An 11-year-old boy made a once-in-a-lifetime discovery after finding an ancient elephant tooth right on the beach. The day of the big find, May 24, Charlie Orchard-Lisle was walking with his mother along East Lane beach in Bawdsey, a Suffolk coastal village in eastern England 75 miles from London, when he spotted the rock-like object […]
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A new study suggests evolution stayed stuck for millions of years until sexual reproduction helped unleash a burst of biodiversity. New research suggests that the earliest animals on Earth may have unintentionally slowed the pace of evolution for millions of years. Scientists have found that their reliance on asexual reproduction limited competition and reduced the [...]
A newly discovered feathered dinosaur from China may help solve a long-standing mystery surrounding a fossil bed filled with ancient bird remains. For years, one fossil site in northwestern China has posed a mystery. The area contains hundreds of fossilized birds, many remarkably well preserved. Mixed among them are strange clusters of shattered bones compressed [...]
A newly discovered crocodile relative from the Triassic had a beak, tiny arms, and walked on two legs, making it look more like an ostrich-like dinosaur than a crocodile. During the Triassic Period, the ancestors of many modern animal groups were branching into an astonishing variety of shapes and lifestyles. Evolution was experimenting with body [...]
Field notebooks from the late Richard Köhler allowed researchers to finally catalog a remarkable fossil tarpon from Aotearoa New Zealand. Recently disclosed notebooks from a late paleontologist supplied the missing details researchers needed to complete their study of a “remarkable” fossil found nearly 30 years ago. Dr. Richard Köhler discovered the fossil fish in 1999 [...]
A newly identified mosasaur from Texas suggests that some ancient marine predators were larger, more powerful, and possibly more aggressive than previously recognized. Bite marks, broken jaws, and a giant skull from Texas are helping scientists redraw the family tree of one of the ocean’s most fearsome ancient predators. The animal behind the evidence was [...]
A newly named crocodile species from Ethiopia likely lived alongside Lucy’s species and dominated the wetlands of Hadar more than 3 million years ago. More than 3 million years ago, when early human relatives such as the famous Lucy moved across the African landscape, they likely shared their world with a formidable crocodile that had [...]
Sally Christine Reynolds, Bournemouth University/ The Conversation
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Category: Biology, Science
Tags: Human, Genetics, Neanderthal, Fossils, denisovan
Scientists have discovered a previously unknown species of true bug that has claws. Amber from Myanmar’s Kachin region has preserved many fossils that reveal the animal diversity of a Cretaceous forest ecosystem from about 100 million years ago. The deposit continues to produce species that were previously unknown to science. LMU researchers have now identified [...]
Scientists discovered that some of Earth’s supposed earliest animal fossils were actually giant ancient microbes. Ancient microfossils discovered in Brazil are changing scientists’ understanding of early life on Earth. Structures once believed to be traces left behind by tiny marine animals have now been identified as fossilized communities of microscopic bacteria and algae instead. The [...]
The “world’s oldest octopus” was actually a 300-million-year-old fossil impostor hiding its secret in tiny teeth. A fossil long celebrated as the world’s oldest octopus has now been revealed to be an entirely different marine animal. The 300-million-year-old specimen, which even appeared in the Guinness Book of Records, was misidentified because of changes that happened [...]
Everyone knows that the platypus is the world’s strangest mammal, obeying conventions as well as Alice Cooper or Ozzy Osbourne ever did. But an “exciting” new fossil is revealing more about this ancient lineage’s long history: namely some serious gnashers. Paleontologists made the rare discovery east of the Flinders Ranges in the remote outback of […]
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A rare fossil fish scan reveals brain features and adaptations tied to the transition from aquatic to land animals. Researchers at Flinders University have taken a closer look inside the head of one of the earliest animals to move from water onto land more than 380 million years ago. Using advanced neutron imaging, the team [...]
A newly discovered stegosaur skull from Spain is offering rare insight into the anatomy and evolution of one of Europe’s most iconic dinosaurs. A rare skull from Spain is giving scientists a clearer look at one of Europe’s most important armored dinosaurs and reshaping ideas about how stegosaurs spread and evolved. Stegosaurs were plant-eating dinosaurs [...]
A distorted dinosaur skull, once dismissed as unusable, became the focus of a detailed digital reconstruction that revealed new insights into early carnivorous dinosaurs. “You want to stick your finger in a dinosaur brain?” asked Simba Srivastava. In a fossil-filled lab at Virginia Tech, he held up a battered, cratered skull that most researchers might [...]
The kraken: a giant squid or octopus of myth, seems to have swam in the Cretaceous oceans, a Japanese study shows. Recovering a selection of truly revolutionary fossils from sediments in Japan and Vancouver Island, the researchers present a prehistoric octopus that could grow as long as 60 feet, and use its powerful jaws to […]
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Every breath you take is part of a very ancient story, a remarkably preserved reptile that died in an Oklahoma cave about 289 million years ago has revealed. The steady movement of your chest, the muscles between your ribs pulling outward, and the air filling your lungs may feel completely routine, yet this familiar process […]
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A museum in Georgia is now home to the world’s first complete and scientifically accurate mounted skeleton of Deinosuchus schwimmeri, one of the largest and most dangerous reptiles to ever live. Deinosuchus schwimmeri, which walked the eastern United States 83 million to 76 million years ago, was a dinosaur-eating, school-bus-sized relative of modern alligators. Measuring up to […]
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Bicharracosaurus dionidei, a newly discovered sauropod from Argentina, shows a mix of brachiosaurid and diplodocid traits, offering new insights into dinosaur evolution in the Southern Hemisphere. Long-necked dinosaurs, known as sauropods, are often what people picture when they think of dinosaurs. With their huge bodies, long necks and tails, and small heads, they include the [...]
Researchers have applied a temperature proxy to exceptionally well-preserved fossil phytoplankton for the first time. The results suggest that conditions in the North Atlantic have been cooler than previously believed since the Miocene epoch. Accurate forecasts of how Earth’s climate will respond to rising atmospheric carbon dioxide depend on climate models. To test and refine [...]
A remarkable new discovery is shedding light on one of the greatest survival stories in Earth’s history—and answering a decades-old scientific mystery. Lystrosaurus, a hardy, plant-eating mammal ancestor, rose to prominence following a mass extinction some 252 million years ago—the most devastating extinction event our planet has ever experienced. While countless species vanished, Lystrosaurus…
Tanyka amnicola is a newly identified ancient tetrapod known from unusual twisted jawbones adapted for grinding plants. This rare herbivorous “living fossil” helps scientists better understand early evolution and ecosystems in Gondwana. In a dry riverbed in Brazil, deep within a forest near the Amazon, paleontologists uncovered a fossilized jawbone from an unknown ancient animal. [...]
Sometimes, the most important paleontological discoveries may come from the most disgusting materials.
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Category: Biology, Science
Tags: Paleontology, Predator, Reptile, Fossils
New fossil tracks reveal a hidden record of Cretaceous dinosaurs in southern Africa. Southern Africa is widely recognized for its rich fossil record, preserving evidence of ancient life, including dinosaurs. However, around 182 million years ago, massive lava eruptions spread across much of the region, covering the inland Karoo Basin where dinosaurs once thrived. Following [...]
Ancient fossils from South China reveal the earliest bony fishes and shed new light on how jaws, teeth, and key vertebrate features evolved before the major fish lineages diverged. A research team led by Profs. Min Zhu, Jing Lu, and You’an Zhu from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) at the Chinese Academy [...]
A Florida teen will have quite the story for his friends to chew on when they all meet back in class after spring break. 16-year-old Aiden Andrews found the 6-inch-long tooth of an ancient shark known as a megalodon while diving near Sarasota. This was the largest shark species in history, and is believed to […]
The post Teen Finds 6-Inch Megalodon Tooth Millions of Years Old While Diving for…
Deepwater rock wrinkles likely formed from chemosynthetic microbes, not just physical processes, reshaping assumptions about ancient ecosystems. In 2016, geologist Rowan Martindale was hiking on a hillside in Morocco when she noticed something unusual: a slab of sedimentary rock marked by a wrinkled surface that resembled elephant skin. “I looked at the wrinkles, and I [...]
Tiny fossils from Hokkaido are revealing a surprisingly mobile ancient ocean during a warmer world. A team led by researchers at Kumamoto University has identified a new genus of microscopic crustaceans in northern Japan, providing fresh insight into how North Pacific ocean currents changed during an important phase of Earth’s climate history. The study examines [...]
Fossil bone analysis shows that mysterious tiny Liaoningosaurus specimens are actually hatchling ankylosaurs, offering rare evidence of early armored dinosaur development. A long-standing puzzle involving dozens of unusually small dinosaur fossils has finally been resolved. Specimens once believed to represent a tiny species of armored dinosaur are now understood to be the remains of baby [...]
3D analysis of bite marks on a tyrannosaur foot bone shows that smaller tyrannosaurs scavenged carcasses, likely consuming the final remains after most flesh was gone. Tyrannosaurs are usually imagined as dominant hunters at the top of the food chain, but new research highlights a more opportunistic side of these massive predators. When the chance [...]