'Tiny' dinosaur, big impact: A 90-million-year-old fossil rewrites history
A team co-led by University of Minnesota Twin Cities researcher Peter Makovicky and Argentinean colleague Sebastian Apesteguía has identified a 90-million-year-old fossil that provides the "missing li...
Lost fossils reveal sea monsters that took over after Earth’s greatest extinction
A lost cache of 250-million-year-old fossils from Australia has rewritten part of the story of life after Earth’s worst mass extinction. Instead of a single marine amphibian species, researchers uncov...
Argentine fossil rewrites evolutionary history of a baffling dinosaur clade
Fossil Clues Show Modern Coral Reef Food Webs Have Dramatically Compressed
<a href="https://scitechdaily.com/fossil-clues-show-modern-coral-reef-food-webs-have-dramatically-compressed/" rel="nofollow" title="Fossil Clues Show Modern Coral Reef Food Webs Have Dramatically Com...
Palaeoanthropological evidence from China is changing the picture of hominin evolutionary history
Recent palaeoanthropological discoveries in China indicate that eastern Asia had an important role in the evolutionary history of the genus Homo over the past 2 million years. New taxonomic proposals ...
Scientists Discover Unusual Long-Legged Ancient Crocodile From 200 Million Years Ago
<a href="https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-discover-unusual-long-legged-ancient-crocodile-from-200-million-years-ago/" rel="nofollow" title="Scientists Discover Unusual Long-Legged Ancient Crocodile...
190-million-year-old “Sword Dragon” fossil rewrites ichthyosaur history
A newly identified ichthyosaur from the UK’s Jurassic Coast is rewriting part of the prehistoric playbook. Nicknamed the “Sword Dragon of Dorset,” the three-meter-long marine reptile lived during a po...
Comparative Sulcal Morphology of the Late Miocene Fossil Ape, Rudapithecus hungaricus
OBJECTIVES: Endocasts of fossil hominoids are exceedingly rare. The only fossil ape endocast analyzed in detail is that of Ekembo nyanzae (KNM-RU 7290), from the early Miocene of Kenya. Two partial cr...
Behavioral implications of an embedded tyrannosaurid tooth and associated tooth marks on an articulated skull of <em>Edmontosaurus</em> from the Hell Creek Formation, Montana
Because teeth can be taxonomically distinct, particularly for non-mammalian carnivores such as non-avian dinosaurs, teeth that have broken off in the bone of another animal during feeding, predation o...
Ant queen frozen in time: New ant species found in Dominican amber
A study by Dr. Gianpiero Fiorentino and his colleagues, published in the Journal of Paleontology, describes the identification of a new species of ant, Hypoponera electrocacica, belonging to the genus...
250 million-year-old amphibian fossils from Australia reveal global spread of 'sea-salamanders'
The Kimberley region in the northwest corner of Western Australia is full of rugged ranges and gorges, and long stretches of red soil and rocky ground. The dry seasons are long, and the wet seasons of...
The untold story of our remarkable hands and how they made us human
The evolution of human hands is one of the most important – and overlooked – stories of our origin. Now, new fossil evidence is revealing their pivotal role
Carboniferous recumbirostran elucidates the origins of terrestrial herbivory
The evolution of herbivory is one of the most important ecological events in the evolution of terrestrial vertebrates and impacted the ecosystems they inhabited. Herbivory independently developed in a...
The oldest in situ <em>Homo erectus</em> crania in eastern Asia: The Yunxian site dates to ~1.77 Ma
With the discovery of three almost complete Homo erectus crania, Yunxian is one of the most important early Pleistocene hominin sites in eastern Asia. Yet, the age of the Yunxian fossils has remained ...
Feeding in Forest Chimpanzees: Do Food Type and Canopy Location Predict Positional Behavior?
OBJECTIVES: Distinctive aspects of great ape anatomy and positional behavior, including upright torso stability and suspension, are hypothesized to have evolved to facilitate ripe fruit-eating in the ...
Comparative cranial biomechanics reveal macroevolutionary trends in theropod dinosaurs, with emphasis on Tyrannosauroidea
Tyrannosaurus is viewed as a model organism in vertebrate paleontology, with numerous studies analyzing its feeding biomechanics. Nonetheless, the evolution of this feeding performance has been under-...
The smallest tetrapod from the Middle Triassic of South America: a new procolophonoid parareptile from the Ladinian of Southern Brazil
The Middle Triassic fossil record of South American parareptiles is scarce, with only a few procolophonoid specimens known. Here, we describe Sauropia macrorhinus gen. et sp. nov., a procolophonoid fr...
United by chewing: Hunter-Schreger band-like pattern and wavy enamel in a fossil crocodile suggest functional convergence with mammals and dinosaurs
Tooth enamel of most mammals shows alternating light and dark bands, called Hunter-Schreger bands (HSB), in longitudinal sections caused by decussating bundles of prisms, the unit building blocks of m...
Nasal soft-tissue anatomy of Triceratops and other horned dinosaurs
Although ceratopsid dinosaurs possess a characteristically hypertrophied narial region, soft-tissue anatomy associated with such a skeletal structure and their biological significance remain poorly un...
Avian features of <em>Archaeopteryx</em> feeding apparatus reflect elevated demands of flight
Powered flight, as the most physically demanding form of vertebrate locomotion, involves elevated energetic demands. The appearance of dinosaurian flight should therefore be associated with novel feat...