ENVIRONMENT & CLIMATEThe earliest evidence for life on Earth is graphite found to be a biogenic substance in 3.7 billion-year-old metasedimentary rocks discovered in western Greenland and microbial mat fossils found in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone discovered in Western Australia.
Scientists found 520 million years old fossil of Trilobite from the upstate of New York. the specimen was fossilized at pyrite. Lead researcher Thomas A. Hegna and his team found eggs from the back of their head.
scientists found 400 million years old fossil of an extinct worm from Royal Ontario Museum. The specimen had been kept for more than a decade. The extinct gigantic species had more than one-centimeter long jaw that made the immense predator during the period.
A baby "sea monster" was unbelievably found in the belly of its fossil mother. The discovery contradicts the origin of the species for it is known as a reptile.
A new study published in the journal Palaeontology has revealed some interesting new details about the process of reproduction in Mosasaurs, the large marine lizards that once populated the waters about 65 million years ago.
News this week revealed a frightening new addition to the fossil record—a “Terror Bird” species known more scientifically as Llallawavis scagliai (aka Scaglia’s Magnificent Bird). But in spite of its massive size and terrifying stance, this top-tier predatory may not have been the most well-adapted hunter that it could be… That is, unless it was hunting in packs.
Think that you don’t have what it takes to start a career in paleontology, even though your fascination with dinosaurs never ends? Well never fear, news this week reveals that you’re never too old, or too young, to start on the hunt for dinosaurs. And 4-year-old Wylie Brys, of Mansfield, Texas, is proving this sentiment true.
Think that we’ve found just about every prehistoric species that there is to find? You’d be terrifyingly wrong if you said yes. In fact, adding a new view on the diversity of some unlikely large predators that predate humans, a new fossil this week revealed another species of South American “terror birds” known as Llallawavis scagliai.
When you watch butterflies flutter through the sky and lobsters waddle in the sea, you may not readily believe that the two far off species have anything in common. But along with spiders, butterflies and lobsters share quite an interesting collective history-one where an ancient ancestor may have emerged from the sea. Cover the ocean, the land and the skies above the radiation of species into many forms are believed to have originated with a common ancestor as long as 508 million years ago. And in a new study published this week in the journal Paleontology researchers are finally giving a face to ancestor known as Yawunik kootenayi.
In a study published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers with the University of Potsdam in Germany say that they may have found the origin of man’s first steps on land with the rediscovery of a 17 million year old fossil of a beaked whale once native to East Africa. The fossil, which was original unearthed in 1964, but lost for nearly half a century after the skull was misplaced, is the oldest known fossil of a beaked whale and strongly suggests an exact time for when the East African plateau was once turned into a savannah.
A rare frilled shark was caught off the coast of Australia in a fishing trawler. This rarely spotted living fossil dates back 80 million years with a face that won't win it any beauty contests and looks like something that might come out of a Hollywood horror movie.
While tales of the cryptid, the Loch Ness monster more colloquially known as Nessy, have gone largely unsubstantiated in the past, archaeologists in Scotland believe that they may now have found creature that fits the bill. The only problem is, that the dolphin-like marine reptile which grew to lengths of up to 14 feet went extinct nearly 170 million years ago.
The newest discovery of fossilized fish, whose eyes have remained largely intact, has provided the proof that the human eye's ability to see in color developed hundreds of millions of years ago.
Those who have fishermen in the family know that the tales of fishing trips are often folkloric at their best. But would you be surprised to hear that ancient tales of a fishing trip, and perhaps some footprints to document the trip, may be one of the most important archaeological finds of the decade? Well it turns out neither did the pair of fishermen whose ever move was recorded below them in a shifting seabed, 5,000 years ago in the frigid waters of the southern Baltic Sea.
Researchers from Idaho State University pray that a new discovery uncovered near American Falls Reservoir in their home state of Idaho may only be part of a whole, yet to be seen. Earlier this month, in the course of surveying an excavation site while working for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the university alongside avid fossil hunters uncovered a portion of a Columbian era mammoth skull complete with tusks. And the team believes the entire rare skeleton may also be buried in the reservoir.
In the common eye, the king of the world of dinosaurs is undoubtedly the Tyrannosaurus rex. But the common misperception is simply not true… there was a dinosaur bigger and far more terrifying than the T. rex. One that conquered land an sea—the Spinosaurus.