236-Million-Year-Old Fossil Reveals a Stunning Secret About the Origins of Mammal Birth
An unusual growth mark in an ancient bone may help resolve a longstanding mystery surrounding the origins of mammalian reproduction. A microscopic growth mark preserved inside a 236 million-year-old f...
Giant Crocodylians Ruled South America’s Ancient Food Chain
Fossil bite marks suggest giant crocodylians, especially Purussaurus neivensis, dominated large prey hunting in Miocene South America. More than 10 million years ago, a vast lake spread across much of...
Construction Crew Uncovers Giant 20-Meter Dinosaur in Brazil
Dasosaurus tocantinensis was about 20 meters long and lived roughly 120 million years ago. Its closest known relative inhabited what is now Spain. About 120 million years ago, a 20-meter-long dinosaur...
Twenty years and 7,500 fossils reveal what blurs Earth's marine fossil record
In productive marine environments, a square meter (10.8 square feet) of seafloor can be perforated by hundreds to thousands of isolated and interconnected tunnels through which crawl and writhe a corn...
“One-in-a-million” sea creature fossil preserves soft tissue for 450 million years
Scientists have identified exceptionally rare soft tissue preserved in a 450-million-year-old crinoid fossil, more than 200 million years older than the first dinosaurs. Its delicate tube feet offer a...
Footprints may reveal biggest known mammal from age of the dinosaurs
Beefy tracks point to a Cretaceous critter as big as a large dog or mountain lion
Scientists say the human family tree may need a major rewrite
The human family tree may be due for a major rewrite. Researchers argue that Australopithecus and Paranthropus should be folded into the genus Homo because new fossils have blurred many of the traits ...
This 23-foot crocodylian may have ruled South America’s food chain
Miocene South America was packed with giant prey—and the predators hunting them were just as spectacular. Fossil bite marks suggest crocodylians, especially the enormous Purussaurus neivensis, were mo...
Rethinking how we name and classify our human ancestors following recent evolutionary discoveries
Recent advances in our understanding of human evolution challenge the way we currently name and classify our ancestors, according to new research from Monash University. The study, published in the Am...
Giant crocodylians dominated the food chain in Miocene South America, fossil evidence suggests
South America was a frightening place during the Miocene. More than 10 million years ago, a vast lake covered much of the continent, home to giant turtles and crocodylians.
A new Ice Age species was hiding in la brea tar pits fossils for decades
Scientists have discovered a new extinct amphibian species hiding in the fossil collections of Los Angeles’ La Brea Tar Pits. Named Spea labreae, the Ice Age spadefoot toad is an exceptionally rare fi...
Scientists Discover a 245-Million-Year-Old Reptile With Its Organs Still Preserved
An international research team examined a unique fossil from China that, for the first time, preserves the digestive system of a marine reptile with a long neck that lived in the oceans 245 million ye...
A 30-year-old fossil was hiding bones from a mysterious ancient sea monster
Fossils collected in Osaka more than 30 years ago have revealed a surprise hiding in plain sight: four previously unrecognized bones from a giant Cretaceous mosasaur. Among them is the first confirmed...
520-Million-Year-Old Fossil Reveals How Cephalopods Learned To Float
A 520-million-year-old fossil reveals an early stage in the evolution of cephalopod buoyancy. A tiny tube running through a shell helped early cephalopods control whether they rose or sank in the ocea...
Nearly Complete Fossil Reveals Scientists Were Wrong About This Ancient Mammal
An exceptionally preserved Cretaceous mammal challenges longstanding assumptions about early placental relatives. A nearly complete mammal skeleton recovered from Mongolia’s Gobi Desert has overturned...
Paleontology rocked by organic molecules found in 66-million-year-old dinosaur bones
Researchers have found strong evidence that original collagen can survive inside dinosaur fossils for tens of millions of years, overturning a long-standing assumption about fossilization. The discove...
Crocodiles can't fly. Birds can. Scientists have finally figured out why
The closest living relatives of crocodiles and alligators are, perhaps surprisingly, birds. Both are archosauriforms, a group of species that originated about 250 million years ago near the beginning ...
Where Were All the Tiny Dinosaurs? Scientists May Finally Have an Answer
For all their astonishing diversity, dinosaurs seem to have hit one evolutionary limit: they almost never became truly tiny. Tiny animals are everywhere in modern ecosystems, from mice and shrews to h...
How a mystery kept in London led to the discovery of a new Ecuadorian frog
Scientists from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador officially described Pristimantis milpe, an abundant and widely distributed species that had been confused with another species for more...
Forests in Wyoming lost 60% of their canopy during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, the last comparable period of global warming, and it took them well over 100,000 years to recover, according to fossilized leaf fragments
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