Chinese pterodactyl wings its way to the United Kingdom
University of PortsmouthThe first ever specimen of a pterodactyl, more commonly found in China and Brazil, has been found in the United Kingdom.
The first ever specimen of a pterodactyl, more commonly found in China and Brazil, has been found in the United Kingdom.
A re-analysis of dinosaur skulls from northern Alaska suggests they belong to a genus that lived over a broad latitudinal range extending into the Arctic.
Among dinosaurs of ancient Colorado, scavenging and possibly cannibalism were responses to a resource-scarce environment, according to a study published May 27, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Stephanie Drumheller of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and colleagues.
The great white shark is one of the most charismatic, but also one of the most infamous sharks.
An international research team led by Jaime A. Villafaña from the Institute of Palaeontology at the University of Vienna discovered the first fossil nursery area of the great white shark, Carcharodon carcharias in Chile. This discovery provides a better understanding of the evolutionary success of the largest top predator in today's oceans in the past and could contribute to the protection of these endangered animals. The study is published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Scientists from the University of Bristol and the University of Zurich have shown that the Titanichthys – a giant armoured fish that lived in the seas and oceans of the late Devonian period 380-million-years ago – fed in a similar manner to modern day basking sharks.
While smaller dinosaurs needed speed, huge predators like T. rex were optimized for energy-efficient walking, according to a study published May 13, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Alexander Dececchi of Mount Marty College, South Dakota and colleagues.
As bad as things might seem here in 2020, they could be worse: we could be living 252 million years ago during the Permian mass extinction.
Scientists have discovered the world's oldest known example of a squid-like creature attacking its prey, in a fossil dating back almost 200 million years.
100 million years ago, ferocious predators, including flying reptiles and crocodile-like hunters, made the Sahara the most dangerous place on Earth.
Scientists of the University of Vienna examined parts of a vertebral column, which was found in northern Spain in 1996, and assigned it to the extinct shark group Ptychodontidae. In contrast to teeth, shark vertebrae bear biological information, like body size, growth, and age and allowed the team surrounding Patrick L.
The end-Permian mass extinction (EPME), approximately 252 million years ago (Ma), caused a serious marine and terrestrial ecosystem crisis, and about 75% of terrestrial biological species disappeared. How long did it take for terrestrial ecosystems to recover?
Researchers have found evidence of rainforests near the South Pole 90 million years ago, suggesting the climate was exceptionally warm at the time.
A new feathered dinosaur that lived in New Mexico 67 million years ago is one of the last known surviving raptor species, according to a new publication in the journal Scientific Reports.
Three new species of toothed pterosaurs — flying reptiles of the Cretaceous period, some 100 million years ago — have been identified in Africa by an international team of scientists led by Baylor University.
The world's animal distribution map will need to be redrawn and textbooks updated, after researchers discovered the existence of 'Australian' species on Christmas Island.
A topic of considerable interest to paleontologists is how dinosaur-dominated ecosystems were structured, how dinosaurs and co-occurring animals were distributed across the landscape, how they interacted with one another, and how these systems compared to ecosystems today.
High-resolution micro-CT scanning of the skull of the fossil specimen known as "Little Foot" has revealed some aspects of how this Australopithecus species used to live more than 3 million years ago.
During the Middle Jurassic Period, the Isle of Skye in Scotland was home to a thriving community of dinosaurs that stomped across the ancient coastline, according to a study published March 11, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Paige dePolo and Stephen Brusatte of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland and colleagues.
Isotope analysis of two Bronze Age El Algar sites in present-day south-eastern Spain provides a integrated picture of diets and farming strategies, according to a study published March 11, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Corina Knipper from the Curt Engelhorn Center for Archaeometry, Germany, and colleagues.
Scientists have recovered DNA from a well-preserved horned lark found in Siberian permafrost.
The study documented the earliest known interbreeding event between ancient human populations— a group known as the “super-archaics” in Eurasia interbred with a Neanderthal-Denisovan ancestor about 700,000 years ago. The event was between two populations more distantly related than any other recorded.
Animal remains at the Takarkori rock shelter suggest human occupants shifted to a more mammal-heavy diet over time, as aridity of the region increased
The tropical region of South America is one of the world's hot spots when it comes to animal diversity.
The fossilized tail of a young dinosaur that lived on a prairie in southern Alberta, Canada, is home to the remains of a 60-million-year-old tumor.
Scientists at the University of Alaska Fairbanks have identified a new species of thalattosaur, a marine reptile that lived more than 200 million years ago.
Several groups of reptiles persisted in Jurassic Africa even as volcanism ruined their habitat
A remarkable new species of meat-eating dinosaur, Allosaurus jimmadseni, was unveiled at the Natural History Museum of Utah. The huge carnivore inhabited the flood plains of western North America during the Late Jurassic Period, between 157-152 million years ago, making it the geologically oldest species of Allosaurus, predating the more well-known state fossil of Utah, Allosaurus fragilis.
The human-caused biodiversity decline started much earlier than researchers used to believe. According to a new study published in the scientific journal Ecology Letters the process was not started by our own species but by some of our ancestors.
Scientists studying fossils collected 35 years ago have identified them as the oldest-known scorpion species, a prehistoric animal from about 437 million years ago. The researchers found that the animal likely had the capacity to breathe in both ancient oceans and on land.
Neandertals collected clam shells and volcanic rock from the beach and coastal waters of Italy during the Middle Paleolithic, according to a study published January 15, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Paola Villa of the University of Colorado and colleagues.
A 550 million-year-old fossilized digestive tract found in the Nevada desert could be a key find in understanding the early history of animals on Earth.
Cardiff University scientists have shed new light on the Earth's climate behaviour during the last known period of global warming over 14 million years ago.
Most people associate the idea of creatures trapped in amber with insects or spiders, which are preserved lifelike in fossil tree resin.
The mysterious disappearance of Greenland's Norse colonies sometime in the 15th century may have been down to the overexploitation of walrus populations for their tusks, according to a study of medieval artefacts from across Europe.
Without a doubt, Tyrannosaurus rex is the most famous dinosaur in the world. The 40-foot-long predator with bone crushing teeth inside a five-foot long head are the stuff of legend.
A research team led by faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York has uncovered evidence that the transition toward forests as we know them today began earlier than typically believed.
Scientists are racing to determine which genealogy most accurately represents the evolutionary history of sea turtles — a challenging proposition.
In a co-authored paper published online in the journal Anthropocene, University of Illinois at Chicago paleontologist Roy Plotnick argues that the fossil record of mammals will provide a clear signal of the Anthropocene era.
Greenhouse gas emissions released directly from the movement of volcanic rocks are capable of creating massive global warming effects
The first flowering plants originated more than 140 million years ago in the early Cretaceous. They are the most diverse plant group on Earth with more than 300,000 species. In a new study in Communications Biology, evolutionary biologists around Agnes Dellinger and Jürg Schönenberger from the University of Vienna have analysed 3-dimensional models of flowers and found that flower shapes can evolve in a modular manner in adaptation to distinct pollinators.
Small populations, inbreeding, and random demographic fluctuations could have been enough to cause Neanderthal extinction, according to a study published November 27, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Krist Vaesen from Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands, and colleagues.
Computational fluid dynamics can be used to study how extinct animals used to swim. Scientists studied 65 million-year-old cephalopod fossils to gain deeper understanding of modern-day cephalopod ecosystems.
100-million-year old legged snake fossil provides critical insight into how the heads of modern snakes evolved
A 91-million-year-old fossil shark newly named Cretodus houghtonorum discovered in Kansas joins a list of large dinosaur-era animals. Preserved in sediments deposited in an ancient ocean called the Western Interior Seaway that covered the middle of North America during the Late Cretaceous period (144 million to 66 million years ago), Cretodus houghtonorum was an impressive shark estimated to be nearly 17 feet or slightly more than 5 meters long based on a new study appearing in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
You've probably seen a lichen, even if you didn't realize it. If you've ever meandered through the forest and wondered what the crusty stuff on trees or rocks was, they're lichens
A study co-led by researchers at Indiana University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences has pushed back the first-known physical evidence of insect flower pollination to 99 million years ago, during the mid-Cretaceous period.
Invisible footprints hiding since the end of the last ice age – and what lies beneath them – have been discovered by Cornell University researchers using a special type of radar in a novel way.
In terms of their body plan, Old World monkeys--a group that includes primates like baboons and macaques--are generally considered more similar to ancestral species than apes are. But a new study that analyzes the first well-preserved femur of Aegyptopithecus zeuxis
Mammals' backbones are weird. Compared to other four-legged animals like reptiles, mammal spines are a complex mix of sections of differently-shaped bones.