A dinosaur skull measuring nearly a foot in length has been discovered embedded in the balustrade support in the Cathedral of St. Ambrose, a 16th-century church in Vigevano, Italy. We don’t yet know what kind of dinosaur it was, however, although 3D modeling may shed light on the answer.

How did the dinosaur skull wind up there?

The calcareous rock in which the dinosaur remains are embedded comes from the rich fossil-bearing site of Mount San Giorgio, which is on the Unesco World Heritage List.

“It is called Broccatello and was mined in Arzo, Switzerland. We know that this type of rock dates geologically to the Lower Jurassic, about 190 million years ago,” [paleontologist Andrea] Tintori said.

(Discovery News via A Blog About History via @pbump. title photograph by Andrea Tintori)

From the talented food artist Vanessa Dualib: Meet the Potatosaurus dulcis, a “totally herbivorous dinosaur and a very ‘sweet’ guy.”

More in Dualib’s Flickr stream.

See also: Hipster Dinosaurs.

(Vanessa Dualib via Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs via @culturingsci)

A number of recent paleontological discoveries have cemented Tyrannosaurus rex as the black sheep of the Tyrannosaurus genus. Seems that the rest of his relatives were much smaller.

Well, except for Tarbosaurus, but we don’t talk to them after what they said about our Bistahieversor at our Kileskus’ wedding the year before last.

Musician Molly Lewis has gone through a bunch of old coloring books and exposed dinosaurs for the tweed-wearing, PBR-sipping hipsters that we always knew they were.

We promise.

Wired‘s gallery of recent dinosaur anatomy discoveries is proof that despite the age of its subject, there’s still plenty for paleontologists to do; whether its creating scale models of triceratops skulls to figure out how the animals would have fought with each other, or making replica dromaeosaur teeth to test jaw strength.

The gallery also has some captivating tidbits of ‘saur lore, such as:

• Tyrannosaurs could toss more than one hundred pounds of meat sixteen feet in the air to reposition it before swallowing it.

I don’t know what to believe anymore. First Pluto takes the bullet, and now this: The triceratops may have never existed. Two paleontologists are now arguing that the three-horned dinosaur species — perhaps first made iconic with “Cera” (pictured above) in the classic 1988 animated film The Land Before Time — is simply the juvenile form of the “torosaurus,” a dinosaur with differently-angled horns and a longer, thinner, and smoother frill with two holes.

Needless to say, we were speechless.

Paleontologists in Alberta have found a dinosaur bone bed covering an area of nearly one and a half square miles, making it the largest such bed ever discovered. It contains the remains of thousands of Centrosaurus apertus, a species whose closest famous relative is of course the Triceratops. Previous discoveries of these animals provided the first evidence that some dinosaurs lived in herds.

Now, based on the new bone bed, paleontologists are drawing new conclusions. First, that some ceratopsian herds may have been much larger that originally thought, with individuals numbering in the “high hundreds to low thousands.”

I’ll give you a moment to visualize a group of these 18-20 foot long animals of that size.

The other conclusion is that these sorts of bone beds were not created when centrosauri drowned while fording a river, but by a massive, deadly storm; ruining any hopes of a dinosaur themed Oregon Trail.

In a newly-released trailer for the PSP’s upcoming Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, we’re treated to gameplay footage of Solid Snake … shooting dinosaurs. Including dragon/pterodactyl hybrids. With machine guns and rocket launchers.

To the joy of every fan who’s still sort of hoping for a Jurassic Park IV (10 years ago I heard there was going to be a Velociraptor/motorcycle chase and have clung to the idea ever since) IDW Publishing has announced that they will have a new Jurassic Park based series starting up in June.

The title is Jurassic Park: Redemption, and I can’t decide if that’s more awesome than it is hilarious, or more hilarious than it is awesome.