PALEONTOLOGY

New microfossils suggest earlier rise in complex life

Microfossils from Western Australia may capture a jump in the complexity of life that coincided with the rise of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere and...

Oldest known samples of brittle stars from supercontinent Gondwana discovered in South Africa

A small team of paleontologists with members from Rhodes University, in South Africa, the National Museum of Natural History, Luxembourg City, and the University...

Asteroid dust caused 15-year winter that killed dinosaur

Around 66 million years ago, an asteroid bigger than Mount Everest smashed into Earth, killing off three quarters of all life on the planet—including...

Bringing a shark to a knife fight: 7,000-year-old shark-tooth knives discovered in Indonesia

Excavations on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi have uncovered two unique and deadly artifacts dating back some 7,000 years—tiger shark teeth that were used...

Oldest family of jewel wasps discovered in Cretaceous amber from Lebanon

Jewel wasps (Chalcidoidea) are one of the most diverse groups of insects, with more than 120,000 species described and an estimated true diversity of...

The first Miocene fossils from coastal woodlands in the southern East African Rift

An international team, with participation by the Geochronology and Geology Program of the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), has published...

Scientists can’t agree on when the first animals evolved—research hopes to end the debate

There are estimated to be nearly 8 million species of animals living today, making up the majority of Earth's documented biodiversity and inhabiting almost...

Elephant teeth: How they evolved to cope with climate change-driven dietary shifts

Seeing elephants in the wild is a timelessly awe-inspiring experience. There are only three living species today: the African savannah elephant, African forest elephant,...

Rare Jurassic fossils discovered near Lake Powell

While documenting fossil tracksites along a stretch of Lake Powell, a Glen Canyon National Recreation Area (Glen Canyon NRA) field crew discovered the first...

New South American site reveals extraordinary fossils from the end of the age of the dinosaurs

The discovery of a spectacular fossil site in Argentina is helping shed new light on life at the end of the Cretaceous, the time...

Extraordinary fossil find reveals details about the weight and diet of extinct saber-toothed marsupial

Recent paleontological explorations in the Tatacoa Desert in Colombia led to the recovery of the most complete skeleton of a "saber-toothed marsupial" discovered in...

Early Cambrian microfossils preserve introvert musculature of cycloneuralians

An international research team led by Prof. Zhang Huaqiao from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NIGPAS)...

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