a unique suite of skeletal adaptations, including a lightly constructed skull with numerous small teeth confined to the anterior snout, and short [ ]
The Spinosauridae comprises a distinctive clade of large, tetanuran theropods known from the Berriasian to the Cenomanian periods in Africa, South America, Europe, and Asia. This group is characterized by an elongated, narrow skull, robust forelimbs equipped with a hooked thumb claw, and elongate neural spines that likely supported a dorsal sail. The ecology of [ ]
Fascism is spreading. We face an unprecedented era of scienticide, genocide, and normalized cruelty. Yet, as Milan Kundera reminds us, “Man’s struggle against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting” (The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, 1979). Against this dystopian backdrop, researchers worldwide are leading a vital resistance: the fight to preserve and advance [ ]
London, December 24th. “…I am glad that you are saving all your kisses for me when I come. By that time I shall be starving for kisses – so terribly hungry that you must kiss me very gently at first, or I will die – as a too hungry man must be fed very little [ ]
Lagerpetids were small to medium-sized (less than 1 m long), cursorial, non-volant reptiles that lived during the Middle to Upper Triassic periods in Argentina, Brazil, Madagascar, and North America. The recognition of lagerpetids as the sister taxon to pterosaurs provides clues to study the origin of Pterosauria, its specialized body plan, and its flying abilities. [ ]