Erwin, D. H. & Valentine, J. W. The Cambrian Explosion: The Construction of Animal Biodiversity (Roberts & Company, 2013).
Briggs, D. E. G. The Cambrian explosion. Curr. Biol. 25, R864–R868 (2015).
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Category: Paleontology
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Scientists finally explain Earth’s strangest fossils
Creatures without hard shells or bones, such as jellyfish, almost never survive in the fossil record. Preservation becomes even more difficult in sandstone, a rock made of coarse grains that allow water to pass through easily and typically forms…
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Paleontologists Unearth New Species of Titanosaur in Argentina
A new genus and species of titanosaur sauropod dinosaur that lived during the Cretaceous period has been identified from the fossilized remains found in northern Patagonia, Argentina.
Life reconstruction of Yeneen houssayi. Image credit:…
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AI Is Solving a Dinosaur Mystery That Stumped Scientists for Decades
A new AI app lets users identify dinosaur footprints by uploading a photo, solving puzzles that have stumped scientists for decades. Even more surprising, it may have uncovered evidence that birds—or bird-like dinosaurs—appeared far earlier…
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Ancient Humans Used Straight-Tusk Elephants Bones as Hammers
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A little piece of fossilized elephant bone found in southern England offers a…
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A lost disease emerges from 5,500-year-old human remains
Scientists have successfully reconstructed the genome of Treponema pallidum from human remains that are about 5,500 years old, discovered in the Sabana de Bogotá region of Colombia. This bacterium is responsible for several serious infectious…
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Strange Red Rocks in Australia Are Challenging Long-Held Ideas About Fossils
Iron-rich rocks at McGraths Flat preserve Miocene rainforest life in remarkable detail, reshaping ideas about how and where exceptional fossils form. Beneath agricultural land in the central tablelands of New South Wales sits one of Australia’s…
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Ancient people carried a wild potato across the American Southwest
More than 10,000 years ago, people living in the southwestern United States carried a wild ancestor of the modern potato across long distances. According to a study published January 21, 2026 in the open-access journal PLOS One, this movement…
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Pleistocene-Age Fossils Reveal Hopping Wasn’t Just for Small Kangaroos
New research by paleontologists from the University of Bristol, the University of Manchester and the University of Melbourne finds that giant ancestors of modern-day kangaroos had robust hindlimb bones and tendon support capable of…
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This 2.6-million-year-old jawbone changes the human story
A newly published study in Nature describes the discovery of the first known Paranthropus fossil from Ethiopia’s Afar region, uncovered about 1000 km north of where this ancient hominin had previously been found. The research team was led by…
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