There has been a boatload of paleontology news in the last week or so. Here’s a brief round-up of some of the highlights:

April 4: Perhaps the biggest news is new evidence that a meteor did NOT kill off the dinosaurs. While no one doubts that a giant meteor did strike the Gulf of Mexico about 65 million years ago, a careful examination of the debris shows that it probably hit about 300,000 years before the dinosaurs went extinct.

April 4: A new species of dinosaur has been found in southern Utah. Scientists describe it as a 7-foot-tall, brightly colored turkey that could run 25 mph.

There's lots more fossil news -- click "read more" for the full list!

March 29: Meanwhile, scientists in New Zealand have discovered the first-ever dinosaur fossils on a South Pacific Island. Most Pacific Islands are too young to have dinosaurs, but the Chathams are older, and were once linked to New Zealand by a land bridge.

April 4: Another cool discovery happened not in the field, but in a German museum. The first-ever fossil of Spinosaurus, a giant meat-eating dinosaur with a sail on its back, was destroyed during World War II. Researchers recently uncovered some lost photographs of the specimen, which they can now use to better understand this strange creature.

April 1: A set of dinosaur footprints in Texas was recently damaged by vandals trying to steal and copy them. The US Army Corps of Engineers has buried the remaining tracks to preserve them.

March 27: Meanwhile, residents of New Mexico are trying to protect a set of much older footprints.

April 4: The University of Pittsburgh and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History are collaborating on a program that will use fossil bones to teach medical students about cancer and other diseases. Many fossils preserve clues to how the animals died. Understanding how diseases evolved will help doctors treat human disease in the future.

March 30: And, in my personal favorite story, gardeners in Australia can now plant saplings of a 200-million-year-old pine tree. The species, long thought to be extinct, was discovered growing on an isolated mountainside outside Sydney in 1994. Proceeds from the sale of the saplings will go to protect rare plant species.

These and other fossil news stories can be found every week at Dinonews.

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