The Cretaceous Period of Earth history ended with a mass extinction that wiped out numerous species, most famously the dinosaurs. A new study now finds that the structure of North American ecosystems made the extinction worse than it might have been.
A team of researchers has found more evidence for the preservation of ancient dinosaur proteins, including reactivity to antibodies that target specific proteins normally found in bone cells of vertebrates.
Global temperatures directly affect the acidity of the ocean, which in turn changes the acoustical properties of sea water. New research suggests that global warming may give Earth’s oceans the same hi-fi sound qualities they had more than 100 million years ago, during the Age of the Dinosaurs.
With tiny 1-inch long jaws, a new species of plant-eater has come to light in rocks in South Africa dating to the early dinosaur era, some 200 million years ago.
New research indicates that shortly before an asteroid impact spelled doom for the dinosaurs, a separate extinction triggered by volcanic eruptions killed life on the ocean floor.
Having recently looked at more than a thousand of the least-changed regions in the genomes of turtles and their closest relatives, a team of Boston University researchers has confirmed that turtles are most closely related to crocodilians and birds rather than to lizards, snakes, and tuataras.
An international team of researchers, including a University of Virginia professor, has found that two ink sacs from 160-million-year-old giant cephalopod fossils discovered two years ago in England contain the pigment melanin, and that it is essentially identical to the melanin found in the ink sac of a modern-day cuttlefish.
Duck-billed dinosaurs that lived within Arctic latitudes approximately 70 million years ago likely endured long, dark polar winters instead of migrating to more southern latitudes.
New research shows that at least one group of small mammals, the multituberculates, actually flourished in the last 20 million years of dinosaurs’ reign and survived their extinction.
Researchers at Drexel University are bringing the latest technological advancements in 3-D printing to the study of ancient life. Using scale models of real fossils, for the first time, they will be able to test hypotheses about how dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals moved and lived in their environments.
66 million years ago, the fearsome, meat-eating dinosaur Majungasaurus crenatissimus prowled the semi-arid lowlands of Madagascar. Its powerful jaws bristled with bladelike teeth, and its strong legs terminated in formidable claws, and it was known to engage in cannibalism. A new study shows that there was one part of its dreadful form that was not to be feared: its arms.
South Australian Museum and University of Adelaide scientists working on fossils from Kangaroo Island, South Australia, have found eyes belonging to a giant 500 million-year-old marine predator that sat at the top of the earth's first food chain.
The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology presented 19 awards in 14 categories earlier this month at their annual meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada. From student articles to digital modeling, the awards recognize an array of important contributions to the field of vertebrate paleontology.
The discovery of a large field of dinosaur tracks in Arkansas has researchers busy using cutting-edge technology and traditional techniques to learn all that they can about the animals and environment that existed there 120 million years ago.
No, this isn’t Jurassic Park. Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine with help from an amateur fossil hunter in College Park, Md., have described the fossil of an armored dinosaur hatchling. It is the youngest nodosaur ever discovered, and a founder of a new genus and species that lived approximately 110 million years ago during the Early Cretaceous Era. Nodosaurs have been found in diverse locations worldwide, but they’ve rarely been found in the United States.
See history in the making: The Museum of the Earth, an affiliate of Cornell University, officially opens its new Fossil Preparation Laboratory on Saturday, Sept. 24.
Scientists have suggested that some ancient sharks bred in the shallows of freshwater lakes, forming nurseries for their hatchlings. Reporting in the most recent issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, a team of German paleontologists support this claim with spectacular 230 million-year-old fossil egg capsules and tiny teeth from Kyrgyzstan.
New fossil localities from North Dakota and Montana have produced the remains of a turtle that survived the 65 million-year-old meteorite impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.
New research from the University of Adelaide has added to the debate about whether dinosaurs were cold-blooded and sluggish or warm-blooded and active.
Palaeontologists have uncovered half-a-billion-year-old fossils demonstrating that primitive animals had excellent vision. An international team led by scientists from the South Australian Museum and the University of Adelaide found the exquisite fossils, which look like squashed eyes from a recently swatted fly.
A fossil of a creature that died about 247 million years ago, originally thought to be a distant relative of both birds and crocodiles, actually came from the crocodile family tree after it had split from the bird family.
While adult tyrannosaurs wielded power and size to kill large prey, youngsters used agility to hunt smaller game.
Paleontologists describe the skull of a juvenile Tarbosaurus bataar determined to be only 2 to 3 years old at the time of its death, about 70 million years ago. Although less than a foot long, this skull is anything but short on the information it reveals, particularly with respect to the changes that took place as these top predators grew from juveniles to adults.
Birds are known more for their senses of vision and hearing than smell, but new research suggests that millions of years ago, the winged critters also boasted a better sense for scents.
Novel 3D imaging technology has provided an unparalleled view of the legs of an ancient snake. The study suggests that snakes lost their legs by growing them more slowly or for a shorter period of time. Researchers hope the new data will help resolve a heated debate about the snake origins: whether they evolved from a lizard that burrowed on land or swam in the oceans.
An international team of palaeontologists, including Jonah Choiniere from George Washington University and Michael Pittman with University College London, have discovered a new species of parrot-sized dinosaur, the first with only one finger.
A team of paleontologists and geologists from Argentina and the United States on Jan. 13 announced the discovery of a lanky dinosaur that roamed South America in search of prey as the age of dinosaurs began, about 230 million years ago. Sporting a long neck and tail and weighing only 10 to 15 pounds, the dinosaur has been named Eodromaeus, the “dawn runner.”
The newly discovered crocodile ancestor came on the scene about the same time as dinosaurs began evolving.
The 20-odd species of living alligators and crocodiles are nearly all that remains of what was once an incredibly diverse group of reptiles called crocodyliforms. Recent fossil discoveries have revealed that some of these reptiles possessed a dazzling array of adaptations that resulted in unique and sometimes bizarre anatomy.
We all know that crocodiles are reptiles with long snouts, conical teeth, strong jaws and long tails. But according to researchers at Stony Brook University in New York, we don’t know what we thought we knew. Rather, some crocodiles possessed a dazzling array of adaptations that resulted in unique and sometimes bizarre anatomy, including blunt, pug-nosed snouts, pudgy bodies and short tails.
After sitting in collections for nearly 30 years, some remarkably well-preserved dinosaur eggs and their contents are offering new insights into the infancy and growth of early dinosaurs. They represent the oldest embryos of any land-dwelling vertebrate ever found. The eggs date from the early part of the Jurassic Period, 190 million years ago.
Only recently have scientists begun to understand conodonts -- enigmatic and relatively successful creatures from the Silurian seas.
ATexas Tech University researcher will discuss the discovery in China of the first complete skeleton of an early sauropod, Yizhousaurus sunae, considered the prototype for what would become some of the largest animals ever to walk the Earth.
This week Sara ElShafie will give a talk in Pittsburgh at the 2010 annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology as sole author of her paper — a rare honor for an undergraduate.
An NC State researcher is part of a team that has discovered fossilized feathers from a giant penguin that lived near the Equator more than 36 million years ago. These fossils reveal color patterns in an ancient extinct penguin species, and offer clues about modern penguins' evolution.
The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) prepares for an international gathering of professionals, students, artists, preparators and others interested in vertebrate paleontology. The SVP 70th Anniversary Meeting, hosted by Carnegie Museum of Natural History, will be held October 10-13, 2010 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.
New discoveries in southern Utah "dinosaur boneyard" reveal giant horned plant-eaters, one with 15 horns, showing different species in same groupings existed at the same time.
A newly discovered skeleton of an ancient seabird from northern Chile provides evidence that giant birds were soaring the skies there 5-10 million years ago. The wing bones of the animal exceed those of all other birds in length; its wingspan would have been at least 5.2 m (17 ft.). This is the largest safely established wingspan for a bird.
The ancient “terror bird” Andalgalornis couldn’t fly, but it used its unusually large, rigid skull—coupled with a hawk-like hooked beak—for a fighting strategy reminiscent of boxer Muhammad Ali. The agile creature repeatedly attacked and retreated, landing well-targeted, hatchet-like jabs to take down its prey, according to a new study published this week in the online, open-access journal PLoS ONE by an international team of scientists.
Matthew Bonnan, one of the world's most noted paleobiologists and a sauropod dinosaur expert, took seven Western Illinois University students on a 13-day field course to Utah, where he taught the hands-on how-to's of excavating and shared the students' excitement of discovering Jurassic Period dinosaur bones.
Fossils of an ancient crocodile with mammal-like teeth have been discovered in the Rukwa Rift Basin of Tanzania, scientists report in this week’s issue of the journal Nature. The unusual creature is changing the picture of animal life at 100 million years ago in what is now sub-Saharan Africa.
Fossils of an ancient crocodile with mammal-like teeth discovered in the Rukwa Rift Basin of Tanzania is changing the picture of animal life at 100 million years in what is now sub-Saharan Africa.
When paleontologist Iyad Zalmout went looking for fossil whales and dinosaurs in Saudi Arabia, he never expected to come face-to-face with a significant, early primate fossil.
The discovery of a remarkable 15-million-year-old Australian fossil limestone cave packed with even older animal bones has revealed almost the entire life cycle of a large prehistoric marsupial, from suckling young in the pouch still cutting their milk teeth to elderly adults.
Thanks to two remarkably complete skeletons discovered by volunteers, paleontologists are finally revealing what Typothorax really looked like, how large it was, how it walked, and myriad other questions. Typothorax is also one of the last large herbivores to evolve in the Late Triassic, before dinosaurs would come to dominate the planet.
A team of international researchers has brought the primary component of mammoth blood back to life using ancient DNA preserved in bones from Siberian specimens 25,000 to 43,000 years old.
The skull of a juvenile sauropod dinosaur, rediscovered in the collections of Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Natural History, illustrates that some sauropod species went through drastic changes in skull shape during normal growth.
A newly described bird from the Jehol Biota of northeast China suggests that scientists have only tapped a small proportion of the birds and dinosaurs that were living at that time, and that the rocks still have many secrets to reveal.
Utah’s world-famous red rocks have yielded a rare skeleton of a new species of plant-eating dinosaur that lived 185 million years ago and may have been buried alive by a collapsing sand dune.
Well-preserved, nearly complete skeleton is a relative of the Velociraptor; will help scientists further describe the physical appearance of other closely-related dinosaurs within the Dromaeosauridae family. Research led by Dr. Xu Xing.
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