Dinosaurs were heavy breathers:

http://news.discovery.com/animals/di...mkcpgn=rssnws1

You beat me to it - some interesting research and here is another link and the paper on the topic.

http://phys.org/news/2014-10-dinosau...led-brain.html

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...35FD9E.f01t03?

A couple of very nice articles on the origin of mammalian fur and why right now is the golden age of dinosaur discovery.

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic....e-root-of-fur/

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/...covery/5809810

Fossil evidence that an Allosaur got thagomized by a stegosaur in a predation event and eventually died from the massive damage inflicted.

This is a thagomizer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thagomizer

Painful is not the word.

Stegosaurs need a lot more love in my opinion - they seem to have gone out of fashion in the popular imagination recently but why I have no idea as they were a really spectacular and varied group of dinosaurs.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/s...ling-machines/

http://www.natureworldnews.com/artic...-necessary.htm

http://phys.org/news/2014-10-kung-fu-stegosaur.html

The paper on Deinocheirus mirificus is finally out and so after almost 50 years the mystery of the 'Unusual horrible hand' is now completely solved.

I have wrote on this remarkable theropod before earlier in this thread but now this paper totally completes the picture - a gigantic ornithomimid with enormous arms and claws, a huge camel like hump, a horses's head, a duck's beak and hoofs on it's hind legs.

What a truly unusual and magnificent species this really was - an omnivore almost as large as a fully grown Tyrannosaurus rex.

The net will be awash with news stories about this great beast - but here are just a few.

The full podcast in Nature is excellent and explains the history, the new specimens and the final reconstruction of the dinosaur.

The golden age of palaeontology continues.

http://www.nature.com/news/fossils-r...nosaur-1.16203

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...ture13874.html

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic....terrible-hand/

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...inosaur-video/

http://www.natureworldnews.com/artic...ng-mystery.htm

http://news.discovery.com/animals/di...le-1410221.htm

http://www.latimes.com/science/scien...022-story.html

I saw this in today's i newspaper. It is a fascinating beast and it looks like the dinosaur equivalent of Australia's platypus which is also my cue to post this cartoon: http://tinypic.com/r/e7xwds/8

Audio dino link: http://www.nature.com/nature/podcast/

Yes it has been a really spectacular year for palaeontology.

With two major long-standing dinosaur mysteries finally solved (amongst many other spectacular finds like the gigantic Titanosaur that David Attenborough is making a new BBC documentary on - the one with the 2.4 metre femur).

The actual life appearance of Spinosaurus and Deinocheirus - two totally astonishing and unique theropods.

More on Deinocheirus and then a beautiful new illustration of the oddball giant theropod by John Conway.

http://uofa.ualberta.ca/news-and-eve...olian-dinosaur

http://johnconway.co/images/medium/d...mirificus.jpeg

And Conway's version of T.rex is interesting as well - very dignified.

http://johnconway.co/images/medium/t...aurus-rex.jpeg

A nice article on Stegoceras respiration, physiology and the function of turbinates in the little Pachycephalosaur ('bonehead dinosaur') along with two short videos.

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic....oses-are-cool/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMzKvB0J8V0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3_q-HKkjQ0

And a little discussion on palaeopathology and the fossil evidence for dinosaur combat.

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the...inosaur-brawls

Found that very interesting Keyser, whether fur evolved for insulation or sensory purposes....

Yes it's not a topic that comes up very often.

The famous genus of synapsid - Dimetrodon - battled sharks.

http://www.livescience.com/48387-per...te-sharks.html

A series of articles on this weeks Deinocheirus paper are on the superb Therapoda blogspot (just click translate).

http://theropoda.blogspot.co.uk/

They have some really excellent images of the fossils themselves.

And look at these beautifully realistic portraits of this magnificent species.

http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs70/i/20...ac-d843u75.jpg

http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs70/i/20...ro-d844v4o.jpg

This is very nice as well.

http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs70/i/20...ed-d8448pl.jpg

It's Cambrian arthropod time...tonight!

Today 21:30
BBC Radio 4

Richard Fortey found his first trilobite fossil when he was 14 years old and he spent the rest of his career discovering hundreds more, previously unknown to science. Professor of Palaeontology at the Natural History Museum, he talks to Jim Al-Khalili about why these arthropods, joint-legged creatures which look a bit like woodlice and roamed the ancient oceans for almost 300 million years, are so important for helping us to understand the evolution of life on our planet.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04mcbhp

Thanks for that.

Gigantism in Palaeozoic invertebrates.

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic....c-revolutions/

And a size comparison chart of the biggest species of Eurypterids ('sea-scorpions') - the largest and most formidable arthropods ever to live.

http://www.prehistoric-wildlife.com/...comparison.jpg

A couple of articles - why dinosaurs evolved feathers originally for display and communication purposes and one on a new burrowing dinosaurs exhibit.

http://phys.org/news/2014-10-dinosau...hers.html#nRlv

http://phys.org/news/2014-10-burrowi...-featured.html

Latest article on Theropoda with a beautiful skeletal size comparison of the two massive oddball theropods (Spinosaurus, Deinocheirus) whose mysterious appearances have finally been solved this year after decades of speculation.

http://theropoda.blogspot.co.uk/2014...pisodio-5.html

Toothed birds.

http://qilong.wordpress.com/2014/10/27/toothed-birds/

More on Deinocheirus and some lovely reconstructions of the great oddball theropod.

http://www.oia.hokudai.ac.jp/blog/20...ger-an-enigma/

http://deviantdinosaurs.deviantart.c...icus-491807877

http://olorotitan.deviantart.com/art...ions-490524321

http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs71/i/20...00-d84d1r3.jpg

Another great article from Darren Naish at Tetrapod Zoology.

This time on the mighty triassic predatory aquatic reptiles the Phytosaurs (which closely resembled but were not crocodilians).

No doubt you have never even heard of them but the very largest species were up to 12 or 13 metres long (the Smilosuchus genus for example) and were true prehistoric monsters.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/...osaurs-part-i/

And here are a couple of nice images of a model of a large Phytosaur (unsure of the species but it does give you an idea of just how vast some were).

http://www.ournakedaustralia.com.au/...8-1024x768.jpg

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jH61cY1hvJ.../phytosaur.jpg

The skull of Smilosuchus.

https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7002/6...c25797c8_z.jpg

Another gigantic examples was Leptosuchus gregorii and here is a 1.5 metre skull - very robust indeed which suggests a vastly powerful bite to me.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi.../Machaer-3.JPG

There is quite a lot on these very formidable but little known (by the public) animals on the web.

It's dino time...coming to a TV screen near you very shortly:

Dinosaurs: The Hunt for Life
The hunt for life within the long-dead bones of dinosaurs may sound like the stuff of Hollywood fantasy - but one woman has found traces of life within the fossilised bones of a T rex. Dr Mary Schweitzer has seen the remains of red blood cells and touched the soft tissue of an animal that died 68 million years ago. Most excitingly of all, she believes she may just have found signs of DNA. Her work is revolutionising our understanding of these iconic beasts.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b039grrx

Start time: 8pm this very evening on BBC Four.

Great stuff TelevisionUser - if you have not seen it before you will really enjoy the programme - it was a Horizon special originally from 2013 on BBC2.

Thanks for reminding me and I would recommend it to any dino-fans on here.

It was actually quite good and it confirmed the dinosaur-bird link. I think there's pretty much zero chance of a fragmented complete dinosaur genome being found (let alone an intact complete genome!) but even isolated genetic material could be usefully compared with modern bird DNA although I think even that modest step is a long shot.

Birds may have outsurvived dinosaurs because of their egg-shapes:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-29895683

Yes sadly we are never going to have a real Jurassic Park (I am trying to forget the f*****g appalling JP3 and the bullshit upcoming film which has totally ignored all the vast new body of knowledge about dinosaurs - no feathers for a start - ridiculous).

A superb basal Ichthyosaur has been discovered and why Hadrosaurs were not such easy prey for Tyrannosaurs as they might first appear.

http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2...r-got-its-fins

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...ience-fossils/

http://canadajournal.net/science/din...dy-18688-2014/

http://news.discovery.com/animals/di...ted-141105.htm

http://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/plant...hers-1.2088593

Plenty of good stuff this week and here are just a few of the latest stories.

Possible physical limitations on the upper size limit for flying Pterosaurs (the problem seems not to be staying in the air but the enormous forces required for the 'quadrupedal launch' that these remarkable animals used to get into the sky).

http://phys.org/news/2014-11-tricky-...-grounded.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/s...rodactyl-size/

The heaviest venomous snake in history is confirmed.

http://www.livescience.com/48629-big...ils-found.html

Finally a closer look at Archaeopteryx.

http://phys.org/news/2014-11-deeper-ancient-wing.html

Two that particularly caught my eye today along with the icthyosaur one mentioned above were:

The dog-sized Cretaceous beaver-like mammal Vintana sertichi
"Ancient skull opens new window on mammal evolution"
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articl...06/4122052.htm

"Insects evolved flight as plants grew taller"
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articl...07/4121879.htm

thought that was a typo

as you were....