Fossils & Ruins News

November 20, 2024

Top Headlines

New Fossil Reveals the Evolution of Flying Reptiles

Nov. 18, 2024 — A newly discovered pterosaur fossil is shedding light on the evolutionary journey of these ancient flying reptiles. This complete specimen, named Skiphosoura bavarica, provides crucial insights into how pterosaurs transitioned from early, smaller ...

Earliest Evidence of Humans Using Fire to Shape the Landscape of Tasmania

Nov. 16, 2024 — Some of the first human beings to arrive in Tasmania, over 41,000 years ago, used fire to shape and manage the landscape, about 2,000 years earlier than previously ...

The Secrets of Fossil Teeth Revealed by the Synchrotron: A Long Childhood Is the Prelude to the Evolution of a Large Brain

Nov. 13, 2024 — Could social bonds be the key to human big brains? A study of the fossil teeth of early Homo from Georgia dating back 1.77 million years reveals a prolonged childhood despite a small brain and an ...

Bird Brain from the Age of Dinosaurs Reveals Roots of Avian Intelligence

Nov. 13, 2024 — A 'one of a kind' fossil discovery could transform our understanding of how the unique brains and intelligence of modern birds evolved, one of the most enduring mysteries of vertebrate ...

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Thanksgiving Special: Dinosaur Drumsticks and the Story of the Turkey Trot

Nov. 20, 2024 — Wings may be the obvious choice when studying the connection between dinosaurs and birds, but a pair of paleontologists prefer drumsticks. That part of the leg, they say, is where fibular reduction ...

The Chilling Sound of the Aztec Death Whistle

Nov. 19, 2024 — The Aztec skull whistle produces a shrill, screaming sound. A study shows that these whistles have a disturbing effect on the human brain. The Aztecs may have deliberately used this effect in ...

Tiny Worm Makes for Big Evolutionary Discovery

Nov. 18, 2024 — The history of a major animal group, composed of millions of species of insects, arachnids, and nemotodes, has been elusive -- until now. A team has now identified the oldest known ecdysozoan in the ...

Egyptians Drank Hallucinogenic Cocktails in Ancient Rituals, Study Confirms

Nov. 15, 2024 — Scholars for the first time identified chemical signatures of the components of a liquid concoction contained in a Bes mug. A new technique helped identify a sample flavored with honey, sesame seeds, ...

Genetic Legacy of Jomon Hunter-Gatherers Linked to Increased BMI in Modern Japanese, Study Finds

Nov. 14, 2024 — New research exploring the roots of modern Japanese populations has linked the genetic signature of Jomon hunter-gatherers to a higher body mass ...

12,000-Year-Old Stones May Be Very Early Evidence of Wheel-Like Technology

Nov. 13, 2024 — A collection of perforated pebbles from an archaeological site in Israel may be spindle whorls, representing a key milestone in the development of rotational tools including wheels, according to a ...

More Evidence That Europe's Ancient Landscapes Were Open Woodlands: Oak, Hazel and Yew Were Abundant

Nov. 12, 2024 — A new study finds that the disturbance-demanding plant species oak, hazel and yew were abundant in Europe's forests before modern humans arrived, ...

On the Origin of Life: How the First Cell Membranes Came to Exist

Nov. 13, 2024 — Few questions have captivated humankind more than the origin of life on Earth. How did the first living cells come to exist? How did these early protocells develop the structural membranes necessary ...

First Amber Find on the Antarctic Continent

Nov. 12, 2024 — Roughly 90 million years ago, climatic conditions in Antarctica were suitable for resin-producing trees. Researchers have now made the southernmost discovery of amber in the ...

A New Wrinkle in Turtles: Their Genomes Fold in a Unique Way, Researchers Find

Nov. 11, 2024 — A study described the three-dimensional architecture of turtle genomes, which fold in a configuration unlike any other animal observed so ...

Was 'Snowball Earth' a Global Event? Study Delivers Best Proof Yet

Nov. 11, 2024 — A series of rocks hiding around Colorado's Rocky Mountains may hold clues to a frigid period in Earth's past when glaciers several miles thick covered the entire ...

Geologists Rewrite Textbooks With New Insights from the Bottom of the Grand Canyon

Nov. 8, 2024 — Geoscientists employed current-day stratigraphic, depositional and paleontological models, along with modern technological muscle to provide updated insights of the Cambrian period of the Grand ...

New Insights Into the Denisovans: New Hominin Group That Interbred With Modern Day Humans

Nov. 8, 2024 — Scientists believe individuals of the most recently discovered 'hominin' group (the Denisovans) that interbred with modern day humans passed on some of their genes via multiple, distinct ...

New Study Maps Dramatic 100-Million-Year Explosion in Color Signals Used by Animals

Nov. 7, 2024 — A recent study finds that color vision evolved in animals more than 100 million years before the emergence of colorful fruits and flowers. And there has been a dramatic explosion of color signals in ...

DNA Evidence Rewrites Story of People Buried in Pompeii Eruption

Nov. 7, 2024 — Researchers have used ancient DNA to challenge long-held interpretations of the people of Pompeii. Contrary to physical appearances, the DNA evidence revealed unexpected variations in gender and ...

The Egg or the Chicken? An Ancient Unicellular Says Egg

Nov. 6, 2024 — Chromosphaera perkinsii is a single-celled species discovered in 2017 in marine sediments around Hawaii. The first signs of its presence on Earth have been dated at over a billion years, well before ...

Groundbreaking Study Provides New Evidence of When Earth Was Slushy

Nov. 5, 2024 — At the end of the last global ice age, the deep-frozen Earth reached a built-in limit of climate change and thawed into a slushy planet. Results provide the first direct geochemical evidence of the ...

Did the World's Best-Preserved Dinosaurs Really Die in 'Pompeii-Type' Events?

Nov. 4, 2024 — Extraordinarily well preserved fossils of feathered dinosaurs and other creatures got that way after being frozen in time by by volcanic eruptions, researchers have long suggested. Not so fast, says ...

Fossil of Huge Terror Bird Offers New Information About Wildlife in South America 12 Million Years Ago

Nov. 4, 2024 — Evolutionary biologists report they have analyzed a fossil of an extinct giant meat-eating bird -- which they say could be the largest known member of its kind -- providing new information about ...

Reconstructing Ancient Climate Provides Clues to Climate Change

Nov. 4, 2024 — Research helps reconstruct an ancient climate and challenges the timing of the Andes Mountains ...

Evolutionary Paths Vastly Differ for Birds, Bats

Nov. 1, 2024 — New research has found that, unlike birds, the evolution of bats' wings and legs is tightly coupled, which may have prevented them from filling as many ecological niches as ...

Indigenous Cultural Burning Has Protected Australia's Landscape for Millennia, Study Finds

Nov. 1, 2024 — Ancient cultural burning practices carried out by Indigenous Australians limited fuel availability and prevented high intensity fires in southeastern Australia for thousands of years, according to ...

A Novel Neural Network for Preserving Cultural Heritage Via 3D Image Reconstruction

Oct. 31, 2024 — Relief-type cultural heritage objects are commonly found in many historical sites worldwide, but often suffer from varying levels of damage and deterioration. Traditional methods for image ...

How Life Began on Earth: Modeling Earth's Ancient Atmosphere

Oct. 31, 2024 — This model reveals how vastly different the atmosphere was on ancient Earth, and how life may have first ...

Buried Alive: Carbon Dioxide Release from Magma Deep Beneath Ancient Volcanoes Was a Hidden Driver of Earth's Past Climate

Oct. 30, 2024 — A team discovered that, contrary to present scientific understanding, ancient volcanoes continued to spew carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from deep within the Earth long past their period of ...

Into the Great Wide Open: How Steppe Pastoralist Groups Formed and Transformed Over Time

Oct. 30, 2024 — With the 'time-traveling ability' of archaeogenetic studies it has become possible to shed light onto the dynamic past of human populations world-wide. Integrated with archaeological and ...

Ancient DNA Brings to Life History of the Iconic Aurochs, Whose Tale Is Intertwined With Climate Change and Human Culture

Oct. 30, 2024 — Geneticists have deciphered the prehistory of aurochs -- the animals that were the focus of some of the most iconic early human art -- by analyzing 38 genomes harvested from bones dating across 50 ...

The 'Urban Revolution' Was Slow in Bronze Age Arabia

Oct. 30, 2024 — Settlements in northern Arabia were in a transitional stage of urbanization during the third to second millennium BCE, according to a new ...

Large Herbivores Have Lived in Yellowstone National Park for More Than 2,000 Years

Oct. 30, 2024 — Large herbivores like bison or elk have continuously lived in the Yellowstone National Park region for about 2,300 years, according to a new analysis of chemicals preserved in lake ...

Bones from Tudor Mary Rose Shipwreck Suggest Handedness Might Affect Collarbone Chemistry

Oct. 30, 2024 — A new study of human skeletal remains from the wreck of the 16th century English warship Mary Rose suggests that whether a person is right- versus left-handed may influence how their clavicle bone ...