Fossils News

November 20, 2024

Top Headlines

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 sacrificial ...

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 fossil record and the only one from the ...

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 ...

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, pine nuts, licorice and grapes -- commonly used ...

Latest Headlines

updated 11:27pm EST

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 ...

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 ...

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, ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Sinuses Prevented Prehistoric Crocodile Relatives from Deep Diving

Oct. 29, 2024 — Paleobiologists have found that the sinuses of ocean dwelling relatives of modern-day crocodiles prevented them from evolving into deep divers like whales 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 ...

Fossil Hunters Strike Gold With New Species

Oct. 29, 2024 — Paleontologists have identified fossils of an ancient species of bug that spent the past 450 million years covered in fool's gold in central New York. The new species, Lomankus edgecombei, is a ...

How Mammals Got Their Stride

Oct. 25, 2024 — Researchers reveal new insights into the complex evolutionary history behind the distinctive upright posture of modern placental and marsupial mammals, showing the transition was surprisingly complex ...

'Well-Man' Thrown from Castle Identified from 800-Year-Old Norse Saga

Oct. 25, 2024 — A passage in the Norse Sverris Saga, the 800-year-old story of King Sverre Sigurdsson, describes a military raid that occurred in AD 1197, during which a body was thrown into a well at Sverresborg ...

Fossils Unveil How Southern Europe's Ecosystem Changed Through Glacial-Interglacial Stages

Oct. 23, 2024 — Fossils from more than 600,000 years ago reveal how Southern Europe's animal community shifted between warm and cold climate fluctuations, according to a new ...

'Paleo-Robots' to Help Scientists Understand How Fish Started to Walk on Land

Oct. 23, 2024 — The transition from water to land is one of the most significant events in the history of life on Earth. Now, a team of roboticists, palaeontologists and biologists is using robots to study how the ...

Paleontologists Discover Colorado 'Swamp Dweller' That Lived Alongside Dinosaurs

Oct. 23, 2024 — The new mammal lived in Colorado 70 to 75 million years ago -- a time when a vast inland sea covered large portions of the state, and animals like sharks, turtles and giant crocodiles ...

Symbiosis in Ancient Corals

Oct. 23, 2024 — A research team has used nitrogen isotope analysis to demonstrate that 385 million years old corals from the Eifel and Sauerland regions had symbionts. This finding represents the earliest evidence ...

Rare Fossils of Extinct Elephant Document the Earliest Known Instance of Butchery in India

Oct. 21, 2024 — Scientists have discovered the earliest evidence of animal butchery by humans in ...

Ancient Viral DNA in the Human Genome Linked to Multiple Sclerosis and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

Oct. 21, 2024 — New research has revealed a connection between ancient viral DNA embedded in the human genome and the genetic risk for two major diseases that affect the central nervous ...

Fossils and Fires: Insights Into Early Modern Human Activity in the Jungles of Southeast Asia

Oct. 10, 2024 — Studying microscopic layers of dirt dug from the Tam Pa Ling cave site in northeastern Laos has provided a team of archaeologists further insights into some of the earliest evidence of Homo sapiens ...

Newly Discovered Late Cretaceous Birds May Have Carried Heavy Prey Like Extant Raptors

Oct. 9, 2024 — Newly discovered birds from Late Cretaceous North America were hawk-sized and had powerful raptor-like feet, according to a new ...

New Seed Fossil Sheds Light on Wind Dispersal in Plants

Oct. 8, 2024 — Scientists have discovered one of the earliest examples of a winged seed, granting insight into the origin and early evolution of wind dispersal strategies in ...

2-Billion-Year-Old Rock Home to Living Microbes

Oct. 3, 2024 — Pockets of microbes have been found living within a sealed fracture in 2-billion-year-old rock. The rock was excavated from the Bushveld Igneous Complex in South Africa, an area known for its rich ...

Study of Monkey Fossils Found in Cave Sheds Light on the Animals' Extinction Centuries Ago

Oct. 2, 2024 — By studying rare fossils of jaws and other skull parts of a long-extinct Caribbean monkey, a team of researchers says it has uncovered new evidence documenting the anatomy and ecology of an extinct ...

Brazilian Fossils Reveal Jaw-Dropping Discovery in Mammal Evolution

Sep. 25, 2024 — The discovery of new cynodont fossils from southern Brazil by a team of palaeontologists has led to a significant breakthrough in understanding the evolution of ...

World's Oldest Cheese Reveals Origins of Kefir

Sep. 25, 2024 — Scientists successfully extracted and analyzed DNA from ancient cheese samples found alongside the Tarim Basin mummies in China, dating back approximately 3,600 years. The research suggests a new ...

Unveiling Ancient Life: New Method Sheds Light on Early Cellular and Metabolic Evolution

Sep. 24, 2024 — Analyzing fossils can be difficult -- especially when they're so small that they can only be seen with a microscope. Researchers have now come up with a ...

Scientists Turn to Human Skeletons to Explore Origins of Horseback Riding

Sep. 20, 2024 — A new, wide-ranging exploration of human remains casts doubt on a long-standing theory in archaeology known as the Kurgan hypothesis -- which, among other claims, suggests that humans first ...

Over Nearly Half a Billion Years, Earth's Global Temperature Has Changed Drastically, Driven by Carbon Dioxide

Sep. 19, 2024 — A new study offers the most detailed glimpse yet into how Earth's surface temperature has changed over the past 485 million years. The data show that Earth has been and can be warmer than today ...

Insights Into South African Population History from 10,000-Year-Old Human DNA

Sep. 19, 2024 — Ancient DNA has provided spectacular insights into human history, particularly in Europe and Asia, where researchers have reconstructed the genomes of thousands of people. However, fewer than two ...

Rugged Falklands Landscape Was Once a Lush Rainforest

Sep. 18, 2024 — A researcher has found evidence that the treeless, rugged, grassland landscape of the Falkland Islands was home to a lush, diverse rainforest up to 30 million years ...