Life began in the sea. Around 475 million years ago, plants started spreading from water onto dry ground. Roughly 100 million years later, vertebrate animals followed. Yet even after animals established themselves on land, they remained meat…
Category: Paleontology
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307-Million-Year-Old Fossil of Plant-Eating Land Vertebrate Found in Canada
Tyrannoroter heberti, a new species of pantylid ‘microsaur’ from the Carboniferous period, shows that some of Earth’s earliest land vertebrates had already evolved complex teeth for grinding plants, suggesting terrestrial herbivory…
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This Football-Shaped Creature Was an Early Terrestrial Plant-Eater
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For 100 million years, plants had Earth’s surface mostly to themselves while…
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A 307 Million-Year-Old Skull Reveals a Surprising Shift in Early Diets
A 307-million-year-old fossil reveals that some of Earth’s earliest land animals were already experimenting with a plant-based diet. Life first emerged in Earth’s oceans. Around 475 million years ago, plants began spreading from water onto…
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Paleontologists Unearth New Dinosaur Species with Never-Before-Seen Skin Structures
Paleontologists in China have discovered a nearly complete skeleton of a previously unknown species of iguanodontian dinosaur that preserves exceptionally detailed fossilized skin, including structures unlike anything seen in other non-avian…
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Carboniferous recumbirostran elucidates the origins of terrestrial herbivory
Reisz, R. R. & Sues, H.-D. in Evolution of Herbivory in Terrestrial Vertebrates: Perspectives from the Fossil Record (ed. Sues, H.-D.) 9–41 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000).
Brocklehurst, N., Kammerer, C. F. & Benson, R. B. J. The origin of…
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The billion-dollar case for sustaining palaeontology’s digital databases
Dietl, G. P. & Flessa, K. W. Conservation paleobiology: putting the dead to work. Trends Ecol. Evol. 26, 30–37 (2011).
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Dillon, E. M. et al. What is conservation…
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Paleontologists Find Traces of Chitin in Cambrian Trilobite Fossil
The detection of chitin in an Olenellus trilobite from the Carrara Formation (514.5 to 506.5 million years ago) of California, the United States, not only demonstrates that this structural polymer might be able to survive in arthropod fossils…
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Scientists Reconstruct a Giant 31-Foot “Dinosaur-Killer” Crocodile in Unprecedented Detail
A full-scale Deinosuchus schwimmeri skeleton brings decades of paleontological research into a single, scientifically precise exhibit. Dr. David Schwimmer, a geology professor at Columbus State University and an internationally recognized…
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New Research Rewrites the Life History of the World’s Most Famous Dinosaur
The largest study ever conducted on the growth of Tyrannosaurus rex reveals that the dinosaur took a far longer and slower route to adulthood than scientists had previously believed. For many years, researchers have estimated the age and growth…
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