DENVER — A team at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science is hard at work piecing together a “remarkably complete” set of Triceratops fossils.
A team of paleontologists and student interns discovered the Triceratops skull, lower jaws and neck during the museum’s annual fieldwork in the Hell Creek Formation near Marmath, North Dakota. According to the museum, the roughly 67-million-year-old dinosaur is one of the heaviest fossils ever collected by the museum, second only to its Stegosaurus in the “Prehistoric Journey” preparation lab.
Denver Museum of Nature & Science
Close-up of the exposed horn and fossil jacket encasing the Triceratops’ shield. Inscription reads: “If you can read this, it means our Triceratops dreams came true.”
“We brought a ginormous front loader out to collect this fossil, and when they weighed it in the field, it was 5.4 tons,” said Salvador Bastien, fossil preparator with the museum. “We’re down to somewhere between 7,000 and 8,000 pounds now. Just a light block that’s easy to roll around, but we were hoping for a much smaller fossil when we went up there, and, man, we just kept finding bone after bone after bone.”
Denver Museum of Nature & Science
Salvador Bastien, a fossil preparator and an excavation crew leader, pick axing at the dig site in North Dakota.
Even after trimming it down, Bastien said the team had to cut a hole in the museum’s wall to get the fossils to fit into the room.
Denver Museum of Nature & Science
Fossil Preparators Salvador Bastien and Natalie Toth in the parking lot of the Museum discussing logistics for moving the fossil off the trailer.
“We expect this dinosaur skull to be very three-dimensional, just like the one we have 3D printed right there,” Bastien said. “A lot of times, fossils are squished really flat, but based on looking sideways at the dimensions of this — what we call a fossil jacket — this is going to be a pretty blown-up three-dimensional skull.”
Maggy Wolanske
Fossil preparator Evan Tamez-Galvan said there is a lot of energy surrounding this discovery.
“I do feel that responsibility because there is such high hopes for it. So while it’s not on me how the fossil preserved itself, but it is on me to make sure that we take care of it, that we work… in a manner that makes sense as well, that we are being smart about our decisions about where to work, when to work,” Tamez-Galvan said.
Maggy Wolanske
The skull is expected to be 100% complete. Tamez-Galvan told Denver7 it should take their team about a year to work on this fossil.
For now, she’s enjoying every minute of working on this remarkable discovery.
“In terms of emotions, working on it, it’s very unreal,” Tamez-Galvan said. “Paleontology is not the easiest field to get in and stay in, and so the fact that I’ve been able to get in, stay in, and been trusted is such an incredible project, it’s like a very surreal kind of pinch myself sort of feeling.”
Maggy Wolanske
Sunday is a free day at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, where visitors can see the work firsthand and the process that goes into bringing these big bones to display.
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A rare juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex fossil found by three children during a family hike in the North Dakota Badlands nearly two years ago will soon be on display at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, the museum said Tuesday.
The unlikely discovery was made in July 2022 by brothers Jessin and Liam Fisher, their father Sam Fisher, and their cousin, Kaiden Madsen. Unsure of what his family had just stumbled upon, Sam reached out to an old high school friend, paleontologist Tyler Lyson, for help.
After obtaining an excavation permit from the Bureau of Land Management — which manages the land where the discovery was made — Lyson, the museum’s curator of paleontology, went out to North Dakota in 2023 with a crew and the children to excavate the fossil.
A family found a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex fossil in North Dakota’s Badlands in 2022. (clockwise from upper left) Sam Fisher, Emalynn Fisher, Danielle Fisher, Liam Fisher, Kaiden Madsen, and Jessin Fisher, pose with the field jacket after it was rolled into a helicopter net. Undated photo.
Tyler Lyson
When he went into the project, Lyson thought the dino may have been something more ordinary, he said in a video interview posted by the museum. However, when he uncovered the most diagnostic part of the fossil, the teeth, he said he knew the “trio of young fossil hunters” had found something really special.
“When we told everyone, the euphoria was amazing; just a remarkable, remarkable moment,” Lyson said. “I mean, it’s not every day that you find such an amazing dinosaur.”
Juvenile T. rex fossils are not an everyday find. This one, dubbed by the museum as the “Teen Rex,” is one of just four young T. rex fossils that have been found on Earth, Lyson said.
Chief fossil preparator Natalie Toth moves an Edmontosaurus annectens skull into its final place in the “Discovering Teen Rex” experience at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. May 2024.
Rick Wicker
“When you’re in a national park, you see deer and elk and moose, but you don’t see the mountain lions or the wolves,” Lyson said. “You don’t see those apex predators, because there just aren’t as many of them. So to find a T. rex at all, and to find one this complete, is truly special.”
While they haven’t completed the histology yet, Lyson said the dinosaur is estimated to have been between 12 and 14 years old. Lyson said it would have weighed about half as much as some of the most famous T. rex specimens.
Jessin, an aspiring paleontologist, told the museum he’s pretty pleased with his find — hoping it leads him down a path like Lyson — something the experienced vertebrate paleontologist is encouraging.
The area in North Dakota’s Badlands where three young children found a juvenile T-Rex skeleton in 2022. The skeleton was taken to the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. Undated photo.
Rick Wicker
“This is a big deal because of the story of discovery. It’s just an amazing, heartwarming story, where you have three kids out looking for fossils in the Badlands of North Dakota, and discovering the king of all, Tyrannosaurus rex,” Lyson said in his museum video.
The fossil will be on display starting June 21 in a temporary museum exhibit called “Discovering Teen Rex.” A documentary sharing the story of the boys’ discovery will also be shown at the museum’s Infinity Theater.
The world just had its hottest year ever recorded, and 2024 has already set a new heat record for the warmest January ever observed, according to the European Union’s climate change monitoring service Copernicus.
The service said that January 2024 had a global average air temperature of 13.14 degrees Celsius, or 55.65 degrees Fahrenheit. That temperature was 0.70 degrees Celsius above the 1991 to 2020 average for the month and 0.12 degrees Celsius above the last warmest January, in 2020.
It was also 1.66 degrees Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial average for the month.
Surface air temperature anomaly for January 2024 relative to the January average for the period 1991-2020. Data source: ERA5
Copernicus Climate Change Service/ECMWF
“2024 starts with another record-breaking month,” Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, said in a news release announcing the findings. “Not only is it the warmest January on record but we have also just experienced a 12-month period of more than 1.5°C above the pre-industrial reference period.”
“This far exceeds anything that is acceptable,” Bob Watson, a former chair of the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change, told CBS News partner network BBC News.
“Look what’s happened this year with only 1.5 degrees Celsius: We’ve seen floods, we’ve seen droughts, we’ve seen heatwaves and wildfires all over the world, and we’re starting to see less agricultural productivity and some problems with water quality and quantity,” Watson said.
A landmark U.N. report published in 2018 said the risks of extreme consequences of climate change would be much higher if global warming exceeded the 1.5 degree threshold. Most of the warming stems from the build-up of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere, largely emitted from the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal and oil.
While the news is a dire warning about the state of the planet, scientists said it would take multiple years of surpassing the 1.5-degree mark for the world to officially be considered in the new era of climate change associated with the threshold.
“This report does not mean that we will permanently exceed the 1.5C level specified in the Paris Agreement, which refers to long-term warming over many years,” World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said last year. “However, WMO is sounding the alarm that we will breach the 1.5C level on a temporary basis with increasing frequency.”
In December, climate negotiators from around the world agreed at COP28 that countries must transition away from fossil fuels. The deal aims to usher in that transition in a manner that achieves net zero greenhouse gas emissions over the next 26 years, in part by calling for the expanded use of renewable energy.
The plan, however, “includes cavernous loopholes that allow the United States and other fossil fuel producing countries to keep going on their expansion of fossil fuels,” Center for Biological Diversity energy justice director Jean Su told The Associated Press in December. “That’s a pretty deadly, fatal flaw in the text.”
Upon the news that January had marked yet another heat record, Burgess, with the EU’s Copernicus service, reiterated the call for limiting the use of fossil fuels, saying it’s essential to limit the rapid warming the world is experiencing.
“Rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are the only way to stop global temperatures increasing,” she said.
Dr. Sultan al-Jaber is the president of COP28, this year’s United Nations climate conference currently being held in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. Al-Jaber is also the CEO of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC).
The potential conflict of interest in al-Jaber’s roles has been put back under the microscope following the revelation of remarks he reportedly made on the role of fossil fuels as nations seek to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius — a primary goal under the Paris Agreement adopted at the COP climate conference in 2015.
“There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5,” al-Jaber said in an online event on Nov. 21, according to The Guardian, adding a pointed barb to the hosts that it would be impossible to stop burning fossil fuels and sustain economic development, “unless you want to take the world back into caves.”
Climate scientists and environmental advocates including former Vice President Al Gore were quick to condemn al-Jaber’s remarks.
“He should not be taken seriously. He’s protecting his profits and placing them in a higher priority than the survival of the human civilization,” Gore told the Reuters news agency.
His remarks also seemingly put him at odds with the United Nations and its secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, who told COP28 delegates on Friday: “The science is clear: The 1.5C limit is only possible if we ultimately stop burning all fossil fuels. Not reduce, not abate. Phase out, with a clear timeframe.”
Al-Jaber previously came under fire in November when the BBC obtained leaked documents showing he planned to use pre-conference meetings to discuss commercial oil and gas interests with representatives of other nations.
“Sultan Al Jaber claims his inside knowledge of the fossil fuel industry qualifies him to lead a crucial climate summit but it looks ever more like a fox is guarding the hen house,” Ann Harrison, Amnesty International’s climate advisor, said.
New York Fashion Week always comes with a bevy of stylish outfit inspiration, whether it’s coming from editors, influencers, stylists, runway collections, or celebrities. Attendees and designers alike work for weeks and even months to perfect what’s displayed during the week-long event, so of course, the resulting ensembles are often a huge success. But sometimes, style during fashion week can err a bit on the overtop side. And since my style sways more minimal than maximal, I always appreciate when someone debuts an outfit that whispers instead of screams.
One such person is Laura Harrier, who attended a NYFW kick-off party for Fossil wearing a deep-V, polo-neck LBD that featured breast pockets and a maxi hemline with a gold chain necklace and black boots. The look is just the sort I talk endlessly about to my friends and coworkers, swooning over the timeless appeal and sexy yet sophisticated elegance of it all. Luckily, it didn’t take me long to find an $89 similarly polo-neck black dress from Nordstrom’s in-house label Open Edit, a brand every editor keeps in their back pocket, that gives off a near-exact vibe to Harrier’s. And with NYFW still very much going strong, I simply have to have it to wear, like, tomorrow. Shop the LBD I’m overnighting for my own fashion-week events and more gorgeous black dresses for fall below.
A first-of-its-kind fossil of a mammal and a dinosaur from around 125 million years ago “locked in mortal combat” challenges the idea that dinosaurs ruled the land, researchers wrote in a study published Tuesday.
The new fossil, discovered on May 16, 2012, in China’s Liaoning Province, shows a mammal attacking a dinosaur about three times its size. The mammal, a carnivorous Repenomamus robustus, was the clear aggressor, researchers wrote in the journal Scientific Reports.
“The mammal died while biting two of the dinosaur’s left anterior dorsal ribs; its mandible plunges downward into the indurated sediment to firmly clasp the bones,” the study’s authors wrote.
The discovery of the two creatures is among the first evidence to show actual predatory behavior by a mammal on a dinosaur, Dr. Jordan Mallon, palaeobiologist with the Canadian Museum of Nature and co-author on the study said in a press release.
Repenomamus robustus is a badger-like animal that was among the largest mammals living during the Cretaceous period.
The dinosaur was identified as a Psittacosaurus, an herbivore about the size of a large dog.
Paleontologists had previously surmised Repenomamus preyed on dinosaurs because of fossilized bones found in the mammal’s stomach.
“The co-existence of these two animals is not new, but what’s new to science through this amazing fossil is the predatory behavior it shows,” Mallon said.
Illustration showing Repenomamus robustus as it attacks Psittacosaurus lujiatunensis before a volcanic debris flow buries them both, ca. 125 million years ago.
Michael W. Skrepnick courtesy Canadian Museum of Nature
Experts believe the attack was preserved when the two animals got caught in a volcanic flow. The area where the fossil was discovered has become known as “China’s Pompeii” because of the many fossils of animals that were buried en masse by mudslides and debris following one or more volcanic eruptions.
After the find, scientists worked to confirm the fossil was not a forgery. The researchers said the intertwined skeletons and the completeness of the skeletons suggest the find is legitimate and that the animals were not transported prior to burial.
Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved in the research, tweeted about the find, suggesting it was like Wile E. Coyote catching the roadrunner. He said the find turns “the old story of dinosaur dominance on its head.”
A 9-year-old girl in Maryland recently made the discovery of a lifetime: a tooth as big as her hand from a megalodon, a now-extinct shark species. Jan Crawford shares more.
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Jersey City — New Jersey officials announced a lawsuit Tuesday against five oil and gas companies and a petroleum trade organization, alleging they had known for decades about the harmful impact of fossil fuels on climate change but instead deceived the public about that link. Attorney General Matthew Platkin and the state’s consumer affairs division and environmental protection department said the suit filed Tuesday in Superior Court in Mercer County names Exxon Mobil Corp., Shell Oil Co. Chevron Corp., BP, ConocoPhillips, and the American Petroleum Institute trade group of which all are members.
The lawsuit alleges that the defendants failed to warn the public about the role of fossil fuels in climate change and instead “launched public-relations campaigns to sow doubts about the existence, causes, and effects of climate change.”
“Based on their own research, these companies understood decades ago that their products were causing climate change and would have devastating environmental impacts down the road,” Platkin said in a statement. “They went to great lengths to hide the truth and mislead the people of New Jersey, and the world.”
With the lawsuit, New Jersey has joined more than two dozen other U.S. cities, counties and states trying to claim compensation from big oil and gas companies for their alleged roles in climate change-related environmental damage.
As CBS News’ Ben Tracy reported in April, the lawsuits are largely modeled after the “Big Tobacco” cases of the 1990s, which eventually saw cigarette makers agreed to pay hundreds of billions of dollars to compensate states for the costs of tobacco-related illnesses, and to curb their marketing to young people.
Shawn LaTourette, New Jersey’s environmental protection commissioner, called the state “ground zero” for some of the worst impacts of climate change. The commissioner added that the Garden State’s communities and environment “are continually recovering from extreme heat, furious storms, and devastating floods.”
The suit comes shortly before the 10th anniversary of Superstorm Sandy, which devastated large parts of New Jersey and New York City. The announcement of the suit was made at Liberty State Park in Jersey City, which was inundated by floodwater from the storm.
The suit seeks civil penalties and damages, including for damage to natural resources such as wetlands, alleging that taxpayers will have to pay billions of dollars to protect communities from rising sea levels, deadlier storms, and other harmful effects and arguing that those costs should be paid by the defendants.
The Shell Group said in a statement that its position on climate change “has been a matter of public record for decades” and the company agreed action was needed and it was playing its part “by addressing our own emissions and helping customers to reduce theirs.”
“As the energy system evolves, so will our business, to provide the mix of products that our customers need and extend the economic and social benefits of energy access to everyone,” the company said. Shell said, however, that “a truly collaborative, society-wide approach” was required and the courtroom was not “the right venue.” Instead, the company said, “smart policy from government, supported by action from all business sectors, including ours, and from civil society, is the appropriate way to reach solutions and drive progress.”
Exxon Mobil spokesperson Casey Norton said such legal proceedings “waste millions of dollars of taxpayer money and do nothing to advance meaningful actions that reduce the risks of climate change.” Norton said the company would “continue to invest in efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while meeting society’s growing demand for energy.”
Chevron called the legal action “a distraction from the serious problem of global climate change, not an attempt to find a real solution.” A representative called it an attempt “to punish a select group of energy companies for a problem that is the result of worldwide conduct stretching back to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.” The company called the claims asserted “legally and factually meritless” and vowed “to demonstrate that in court” while continuing to work the public and private sectors “to craft real solutions to global climate change.”
An aerial view of the Phillips 66 oil refinery in Linden, New Jersey, May 11, 2022.
Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency/Getty
Representatives of BP and ConocoPhillips declined comment. A message seeking comment for this story was also sent to the Manufacturers’ Accountability Project trade organization, an attorney for which told CBS News in April that “fighting climate change requires policymaking, not lawsuits.”
“This is not an issue of who knew what or when, or who said what and when,” said the attorney, Phil Goldberg. “The federal government has had the very same information that they’re saying that the energy companies had going back to the 1960s and ’70s and ’80s. The question is, what we’re gonna do about it today?”
Richard Lazarus, an environmental law professor at Harvard, told CBS News that while U.S. states and cities have been “left with the problem” caused by the federal government’s failure to pass laws protecting the environment, the legal battle for accountability would likely need to coalesce, and even then, it could be an uphill battle.
“The scope of the problem is one that requires, really, a national approach,” he told Tracy in April. “The challenge will be causation – to prove that their [fossil fuel companies] fraudulent behavior is what prevented the United States from passing the laws we needed to reduce those greenhouse gas emissions.”
An almost-perfect fossil of a 180-million-year-old reptile was discovered in a drained reservoir in England. As Charlie D’Agata reports, the rare find of the bones of a “Sea Dragon” that is over 33-feet long may help scientists learn about why these beasts failed to adapt to a changing climate.
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