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Paleontology News

October 3, 2025

Top Headlines

 

Scientists have finally uncovered direct genetic evidence of Yersinia pestis — the bacterium behind the Plague of Justinian — in a mass grave in Jerash, Jordan. This long-sought discovery resolves a centuries-old debate, confirming that the ...
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 ...
When Siberian volcanoes kicked off the Great Dying, the real climate villain turned out to be the rainforests themselves: once they collapsed, Earth’s biggest carbon sponge vanished, CO₂ ...
New research adds to our understanding of how rapidly rising sea levels due to climate change foreshadow the end of the Great Barrier Reef as we know it. The findings suggest the reef can withstand rising sea levels in isolation but is vulnerable to ...
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 ...
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 ...

Latest Headlines

updated 1:23pm EDT

Earlier Headlines

 

Two tiny pterosaurs, preserved for 150 million years, have revealed a surprising cause of death: violent storms. Researchers at the University of Leicester discovered both hatchlings, nicknamed Lucky ...

Sauropod tooth scratches reveal that some dinosaurs migrated seasonally, others ate a wide variety of plants, and climate strongly shaped their diets. Tanzania’s sand-blasted vegetation left ...

Scientists have uncovered microbial DNA preserved in mammoth remains dating back more than one million years, revealing the oldest host-associated microbial DNA ever recovered. By sequencing nearly ...

Fossilized bones in Brazil reveal that deadly infections plagued sauropods 80 million years ago. Researchers uncovered unhealed lesions consistent with osteomyelitis, pointing to pathogens spread ...

Spicomellus afer, a newly analyzed Jurassic ankylosaur from Morocco, is overturning scientists’ understanding of dinosaur evolution. Unlike any other known creature, it carried a collar of ...

Seventy million years ago, southern Patagonia was home to dinosaurs, turtles, and mammals—but also to a fierce crocodile-like predator. A newly discovered fossil, astonishingly well-preserved, ...

Scientists have uncovered the world s earliest fossil showing both Neanderthal and Homo sapiens features: a five-year-old child from Israel s Skhul Cave dating back 140,000 years. This discovery ...

Fossils unearthed in Ethiopia are reshaping our view of human evolution. Instead of a straight march from ape-like ancestors to modern humans, researchers now see a tangled, branching tree with ...

In the deserts of Ethiopia, scientists uncovered fossils showing that early members of our genus Homo lived side by side with a newly identified species of Australopithecus nearly three million years ...

An extraordinary fossil find along Victoria’s Surf Coast has revealed Janjucetus dullardi, a sharp-toothed, dolphin-sized predator that lived 26 million years ago. With large eyes, slicing teeth, ...

Tyrannosaurus rex might be the most famous meat-eater of all time, but it turns out it wasn’t the only way to be a terrifying giant. New research shows that while T. rex evolved a skull designed ...

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 stunning discovery in North Greenland has reclassified strange squid-like fossils, revealing that nectocaridids were not early cephalopods but ancestors of arrow worms. Preserved nervous systems ...

A groundbreaking fossil discovery in the Grand Canyon has unveiled exquisitely preserved soft-bodied animals from the Cambrian period, offering an unprecedented glimpse into early life more than 500 ...

The newly described Mirasaura grauvogeli from the Middle Triassic had a striking feather-like crest, hinting that complex skin appendages arose far earlier than previously believed. Its bird-like ...

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 chance glance at a museum display has led to the first-ever discovery of an ichthyosaur fossil in western Japan, dating back around 220 million years. Initially mistaken for a common bivalve ...

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