Science Daily - Fossils

Researchers have described some of the best-preserved three-dimensional trilobite fossils ever discovered. The fossils, which are more than 500 million years old, were collected in the High Atlas of Morocco and are being referred to by scientists as 'Pompeii' trilobites due to their remarkable preservation in ash.

Why did multicellularity arise? Solving that mystery may help pinpoint life on other planets and explain the vast diversity and complexity seen on Earth today, from sea sponges to redwoods to human society. A new article shows how specific physical conditions -- especially ocean viscosity and resource deprivation -- during the global glaciation period known as Snowball Earth could have driven eukaryotes to turn multicellular.

Researchers have identified the likeliest timeline of the famous Hellenistic-era Kyrenia shipwreck, discovered and recovered off the north coast of Cyprus in the 1960s.

For centuries, scientists thought they knew where the griffin legend came from. A new study takes a closer look at the data and folklore's influence on science.

A new dinosaur has been identified and named. The dinosaur's name, Lokiceratops rangiformis, translates roughly to 'Loki's horned face that looks like a caribou.'

A white wine over 2,000 years old, of Andalusian origin, is the oldest wine ever discovered.

An international team of scientists has identified the oldest fossil of a sea-going reptile from the Southern Hemisphere -- a nothosaur vertebra found on New Zealand's South Island. 246 million years ago, at the beginning of the Age of Dinosaurs, New Zealand was located on the southern polar coast of a vast super-ocean called Panthalassa. 'The nothosaur found in New Zealand is over 40 million years older than the previously oldest known sauropterygian fossils from the Southern Hemisphere.

New research has found that sharks retained high levels of functional diversity for most of the last 66 million years, before steadily declining over the last 10 million years to its lowest value in the present day.

Paleontologists have identified a new genus of fossil goby, revealing evolutionary secrets of a lineage that stretches back millions of years.

When it comes to the ocean's response to global warming, we're not in entirely uncharted waters. A new study shows that episodes of extreme heat in Earth's past caused the exchange of waters from the surface to the deep ocean to decline.

New research has identified 100-million-year-old fossilized bones discovered in western Queensland as belonging to a newly identified species of pterosaur, which was a formidable flying reptile that lived among the dinosaurs.

An international scientific team has redefined our understanding of archaea, a microbial ancestor to humans from two billion years ago, by showing how they use hydrogen gas. The findings explain how these tiny lifeforms make energy by consuming and producing hydrogen. This simple but dependable strategy has allowed them to thrive in some of Earth's most hostile environments for billions of years.

Ancient apes in Germany co-existed by partitioning resources in their environment, according to a new study.

In a parasitic first, a Baltic amber specimen has revealed that millions of years ago tiny worms known as nematodes were living inside of and feeding on the outer protective layer of pseudoscorpions.

The identity of a prehistoric marine reptile has finally been revealed after experts discovered that some of its remains actually belonged to fish.

Geobiologists reported a 550 million-year-old sea sponge that had been missing from the fossil record. The discovery sheds new light on a conundrum that has stumped zoologists and paleontologists for years.

A team of palaeontologists has discovered a fossil of a gigantic flying reptile from the Jurassic period with an estimated wingspan of more than three metres -- making it one of the largest pterosaurs ever found from that era.

This fossil looks like a lumpy, rounded rock with a couple of exposed teeth that are a little worse for wear, having been submerged and tumbled along the floor of the Gulf of Mexico for thousands of years before washing up on a beach. But when it was X-rayed a doctoral student saw there was more to the fossil that met the eye: a hidden canine tooth that had not yet erupted from the jaw bone. It was just what researchers needed to identify the fossil as belonging to a Homotherium, a genus of large cat that roamed much of the Earth for millions of years.

A large fossil discovery has helped shed light on the history of dinosaurs in Wales.

Fossils found on the shoreline of Lake Kariba in Zimbabwe represent a completely new dinosaur species. This remarkable find, named Musankwa sanyatiensis, marks only the fourth dinosaur species named from Zimbabwe.