Paleontology

This week's Friday Fossil is Helicoprion. What can I say. This is one weird bastard. And it used to look even weirder, The story is like this. At the turn of the last century, people started to…

This week's Friday Fossil is Helicoprion. What can I say. This is one weird bastard. And it used to look even weirder, The story is like this. At the turn of the last century, people started to…

Nephila, orb web weavers of golden silk traps up to five feet in diameter that snare bats in tropical regions, have a new relative that lived with the dinosaurs 165 million years ago and named it…

Liaoconodon hui, a complete fossil mammal from the Mesozoic, has been found in China and includes a long-sought transitional middle ear. The specimen shows the bones associated with hearing in…

A gigantic theropod dinosaur has been discovered in China. According to findings published in Cretaceous Research, the newly named dinosaur species Zhuchengtyrannus magnus probably measured about 11…

This week's Friday Fossil is Arthropleura. "Calm down, dear!!" I'm about to pop off to the isle of Arran, the poster-child of British Geology. Not many countries can boast a handy island that has…

This week's friday fossil is Tribrachidium. Tribrachidium is from that oddest of time periods, the Ediacaran, and because of that we can partly excuse it for its weirdness. It's basically an Isle of…

I think one of the first things that got me interested in evolutionary biology was finding out that whales used to have legs. It's pretty incredible that the sleek, powerful whales of modern day…

Every friday from now on I'm going to pick out a cool fossil and stick it here. It's not necessarily going to be from the recent literature, and I'm an invertebrate paleontologist, so don't expect…

Everyone's heard of the Darwin Awards, right? It's where some poor soul dies in such a monumentally stupid way that it can be considered that they have done the human gene pool a great favour by…