Early Mammals News

September 1, 2026

Top Headlines

3,500-year-old Skeletons Challenge What Scientists Thought They Knew About Syphilis

Aug. 12, 2026 Ancient remains from Vietnam suggest diseases like yaws may have been passed from mother to child thousands of years ago, a form of transmission often assumed to indicate syphilis. The discovery ...

Ancient DNA Reveals Plague Was Already Killing Humans 5,500 Years Ago

June 18, 2026 Plague was already a deadly killer 5,500 years ago, long before cities, farming, or the rat-infested conditions usually linked to historic outbreaks. By analyzing ancient DNA from hunter-gatherer cemeteries in Siberia, researchers discovered early ...

Who Are the Japanese? Huge DNA Discovery Rewrites History

May 14, 2026 Scientists analyzing the genomes of thousands of people across Japan discovered evidence for a previously overlooked third ancestral group, challenging the long-accepted “dual origins” theory. The newly identified ancestry appears linked to the ...

Scientists Find Perfect Fossils in Rust Beneath Australian Farmland

Apr. 24, 2026 Beneath the dry farmland of New South Wales lies a hidden window into a lost rainforest teeming with life from 11-16 million years ago. At McGraths Flat, scientists have uncovered fossils preserved in astonishing detail—not in typical rock like ...

Scientists Just Solved a 160-million-year Fossil Mystery “I’ve Never Seen Anything Like It”

Apr. 15, 2026 A rare fossil discovery is shedding light on the “missing years” of early sponge evolution. Scientists found a 550-million-year-old sponge that likely lacked hard skeletal parts, explaining why ...

Ancient DNA Solves 12,000-year-old Mystery of Rare Genetic Growth Disorder

Feb. 17, 2026 An Ice Age double burial in Italy has yielded a stunning genetic revelation. DNA from a mother and daughter who lived over 12,000 years ago shows that the younger had a rare inherited growth disorder, confirmed through mutations in a key bone-growth ...

Europe’s “Untouched” Wilderness Was Shaped by Neanderthals and Hunter-gatherers

Feb. 12, 2026 Long before agriculture, humans were transforming Europe’s wild landscapes. Advanced simulations show that hunting and fire use by Neanderthals and Mesolithic hunter-gatherers reshaped forests and ...

This AI App Can Tell Which Dinosaur Made a Footprint

Feb. 1, 2026 Dinosaur footprints have always been mysterious, but a new AI app is cracking their secrets. DinoTracker analyzes photos of fossil tracks and predicts which dinosaur made them, with accuracy rivaling human experts. Along the way, it uncovered ...

A Lost Disease Emerges from 5,500-year-old Human Remains

Jan. 26, 2026 A 5,500-year-old skeleton from Colombia has revealed the oldest known genome of the bacterium linked to syphilis and related diseases. The ancient strain doesn’t fit neatly into modern categories, hinting at a forgotten form that split off early ...

New Fossils in Qatar Reveal a Tiny Sea Cow Hidden for 21 Million Years

Dec. 12, 2025 Fossils from Qatar have revealed a small, newly identified sea cow species that lived in the Arabian Gulf more than 20 million years ago. The site contains the densest known collection of fossil sea cow bones, showing that these animals once thrived ...

Scientists Find a Surprising Link Between Lead and Human Evolution

Nov. 16, 2025 Researchers found that ancient hominids—including early humans—were exposed to lead throughout childhood, leaving chemical traces in fossil teeth. Experiments suggest this exposure may have driven genetic changes that strengthened ...

A 400-million-year-old Plant Creates Water so Weird It Looks Alien

Nov. 13, 2025 Researchers discovered that living horsetails act like natural distillation towers, producing bizarre oxygen isotope signatures more extreme than anything previously recorded on Earth—sometimes resembling meteorite water. By tracing these isotopic ...

Latest Headlines

updated 11:06am EDT

Fossil Feet May Be Misleading Scientists About Human Evolution

Aug. 31, 2026 Wild monkeys in West Africa can climb vertical tree trunks using foot flexibility scientists did not realize they possessed. The discovery challenges a key assumption about what the last common ...

1.4-Million-Year-Old Footprints Reveal a Surprisingly Large Human Relative

Aug. 30, 2026 Ancient footprints in Kenya reveal that eight Paranthropus boisei may have traveled together 1.4 million years ago, with some individuals reaching surprisingly large, human-like body sizes. The ...

324-Million-Year-Old Fossil Reveals How Insects Conquered Land

Aug. 27, 2026 Ancient fossils suggest insects conquered land through a long amphibious phase rather than making an abrupt jump from water to dry ground. A newly identified 324-million-year-old species still ...

“One-in-a-Million” Sea Creature Fossil Preserves Soft Tissue for 450 Million Years

Aug. 20, 2026 Scientists have identified exceptionally rare soft tissue preserved in a 450-million-year-old crinoid fossil, more than 200 million years older than ...

This 23-Foot Crocodylian May Have Ruled South America’s Food Chain

Aug. 19, 2026 Miocene South America was packed with giant prey—and the predators hunting them were just as spectacular. Fossil bite marks suggest crocodylians, especially the enormous Purussaurus neivensis, were ...

Tiny 1.7-Billion-Year-Old Fossils Could Reveal How Complex Life Began

Aug. 17, 2026 Scientists are searching some of Earth’s oldest rocks for tiny fossils that could reveal how simple microbial life made the extraordinary leap toward plants, animals, and other complex organisms. ...

A New Ice Age Species Was Hiding in La Brea Tar Pits Fossils for Decades

Aug. 16, 2026 Scientists have discovered a new extinct amphibian species hiding in the fossil collections of Los Angeles’ La Brea Tar Pits. Named Spea labreae, the Ice Age spadefoot toad is an exceptionally rare ...

Paleontology Rocked by Organic Molecules Found in 66-Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Bones

Aug. 14, 2026 Researchers have found strong evidence that original collagen can survive inside dinosaur fossils for tens of millions of years, overturning a ...

240-Million-Year-Old Reptile Fossil Reveals a Lost Chapter Before Dinosaurs and Crocodiles

Aug. 10, 2026 A 240-million-year-old reptile discovered in Brazil is revealing what evolution looked like just before the rise of dinosaurs and crocodiles. The ...

For 15,000 Years, Humans and Dogs Have Been Changing Each Other

Aug. 10, 2026 Dogs have been shaping—and being shaped by—humans for about 15,000 years, evolving from early partners of hunter-gatherers into an astonishing range of specialized companions. Across the globe, ...

The Dodo Bird Had a Secret Sensory World Scientists Are Only Now Discovering

Aug. 8, 2026 CT scans of the world’s rarest dodo skulls suggest the extinct bird may have had a stronger sense of smell, a highly sensitive beak, and a lifestyle that extended into dawn and dusk. The ...

Dinosaurs Became Giants — So Why Did They Never Become Tiny?

Aug. 9, 2026 Dinosaurs conquered the land at enormous sizes, but strangely, they almost never evolved into truly tiny animals. New research suggests that physiology alone can’t explain this missing miniature ...

Scientists Found Two Mysterious ‘ghost’ Ancestors Hiding in Our DNA

July 31, 2026 Modern humans carry DNA from two mysterious extinct lineages in addition to Neanderthals and Denisovans. Their hidden genetic legacy shows that our evolutionary past was shaped by repeated mixing ...

Did T. Rex Leave These 66-Million-Year-Old Bite Marks?

Aug. 4, 2026 Fossilized dinosaur bones from Wyoming are offering a rare glimpse into the feeding behavior of Tyrannosaurus rex. Researchers examined more than 3,000 bones dating back 72 to 66 million years and ...

Scientists Just Discovered a Lost Branch of Australia’s Marsupials

July 19, 2026 Fossils from Queensland suggest a newly recognized marsupial order may have survived in Australia for around 35 million years, rewriting part of the story of how the continent's unique mammals ...

Ancient Denisovan DNA Still Shapes Human Immunity Today

June 13, 2026 Ancient encounters between humans and the mysterious Denisovans are still shaping people today. By analyzing genomes from populations across the Pacific, researchers uncovered evidence that the ...

After 70 Years of Excavation, Ancient Sardis Becomes a UNESCO World Heritage Site

June 25, 2026 After nearly seven decades of excavation, the legendary ancient city of Sardis has become a UNESCO World Heritage Site, celebrating years of discoveries that continue to reshape its history. ...

This Four-Winged Dinosaur May Have Terrorized Earth's Earliest Birds

June 23, 2026 A newly discovered feathered dinosaur called Jian changmaensis may be the missing predator responsible for mysterious piles of crushed prehistoric bird bones in China. The four-winged glider, a close ...

Stonehenge's Most Mysterious Stone Traveled 700 Kilometers Across Britain

June 9, 2026 Scientists have uncovered new evidence that Stonehenge’s six-ton Altar Stone was deliberately transported hundreds of kilometers from Scotland by ancient people. The feat would have required ...

This Bizarre Crocodile Relative from the Triassic Looked Like an Ostrich Dinosaur

May 29, 2026 Scientists have discovered Labrujasuchus expectatus, a bizarre crocodile relative that looked more like an ostrich-like dinosaur than anything resembling a modern crocodile. It walked on two legs, ...

Scientists Discover Giant Sea Predator Tylosaurus Rex That Terrorized Ancient Oceans

May 23, 2026 A colossal new sea predator named Tylosaurus rex has been identified from fossils found in Texas, revealing a brutal 43-foot-long hunter that ruled ancient oceans 80 million years ago. The discovery ...

567-Million-Year-Old Fossils Rewrite the Dawn of Animal Life

Aug. 5, 2026 A spectacular fossil site in Canada contains 567-million-year-old creatures that may represent some of the earliest animals to move, reproduce sexually, and develop recognizable body plans. The ...

Scientists Think They’ve Cracked the Mystery of Human Right-Handedness

May 18, 2026 A new study suggests humans became overwhelmingly right-handed because of two major evolutionary shifts: walking on two legs and developing much larger brains. Researchers found that as human ...

Stunning Fossil Discovery Challenges the Origins of Animal Life

May 12, 2026 Scientists revisiting mysterious 540-million-year-old microfossils from Brazil have overturned a major idea about early animal life. What were once thought to be trails left behind by tiny worm-like ...

Ice Age Humans in China Crafted Surprisingly Advanced Stone Tools 146,000 Years Ago

May 9, 2026 Scientists in China discovered that ancient humans were making surprisingly advanced stone tools during a harsh ice age 146,000 years ago. The tools, created by Homo juluensis, show careful planning ...

A Child's Tooth and Strange Green Stones Uncover a 5,500-Year-Old Mystery

June 3, 2026 An ancient mountain cave in the Pyrenees may have served as one of the earliest high-altitude mining camps ever discovered, with evidence of repeated visits spanning thousands of years. The find ...

This Prehistoric Fish May Explain How Animals First Walked on Earth

May 25, 2026 Scientists have peered inside the skull of a 380-million-year-old Antarctic fish that was closely related to the first animals to walk on land, revealing surprising clues about how life began its ...

This Tiny Mammal Survived the Dinosaur Apocalypse and Changed Life on Earth

Apr. 27, 2026 A newly discovered prehistoric mammal may hold clues to how life survived the dinosaur-killing extinction. The tiny species, Cimolodon desosai, lived 75 million years ago and had traits—like a ...

Giant Octopuses Ruled the Oceans 100 Million Years Ago, Study Finds

Apr. 24, 2026 Giant, fearsome octopuses may have once ruled the ancient seas, according to new research that flips the script on their evolutionary past. By uncovering exquisitely preserved fossil jaws hidden ...

100-Million-Year-Old Bug Had Crab-Like Claws Unlike Any Known Insect

May 25, 2026 Deep inside 100-million-year-old amber from Myanmar, scientists uncovered a bizarre ancient bug with clawed front legs that look more like a crab’s pincers than anything seen in modern insects. The ...