Teeth found in Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Dorset are believed to belong to the maniraptorans, a group of dinosaurs, including Velociraptor, which include birds and their closest relatives. A fossil jawbone found in Alaska offers evidence that some dinosaurs stayed in polar habitats year-round.

They were likely small, active predators. Probably starting off with a body length of only a couple of metres, they would have been bipedal with small, grasping hands. The similarities are so pronounced that when they were first discovered, some scientists believed these dinosaurs might be the direct ancestors of some living birds. More recent research has instead revealed that they are relatives who adapted to similar challenges in a process known as convergent evolution. Bipedality is really important for defining early dinosaurs,' says Paul. 'To do that, they also had to modify their hind legs.' While previous studies have attempted to classify isolated teeth based on a variety of statistical methods, they've not always been particularly successful.Every year, more people are reading our articles to learn about the challenges facing the natural world. Our future depends on nature, but we are not doing enough to protect our life support system. Pollution has caused toxic air in our cities, and farming and logging have wreaked havoc on our forests. Climate change is creating deserts and dead zones, and hunting is driving many species to the brink of extinction. This is the first time in Earth's history that a single species - humanity - has brought such disaster upon the natural world. But if we don't look after nature, nature can't look after us. We must act on scientific evidence, we must act together, and we must act now.

Iguanodon was the second dinosaur ever described. This famous creature was discovered some 200 years ago by Mary Ann and Gideon Mantell who found several large, iguana-like teeth by the side of a road in Sussex. Similar models have now been applied to teeth from the Middle Jurassic held in the collections of the Museum and the Museum of Gloucester in an attempt to identify them. Many dinosaurs were once put in the Iguanodon genus, but recent assessments have led to some of the species being reassigned to new genera. One example is Mantellisaurus atherfieldensis, the dinosaur on display in our Hintze Hall. It was once known as Iguanodon atherfieldensis. Is this embarrassing for the dinosaur king? Yes. But T. rex did have serrated, banana-size teeth and one of the most powerful bite forces on record, so it's not like we'd laugh in its face or anything (unless we were walking away at a brisk clip). But T. rex, the most famous carnivore of them all, was a slowpoke, with a preferred walking speed of just under 3 mph (5 km/h), according to a separate study, published in April in the journal Royal Society Open Science. That's about the average walking speed for a person.

What is a dinosaur?

This diversity might be explained by the environments of the past,’ Kohta says. ‘The Cretaceous sediments in the Nemegt Basin suggest there were once a variety of moist and dry habitats.’ The models were then applied to the unidentified, isolated teeth, which found that most of the teeth belonged to maniraptorans, and dromaeosaurids in particular. These teeth were split into three distinct groups based on their size and shape. Incredibly, there was even evidence that young dinosaurs hung out (and died) together, indicating that the herd had an internal structure. This is the oldest evidence of socially complex, gregarious behavior in dinosaurs, according to the study, published in October in the journal Scientific Reports. Largely ignored due to its scrappy nature, the fossil is composed of part of an arm bone plus a few vertebrae. Crucially, however, some of these vertebrae are from close to the hip and show that three of them were sacral vertebrae, and this three-vertebra sacrum is one of the defining features of dinosaurs. Named Jaculinykus yaruui, or the ‘speedy clawed dragon’, the small, possibly feathered, dinosaur was well adapted to dashing around what is now Mongolia. With hands dominated by a large thumb, it could have dug into insect colonies in the search for food.

These changes likely occurred as a result of the first dinosaurs walking on their hind legs, or being bipedal.

2. Australia’s biggest known dinosaur

An illustration of the "shark-toothed" dinosaur Ulughbegsaurus uzbekistanensis, which lived in what is now Uzbekistan about 90 million years ago. (Image credit: Julius Csotonyi) The measurements of thousands of teeth from known dinosaur species were used to train three different models. Each model analyses the data in a different way, with the results of each combined to give the most likely identity of each tooth. Tlatolophus galorum is a type of herbivorous dinosaur called a lambeosaur. The dinosaur is so named because its dramatic crest resembles the tlahtolli, a comma-like symbol in Aztec art that stands for “word” in the Nahuatl language. The species name galorum combines two family names, Garza and López, to honor people who aided with the fossil’s collection. Collecting their finds on the kitchen table, Megan and her dad were thrilled as the prehistoric puzzle of bone fragments started coming together.