paleontology

We would like to introduce you to an exciting recent Ice Age discovery from our bay area here; the giant molar of an elephant-like creature that was neither an elephant nor a mammoth!  This is a single molar from the newly described mastodon speci...

Earth may have been pushed deeper into a global deep freeze by something surprisingly ordinary: salt. Around 700 million years ago, Earth entered periods of extreme glaciation known as Snowball Earth, when ice is thought to have spread across much or potentially all of the planet’s surface. Scientists have long known that expanding ice could […]

A Europe-wide habitat model suggests climate shifts moved Neanderthal refuges without erasing them, while weak links among some regions may have made small populations harder to rescue after local shocks.

Buried beneath the seafloor near Antarctica for 68 million years, a single fossil egg is rewriting what scientists thought they knew about ancient reptiles. It has no skeleton, no obvious owner, and a shape that doesn't match anything paleontologists expected to find there.

For several decades, paleontologists have described Miracinonyx trumani -- an extinct species of cheetah-like felid that roamed the North American prairies and steppe terrains more than 13,000 years ago -- as North America’s answer to the African cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus). The post Ancient DNA Rewrites Story of Enigmatic ‘American Cheetah’ appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News .

Ancient DNA confirms Miracinonyx trumani was more closely related to modern pumas than cheetahs and had a more varied diet than previously thought.

Frozen for 36,000 years, a saber-toothed cub still has whiskers, claws and features fossils never revealed.

With artificial intelligence and careful modeling of fossilized wings, researchers reproduced how some extinct, katydid-like insects might have made noise

The region’s enormous herbivores, some weighing more than 1 ton, were no match for this prehistoric beast

.Scientists from the University of Regina used neutron imaging at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory to examine fossilized bones from dinosaurs, including a broken rib from Scotty, the largest Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton discovered. Neutron imaging allowed researchers to nondestructively examine the rib and corroborate earlier X-ray findings of a rare network of mineralized b…

.Scientists from the University of Regina used neutron imaging at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory to examine fossilized bones from dinosaurs, including a broken rib from Scotty, the largest Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton discovered. Neutron imaging allowed researchers to nondestructively examine the rib and corroborate earlier X-ray findings of a rare network of mineralized b…

Abstract The Lower Devonian Rhynie cherts contain a wide variety of microfossils with possible affinities to fungi or fungus-like organisms, only a fraction of which have been described and critically evaluated. Philophrosyne beckeri gen. et sp. nov. occurs in accumulations of decayed plant parts interspersed with patches of microbial-mat communities. The specimens consist of a sac-like envelope …

A meter-long scorpion with massive pincers stalked ancient Britain 415 million years ago, long before forests and the better-known age of giant insects. Its surprising size and possible semi-aquatic lifestyle could reshape ideas about how early arthropods became giants.

The swelling runs about 17 percent of the length of a 1,023 millimetre tibia from eastern Spain, and its describers worked through fractures, bruises and tumours before settling on an infected sore in the skin above it.

Sexual size dimorphism is widespread in mammals, often reflecting the influence of sexual selection and/or varied ecological pressures. In this study, we investigated the patterns and extent of sexual dimorphism in craniodental traits among adult dasyurid marsupials, with a primary focus on species in the subfamily Dasyurinae. This group spans a wide range of body sizes and ecological niches. Our…

Abstract Background Changes in gene expression regulation are central to the acquisition of novel phenotypes during mammalian evolution. However, transcriptomes substantially accumulate neutral divergence over evolutionary time. As a result, selection-driven gene expression shifts are difficult to distinguish from neutral changes, thereby blurring adaptive signatures during genome evolution. Here…

How quickly sediment accumulates on the seafloor appears to be the key factor determining whether fossils from different time periods become mixed together. A single layer of marine fossils can look like a snapshot of one ancient community even when the organisms preserved side by side actually lived hundreds or thousands of years apart. For [...]

Paleontologists studying a fossil unearthed in southern Manitoba, Canada, have identified what they believe are two bite marks on the internal skeleton of the ancient giant cephalopod Enchoteuthis. The post Fossil of Giant Squid-Like Creature from Cretaceous Period Bears Marks of Deadly Attack appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News .