Paleontology

1. 

   Science

   A Single Capybara Tooth Turned Up in a 9-Million-Year-Old Marine Bed in Chile's Atacama Desert, the Driest Place on Earth, Alongside Freshwater Fish, Crocodiles and Palm Phytoliths

   The University of Arizona-led team says the world's largest rodent, a wetland animal that lives nowhere in Chile today, must have walked around the top of South America along a coastal corridor rather than over the 18,000-foot Andes, and that the coast was once 'sunny Southern California full of palm trees.'

   Sep 21 · 4 min read

2. 

   Science

   UCLA Scientists Took T. Rex's Temperature From Two Teeth and Got 97°F, Almost Exactly Human

   It's the first actual number for a tyrannosaur's body heat. The isotope 'thermometer' needed 90% less enamel than a decade ago, which is what finally persuaded the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County to let them drill Thomas the T. rex.

   Sep 16 · 4 min read

3. 

   Science

   A Skeleton Dug Up in Tanzania in 1963 Sat in a London Drawer for 60 Years

   Dinodontosaurus isiyavamanda, a 240-million-year-old tusked herbivore, ties Tanzania's fossil beds to Brazil and Argentina. The rocks that were supposed to hold the earliest dinosaurs can no longer claim the title.

   Sep 16 · 4 min read

4. 

   Science

   A 25-Meter Diplodocus Has Turned Up in Spain

   Fourteen tail vertebrae and a set of chevron bones from a single animal, excavated at La Tejería in Teruel, place the giant as a close relative of Diplodocus hallorum. The find, published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, redraws the Late Jurassic map.

   Sep 15 · 3 min read

5. 

   Science

   A British Expedition Left a Giant Fossil on an Arctic Mountaintop in 1948. It Sat There 36 More Years

   Arctobatrachus urdensis had a boomerang-shaped skull 27 inches wide and 8 inches long. It is the largest plagiosaurid ever found, and one of the oldest.

   Aug 11 · 3 min read

6. 

   Science

   CT Scans of the World's Only Two Complete Dodo Skulls Suggest the Bird Hunted by Smell and Touch, Possibly at Dusk

   The brain is long gone, but it left impressions on the inside of the skull. Researchers reconstructed those spaces digitally — and found nothing to support the idea that the dodo was stupid.

   Aug 10 · 4 min read

7. 

   Science

   The Biggest Megalodon Bones Ever Found Were Believed Destroyed in 1989. They Were Sitting on a Shelf

   Rediscovered vertebrae from a single 11-million-year-old shark in Denmark support a length beyond 79 feet — and suggest its pups were born 12 feet long.

   Aug 8 · 3 min read

8. 

   Science

   A Fossil Bed in Canada's Mackenzie Mountains Pushes the Dawn of Animal Life Back 10 Million Years

   More than 100 specimens dated to 567 million years ago include six groups never before found in North America, and evidence that early animals moved, reproduced sexually and built recognizable body plans earlier than thought.

   Aug 6 · 3 min read

9. 

   Science

   A Fossil Sat in a Museum Drawer Since 1948. A CT Scan Just Made It a New Predator

   Yale researchers identified Eosphorosuchus lacrimosa, a jackal-sized crocodile relative from 210 million years ago with a short snout and a skull built for crushing.

   Jul 31 · 3 min read

10. 

    Science

    A Three-Foot Giant Salamander From 3.5 Million Years Ago Turns Up in Three Japanese Vertebrae

    Kyoto University researchers say fossils from Oita prefecture belong to a new genus, only the sixth ever described in the giant salamander family, and suspect other museum specimens have been misfiled for years.

    Jul 26 · 3 min read

11. 

    Science

    Ancient Ferns Turned End-Triassic Europe Into a Wildfire Machine That Burned for 300,000 Years

    Utrecht scientists tracked the colour of 15,000 fossil spores through four drill cores and found the plants that survived the mass extinction were the ones feeding the flames.

    Jul 25 · 3 min read

12. 

    Science

    Fossil Hunters in India Unearth Ceratocaudia, a Pint-Sized Jurassic Cousin of the Giant Sauropods

    The 23-foot dinosaur, pieced together from more than 180 bone fragments in Gujarat, pushes the origins of a lineage that later produced titans like Brachiosaurus back by tens of millions of years.

    Jul 24 · 3 min read

13. 

    Science

    'Gus' the T. Rex Sells for a Record $50.1 Million, the Priciest Fossil Ever Auctioned

    A 38-foot Tyrannosaurus discovered on a South Dakota ranch shattered its estimate after a 10-minute bidding war — and reignited a fight between collectors and paleontologists.

    Jul 22 · 3 min read

14. 

    Science

    A Handful of Fossil Teeth Reveals a Lost Branch of Australia's Marsupial Family Tree

    Scientists say tiny insect-eating creatures from Queensland's Riversleigh fossil beds belong to an entirely new marsupial order, Keeunamorphia, that thrived for 35 million years before vanishing.

    Jul 21 · 3 min read

15. 

    Science

    Some Giant Long-Necked Dinosaurs Could Rear Up on Two Legs — Until They Grew Too Big

    A computer analysis of sauropod thigh bones shows young Uberabatitan and Neuquensaurus could stand on their hind legs with surprisingly little strain.

    Jul 21 · 2 min read

16. 

    Science

    Stanford Scientists Say They've Cracked What Made Earth's Greatest Mass Extinction So Deadly

    Some 252 million years ago, roughly 96% of marine species vanished. A new study pinpoints which animals' metabolisms could not survive warmer, oxygen-starved seas.

    Jul 14 · 3 min read

17. 

    Science

    A T. Rex Tooth Lodged in a Dinosaur's Face Captures the Final Moments of a Prehistoric Attack

    A duck-billed Edmontosaurus skull from Montana still carries the broken tooth of its attacker — rare, direct evidence of how the tyrant king hunted.

    Jul 14 · 3 min read

18. 

    Science

    A Muddy 'Mother Goose' Fossil Rewrites the Origin Story of New Zealand's Giant Flightless Birds

    A rare goose unearthed from an ancient lakebed in Central Otago suggests the country's colossal 18-kilogram geese descended from far more recent arrivals than scientists long assumed.

    Jul 13 · 3 min read

19. 

    Science

    20,000-Year-Old Bees Turned a Dead Beast's Teeth Into Their Nursery

    On the island of Hispaniola, scientists found the first known evidence of ancient bees nesting inside the empty tooth sockets of mammal jawbones scattered across a cave floor by owls.

    Jul 7 · 3 min read

20. 

    Science

    A Fossil That Sat in a Drawer for 40 Years Is Antarctica's First Dinosaur Bone

    An 82-million-year-old tail vertebra collected on James Ross Island in 1985 has been identified as a titanosaur — the first dinosaur bone ever found on the continent.

    Jul 5 · 2 min read

21. 

    Science

    Four-Winged 'Jian' Dinosaur Found in China May Be the Predator That Hunted Early Birds

    A newly named microraptor relative, Jian changmaensis, glided on four feathered limbs and may explain piles of crushed bird bones in a 120-million-year-old fossil bed.

    Jun 25 · 3 min read

22. 

    Science

    A Million-Year-Old Cave in New Zealand Reveals a Lost World — and a Flying Kakapo Ancestor

    Fossils sealed between two volcanic ash layers near Waitomo preserve 12 bird species and four frog species, including an ancient relative of the flightless kakapo that may once have flown.

    Jun 25 · 3 min read

23. 

    Science

    T. Rex Was a Slow Grower, Taking About 40 Years to Reach Full Size, Study Finds

    By reading growth rings in 17 tyrannosaur specimens, researchers nearly doubled the dinosaur's estimated growth timeline — and found that some famous 'T. rex' fossils may not be T. rex at all.

    Jun 23 · 3 min read

24. 

    Science

    Millipedes Beat Backboned Animals Onto Land by 80 Million Years, a Sweeping New Family Tree Reveals

    Scientists assembled the first complete evolutionary history of every living millipede order, tracing the leggy creatures back roughly 460 million years — long before any vertebrate crawled ashore.

    Jun 14 · 3 min read

25. 

    Science

    Giant Crocodile Nicknamed 'Lucy's Hunter' Terrorized Early Human Ancestors

    Newly identified species prowled Ethiopian rivers 3 million years ago when Lucy's species walked the Earth.

    Jun 13 · 2 min read

26. 

    Science

    Lost Field Notebooks Solve 55-Million-Year-Old Fossil Fish Mystery

    The spectacular 1.2-meter fossil discovered on a remote New Zealand cliff has been identified as an ancient tarpon-like predator thanks to the late collector's recovered notebooks.

    Jun 12 · 2 min read

27. 

    Science

    Meet Kank australis: A Patagonian Raptor That Hunted Fish Like a Heron

    The 70-million-year-old dinosaur paired a raptor's sickle claw with a long, flexible neck, revealing a fish-eating lifestyle unusual for its family of predators.

    Jun 10 · 3 min read

28. 

    Science

    Newly Named Fossil Salamander, an Ancient Cousin of the Axolotl, Surfaces in Mexico

    The 4.2-million-year-old species, dubbed Ambystoma quetzalcoatli after the Aztec feathered-serpent god, is the first fossil salamander ever named from Mexico and the country's oldest known record of the group.

    Jun 9 · 3 min read

29. 

    Science

    Fossils Reveal a Meter-Long Scorpion That Prowled Ancient Britain 415 Million Years Ago

    Newly identified as Praearcturus gigas, the giant was among the first large predators to stalk the land — armed with 16-centimeter pincers.

    Jun 8 · 2 min read

30. 

    Science

    Four-Winged 'Dragon' Dinosaur Unearthed in China Glided Through the Trees Hunting Early Birds

    Newly named Jian changmaensis, a barn-owl-sized cousin of Velociraptor, is the first non-bird dinosaur found at a Chinese site that has yielded more than 100 ancient birds — and it appears to have preyed on them.

    Jun 5 · 3 min read

31. 

    Science

    65-Foot 'Jurassic Titan' Unearthed in Patagonia Is the First of Its Kind From South America

    Named Bicharracosaurus dionidei, the long-necked giant fills a major gap in the story of how the largest dinosaurs evolved in the Southern Hemisphere.

    Jun 5 · 3 min read

32. 

    Science

    Scientists Discover Hidden 40-Million-Year-Old Ant in Goethe's Amber Collection

    Advanced 3D imaging reveals extinct ant species preserved in extraordinary detail, offering new insights into ancient forest ecosystems and behavior.

    Jun 4 · 3 min read

33. 

    Science

    380-Million-Year-Old Antarctic Fish Reveals Clues to How Life First Walked on Land

    Advanced neutron imaging of Koharalepis jarviki fossil uncovers brain features and air-gulping adaptations that helped ancient fish transition from water to land.

    May 25 · 3 min read

34. 

    Science

    100-Million-Year-Old Bug With Crab-Like Claws Unlike Any Modern Insect Discovered in Amber

    The bizarre ancient creature represents only the fourth known case of crab-like pincers evolving independently in insects.

    May 25 · 3 min read

35. 

    Science

    Scientists Discover Giant Sea Predator 'Tylosaurus rex' That Terrorized Ancient Oceans

    43-foot marine reptile from Texas fossil reveals brutal predator that dominated prehistoric seas 80 million years ago.

    May 23 · 3 min read

36. 

    Science

    Stunning 150-Million-Year-Old Stegosaur Skull Unearthed in Spanish Crop Field Forces Rewrite of Dinosaur Evolution

    Paleontologists in Teruel province have recovered the most complete Dacentrurus armatus skull ever found in Europe and proposed an entirely new evolutionary group, Neostegosauria, to make sense of where the plated dinosaur fits on the family tree.

    May 17 · 4 min read

37. 

    Science

    Scientists Discover Giant 'Last Titan' Dinosaur in Thailand

    Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis weighed 27 tonnes and may be Southeast Asia's final giant sauropod before seas transformed the region.

    May 15 · 2 min read

38. 

    Science

    Paleontology Rocked by Discovery of Organic Molecules in 66-Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Bones

    Scientists find compelling evidence that Edmontosaurus fossil retains original collagen proteins, overturning long-held beliefs about fossilization.

    May 14 · 2 min read

39. 

    Science

    Scientists Find Organic Molecules in 66-Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Bones

    Remarkably preserved Edmontosaurus fossil from South Dakota contains traces of original collagen proteins, challenging long-held beliefs about fossilization.

    May 14 · 3 min read

40. 

    Science

    75-Million-Year-Old Mammal 'Cimolodon Desosai' Discovered in Baja California Dinosaur Beds

    A University of Washington team unearthed a hamster-sized multituberculate that scampered through forests alongside the dinosaurs and may help explain how mammals survived the asteroid extinction.

    May 8 · 3 min read

41. 

    Science

    240-Million-Year-Old Giant 'Sand Creeper' Found Hidden in Retaining Wall

    Scientists have identified Arenaerpeton supinatus, an ancient amphibian preserved with rare skin traces, after the fossil spent decades forgotten inside a garden wall.

    May 6 · 3 min read

42. 

    Science

    240-Million-Year-Old 'Sand Creeper' Giant Amphibian Discovered Hidden in Garden Wall

    A forgotten fossil embedded in a retaining wall has been identified as one of Australia's most remarkable prehistoric finds, revealing a fearsome river predator with rare skin preservation.

    May 6 · 3 min read

43. 

    Science

    75-Million-Year-Old Tyrannosaur Fossil Reveals Shocking Cannibalistic Feeding Behavior

    High-resolution 3D scans identify precise bite marks showing smaller tyrannosaur fed on remains of much larger relative, challenging predator stereotypes.

    May 5 · 2 min read

44. 

    Science

    Tyrannosaur Fossil Reveals 75-Million-Year-Old Cannibalistic Feeding Behavior

    High-resolution 3D scans of bite marks on massive foot bone show smaller tyrannosaur scavenged remains of much larger relative.

    May 5 · 3 min read

45. 

    Science

    Scientists Discover Bizarre 275-Million-Year-Old Animal with Twisted Jaw

    Tanyka amnicola belonged to an ancient lineage that was already a 'living fossil' in its time, featuring unusual jaw structure with sideways-pointing teeth.

    May 2 · 3 min read

46. 

    Science

    275-Million-Year-Old Animal Had Twisted Jaw Unlike Anything Alive Today

    Tanyka amnicola, discovered in Brazilian riverbed, was a 'living fossil' even in its own time with unique sideways-pointing teeth for grinding plants.

    May 1 · 2 min read

47. 

    Science

    Massive 50-Foot Ancient Snake Discovered in India May Rival Legendary Titanoboa

    Vasuki indicus lived 47 million years ago and could have stretched up to 49 feet long, making it one of the largest snakes ever discovered.

    Apr 29 · 3 min read

48. 

    Science

    Scientists Discover 50-Foot Ancient Snake That Rivals the Legendary Titanoboa

    Named Vasuki indicus, the massive prehistoric serpent lived 47 million years ago in India and represents a unique lineage that originated on the subcontinent.

    Apr 29 · 3 min read

49. 

    Science

    Scientists Discover 50-Foot Ancient Snake That May Rival Legendary Titanoboa

    Fossil remains of Vasuki indicus from 47 million years ago reveal a massive serpent that stretched up to 49 feet in length.

    Apr 29 · 3 min read

50. 

    Science

    Ancient Blood Vessels Discovered in T. Rex Fossil Reveal Dinosaur Healing Secrets

    Powerful synchrotron X-rays uncover preserved blood vessels in 66-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex rib, providing new insights into dinosaur biology and recovery.

    Apr 27 · 3 min read

51. 

    Science

    Ancient Blood Vessels Discovered in T. Rex Fossil Rewrite Dinosaur Science

    Powerful synchrotron X-rays reveal preserved circulatory system in 66-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex bone, offering unprecedented insights into dinosaur biology and healing processes.

    Apr 26 · 3 min read

52. 

    Science

    100-Million-Year-Old Snake Had Hind Legs and Mysterious Lost Bone

    Najash rionegrina fossil reveals early snakes were large predators with wide mouths, not small burrowers as previously thought.

    Apr 25 · 3 min read

53. 

    Science

    100-Million-Year-Old Snake Had Hind Legs and Lost Bone That Rewrites Evolution

    A remarkably preserved fossil reveals early snakes were large, wide-mouthed predators rather than tiny burrowers, challenging long-held theories about snake origins.

    Apr 24 · 2 min read

54. 

    Science

    100-Million-Year-Old Snake Fossil Reveals Evolutionary Secrets and Lost Bone

    Najash rionegrina specimen challenges long-held theories about snake origins, showing early serpents were large predators with hind legs and intact cheekbones.

    Apr 24 · 3 min read

55. 

    Science

    Virginia Tech Student Solves 160-Million-Year Fossil Mystery With 'Murder Muppet' Dinosaur

    Crushed skull forgotten in drawer reveals new species that challenges understanding of early dinosaur evolution and mass extinction.

    Apr 15 · 2 min read

56. 

    Science

    250-Million-Year-Old Fossil Confirms Mammal Ancestors Laid Eggs — First Direct Proof Ever Found

    Using synchrotron X-ray CT imaging, scientists from the University of the Witwatersrand proved that Lystrosaurus — Earth's greatest mass extinction survivor — reproduced by laying soft-shelled eggs, answering a question paleontologists have pursued for decades.

    Apr 15 · 4 min read

57. 

    Science

    Scientists Discover 'Lost World' of Advanced Animals 540 Million Years Ago

    Fossil findings in China reveal complex creatures existed millions of years before the famous Cambrian explosion, rewriting the timeline of animal evolution.

    Apr 7 · 3 min read

58. 

    Science

    500-Million-Year-Old Fossil Rewrites the Origin of Spiders and Scorpions

    Megachelicerax cousteaui, an 8-centimeter Cambrian arthropod from Utah described by Harvard researchers in Nature, pushes chelicerate origins back 20 million years and confirms molecular clock predictions about when arachnid ancestors first appeared.

    Apr 6 · 4 min read

59. 

    Science

    Paleontologists Find Ancient Bees That Nested Inside Fossil Bones in Caribbean Cave

    Researchers at the Florida Museum of Natural History discovered bee nest structures built inside the jaw bones of extinct hutias and ground sloth teeth in a Dominican Republic cave — the first known case of bees nesting in fossil cavities.

    Apr 6 · 4 min read

60. 

    Science

    Scientists Discover Adorable Baby Dinosaur in South Korea Named After Cartoon Character

    CT scans reveal hidden skull and stomach stones in first new Korean dinosaur species identified in 15 years.

    Apr 2 · 2 min read

Showing the latest 60. More in Science.