Paleontology

A newly discovered fossil, found in South America, bears resemblance to Scrat, the sabre-toothed squirrel well-known for his antics in the Ice Age movies. In reality, though, the creature is known by…

252 million years ago there was a watershed moment in the history of life on Earth - namely that there was almost no life left on Earth. As much as 90 percent of ocean organisms were extinguished,…

A couple of months ago, I picked up on the news that Archaeopteryx had been rebumped in its* phylogeny to now sit among the dromeosaurs. I also mentioned near the end... I will say this, though: don'…

I'll bet you've never seen a fossilized parrot before. This is an ex-parrot. It has ceased to be. (Just couldn't resist it, apologies!) This is the newly named Cyrilavis colburnorum from the…

Mention "Mass Extinction" and most people will immediately think of the extinction that killed the dinosaurs. To be fair, this was pretty big, as far as extinctions go. Not only did it kill all of…

A giant crococile versus a giant snake in a Colombian coal mine? It sounds even more awesome than "Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus", except the real life version does not have Debbie Gibson. An…

In 1997, Ray Stanford, a citizen scientist dinosaur tracker who often spent time looking for fossils close to his Maryland home, was searching a creek bed after an extensive flood and discovered a…

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Brain, pelvis, hands and feet  don't lie - and five recent studies of Australopithecus sediba, a primitive hominin that existed around the same time early Homo species first began to appear on…

A new oldest woolly rhino fossil in Tibet suggests some giant mammals evolved there before the beginning of the Ice Age, but it leaves a lot of questions about where these giants came from and how…