Experts estimate that a new species of dinosaur is named every two weeks. While there is debate about whether these are all new species or, in some cases, previously discovered species being given new names, it's clear that there are a lot of dinosaur fossils out there. Scientists are digging them up and identifying them at a ferocious pace. As Riley Black, paleontologist and science writer, put it in a 2019 article in The New Scientist, we are in a "golden era of dinosaur discovery."
Here are a few — just a few — of the exciting finds so far in this year of the golden era.
(Credit:Jorge Gonzalez)CC BY-NC Iani Smithi
Iani smithi was a big-jawed, plant-eating dinosaur that lived almost 99 million years ago in the mid-Cretaceous. It was a tough time to be alive. Increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide were causing warmer temperatures and higher sea levels. ...
