Paleontology
- Earth
Americas’ hookup not so ancient after all
Debate lingers over when the Isthmus of Panama formed and closed the seaway that separated North and South America millions of years ago.
- Paleontology
Humans may have taken different path into Americas than thought
An ice-free corridor through the North American Arctic may have been too barren to support the first human migrations into the New World.
- Paleontology
T. rex look-alike unearthed in Patagonia
A new dinosaur species discovered in Patagonia has the runty forearms of a Tyrannosaurus rex, but is not closely related to the gigantic predator.
- Paleontology
New fossil suggests echolocation evolved early in whales
A 27-million-year-old whale fossil sheds light on echolocation’s beginnings.
- Paleontology
Woolly mammoths’ last request: Got water?
Woolly mammoths survived on an Alaskan island thousands of years after mainland mammoths went extinct. But they died out when their lakes dried up, thanks to a warming climate and rising sea levels.
- Earth
How dinosaurs hopped across an ocean
Land bridges may have once allowed dinosaurs and other animals to travel between North America and Europe around 150 million years ago, a researcher proposes.
- Paleontology
Why the turtle got its shell
Fossil evidence suggests that turtles’ ancestors started to form precursors to today’s shells to help them dig, not to protect themselves.
- Paleontology
Parasites wormed way into dino’s gut
Tiny slimed tunnels in the guts of a 77-million-year-old duck-billed dinosaur fossil offer the first hard evidence that dinosaurs may have been infected by parasitic worms, paleontologists say.
- Animals
Two newly identified dinosaurs donned weird horns
Two newly discovered relatives of Triceratops had unusual head adornments — even for horned dinosaurs.
- Animals
Insect debris fashion goes back to the Cretaceous
Ancient insects covered themselves in dirt and vegetation just as modern ones do, fossils preserved in amber suggest.
- Paleontology
Human route into Americas traced via trail of bison fossils
Bread crumbs in the form of ancient bison may mark one potential path that humans took to colonize the Americas.
- Life
1.56-billion-year-old fossils add drama to Earth’s ‘boring billion’
Ancient multicellular eukaryotes big enough to be seen by the naked eye discovered in 1.56-billion-year-old rock in China may be an ancestor of modern algae.
