Category:
Paleontology
Jan 30, 2013
Rhabdopleurids: 500 Million Years and Counting
Evolution doesn’t always end in success for every organism. In fact, for some, it seems to result in exactly what a species most fears: extinction.
Jan 30, 2013
Bigger Isn’t Necessarily Smarter: An Enormous Dino With a Tiny Brain
The biggest creatures to ever walk the Earth had brains smaller than ours.
Jan 28, 2013
Snagging a Date 125 Million Years Ago: the Avian Way
Sexual dimorphism, an essential piece of many species’ survival, is the difference in morphological appearance between males and females of the same species. Think Lion King: Simba’s father sported a big bushy orange mane, whereas his mother, also a lion, had no showy neck fur to speak of.
Jan 7, 2013
An Ancient Brain Gives Clues About Insect Ancestry
Fuxianhuia protensa is an ancient arthropod from the Yunnan Province of China that has scientists rethinking the evolutionary history of insects.
Dec 21, 2012
Defining Life
Life is more than the lucky product of a stew of elements; biology is more than complex chemistry.
Nov 27, 2012
A New Ancient Fish Offers Insight into “Living Fossil” Species
The fossils of a diminutive 100-million-year-old fish recently discovered in Texas has close relatives still living today.
Oct 25, 2012
The Early Bird Gets the Earlier Bird
A new study shows fossilized proof that feathered dinosaurs ate Mesozoic birds.
Oct 2, 2012
Bringing Back the Woolly Mammoth
In Yakutia Russia, scientists have found what they believe to be frozen living cells from ancient mammoths.
Oct 2, 2012
World’s Tiniest Footprints Discovered
A recent trace fossil discovery at Canada's Joggins Fossil Cliffs has captured the interest of paleontologists worldwide.
Oct 2, 2012
Dawn of the Deed, Part 1: Down and Dirty in the Devonian
In Part I of a series, author John Long describes his passion for placoderms – and his sudden discovery of live birth in these ancient fish.The story of unraveling placoderm reproduction begins with a 380-million-year-old fossil from the Gogo site, Western Australia, that yielded the oldest evidence of live birth in vertebrates.
Oct 1, 2012
When Opportunity Calls, The Message Isn’t Always Clear
In an act that proclaimed the continuing importance of the aging spacecraft—looking tired and dusty but proud after weathering no less than five Martian winters—the rover <em>Opportunity</em> beamed home a set of images that has scientists scratching their heads.Scientists examining a Mars image from the 9-year-old rover <em>Opportunity </em>have multiple working hypotheses of what the spherules might be, but no one is yet sold on an explanation.
Sep 14, 2012
The Search for the Origin of Life
Recent scientific efforts are bringing us closer to an understanding of the earliest life on Earth, and to the fielding of a theory that explains the dawn of our earliest ancestor.The cases of the earliest discovered evidences for life on Earth, if biological in origin, constrain the timing for the emergence of life to sometime before 3.4 billion years ago.
Aug 22, 2012
Seals in Parallel
A new study of seal locomotion suggests that true seals and sea lions evolved in parallel from separate aquatic ancestors.
Aug 19, 2012
Prehistoric Pigment
On an ancient ocean floor in the United Kingdom, paleontologists have found exceptionally well-preserved, 160-million-year-old ink sacs.
Aug 19, 2012
Brain vs. Brawn
According to a new study, small animals with brains that are relatively large compared to their body size are better suited for survival.
Aug 10, 2012
Early Domestication Discovered
The earliest domesticated animals in sub-Saharan Africa have been found in a cave in Namibia.
Aug 9, 2012
Found: Fossil Flatfish
A new discovery by Matt Friedman at Oxford University is providing paleontologists with clues to the flatfish’s seemingly unsolved history.
Jul 12, 2012
Lost and Found: An Ancient Forest
An ancient forest has been uncovered in a mine in Southern Illinois.
Jul 5, 2012
Mysteries of a Miniature Mammoth
An 800,000-year-old tooth that paleontologists originally thought belonged to an elephant is actually from a miniature-sized mammoth.
Jul 5, 2012
Prehistoric Flatulence Warmed the Earth
Dinosaurs contributed approximately 520 million tons of methane gas to prehistoric environments every year.
Jun 1, 2012
Largest Croc Made a Meal Out of Humans
A recently discovered crocodile is the largest species yet known, and lived alongside ancient humans 3 million years ago.
May 16, 2012
Not Your Average Chicken Egg
A recent fossil discovery in Spain is giving paleontologists exciting new data about the similarities between dinosaur eggs from prehistoric times and modern-day bird eggs.
May 8, 2012
Human Ancestor Was A Tree Climber
The famed australopithecine “Lucy” might have run into more than just her own species when she roamed Eastern Africa 3.2 million years ago.
Apr 17, 2012
Feathery Dinosaurs Go Large
A new, large tyrannosaur from China suggests puts the concept of "scaly dinosaurs" to the test.
Apr 11, 2012
Taking a Micro-look at Coral Relationships
Corals grow in shapes specific to their surroundings, but this plasticity often masks evolutionary relationships. One must look closer...Sahale Casebolt, a graduate student at Virginia Tech, is comparing micro-features of fossil and modern corals with their DNA sequences to reveal evolutionary relationships.
Apr 10, 2012
Dinobots
Drexel University's James Tengorra, a mechanical engineer, suggests using dinosaur robots as an efficient way to study dinosaur fossils.
Mar 26, 2012
Home Sweet Mollusk
Paleontologists have found three tiny lobster fossils inside the fossil shell of a Jurassic mollusk.
Mar 19, 2012
An Ancient Animal Masquerades as a Flower
Lorna O’Brien, a paleontologist at the University of Toronto, has been studying an ancient animal that bears an uncanny resemblance to the flower that we associate with springtime.
Mar 13, 2012
Not Your Average Scrubbing Sponge
Scientists have uncovered what they believe is the earliest ancestor of all animals.
Mar 13, 2012
Prehistoric Preschool
Paleontologists have discovered the oldest dinosaur nursery on Earth.
Feb 29, 2012
Judging a Book by Its Cover—Or a Dinosaur by its Skin
Apparently paleontologists are exempt from the age-old adage “don’t judge a book by its cover."
Feb 15, 2012
Mass Extinction Survivors Took 2M Years to Evolve
The discovery challenges the widely held assumption that a period of explosive evolution quickly follows for survivors of mass extinctions.