Mastodons are relatives of elephants belonging to the genus Mammut that inhabited North and Central America before they went extinct about 10,000 to 11,000 years…
Despite a land area of just 148 square miles (384 km2), the Isle of Wight, an island off England, is one of the richest dinosaur…
Paleontologists have identified the remains of one of Europe’s largest ever land hunters. Spinosaurids, or spinosauridae (meaning “spined lizards”) is a family of carnivorous theropod…
Scientists investigated the diet of megalodon, the largest shark to have ever lived, using zinc isotopes. In a new study, researchers compared how high up…
Metacommunity analysis suggests succession, not mass extinction, explains the Ediacaran diversity drop. Early animals developed complex ecological communities more than 550 million years ago, setting…
Paleontologists have been debating for decades whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded, like modern mammals and birds, or cold-blooded, like modern reptiles. Knowing whether dinosaurs were warm-…
Evidence that the mysterious ancient fish-like vertebrate Palaeospondylus was likely one of the earliest ancestors of four-limbed animals, including humans, has been discovered by the…
What the new Jurassic Park movie gets wrong: Aerodynamic analysis causes a rethink of the biggest pterosaur. One of the most exciting moments of Jurassic…
An international team of researchers has discovered a new type of fossilization. Discovery of ‘ghost’ fossils reveals plankton resilience to past global warming events. An…
Did the world’s largest prehistoric shark need an orthodontist, or did it just have a bad lunch? Researchers from North Carolina State University (NCSU) and…
Scientists have found that a key modern group of reptiles that includes lizards and snakes – known as squamates – diverged in the Jurassic period,…
Fossils can tell scientists a lot about an animal such as their morphology, their environment, and where to place them in the tree of life….
Largest ever ichthyosaur tooth is among fossil discoveries including remains of a new beast, sized longer than a bowling alley. Paleontologists have discovered sets of…
Glowing spider fossils prompt breakthrough study of how they were preserved at Aix-en-Provence. A geologic formation near Aix-en-Provence, France, is renowned as one of the…
Remarkable new evidence that pterosaurs, the flying relatives of dinosaurs, were able to control the color of their feathers using melanin pigments has been discovered…
The fossilized remains of the triceratops specimen known as ‘Big John’ display injuries to the skull that may have occurred during combat with another triceratops,…
A recent study published in PeerJ examines the preservation of unique ichthyosaur fossils using cutting-edge research methodologies. In the final, large group of ichthyosaurs, one…
T. rex’s short arms may have lowered risk of bites during feeding frenzies. Over the two decades paleontologist Kevin Padian taught a freshman seminar called…
