Feature Channels: Paleontology

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The discovery of 27 avian footprints on the southern Australia coast — dating back to the Early Cretaceous when Australia was still connected to Antarctica — opens another window onto early avian evolution and possible migratory behavior.

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The world’s total population is expected to reach 9.9 billion by 2050. This rapid increase in population is boosting the demand for agriculture to cater for the increased demand. Below are some of the latest research and features on agriculture and farming in the Agriculture channel on Newswise.

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A CT scan of an often-overlooked, plant-eating dinosaur’s skull reveals that while it may not have been all that “brainy,” it had a unique combination of traits associated with living animals that spend at least part of their time underground, including a super sense of smell and outstanding balance. The work is the first to link a specific sensory fingerprint with this behavior in extinct dinosaurs.

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Could robots, whose forms can be adapted to achieve almost any real-world task, soon be able to lend a hand in understanding the paleoecology tracing of extinct organisms?

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A new study led by scientists at the American Museum of Natural History, Brooklyn College, and the Catalan Institute of Paleontology Miquel Crusafont has reconstructed the well-preserved but damaged skull of a great ape species that lived about 12 million years ago.

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Recent paleontological explorations in the Tatacoa Desert in Colombia led to the recovery of the most complete skeleton of a "saber-toothed marsupial” discovered in northern South America.

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Binghamton University, State of New York Assistant Professor Adriane Lam’s research allows scientists to more accurately predict future climate and zoological changes as the Earth continues to warm.

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Palaeontologists at University College Cork (UCC) have found the first molecular evidence of phaeomelanin, the pigment that produces ginger colouration, in the fossil record.

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Powerful X-rays generated at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory help researchers shed new light on feather evolution.

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Palaeontologists at University College Cork (UCC) in Ireland have discovered X-ray evidence of proteins in fossil feathers that sheds new light on feather evolution.

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A 455-million-year-old fossil fish provides a new perspective on how vertebrates evolved to protect their brains, a study has found.

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RUDN University dentists showed how tomography, microfocus or medical, will help archaeologists and paleontologists in taxonomic and evolutionary studies. To do this, they developed a program that details and accurately determines the thickness of the enamel of fossil teeth.

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Accurate phylogenetic trees are fundamental to evolutionary and comparative biology, but the almost simultaneous emergence of major animal phyla and diverse body plans during the Cambrian Explosion poses major challenges to reconstructing deep metazoan phylogenetic relationships.

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Scientists have discovered a new species of small plant-eating dinosaur on the Isle of Wight in southern England (UK). The new species, Vectidromeus insularis, is the second member of the hypsilophodont family to be found on the island, suggesting that Europe had its own family of small herbivorous dinosaurs, distinct from those found in Asia and North America.

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Plesiosaurs gained their famous long necks rapidly, researchers have shown.

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A group of researchers have redescribed a unique fossil animal from rocks nearly 520 million years old that fills in a gap in our understanding of the evolution of animals known as arthropods.

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A new New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics paper out today describes the 266 fossil species as one of the richest and most diverse groups of three-million-year-old fauna ever found in New Zealand.