Paleontology

Paleontology

Early birds could achieve liftoff

Early birds and other flying dinosaurs had the strong legs and wing speed needed to launch into the air directly from the ground, researchers argue.

Paleontology

Ancient armored fish revises early history of jaws

The fossil of a 423-million-year-old armored fish from China suggests that the jaws of all modern land vertebrates and bony fish originated in a bizarre group of animals called placoderms.

Paleontology

Birds’ honks filled Late Cretaceous air

Oldest avian voice box fossil yet discovered belonged to a ducklike bird that lived during the age of the dinosaurs.

Paleontology

Ancient microbe fossils show earliest evidence of shell making

Armor-plated, 809-million-year-old fossilized microbes discovered in Canada are the oldest known evidence of shell making.

Animals

Barnacles track whale migration

The mix of oxygen isotopes in the shells of barnacles that latch on to baleen whales may divulge how whale migration routes have changed over millions of years.

Paleontology

Pterosaurs weren’t all super-sized in the Late Cretaceous

A 77-million-year-old flying reptile may be the smallest pterosaur of the Late Cretaceous.

Life

Fossils hint at India’s crucial role in primate evolution

Ancient fossils from coal mine in India offer clues to what the common ancestor of present-day primates might have looked like.

Health & Medicine

Readers contemplate aging research

Aging research, dino guts and Earth's quasisatellite in reader feedback.

Paleontology

Preteen tetrapods identified by bone scans

Roughly 360 million years ago, young tetrapods may have schooled together during prolonged years as juveniles in the water.

Paleontology

Jurassic ichthyosaur dubbed ‘Storr Lochs Monster’ unveiled

A rare, 170-year-old skeleton discovered in Scotland is one of the best-preserved ichthyosaur fossils from the Middle Jurassic.

Paleontology

Greenland may be home to Earth’s oldest fossils

Dating to 3.7 billion years ago, mounds of sediment called stromatolites found in Greenland may be the oldest fossilized evidence of life on Earth.

Oceans

Lack of nutrients stalled rebound of marine life post-Permian extinction

Warm sea surface temperatures slowed the nitrogen cycle in Earth’s oceans and delayed the recovery of life following the Permian extinction, researchers propose.