A new genus and species of four-winged pennaraptoran dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous of northern China is adding another twist to the story of how birds evolved from their dinosaur ancestors.
A 113-million-year-old pterosaur fossil from northeastern Brazil has yielded rare evidence of soft tissues, organic molecules and chemical traces of a diet heavy in fish and cephalopods such as squid or nautilus relatives.
Paleontologists from the Field Museum of Natural History have described the fossilized remains of baby embolomeres, crocodile-like predators that prowled ancient rivers and swamps between 350 and 280 million years ago.
Exceptionally preserved skin of Montsecosuchus depereti, an extinct crocodylomorph no larger than a house cat that prowled the tropical wetlands of Early Cretaceous Spain, has allowed paleontologists to reconstruct details of its scales, sensory organs and even possible banded markings along its tail.
An international team of paleontologists from Romania, Hungary and Italy has identified a new genus and species of herbivorous, duck-billed dinosaur from an incomplete skeleton unearthed in the HaΘeg Basin, a bowl-shaped depression in the Carpathians of present-day Romania.
Deep inside a limestone cave in southern China, paleontologists have uncovered an assemblage of thirteen fossilized teeth belonging to Gigantopithecus blacki, the largest primate species ever known to have lived.
Paleontologists have described a new genus and three new species of small, insect-eating marsupials from the Early Miocene deposits of the Riversleigh World Heritage Area in northwestern Queensland, one of Australiaβs richest fossil sites.
A new study suggests evolution stayed stuck for millions of years until sexual reproduction helped unleash a burst of biodiversity. New research suggests that the earliest animals on Earth may have unintentionally slowed the pace of evolution for millions of years. Scientists have found that their reliance on asexual reproduction limited competition and reduced the [...]
A newly discovered feathered dinosaur from China may help solve a long-standing mystery surrounding a fossil bed filled with ancient bird remains. For years, one fossil site in northwestern China has posed a mystery. The area contains hundreds of fossilized birds, many remarkably well preserved. Mixed among them are strange clusters of shattered bones compressed [...]
Paleontologists have identified a previously unknown species of amphicyonid -- the extinct family of carnivorous mammals popularly known as bear-dogs -- from two specimens unearthed at a rich fossil site in the Vallès-Penedès Basin near Barcelona, Spain.
The extinct Eurasian cave lion (Panthera spelaea) and todayβs African and Asian lions (Panthera leo) belong to separate evolutionary lineages that diverged roughly 1.7 million years ago -- far earlier than previously thought, according to an analysis of 12 cave lion genomes spanning more than 100,000 years.
Fossils from some of the oldest-known animals on Earth, dating from 574 million years ago (Ediacaran period), suggest that cloning, not competition, dominated the Ediacaran seas, slowing evolution until environmental stress helped drive the rise of sexual reproduction and a burst of biodiversity.
Paleontologists have identified a new species of meiolaniform turtle from northern Patagonia, Argentina, that lived during the Maastrichtian age, just before the asteroid-triggered mass extinction that wiped out all non-avian dinosaurs.
In a new study, fossilized droppings suggested that ancient ground squirrels ate the meat of much larger animals, including mammoths, bison and saber-toothed cats.
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