News
December 7, 2000: Dinosaur Cursors For Windows
If you use Windows 95/98/NT and Internet Explorer 4 or greater My Comet Cursor has dinosaur cursors for you!
May 17, 2000: What's Your State Dinosaur?
You probably know your state's flag and flower, but what's your state's fossil? Virtually every state has a state fossil, but only thirteen are dinosaurs. Start writing letters! And can you name the three states where no dinosaur fossils have ever been discovered? Okay, Hawaii is obvious, but the other two may surprise you. Read all about it at Dinosaur Interplanetary Gazette's The Sort of Official State Dinosaur Page.
April 29, 2000: Dinosaur Heart Studied
Scientists made CT scans of a lump of iron-rich stone found inside the rib cage of a 66 million year old Thescelosaurus and were able to image a four-chambered, single-aorta heart. This heart is much more similar to modern birds than modern crocodiles, providing fuel to both central dino-debates: whether dinos were cold-blooded or warm-blooded and wheter or not birds are descended from dinosaurs. But perhaps the second aorta was not preserved when sand filled the chest cavity and preserved the heart's structure? Hopefully more fossils will be studied with this technique, shedding light on many questions that can only be answered by learning about soft-tissues not usually preserved.
Read all about it and see a diagram comparing the dinosaurs heart to a crocodile's at <http://www.newscientist.com/news/news_223628.html>.
April 17, 2000: Back in Print!
One less thing is wrong with the world: you can once again buy 109 full-color cards, four plastic dinos, and a dino-die in Dino Hunt. Adults and children can have fun together without either age-group being bored. You can even Click here to order!
April 7, 2000: National Geographic Confirms Archaeoraptor Mistake
Read all about it at: <http://dml.cmnh.org/2000Apr/msg00174.html>.
March 15, 2000: Zoom Dinosaurs
Zoom Dinosaurs is a comprehensive on-line hypertext book about dinosaurs designed for students of all ages. Is easy-to-use structure allows readers to start at a basic level on each topic and progress more advanced information.
March 10, 2000: Largest Carnivorous Dinosaur
More from the Patagonian desert: a clutch of six carnivores of a previously unknown species. The unnamed creature hasn't been named or fully studied, but it may have been as much as 45 feet long, larger than Giganotosaurus (41 feet) or T. Rex (40 feet). Additionally, scientists are suggesting that finding the bones together suggests the animals may have hunted in packs. That would certainly give Dino Hunters a challenge! You can read more on CNN or MSNBC.
March 6, 2000: "Dinosaur" From Disney Opens May 19
There's a web page, of course. The dinosaurs will talk in this film, as shown in the new third trailer, viewable on-line . . .
February 20, 2000: Largest Yet Dinosaur Eggs
South Korean Paleontologists have announced finding a clutch of twenty eggs measuring sixteen inches from end to end. Check out the full story from the BBC
February 19, 2000: Dino Hunt Available Again in April!
The booster packs have always been available, but the boxed set ran out a while back. Sadly no new cards (keep those cards and letters coming!), but if you don't have your own set or need some for nephews and nieces, they're coming back in April.
February 8, 2000: Archaeoraptor Is A Hoax
Featured last year in National Geographic, Archaeoraptor liaoningensis was supposed to be an evolutionary link between theropods and birds. After months of study it was proclaimed a new species last fall, only to be proved a hoax a few weeks later. Apparently it had been cobbled together from two different animals. Luckily, it was found out before much damage was done – no other work had been based on its classification. The Sydney Morning Herald's article High-flying dinosaur's wings clipped provides a good synopsis. USA Today also has a story with a potentially misleading headline: Dinosaur-bird link smashed in fossil flap. While the Archaeoraptor is certainly no longer a bird-dinosaur link, it was not around long enough to become part of the bird-dinosaur debate, which continues unabated. Two other apparently feathered theropods, Sinornithosaurus (1996) and Beipiaosaurus (1997), continue to support the theory that birds are descended from dinosaurs. Another story, Scientist Disputes China Fossil points out that each half of the Archaeoraptor provides new information, so there may still be something new here . . .
February 5, 2000: Ooo, Look At The Cute Widdle Dinosaur
A team of amateur paleontologists has made a unique discovery: the fossil of a young Tyrannosaurus rex. They call him Tinker, and they're slowly putting him back together in their Texas Hill Country lab. Here's the Dallas Morning News story, and here's Tinker's own website.
January 27, 2000: Dinosaur Artist Link Index
The The Dinosaur Interplanetary Gazette ("The Ultimate Online Dinosaur Magazine") has produced a sizeable index of dinosaur artist and gallery web pages. Definitely a starting point for many surfing sessions. Check their Dinosaur Artist Links.
January 20, 2000: Paleo Map Project
If you're trying to understand the postions of the continents and oceans during the time of Dino Hunt, check out thePaleo Map Project.
January 19, 2000: Dinosaur Screensaver for Macintosh and Windows
The Walking with Dinosaurs project at the BBC has produced free dinosaur screensavers for Windows and Macintosh computers. Check them out at <http://search.bbc.co.uk/dinosaurs/games/screen_saver.shtml>, and the whole page is worth a look while you're there.
December 31, 1999: Paleo Awards
Since everyone seems to be preparing their ____ of the Millenium Lists, Steve Brusatte put together a panel of 22 experts and had them vote for the paleontology find of the year, decade, century, and millenium. Check out <http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Galaxy/8152/paleoawards.html> and see what they thought.
December 17, 2000: Sauroposeidon News Story
The BBC has a good page on Sauroposeidon with diagrams and the full story on its discovery at <http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_503000/503682.stm>.
November 11, 1999: Jobaria Tiguidensis – Yet Another Sauropod
Recent discoveries of very large, very old, and very scary dinosaurs make it difficult for the new finds to make a splash, but Jobaria is still worth consideration. This 20-ton, 70 foot long sauropod lived in Niger 135 million years ago, and was announced today by a team from the University of Chicago.
One thing Jobaria does have is its own web site, and a pretty spiffy one at that: <http://www.jobaria.org/>.
November 3, 1999: New Largest Dinosaur – Sauroposeidon
Paleontologists in Oklahoma have found four and five foot long vertabrae belonging to a new species named Sauroposeidon Porteles, the tallest and possibly largest dinosaur yet known. The forty foot neck on this creature is also a new record. Its head reached sixty feet in height, helping it consume a ton of plant material per day. Living 110 million years ago in the Early Cretaceous, scientists believe this "giraffe-like" creature weighed in at sixty tons.
October 21, 1999: New Oldest Dinosaurs Discovered in Madagascar
Local boys in Madagascar found a trove of fossils including a couple of jaw bones from early Prosauropods, and circumstantial evidence shows them to be 230 million years old making them the oldest known dinosaurs. Scientists examining the fossils have said they are of "exquisite quality," probably coming from kangaroo-sized animals.
Other animals at the site include five new early species of synapsids – the reptillian ancestos of mammals. This site may yield a lot of information about a time when both dinosaurs and mammallian ancestors were changing rapidly.
No names have been announced, but scientists have said that the boys names will be used in naming some of the many new animals in the fossil bed they found.
September 15, 1999: Sue is Online!
Sue, the largest and most complete of the twenty three T. Rex ever found, has her own web page, complete with live web cam of the preparation, FAQ, schedule of events, and image gallery featuring the fossil preparation process. Another must see: <http://www.fmnh.org/sue/>
September 14, 1999: Walking With Dinosaurs, The Web Site
This new six-part BBC documentary won't show in the US until sometime in 2000, but you can visit the very, very nice web page now. A must-see at: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/dinosaurs/>
September 13, 1999: Dinosaur Disaster
Ten years of digging near Shell, Wyoming have convinced paleontologists that the "large pileup of dinosaur bodies" may be the result of a natural catastrophe. Normally the remains of a few dinosaurs may be found together when rivers or pools formed "traps" where bodies collected and were covered with sediment before they were completely decayed, but this site has revealed dozens of individuals and there may be hundreds. The site is not precisely dated yet, but is reported as being over 140 million years old. Read all about it at <http://www.sltrib.com/09161999/science/24135.htm>.
September 6, 1999: Dino Tracks Found In The Yukon!
This find reported on CNN is only the second dinosaur find in the Yukon territory, the previous find being three bone fragments. These 65 million year old tracks, along with the finds earlier this year in Argentina and Antarctica, remind us that when dinosaurs "ruled the Earth," they ruled all of it!
July 29, 1999: Dino Jagd! English Translation Of The German Edition Rules
You may have heard there were some changes to Dino Hunt for the German market, now we have an English translation of the German edition rules! The most significant difference is the game board. You can read them at: <http://www.sjgames.com/dinohunt/dino_jagd.html>.
July 20, 1999: Another Antarctic Dinosaur
Paleontological discoveries in Antarctica are particularly rare because of the conditions necessary for fossils to be preserved are unlikely in the small part of Antarctica that isn't permanently covered with snow and ice. But in February pieces of a thigh and shin bone from a four meter herbivourous relative of Iguanadon were found on the tip of Antarctica's penninsula. This is only the fifth dinosaur found in Antarctica (all herbivores so far), but it gives us strong evidence that Argentina and Antarctica were connected during the age of dinosaurs, and that dinosaurs may have been able to adapt to different types of climates, such as the Antarctic climate of the time where average water temperature ranged from 50 to 55 degrees Fahrenheit.
July 12, 1999: World's Largest Dinosaur Display?
Submitted to the Guinness people is the 134 foot long reconstructed Seismosaurus, 50 feet longer than the next longest dinosaur display, and 33 feet longer than the blue whale at the Smithsonian. In August it will be disassembled to travel to Chicago for DinoFest 2000, and after that it, too, will head to the Smithsonian.
July 7, 1999: ABC Orders Dinotopia Miniseries
ABC plans to air a six-part miniseries in May 2001 based on the first two books in James Gurney's illustrated series Dinotopia, according to Variety.
The books center around a utopian island where talking dinosaurs and humans live in peace and harmony.
The ABC series is being developed by Hallmark Entertainment, with a reported pricetag of $50 million.
The miniseries will likely be shot in Australia, New Zealand, the Gobi desert and Mongolia, with a mixture of computer-generated effects and animatronics used to bring the dinosaurs to life. To date the Dinotopia books have sold more than 2 million copies, and HarperCollins plans to publish the third installment in the series, Dinotopia: First Flight, in October.
June 18, 1999: Fossil of Oldest Beaked Bird Discovered
Confuciusornis dui was discovered last year in ancient lake sediment in China. This small bird appears to be 130 million years old, placing it only 10-15 million years after Archaeopteryx. Archaeopteryx had a toothy, reptile like nose and mouth, while Confuciusornis dui has no teeth and a beak like Woody Woodpecker. Previously the oldest bird with a beak was 70 million years old.
Full story at CNN: <http://www.cnn.com/NATURE/9906/16/oldest.beaked.bird.ap/>.
June 13, 1999: Dinosaur Eggs Found In East China And Korea
Seperate teams have found clutches of dinosaur eggs in South Korea and East China. Not much has been released yet.
You can read a brief piece about the China find at: <http://dml.cmnh.org/1999May/msg00689.html>.
May 4, 1999: New King Of The Dinos
It looks like April was a big month for big dinosaurs. Not only was a new largest Nodosaur and Ankylosaur found in Utah, but now Argentina, home of the largest Sauropod, is the home of a new, largest carnivorous Theropod as well. Rudolfo Coria and his team have announced a meat eater skeleton larger than Giganotosaurus, also found in Argentina. There are five sets of fossils for this new creature, though no complete one. There is no name yet, but you can read all about it at <>http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/dinosaurs990429.html>.
April 30, 1999: More Info On New Dinosaurs From Utah
There are a few more details about the new find in Utah by Bilby and Hall at <http://cnn.com/NATURE/9904/27/dinosaur.find.ap/>. These are now being called the largest Ankylosaur and Nodosaur yet, the new Ankylosaur being 50% larger than any previously known. This suggests that the land bridge from Asia (by which Ankylosaurs and Nodosaurs arrived in North America) formed much earlier than previously thought.
April 26, 1999: More Input For Card-Tinkerers!
Several new dinosaurs have been found in Utah, including a thirty foot Ankylosaur and a five foot Nodosaur. Each of these is at least as large as any species known, and possibly larger. There is also a Sauropod and a "meat eater" and some other animals that may be new, but information is sketchy. The initial news is at <http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/990426/oh_cleve_n_1.html>, but they haven't released many details yet. If you want to start a thread on which of these deserve a card in your Dino Hunt deck, you can join the DH mailing list by visiting the SJ Games Mailing List Page.
January 28, 1999: Cold-Blooded But Fast?
Scientists investigating Scipionyx, the baby dinosaur fossil found in Italy, have published their initial conclusions in Science. Their study of its internal organs suggests to them that dinosaurs were not closely related to birds after all, and were cold-blooded, but still, due to their specialized lung structure, capable of fast movement. For details, see the CNN story.
January 28, 1999
Suchomimus Tenerensis gives T. Rex some new competition for fiercest dinosaur. The November 1998 issue of Science magazine reported a find in the Sahara of a nearly complete skeleton of Suchmimus. Measuring 36 feet (11m) long and 12 feet (4m) high at the hips, this Spinosaur appears to be a close relative of Baryonyx. The four foot long skull includes a long, narrow mouth larger than that of T. Rex, with a hundred conical teeth that appear to be for hooking, rather than slicing, its prey, which along with other factors suggests a diet of fish. With substantial arms and claws a foot long Suchomimus was better equipped than T. Rex, and it does appear to have been capable of running. A good starting place for more info is <http://polar.ngeo.com/explorer/sereno/index.html>.
August 12, 1998: Dino Hunt Gets Its Own Mailing List!
Want to discuss Dino Hunt or dinosaur topics with other Dino Hunters? Or trade some duplicate cards for ones you don't have? Send email to majordomo@pyramid.sjgames.com with "subscribe dinohunt" in the message body (unsubscribing is just as easy). Check out Steve Jackson Games Mailing Lists to find out about other mailing lists.
July 23, 1998: Now Mauling a Mall Near You!
This Christmas season, The Discovery Channel/Nature Co. will feature Dino Hunt in its line of specialty stores.
We're very excited about the game being introduced to the shopping-mall retail environment. Check out your local The Nature Co. store in October.
June 23, 1998: Dino Hunt – The Parents' Choice & Dinosaur Society!
Dino Hunt is a 1998 Parents' Choice Silver Honor award winner! The Parents' Choice Foundation has been reviewing childrens' games, books, videos, magazines, software, just about everything for the last nineteen years. They publish a guide, and single out a few products to honor for helping children develop their skills, character, and problem solving ability.
Previous honors for Dino Hunt include making the Games 100 list for 1997, and the Dinosaur Society seal of approval.
January 20, 1998: Pterosaur Home Page
Dave Peters' Pterosaur Home Page is a great new spot for all us flying reptile fans. Among other things, Dave has a paper pterodactyl you can cut out and build, and the plans can be seen online!
December 7, 1997: Megaraptor!
A huge claw, about 15 inches long, was shown in public for the first time Tuesday at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Unearthed in Patagonia, it is 54% larger than the claw of Utahraptor. The discoverer has named the new dinosaur Megaraptor namunhuaiquii ("foot-lance" in the Mapuche Indian language). From the claw and a few leg bones (all that have been found to date), he estimates that it was some 25 feet long and stood 14 feet high. Further expeditions to the site are planned.
October 6, 1997: Auction of Sue, the T. rex
On October 4, Sotheby's auctioned the skeleton of Sue, the T. rex. On behalf of the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History, Richard Gray, President of the Art Dealers Association of America, made the winning bid of $7.6 million dollars. The money came from a group of sponsors, in cluding McDonald's Corporation and Walt Disney World Resort. The fossil will be on display at the museum and so will stay in the US. You can find great info and pics about the auction at The Dinosaur Interplanetary Gazette.
October 4, 1997: Review
Dino Hunt is reviewed in Kulkmanns G@mebox (Reviews of English and German Games and Boardgames and Collectibles Corner). This review includes a discussion of the German version, which uses a gameboard.
September 30, 1997: Dino Hunt Named to Games 100
Dino Hunt, the acclaimed family card game of time travel and dinosaur hunting from Steve Jackson Games, has been honored by Games Magazine as one of their "Games 100," the finest games of the year.
"It's a tremendous honor," Dino Hunt designer Steve Jackson said. "Dino Hunt is a game I've been wanting to do for a long, long time, and I'm thrilled that other people are enjoying the game as much as I had hoped."
Dino Hunt is not the first Steve Jackson Games product to be honored in the "Games 100." Car Wars, Illuminati, Toon and GURPS have all been named to the list in years past.
September 18, 1997: Fossil Find
A paleontologist working in Montana has found what might be the biggest T. rex yet, or possibly, he says, a new and bigger species! Dr. Keith Rigby, from Notre Dame, has unearthed a 52-inch pubis; the same bone in the largest T. rex known is only 48 inches. It isn't yet known how complete the new find is.
August 25, 1997: New Dino Hunt Rules Variant
John and Fran Ickes (shadowcat@nomad.net) have created a Dino Hunt variant called Two by Two. The object is to collect two dinosaurs from each time period. This and other optional rules are on the variant page.
August 3, 1997: Dino Hunt in German!
It's actually been out for quite a while, from Pegasus, but we just now got copies. (Not their fault. Long story.)
A very pretty production. It's in a BIG box, with a big gameboard, and slightly modified rules to use the board. German family games, it seems, have to have boards.
It's got 80 dinos and 29 specials, the same one that our basic game does (I think . . .) There are no booster packs yet, but someday, maybe!
We'll be putting three copies on the auction Real Soon Now.
July 27, 1997: Tinysaurs
I picked up a few of Tamiya's 1/35 dinosaur dioramas at the hobby shop. Awesome. Good detail, proper anatomy (tails off the ground) and lots of those little goodies that diorama builders like. I'm going to have fun building these . . . if they come out well, you may see a BIG diorama in a Dino Hunt display at a convention sometime.
PS . . . Hey, if anybody out there is sitting around with any of these in unassembled, or even salvageable/kitbashable state, and wants to swap for some Dino Hunt cards or something, drop me a line . . .
July 16, 1997: New Dino Goodies
Our auction moves into Dino Hunt territory, with three full sets of the 1996 limited edition of Dino Hunt, including the ten gold foil Ultra-Rare dinosaurs. Check out the auction page to bid!
And we also have more goodies for Dino Hunt fans: a set of dinosaur icons for the Macintosh, created by Kjeld Mahoney. Enjoy!
June 25, 1997: Half Bird, Half Dinosaur
A new discovery from Argentina seems very close to the "missing link" between birds and dinosaurs. Standing about four feet tall, it looks like a running dinosaur – but its "arms" seem to have been designed to flap like wings.
The new creature has been named Unenlagia comahuensis, meaning "half bird from northwest Patagonia." The species name is not Latin; it is from the local Indian language.
