FINDINGS

Many Dinosaurs Yet to Be Unearthed

Discussion Policy

Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.

Dinosaur hunters have unearthed fewer than one-third of the various kinds of dinosaurs to be found, a statistical analysis suggests.

"Good news for paleontology," said Steve Wang of Swarthmore College, who wrote the paper with University of Pennsylvania paleontologist Peter Dodson.

Such predictions have been made in the past. But since Dodson previously did so in 1990, the rate of dinosaur finds has soared -- the result of exploration in new areas and by new people. Once largely the province of white males from the United States, Britain and Canada, the field now encompasses many paleontologists from fossil hotbeds such as China and Argentina.

From the early 1800s until 1990, science had identified 285 genera of dinosaurs. In the past 25 years, the number climbed to 527, a jump of 85 percent.

The total number of "recoverable" genera is 1,844, Dodson and Wang estimated. That doesn't count the probable hundreds of varieties that were not preserved in rock.

-- From News Services

< 2