Paleontology News

July 19, 2024

Top Headlines

New Snake Discovery Rewrites History, Points to North America's Role in Snake Evolution

July 19, 2024 — A new species of fossil snake unearthed in Wyoming is rewriting our understanding of snake evolution. The discovery, based on four remarkably well-preserved specimens found curled together in a ...

Evidence for Butchery of Giant Armadillo-Like Mammals in Argentina 21,000 Years Ago

July 17, 2024 — Cut marks on fossils could be evidence of humans exploiting large mammals in Argentina more than 20,000 years ago, according to a new ...

Research Tracks 66 Million Years of Mammalian Diversity

July 17, 2024 — New research has examined the fossil record going back 66 million years and tracked changes to mammalian ecosystems and species diversity on the North American ...

Insight Into One of Life's Earliest Ancestors Revealed in New Study

July 12, 2024 — Researchers have shed light on Earth's earliest ecosystem, showing that within a few hundred million years of planetary formation, life on Earth was already ...

Latest Headlines

updated 11:15pm EDT

First Ever 3D Reconstruction of 52,000-Year-Old Woolly Mammoth Chromosomes Thanks to Serendipitously Freeze-Dried Skin

July 11, 2024 — An international research team has assembled the genome and 3D chromosomal structures of a 52,000-year-old woolly mammoth -- the first time such a ...

A New Species of Extinct Crocodile Relative Rewrites Life on the Triassic Coastline

July 10, 2024 — The surprising discovery of a new species of extinct crocodile relative from the Triassic Favret Formation of Nevada, USA, rewrites the story of life ...

Research Reveals the Most Complete Dinosaur Discovered in the UK in a Century

July 10, 2024 — The most complete dinosaur discovered in the UK in the last 100 years, with a pubic hip bone the size of a 'dinner plate', has been described in a ...

Ancient Large Kangaroo Moved Mainly on Four Legs, According to New Research

July 9, 2024 — A type of extinct kangaroo that lived during the Pleistocene around two and a half million to ten thousand years ago, known as the 'giant wallaby', was a poor hopper, a study has ...

Life Underground Suited Newly Discovered Dinosaur Fine

July 9, 2024 — A newly discovered ancestor of Thescelosaurus shows evidence that these animals spent at least part of their time in underground burrows. The new species contributes to a fuller understanding of life ...

The Dawn of the Antarctic Ice Sheets

July 4, 2024 — In recent years global warming has left its mark on the Antarctic ice sheets. The 'eternal' ice in Antarctica is melting faster than previously assumed, particularly in West Antarctica more than East ...

Extinct Humans Survived on the Tibetan Plateau for 160,000 Years

July 3, 2024 — Bone remains found in a Tibetan cave 3,280 m above sea level indicate an ancient group of humans survived here for many ...

Giant Salamander-Like Creature Was a Top Predator in the Ice Age Before the Dinosaurs

July 3, 2024 — Meet Gaiasia jennyae, the swamp creature with a toilet seat-shaped head. It lived 40 million years before the first dinosaurs, and it was the top ...

Mighty Floods of the Nile River During Warmer and Wetter Climates

July 3, 2024 — Global warming as well as recent droughts and floods threaten large populations along the Nile Valley. Sediment cores off the Nile mouth reveal insights into the effects and causes of heavy rainfall ...

The Evidence Is Mounting: Humans Were Responsible for the Extinction of Large Mammals

July 1, 2024 — Human hunting, not climate change, played a decisive role in the extinction of large mammals over the last 50,000 years. This conclusion comes from ...

Earlier Headlines

Sixty-Million-Year-Old Grape Seeds Reveal How the Death of the Dinosaurs May Have Paved the Way for Grapes to Spread

July 1, 2024 — Scientists discovered the oldest fossil grapes in the Western Hemisphere, which help show how after the death of the dinosaurs, grapes spread across the ...

Ammonites' Fate Sealed by Meteor Strike That Wiped out Dinosaurs

June 27, 2024 — Ammonites were not in decline before their extinction, scientists have ...

Last Surviving Woolly Mammoths Were Inbred but Not Doomed to Extinction

June 27, 2024 — The last population of woolly mammoths was isolated on Wrangel Island off the coast of Siberia 10,000 years ago, when sea levels rose and cut the mountainous island off from the mainland. A new ...

Prehistoric 'Pompeii' Discovered: Most Pristine Trilobite Fossils Ever Found Shake Up Scientific Understanding of the Long Extinct Group

June 27, 2024 — Researchers have described some of the best-preserved three-dimensional trilobite fossils ever discovered. The fossils, which are more than 500 million years old, were collected in the High Atlas of ...

Why the Harsh Snowball Earth Kick-Started Our Earliest Multicellular Ancestors

June 27, 2024 — Why did multicellularity arise? Solving that mystery may help pinpoint life on other planets and explain the vast diversity and complexity seen on Earth today, from sea sponges to redwoods to human ...

Shocked Quartz Reveals Evidence of Historical Cosmic Airburst

June 26, 2024 — Researchers continue to expand the case for the Younger Dryas Impact hypothesis. The idea proposes that a fragmented comet smashed into the Earth's atmosphere 12,800 years ago, causing a ...

New Study Finds Dinosaur Fossils Did Not Inspire the Mythological Griffin

June 20, 2024 — For centuries, scientists thought they knew where the griffin legend came from. A new study takes a closer look at the data and folklore's influence on ...

Newly Discovered Dinosaur Boasts Big, Blade-Like Horns

June 20, 2024 — A new dinosaur has been identified and named. The dinosaur's name, Lokiceratops rangiformis, translates roughly to 'Loki's horned face that looks like a ...

Ancient Polar Sea Reptile Fossil Is Oldest Ever Found in Southern Hemisphere

June 17, 2024 — An international team of scientists has identified the oldest fossil of a sea-going reptile from the Southern Hemisphere -- a nothosaur vertebra found on New Zealand's South Island. 246 million ...

Early Homo Sapiens Facilitated the Establishment of the Bonelli's Eagle in the Mediterranean 50,000 Years Ago

June 14, 2024 — Scientists have unraveled the ancestral history of one of the most iconic birds of prey in the current Iberian fauna: the Bonelli's eagle (Aquila fasciata). The study combines evidence from ...

Sharks Have Depleted Functional Diversity Compared to the Last 66 Million Years

June 14, 2024 — New research has found that sharks retained high levels of functional diversity for most of the last 66 million years, before steadily declining over the last 10 million years to its lowest value in ...

Paleontology: New Fossil Fish Genus Discovered

June 13, 2024 — Paleontologists have identified a new genus of fossil goby, revealing evolutionary secrets of a lineage that stretches back millions of ...

Ancient Ocean Slowdown Warns of Future Climate Chaos

June 13, 2024 — When it comes to the ocean's response to global warming, we're not in entirely uncharted waters. A new study shows that episodes of extreme heat in Earth's past caused the exchange of ...

No Bones About It: 100-Million-Year-Old Bones Reveal New Species of Pterosaur

June 12, 2024 — New research has identified 100-million-year-old fossilized bones discovered in western Queensland as belonging to a newly identified species of pterosaur, which was a formidable flying reptile that ...

Tiny New Species of Great Ape Lived in Germany 11 Million Years Ago

June 7, 2024 — Ancient apes in Germany co-existed by partitioning resources in their environment, according to a new ...

Tiny Roundworms Carve out Unique Parasitic Niche Inside Pseudoscorpion's Protective Covering

June 6, 2024 — In a parasitic first, a Baltic amber specimen has revealed that millions of years ago tiny worms known as nematodes were living inside of and feeding on the outer protective layer of ...

Fishy Mystery of Marine Reptile Solved

June 5, 2024 — The identity of a prehistoric marine reptile has finally been revealed after experts discovered that some of its remains actually belonged to ...

'Missing' Early Sea Sponges Discovered

June 5, 2024 — Geobiologists reported a 550 million-year-old sea sponge that had been missing from the fossil record. The discovery sheds new light on a conundrum that has stumped zoologists and paleontologists for ...

Gigantic Jurassic Pterosaur Fossil Unearthed in Oxfordshire, UK

June 4, 2024 — A team of palaeontologists has discovered a fossil of a gigantic flying reptile from the Jurassic period with an estimated wingspan of more than three metres -- making it one of the largest ...

How Sharks Survived a Major Spike in Earth's Temperature

June 3, 2024 — The sharks we know today as the open ocean's top predators evolved from stubby bottom dwellers during a dramatic episode of global warming millions of years ...