Paleontology News

October 14, 2024

Top Headlines

Newly Discovered Late Cretaceous Birds May Have Carried Heavy Prey Like Extant Raptors

Oct. 9, 2024 — Newly discovered birds from Late Cretaceous North America were hawk-sized and had powerful raptor-like feet, according to a new ...

Fossils and Fires: Insights Into Early Modern Human Activity in the Jungles of Southeast Asia

Oct. 10, 2024 — Studying microscopic layers of dirt dug from the Tam Pa Ling cave site in northeastern Laos has provided a team of archaeologists further insights into some of the earliest evidence of Homo sapiens ...

New Seed Fossil Sheds Light on Wind Dispersal in Plants

Oct. 8, 2024 — Scientists have discovered one of the earliest examples of a winged seed, granting insight into the origin and early evolution of wind dispersal strategies in ...

Study of Monkey Fossils Found in Cave Sheds Light on the Animals' Extinction Centuries Ago

Oct. 2, 2024 — By studying rare fossils of jaws and other skull parts of a long-extinct Caribbean monkey, a team of researchers says it has uncovered new evidence documenting the anatomy and ecology of an extinct ...

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Iron Nuggets in the Pinnacles Unlock Secrets of Ancient and Future Climates

Oct. 2, 2024 — Small iron-rich formations found within Western Australia's Pinnacles, which are part of the world's largest wind-blown limestone belt spanning more than 1000km, have provided new insights into ...

Nanostructures in the Deep Ocean Floor Hint at Life's Origin

Sep. 25, 2024 — Researchers have discovered inorganic nanostructures surrounding deep-ocean hydrothermal vents that are strikingly similar to molecules that make life as we know it possible. These nanostructures are ...

Ancient Sunken Seafloor Reveals Earth's Deep Secrets

Sep. 27, 2024 — Geologists discover a mysterious subduction zone deep beneath the Pacific Ocean, reshaping our understanding of Earth's ...

World's Oldest Cheese Reveals Origins of Kefir

Sep. 25, 2024 — Scientists successfully extracted and analyzed DNA from ancient cheese samples found alongside the Tarim Basin mummies in China, dating back approximately 3,600 years. The research suggests a new ...

Reconstructing the Evolutionary History of the Grape Family

Sep. 25, 2024 — Until now, it was believed that plants of the grape family arrived at the European continent less than 23 million years ago. A study on fossil plants draws a new scenario on the dispersal of the ...

Brazilian Fossils Reveal Jaw-Dropping Discovery in Mammal Evolution

Sep. 25, 2024 — The discovery of new cynodont fossils from southern Brazil by a team of palaeontologists has led to a significant breakthrough in understanding the evolution of ...

Unveiling Ancient Life: New Method Sheds Light on Early Cellular and Metabolic Evolution

Sep. 24, 2024 — Analyzing fossils can be difficult -- especially when they're so small that they can only be seen with a microscope. Researchers have now come up ...

Over Nearly Half a Billion Years, Earth's Global Temperature Has Changed Drastically, Driven by Carbon Dioxide

Sep. 19, 2024 — A new study offers the most detailed glimpse yet into how Earth's surface temperature has changed over the past 485 million years. The data show that ...

Early Dingoes Are Related to Dogs from New Guinea and East Asia

Sep. 18, 2024 — New archaeological research has discovered for the first time clear links between fossils of the iconic Australian dingo, and dogs from East Asia and New ...

South African Rock Art Possibly Inspired by Long-Extinct Species

Sep. 18, 2024 — A mysterious tusked animal depicted in South African rock art might portray an ancient species preserved as fossils in the same region, according to a new ...

Explaining Dramatic Planet-Wide Changes After World's Last 'Snowball Earth' Event

Sep. 18, 2024 — Some of the most dramatic climatic events in our planet's history are 'Snowball Earth' events that happened hundreds of millions of years ago, when almost the entire planet was encased ...

How El Nino and Mega Ocean Warming Caused the Greatest-Ever Mass Extinction

Sep. 12, 2024 — Mega ocean warming El Nino events were key in driving the largest extinction of life on planet Earth some 252 million years ago, according to new research. The study has shed new light on why the ...

Trilobite Fossils from Upstate New York Reveal 'Extra' Set of Legs

Sep. 12, 2024 — A new study finds that a trilobite species with exceptionally well-preserved fossils from upstate New York has an additional set of legs underneath its head. The research suggests that having a fifth ...

New Fossil Fish Species Scales Up Evidence of Earth's Evolutionary March

Sep. 12, 2024 — Climate change and asteroids are linked with animal origin and extinction -- and plate tectonics also seems to play a key evolutionary role, 'groundbreaking' new fossil research reveals. ...

The Neanderthals May Have Become Extinct Because of Their Isolated Lifestyle

Sep. 12, 2024 — Neanderthal remains recently discovered in a cave in France support well-known theory of why the Neanderthals became extinct, researchers behind a new study ...

Risky Play Exercises an Ancestral Need to Push Limits

Sep. 11, 2024 — Since their invention in the 1920s, jungle gyms and monkey bars have become both fixtures of playgrounds and symbols of childhood injury that anxious caretakers want removed. Anthropologists mark 100 ...

Flightless Parrot in New Zealand Developed Different Feather Colors to Evade Predatory Birds

Sep. 10, 2024 — Aotearoa New Zealand's flightless parrot, the k k p , evolved two different color types to potentially help them avoid detection by a now-extinct apex predator, researchers ...

'Some Pterosaurs Would Flap, Others Would Soar' -- New Study Further Confirms the Flight Capability of These Giants of the Skies

Sep. 6, 2024 — Some species of pterosaurs flew by flapping their wings while others soared like vultures, demonstrates a new study. Findings include a new pterosaur with a five-meter wingspan, which is one of the ...

Chemists Explain Why Dinosaur Collagen May Have Survived for Millions of Years

Sep. 4, 2024 — Chemists offer a new explanation for how collagen in dinosaur bones may have survived millions of years: An atomic-level interaction prevents its bonds from being broken down by ...

Ancient Sea Cow Attacked by a Crocodile and Sharks Sheds New Light on Prehistoric Food Chains

Aug. 29, 2024 — A new study showing how a prehistoric sea cow was preyed upon by not one, but two different carnivores -- a crocodilian and a shark -- is revealing clues into both the predation tactics of ancient ...

Land-Sea 'Tag-Team' Devastated Ocean Life Millions of Years Ago Reveal Scientists

Aug. 29, 2024 — A 'tag-team' between the oceans and continents millions of years ago devastated marine life and altered the course of evolution on Earth, according to a new study. Scientists say a string ...

Algorithm Raises New Questions About Cascadia Earthquake Record

Aug. 27, 2024 — A study is calling into question the reliability of the earthquake record of Cascadia. The researchers analyzed a selection of turbidite layers from the Cascadia subduction zone dating back about ...

What Microscopic Fossilized Shells Tell Us About Ancient Climate Change

Aug. 26, 2024 — By analyzing foram shells recovered in drill cores, study led by geologists links rapid climate change that led to thermal maxima 50 million years ago to rising CO2 ...

Darwin's Fear Was Unjustified: Writing Evolutionary History by Bridging the Gaps a Big Issue

Aug. 26, 2024 — Fossils are used to reconstruct evolutionary history, but not all animals and plants become fossils and many fossils are destroyed before we can find them (e.g., the rocks that contain the fossils ...

Matching Dinosaur Footprints Found on Opposite Sides of the Atlantic Ocean

Aug. 26, 2024 — An international team of paleontologists has found matching sets of Early Cretaceous dinosaur footprints on what are now two different ...

To Kill Mammoths in the Ice Age, People Used Planted Pikes, Not Throwing Spears, Researchers Say

Aug. 21, 2024 — Archeologists say new findings might help resolve the debate about Clovis points and reshape how we think about what life was like roughly 13,000 years ago. After an extensive review of writings and ...

Fossil Hotspots in Africa Obscure a More Complete Picture of Human Evolution

Aug. 20, 2024 — A new study shows how the mismatch between where fossils are preserved and where humans likely lived may influence our understanding of early human ...

Tracking Down the Asteroid That Sealed the Fate of the Dinosaurs

Aug. 16, 2024 — The asteroid that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago probably came from the outer solar ...

Scottish and Irish Rocks Confirmed as Rare Record of 'Snowball Earth'

Aug. 16, 2024 — The study found that the Port Askaig Formation, composed of layers of rock up to 1.1 km thick, was likely laid down between 662 to 720 million years ago during the Sturtian glaciation -- the first of ...

Giant Fossil Seeds from Borneo Record Ancient Plant Migration

Aug. 14, 2024 — Ancient fossil beans about the size of modern limes, and among the largest seeds in the fossil record, may provide new insight into the evolution of today's diverse Southeast Asian and ...