Steve at the famous Lyme Regis fossil site in England.

On 16 October 2014 Te Papa hosted tyrannosaur expert Dr Stephen Brusatte who revealed the newest members of the tyrannosaur family to an enthusiastic audience. We heard about his global travels to dig up fossils and the latest research on tyrannosaur diversity and evolution. Only this year Steve helped describeRead more

Early Miocene mosquito from the Dominican Republic. Photo by Didier Desouens.

I first saw the movie Jurassic Park as a high school student when it was released 20 years ago.  At the time it led to a sudden rise in the number of children obsessed with dinosaurs and wanting to be palaeontologists.  But for me it was all about the scientists workingRead more

Joan Wiffen, who found hard evidence that dinosaurs had inhabited New Zealand, died this month aged 87. I’m not a scientist, but I do have an interest in the history of science, and even I can see that Wiffen made historically significant and far-reaching contributions to scientific thinking. First findings In 1975, Wiffen found somethingRead more