Science Daily - Fossils

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Paleontology and fossil records. Read about fossil finds over the last 10 years starting with the most recent research. Full text, photos.
Updated: 19 hours 36 min ago

Earliest deep-cave ritual compound in Southwest Asia discovered

Mon, 12/09/2024 - 15:24
A cave in Galilee, Israel, has yielded evidence for ritualistic gathering 35,000 years ago, the earliest on the Asian continent.
Categories: Fossils

Insect fossil find 'extremely rare'

Mon, 12/02/2024 - 21:19
Newly discovered insect fossils are so small they can barely be seen by the human eye but have been preserved in an 'extraordinary' way.
Categories: Fossils

A fossil first: Scientists find 1.5-million-year-old footprints of two different species of human ancestors at same spot

Thu, 11/28/2024 - 19:07
More than a million years ago, on a hot savannah teeming with wildlife near the shore of what would someday become Lake Turkana in Kenya, two completely different species of hominins may have passed each other as they scavenged for food. Scientists know this because they have examined 1.5-million-year-old fossils they unearthed and have concluded they represent the first example of two sets of hominin footprints made about the same time on an ancient lake shore. The discovery will provide more insight into human evolution and how species cooperated and competed with one another, the scientists said.
Categories: Fossils

Brains grew faster as humans evolved

Wed, 11/27/2024 - 13:00
Brain size increased gradually within each ancient human species rather than through sudden leaps between species.
Categories: Fossils

World's oldest lizard wins fossil fight

Tue, 11/26/2024 - 18:17
A storeroom specimen that changed the origins of modern lizards by millions of years has had its identity confirmed.
Categories: Fossils

Scientists use ancient DNA to shed light on adaptation of early Europeans

Tue, 11/19/2024 - 17:18
Leveraging a unique statistical analysis and applying it to ancient DNA extracted from human skeletal remains, a team of researchers has revealed new insights into how ancient Europeans adapted to their environments over 7,000 years of European history.
Categories: Fossils

The chilling sound of the Aztec death whistle

Tue, 11/19/2024 - 12:29
The Aztec skull whistle produces a shrill, screaming sound. A study shows that these whistles have a disturbing effect on the human brain. The Aztecs may have deliberately used this effect in sacrificial rituals.
Categories: Fossils

Tiny worm makes for big evolutionary discovery

Mon, 11/18/2024 - 11:52
The history of a major animal group, composed of millions of species of insects, arachnids, and nemotodes, has been elusive -- until now. A team has now identified the oldest known ecdysozoan in the fossil record and the only one from the Precambrian period.
Categories: Fossils

Earliest evidence of humans using fire to shape the landscape of Tasmania

Sat, 11/16/2024 - 18:56
Some of the first human beings to arrive in Tasmania, over 41,000 years ago, used fire to shape and manage the landscape, about 2,000 years earlier than previously thought.
Categories: Fossils

Egyptians drank hallucinogenic cocktails in ancient rituals, study confirms

Fri, 11/15/2024 - 11:46
Scholars for the first time identified chemical signatures of the components of a liquid concoction contained in a Bes mug. A new technique helped identify a sample flavored with honey, sesame seeds, pine nuts, licorice and grapes -- commonly used to make the beverage look like blood.
Categories: Fossils

Bird brain from the age of dinosaurs reveals roots of avian intelligence

Wed, 11/13/2024 - 11:33
A 'one of a kind' fossil discovery could transform our understanding of how the unique brains and intelligence of modern birds evolved, one of the most enduring mysteries of vertebrate evolution.
Categories: Fossils

New insights into the Denisovans: New hominin group that interbred with modern day humans

Fri, 11/08/2024 - 10:33
Scientists believe individuals of the most recently discovered 'hominin' group (the Denisovans) that interbred with modern day humans passed on some of their genes via multiple, distinct interbreeding events that helped shape early human history. Scientists outline evidence suggesting that several Denisovan populations, who likely had an extensive geographical range from Siberia to Southeast Asia and from Oceania to South America, were adapted to distinct environments. They further outline a number of genes of Denisovan origin that gave modern day humans advantages in their different environments.
Categories: Fossils

Did the world's best-preserved dinosaurs really die in 'Pompeii-type' events?

Mon, 11/04/2024 - 14:05
Extraordinarily well preserved fossils of feathered dinosaurs and other creatures got that way after being frozen in time by by volcanic eruptions, researchers have long suggested. Not so fast, says a new study.
Categories: Fossils

Fossil of huge terror bird offers new information about wildlife in South America 12 million years ago

Mon, 11/04/2024 - 10:23
Evolutionary biologists report they have analyzed a fossil of an extinct giant meat-eating bird -- which they say could be the largest known member of its kind -- providing new information about animal life in northern South America millions of years ago.
Categories: Fossils

Reconstructing ancient climate provides clues to climate change

Mon, 11/04/2024 - 10:22
Research helps reconstruct an ancient climate and challenges the timing of the Andes Mountains uplift.
Categories: Fossils

Indigenous cultural burning has protected Australia's landscape for millennia, study finds

Fri, 11/01/2024 - 11:37
Ancient cultural burning practices carried out by Indigenous Australians limited fuel availability and prevented high intensity fires in southeastern Australia for thousands of years, according to new research.
Categories: Fossils

Buried Alive: Carbon dioxide release from magma deep beneath ancient volcanoes was a hidden driver of Earth's past climate

Wed, 10/30/2024 - 14:06
A team discovered that, contrary to present scientific understanding, ancient volcanoes continued to spew carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from deep within the Earth long past their period of eruptions.
Categories: Fossils

Ancient DNA brings to life history of the iconic aurochs, whose tale is intertwined with climate change and human culture

Wed, 10/30/2024 - 13:58
Geneticists have deciphered the prehistory of aurochs -- the animals that were the focus of some of the most iconic early human art -- by analyzing 38 genomes harvested from bones dating across 50 millennia and stretching from Siberia to Britain. The aurochs roamed in Europe, Asia and Africa for hundreds of thousands of years. Adorned as paintings on many a cave wall, their domestication to create cattle gave us a harnessed source of muscle, meat and milk. Such was the influence of this domestication that today their descendants make up a third of the world's mammalian biomass.
Categories: Fossils

Sinuses prevented prehistoric croc relatives from deep diving

Tue, 10/29/2024 - 19:30
Paleobiologists have found that the sinuses of ocean dwelling relatives of modern-day crocodiles prevented them from evolving into deep divers like whales and dolphins.
Categories: Fossils

Fossil hunters strike gold with new species

Tue, 10/29/2024 - 11:06
Paleontologists have identified fossils of an ancient species of bug that spent the past 450 million years covered in fool's gold in central New York. The new species, Lomankus edgecombei, is a distant relative of modern-day horseshoe crabs, scorpions, and spiders. It had no eyes, and its small front appendages were best suited for rooting around in dark ocean sediment, back when what is now New York state was covered by water.
Categories: Fossils

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