What would a traveler from the future think if one day s/he could analyze the rocks that are currently forming on the planet? Surely, this person would find quite a few plastic fragments and wonder why this material was so abundant in rocks of a certain age on Earth.
Biomechanical studies on the arachnid-like front “legs” of an extinct apex predator show that the 2-foot (60-centimeter) marine animal Anomalocaris canadensis was likely much weaker than once assumed. One of the largest animals to live during the Cambrian, it was probably agile and fast, darting after soft prey in the open water rather than pursuing hard-shelled creatures on the ocean floor.
A team led by scientists at The University of Texas at Austin has filled a major gap in the state’s fossil record – describing the first known Jurassic vertebrate fossils in Texas.
A study led by the University of Oxford has brought us one step closer to solving a mystery that has puzzled naturalists since Charles Darwin: when did animals first appear in the history of Earth?
From the 20-foot-long jawbones of the filter-feeding blue whale to the short, but bone-crushing, jaws of the hyena and the delicate chin bones of a human, the pair of lower jawbones characteristic of mammals have evolved with amazing variation.
A Cretaceous origin for placental mammals, the group that includes humans, dogs and bats, has been revealed by in-depth analysis of the fossil record, showing they co-existed with dinosaurs for a short time before the dinosaurs went extinct.
A new study finds that the gigantic prehistoric Megalodon or megatooth shark was warm-blooded. DePaul University paleobiologist Kenshu Shimada sheds light on the physiology of Megalodon and reveals new clues about how climate change may have led to the shark’s demise.
The recent tragic loss of the Titan submersible in the depths of the North Atlantic has brought the fascinating (and very dangerous) world of Oceanography and Marine Science to the forefront. Below are some recent stories that have been added to the Marine Science channel on Newswise, including expert commentary on the Titan submersible.
In the age of dinosaurs, many marine reptiles had extremely long necks compared to reptiles today.
Extinct kangaroos used alternative methods to their famous hop according to comprehensive analysis from University of Bristol and the University of Uppsala scientists.
The first side-necked turtle ever to be found in the UK has been discovered by an amateur fossil collector and palaeontologists at the University of Portsmouth.
The earliest reptiles, birds and mammals may have borne live young, researchers from Nanjing University and University of Bristol have revealed.
Although the prehistoric site of Eynan-Mallaha in northern Israel has been thoroughly examined since 1955, it still holds some surprises for scientists. Seven prehistoric wind instruments known as flutes, recently identified by a Franco-Israeli team.
A team of researchers from the University of Bristol have shed light on the life of the ancient reptile Rhynchosaur, which walked the earth between 250-225 million years ago, before being replaced by the dinosaurs.
A newly discovered plant-eating dinosaur may have been a species’ “last gasp” during a period when Earth’s warming climate forced massive changes to global dinosaur populations.
Analysis of a British spinosaur tooth by palaeontologists at the EvoPalaeoLab of the University of Southampton shows that several distinct spinosaur groups inhabited Cretaceous Britain.
If you look at enough dinosaur fossils, you'll see that their skulls sport an amazing variety of bony ornaments, ranging from the horns of Triceratops and the mohawk-like crests of hadrosaurs to the bumps and knobs covering the head of Tyrannosaurus rex.
Stony Brook University will honor the life and legacy of eminent paleoanthropologist, conservationist and politician Richard E. Leakey by hosting “Africa: The Human Cradle: An International Conference Paying Tribute to Richard E. Leakey” from June 5 - 9, 2023 at the university’s Charles B. Wang Center. The Turkana Basin Institute (TBI) and Stony Brook are hosting the conference, in partnership with the National Geographic Society. Thought leaders from around the world will celebrate the immeasurable, life-long contributions by Leakey to furthering the appreciation of Africa’s centrality in the narrative of human evolution.
Scientists have discovered a new species of mosasaur, a sea-dwelling lizard from the age of the dinosaurs, with strange, ridged teeth unlike those of any known reptile.
A new study shows that sand dunes can serve as repositories of fire history and aid in expanding scientific understanding of fire regimes around the world.
A new paper from the University of Bristol rewrites the history of the darkest, most bizarre event in the history of palaeontology.
Over 20 years ago, the BBC’s Walking with Dinosaurs TV documentary series showed a 25-metre long Liopleurodon. This sparked heated debates over the size of this pliosaur as it was thought to have been wildly overestimated and more likely to have only reached an adult size of just over six metres long.
Even without body parts that allowed for movement, new research shows — for the first time — that some of Earth’s earliest animals managed to be picky about where they lived.
Cycads, a group of gymnosperms which can resemble miniature palm trees (like the popular sago palm houseplant) were long thought to be “living fossils,” a group that had evolved minimally since the time of the dinosaurs. Now, a well-preserved 80-million-year-old pollen cone discovered in California has rewritten scientific understanding of the plants.
A recent study by scientists at The University of Texas at Austin and collaborators found that many of the fossils from Germany’s Posidonia shale do not get their gleam from pyrite, commonly known as fool’s gold, which was long thought to be the source of the shine. Instead, the golden hue is from a mix of minerals that hints at the conditions in which the fossils formed.
Life in the ocean’s “twilight zone” could decline dramatically due to climate change, new research suggests.
A fossil of a ‘royal fish’ - estimated to be over 66 million years old - is the first ever to be found in Africa.
Human activity is currently driving a loss of natural diversity that some experts describe as the sixth major mass extinction event in the history of the Earth.
Researcher will discuss the study which involved a sleeping aid known as suvorexant that is already approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for insomnia, hints at the potential of sleep medications to slow or stop the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.
The diverse swimming techniques of the ancient reptiles that ruled the Mesozoic seas have been revealed for the first time by scientists at the University of Bristol.
New fossils in amber have revealed that beetles fed on the feathers of dinosaurs about 105 million years ago, showing a symbiotic relationship of one-sided or mutual benefit.
For more than half a century, the Tully monster (Tullimonstrum gregarium), an enigmatic animal that lived about 300 million years ago, has confounded paleontologists, with its strange anatomy making it difficult to classify.
Using rigorous and detailed collection methods, a University of Minnesota Twin Cities-led research team was able to place the remains of fossil apes, such as Morotopithecus, within detailed habitat reconstructions.
Scientists have described a new species of bat based on the oldest bat skeletons ever recovered. The study on the extinct bat, which lived in Wyoming about 52 million years ago, supports the idea that bats diversified rapidly on multiple continents during this time.
The ancestors of modern mammals managed to evolve into one of the most successful animal lineages – the key was to start out small and simple, a new study reveals.
A team of researchers compared the genomes of woolly mammoths with modern day elephants to find out what made woolly mammoths unique, both as individuals and as a species. The investigators report April 7 in the journal Current Biology that many of the woolly mammoth’s trademark features—including their woolly coats and large fat deposits—were already genetically encoded in the earliest woolly mammoths, but these and other traits became more defined over the species’ 700,000+ year existence.
The recent discovery of a complete sabertooth cat skull from southwest Iowa provides the first evidence of this animal in the state. It also offers clues about an iconic Ice Age predator before the species went extinct roughly 12-13,000 years ago. Researchers believe the skull belonged to a subadult male that may have preyed on giant ground sloths.
Bruce Lieberman, professor of ecology & evolutionary biology and senior curator of invertebrate paleontology at the KU Biodiversity Institute & Natural History Museum, sought to use steam-engine history to test the merits of “competitive exclusion,” a long-held idea in paleontology that species can drive other species to extinction through competition.
A new study investigates how an extinct, carnivorous marsupial relative with canines so large they extended across the top of its skull could hunt effectively despite having wide-set eyes, like a cow or a horse.
Trilobites, prehistoric sea creatures, had so-called median eyes, single eyes on their foreheads, in addition to their compound eyes, research conducted by Dr Brigitte Schoenemann at the University of Cologne’s Institute of Zoology and Professor Dr Euan Clarkson at the University of Edinburgh has now found out.
An eagle twice the size of the modern-day apex predator the wedge-tailed eagle, which soared over southern Australia more than 60,000 years ago, had a wingspan up to 3m wide and powerful talons wide enough to grab a small kangaroo or koala.
An international scientific team led by Stony Brook University paleontologist Andrew J. Moore, PhD, has revealed that a Late Jurassic Chinese sauropod known as Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum sported a 15-meter-long neck. The details will be published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology and provide fresh insights on the evolution of the iconic sauropod body.
A new fossil discovery dating from ‘just’ a few million years after the greatest mass extinction provides the earliest evidence of the insect group that includes mosquitoes and flies
Islands are hotspots for biodiversity – they cover less than 7% of the Earth’s land area, but account for up to 20% of all terrestrial species on the planet. However, islands are also hotspots for species extinction as 50% of today’s IUCN threatened species are native to islands.
In a newly published paper in the journal Papers in Palaeontology, University of Illinois Chicago’s Roy Plotnick and colleagues report that fossils long-interpreted as jellyfish were anemones. To do so, they simply turned the ancient animals upside down.
Cartilaginous fish have changed much more in the course of their evolutionary history than previously believed. Evidence for this thesis has been provided by new fossils of a ray-like shark, Protospinax annectans, which demonstrate that sharks were already highly evolved in the Late Jurassic. This is the result of a recent study by an international research group led by palaeobiologist Patrick L. Jambura from the Department of Palaeontology at the University of Vienna, which was recently published in the journal Diversity.
Ancient climates can help us understand the past, but also the future. 23 million years ago, in a time called the Miocene Epoch, Connecticut was around five to six degrees warmer than today and located roughly where Long Island is now.
Dinosaur claws had many functions, but now a team from the University of Bristol and the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) in Beijing has shown some predatory dinosaurs used their claws for digging or even for display.
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