A Decade of Ancient DNA Analysis Has Taught Scientists “What It Means to Be Human”
A ball of 4,000-year-old hair frozen in time tangled around a whalebone comb led to the first ever reconstruction of an ancient human genome just…
Paleontology
200-Million-Year-Old Fossil Sheds Light on the Evolution of How Dinosaurs Breathed
An international team of scientists has used high-powered X-rays at the European Synchrotron, the ESRF, to show how an extinct South African 200-million-year-old dinosaur, Heterodontosaurus…
Climate Changed the Size of Our Bodies – And Our Brains
The average body size of humans has fluctuated significantly over the last million years and is strongly linked to temperature. Colder, harsher climates drove the…
Unusual Dinosaurs Rapidly Shrank Down to the Size of Chickens As They Adopted a Remarkable New Diet
Dinosaurs were generally huge, but a new study of the unusual alvarezsaurs show that they reduced in size about 100 million years ago when they…
Newly Discovered Paleonursery Offers Rare, Detailed Glimpse at Life 518 Million Years Ago
Deposit contains exceptionally preserved fossils of soft-bodied, juvenile organisms from the Cambrian period. All life on Earth 500 million years ago lived in the oceans,…
A Comet Strike 13,000 Years Ago May Have Sparked Key Shift in Human Civilization
A cluster of comet fragments believed to have hit Earth nearly 13,000 years ago may have shaped the origins of human civilization, research suggests. Possibly…
Ancient Fossil Shark Scales Provide a Glimpse of Reef Predator Populations Before Human Impact
The results indicate that shark abundance in the region declined roughly three-fold since prehistoric times. Scientists recently made news by using fossil shark scales to…
Global Climate Dynamics Drove the Decline of Mastodonts and Elephants, Not Overhunting by Early Humans
Elephants and their forebears were pushed into wipeout by waves of extreme global environmental change, rather than overhunting by early humans, according to new research….
New Species of Beetle Discovered in Dinosaur Ancestor’s 230 Million-Year-Old Poop
The tiny beetle Triamyxa coprolithica is the first-ever insect to be described from fossil feces. The animal the researchers have to thank for the excellent…
Newly Discovered Prehistoric Armored Dinosaur May Have Been Able to Dig
Newly excavated skeletal remains of an ankylosaurid — a large armored herbivore that lived during the Cretaceous Period — may indicate that members of this…
New Research Shows Dinosaurs Were in Decline for Million Years Before the Final Asteroid Death Blow
The death of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago was caused by the impact of a huge asteroid on the Earth. However, paleontologists have continued…
Tiny Ancient Bird Discovered in China Shares Skull Features With Tyrannosaurus rex
Researchers from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have discovered a 120-million-year-old partial fossil skeleton of a…
When T. rex Dominated, Medium-Sized Predators Disappeared – Replaced by Juvenile Tyrannosaurs
New University of Maryland study suggests that everywhere tyrannosaurs rose to dominance, their juveniles took over the ecological role of medium-sized carnivores. A new study…
Discovery of Tiny Bones and Teeth Reveals Multiple Dinosaur Species Lived and Nested in the Arctic
In the 1950s, researchers made the first unexpected discoveries of dinosaur remains at frigid polar latitudes. Now, researchers reporting in the journal Current Biology on June 24…
Newly Discovered Human Species “Dragon Man” May Replace Neanderthals As Our Closest Relative
A near-perfectly preserved ancient human fossil known as the Harbin cranium sits in the Geoscience Museum in Hebei GEO University. The largest of known Homo skulls, scientists…
Were Dinosaurs Warm-Blooded? Research Team Discovers Arctic Dinosaur Nursery
Images of dinosaurs as cold-blooded creatures needing tropical temperatures could be a relic of the past. University of Alaska Fairbanks and Florida State University scientists…
Scientists Discover a New Genetic Mutation That Distinguishes Modern Humans From Neanderthals
Skoltech scientists and their colleagues from Germany and the United States have analyzed the metabolomes of humans, chimpanzees, and macaques in muscle, kidney, and three…
New Species of Humongous Prehistoric Crocodile “River Boss” Discovered in Australia
A new species of large prehistoric croc that roamed south-east Queensland’s waterways millions of years ago has been documented by University of Queensland researchers. PhD…