Paleontology

Because an uninterrupted sequence of fossilized pollen from flowers begins in the Early Cretaceous, approximately 140 million years ago, it is generally assumed that flowering plants first evolved…

The discovery of what may be the earliest known creature with what can be discerned as a face has been reported in Nature. Entelognathus primordialis is an exceptionally well-preserved 419-million-…

A new species called Gondwanascorpio emzantsiensis is now the oldest known land-living animal discovered in Gondwana. Dr. Robert Gess, from the Evolutionary Studies Institute at Wits University,…

A 160 million-year-old fossil of an extinct rodent-like creature from China has been identified as Rugosodon eurasiaticus and is helping to explain how multituberculates, the most evolutionarily…

Researchers have described Megaconus mammaliaformis, an unusual mammal that lived about 165 million years ago. Previously, all that was known about this long-extinct mammal was a few little teeth…

Everyone has seen dinosaur skeletons in museums. You're not supposed to touch them, even on the outside. Dr. Qi Zhao of the Institute for Vertebrate Paleontology in Beijing got to not only…

The world's first known odd couple: 250 million years ago, a mammal forerunner and an amphibian shared a burrow in South Africa. Scientists scanning a 250 million-year-old fossilized burrow from the…

Paleontologists have presented the most extensive review yet available of toothed pterosaurs from the Cretaceous in England, featuring detailed taxonomic information, diagnoses and photographs of 30…

I mentioned at the end of last week's post about the new "earliest bird" that there were murmurs of discontent about the authenticity of the fossil specimen of Anchrionis. This fossil has come from…

Spindle-shaped inclusions in 3 billion-year-old rocks are microfossils of plankton probably inhabited the oceans around the globe during that time - but these inclusions in the rocks were not…