Paleontology News

April 10, 2025

Top Headlines

Footprints Reveal Prehistoric Scottish Lagoons Were Stomping Grounds for Giant Jurassic Dinosaurs

Apr. 2, 2025 — Jurassic dinosaurs milled about ancient Scottish lagoons, leaving up to 131 footprints at a newly discovered stomping ground on the Isle of Skye in Scotland, according to a new ...

Ancient Amphibians as Big as Alligators Died in Mass Mortality Event in Triassic Wyoming

Apr. 2, 2025 — Dozens of amphibians perished together on an ancient floodplain around 230 million years ago, according to a new ...

8 Million Years of 'Green Arabia'

Apr. 9, 2025 — A new study reveals the modern arid desert between Africa and Saudi Arabia was once regularly lush and green with rivers and lakes over a period of 8 million years, allowing for the occupation and movements of both animals and ...

Prehistoric Rhinos Lived in Super-Herds

Apr. 9, 2025 — Rhinos that flourished across much of North America 12 million years ago gathered in huge herds, according to a new ...

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Mediterranean Hunter Gatherers Navigated Long-Distance Sea Journeys Well Before the First Farmers

Apr. 9, 2025 — Evidence shows that hunter-gatherers were crossing at least 100 kilometers (km) of open water to reach the Mediterranean island of Malta 8,500 years ...

Mammoth Genetic Diversity Throughout the Last Million Years

Apr. 9, 2025 — A new genomic study has uncovered long-lost genetic diversity in mammoth lineages spanning over a million years, providing new insights into the evolutionary history of these ...

Dinosaurs' Apparent Decline Prior to Asteroid May Be Due to Poor Fossil Record

Apr. 8, 2025 — The idea that dinosaurs were already in decline before an asteroid wiped most of them out 66 million years ago may be explained by a worsening fossil ...

Life Recovered Rapidly at Site of Dino-Killing Asteroid: A Hydrothermal System May Have Helped

Apr. 8, 2025 — About 66 million years ago, an asteroid slammed into the planet, wiping out all non-avian dinosaurs and about 70% of all marine species. But the ...

Machine Learning Helps Construct an Evolutionary Timeline of Bacteria

Apr. 3, 2025 — Scientists have helped to construct a detailed timeline for bacterial evolution, suggesting some bacteria used oxygen long before evolving the ability to produce it through ...

Animal Behavioral Diversity at Risk in the Face of Declining Biodiversity

Apr. 3, 2025 — Drastic declines in biodiversity due to human activities present risks to understanding animal behaviors such as tool use, according to new research. Shrinking animal populations make the study of ...

Mammals Were Adapting from Life in the Trees to Living on the Ground Before Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid

Apr. 1, 2025 — More mammals were living on the ground several million years before the mass extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs, new research has ...

New Species Revealed After 25 Years of Study on 'Inside Out' Fossil -- And Named After Discoverer's Mum

Mar. 26, 2025 — A new species of fossil is 444 million years-old with soft insides perfectly preserved. Research 'ultramarathon' saw palaeontologist puzzled by ...

New Fossil Discovery Reveals How Volcanic Deposits Can Preserve the Microscopic Details of Animal Tissues

Mar. 18, 2025 — An analysis of a 30,000-year-old fossil vulture from Central Italy has revealed for the first time that volcanic rock can preserve microscopic ...

From Dinosaurs to Birds: The Origins of Feather Formation

Mar. 20, 2025 — Feathers, essential for thermoregulation, flight, and communication in birds, originate from simple appendages known as proto-feathers, which were present in certain dinosaurs.By studying embryonic ...

Genetic Study Reveals Hidden Chapter in Human Evolution

Mar. 18, 2025 — Modern humans descended from not one, but at least two ancestral populations that drifted apart and later reconnected, long before modern humans spread across the ...

Iguanas Floated One-Fifth of the Way Around the World to Colonize Fiji

Mar. 17, 2025 — The only iguanas outside the Americas, Fiji iguanas are an enigma. A new genetic analysis shows that they are most closely related to the North American desert iguana, having separated about 34 ...

Misha Lived in Zoos, but the Elephant's Tooth Enamel Helps Reconstruct Wildlife Migrations

Mar. 13, 2025 — Misha lived her whole life in zoos, but this elephant's teeth are now helping scientists reconstruct wildlife migrations. Geologists show how strontium isotopes found in teeth or tusks reveal ...

Dozens of 3-Toed Dinosaurs Leave Their Mark in Australia

Mar. 13, 2025 — A researcher has confirmed a boulder at a regional school contains one of the highest concentrations of dinosaur footprints per square meter ever documented in ...

New Name for One of the World's Rarest Rhinoceroses

Mar. 13, 2025 — A recent study has reclassified the species commonly known as the Javan rhinoceros, proposing a more precise scientific name: Eurhinoceros sondaicus. The research highlights key differences in body ...

A 62-Million-Year-Old Skeleton Sheds Light on an Enigmatic Mammal

Mar. 11, 2025 — For more than 140 years, Mixodectes pungens, a species of small mammal that inhabited western North America in the early Paleocene, was a mystery. What little was known about them had been mostly ...

Are Volcanoes Behind the Oxygen We Breathe?

Mar. 10, 2025 — It is widely believed that Earth's atmosphere has been rich in oxygen for about 2.5 billion years due to a relatively rapid increase in microorganisms capable of performing photosynthesis. ...

Earth's Orbital Rhythms Link Timing of Giant Eruptions and Climate Change

Mar. 7, 2025 — An international team of scientists has synchronized key climate records from the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to unravel the sequence of events during the last million years before the extinction of ...

Plants Struggled for Millions of Years After the World's Worst Climate Catastrophe

Mar. 6, 2025 — Scientists have uncovered how plants responded to catastrophic climate changes 250 million years ago. Their findings reveal the long, drawn-out process of ecosystem recovery following one of the most ...

Prehistoric Bone Tool 'Factory' Hints at Early Development of Abstract Reasoning in Human Ancestors

Mar. 5, 2025 — The oldest collection of mass-produced prehistoric bone tools reveal that human ancestors were likely capable of more advanced abstract reasoning one million years earlier than thought, finds a new ...

When Birds Lose the Ability to Fly, Their Bodies Change Faster Than Their Feathers

Feb. 27, 2025 — Researchers examined dozens of bird species in museum collections looking for differences in the feathers and bodies between birds that can fly and birds that can't. They found that when birds ...

Humans Inherited Their Flexible Joints from the Earliest Jawed Fish

Feb. 25, 2025 — The efficient architecture of our joints, which allows our skeletons to be flexible and sturdy, originated among our most ancient jawed fish ancestors, according to a new ...

Near-Complete Skull Discovery Reveals 'Top Apex', Leopard-Sized 'Fearsome' Carnivore

Feb. 17, 2025 — A rare discovery of a nearly complete skull in the Egyptian desert has led scientists to the 'dream' revelation of a new 30-million-year-old species of the ancient apex predatory carnivore, ...

Global Warming and Mass Extinctions: What We Can Learn from Plants from the Last Ice Age

Feb. 12, 2025 — Global warming is producing a rapid loss of plant species -- according to estimates, roughly 600 plant species have died out since 1750 -- twice the number of animal species lost. But which species ...

Underwater Fossil Bed Discovered by Collectors Preserves Rare Slice of Florida's Past

Feb. 12, 2025 — Fossil collectors in Florida have discovered an ancient sinkhole, now at the bottom of a river, which holds the remains of animals rarely seen in the state, including a type of giant armadillo, giant ...

Anomaly in the Deep Sea

Feb. 10, 2025 — Beryllium-10, a rare radioactive isotope produced by cosmic rays in the atmosphere, provides valuable insights into the Earth's geological history. A research team has discovered an unexpected ...

Soft Tissue from a 183 Million-Year-Old Jurassic Plesiosaur Analyzed

Feb. 7, 2025 — Researchers have analyzed the soft tissue from a fossilized plesiosaur for the first time. The results show that the long-necked marine reptile had both smooth and scaly skin. This was likely so it ...

Cretaceous Fossil from Antarctica Reveals Earliest Modern Bird

Feb. 5, 2025 — Sixty-six million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous Period, an asteroid impact near the Yucat n Peninsula of Mexico triggered the extinction of all known non-bird dinosaurs. But for the early ...

Sharks and Rays Benefit from Global Warming, but Not from CO2 in the Oceans

Jan. 30, 2025 — Sharks and rays have populated the world's oceans for around 450 million years, but more than a third of the species living today are severely threatened by overfishing and the loss of their ...

Unveiling Japan's Geological History Through Volcanogenic Massive Sulfide Deposits

Jan. 27, 2025 — Dating key tectonic events in Japan's geological history has long been often challenging due to poor microfossil preservation from intense heat due to metamorphism. Researchers tackled this by ...