Artifacts of the Bronze Age at the territory of the Southern Urals for several decades have been the object of active research by archaeologists from around the world. Scientists of South Ural State University together with international colleagues from USA and Germany for more than 10 years have been researching a synchronous necropolis (Kamenny Ambar-5)
New research disputes a long-held view that our earliest tool-bearing ancestors contributed to the demise of large mammals in Africa over the last several million years. Instead, the researchers argue that long-term environmental change drove the extinctions, mainly in the form of grassland expansion likely caused by falling atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.
A geology professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, has discovered that a set of 28 footprints left behind by a reptile-like creature 310 million years ago, are the oldest ever to be found in Grand Canyon National Park.
An international team has unearthed what life might have been like for a now-extinct subspecies of spotted hyena. They found that despite their massive size, some cave hyenas experienced times of hardship that affected them to the bone, causing areas of arrested growth that appear as dark lines, like rings on a tree trunk.
Chris Rodning, the Paul and Debra Gibbons Professor in the Tulane University School of Liberal Arts’ Department of Anthropology, has co-authored a major paper on the archaeology of a Spanish colonial fort built in 1566 at the Berry site, a large Native American town in present-day North Carolina.
Using evidence found in teeth from two Neanderthals from southeastern France, researchers from the Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai report the earliest evidence of lead exposure in an extinct human-like species from 250,000 years ago.
Cal State Fullerton (CSUF) paleontologists have described a new genus and species of walrus and named it after CSUF Titans and Orange County, where the extinct, tuskless fossil was discovered.
A team of archaeologists has discovered a nearly 1,500-year old carved altar in the jungles of northern Guatemala.
Humans arrived on the tropical island of Madagascar more than 6,000 years earlier than previously thought based on an analysis of bones from what was once the world’s largest bird, according to a study led by Stony Brook University researcher Dr. Pat Wright and published today in the journal Science Advances.
Larisa DeSantis' latest research confirms the shape of tooth wear best indicates the kind of food koalas and kangaroos ate, not whether it was covered in dust and dirt.
Laughing gas and the mystery of Carl Sagan's Faint Young Sun Paradox: When the sun shone dimmer an eon ago, Earth remained warm in spite of it likely thanks to a mix of greenhouse gases. Biogeochemists have now shown how N20, known today for its use as a dental anesthetic, may have made it into the mix.
A laboratory at the Illinois Institute of Technology is using fiber diffraction to examine tissue structures in the human brain and heart, as well as in T. rex fossils. Few researchers use this type of X-ray diffraction because of the time and labor required to complete experiments, the researchers have resolved images of the fine threads of collagen fibrils in connective, neurological and dinosaur tissues to one-billionth of a meter. During the 68th Annual Meeting of the American Crystallographic Association, they will explain their work.
Fossils of a new genus and species of an ankylosaurid dinosaur—Akainacephalus johnsoni-- have been unearthed in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah, U.S.A., and are revealing new details about the diversity and evolution of this group of armored dinosaurs.
Dinosaur-age fossilised remains of tiny organisms normally found in the sea have been discovered in inland, arid Australia – suggesting the area was, for a short time at least, inundated by sea water 40 million years before Australia’s large inland sea existed.
An international team of scientists has concluded the asteroid that smashed into Earth 66 million years ago not only wiped out the dinosaurs, but erased the world’s forests and the species that lived in trees. The researchers say only small ground-dwelling birds survived the mass extinction, profoundly changing the course of bird evolution.
HHMI invests $200 million in a small cadre of leading scientists, challenging them to push the limits of what we know about biology.
Sweet potatoes may seem as American as Thanksgiving, but scientists have long debated whether their plant family originated in the Old or New World. New research by an Indiana University paleobotanist suggests it originated in Asia, and much earlier than previously known.
Harvard Medical School researchers lead the first whole-genome analysis of ancient human DNA from Southeast Asia Study identifies at least three major waves of human migration into the region over the last 50,000 years, each shaping the genetics of Southeast Asia “to a remarkable extent” Findings reveal a complex interplay among archaeology, genetics and language
Researchers have uncovered important genomic data from the remains of an ancient giant ground sloth, or Mylodon darwinii, the emblematic creature named after Charles Darwin, whose discovery of fossilized remains in South America is considered to be one of his significant scientific achievements.
Every 405,000 years, gravitational tugs from Jupiter and Venus slightly elongate Earth’s orbit, an amazingly consistent pattern that has influenced our planet’s climate for at least 215 million years and allows scientists to more precisely date geological events like the spread of dinosaurs, according to a Rutgers-led study. The findings are published online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A new National Science Foundation grant awarded to Professor of Statistics Steve Wang will help him, his students, and a recent alumna decode why the Earth may be entering a modern extinction.
Silvisaurus condrayi has made a return to the KU Natural History Museum in a new, more complete form, accompanied by an interactive display that includes stunning depictions of the dinosaur and its environs.
By using network analysis to search for communities of marine life in the fossil records of the Paleobiology Database, the team, including researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, was able to quantify the ecological impacts of major events like mass extinctions and may help us anticipate the consequences of a “sixth mass extinction.”
A close examination of 3.6 million year old hominin footprints discovered in Laetoli, Tanzania suggests our ancestors evolved the hallmark trait of extended leg, human-like bipedalism substantially earlier than previously thought.
Scientists have long wondered why the physical traits of Neanderthals, the ancestors of modern humans, differ greatly from today’s man. In particular, researchers have deliberated the factors that necessitated early man’s forward-projecting face and oversized nose. As published in the April 4 edition of The Royal Proceedings Society B, an international research team led by a professor at the University of New England in Australia, with the aid of an anatomy and fluid dynamics expert at NYIT College of Osteopathic Medicine at Arkansas State University (NYITCOM at A-State), may have the answer.
Genetic archaeologist David Reich discusses how DNA retrieved from inch-long bone in the skull has accelerated our understanding of ancient humans.
Injecting carbon dioxide deep underground into basalt flows holds promise as an abatement strategy. Now, new research by scientists at Washington University in St. Louis sheds light on exactly what happens underground during the process, illustrating precisely how effective the volcanic rock could be in trapping and converting CO2 emissions.
A project spanning countries, years and institutions has attempted to reconstruct what the southern end of the world looked like during the Triassic period, 252 to 199 million years ago.
An international team of researchers, led by Dr. Asier Gomez-Olivencia of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) and including Binghamton University anthropologist Rolf Quam, has provided new insights on one of the most famous Neandertal skeletons, discovered over 100 years ago: La Ferrassie 1.
New study at the University of Haifa reveals the first archeological evidence of the role played by pigeons in Byzantine agriculture in the Negev: improving and fertilizing soil in vineyards and orchards
When the University of Michigan Museum of Natural History reopens in its new home about a year from now, visitors to the evolution gallery will come face to face with a life-size, hyperrealistic sculptural reconstruction of an extinct human relative that roamed southern Africa 2 million years ago.
Fossils of six new species of pterosaurs, giant flying reptiles that flew over the heads of the dinosaurs, have been discovered by a team of researchers.
Orthopaedic surgeon Robert Klapper, MD, spends his days repairing worn-out hip joints. But examining the hip joint of an animal extinct for more than 12,000 years presented an entirely new challenge—and shed light on a long-running debate within paleontology about saber-toothed cats. Klapper is working with the paleontologists at the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum to unravel the mystery of how these giant cats lived and roamed. Using Cedars-Sinai’s most advanced CT scan machines, Klapper studied the pelvis and femurs of an extinct cat.
Modern humans have brains that are more than three times larger than our closest living relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos. Scientists don't agree on when and how this dramatic increase took place, but new analysis of 94 hominin fossils shows that average brain size increased gradually and consistently over the past three million years.
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While the giant birds that once dominated New Zealand are all extinct, a study of their preserved dung (coprolites) has revealed many aspects of their ancient ecosystem, with important insights for ongoing conservation efforts.
Scientists have long wondered how the horse evolved from an ancestor with five toes to the animal we know today. While it is largely believed that horses simply evolved with fewer digits, researchers at New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine (NYITCOM) pose a new theory that suggests remnants of all five toes are still present within the hooves of the horse.
University of Arkansas researchers used LiDAR imaging to digitally preserve and study important dinosaur tracks.
The partial skeleton of a new species of turkey-sized herbivorous dinosaur has been discovered in 113 million year old rocks in southeastern Australia. The fossilized tail and foot bones give new insight into the diversity of the small, bipedal herbivorous dinosaurs called ornithopods.
Though mass extinctions wiped out staggeringly high numbers of species, they barely touched the overall "functional" diversity--how each species makes a living, be it filtering phytoplankton or eating small crustaceans, burrowing or clamping onto rocks. University of Chicago scientists documented this surprising trend in a study on extinctions published Jan. 5 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
New research on the isotopic composition of barnacle shells shows that prehistoric whales were undertaking migrations, just like their modern-day descendants.
Scans of fossilized dinosaur prints show how some dinosaur feet moved not just on top of but through the earth. The results of this study will be presented at the annual conference of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in San Francisco, CA on January 4, 2018
Researchers at UCLA and the University of Wisconsin–Madison have confirmed that microscopic fossils discovered in a nearly 3.5 billion-year-old piece of rock in Western Australia are the oldest fossils ever found and indeed the earliest direct evidence of life on Earth.
The oldest ice core ever drilled outside the polar regions may contain ice that formed during the Stone Age—more than 600,000 years ago, long before modern humans appeared.
Using modern research tools on a 155-million-year-old reptile fossil, scientists at Johns Hopkins and the American Museum of Natural History report they have filled in some important clues to the evolution of animals that once roamed land and transitioned to life in the water.
University of Michigan paleontologists conducted a second excavation this week at the Chelsea-area farm where the skull, tusks and dozens of intact bones of an ice age mammoth were pulled from the ground in late 2015.
Plesiosaurs, who thrived during the early to middle Jurassic Period, used four paddlelike flippers of nearly equal size and musculature to swim. Despite the seemingly subpar engineering, the fossil record reveals that plesiosaurs were widespread and prolific. This inspired a team in the U.K. to explore how swimming with four flippers might be advantageous compared to two. They’ll present their work during the 70th meeting of the Division of Fluid Dynamics, Nov. 19-21, 2017.
Scientists recently announced the discovery of a fossil that fills a missing evolutionary link—the first known member of the modern bryozoans to grow up into a structure. Called Jablonskipora kidwellae, it is named after UChicago geophysical scientists David Jablonski and Susan Kidwell.
Prehistoric polar forests were built for survival, but were not hardy enough to live in ultra-high concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide. A UWM geologist is studying the tree fossil record in Antarctica from a mass extinction 250 million years ago, looking for clues to how greenhouse gases affected plants -- then and now.
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