Tiny Jurassic bird reveals a key step in bird evolution
The transition from a lumbering, heavy dinosaur body to the flight-adapted bird body plan is one of many fascinating episodes in evolutionary history. Working out how this massive transformation took ...
The oldest deliberately collected fossil ichthyosaur was discovered in Roman Britain around 1,800 years ago
Around 1,800 years ago, a fossilized spinal bone lay on the windswept beaches of Roman Britain until a curious passerby picked it up and carried it far away, only to drop it in a pit.
Unique fossil record of marine mollusks helps scientists predict extinction risk—before it's too late
Scientists are increasingly worried we may be witnessing the start of the "sixth mass extinction"—the first to be caused by human activities.
These 567-Million-Year-Old Fossils Are Rewriting the Story of Life on Earth
Ancient deep-sea organisms suggest movement, sexual reproduction, and complex animal life began earlier than previously thought. Every animal alive today, from jellyfish to humans, traces its ancestry...
Climate change is silencing the Pilbara barking gecko
New research from Monash University has provided the first comprehensive assessment of the Pilbara barking gecko (Underwoodisaurus seorsus) and revealed the species is facing a heightened risk of exti...
Ancient bees turned tooth sockets into tiny nurseries 20,000 years ago
A stunning fossil discovery shows that ancient bees used the empty tooth sockets of mammal bones as tiny nests after owls scattered the bones across a cave floor 20,000 years ago. It's the first known...
Rare 309-million-year-old fossils suggest early tetrapods developed without tadpole phase
Scientists have long posited that the earliest water animals to transition to land had amphibious tadpole features, going through a metamorphosis akin to that of today's frogs.
Megalodon's legendary life revealed by fossil rediscovery
Museums are supposed to be havens for the collective cultural and scientific heritage of the planet, but specimens sometimes go missing.
Scientists Discover the First-Ever Molecules Preserved Inside a 113-Million-Year-Old Pterosaur Fossil
Ancient microbes may have helped preserve a pterosaur fossil and its chemical clues for more than 100 million years. An international study led by Curtin University has shed new light on how a prehist...
Diminutive species 'the Hobbit' did not hunt or control fire, deepening the mystery of its ancestry, dwarf elephant bones reveal
The extinct human species Homo floresiensis was a scavenger, not a hunter, an analysis of fossil animal bones reveals.
New Fossils Show the Arctic Was an Evolutionary Powerhouse During the Age of Dinosaurs
Tiny fossil teeth from Alaska are changing how scientists view mammal life and migration in the ancient Arctic. Today’s Arctic is one of the harshest and least biodiverse places on Earth, but du...
520-Million-Year-Old Fossils Solve One of Evolution’s Biggest Mysteries
Exceptionally preserved fossils from China reveal that bryozoans were already thriving during the Cambrian explosion. More than half a billion years ago, the Cambrian explosion reshaped life on Earth,...
Tooth fossil analysis suggests 'brawn before bite' in early Asian mammals
An analysis of fossil teeth from mammals that lived in China following the most recent major mass extinction suggests size came before both shape and function as diets diversified.
Antarctica's first dinosaur fossil belonged to a group of the largest land animals ever
Researchers have identified the first-ever dinosaur fossil discovered on Antarctica, revealing it belonged to a titanosaur.
Himalayan pangolin emerges as distinct species, confirmed with DNA from 19th-century specimen
The pangolin is a midsize mammal found only in Africa and Asia. The pangolins' scales make them unique, but these scales have become their undoing. Pangolins are poached for their scales, making them ...
17-Million-Year-Old Ape Fossil in Egypt Could Change What We Know About Human Origins
Researchers have identified a previously unknown fossil ape from Egypt that could alter long-held ideas about the origins of modern apes. The evolutionary story of apes has long contained a major geog...
A rare dinosaur fossil from Antarctica is found tucked away in a drawer
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Deep inside crocodile skulls, 100 million years of brain evolution barely registers
Although modern crocodiles, alligators, caimans and gharials are restricted to the tropics, their fossil record tells a very different story. Ancient crocodylians once inhabited much of the globe and ...
No life strategy guarantees survival when the environment changes, a 500-million-year study of coral evolution reveals. While algae symbiosis allowed modern corals to dominate, fossil data shows this trait makes them uniquely vulnerable to rapid warming compared to deep-sea species.
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New fossil site suggests flowering plants were already thriving 10 million years before the dinosaur extinction
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