A long running scientific dispute about the origin of the Silverpit Crater beneath the southern North Sea has now been settled.
New research shows that the structure formed when an asteroid or comet struck the region roughly 43 to 46 million…
Category: Paleontology
-
275-Million-Year-Old Amphibian Relative with Twisted Jaws Rewrites Early Tetrapod Diets
A new genus and species of archaic stem tetrapod from the Permian period has been identified from fossil jawbones found in Brazil. Named Tanyka amnicola, this strange amphibian relative had sideways-facing teeth and a rasp-like grinding…
Continue Reading
-
This Ancient Fossil Bird Has 800 Stones in Its Throat and No One Knows Why
The new species, named after the electro funk band Chromeo, helps explain the larger story of why only one small group of dinosaurs survived the extinction. A fossil rarely reveals an animal’s entire life story. Even when a body is well…
Continue Reading
-
This Giant Dinosaur Walked in Circles 150 Million Years Ago – Scientists Uncover Its Secrets
A rare looping dinosaur trackway in Colorado reveals new clues about sauropod movement and hints that the massive animal may have walked with a limp. Researchers studying an unusual looping trail of fossilized footprints in the United States have…
Continue Reading
-
This 2-pound dinosaur is rewriting what scientists know about evolution
Researchers have identified a 90 million year old fossil that helps solve a long standing mystery about a strange group of prehistoric animals. The discovery was led by University of Minnesota Twin Cities scientist Peter Makovicky along with…
Continue Reading
-
Author Correction: Carboniferous recumbirostran elucidates the origins of terrestrial herbivory
Author Correction: Carboniferous recumbirostran elucidates the origins of terrestrial herbivory
Continue Reading
-
Triassic Crocodile Relative May Have Learned to Walk on Two Legs
Fossils from the Chinle Formation of Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona, the United States, reveal that Sonselasuchus cedrus, a species of shuvosaurid that lived about 215 million years ago (Triassic period), likely began life walking…
Continue Reading
-
This Ancient Crocodile Ancestor Learned to Walk on Two Legs
They looked like ostriches as they walked upright on two legs, with the other pair of small legs acting as arms. Even their other features, like hollow bones, large eye sockets, and a toothless beak, were reminiscent of birds or of the “
Continue Reading
-
Ichnofossils in volcanic glass from palaeoproterozoic hydrothermal vents were burrowed by microorganisms probably seeking phosphate
Djokic, T., Van Kranendonk, M. J., Campbell, K. A., Walter, M. R. & Ward, C. R. Earliest signs of life on land preserved in ca. 3.5 Ga hot spring deposits. Nat. Comm. 8, 15263 (2017).
Wacey, D….
Continue Reading
-
Scientists stunned to find signs of ancient life in a place no one expected
Dr. Rowan Martindale, a paleoecologist and geobiologist at the University of Texas at Austin, was hiking through the Dadès Valley in Morocco’s Central High Atlas Mountains when something unusual caught her attention and made her stop.
Martindale…
Continue Reading