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Fossils News

August 25, 2025

Top Headlines

 

Over 300 million years ago, Illinois teemed with life in tropical swamps and seas, now preserved at the famous Mazon Creek fossil site. Researchers from the University of Missouri and geologist ...
Scientists have uncovered DNA from 214 ancient pathogens in prehistoric humans, including the oldest known evidence of plague. The findings show zoonotic diseases began spreading around 6,500 years ...
A new species of velvet worm, Peripatopsis barnardi, represents the first ever species from the arid Karoo, which indicates that the area was likely historically more forested than at present. In the Cape Fold Mountains, we now know that every ...
A new method could soon unlock the vast repository of biological information held in the proteins of ancient soft tissues. The findings could open up a new era for palaeobiological ...
New techniques used to analyze soft tissue in dinosaur fossils may hold the key to new cancer discoveries. Researchers have analyzed dinosaur fossils using advanced paleoproteomic techniques, a method that holds promise for uncovering molecular data ...
The fossils of ancient salamander-like creatures in Scotland are among the most well-preserved examples of early stem tetrapods -- some of the first animals to make the transition from water to land. Thanks to new research, scientists believe that ...
Spring in the Arctic brings forth a plethora of peeps and downy hatchlings as millions of birds gather to raise their young. The same was true 73 million years ago, according to a new article. The paper documents the earliest-known example of birds ...
A new study reveals that the aerobic nitrogen cycle in the ocean may have occurred about 100 million years before oxygen began to significantly accumulate in the atmosphere, based on nitrogen isotope analysis from ancient South African rock cores. ...
Palaeontologists have analyzed the most complete stegosaurian skull ever found in Europe and rewritten the evolutionary history of this iconic group of ...
Humans were making tools from whale bones as far back as 20,000 years ago, according to a new study. This discovery broadens our understanding of early human use of whale remains and offers valuable insight into the marine ecology of the ...
Contrary to widespread assumptions, the largest shark that ever lived -- Otodus megalodon -- fed on marine creatures at various levels of the food pyramid and not just the top. Scientists analyzed the zinc content of a large sample of fossilized ...
A mysterious sea monster fossil discovered decades ago in British Columbia has finally revealed its true identity — and it’s unlike anything scientists have seen before. Named Traskasaura ...

Latest Headlines

updated 1:27pm EDT

Earlier Headlines

 

A new long-necked marine reptile, Plesionectes longicollum, has been identified from a decades-old fossil found in Germany’s Posidonia Shale. The remarkably preserved specimen rewrites part of the ...

A fish thought to be evolution’s time capsule just surprised scientists. A detailed dissection of the coelacanth — a 400-million-year-old species often called a “living fossil” — revealed ...

A century-old fossil long mislabeled as a caterpillar has been reidentified as the first-known nonmarine lobopodian—rewriting what we know about ancient life. Discovered in Harvard’s museum ...

Half a billion years ago, a strange sea-dwelling creature called Mollisonia symmetrica may have paved the way for modern spiders. Using detailed fossil brain analysis, researchers uncovered neural ...

A tiny, overlooked wrist bone called the pisiform may have played a pivotal role in bird flight and it turns out it evolved far earlier than scientists thought. Fossils from bird-like dinosaurs in ...

A major breakthrough in Maya archaeology has emerged from Caracol, Belize, where the University of Houston team uncovered the tomb of Te K'ab Chaak—Caracol’s first known ruler. Buried with ...

A university student on a fossil-hunting field trip in Dorset made a stunning discovery: a 145-million-year-old jawbone belonging to a previously unknown mammal species with razor-like teeth. With ...

In the remote reaches of Arizona s Petrified Forest National Park, scientists have unearthed North America's oldest known pterosaur a small, gull-sized flier that once soared above Triassic ...

A groundbreaking study suggests that the famous Cambrian explosion—the dramatic burst of diverse animal life—might have actually started millions of years earlier than we thought. By analyzing ...

The shift from lizard-like sprawl to upright walking in mammals wasn’t a smooth climb up the evolutionary ladder. Instead, it was a messy saga full of unexpected detours. Using new bone-mapping ...

DNA from a skull found at Newgrange once sparked theories of a royal incestuous elite in ancient Ireland, but new research reveals no signs of such a hierarchy. Instead, evidence suggests a ...

Footprints found in the ancient lakebeds of White Sands may prove that humans lived in North America 23,000 years ago — much earlier than previously believed. A new study using radiocarbon-dated ...

A massive, extinct salamander with jaws like a vice once roamed ancient Tennessee and its fossil has just rewritten what we thought we knew about Appalachian amphibians. Named Dynamognathus ...

Despite Earth's most devastating mass extinction wiping out over 80% of marine life and half of land species, a group of early reptiles called archosauromorphs not only survived but thrived, ...

A prehistoric digestive time capsule has been unearthed in Australia: plant fossils found inside a sauropod dinosaur offer the first definitive glimpse into what these giant creatures actually ate. ...

In a paper published in National Science Review, a Chinese team of scientists highlights the discovery of well-preserved blue-stain fungal hyphae within a Jurassic fossil wood from northeastern ...

In the dense forests of Michigan s Upper Peninsula, archaeologists have uncovered a massive ancient agricultural system that rewrites what we thought we knew about Native American farming. Dating ...

Bronze Age life changed radically around 1500 BC in Central Europe. New research reveals diets narrowed, millet was introduced, migration slowed, and social systems became looser challenging old ...

Researchers have analyzed ancient DNA from Borrelia recurrentis, a type of bacteria that causes relapsing fever, pinpointing when it evolved to spread through lice rather than ticks, and how it ...

Scientists have analyzed ancient DNA and compared more than 400 fossils from 17 natural history museums to figure out how and why extinct sloths got so ...

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