The remains of a Balaur bondoc, a relative of the Velociraptor, has been found in Romania. It is the first-meat-eating dinosaur to be describe which live in Europe during the final 60 million years of the dinosaurs.

“Balaur might be one of the largest predators in this ecosystem because not even a big tooth has been found in Romania after over a hundred years of research,” paleontologist Zoltan Csiki of the University of Bucharest in Romania said in a press release. Csiki is the lead researcher of the discovery announced Aug. 30 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The new dinosaur was about 6 to 7 feet long. It had functional big toes with large claws — presumably for slashing prey — in addition to a claw on the second toe that is typical of the group of dinosaurs. Its feet and legs were short and stocky, with bones fused together, and large muscle attachment areas on its pelvis, indicating the dinosaur was built for strength over speed. Its hands were atrophied, so Balaur likely used its feet rather than its hands to grasp prey.

“Its anatomy shows that it probably hunted in a different way than its less stocky relatives,” said paleontologist Stephan Brusatte of Columbia University in a press release. “Compared to Velociraptor, Balaur was probably more of a kick boxer than a sprinter, and it might have been able to take down larger animals than itself, as many carnivores do today.”

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A new study is suggesting that two meteorite impacts killed off the dinosaurs, not one.

Previously, scientists had identified a huge impact crater in the Gulf of Mexico as the event that spelled doom for the dinosaurs.

Now evidence for a second impact in Ukraine has been uncovered.

This raises the possibility that the Earth may have been bombarded by a whole shower of meteorites.

The new findings are published in the journal Geology by a team lead by Professor David Jolley of Aberdeen University.

When first proposed in 1980, the idea that a meteorite impact had killed the dinosaurs proved hugely controversial. Later, the discovery of the Chicxulub Crater in the Gulf of Mexico, US, was hailed as “the smoking gun” that confirmed the theory.

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A new study is suggesting that the Isle of Wight is home to the one of the richest sources of “pick’n'mix” dinosaurs remains in the world.

Weather conditions 130 million years ago have been suggested as one reason why thousands of small teeth and bones lie buried alongside bigger fossils.

Portsmouth University palaeontologist Dr Steve Sweetman and Dr Allan Insole from Bristol University led the study.

Dr Sweetman said remains were “unique” to the island.

The research has been published in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.

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A cache of dinosaur bones have been found during the construction of a sewer in Edmonton, Alberta.

“Any find like this at a new location adds information to our growing data set,” said Mr Neuman. “It expands our central knowledge of dinosaurs in Alberta.”

“One of the things that makes this find significant is that the crews are out there digging holes frequently, and it’s really nice to know they are acting as good stewards of the material and bringing it to our attention when they find it.”

Mr Neuman said workers will now continue to dig out bones still stuck inside the walls of the tunnel.

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Palaeontologists John Scannella and Jack Horner are presenting the case that the triceratops and it’s relative the torosaurus, despite the different skulls, are actually the same species in different stages of life.

Triceratops had three facial horns and a short, thick neck-frill with a saw-toothed edge. Torosaurus also had three horns, though at different angles, and a much longer, thinner, smooth-edged frill with two large holes in it. So it’s not surprising that Othniel Marsh, who discovered both in the late 1800s, considered them to be separate species.

Now Scannella and Horner say that triceratops is merely the juvenile form of torosaurus. As the animal aged, its horns changed shape and orientation and its frill became longer, thinner and less jagged. Finally it became fenestrated, producing the classic torosaurus form (see diagram, right).

This extreme shape-shifting was possible because the bone tissue in the frill and horns stayed immature, spongy and riddled with blood vessels, never fully hardening into solid bone as happens in most animals during early adulthood. The only modern animal known to do anything similar is the cassowary, descended from the dinosaurs, which develops a large spongy crest when its skull is about 80 per cent fully grown.

Shape-shifting continued throughout these dinosaurs’ lives, Scannella says. “Even in the most mature specimens that we’ve examined, there is evidence that the skull was still undergoing dramatic changes at the time of death.”

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