Fossils News
April 28, 2024
Top Headlines
Apr. 23, 2024 Bioluminescence first evolved in animals at least 540 million years ago in a group of marine invertebrates called octocorals, according to the results of a new study. The study focuses on an ancient group of marine invertebrates that includes soft ...
Apr. 24, 2024 A new study has recovered a 3.7-billion-year-old record of Earth's magnetic field, and found that it appears remarkably similar to the field surrounding Earth ...
Apr. 23, 2024 Palaeontologists have solved a hundred-year-old mystery of how some fossil frogs preserve their fleshy parts -- it's all down to their skin. Palaeontologists studied 45-million-year-old fossil frogs from the Geiseltal site in central Germany. ...
Apr. 17, 2024 The fossilized remains of a second gigantic jawbone measuring more than two meters long has been found on a beach in Somerset, ...
Latest Headlines
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Apr. 17, 2024 New research has highlighted an area in Arabia that once acted as a key point for cultural exchanges and trades amongst ancient people -- and it all took place in vast caves and lava tubes that have ...
Apr. 15, 2024 Palaeontologists have described three unusual new species of giant fossil kangaroo from Australia and New Guinea, finding them more diverse in shape, range and hopping method than previously thought. ...
Apr. 9, 2024 Several similar large, fossilized bone fragments have been discovered in various regions across Western and Central Europe since the 19th century. The animal group to which they belonged is still the ...
Apr. 5, 2024 A new study calls into question Bergmann's rule, an 1800s-era scientific principle stating that animals in high-latitude, cooler climates tend to be larger than close relatives living in warmer ...
Apr. 3, 2024 The earliest dinosaurs had rapid growth rates, but so did many of the other animals living alongside them, according to a new ...
Apr. 2, 2024 An international team of scholars present the earliest clear archaeological and biomolecular evidence for the raising of chickens for egg production, based on material from 12 archaeological sites ...
Mar. 28, 2024 What did an ancient Chinese emperor from 1,500 years ago look like? A team of researchers reconstructed the face of Chinese Emperor Wu of Northern Zhou using DNA extracted from his remains. The study ...
Mar. 20, 2024 A new study has challenged previously held views that brain preservation in the archaeological record is extremely rare. The team compiled a new ...
Mar. 21, 2024 Scientists have explored the puzzling world of rays that lived 150 million years ago and discovered a previously hidden diversity -- including a new ray species. This study significantly expands the ...
Mar. 22, 2024 Spiders that disguise themselves as ants live in many locations around the globe but until now most had been able to avoid detection from fossil ...
Earlier Headlines
Mar. 21, 2024 Scientists have uncovered the fossilized skull of a 270-million-year-old ancient amphibian ancestor in the collection of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. The team of ...
Mar. 20, 2024 Measuring between 3 to 3.5 meters, 16 million years old: Paleontologists have announced the discovery of a new species of freshwater dolphin in the Peruvian Amazon region. Surprisingly, its closest ...
Mar. 18, 2024 Dinosaurs get all the glory. But aetosaurs, a heavily armored cousin of modern crocodiles, ruled the world before dinosaurs did. These tanks of the Triassic came in a variety of shapes and sizes ...
Mar. 12, 2024 A large find of dinosaur tracks and fossilized plants and tree stumps in far northwestern Alaska provides new information about the climate and movement of animals near the time when they began ...
New Study Reveals Insight Into Which Animals Are Most Vulnerable to Extinction Due to Climate Change
Mar. 7, 2024 In a new study, researchers have used the fossil record to better understand what factors make animals more vulnerable to extinction from climate change. The results could help to identify species ...
Mar. 7, 2024 The oldest fossilized forest known on Earth -- dating from 390 million years ago -- has been found in the high sandstone cliffs along the Devon and Somerset coast of South West ...
Mar. 5, 2024 A new fossil, named 'Attenborough's strange bird' after naturalist and documentarian Sir David Attenborough, is the first of its kind to evolve a toothless beak. It's from a ...
Feb. 29, 2024 A technique originally devised to extract DNA from woolly mammoths and other ancient archaeological specimens can be used to potentially identify badly burned human remains, according to ...
Feb. 29, 2024 A 30 million year-old fossil whale may not be the heaviest animal of all time after all, according to a new analysis by paleontologists. The new analysis puts Perucetus colossus back in the same ...
Feb. 21, 2024 To learn about the first organisms on our planet, researchers have to analyze the rocks of the early Earth. These can only be found in a few places on the surface of the Earth. The Pilbara Craton in ...
Feb. 20, 2024 In a new study, paleontologists describe the oldest-known leaf-nosed bat fossils, which were found along the banks of the Panama Canal. They're also the oldest bat fossils from Central America, ...
Feb. 20, 2024 By analysing ancient DNA, an international team of researchers have uncovered cases of chromosomal disorders, including what could be the first case of Edwards syndrome ever identified from ...
Feb. 19, 2024 Until recently, Orthacanthus gracilis could have been considered the 'John Smith' of prehistoric shark names, given how common it was. Three different species of sharks from the late ...
Feb. 16, 2024 Palaeontological analysis shows that a renowned fossil thought to show soft tissue preservation is in fact just paint. The fossil discovered in 1931 was thought to be an important specimen for ...
Feb. 15, 2024 New research has shown that the tropical subsurface ocean gained oxygen during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (commonly referred to as PETM). During this short-lived interval of time in Earth s ...
Feb. 14, 2024 A new study explores the weight great fossil sites have on our understanding of evolutionary relationships between fossil groups and quantified the power these sites have on our understanding of ...
Feb. 12, 2024 Scientists examined hundreds of birds in museum collections and discovered a suite of feather characteristics that all flying birds have in common. These 'rules' provide clues as to how the ...
Feb. 9, 2024 Snail shells are often colorful and strikingly patterned. This is due to pigments that are produced in special cells of the snail and stored in the shell in varying concentrations. Fossil shells, on ...
Feb. 9, 2024 Nearly 400 exceptionally well-preserved fossils dating back 470 million years have been discovered in the south of France by two amateur paleontologists. The discovery provides unprecedented ...
Feb. 6, 2024 The rivers of Australia, which once flowed across its now dry interior, used to host a range of bizarre animals -- including a sleek predatory lobe-finned fish with large fangs and bony scales. The ...
Thursday, March 21, 2024
Wednesday, March 20, 2024
Monday, March 18, 2024
Tuesday, March 12, 2024
Thursday, March 7, 2024
- New Study Reveals Insight Into Which Animals Are Most Vulnerable to Extinction Due to Climate Change
- Earth's Earliest Forest Revealed in Somerset Fossils
Tuesday, March 5, 2024
Thursday, February 29, 2024
- Scientists ID Burned Bodies Using Technique Used for Extracting DNA from Woolly Mammoths, Neanderthals
- Slimming Down a Colossal Fossil Whale
Wednesday, February 21, 2024
Tuesday, February 20, 2024
- Panama Canal Expansion Rewrites History of World's Most Ecologically Diverse Bats
- Ancient DNA Reveals Down Syndrome in Past Human Societies
Monday, February 19, 2024
Friday, February 16, 2024
Thursday, February 15, 2024
Wednesday, February 14, 2024
Monday, February 12, 2024
Friday, February 9, 2024
- Surprisingly Vibrant Color of 12-Million-Year-Old Snail Shells
- New Fossil Site of Worldwide Importance Uncovered in Southern France
Tuesday, February 6, 2024
Friday, February 2, 2024
Wednesday, January 31, 2024
Tuesday, January 30, 2024
Monday, January 29, 2024
Wednesday, January 24, 2024
- DNA from Preserved Feces Reveals Ancient Japanese Gut Environment
- Ancient Brown Bear Genomes Sheds Light on Ice Age Losses and Survival
- New Pieces in the Puzzle of First Life on Earth
Tuesday, January 23, 2024
Monday, January 22, 2024
Sunday, January 21, 2024
Thursday, January 18, 2024
Wednesday, January 17, 2024
Tuesday, January 16, 2024
Monday, January 15, 2024
Thursday, January 11, 2024
- Even the Oldest Eukaryote Fossils Show Dazzling Diversity and Complexity
- Oldest Known Fossilized Skin Is 21 Million Years Older Than Previous Examples
- Prehistoric Person With Turner Syndrome Identified from Ancient DNA
Wednesday, January 10, 2024
- The Extinction of the Giant Ape: Long-Standing Mystery Solved
- New Research Sheds Light on an Old Fossil Solving an Evolutionary Mystery
Friday, January 5, 2024
Wednesday, January 3, 2024
Tuesday, January 2, 2024
Thursday, December 21, 2023
- Insects Already Had a Variety of Defense Strategies in the Cretaceous
- Unveiling Ancient Secrets: 3D Preservation of Trilobite Soft Tissues Sheds Light on Convergent Evolution of Defensive Enrollment
Tuesday, December 19, 2023
Monday, December 18, 2023
Thursday, December 14, 2023
Wednesday, December 13, 2023
Tuesday, December 12, 2023
Thursday, December 7, 2023
- Molecular Fossils Shed Light on Ancient Life
- It Turns Out, This Fossil 'plant' Is Really a Fossil Baby Turtle
- Geoscientists Map Changes in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Over Past 66 Million Years
Wednesday, December 6, 2023
Monday, December 4, 2023
- Earliest-Known Fossil Mosquito Suggests Males Were Bloodsuckers Too
- Crocodile Family Tree Mapped: New Light Shed on Croc Evolution
Thursday, November 30, 2023
Wednesday, November 29, 2023
- Unknown Animals Were Leaving Bird-Like Footprints in Late Triassic Southern Africa
- Landscape Dynamics Determine the Evolution of Biodiversity on Earth
Wednesday, November 22, 2023
Tuesday, November 21, 2023
- Curators and Cavers: How a Tip from a Citizen Scientist Led to Deep Discoveries in Utah's Caves
- Trilobites Rise from the Ashes to Reveal Ancient Map
- Looking for 'LUCA' And the Timing of Cellular Evolution
Friday, November 17, 2023
Thursday, November 16, 2023
- Research in Lake Superior Reveals How Sulfur Might Have Cycled in Earth's Ancient Oceans
- Plants That Survived Dinosaur Extinction Pulled Nitrogen from Air
- Radiocarbon Dating Meets Egyptology and Biblical Accounts in the City of Gezer
- Birds Set Foot Near South Pole in Early Cretaceous, Australian Tracks Show
Tuesday, November 14, 2023
- Europe Was Not Covered by Dense Forest Before the Arrival of Modern Humans
- New Study Reveals Surprising Insights Into Feeding Habits of Carnivorous Dinosaurs in North America
Tuesday, November 7, 2023
Monday, November 6, 2023
- 450-Million-Year-Old Organism Finds New Life in Softbotics
- Fossils Tell Tale of Last Primate to Inhabit North America Before Humans
- Frogs Were Florida's First-Known Vertebrates from the Caribbean
Wednesday, November 1, 2023
Monday, October 30, 2023
Friday, October 27, 2023
Wednesday, October 25, 2023
- Climate Change Likely Impacted Human Populations in the Neolithic and Bronze Age
- Sediment Core Analysis Supports New Epoch Characterized by Human Impact on Planet
- Bizarre New Fossils Shed Light on Ancient Plankton
Tuesday, October 24, 2023
Friday, October 20, 2023
Thursday, October 19, 2023
- Waves of Change: How Sea-Levels and Climate Altered the Marine Ecosystems at the South Pole 390-385 Million Years Ago
- Researchers Identify the Oldest Pieces of Baltic Amber Found on the Iberian Peninsula: Imports Began Over 5,000 Years Ago
- Holy Bat Skull! Fossil Adds Vital Piece to Bat Evolution Puzzle
Wednesday, October 18, 2023
Monday, October 16, 2023
Thursday, October 12, 2023
Tuesday, October 10, 2023
Monday, October 9, 2023
Friday, October 6, 2023
Wednesday, October 4, 2023
Friday, September 29, 2023
Thursday, September 28, 2023
Friday, September 22, 2023
Thursday, September 21, 2023
- Dinosaur Feathers Reveal Traces of Ancient Proteins
- New Study Reveals a Long History of Violence in Ancient Hunter-Gatherer Societies
Wednesday, September 20, 2023
- Slow Growth in Crocodile Ancestors Pre-Dated Their Semi-Aquatic Lifestyle
- Prehistoric Fish Fills 100 Million Year Gap in Evolution of the Skull