Paleontology News

June 7, 2024

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June 5, 2024 — Geobiologists reported a 550 million-year-old sea sponge that had been missing from the fossil record. The discovery sheds new light on a conundrum that has stumped zoologists and paleontologists for ...

Tiny Roundworms Carve out Unique Parasitic Niche Inside Pseudoscorpion's Protective Covering

June 6, 2024 — In a parasitic first, a Baltic amber specimen has revealed that millions of years ago tiny worms known as nematodes were living inside of and feeding on the outer protective layer of ...

Gigantic Jurassic Pterosaur Fossil Unearthed in Oxfordshire, UK

June 4, 2024 — A team of palaeontologists has discovered a fossil of a gigantic flying reptile from the Jurassic period with an estimated wingspan of more than three metres -- making it one of the largest pterosaurs ever found from that ...

Bringing Back an Ancient Bird

May 28, 2024 — Using ancient DNA extracted from the toe bone of a museum specimen, biologists have sequenced the genome of an extinct, flightless bird called the little bush moa, shedding light into an unknown corner of avian genetic history. The work is the first ...

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updated 2:36pm EDT

Fishy Mystery of Marine Reptile Solved

June 5, 2024 — The identity of a prehistoric marine reptile has finally been revealed after experts discovered that some of its remains actually belonged to ...

An Unlikely Hero in Evolution: Worms

June 1, 2024 — One of Earth's most consequential bursts of biodiversity -- a 30-million-year period of explosive evolutionary changes spawning innumerable new species -- may have the most modest of creatures to ...

How Sharks Survived a Major Spike in Earth's Temperature

June 3, 2024 — The sharks we know today as the open ocean's top predators evolved from stubby bottom dwellers during a dramatic episode of global warming millions of years ...

Origins of 'Welsh Dragons' Finally Exposed by Experts

May 30, 2024 — A large fossil discovery has helped shed light on the history of dinosaurs in ...

'Ugly' Fossil Places Extinct Saber-Toothed Cat on Texas Coast

May 30, 2024 — This fossil looks like a lumpy, rounded rock with a couple of exposed teeth that are a little worse for wear, having been submerged and tumbled along the floor of the Gulf of Mexico for thousands of ...

Musankwa Sanyatiensis, a New Dinosaur from Zimbabwe

May 30, 2024 — Fossils found on the shoreline of Lake Kariba in Zimbabwe represent a completely new dinosaur species. This remarkable find, named Musankwa sanyatiensis, marks only the fourth dinosaur species named ...

Florida Fossil Porcupine Solves a Prickly Dilemma 10-Million Years in the Making

May 28, 2024 — An exceptionally rare fossilized porcupine skeleton discovered in Florida has allowed researchers to trace the evolutionary history for one of North ...

Ancient People Hunted Extinct Elephants at Tagua Tagua Lake in Chile 12,000 Years Ago

May 22, 2024 — Thousands of years ago, early hunter-gatherers returned regularly to Tagua Tagua Lake in Chile to hunt ancient elephants and take advantage of other ...

Researchers Discover Hidden Step in Dinosaur Feather Evolution

May 21, 2024 — Scientists discover 'zoned development' in dinosaur skin, with zones of reptile-style scales and zones of bird-like skin with feathers. A new dinosaur skin fossil has been found to be composed of ...

Evolutionary History of Extinct Duck Revealed

May 20, 2024 — The study's findings show mergansers arrived in the New Zealand region at least seven million years ago from the Northern Hemisphere, in a separate colonisation event to that which led to the ...

Diverse Headgear in Hoofed Mammals Evolved from Common Ancestor

May 20, 2024 — From the small ossicones on a giraffe to the gigantic antlers of a male moose -- which can grow as wide as a car -- the headgear of ruminant hooved mammals is extremely diverse, and new research ...

Record Low Antarctic Sea Ice 'Extremely Unlikely' Without Climate Change

May 20, 2024 — Scientists have found that the record-low levels of sea ice around Antarctica in 2023 were extremely unlikely to happen without the influence of climate change. This low was a one-in-a-2000-year ...

Ancient Arachnid from Coal Forests of America Stands out for Its Spiny Legs

May 17, 2024 — The spiny legged 308-million-year-old arachnid Douglassarachne acanthopoda was discovered the famous Mazon Creek ...

How Did Sabre-Toothed Tigers Acquire Their Long Upper Canine Teeth?

May 16, 2024 — In a groundbreaking study an international team of scientists has investigated the evolutionary patterns behind the development of sabre teeth, with some unexpected results along the ...

Summers Warm Up Faster Than Winters, Fossil Shells from Antwerp Show

May 15, 2024 — In a warmer climate, summers warm much faster than winters, according to research into fossil shells. With this knowledge we can better map the consequences of current global warming in the North Sea ...

First 'Warm-Blooded' Dinosaurs May Have Emerged 180 Million Years Ago

May 15, 2024 — The ability to regulate body temperature, a trait all mammals and birds have today, may have evolved among some dinosaurs early in the Jurassic period about 180 million years ago. The new study ...

Human Activity Is Making It Harder for Scientists to Interpret Oceans' Past

May 8, 2024 — New research shows human activity is significantly altering the ways in which marine organisms are preserved, with lasting effects that can both improve and impair the fossil ...

Did a Magnetic Field Collapse Trigger the Emergence of Animals?

May 3, 2024 — Researchers uncovered compelling evidence that Earth's magnetic field was in a highly unusual state when the macroscopic animals of the Ediacaran Period -- 635 to 541 million years ago -- ...

Rock Solid Evidence: Angola Geology Reveals Prehistoric Split Between South America and Africa

May 1, 2024 — A research team has found that ancient rocks and fossils from long-extinct marine reptiles in Angola clearly show a key part of Earth's past -- the splitting of South America and Africa and the ...

Revised Dating of the Liujiang Skeleton Renews Understanding of Human Occupation of China

May 1, 2024 — Researchers have provided new age estimates and revised provenance information for the Liujiang human fossils, shedding light on the presence of Homo sapiens in the region. Using advanced dating ...

The Double-Fanged Adolescence of Saber-Toothed Cats

Apr. 29, 2024 — How did North America's saber-toothed cats hunt without breaking their unwieldy saber-like canines, which are vulnerable to sideways bending stresses? A paleontologist provides mechanical ...

T. Rex Not as Smart as Previously Claimed

Apr. 29, 2024 — Dinosaurs were likely as smart as reptiles but not as intelligent as ...

Researchers Find Oldest Undisputed Evidence of Earth's Magnetic Field

Apr. 24, 2024 — A new study has recovered a 3.7-billion-year-old record of Earth's magnetic field, and found that it appears remarkably similar to the field surrounding Earth ...

Fossil Frogs Share Their Skincare Secrets

Apr. 23, 2024 — Palaeontologists have solved a hundred-year-old mystery of how some fossil frogs preserve their fleshy parts -- it's all down to their skin. Palaeontologists studied 45-million-year-old fossil ...

Ice Age Climate Analysis Reduces Worst-Case Warming Expected from Rising CO2

Apr. 17, 2024 — A detailed reconstruction of climate during the most recent ice age, when a large swath of North America was covered in ice, provides information on the relationship between CO2 and global ...

Paleontologists Unearth What May Be the Largest Known Marine Reptile

Apr. 17, 2024 — The fossilized remains of a second gigantic jawbone measuring more than two meters long has been found on a beach in Somerset, ...

Marine Plankton Behavior Could Predict Future Marine Extinctions

Apr. 17, 2024 — Marine communities migrated to Antarctica during the Earth's warmest period in 66 million years long before a mass-extinction ...

Genetic Variant Identified That Shaped the Human Skull Base

Apr. 17, 2024 — Researchers have identified a variant in the gene TBX1 as key in the development of the unique morphology at the base of the skull. TBX1 is present at higher levels in humans than in closely related ...

Interspecies Competition Led to Even More Forms of Ancient Human -- Defying Evolutionary Trends in Vertebrates

Apr. 17, 2024 — Competition between species played a major role in the rise and fall of hominins -- and produced a 'bizarre' evolutionary pattern for the Homo lineage -- according to a new study that ...

Seed Ferns: Plants Experimented With Complex Leaf Vein Networks 201 Million Years Ago

Apr. 16, 2024 — According to a research team led by palaeontologists, the net-like leaf veining typical for today's flowering plants developed much earlier than previously thought, but died out again several ...