Articles for author: Saman Zehra

a stone carving of a bird on a wooden table

Karoo Fossils and Prehistoric Life at South Africa’s Iziko Museum

Deep beneath South Africa’s arid Karoo landscape lies one of Earth’s most extraordinary fossil treasures, and nowhere is this ancient story told more compellingly than within the halls of Cape Town’s Iziko South African Museum. Walking through these corridors feels like stepping back through 300 million years of evolutionary history, where the boundaries between imagination ...

blue and white polka dot fish on coral reef

Jurassic Seas: The Era’s Most Incredible Marine Predators

While dinosaurs dominated the land during the Jurassic period, the ancient oceans harbored creatures that would make today’s great white sharks look like minnows. These prehistoric seas, spanning from 201 to 145 million years ago, teemed with marine predators so formidable they could have easily devoured a school bus. The warm, shallow seas of the ...

a large dinosaur walking across a field under a cloudy sky

Dinosaur Snow Days: Did Prehistoric Giants Ever See Winter?

Picture this: a towering Tyrannosaurus Rex trudging through knee-deep snow, its massive footprints creating a trail across a frozen landscape. It sounds like something out of a fantasy movie, but the question of whether dinosaurs experienced winter weather is far more complex and fascinating than you might imagine. For over 165 million years, these prehistoric ...

A close up of a dinosaur with its mouth open

The Four-Winged Dino That Tried to Be a Bird

Picture this: 125 million years ago, in the dense forests of ancient China, a crow-sized creature perched on a branch, shaking out not two, but four feathered wings. This wasn’t your typical dinosaur, and it certainly wasn’t quite a bird either. Meet Microraptor, the four-winged fossil that turned everything we thought we knew about the ...

a dinosaur skeleton is displayed in a museum

Late Cretaceous Carnivores: More Than Just T. rex

The Late Cretaceous period, spanning from about 100 to 66 million years ago, represents one of the most dramatic chapters in Earth’s history. While Tyrannosaurus rex commands the spotlight in popular culture, this ancient world teemed with an incredible diversity of predators that would make today’s apex hunters look like house cats. From the razor-clawed ...

Saman Zehra

a black and white photo of a dinosaur statue

Retro Dino Documentaries: What Held Up and What Definitely Didn’t

Picture this: it’s 1993, and you’re settling into your couch with a bowl of popcorn, ready to watch the latest dinosaur documentary. The narrator’s voice booms dramatically as a massive Tyrannosaurus rex drags its tail across the screen, roaring like a lion on steroids. Fast forward three decades, and that same scene would make paleontologists ...

a close up of a rock with a horse on it

The Jurassic Divide: Dinosaurs and the Breakup of a Supercontinent

Picture this: colossal dinosaurs roaming across vast landscapes that stretched from what we now call Morocco to New York City, all connected by a single, massive landmass. This wasn’t science fiction—it was Earth 200 million years ago, when the supercontinent Pangaea dominated our planet’s surface. But as the Jurassic period unfolded, something extraordinary happened that ...