May 3, 2012 – 6 PM, Penn Dixie exhibit at Science Night at Ellicott Elementary School. May 5 & 6, 2012 – Penn Dixie open on weekends, Sat. 9 AM-4 PM &  Sun. 11 AM-4 PM May 6, 2012, 9 AM, Penn Dixie Spring Bird Walk led by Michael Morgante, Buffalo Ornithological Society. No preregistrations […]

The oldest known fossil forest, dating back 385 million years, has been investigated after being unearthed for the first time since it was discovered and buried by dam workers back in the 1920s. The Gilboa fossil forest, in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York, has for several years been recognized as the the oldest […]

The oceans teemed with life 600 million years ago, but the simple, soft-bodied creatures would have been hardly recognizable as the ancestors of nearly all animals on Earth today. Then something happened. Over several tens of millions of years — a relative blink of an eye in geologic terms — a burst of evolution led […]

PENN DIXIE PUBLIC HOURS The Penn Dixie Site is open to the public for fossil collecting every Saturday, from May through October, 9 AM to 4 PM; Sundays, May-October, 11 AM to 4PM; and Spring Break-April 6-7 & 9-15, and June 16–Sept. 4, Mon.-Fri., 9 AM-4 PM, rain or shine.  Closed Easter Sunday, Memorial Day, […]

Duck-billed dinosaurs that lived within Arctic latitudes approximately 70 million years ago likely endured long, dark polar winters instead of migrating to more southern latitudes, a recent study by researchers from the University of Cape Town, Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas and Temple University has found. The researchers published their findings, “Hadrosaurs Were […]

 Dating back 280 million years or so, the oldest known fossil reptile embryos have been unearthed in Uruguay and Brazil. They belong to the ancient aquatic reptiles, mesosaurs. The study of these exceptionally well-preserved fossils suggests that mesosaurs were either viviparous[1] (pushing back this mode of reproduction by 60 million years) or that they laid […]

The second-largest mass extinction in Earth’s history coincided with a short but intense ice age during which enormous glaciers grew and sea levels dropped. Although it has long been agreed that the so-called Late Ordovician mass extinction — which occurred about 450 million years ago — was related to climate change, exactly how the climate […]

The famous feathered dinosaur archaeopteryx seems to have had a penchant for fossilizing in painful positions, with its head cranked backward at a severe angle. The contorted posture is so common in dinosaur fossils that it has its own name: opisthotonus, from the Greek “tonos,” meaning tightening, and “opistho,” behind. Since the 1920s, paleontologists have […]

The discovery of a giant, meat-eating dinosaur sporting a downy coat has some scientists reimagining the look of Tyrannosaurus rex. With a killer jaw and sharp claws, T. rex has long been depicted in movies and popular culture as having scaly skin. But the discovery of an earlier relative suggests the king of dinosaurs may […]