The Skeptics Society & Skeptic magazine

Don Prothero considers a conjecture proposed to explain a supposed periodicity in mass extinctions.

Renowned Harvard cosmologist and theoretical physicist Dr. Lisa Randall explores a scenario in which a disk of dark matter — the elusive stuff in the universe that interacts through gravity like ordinary matter, but that doesn’t emit or absorb light — dislodged a comet from the Oort cloud that was ultimately responsible for the dinosaurs’ extinction. Randall teaches us an enormous amount about dark matter, our Universe, our galaxy, asteroids, and comets—and the process by which scientists explore new concepts.

Donald Prothero reviews a fanciful summer blockbuster about dinosaurs.

Donald Prothero discusses strengths and criticisms of a new study of diplodocine sauropod dinosaurs, and considers the puzzling picture it paints of the lives and relationships of these gigantic animals.

Donald Prothero considers the Christians Against Dinosaurs website, and reflects on the problem described by "Poe’s Law": it is often impossible to tell the difference between parody and sincere extremism.

Daniel Loxton reviews a colorful nonfiction dinosaur book for children.

Donald R. Prothero’s science books combine straightforward research with first-person narratives of discovery, injecting warmth and familiarity into a profession that desperately needs a more appealing approach to nonspecialists. Bringing his trademark style to an increasingly relevant subject of concern, Prothero links the climate changes that have occurred over the past 200 million years to their effects on plants and animals, especially contrasting the extinctions that ended the Cretaceous period, which wiped out the dinosaurs, with those of the later…