The Persistent Effects of Colonialism in Caribbean Science
Florida Museum of Natural HistoryPrior to the first world war, sprawling European empires collectively controlled roughly 80% of Earth’s landmass.
Prior to the first world war, sprawling European empires collectively controlled roughly 80% of Earth’s landmass.
Megatooth sharks like, Otodus megalodon, more commonly known as megalodon, lived between 23 and 3.6 million years ago in oceans around the globe and possibly reached as large as 20 metres in length.
Scientists have finally put to bed a long-standing question over the role of Earth’s orbit in driving global ice age cycles.
For decades, paleontologists have debated whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded, like modern mammals and birds, or cold-blooded, like modern reptiles.
A group of paleontologists, included researchers from the Ural Federal University (UrFU), discovered the jaws of an Etruscan bear from the early Pleistocene period (2–1.5 million years ago) in the Taurida cave.
One of the most exciting moments of the new Jurassic Park sequel, Jurassic World Dominion, is when the Quetzalcoatlus swoops down from the sky and attacks the heroes’ aircraft.
Jars of tiny platypus and echidna specimens, collected in the late 1800s by the scientist William Caldwell, have been discovered in the stores of Cambridge’s University Museum of Zoology.
Did the world’s largest prehistoric shark need an orthodontist, or did it just have a bad lunch?
From embryo to turtle cracker: a team led by palaeobiologist Julia Türtscher from the University of Vienna studied the multiple changes in tooth shape in the tiger shark. The study, recently published in the Journal of Anatomy, is also central in drawing conclusions about extinct species from the myriad of preserved shark teeth in the field of palaeontology.
A new Rice University-led analysis of the remains of ancient predators reveals new information about how prehistoric humans did – or didn’t – find their food.
A new study led by SMU paleontologist Anthony Fiorillo identifies the key role precipitation and temperature play in structuring vertebrate herbivore dinosaur populations in Alaska. The findings, which are published in the journal Geosciences, may also provide historical insights into the consequences of climate change.
Scientists at the University of Bristol have discovered that body size is more important than body shape in determining the energy economy of swimming for aquatic animals.
A geologic formation near Aix-en-Provence, France, is famed as one of the world’s chief treasure troves of fossil species from the Cenozoic Era. Since the late 1700s, scientists there have been unearthing amazingly well-preserved fossilized plants and animals.
Flying reptiles could change the colour of their feathers, research finds.
In Triceratops Traits, students work alongside paleontologists to solve an evolutionary mystery by analyzing and interpreting data from the fossil record under the premise that natural laws have operated the same throughout the history of life on Earth to fit 7th grade learning standards in Utah and 6th-8th grades around the U.S.
Over the last several months, a certain bird – believed to be a sacred ibis – has been drawing a lot of attention, and covering a lot of ground, at Cornell University.
Over the two decades paleontologist Kevin Padian taught a freshman seminar called The Age of Dinosaurs, one question asked frequently by undergraduates stuck with him: Why are the arms of Tyrannosaurus rex so ridiculously short?
Spinosaurus is the largest predatory dinosaur known - over two metres longer than the longest Tyrannosaurus rex - but the way it hunted has been a subject of debate for decades. In a new paper, published today in Nature, a group of palaeontologists have taken a different approach to decipher the lifestyle of long-extinct creatures: examining the density of their bones.
Lacewings (Neuroptera) are small predatory insects, whose larvae are sometimes used as pest control agents in agriculture. Few non-specialists, however, know that some lacewings can look a lot like praying mantises.
Baleen plates –the signature bristle-like apparatus toothless whales use to feed – reveal how these large aquatic mammals adapt to environmental changes over time.
Researchers led by the University of Bristol show that the earliest jaws in the fossil record were caught in a trade-off between maximising their strength and their speed.
The fossil, housed in The Nat’s paleontology collection, offers a window into what the Earth was like during the Eocene Period, more than 40 million years ago.
Danish and Swedish researchers have dated the enormous Hiawatha impact crater, a 31 km-wide meteorite crater buried under a kilometer of Greenlandic ice.
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A new study reveals that the iconic extinct Megalodon or megatooth shark grew to larger sizes in cooler environments than in warmer areas.
Relatively small, but fearsome-looking stegosaur measured about 2.8 metres (9 feet) from nose to tail—but scientists can’t tell whether the remains are those of an adult or juvenile.
A new study reveals that the iconic extinct Megalodon or megatooth shark grew to larger sizes in cooler environments than in warmer areas. DePaul University paleobiology professor Kenshu Shimada and coauthors take a renewed look through time and space at the body size patterns of Otodus megalodon, the fossil shark that lived nearly worldwide roughly 3.6 million to 15 million years ago. The new study appears in the international journal Historical Biology.
Geologists at Lund University in Sweden have mapped 300 years of research on the prehistoric marine reptiles known as ichthyosaurs.
A new analysis of Tyrannosaurus skeletal remains reveals physical differences in the femur, other bones and dental structures across specimens that could suggest Tyrannosaurus rex specimens need to be re-categorised into three distinct groups or species, reports a study published in Evolutionary Biology.
The asteroid which killed nearly all of the dinosaurs struck Earth during springtime. This conclusion was drawn by an international team of researchers after having examined thin sections, high-resolution synchrotron X-ray scans, and carbon isotope records of the bones of fishes that died less than 60 minutes after the asteroid impacted.
Approximately 80 miles from the westernmost reach of China’s Great Wall, paleontologists found relics of an even more ancient world. Over the last two decades, teams of researchers unearthed more than 100 specimens of fossil birds that lived approximately 120 million years ago, during the time of the dinosaurs.
A set of Triassic archosaur fossils, excavated in the 1960s in Tanzania, have been formally recognised as a distinct species, representing one of the earliest-known members of the crocodile evolutionary lineage.
A new scientific study shows that all previously proposed body forms of the gigantic Megalodon, or megatooth shark, which lived nearly worldwide roughly 15-3.6 million years ago, remain in the realm of speculations.
Researchers in Japan, Sweden, and the US have unearthed evidence that low volcanic temperatures led to the fourth mass extinction, enabling dinosaurs to flourish during the Jurassic period.
A new article published today in PLOS ONE by a Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU)’s Institute of Archaeology team and colleagues focused on the remains of a previously submerged fisher-hunter-gatherer camp on the shores of the Sea of Galilee from around 23,000 years ago.
New research led by the University of Bristol has revealed how giant 50-tonne sauropod dinosaurs, like Diplodocus, evolved from much smaller ancestors, like the wolf-sized Thecodontosaurus.
German and Austrian scientists took a closer look at the braincase of a dinosaur from Austria. The group examined the fossil with a micro-CT and found surprising new details: it was sluggish and deaf. The respective study got recently published in the scientific journal scientific reports.
Florida State University researchers have new insight into the complicated puzzle of environmental conditions that characterized the Late Ordovician Mass Extinction (LOME), which killed about 85% of the species in the ocean.
The fossil record, which documents the history of life on Earth, is heavily biased by influences such as colonialism, history and global economics, argues a new study involving palaeontologists at the University of Birmingham and the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg.
A 72 to 66-million-year-old embryo found inside a fossilised dinosaur egg sheds new light on the link between the behaviour of modern birds and dinosaurs, according to a new study.
A new bird-like dinosaur that used brute strength to overcome its prey has been found by paleontologists combing through fossils found on the Isle of Wight, on the south coast of Great Britain.
A new extinct reptile species has shed light on how our earliest ancestors became top predators by modifying their teeth in response to environmental instability around 300 million years ago.
Giant, long-necked sauropods, thought to include the largest land animals ever to have existed, preferred to live in warmer, more tropical regions on Earth, suggesting they may have had a different physiology from other dinosaurs, according to a new study led by researchers at UCL and the University of Vigo.
A groundbreaking study led by researchers at FAU and an international team of scientists conclusively confirms the time year of the catastrophic Chicxulub asteroid, responsible for the extinction of dinosaurs and 75 percent of life on Earth 66 million years ago. Springtime, the season of new beginnings, ended the 165 million year reign of dinosaurs and changed the course of evolution on Earth.
New research finds megafaunal collapse occurred before major environmental shift, small pockets of mammoths and horse adapted to change.
Italy is not exactly renown for dinosaurs. In comparison to its excellent artistic and archaeological heritage, dinosaur fossils are very rare.
New research shows that humans had a significant role in the extinction of woolly mammoths in Eurasia, occurring thousands of years later than previously thought.
Researchers at the University of Bristol have found that fast evolution can lead to nowhere.
Assemblages of tropical non-indigenous species in the Eastern Mediterranean have biological traits that markedly differ from those of native biological communities. This was shown by an international team of scientists led by Jan Steger from the Department of Palaeontology at the University of Vienna.
Researchers have developed formulas that can calculate the body size of a primate based on the root size of its teeth. The formulas could allow researchers to make use of partial and incomplete fossils in order to learn how ancient primates – including human ancestors – interacted with their environment.