Paleontology
- Paleontology
Oceans may have poisoned early animals
High sulfur and low oxygen produced a deadly brew nearly 500 million years ago that apparently stalled a burst of evolutionary change.
- Animals
Island orangs descend from small group
Bornean apes went through a genetic bottleneck when isolated during an ancient glaciation.
- Paleontology
Ancient trumpets played eerie notes
Acoustic scientists re-create and analyze sounds from 3,000-year-old shell instruments for insight into pre-Inca civilization.
- Paleontology
India yields fossil trove in amber
Insect remains suggest the continent hosted a surprisingly wide variety of creatures 50 million years ago.
- Paleontology
The hunchback of central Spain
An exquisitely preserved dinosaur from central Spain has a hump on its back and suggestions of featherlike appendages on its arms. The primitive carnivore lived about 125 million years ago and may push back the first known instance of feathers on the dinosaur family tree.
- Earth
Primordial bestiary gets an annex
A classic Canadian fossil trove extends to thinner deposits, geologists find.
- Paleontology
Oldest dog debated
A fossil jaw may, or may not, come from the oldest known example of man’s best friend.
- Paleontology
Apes and Old World monkeys may have split later than thought
A 29- to 28-million-year-old primate fossil found in Saudi Arabia assists scientists in timing a major evolutionary transition.
- Earth
Moby Dick meets Jaws
A recently discovered fossil demonstrates that giant whales weren’t always as gentle as they are today.
- Earth
Ancient marine reptiles losing their cool
Warm-bloodedness may help explain the creatures’ evolutionary success, a new study suggests.
- Paleontology
Octopus origins
After examining more than 90 new specimens of Nectocaris pteryx, paleontologists put it near the root of the cephalopod evolutionary tree.
- Earth
Earliest birds didn’t make a flap
The feathers of Archaeopteryx and Confuciusornis probably were not strong enough to support sustained flight.
