Paleontology

Dearcmhara shawcrossi, Scottish dino-fish. Todd Marshall By Stephen Brusatte, University of Edinburgh Today my colleagues and I had the great privilege to announce a remarkable new discovery: a…

Reconstructing ancient life has long required a certain amount of inference and imagination - especially speculative is the coloration of long-extinct organisms. New methods of investigation are…

Many large mammals went extinct at the end of the most recent Ice Age (about 11,000 years ago), including the Steppe bison, Bison priscus. Recently an intact one was found, literally frozen in…

A fossil of the ancient horse Eurohippus messelensis found in Germany contains a fetus as well as parts of the uterus and associated tissues. Eurohippus messelensis had four toes on each forefoot…

The femur that led to the oldest modern human genome. Credit: Bence Viola, MPI EVA By Daniel Zadik, University of Leicester When a human bone was found on a gravelly riverbank by a bone-carver who…

Deinocheirus mirificus. Credit: Yuong-Nam Lee By Stephen Brusatte, University of Edinburgh Everywhere scientists look it seems like they are finding dinosaurs. A new species is emerging at the…

By pairing chemical analyses with micropaleontology, the study of tiny fossilized organisms, researchers believe they can decipher how global marine life was affected by a rapid warming event more…

Sauropods,  large, long-necked plant-eating dinosaurs such as Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus, are the largest animals to have ever walked the Earth, with the biggest weighing 80 tons. Clearly, a…

A 52-million-year old beetle was able to live alongside ants—preying on their eggs and usurping resources—within the comfort of their nest. Somehow. The fossil, encased in a piece of amber from…

Phytosaur: still got it. Credit: BFS Man, CC BY By Stephanie Drumheller, University of Tennessee; Michelle Stocker, Virginia Tech, and Sterling Nesbitt, Virginia Tech Some 220 million years ago, the…