New research led by the University of California, Berkeley reveals that beyond Neanderthals and Denisovans, humans interbred with two mysterious ‘ghost’ lineages: one in Africa more than 50,000 years ago, another in Eurasia over 1.7 million years ago.

The post Scientists Find Traces of Two Unknown Archaic Hominins in Human DNA appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

Paleontologists have identified the earliest-known cephalopod equipped with a siphuncle -- a tubular extension of the mantle found in shelled cephalopods -- pushing back the fossil record of this key evolutionary feature to the Early Cambrian, roughly 520 million years ago.

The post 520-Million-Year-Old Fossil from China Fills Gap in Evolutionary History of Cephalopods appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

Archaeologists in southwestern Germany have unearthed two miniature bird figurines carved from mammoth ivory, among the smallest and most delicate examples of Ice Age art ever found.

The post 40,000-Year-Old Bird Figurines Found in German Cave appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

An international team of paleontologists has identified a new species of early sauropodomorph dinosaur in Zimbabwe, adding to growing evidence that southern Africa hosted a richer diversity of dinosaurs during the Late Triassic epoch than previously recognized.

The post New Species of Triassic Dinosaur Discovered on Shores of Zimbabwe’s Lake Kariba appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

A set of 1.43-million-year-old fossil footprints preserved along the margin of an ancient lake in northern Kenya is offering paleoanthropologists new evidence about the size, gait and social lives of the beings who made them and reopening questions about which species they belonged to.

The post Ancient Footprints in Kenya Hint at Bigger Bodies and Group Behavior among Early Human Relatives appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

After a century of speculation, astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have captured the clearest evidence yet that the red supergiant Betelgeuse is orbited by a faint companion star.

The post Astronomers Directly Image Betelgeuse’s Long-Suspected Stellar Companion appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

Paleontologists have announced the discovery of a new fossil honeybee species that fills a long-standing gap in the evolutionary record of the genus Apis.

The post Japanese Fossil Bee Fills Two-Million-Year Gap in Honeybee History appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

A stunning new image captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the lopsided intermediate spiral galaxy NGC 4654, whose unusual shape was sculpted by both a close encounter with another galaxy and a headlong plunge through the hot gas of the Virgo Cluster.

The post Hubble Spots Spiral Galaxy Warped by Cosmic Forces appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

Paleontologists at the University of New South Wales have described a new genus and species of dasyurid marsupial from the Early Miocene of Australia, offering the first solid evidence that the family Dasyuridae -- which today includes quolls, Tasmanian devils and tiny antechinuses -- existed long before scientists had proof of it in the fossil record.

The post Early Miocene Fossil Rewrites Family Tree of Little Carnivorous Marsupials appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

Paleontologists have unearthed a remarkably preserved fossil snake in Brazil that is reshaping ideas about how the earliest snakes lived and complicating the long-running debate over whether their ancestors burrowed underground, swam in the sea or crawled the surface.

The post Did Early Snakes Burrow, Swim or Crawl? 80‑Million‑Year‑Old Fossil Suggests: All Three appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

Liopleurodon ferox is a short-necked marine reptile that patrolled the seas of what is now England and France some 163 million years ago.

The post Jurassic Pliosaur Liopleurodon Was Big, but Not as Big as Once Feared appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

Ararat-1, a modest limestone cave that lies at an elevation of 1,034 m on the eastern flanks of the Ararat Depression in central Armenia, has yielded a striking puzzle about how Middle Paleolithic humans moved across their landscape.

The post Stone Tools from Armenian Cave Reveal Split Strategy for Survival 50,000 Years Ago appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

Paleontologists in India have unearthed a partial skeleton of a diminutive, previously unknown neosauropod dinosaur from the Middle Jurassic rocks of Gujarat’s Kachchh Basin.

The post Small Sauropod Dinosaur from Jurassic Period Discovered in India appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

A new genus and species of cryptobranchid salamander that lived in lakes in Japan about 3.5 million years ago has been identified from three fossil vertebrae, filling a major gap in the fossil record of one of the world’s oldest amphibian lineages.

The post 3.5-Million-Year-Old Fossil from Japan Reveals Lost Lineage of Giant Salamanders appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

Paleontologists have described a new genus and species of ancient gecko found in two pieces of amber from the 99-million-year-old (mid-Cretaceous) amber deposits in Kachin province, Myanmar.

The post Oldest Known Male Gecko Found Preserved in Kachin Amber appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

By analyzing nickel isotopes preserved in the 66-million-year-old debris left by the Chicxulub impact, researchers conclude that the asteroid responsible for Earth’s last mass extinction most likely belonged to an exceptionally rare class of primitive meteorites called carbonaceous chondrites of the Ornans type (CO chondrites).

The post Dinosaurs May Have Been Wiped Out by ‘Oddball’ Space Rock appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

Using spectral data from the Magellan Clay telescope at Las Campanas Observatory, astronomers detected helium escaping from LHS 1140b, a rocky exoplanet that orbits in the habitable zone of the nearby low-mass star LHS 1140.

The post Potential Atmosphere Detected on Habitable-Zone Exoplanet LHS 1140b appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

Researchers have identified and formally described a new species of the African monkey genus Colobus living in the remote interior of the Democratic Republic of Congo, marking only the fifth new monkey species found on the continent in the past 75 years.

The post Scientists Discover New Monkey Species in Democratic Republic of Congo appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

Thousands of fossilized bones from a Cretaceous-period bonebed in Wyoming, the United States, offer rare physical evidence that Tyrannosaurus rex fed on the carcasses of a duck-billed dinosaur species called Edmontosaurus annectens.

The post Tyrannosaurus rex Scavenged Duck-Billed Dinosaurs in Ancient Wyoming, Bite Marks Reveal appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

A new genus and species of lambeosaurine hadrosaurid dinosaur has been identified in southern Alberta, Canada, dating back 77 million years to the Campanian age of the Cretaceous period.

The post New Crested Dinosaur Species Identified in Canada appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.