Science Daily - Fossils

The oldest collection of mass-produced prehistoric bone tools reveal that human ancestors were likely capable of more advanced abstract reasoning one million years earlier than thought, finds a new study.

New research has revealed how massive ancient glaciers acted like giant bulldozers, reshaping Earth's surface and paving the way for complex life to flourish. By chemically analyzing crystals in ancient rocks, the researchers discovered that as glaciers carved through the landscape, they scraped deep into the Earth's crust, releasing key minerals that altered ocean chemistry. This process had a profound impact on our planet's composition, creating conditions that allowed complex life to evolve.

A new study suggests that Neanderthals experienced a dramatic loss of genetic variation during the course of their evolution, foreshadowing their eventual extinction. Examination of semicircular canals of ear shows Neanderthals experienced 'bottleneck' event where physical and genetic variation was lost.

A rare discovery of a nearly complete skull in the Egyptian desert has led scientists to the 'dream' revelation of a new 30-million-year-old species of the ancient apex predatory carnivore, Hyaenodonta.

Ancient Egyptian mummified bodies smell 'woody,' 'spicy' and 'sweet', finds a new study, revealing new details about mumification practices.

Fossil collectors in Florida have discovered an ancient sinkhole, now at the bottom of a river, which holds the remains of animals rarely seen in the state, including a type of giant armadillo, giant ground sloths and an odd-looking tapir.

Researchers have analyzed the soft tissue from a fossilized plesiosaur for the first time. The results show that the long-necked marine reptile had both smooth and scaly skin. This was likely so it could both swim rapidly and move along rough seabeds.

Sixty-six million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous Period, an asteroid impact near the Yucat n Peninsula of Mexico triggered the extinction of all known non-bird dinosaurs. But for the early ancestors of today's waterfowl, surviving that mass extinction event was like ... water off a duck's back. Location matters, as Antarctica may have served as a refuge, protected by its distance from the turmoil taking place elsewhere on the planet. Fossil evidence suggests a temperate climate with lush vegetation, possibly serving as an incubator for the earliest members of the group that now includes ducks and geese.

Where lies the origin of the Indo-European language family? Researchers contribute a new piece to this puzzle. They analyzed ancient DNA from 435 individuals from archaeological sites across Eurasia between 6.400--2.000 BCE. They found out that a newly recognized Caucasus-Lower Volga population can be connected to all Indo-European-speaking populations.

The remains of the earliest dinosaurs may lie undiscovered in the Amazon and other equatorial regions of South America and Africa, suggests a new study.

The fossilized neck bone of a flying reptile unearthed in Canada shows tell-tale signs of being bitten by a crocodile-like creature 76 million years ago, according to a new study.

Around 45 million years ago, a 4.6 feet-tall (1.40 meters) flightless bird called Diatryma roamed the Geiseltal region in southern Saxony-Anhalt. An international team of researchers report on the bird's fully preserved skull. The fossil was unearthed in the 1950s in a former lignite mining area in the Geiseltal in Germany. It was initially misclassified and thus led a shadowy existence until its rediscovery. The only other place that a similar skull fossil has been found is the USA.

Scientists have identified fossils of snow leopards. The discovery has allowed them to trace the evolutionary history of the species during the Quaternary period and to propose how it dispersed from the Tibetan plateau to the Iberian Peninsula, far from the high and icy Himalayan mountains.

The three-dimensional shape of a protein can be used to resolve deep, ancient evolutionary relationships in the tree of life, according to a new study. It is the first time researchers use data from protein shapes and combine it with data from genomic sequences to improve the reliability of evolutionary trees, a critical resource used by the scientific community for understanding the history of life, monitor the spread of pathogens or create new treatments for disease. Crucially, the approach works even with the predicted structures of proteins that have never been experimentally determined. The findings open the door to using the massive amount of structural data being generated by tools like AlphaFold 2 and help open new windows into the ancient history of life on Earth.

An international team of scientists has uncovered a fascinating piece of the evolutionary puzzle: how the ventral nerve cord, a key component of the central nervous system, evolved in ecdysozoan animals, a group that includes insects, nematodes, and priapulid worms. Their findings provide valuable insights into the origins of these structures in the basal Cambrian period.

A new study finds that one of the hottest periods in Earth's history may have driven lampreys apart -- genetically speaking. The work could have implications for how aquatic species respond to our current changing climate.

Researchers have unearthed two fossils, named Punk and Emo, revealing that ancient molluscs were more complex and adaptable than previously known.

Evolution has resulted in the development of both herbivores and carnivores -- but how? What type of food did extinct vertebrates eat? And how can we gain insight into the diets of these creatures? In living animals, we can simply observe what they feed on today. In the case of extinct species, however, researchers rely on morphological or chemical information supplied by fossils. A team has now compiled a reference framework of isotope compositions indicating the type of diet for extant reptiles that represents a useful reference dataset to reconstruct the diet of fossil reptiles.

A new study has outlined the first genomic evidence of early migration from New Guinea into the Wallacea, an archipelago containing Timor-Leste and hundreds of inhabited eastern Indonesian islands.

A newly described dinosaur whose fossils were recently uncovered is challenging the existing narrative, with evidence that the reptiles were present in the northern hemisphere millions of years earlier than previously known.