Paleontology

Paleontology

L.A.’s Oldest Tourist Trap

Modern excavations at the La Brea tar pits are revealing a wealth of information about local food chains during recent ice ages, as well as details about what happened to trapped animals in their final hours.

Paleontology

Ancestral Handful: Tiny skull puts Asia at root of primate tree

Researchers have unearthed the partial skull of the oldest known primate, a tiny creature that lived in south-central China 55 million years ago.

Paleontology

Proud paleontologists proclaim: It’s a boy!

Marine sediments deposited about 425 million years ago have yielded what scientists contend is the world’s oldest undoubtedly male fossil.

Paleontology

Northern Extinction: Alaskan horses shrank, then disappeared

Horses that lived in Alaska shrank dramatically in body size before they went extinct at the end of the last ice age.

Paleontology

Ancient atmosphere was productive

New laboratory experiments suggest that extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the era just before the dinosaurs went extinct may have boosted plant productivity to at least three times that found in today’s ecosystems.

Paleontology

Healed scars tag T. rex as predator

Healed wounds on the fossil skull of a Triceratops—wounds that match the size and shape of those that would be made by Tyrannosaurus rex—are a strong sign that the tooth scrapes are a result of attempted predation, not scavenging.

Paleontology

Role of gastroliths in digestion questioned

New analyses of the gastroliths in ostriches are casting doubt on the theory that large, plant-eating dinosaurs swallowed stones to grind up tough vegetation and thereby aid their digestion.

Paleontology

Tracks suggest chase, capture, and after-meal respite

A 1.3-meter-long, S-shaped trail of fossil footprints discovered in southwestern Indiana includes one set of disappearing tracks—suggesting an ancient chase—and an impression where the predator rested after its meal.

Paleontology

Bob, Bob, Bobbin’ Along: Dinosaur buoyancy may explain odd tracks

New lab experiments and computer analyses may explain how some of the heftiest four-legged dinosaurs ever to walk on Earth could have left trackways that include the imprints of only their front feet.

Paleontology

Fossils of Flyers: Bones tell why Atlantic albatross disappeared

Ancient albatross fossils suggest that rising sea levels 400,000 years ago wiped out the North Atlantic population of short-tailed albatross.

Paleontology

Reptile remains fill in fossil record

The fossil remains of a sphenodontian, an ancient, lizardlike reptile, are helping fill a 120-million-year-old gap between this creature's ancestors and today's tuatara, sole survivors of the once prominent group.

Paleontology

Some trilobites grew their own eyeshades

The 380-million-year-old fossil of a trilobite strongly suggests that members of at least some trilobite species were active during the daytime, a lifestyle that scientists previously had only suspected.