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Happy hunting predicted for dinosaur seekers

Two-thirds of all species groups are yet to be unearthed.

Thanks to movies such as Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park and visits to natural history museums, 'dinosaur hunter' is one scientific job that schoolchildren aspire to. And according to a study of dinosaur diversity, these budding palaeontologists will have plenty to do: researchers estimate that more than 1,000 new groups of dinosaur species remain to be discovered.

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Posted by Nicola Jones on September 04, 2006
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I'm sure the 90s were long for all of us, but I think that Table 1 should read 'The 1900s by decade' rather than the '1990s by decade'.

Posted by: Katherine Haxton | September 6, 2006 02:29 AM

Although I am not an expert in the field, and I have no idea how this statistical estimate on the number of species of dinosaurs was achieved, my idea is the following:
Perhaps one should count all the species today, assuming that all animals were once 'tiny' dinosaurs, and multiply this by 'branches' of each family, according to their branches in evolution. This would be somewhat similar to the theory of 'Noah's Arc,' where there was only one(pair of)species of any given animal, while at the same time not negating the obvious scientific research of Darwin, in his 'Theory of Evolution.' There is absolutely no reason why the two stand-points should differ in theory.Maybe we were all 'one cell' (like an amoeba!)that evolved differently, or maybe there were thousands of one celled creatures, which all developed into something different!

Posted by: Sandra Louise Harrington | September 8, 2006 11:25 AM

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