Paleontology
- Paleontology
Sea stars sighted predators 79 million years ago
Sea stars may have evolved complex lenselike structures to detect and evade predators at least 79 million years ago.
- Paleontology
Microbes indicted in ancient mass extinction
About 252 million years ago an estimated 96 percent of all species were wiped from Earth, and now scientists have a new suspect in the killing — methane-belching microbes.
- Paleontology
Ancient oceans’ top predator was gentle filter feeder
New fossils suggest that a distant relative of lobsters used bristled limbs to net its prey, not spike it.
- Plants
Fossil fern showcases ancient chromosomes
Fossil nuclei and chromosomes seen in a 180-million-year-old fern reveals that the plants have stayed mostly the same.
- Paleontology
The dinosaur ‘chicken from hell’
Fossils suggest that a supersized chickenlike reptile called Anzu wyliei roamed what are now the Dakotas roughly 67 million years ago.
- Paleontology
Fossil whale skull hints at echolocation’s origins
Ancestors of toothed whales used echolocation as early as 34 million years ago, analysis of a new fossil skull suggests.
- Paleontology
New dino species named Europe’s top predator
At up to 10 meters long and weighing in at four to five tons, this Tyrannosaurus rex-like beast could have been the biggest predator to ever roam Europe and among the largest dinosaurs to walk Earth during the late Jurassic period.
- Animals
Algal blooms created ancient whale graveyard
Whales and other marine mammals died at sea and were buried on a tidal flat in what's now in the Atacama Desert in Chile.
- Animals
A weighted butt gives chickens a dinosaur strut
Scientists put wooden tails on chickens to learn how small feathered dinosaurs moved, with results captured on video.
- Animals
Some crocodiles go out on, or up, a limb to hunt, keep warm
Observations of crocodiles from Australia, Africa and North America show that four species could waddle up and along branches above water. They do this to regulate their temperature and look for prey, scientists suggest.
- Genetics
When flowers died out in Arctic, so did mammoths
Genetic analysis finds vegetation change in the Arctic around same time as megafauna extinction.
- Paleontology
Rivers of rock and gas froze ancient animals in time
Ancient Chinese fossil beds were preserved by high-speed rivers of volcanic rock and gas.
