Enter the cuddly dinosoaur

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Turns out the ferocious types of dinosaurs you learned about in children’s books weren’t the most common types in the Cretaceous period; just the only ones anyone bothered to dig up.

Recent Must Reads

9/27 – Russia’s ‘Carnivore’ under fire

9/26 – Perrier trumps local activists

9/23 – Tokyo gets toasty

9/22 – New study on power lines and cancer

In fact, the modern conceit of the dinosaur is skewed towards those found in a few tiny corners of the Northern Hemisphere and during the Triassic and Jurrasic geological periods, according to the NEW SCIENTIST. Hence, dinos in the southern hemisphere and some which emerged in the later Cretaceous period have gone almost entirely undiscovered — with the notable exception of the Giganotosaurus which was discovered in 1995 Argentina and which unseated T-Rex as the presumptive largest dinosaur ever. Scientists say southern, Cretaceous-era dinos lasted 50 million years longer than their northern counterparts, and “evolved” into bigger, dumber, and more primitive beasts.

Hold on to your (outdated) copy of Jurassic Park, there’s a whole other hemisphere full of monsters to be dug up.

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate