Paleontology
- 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.
- Paleontology
Ratzilla: Extinct rodent was big, really big
Scientists who've analyzed the fossilized remains of an extinct South American rodent say that the creatures grew to weigh a whopping 700 kilograms.
- Paleontology
Fossils’ ear design hints at aquatic lifestyle
New studies of distinctive skull structures in fossils of one of Earth's earliest-known four-limbed creatures suggest the animal could hear best when it was underwater.
- Paleontology
Oh, what a sticky web they wove
A look inside a piece of 130-million-year-old amber has revealed a thin filament of spider silk with sticky droplets that look just like those produced by modern spiders.
- Paleontology
Three Species No Moa? Fossil DNA analysis yields surprise
Analyses of genetic material from the fossils of large flightless birds called moas suggest that three types of the extinct birds may not be separate species after all.
- Paleontology
A human migration fueled by dung?
When people made their way from Asia to the Americas, the path they took may have been covered in dung.
- Paleontology
Learning from the Present
New field studies of unfossilized bones, as well as databases full of information about current fossil excavations and previous fossil finds, are providing insights into how complete—or incomplete—Earth's fossil record may be.
- Paleontology
Secrets of Dung: Ancient poop yields nuclear DNA
Researchers have extracted remnants of DNA from cells preserved in the desiccated dung of an extinct ground sloth.
- Paleontology
Teeth tell tale of warm-blooded dinosaurs
Evidence locked within the fossil teeth of some dinosaurs may help bolster the view that some of the animals were, at least to some degree, warm-blooded.
- Paleontology
Alaska in the ice age: Was it bluegrass country?
At the height of the last ice age, northern portions of Alaska and the Yukon Territory were covered with an arid yet productive grassland that supported an abundance of large grazing mammals, fossils suggest.
- Paleontology
Earful of data hints at ancient fish migration
Small bony growths that developed in the ears of fish more than 65 million years ago are providing a wealth of information about the species’ environment and lifestyle.
