Latest articles by Julio Lacerda

fossils
about 4 years ago by Julio Lacerda

What would you get if you mixed a dog and a bear?

Amphicyonids were a family of carnivores that lived in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa for about 45 million years. They were part of a group of mammals called “Caniformia”, which includes animals such as seals, raccoons, weasels, skunks, otters, bears and dogs. The similarities of Amphicyonids and these last two are what gave them the colloquial name of “bear-dogs”.
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fossils
about 4 years ago by Pete Buchholz

The giant troodontid dinosaurs of Alaska

North America's Late Cretaceous dinosaur fauna is familiar and well studied. The dinosaurs unearthed from the North Slope of Alaska are at once familiar, but also unique, and preserve evidence of troodontids twice the size of their contemporaries from Montana and Alberta.
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fossils
about 4 years ago by Julio Lacerda

Extinct hoofed animals looked like gorilla-horse hybrids

Imagine that you are walking through a forest and see a great beast among the trees. It has a horse-like face, a big belly, short hoofed back legs and much longer arms with sharp claws on its “hands”. What you’re seeing is not a mythological creature or a hybrid monster, it’s an extinct chalicothere.
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fossils
over 4 years ago by Vasika Udurawane

Dinosaurs south of the border

For millions of years, dinosaurs dominated the conifer forests and plains of ancient Mexico. They were also on ground zero during the earth-shattering cataclysm that ended their 165-million-year reign.
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fossils
over 4 years ago by Carlos Albuquerque

Pleurosaurus, the Jurassic marine-dwelling relative of the tuatara

Of all the prehistoric reptile groups, few are given as much disservice as the sphenodonts. Currently represented only by New Zealand’s iconic tuatara, these animals were once widespread, living on most continents. Some, like Homoeosaurus, are even a darling of prehistory books, almost always portrayed as tuatara clones.
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Julio
Lacerda

Staff Artist and Writer